“We can finish today,” Garth said at last.
“Oh, we’ll never be finished,” Tony said. Hangovers must be good for me, he thought to himself. He felt totally in command.
Garth looked surprised. “Why not?”
“Come on. Bill. You people never finish. Even when you make the movie, you’re not finished. Only art forms can be finished — a can of tomatoes is forever being repackaged.”
Garth looked hard. Those chiseled cheeks froze, a statuary bust placed on a mountain, fiercely American. “If you believe that, you shouldn’t be writing movies.”
Tony nodded agreeably. “You’re probably right.”
“You know I get pretty sick of you New Yorkers. With your snobbery and your bullshit. You’re willing to take the money, you do sloppy work, and then you complain we’re only interested in money.”
Tony smiled. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right.”
Garth frowned at him. He wanted to fight.
Tony spoke casually. “Who are you going to get to rewrite it?”
“What?”
“Who are you going to bring in to rewrite my draft? I suggest you go for a good dramatic writer. The script’s structure is okay now and I’ve got you a couple of cute funny scenes, but you need somebody … oh, just a trifle pompous, not in a bad way, to really do the heavy stuff.” Tony sipped his coffee, studying the baffled look on Garth’s face. It was wonderful, silly and wacky, just like his dreams. “You know what I mean,” he argued. “Scenes with very few words, shot darkly, a lot of glistening tears. Meryl’ll play it then. You guys’ll walk off with dual Academy Awards.”
“What the fuck do you think you’re playing? A game? You think because I let you fuck her. I’ll take this crap?” Garth’s real anger wasn’t very different from his screen fury. His face seemed to widen with internal explosive force, his lips disappeared while he clipped his words.
Tony smiled. He had an idea for the next moment in the scene. He thought it would really play nicely. He sat up more, put the coffee down, and picked up the bedside telephone. He dialed the general number for International. “Hello,” he said to the operator. “Mr. Winters please.”
“Oh, for Chrissakes.” Garth got up nervously, his face scared, and made as though to leave, but predictably (Mike Nichols wouldn’t have permitted such an obvious bit of blocking) he stopped at the door when Tony told his father’s secretary, “Hi, this is Tony Winters. … Hi, how are you? … No. you’re right, I have been remiss. In fact, I wanna correct that. Could you tell my father I’m going to come by — Oh, I’m in Malibu, it might take me an hour or so to get it together.” Garth shook his head over and over with disgust. “Well, if he’s not back from lunch by then. I’ll just wait, okay? … Great, thanks.”
Garth didn’t turn to face him. He put a hand on the tall window and hunched over as though bowing to the endless expanse of the Pacific. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Tony?”
“Nothing,” Tony said, pulling the covers aside. He put his feet on the ground gently, testing the floorboards as though they might give way. “I haven’t had a good talk with my dad”—he stood up and smiled—“dear old Pops, in years.”
Garth pushed himself off the window, wheeling gracefully, a dancer pirouetting. The nervous look was gone. “We’ve still got the last scene to write.”
Tony laughed — it sounded shaky. “We,” he mumbled.
“Yeah,” Garth answered pugnaciously. “We.”
“After I talk to my dad,” Tony responded.
“You’re a big boy, Tony,” Garth warned, readying for his exit line. “Check your arithmetic. Don’t add this up wrong.” He fixed Tony with a glance for a beat, and then moved out of the room confidently.
Left alone, Tony was uncertain, feeling woozy and confused. He had had nothing particular in mind when he phoned his father’s office. He had done it as a prank, to throw Garth. But now it seemed like a good excuse to confront his father, to ask him the questions that he had spent a lifetime … avoiding? No. Asking himself. It was time to find someone with answers, not simply more questions.
In the end, Mrs. Thorn pretended they all still had their heads firmly attached to their necks. David was told to write his account immediately. He casually asked to be allowed to return home to change. Permission was granted, but they wanted him back within an hour or so, and expected a version by morning.
It was midnight when he walked out of the Newstime building for the last time. The radio cab was waiting. He took his carry-on luggage into the back seat and leaned on it while they drove down Fifth Avenue. He half-expected the city to look different, since he and his life had been so completely changed by the last two days. He wanted something in the architecture of New York to reflect the altered inner landscape of his mind. But, he realized, what made the town so majestic was its indifference. They passed a laughing couple on a corner, the sounds of their joy swallowed by the building’s hollows. A rag-covered woman moved, head bowed, under the public library’s lions — an ant crawling up an impossible stairway, liable to be stepped on by the giants who surely must inhabit such a building. Everywhere the stacks of lighted boxes suggested countless lives, at rest or restless, unaware of their insignificance.
Once he had looked at the city as a sight to conquer. He rode home from the magazine feeling the power and influence that surrounded him, certain his fate would be to move these people, to tell them what to think, what to do. Behind the mask of objectivity had lurked the even darker face of power. What a silly youthful dream. It could never have happened, it hadn’t been a dream that was coming true — he was simply another doll living in these endless rows of dollhouses. Toys for giants he neither knew nor understood.
He wondered how long it would be before Patty would tell about the things she had found. At first she’d swear to keep it to herself — probably to spare herself the embarrassment. But when she got another lover, that fear would dissipate, and it would join the repertoire, another story of another crazy lover from her past. She’d use it, if not in her next novel, then in the one after.
And she didn’t even know how often he had indulged his fantasy, how many times he had bared himself to the Mistress and been stripped of his false dignities, admitted his depraved longings. He loved it. Giving up all the pretenses — the relief of openly being a slave, licking to please, whimpering honestly at the whip, begging to have his silly sex stroked, granted pleasure only when thoroughly exposed as abject and humiliated. He had paid for every session — the arrangement was merely business for the Mistress — but it was leaving her, not Patty, not the magazine, that he regretted.
He arrived at the loft. The leather collar, the magazines, and the Polaroid were there on the coffee table, just as she had told him. He’d have to dispose of them, and the telephone number in his book, before finishing. He didn’t want anything for Patty to cite as evidence. Throwing them in the garbage wouldn’t suffice: he burned the photo and the magazines and went downstairs to the cold garbage room, putting the leather collar at the bottom of one of the bags.
Back upstairs, his phone was ringing. He glanced at the clock. He had been gone for forty minutes, not really long enough for Chico to become anxious. It was probably Patty, desperate to restore her self-respect, not wanting to face a lifetime of knowing that when he most needed her, she simply wasn’t there. A long agonizing phone call would give that back to her. He didn’t mind the idea of granting the favor — but the pain of life was something he no longer wanted to feel. He pulled the plug from the wall jack so the ringing wouldn’t disturb him.