“Oh, yeah?” Fred said with woozy surprise. He’s already tipsy, Marion noted.
“He wrote a terrific movie for me.”
“Yeah, with Bill Garth, right?” Fred asked.
“Oh, that’s right,” Foxx said, pretending he had just remembered. “Tony said you two are good friends.”
“Oh, yeah?” Fred said with a gleam in his eye. “Well, you know, in the last year, a lot of people have suddenly become my good friends.”
Foxx laughed hard — but nervously. “Of course, of course. Isn’t the world terrible? But he’s a good writer.”
“Yeah, he’s good,” Fred said with a tone of critical omniscience. “But in his plays he’s never really put it all together. Someday he’ll have a big smash.” Fred started down the stairs. He looked back at Marion and smiled. “Though Betty’s probably getting tired of waiting, right?” He guffawed and moved toward the noise of the crowd.
At the sight of him, they applauded good-naturedly. A few shouted mocking toasts, but many stared at him with glistening, fascinated eyes, as though trying to decode the mysterious formula that had made him a star.
In the rear of the front room, smiling but not applauding, stood Patty Lane. To the publishing people she was a familiar sight and provoked much gossip. She wore a black silk men’s shirt, just covering the tops of her naked thighs. The buttons were open halfway down her chest, so that anyone standing at an angle to her could thoroughly view the sheer black bra she was wearing. Her escort was Raul Sabas, the Broadway musical-comedy star whose obvious effeminacy and open admission of homosexuality had led to a ceaseless flow of gossip that he was in fact experimenting with women. Raul was dressed in an identical silk shirt (though he wore black leather pants with it), also open halfway down his chest, and he and Patty seemed very chummy, Raul’s arm often gathering her for a delighted squeeze at one of her witticisms. Their presence together intensified the talk about them, but the five or six people in the room who were “really in the know” about the mysterious Patty Lane (her status as a cult author was growing daily due to the surprisingly strong sales of the quality-paperback edition of her first novel) whispered to others the current rumor that Sabas was a beard — in fact, they suspected she was flirting with lesbianism.
Standing with this unusual couple was Tony Winters, tan from another long trip to Los Angeles, wearing jeans, polo shirt, and a blue satin windbreaker with the title of his forthcoming movie on the back. Leaning on him wearily was his wife, Betty, looking, by contrast with her husband and friends, absurdly conventional and out of sync, dressed in a demure enormous maternity dress that visually inflated her fifth month of pregnancy to eight-month proportions. Betty, the ones “in the know” explained, had quit her job, intending to devote herself to raising the child, and that was the reason Patty Lane’s new contract wasn’t with Garlands. Betty cited her husband’s frequent absences in LA as the reason she felt her baby would need a nonworking mother, but those “in the know” mumbled that the couple’s move to the West Coast was only a matter of time.
This foursome huddled together while Fred made his way through the crowd, greeting people boisterously, pumping hands like an electioneering politician. Something Tony said caused his group to burst out laughing, a quartet abruptly playing a different sheet of music from the room’s orchestra.
“What’s so funny?” Fred called out, following the curious glances of people around him toward the two couples. “Hey, Patty! You look great.” The crowd parted for him to walk up. “Tony, Betty, how are you? Raul Sabas!” Fred said, putting his hand out enthusiastically. “I love your work.”
“Thanks. Don’t you love our matching outfits?” Sabas asked, putting an arm around Patty and posing like a chorus girl.
“We’re twins,” Patty said with the unsmiling but sly expression that had replaced, during the last year, her formerly eager, wondering style.
“Where’s Marion?” Betty asked.
“Marion!” Fred shouted like a vulgar situation-comedy character calling for his wife to bring him a beer. People laughed and parted to reveal a somewhat flushed and bedraggled Marion, stuck at the other end of the room, having been cut off by the congratulatory press of the party. Fred didn’t wait for her arrival to continue. He waved his glass at Tony. “I was just talking about you.”
Tony nodded. “Yes?”
“My movie producer, Jim Foxx, is here—”
“Yeah, I saw him.” Tony smiled. “He produced Concussion.”
“Is that your movie?” Fred asked.
“Right,” Tony said, and turned his back to show the title sewn on the back of his jacket. “In a theater near you this summer.”
“Hey!” Fred said, and nudged Marion, who had just then arrived at his side. A little of her champagne was jostled out of the glass. “I should get one like that for The Locker Room, don’t you think?”
“Fred, you spilled my wine.”
Fred glanced down at the floor. His eyes widened with delighted surprise. “This is right near the spot where I spilled coffee before meeting with Bart!”
Tony nodded solemnly. “So it’s a tradition.”
Raul Sabas laughed. “You told that story on Carson. It was a scream.”
“Oh, Fred’s a hoot,” Patty said, her pale white face glowing out of the dark black of her outfit, her eyes glistening, but her expression flat.
“Anyway,” Fred continued to Tony, taking a hearty slug to drain his glass, “he said you’re interested in adapting my next novel.”
“I am?” Tony looked aloof and surprised.
“Uh-oh!” Fred covered his mouth. “Maybe it’s a secret.” He smiled at Betty. “Anyway, you won’t have to worry about baby’s new clothes.”
“Fred!” Bart called from the other end of the room, gesturing for him to join him.
“Oops! Gotta greet people.” Fred said, and left them, taking Marion’s hand, dragging her with him.
“I’ll talk to you later,” Marion said to Betty before the crowd swallowed her.
Tony looked at Patty and rolled his eyes. She smiled slyly. “Don’t we all just love our Freddy?”
“I think he’s cute!” Raul Sabas exclaimed. “Just like a corn muffin! I’d love to butter him all over.”
“Oh, cut it out, Raul,” Tony said. “You’re with us. You can be yourself. Button your shirt, have a beer, and talk baseball.”
Raul roared and put out his long arm, touching Tony on the shoulder with the tip of his index finger, as though knighting him.
Betty groaned. “I have to pee again.”
“My God,” Tony said.
“Shut up,” Patty said. “It’s your fault.”
Betty moved toward the crowd, saying, “If I don’t come back soon. I’ll be asleep in a bedroom.”
Patty turned her back to the crowd, edged near to Tony, and said in a low voice: “Stop being so crabby with her.”
Tony stared down Patty’s shirt at her breasts, making no attempt to disguise his look. “Conventional ethics from you? I’m supposed to sit home with a ballooning wife making soufflés while you go to literary soirees and fuck everything in sight?”
“Excuse me,” Raul Sabas said, only he wasn’t speaking with mock flamboyance, but genuine irritation. “For your information, she isn’t sleeping with anyone.”
Patty smiled at Raul. “Thanks for clearing that up, Raul.”
“I was only kidding, Raul,” Tony answered. “I know all about her vow of celibacy. I’m married to her best friend, remember?”
“It’s not a vow, Tony,” Patty answered, frowning.