“You should be writing for the theater,” Raul said to Tony, still angry. “Hollywood’s turning you into a humorless vulgarian.”
“Tony is writ—” Patty began to Raul.
“Quiet!” Tony said sharply, and then spoke in a rush. “Don’t knock being a humorless vulgarian. Look what it’s done for Fred.” He looked down Patty’s shirt again.
Patty began to button it. “Be nice to her, Tony, or I’ll cut your balls off.”
Like you did with David, Tony thought to himself. He turned away, searching for the bar. He was going to get drunk. “I’m going to get a drink,” he said, and moved away bumping into an elegantly dressed man.
“Excuse me,” the man said. He was Brian Stoppard. Paula Kramer’s husband.
Paula moved around them both to greet Patty with breathless enthusiasm: “You’re not going to believe what Fred said to me at the door! He forgave me for my piece. He said he knows what it’s like for free-lance magazine writers — to be noticed, they have to do hatchet jobs.”
“Freddy the dope,” Patty mumbled with a sly smile. He’s right, she thought to herself. “It’s good to see you. Paula.”
“I’m Brian Stoppard,” Paula’s lawyer husband said, putting his hand out to Raul Sabas.
“Hello!” Raul said in a vaguely mocking way. “Raul Sabas.”
“Oh, I know,” Brian said in a neutral tone. “I’m a great fan of yours.”
“Well, I don’t have to worry,” Paula continued. “Brian’s going to get my revenge for me. Freddy made the mistake of asking Brian if he wanted to play in his high-stakes poker game.”
“Are you a good poker player?” Patty asked Brian.
“Good!” Paula answered for him. She scanned the room. “Soon this will all be ours!”
At the rear of the room, Tony got himself a Scotch at the bar and sipped it, watching Fred greet admirers. Jim Foxx waved to him and walked over. “Where’s Betty?” he asked.
“Peeing.”
“Ah, I remember what it’s like. When’s she due?”
“February.”
Foxx nodded. “Did you talk to Fred about doing the adaptation?”
“He brought it up.” Tony crunched an ice cube, the cold radiating through a tooth and sending a frozen bolt of pain to his brain.
“Pity we have to wait for him to write the damn thing.” Foxx smiled nastily.
“Poor Fred,” Tony said sardonically. “No one here has any respect for his talent.”
“Talent?” Foxx said as though he had never heard the word. He laughed. “Don’t pity him. He’s done great for himself.”
“Don’t worry,” Tony answered.
“Say!” Foxx said, and grabbed his arm. “I just heard from some guy — theater producer …” He pointed toward a small man huddled in a corner with an overweight woman.
“Ted Bishop,” Tony supplied the name.
“He said he’s doing a new play of yours in the fall.”
“Yep,” Tony answered, and crushed another cube, enjoying the hurtful cold.
“How come you didn’t tell me about it? He says it’d make a great movie.”
Tony grunted.
“When did you write it?”
“While I was rewriting the script for the eighteenth time.” Tony put his empty glass down. “I’d better find my wife.” He started to move away.
“Can I read it?” Foxx called after him.
“I don’t know,” Tony called back. “How are the remedial courses coming?”
Foxx’s obscene answer was drowned out by a hubbub coming from the windowed end of the room. There, shouting for quiet, stood Tom Lear. He was on a chair, holding a glass aloft to make a toast, while next to him Sam Wasserman. Bob Holder, and Karl Stein were shushing the crowd.
“We come to praise Fred,” Tom called out. “Not to break his eardrums.” After some laughter, he had their attention. “We all know why we’re here,” Tom Lear said in a solemn, hushed tone. The room became piously silent. “To tell Fred to please get his damn book off the bestseller list and make room for one of us!”
Hoots of laughter. Scattered applause. And then, shocking the crowd into a wild outburst of hilarity, Fred let out a wet, loud Bronx cheer. “Never!” he shouted.
“No, seriously,” Tom Lear said. “No one deserves this success more than Fred.” Tom lowered his head — to keep from snickering, Patty Lane thought to herself — and the crowd returned to the enforced reverence of a school auditorium. “Success, especially when it happens to someone who’s young, usually spoils them. They start to believe their reviews—”
“Not me!” Fred called out, and everybody laughed, relieved that the author had been the one to point indirectly that his reviews had been either very mixed or outright pans.
Lear pressed on, holding a hand up for quiet. “They forget their friends, lose interest in the struggle to write well, and only care about the interest on their money. It’s ruined more than one brilliant young American writer. Fred has too much good sense and good feeling for that. More than anything, that’s what I love about him.” Tom lifted his glass: “To another year on the list. Fred.”
“To another year,” most of the crowd mumbled, and there was scattered, desultory applause. Fred felt the urge to cry. Bart and Marion flanked him while he listened. Indeed, the town house contained the sum of all his relationships: all of his New York friends, even the old gang from Long Island; his parents were standing shyly in a corner with their best friends; his brother and sister were over by the hors d’oeuvres stuffing their faces. He loved them all. Even Tom and Sam and the other writing boys who had treated him like a piece of shit — the struggle to win their admiration had only made it a more valued prize.
At his worst moments he suspected none of them would care about him if he hadn’t made it so big, but tonight he felt, in the warmth and noise of this room, that it wasn’t so. They had all helped, after all. Even if sometimes they had been reluctant, or envious once things began to go well, despite all the insults, they had taken him to their hearts. Marion kicked him out, but she took him back. Holder asked for a lot of rewrites, but he never lost faith in Fred’s ability to do them. Bart was cold and bossy, but he sure came through on his promises.
At times Fred had felt as though his heart would break, like a child wandering in the cold, unable to find his way home. But the villains had all turned out to be benevolent under their dark mustaches, and the brightly wrapped packages beneath the glowing Christmas tree in that distant window were for him after all. He leaned drunkenly on his wife and felt his eyes moisten. I love these people, he said to himself.
Holder’s blustering, mostly self-congratulatory speech followed, embarrassing the group. People shifted restlessly from one foot to another, a few deserted to the bar, until Bart, correctly judging the limits of the party’s endurance of honoring The Locker Room, interrupted to say the buffet on the second floor was ready. There was ecstatic applause and a stampede upstairs on the old staircase that rumbled in the frail house’s chest like a death rattle.
What horseshit, Tony thought to himself, draining another glass of Scotch while he watched the eager faces go by. Keep it to yourself, he said as a reminder, going over the long list of vows he had made on the fateful drive back from his father’s office to Garth’s Malibu house a year ago. This party was a sore test of his fidelity to the new Tony. No carping at the success of others. No discussion of his own projects, no predictions of either success or failure. He had slipped twice already, allowing sarcasms about Fred to escape. Sarcasm was worse than an outright complaint. He had taken a swipe at Foxx, probably undoing a year of studious politeness. Sarcasm — the consolation prize of failed talent. His mother, now the ultimate symbol of a loser to him, used it often. And then he had been sexual with Patty, breaking another of his monk’s orders. Learn to be a good bit player, Tony, he ordered himself. Don’t step into the center spot; stand aside in the shadow and do your work. Do your work and one day the brilliant light will find you.