Lois laughed. “You must be tired.”
“What?” he said, startled. “I’m sorry. No, I’m not tired. I’m sort of — I guess this is jet lag. My legs want to sleep but my mind wants to see the city.”
“But you know LA.”
“Not as an adult. Not really.”
“You want to get a drink somewhere?” she asked tentatively. She meant more than merely a drink. He knew it from the slight edge of scared girlishness that crept in. She felt exposed by the question.
“Does LA have a nightlife?” he stalled. Not because he hadn’t decided — it was just a drink after all, no matter what she thought: he could always cool off later. He delayed because he wanted to tease her slightly. See how eager she was.
“Not really. It has comedy clubs, discos, and massage parlors.”
“No Elaine’s?”
“I guess there’s Spago’s.”
“No jazz clubs? No bourgeois nightlife?”
“I don’t think so,” she said doubtfully. She was embarrassed by her city’s failure to provide sophistication in this circumstance. Tony knew he had her on this score: she had made it in television; it bred insecurity when faced with a tired, cynical New Yorker. At least it would until she was forty, when the simple pleasure of having money usually overcomes any doubts about its environment.
“Amazing,” Tony said.
She glanced at him. “No drink?”
She was eager enough. “Oh yes. Sure. But where?”
There was a pause. Then, in a cool tone: “We could go to my house.”
“Okay,” Tony said, like someone concluding an amiable negotiation. They were on Sunset by now, leaving Hollywood’s garish billboards and bold hookers and giving way to quiet rows of tall palms. She took a right and they began their ascent onto one of Beverly’s hills.
CHAPTER 5
Patty lay on her bed staring at the stuff from Shadow Books. It had been too good to be true. Sure, as Betty had predicted, they did pay five thousand for a romance novel, the plots and characters were all a matter of formula, but Patty would have to write something on spec in order to land an assignment. Joe McGuire, the top editor (“word processor” might be more accurate) of Shadow Books, had been sweet. He said normally they asked for an entire novel before making a commitment, but all he would ask of Patty — since Betty thought so highly of her — was a sample chapter and an outline.
So now she lay on the bed surrounded by titles like Dark Harvest, clutching a guide sheet from Shadow Books on what elements ought to be in a romance novel.
But it wasn’t so bad. She felt excited, like the first day of school. The formula was so rigid that the task seemed easy, and a sample chapter would mean no more than twenty pages. Surely she could do that in a few days.
Her phone rang and she picked it up expecting that it would be Betty — widowed by Tony’s trip to the Coast and curious about Patty’s reaction to the material. It was David.
“Hi. I’m sorry.”
“Hi,” she said with genuine surprise and enthusiasm. “What for?”
“Tuesday night. I was a lousy date. I’m sorry. The office was in turmoil—”
“I know! Do you still have your job?” Patty asked with naive seriousness.
David laughed. “I guess so.”
“Do you like this guy Rounder? Who is he?”
“You’re really up on this.”
“I love page six! Read it every day.”
“Well, I haven’t met him. I don’t think anybody has. It was a real mess this week. I was writing the cover and there were all these rumors. I know I was grumpy.”
“You sure were.”
David laughed. “That’s right. Don’t spare my feelings.”
They both laughed. Patty remembered David had started to talk about the changes at Newstime when they met for dinner Tuesday, but she had assumed it meant little to him personally and hadn’t really let him talk. Maybe the stalling conversation and bad sex of the evening were due to her lack of attention. She had been very self-concerned lately.
“Let me take you out to dinner to apologize,” David said.
They met at a bar between her sublet and his loft. He was fun this time. He quickly ordered and put away three drinks while explaining his week. Patty found the names and various alliances confusing, but the general impression, that David was a dynamic force in the midst of a power struggle for control of one of America’s most important magazines, was exciting. She was glad she had her romance novel to discuss when he was done talking about his job. She suspected he thought she was flighty and at loose ends (I am, she thought), but having Shadow Books alleviated that worry.
Indeed, David was interested. He insisted on going back to her sublet — thank God I washed the dishes before leaving, she thought — to look at the guide sheet. He was charming about the whole thing, sufficiently irreverent to read the empty and gaudy prose aloud and yet not snobbish about her plan to write one. “It’s great money,” he said, “if you knock them out in three or four weeks.”
“And if they’re popular, you can be rich!” Patty said in a tone of absolute trust that life could have dramatic and happy changes of fortune.
“You mean it can be more than just a flat fee of five thousand?” David asked. They were on the bed, Patty sitting with her legs under her, David lying down, his head propped up by pillows, his legs stretched out behind her back. He seemed relaxed, friendly. There was little of the judgmental and therefore cautious atmosphere of a date. He behaved like an old friend or lover would. It seemed so long since she had felt this at ease. When she broke up with her college boyfriend five years ago, she had told him that she wanted romance and adventure: their quiet intimacy had become too fraternal. She believed, from their perfunctory and routine sex to their dull social life of seeing movies and going to dancing parties, that their life together was more teenage than adult, and their closeness more a fearful need for company than a desire to be intimate. But in the years since, the loss of that safety had become frightening. Patty often felt desired by men, but rarely loved in the way that her family of two brothers and a sister made her feel. David was prepared to share her fantasy of writing these romances and becoming rich. It was a simple exchange of trust and interest — but it had been a long time since a man had been willing to make the bargain.
“Yes!” Patty said, unafraid to expose her greedy scenario. “If the first two I write are popular, then I can negotiate for royalties. Elizabeth Reynolds makes over a million a year writing them.”
David picked up Dark Harvest. He had read aloud from it earlier, sarcastically intoning the puffed-up prose. He opened it to the middle and silently read a paragraph.
“Foul, isn’t it?” Patty said. “Can I stand doing it?”
“For a million dollars a year? You sure can.” He read another paragraph with a serious and studious air. When he was finished, he put the book down and looked at Patty. His eyes had a distant, thoughtful look. Then he laughed. “It’s not any different than what I do.”
“This junk?”
“Yeah. It’s a formula. Take the heroine to an exotic place so the frustrated housewife feels she’s taking the trips that she knows her husband will never be able to afford. Newstime and the Weekly create the feeling for their readers that they’re in the know. I write my stories about the President and the government in a confidential tone, like the reader is getting inside dope nobody else gets. And it’s bullshit. I’m taking bureau reports from reporters who, for the most part, get handed briefings. To be sure, sometimes some of our better reporters get a real story, but always because someone inside has decided to let the cat out of the bag, and our guy just happens to be there.”