“Okay! Bye!”
“Call me,” Lois said eagerly. “Let me know what happens.”
“Sure.” He started to hang up and then caught himself. “Where?”
“The number is—”
“I don’t have a pen—”
“Call the network at Studio City. Ask for the show. Then ask for me.”
He shaved as quickly as he could, given that the floor seemed, every once in a while, to buckle and wave beneath him. He wondered if it was an earthquake, but his puffy and pale face and his bloodshot eyes told him otherwise. When he bent over to rinse off, he almost pitched into the sink. He rubbed hot water into his skin and then stared into his eyes. “You’re a mess,” he told himself. “If you can’t handle a breakfast, how the fuck are you going to write a screenplay?”
He groaned and rested for a moment, trying to settle his erratic breathing and his uncertain stomach. When he looked back in the mirror, he had an answer:” ’Cause it’s the breakfast that’s really tough.”
He laughed at himself, as if he were in an audience, not feeling his anguish and tension, but merely observing how childishly he was overreacting.
That’s what you’ve got to do. Play this like it’s a part. A role you’ve written.
Tony walked out of the room, his back straight, and ambled casually toward the stairs, his feet moving silently on the thick green-striped carpet. You’re smart, modest, pleasant, and sure of yourself, he said as he appeared in the lobby and turned toward the elevator banks.
You’re smart, modest, quite pleasant, and impossibly sure of yourself, he told himself as he approached the narrow arched entrance to the Polo Lounge. A woman dressed in a silk blouse and a tweed skirt came up to him.
“Reservation?” she asked languidly.
Only then did he realize she worked there. “I’m meeting Bill Garth.”
“Yes,” she said with anxious eagerness, “he’s here.”
Tony ignored the glances — evaluating ones, he was sure — as they walked toward the back, heading for a bank of booths against one wall. Garth was there along with the producer (his name! what was it?), and as Tony approached they broke off what appeared to be a serious discussion. Garth’s face, that famous but relatively ordinary face, with his slightly bent nose, high forehead, and darting clever eyes, looked up at him.
You’re very smart, very modest, extremely pleasant, and utterly, totally, eternally sure of yourself, Tony said to himself.
David Bergman tossed his yogurt into the black plastic wastebasket under his desk and stared at his typewriter. It was an old Royal, a rattling gray manual that writers at the magazine insisted on, believing it created more than a superficial kinship with the great journalists of the past. David had gone along with the tradition, just as he had adopted their style of dress, their drinking hours, and their political attitudes. He had become a member of the club, body and soul, but now that he was recognized as a top writer, a power hitter who could win the ballgame in the late innings, he wanted out.
For a day, he thought he had crossed the line from the playing field to the front office. The weekend with Patty had overwhelmed such thoughts. But when he entered the building that morning, walking past the huge blowup of that week’s cover, the disappointment of Chico’s promise falling through made him sag unhappily. He loathed the routine: carrying his paper bag with coffee and yogurt, reading the competition, admitting to himself that their story was very similar, indeed almost identical to his, and waiting for orders from above as to what his subject matter for the week would be.
He picked up his phone and dialed Chico’s extension. He hadn’t decided what he would say — a unique approach for him, normally he mentally rehearsed every conversation with a boss — but he felt there was nothing to lose by complaining. His job was secure and his chances for a promotion, if they had been scuttled by the hiring of Rounder, couldn’t sustain any further damage.
“Hi, Linda,” David said. “It’s David Bergman. Is he there?”
“He’s in a meeting with Syms and Rounder. He’ll get back to you.”
“Syms and Rounder?” David said. He had — he made a point of having — a good relationship with all of the Marx Brother secretaries. “What’s going on? A triple suicide?”
Linda laughed sharply and quickly caught herself. She whispered: “I don’t know. But it’s something.”
“Hmmm. Well, get your boss to call me back. Tell him I’ve taken poison and unless I get his call within a half-hour, the antidote won’t have enough time to save me.”
Linda laughed. “Okay, but if I were you, I’d take the antidote.”
He hung up and stood, walking to his one window with its view of Madison Avenue. The city looked gray, dressed for work in a law firm, presenting an unemotional face, a face that could look upon misery and greatness as one. He knew that the meeting upstairs would have a profound effect on his life. If they were firing Syms, that meant Chico was influencing Rounder’s decisions, and David’s promotion to senior-edit Business was likely. If they weren’t, then there would be no openings on the senior-editor level, and Syms, given a chance to toady to Rounder, would clog up things for a while, and probably insist on keeping David as a writer, knowing that to surrender a good writer would only weaken his section.
It was all garbage, David thought with disgust. They dangle jobs and promotions as if they were cheese for experimental mice: to convince the poor trapped writers that the maze could be escaped someday. I’m here forever, he pronounced over himself, a judge delivering the sentence.
“Good job, David,” a voice called at his door.
It was Kahn. For a moment David didn’t know what Kahn meant, and then remembered he had written the cover story. “Thanks. I read Weekly’s. Seemed no different.”
Kahn raised his eyebrows. This was the sort of criticism that, if someone else made it, would be considered insulting. “You’re selling yourself short. Your piece is much better.”
David nodded and returned to his chair, sitting morosely.
Kahn looked at him. “Something wrong?”
David shook his head.
“I liked your tag,” Kahn went on, as if David’s problem was that he needed more praise. He looked at David’s piece and quoted, “ ‘While the President lay on an operating table, Haig took the microphones at the White House to reassure the nation that “I’m in charge here.” Although the assassin’s bullet thankfully proved not to be fatal, Alexander Haig will not soon forget its deadly political ricochet.’ ”
“That was Chico’s suggestion,” David said coolly. He didn’t believe Kahn’s praise. That tag was a routine gag, nothing special.
“Oh,” Kahn said, taken aback. “Well, it’s good,” he went on lamely.
David had never been anything but polite to Kahn, who, after all, was his elder and for many years had been the heir presumptive to Syms. But he didn’t conceal his irritation now: “Give me a break. It’s crap. And you know it.”
Kahn’s mouth opened to answer, but nothing came out.
David smiled maliciously. “Yes?” he prompted. “Going to argue about it some more? There’s nothing in this magazine worth the paper it’s printed on. The only thing that separates you and me from them”—he pointed outside his office, meaning to indicate the less prestigious writers of Newstime—“is we process the crap faster.”
Again Kahn opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, behind him Chico, Syms, and a tall blond appeared.
Chico entered officiously. He introduced David and Kahn to the tall blond, who was, of course. Rounder, their new boss. David, rattled that the two most powerful Marx Brothers had entered so hard upon his critical remarks, got up awkwardly.