It was wonderful.
This was his moment.
He had reached the pinnacle. He had a scheduled and confirmed appointment to see Bernie Schwartz, one of the gods at Artist Talent Inc.
Peter had fretted about his wardrobe. He'd never done a meeting like this and was too sheepish to inquire about dress codes. Did agents wear suits in this day and age? Did writers? Should he try and look conservative or flashy? Buttoned-down or casual? He opted for a middle ground to play it safe-gray pants, white oxford shirt, blue blazer, black loafers. As he drew closer to the disk, he saw himself, undistorted, in a single mirrored pane and quickly looked away, self-conscious of his bony litheness and receding hairline, which he usually hid under a baseball cap. He did know this-the younger the writer, the better, and it appalled him that his balding nut made him look way too old. Did the world have to know he was pushing fifty?
The revolving doors swept him into chilled air. The reception desk was fabricated from polished hardwoods and matched the concavity of the building. The flooring was concave too, made of thin planks of curved slippery bamboo. The interior design was all about light, space, and money. A bank of starlet-type receptionists with invisible wire headsets were all saying, "ATI, how may I direct your call. ATI, how may I direct your call?"
Over and over, it took on the quality of a chant.
He craned his neck at the atrium, and high up on the galleries saw an army of young hip men and women moving fast, and yes, the agents did wear suits. Armani Nation.
He approached the desk and coughed for attention. The most beautiful-looking woman he had ever seen asked him, "How may I help you?"
"I have an appointment with Mr. Schwartz. My name is Peter Benedict."
"Which one?"
He blinked in confusion and stammered. "I-I-I don't know what you mean. I'm Peter Benedict."
Icily, "Which Mr. Schwartz. We have three."
"Oh, I see! Bernard Schwartz."
"Please take a seat. I'll call his assistant."
If you hadn't known Bernie Schwartz was one of the top talent agents in Hollywood, you still wouldn't know after seeing his eighth-floor corner office. Maybe a fine art collector, or an anthropologist. The office was devoid of the typical trappings-no movie posters, arm-around-star or arm-around-politician photos, no awards, tapes, DVDs, plasma screens, trade mags. Nothing but African art, all sorts of carved wooden statues, decorative pots, hide shields, spears, geometric paintings, masks. For a short, fat, aging Jew from Pasadena, he had a major thing going for the dark continent. He shouted through the door to one of his four assistants, "Remind me why I'm seeing this guy?"
A woman's voice: "Victor Kemp."
He waved his left hand in a gimme sign. "Yeah, yeah, I remember. Get me the folder with the coverage and interrupt me after ten minutes, max. Five, maybe."
When Peter entered the agent's office, he felt instantly ill at ease in Bernie's presence, even though the small man had a big smile and was waving him in from behind his desk like a deck officer on an aircraft carrier. "Come in, come in." Peter approached, faking happiness, assaulted by primitive African artifacts. "What can I get you? Coffee? We got espresso, lattes, anything you want. I'm Bernie Schwartz. Glad to meet you, Peter." His light thin hand got squashed by a small thick hand and was pumped a few times.
"Maybe a water?"
"Roz, get Mr. Benedict a water, will ya? Sit, sit there. I'll come over to the sofa."
Within seconds a Chinese girl, another beauty, materialized with a bottle of Evian and a glass. Everything moved fast here.
"So, did you fly in, Peter?" Bernie asked.
"No, I drove, actually."
"Smart, very smart. I'm telling you, to this day I won't fly anymore, at least commercial. Nine/eleven is still like yesterday to me. I could've been on one of those planes. My wife has a sister in Cape Cod. Roz! Can I get a cup of tea? So, you're a writer, Peter. How long you been writing scripts?"
"About five years, Mr. Schwartz."
"Please! Bernie!"
"About five years, Bernie."
"How many you got under your belt?"
"You mean just counting finished ones?"
"Yeah, yeah-finished projects," Bernie said impatiently.
"The one I sent you is my first."
Bernie closed his eyes tightly as if he were telepathically signaling his girclass="underline" Five minutes! Not ten! "So, you any good?" he asked.
Peter wondered about that question. He'd sent the script two weeks ago. Hadn't Bernie read it?
To Peter, his script was like a sacred text, imbued with a quasimagical aura. He had poured his soul into its creation and he kept a copy prominently displayed on his writing desk, three-hole-punched with shiny brass brads, his first completed opus. Every morning on his way out the door, he touched the cover as one might finger an amulet or stroke the belly of a Buddha. It was his ticket to another life, and he was eager to get it punched. Moreover, the subject matter was important to him, a paean, as he saw it, to life and fate. As a student, he had been deeply moved by The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder's novel about five strangers who perished together on a collapsing bridge. Naturally, when he started his new job in Nevada he began to dwell on the notions of fate and predestination. He chose to craft a modern take on the classic tale where-in his version-the strangers' lives intersected at the instant of a terror attack. Bernie got his tea, "Thank you, honey. Keep an eye out for my next meeting, okay?" Roz cleared Peter's line of sight and winked at her boss.
"Well, I think it's good," Peter answered. "Did you have a chance to look at it?"
Bernie hadn't read a script in decades. Other people read scripts for him and gave him notes-coverage.
"Yeah, yeah, I got my notes right here." He opened the folder with Peter's coverage and scanned the two-pager.
Weak plot.
Terrible dialogue.
Poor character development, etc., etc.
Recommendation: pass.
Bernie stayed in character, smiled expansively and asked, "So tell me, Peter, how is it you know Victor Kemp?"
A month earlier, Peter Benedict walked into the Constellation with a hopeful spring to his step. He preferred the Constellation over any casino on the Strip. It was the only one with a whiff of intellectual content, and furthermore, he had been an astronomy buff as a boy. The planetarium dome of the grand casino had a perpetually shifting laser display of the night sky over Las Vegas, exactly as it would appear if you stuck your head outside while someone turned off the hundreds of millions of lightbulbs and fifteen thousand miles of neon tubing that washed out the heavens. If you looked carefully, came often enough, and were a student of the subject, over time you could spot each of the eighty-eight constellations. The Big Dipper, Orion, Andromeda-a piece of cake. Peter had found the obscure ones too: Corvus, Delphinus, Eridanas, Sextens. In fact, he only lacked Coma Berineces, Berineces' Hair, a faint cluster in the northern sky sandwiched between Canes Venatici and Virgo. One day he would find that too.
He was playing blackjack at a high-stakes table, minimum bet per hand $100, maximum $5,000, his baldness covered by a Lakers baseball cap. He almost never exceeded the minimum but preferred these tables because the spectacle was more interesting. He was a good, disciplined player who usually ended an evening a few hundred up, but every so often he left a thousand richer or poorer, depending on the streakiness of the cards. The real thrills flowed his way vicariously, watching the big money players juggling three hands, splitting, doubling down, risking fifteen, twenty grand at a time. He would have loved pumping out that kind of adrenaline but knew it wasn't going to happen-not on his salary.