Howard can’t help laughing to himself as he goes down in the lift. What a world he’s got himself into now! Bill Saltman is a fantastic character — the kind of quirky, tiresome man who actually gets extraordinary things done; the kind of man who is so implausible as the director of the New Jerusalem that you feel he really might just possibly bring it off.
Howard strolls up Sixth Avenue in the afternoon sunlight. How far he has come since the days in Harry Fischer’s office above the tobacconist’s, with the cosy office jokes and the lunch-time beers in the pub! Now he is in a world where it’s nothing to fly to the Bahamas for a conference — and for a conference that’s probably not even going to be in the Bahamas; a world where very high-class girls ring up uninvited and try to make you feel at home.
His life has a vertiginous sense of development and purpose.
“I’ve been thinking,” says Bill Saltman when Howard returns at five o’clock. He is smoking his curly pipe still, but is now wearing only a Turkish bathrobe and Persian slippers. There is no sign of Biba. A stuffiness lingers in the air — an overbreathed smell. He turns on the air-conditioner. The stale smell is replaced by a dank smell.
“I’ve been giving it a lot of thought,” he says slowly, chewing on the pipe, and smoothing the glossy black hair above the drooping face. “I think I know where we’ve gone wrong. The thing is this, Howard. You’ve told me a lot about your ideas, and I’ve enjoyed sitting here listening to them. But tell me one thing, Howard. What’s the story?”
“The story?” says Howard. He jumps up from the day-bed on which he has just sat down. “Well …”
Bill Saltman holds up his hand.
“Just a moment, Howard. Would you excuse me for a moment? I have to take a shower. I’m awfully sticky.”
He disappears. Howard sinks back onto the day-bed. The story? He’s never thought about it like that. A story … But this might be a good way to look at it — not as something static, but as a scenario, a sequence of events, a developing situation, something existing in a temporal dimension! He goes to the Chinese desk, and takes a sheet of paper out of the Mexican paper-rack.
Bill Saltman’s head appears round the door, with fingers of wet hair hanging over his leathery brown forehead.
“So what’s the story, Howard?” he demands.
“I’m just writing it.”
“Tell it me. I’ve left my reading glasses in Bangkok some place.”
“Well,” says Howard, jumping up, and beginning to walk up and down, “it’s the story of this society, where everyone begins to get more and more aware of its real nature, and …”
“In two words, Howard. I’m standing here with water running off me.”
“Well, people begin to make a structural analysis….”
“Hold it. I’ll put some clothes on.”
When he comes back he is wearing a shirt and a pair of socks held up by suspenders.
“I’ll tell you what a story is, Howard,” he says. “A story is when something happens. A story is when someone’s trying to do something, and someone’s trying to stop him. So, wham, there’s a fight on.”
“Yes, well …”
“A story is when this McTavish you have in the book — we’ll have to change that name, by the way — they’ll never believe it — they’ll arrest you….”
“It’s McKechnie.”
“That’s worse. A story is when McTavish wants to build a better world for everyone — just like you have it in the book, I don’t want to change anything — and the local hoods jump on him. Or his wife, even — she turns against him. How about that, Howard? His wife, his own wife! That could be good. ‘Oh God, Mary!’ says McPherson. ‘O God, Mary!’ — his voice is breaking with emotion — ‘Oh God, Mary, I don’t want our kids to grow up in a world like this, with man an enemy to man, and cats crawling all over the books, in a cold-water walk-up behind the subway depot. I want a decent world where a man can stand on his own two feet, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.’ ”
“Yes, well …”
“Listen, Howard. And Mary says, ‘Don’t make trouble, Lester! You’ll lose your job! Haven’t we always been happy together the way we are? You testify before the Commission tomorrow and I take the kids and go home to Mother in Milwaukee!’ Now, that’s a story, Howard!”
“But isn’t this going to lead to violence, and, and …”
The doorbell rings.
“Let her in, Howard, while I put my pants on. I’ll see you tomorrow, at twelve o’clock, and maybe we can get in an hour’s work before lunch.”
So this is how it’s going to be, thinks Howard, as he rides down in the lift again. An exhilarating struggle between the abstraction and intellectuality of his concept, and the strong vulgarity, the earthy vigour, of Bill Saltman’s. This is the way things are created! How in-turned and etiolated and overeducated Harry Fischer’s design team seems now! It was only too appropriate that they were designing inert masses of rock with their noses in the air, and snow on them.
Gayle was pretty, too.
“But Bill Mishkin,” shouts Howard, “said specifically that it doesn’t have to be all sex and violence.”
Shouting is one of the useful skills he is learning. This is several days later.
“Bill Mishkin,” says Bill Saltman, “is a simple Russian boy from way out in the sticks who went through law school and inherited a couple of million from his uncle in the garment trade and couldn’t add two and two together and get more than four.”
“Bill Mishkin’s just made New Canaan, Connecticut, March 1 to April 14, without so much as a single shooting, beating, or naked buttock from one end to the other! Just whites being nice to blacks, and parents smoking a little sympathetic pot with their kids!”
“Right! So who’s ever seen it? Who’s ever heard of it? New Canaan, Connecticut, March 1 to April 14, has just sunk like a stone, disappeared without trace!”
“Look, I’m not arguing about the rapes. I see we need those. I admit that. And the burning alive bits, and the flagellation, and the cannibalism. All I’m saying is that we’ll overdo it if we have the …”
The phone rings.
“Hello?” says Bill. “Oh no, not again! But this is the third time she’s escaped! What are the guards for …?”
He puts his hand over the mouthpiece.
“It’s family business,” he says to Howard. “Could you come back at about ten o’clock tonight …?”
~ ~ ~
“Oh God, it’s going to be a terrible place!” cries Howard to his fellow-guests around the Chases’ dinner table, holding his head and rocking it from side to side in humorous de-spair.
“You know Howard’s writing the scenario for the New Jerusalem, don’t you?” Prue reminds them all.
“The New Jerusalem!” cries Howard. “More like the New Disneyland, by the time we’ve finished! I can’t tell you the dreck we’re going to have in it. I shall never be able to look anyone in the eye again. Would you believe gladiator shows? And public hangings?”
They all laugh — but with a tinge of envy and respect.
“It sounds like a real Howard Baker story,” says Barratt Kessell. But he’s impressed, Howard can tell, by the casual use of expressions like “dreck” and “would you believe?”
“If it ever gets made,” says Howard. “Because I don’t think it’s ever going to get off the ground. You wouldn’t believe the wheeling and dealing that’s going on.“
“Tell us anyway,” says Charles Aught.
“Well,” says Howard, “it turns out that Mishkin doesn’t actually have any money himself. He’s simply trying to put a package together to sell to one of the big corporations — Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh or Zebaot International. To do that, of course, he has to have some bankable names to star in it. Like Joan of Arc and Saint Francis of Assissi. Don’t laugh — I’m serious. But of course Joan’s tied up in the Hundred Years War, and Frank’s got involved in some great animal epic. And while we’re waiting for them, Bill Saltman’s gone off to direct the establishment of white slavery in South America Still, I’m learning the general principles of the business. In five words: Grab the money and run.“