Opening the door, I saw Miguel seated at the desk, talking with two older guys. The air was thick with smoke. A cup that was torn into a makeshift ashtray was filled with Gitanes cigarette stubs.
“No, I don’t think it’s fair,” said the more dashingly dressed NYU student. “You charged Hans a fraction of what you’re charging me.”
Miguel threw me a quick glance, and putting down the pizza he was eating, he replied, “Look, me and my partner simply don’t feel that staying here for that length of time is profitable for any less than a hundred a piece.” I was an instant partner in some leery deal.
“Well”—the young filmmaker arose—“I have only a hundred dollars budgeted to this screening. Beyond that I’ll just have to look elsewhere.”
Before he left, Miguel replied, “When you find that it gets no cheaper, swallow your pride and come back.”
The young director left the office, and his sidekick closed the door behind him.
“Hungry?” Miguel took an angle of pizza from a cardboard box that was sitting on canisters behind him. “It has a whole wheat crust.”
“What’s going on?” I asked, and then bit into the slice.
“I’m supplementing our income a bit, is all.”
“Well,” I said as I gorged myself, “I don’t want to play the devil’s advocate, but can’t you settle for a hundred less? I mean, a poor student like that can’t have much more to spare.”
“Trust me when I say that I know what I’m doing. I’m a sweetheart. In fact, I didn’t charge Hans and Grett a cent. I just said that so I could get money out of this guy.”
“What’ve you got against this kid? His film has got to be better than that…cinematic havoc now on the screen.”
“Did you ever hear of the Owensfield Complex?” It sounded at first like a Freudian term, but I remembered reading about it. The Owensfield Complex was a glamorous group of midtown co-ops that had been in the news recently because they had remarkably reinterpreted certain building codes and zoning laws.
“Who is that guy?”
“Nigel Owensfield, grand-nephew to the tycoon-founder Clarel.”
“The guy that just left here?” I inquired.
“Yep. Do you know the Harrington Quarterly!”
“I’ve heard about it.” Helmsley had gotten stuff accepted there.
“What did you hear?”
“That it recently gained a lot of prestige, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“Prestige came with a cost. The only thing that separates mainstream culture from subculture is a budget. Owensfield bought an editor position and at the same time pulled the quarterly from the level of the Sleazoid Express and put it on rank with The Hudson Review.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I heard,” Miguel replied, lighting up another cigarette. “In short, he could spare another hundred bucks.”
“Am I really your partner?”
“Oh, sure. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about it. I have a lot of connections and I need your help.”
“Fifty-fifty split?”
“Well, sure,” he replied benevolently, only to add, “but half of nothing is nothing, isn’t it?”
“What exactly does Owensfield do at this magazine?”
“Part owner and some kind of editor. Why?”
“Just curious. You wouldn’t mind if I talk to him alone, would you?”
“What are you going to say to him?”
“I’m not sure, but I promise I won’t ask for a cent less than you want.” Miguel smiled and jumped out of his chair. He dashed through the theater, hunting for the heir-editor. I sat in the swivel chair and in another moment the heir was sitting alone with me in the office.
“I think I can deliver this place to you at the fee you want, but there are two provisos.”
“Continue.”
“Before I continue, I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced.” I told him my name and explained that I was an obscure visionary poet from the East Village.
“Another obscure visionary poet,” he muttered bored.
“Not another,” I corrected, “one that has control of a theater you need, and frankly I’m hoping to be less obscure.”
“That would leave just the visionary.”
“Right, and I envision that we can help each other.”
“You’re jesting.” He quickly understood the direction in which I was heading.
“I’ve been writing poetry all my life and, other than in school, I’ve never been published. All I’m asking is that you look at a poem of mine. If you don’t like it, nothing lost. But if you do like it, you gain a poet and a theater.”
“Why in God’s name do you think that I can get you published?”
“Everyone knows that you are to the Harrington what Delmore Schwartz was to the Partisan Review, what Mencken was to American Mercury and what Perkins was to Harper & Row.”
“Perkins was with Scribner, and that wasn’t a magazine.”
“I thought Bartelby was with Scribner’s.”
“Oh, God!” He sighed and rose to go.
“Look! All we’re talking about is a couple of well-crafted lines, one stanza that describes the mechanism of the East Village.”
“The mechanism of the East Village?” He smiled. “What’s your poem about, a car?”
“Call it what you will.”
“Is this machine rhymed or free verse?”
“I rhyme, but…”
“Narrative, confessional, free association…?”
“Essentially narrative.”
“Where is this sacred poem?” he asked. Apparently I had passed the multiple-choice part of the quiz.
“I’ll have it for you in a week.”
“A week! Tomorrow is our final editorial conference. Then we go to print. Next week is my first vacation in two years.” He rose again and said, “That ends that.”
“Wait a second.” I stood up. “I can have it for you before the film ends.”
“All right, fine,” he replied, prepared to go.
“Then you’ll do it?”
“I’ll consider it if you get the poem here before the film ends, but I’ll tell you right now, don’t expect much.” He opened the door to leave.
“One last thing,” I requested before he departed. “Miguel’s a bit of a barbarian. In order to get you your price I would like you to tell him that you’re paying the whole two hundred. I’ll cover the deficit.”
“You mean if I accept your poem,” he added. Then we shook hands, and he went back into the auditorium.
I swiftly went through the office collecting necessities to write poetry with, a beer from the fridge, a clock, two sharpened pencils, paper. Calling the projectionist, I asked her how long the film would last.
“Another reel, about twenty minutes,” she replied, curiously free of any antagonism.
I snuck into the bathroom stall, and for the benefit of any curious eyes that might check the exposed underpart of the partition, I dropped my pants around my knees and sat.
I hadn’t written a poem in years, and was not sure of why I was doing this. Occasionally opportunity was prompting enough. I thought hard about nonsense and started scribbling. First, I started just jotting out recollections of New York, but then I dashed down little slogans and aphorisms that I had heard over the past few months, then I rhymed them into a quick poem, while offering my own criticism in alternating verse:
Stop Aids not Gays.
It wasn’t well rhymed
No entry for gentry
A graffitied wall chimed.
Only niggers pull triggers