Hot Properties (22 page)

Still, he read through the clauses, looking for the legal reassurance that, even after a hurricane of rejection, he would be left clutching his five thousand dollars. He never got there. His eye was caught by an earlier clause: “$5,000 payable on signing. $5,000 payable on delivery of a mutually satisfactory one hundred pages. $10,000 payable on delivery of a mutually satisfactory completed manuscript.”

What did “mutually satisfactory” mean? For a moment he thought, illogically, it meant that Holder would have to accept his novel if he, Fred, found it satisfactory. Then he absorbed the phrase. The only protection it gave him was that if Holder liked his novel and Fred didn’t, Fred could prevent Holder from publishing it. This notion delighted Fred, and not simply because of its obvious improbability: the chance that he might dislike his own work while others approved of it was fundamentally unsound. The suggestion that his opinion of his work needn’t be in tow to the world’s was as absurd to Fred as the possibility that he might be granted the ability to fly while the rest of humanity remained earthbound. To be a yo-yo jerked up and cast down by an unseen and whimsical giant, spinning on a string of hope, seemed an immutable natural law to him, a fate no one could escape.

He phoned Karl Stein first thing in the morning to chat about that silly clause in his contract, ignoring Karl’s request, made to all his friends, that they not interrupt him before noon. Since the disappointing publication of
Stewardess,
Karl had had trouble writing his next book, and he liked to keep his mornings free of distractions. Fred had been ignoring Karl’s injunction from the day he got his deal for
The Locker Room.
Fred justified his violations by telling himself that Karl wasn’t serious. For although Karl would say, “Fred, I can only talk for a few minutes,” at the start of the conversation, it was almost always Karl who would end up telling a story or worrying over a plot point in his new novel, thereby extending the call for an hour.

That morning Fred was startled when he had heard Karl’s voice blare loudly in the phone with the telltale whoosh of a tape recorder, saying, “Hello. This is Karl Stein. I’m not in right now. But if you leave your name and number when you hear the beep, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

“What!” Fred said, after the beep, with mock outrage. “A phone-answering machine! I can’t believe it! And I certainly don’t believe that you’re out at nine-thirty in the morning!” Fred guffawed into the receiver. “I was just calling to tell you something I found in my book contract …” Fred paused and waited. He knew Karl would be monitoring the machine, listening to Fred talk. Fred thought that the suggestion he had something interesting in his book contract, keeping in mind that Karl was also being published by Bob Holder and Garlands, might provoke Karl—

There was a clattering sound. “Fred?”

“Karl? Is this you? Or a robot?”

“I was taking a shower, and I—”

“Sure, sure,” Fred said. “When did you get the machine?”

“Yesterday. Now that I’m doing more magazine articles, I’ll be in and out—”

Fred laughed good-naturedly. “And in case the President calls, you don’t want to miss it.”

“Fred,” Karl said, his naturally deep voice resonating even more with suppressed anger, “I need the machine.”

“Hey, I was teasing. I know. I hate the machines, that’s all. I always think it’s a person at first. But the worst thing is, you have to have a reason every time you call somebody. Otherwise, you’re left listening to the beep and going: Duh … Most of the time, I call people just to chat.”

“Or drive them crazy,” Karl said, with enough humorous coloration to soften his voice’s dark palette.

“That’s right,” Fred said, laughing, but he felt stung, reminded once more that he wanted Karl’s frendship more than Karl wanted his. Every time Fred began to behave unselfconsciously with Karl, he was brought up short and made to feel that he had to start again, watching that his tone be deferential, careful, stepping around Karl’s ego as though it were shattered glass on a clear floor: the sharp pieces might be anywhere and they could cut deep.

“So what’s new?” Karl asked, friendly again, now that he had Fred bleeding.

Fred knew that Karl had heard him saying on the machine there was something interesting in his contract. He wanted to force Karl to ask what it was. “Oh, nothing. I’m stuck on the book. Is the game on this week?” There was a pause, a hesitating pause from Karl. Since Fred’s three-hundred-dollar loss, Karl had been obliged to invite Fred back several times. Besides, in Fred’s mind, he had a book contract now, so he belonged as much as anyone. But Fred was surprised that after three more visits, even though he had done better—not winning back what he had lost, but breaking even once, winning fifty dollars another time, losing a small amount—that Karl didn’t volunteer an invitation for the next week. And when Fred asked to come, Karl stammered that an old member of the game was in town and they didn’t have room for him.

Every week for a month and a half, it had been the same: Fred waiting for Karl to say something, finally asking himself, and then being given some excuse. Karl’s stammer would get worse and his ability to invent was taxed into bankruptcy. By the fourth week of noninvitation. Karl was saying that two caned chairs had been broken by a visiting overweight uncle and Karl couldn’t accommodate a seventh player. Fred, of course, offered to bring his own chair. Then Karl added to his poor invention by saying that he felt tired and wanted the game to end early and so preferred holding the number of participants down. Fred, naturally, said he would leave at eleven. Karl finally had to say no without rationalizing. But Fred was not to be got rid of by even that clear an answer. He said, “Okay, but I want to come next week. I’m still not even, you know.” And so Fred was back in and stayed for seven more weeks.

But then Sam Wasserman complained to Karl about Fred. Sam said that Fred was ruining the game with his cheapskate style of play. It was true that Fred, since the three-hundred-dollar loss, had become a conservative gamesman, folding nine out of ten hands on the opening cards. Karl, bullied by Sam’s remarks and fearful of losing Sam, made another attempt at discouraging Fred from coming. He tried a direct lie, telling Fred that he had decided to give up playing and had canceled the game. Fred asked why. Karl said the arranging, the setting up of the table, the cleaning up afterward, all of it was too much hassle. Fred offered to take over. Since, in fact, Karl had
not
canceled the game, he could hardly say yes and permit Fred to call the others, who were under the impression that nothing had changed. That would work only if he included the other five players in his deception. Karl was embarrassed by his own actions, humiliated both by the fact that he was telling lies
and
that he didn’t have the guts to simply tell Fred he wasn’t wanted. He was forced to call Fred back and say the game was on.

Karl had spent several nights unable to fall asleep, wondering why he bothered being friends with Fred. He told himself not to let Fred seduce him into long telephone calls, not to be frightened to tell Fred he was ruining the poker game, in brief, not to care about sparing Fred’s feelings. But every morning, no matter how many vows he had made, Fred would call and Karl would answer, tight and tense in the early part of the conversation, until he heard himself saying something insulting or demeaning to Fred, something he would instantly regret and feel he’d have to make up for by chatting longer.

Finally he bought the phone machine to defend himself. He’d call Fred back in the afternoon, after finishing his own work, and surely then he’d be able to avoid hurting Fred and therefore … But then, the very first time Fred called, he had picked up anyway! Meanwhile, Sam Wasserman was bitching more and more about Fred, his hostility surfacing at the game with increasing frequency, and just three days ago Sam had phoned and said that he was feeling fluish and might not come. “But you don’t need me anyway,” Sam had added pointedly, “you’ve got fuzzy Freddy.” The point was clear. After all, nobody cancels events three days off on the chance that he might be coming down with the flu. So Karl had conceived of the plan that he would buy the phone machine, call Fred and tell him an old friend who used to play in the game (this was an excuse he had used successfully in the past) was in town and he didn’t have room for Fred, and then turn the machine on all the rest of the week, so as not to have to listen to Fred’s plaintive questions and … But then he had picked up! The very first time!

And now here was the moment, here was the time to laboriously tell Fred that this old friend was coming to town, stammering throughout because he knew it sounded utterly fake, totally dishonest.

“Hello, Karl!” Fred said, laughing nervously. “Are you there?”

“Sorry. Listen, I don’t think there’ll—”

“What? You’re not having the game?”

“No, but my old friend is—”

“Oh? Which old friend is this?” Fred said with open disbelief.

Karl opened his mouth to continue the lie, but there was no engine to power the words. They were stuck in his throat, a sailboat resting on still waters, with no wind to blow them to their destination. “Nobody,” Karl said angrily.

“What?” Fred said, startled. Instantly his voice was small, scared by the possibilities of confrontation.

Karl noticed. It made him angrier. Why does Fred needle and probe and insist, if he’s unwilling to hear the truth? If he’s so vulnerable, Karl thought, why does he act so tough?

“The others don’t like you,” Karl said, wanting to wound Fred, but discovering, right in the middle of the thrust, that he didn’t relish the actual moment of stabbing Fred. “They say if I keep inviting you, they won’t come. I don’t want to lose the whole game because of you.”

There was silence from Fred. A total oblivion that almost convinced Karl Fred had been cut off and his excursion into truth had been wasted. Then he heard Fred clear his throat.

“Look. I’ve tried to—” Karl began to stammer, but Fred interrupted.

“I understand. No problem. I gotta go.”

Fred hung up.

He stared at the phone. He had known, really, known all along. But still he had tried to tell himself it was coming from within him, his own poor sense of himself, his perpetual nervousness that he wouldn’t be liked. The black receiver resting in its cradle, still and silent, possessing no identity but its own, reflected a small distorted image of his face peering anxiously into the black impenetrable world. “Let me in,” it seemed to say, “or I’ll die.”

David Bergman’s dinner party was about to begin. He had finished setting the table with his brother’s hand-me-down china. It was black Wedgwood, chosen to match the black Formica kitchen, and therefore left behind, since his brother’s taste had moved on, evolving backward from high-tech to Victorian wall sconces and floral patterns.

However, David had to admit that the dense-colored but delicate plates, boldly blotting the white Formica dining table, did indeed, as his brother would say, “make a statement.” And David wanted to impress, to seem as adult as possible tonight. It had taken two months to find a night that Chico and Rounder (nobody called him Groucho, possibly because he was such an outsider: a restraint which ultimately added to the sense that he would forever continue to be one) were both free to come. The other guests, who had suddenly become problematic, were Tony Winters and his wife, Betty. A few days ago Betty had told Patty that Tony and she might not be able to come because Tony’s father was coming in from Los Angeles on his way to London and wanted to see them for dinner. Patty had, with shameless charm, begged Betty not to cancel, complaining that she would be drowned in a flood of
Newstime
gossip. Betty called back, after checking with Tony. His father wasn’t arriving until ten o’clock, and he planned to meet them at eleven, so they
could
attend, as long as it was understood they would have to leave early.

David resented this arrangement. He had met Tony and Betty on only one other occasion besides the dinner nearly a year before at Fred’s—the night he had first met Patty. A few months later they had gone to a startlingly fancy brunch at Tony’s and Betty’s. That event, with its nakedly business-oriented guest list, the professionally tended bar, the rented coat racks, the fancy dishware, and the elaborate menu, convinced David it was appropriate for someone his age to invite his bosses to dinner. David, secretly, was irritated that Patty would never dream of entertaining on that scale (David didn’t consider the possibility that Tony might have made the arrangements), thus forcing him to settle for an uncatered, relatively intimate dinner. At Tony’s party he had counted at least thirty people in show business, all of whom, David assumed, were important contacts for Tony, relationships Tony needed to succeed. David wouldn’t have minded having Rounder and Chico over, along with the other Marx Brothers and the important editors he knew from
Business Week,
the
Wall Street Journal,
the New York
Times,
and so on, to make the point to the Marx Brothers that David was the sort of person whom they needed to woo, if they wanted to hang on to him.

At first David had been put off by the prospect of including Tony and Betty at his dinner. Although David thought Tony was an impressive figure, he knew that Rounder and Chico were so neglectful of culture they wouldn’t care about Tony until he had six Broadway hits. However, when David learned Tony would have to leave early, he worried whether it would seem like a slight to Rounder and Chico, as if David couldn’t hold the attention of even minor playwrights. Who the fuck cares? David told himself as he laid down the last spoon. I hope to become Nation senior editor, not edit the culture pages.

Tony and Betty arrived first, half an hour early, bringing an expensive bottle of wine and expressing disarming apologies. “God, I’m sorry about this!” Tony exclaimed while shaking David’s hand. “I know it must seem strange. But I haven’t seen my father in almost two years. Last two times I was in LA, I didn’t give him proper notice and ended up missing him entirely.”