Mitla Pass (13 page)

“Val, I’ve got to decide what I want to be when I grow up. I can’t be a producer. I’d murder half of the actors and directors I know. Point two. This town is stacked against the writers. What we’ve gotten into is an endless war to try to retain normalcy in an abnormal town. You haven’t mentioned my next novel for months. San Francisco isn’t even in your vocabulary anymore. Inch by inch I’m being sucked in, down here.”

“For the first eighteen years of my life, I was a Navy brat. We lived on twelve different bases. And for the first eight years of our marriage, we lived a nightmare. We’re happy here. I want a home,” she said.

“So do I. But it’s got to be outside of this magnetic field. I don’t know if I can produce books in this atmosphere. This problem is going to come up again and again.”

“Suppose you want to write a novel on India the next time, or Alaska?”

“What are you telling me, Val? No more novels? What else is buzzing around in your head?”

She was frightened and didn’t want to say what was on the edge of her tongue.

“What else, Val?” I demanded.

“Suppose your next book flops. I don’t relish returning to poverty. You have to stay near the studios.”

That was blunt enough. I owed my family a living and a home and I had no business dragging them around the world.

“School vacation starts next month. You and the girls come up to San Francisco with me for three months. I’ll finish my research and come back here and write the book. Well decide what to do afterward.”

“I’m not going up there with you to be a writer’s nurse and whore. I’ve enrolled in art school.”

She unloaded the heavy artillery on me. Subtle but rich with innuendo. What she was saying, silently, was that I had ruined her promising career as an artist. She had made all the big sacrifices for me and now it was my turn.

Val understood one thing. She knew I had a dreadful fear of loneliness. I’d go to pieces if I had to eat a meal alone in a restaurant. If I was in a hotel out of town, I never took my finger out of the telephone dial. I couldn’t hack it alone in San Francisco.

“Christ sake, there are art schools in San Francisco!”

“Neither Penny, Roxy, nor I want to be around with your hookers and pimps.”

“But that’s the book I’m writing! Val, I’m not buying this. For ten years you’ve complained about the magnificent career you lost on account of me. You’re using this fantasy career to lie to yourself. You want to hear it? You don’t have the talent or the balls to make it. If you needed it like I need to write, you would have done it ten years ago. Dammit, all it is is a lie to keep a weapon over my head.”

W
ELL,
I
DIDN’T GO
to San Francisco to finish my research. Val knew I wouldn’t. Of course, she never set foot in art school either.

So, I wrote
The Tenderloin
in my pleasant little cottage in four frantic months. I really needed double that time, but Sal kept pressure on me and Val had established a fat lifestyle.

When the book was finished, Val found a lovely home on three acres in Woodland Hills that had every yummy thing that any girl would want, forever and ever. Stable, pool, tennis court, big oaks, the works. I’d need a screenplay right away.

Several months later,
The Tenderloin
was published. Do you want the long version or the short version? It bombed. Of all the hurts inflicted on me, none was more devastating than what one reviewer wrote: “Zadok must have written the novel in an orange grove. He certainly didn’t go anywhere near the tenderloin.”

The Tenderloin
was a flat, glossy, imitation Runyon, a superficial exercise for me to zip through and then get back to what was really important in life, making money.

If. If ... if ... IF! IF I had taken the three months and gone up to San Francisco, I would have captured the unique lilt and toughness of the place. IF the rabbit hadn’t stopped to take a crap he would have caught the turtle. Val and I didn’t talk much about
The Tenderloin.
We didn’t have to.

A man can lie to his boss, his wife, his children, but he can’t lie to the typewriter. Sooner or later truths will emerge. The truth was that I was writing about people who were suffering, but I never felt their pain and the readers saw right through me. It’s hard to feel your stomach growl with hunger on two thousand dollars a week. Want to play the novel game? You’ve got to bare it all.

I was going to dwell in shit city forever. I envisioned the yellow brick road stretched out before me. Producership, maybe with Stanley Gold. Television series, bundles of money involved. Take any ridiculous idea and embellish it with canned laughter. Crap is selling these days like never before.

When I had wept before God begging Him to spare Penny’s life, didn’t I also swear I’d be a writer He would be proud of? Golden handcuffs. Mink-lined cells. God almighty, Val bought me shirts with my initials on the pockets. My asthma was returning. I hadn’t had an attack in fifteen years. Maybe I’ve got to see a shrink. Fire a shot on Bedford Drive and you’ll hit fifty of them.

It had become apparent that with all my bluster, I didn’t really have what it takes. I couldn’t stomach the sacrifice anymore and I blamed it on Val or Sal or Mal or Gold. Everyone but myself. All right! I haven’t got it! Leave me in peace! I HAVENT GOT IT!

“H
ELLO
, Zadok speaking.”

“Gideon, you old mother. How you been?”

“Junkyard?”

“That’s what they call me.”

“Oh, buddy, you’re a voice for the weary. Where are you?”

“I’ve got a cottage at the Beverly Hills. I’m on the way to Hong Kong on a business trip. I was hoping you’d be in town.”

My spirits lifted. Sergeant Kelly Murphy had been an old Marine buddy. We called him Junkyard because he’d collect the oddest pieces of worthless trash and somehow always get rid of it for a profit. A regular rug merchant.

Along with running his oriental bazaar, Murphy was a hell of a gambler, one of the best crap shooters I’d ever seen. He left the Corps with a sizable bankroll.

Junkyard had done a hitch in the Corps before the war, which included service in the Caribbean. He swore he was going to return there after the war, and he did, in spades. Starting with one small boat, he scoured the Caribbean for war surplus and ended up with a small fleet of tramp steamers and a couple of airplanes. We always stayed in touch, even before my first book was published.

Penny and Roxy adored him, partly because of his extravagant presents. Valerie tolerated him because she’d grown up with so many colorful characters in the Navy. On the other hand, she detested him because when he blew into town I was always bound to go out on a real twister for a few days.

We started out at Tail o’ the Cock, and ended up at his cottage at the Beverly Hills, with numerous intermediate stops.

“You haven’t drawn a happy breath since you’ve been down here but I’ve never seen you like this,” Junkyard said.

“I saw six hundred that’s six zero zero—screenwriters bow like sheep in the face of a loyalty oath. When I refused to sign, Colonel Gold recited to me, for the first time, those immortal words, ‘You’ll never work in this town again.’ Son of a bitch hired me two weeks later to get a bungled script into order.”

Junkyard unpeeled the top of a new vodka bottle. I was on the stuff, straight, now.

“And furthermore,” I emoted, “I saw a casting call go out for dumb, big-titted redheads answered by five hundred big-titted redheads who went down on forty-two producers and a partridge in a pear tree.”

I banged down some hors d’oeuvres and a shot.

“Speaking of big-titted redheads, the girls should be showing up pretty soon.”

“Why don’t you give them a call and tell them we’ll catch up with them tomorrow night. I think you need to talk to your buddy,” Junkyard said.

“I’m running off at the mouth. Better shut up.”

“It’s hidden down there pretty deep. It’s got to find its way out of you, Gideon.”

I dialed. “Hello, Brenda, Gideon. Sorry to break your heart, lover, but we’re not going to be able to get together tonight. We’ll take care of the tab. Hold tomorrow night open. You’re a real doll.”

I couldn’t look Junkyard in the eyes. “Actors,” I said. “Ever see a peacock spread its fan and shriek? Horrible sound. You whore writers aren’t making me beautiful enough. And the broads come after your nuts with switchblade knives. I owe this Oscar to all the little people, the grips, the cameramen, the wardrobe mistress, but most of all to MY writers.”

“You was always a big pain in the ass, Gideon. Always hustling. If it had been up to you, you would have turned the whole regiment into dancing boys and staged the biggest fucking review the world had ever seen.”

“Let me tell you something. It’s not normal, or human, or decent, to ask a man to write a novel. Three to five years in that God-damned darkness!”

“Then stop crying in your beer and be thankful for what you’ve got.”

“Shit! Go to Hong Kong! I don’t have to listen to your shit! You were always full of shit!”

“What’s scaring you, son?”

Junkyard was a big strong man and when he grabbed you, you knew it. He took my shoulders and shook me.

“What’s scaring you!”

I tore out of his arms and could feel my chest tightening up. I was going to have a goddam asthma attack! He came up behind me.

“We’re coming into the beach! The Japs have opened fire! The ramp drops! What’s scaring you? Is it the Jew business? Are you haunted by dreams about Pedro? You’re the biggest man to come out of our regiment! We’re proud when we can just touch you! Now what’s scaring you?”

“Loneliness!” I screamed.

It grew very quiet. His eyes were filled with the kind of sorrow he had after the battle. I realized then, I meant something special to a lot of Marines. “God,” he whispered.

“It’s a terrible fear, so awful. I don’t know how to whip it.”

“Be a Marine,” he said.

“Fuck all, I can’t make it.”

“You’ve got to get your ass out of this town and prove you can bear your loneliness. Look at you, son. You’re so unhappy you’re going to put a gun to your head.”

“I don’t know if I can, man.”

“I’ve got a nice setup on St. Barthélemy. I want you to go down there and get your shit together.”

“I don’t know, man, I don’t know.”

U
NLIKE
F. T
ODD
W
ALLACE
, Sal Sensibar could smell a deal in the making from two continents away. He’d go through trash cans, listen from stalls in the men’s room, supply girls for a key lawyer at the studio. Sal knew what was going on and he didn’t learn it from reading
Variety.

There was a particular producer in town I truly admired, Judd Schlosberg. Who wouldn’t? He had been a wonderchild, running a studio when he was twenty-seven. Later, he became one of the first independent producers in Hollywood.

When you meet with a producer and he says, “I have the greatest respect for the writer,” you know the son of a bitch is lying. Judd Schlosberg probably never uttered those words but he had worked successfully with Maxwell Anderson, Tennessee Williams, and John Steinbeck. That was really what attracted me.

He usually left his writers alone and a goodly number of his scripts were lush and translated to the screen with great care and taste. Schlosberg had four Oscars on a shelf behind his desk for best picture, plus the Thalberg Award for lifetime achievement and the Hersholt Humanitarian Award.

When Sal found out Schlosberg had purchased an obscure little story about the great Texas gunfighter, John Hardin, from
Atlantic
I told him I wanted him to get me the job.

Judd Schlosberg was a short man, barely over five feet, with a kind of angelic face. His office was a subtle showcase of his achievements, a holy room topped off with a dozen Remington paintings and statues.

Judd Schlosberg had heard enough bullshit from the lips of glib writers to create landfill for a medium-sized city. I wasn’t about to give him his first snow job.

“You don’t have any track record as a Western writer,” he said.

“This story could be set on a ship, with a gang of tunnel workers, with a football team. The whole world is one big cowboy story. There’s no mystery to a Western. I asked for a crack at this because I know what you saw in the story and what you want out of it.”

“What did I see in it?”

“You’ve got everyone in Hollywood riding in those sixteen saddles. Maybe the whole world.”

He knew my perception and approach were exactly like his and gave me four weeks to do a treatment. I took no shortcuts. It was the best I could write. I needed this one so badly I found places my typewriter had never roamed.

Sal turned it in and the agonizing wait began. After two weeks, Sal called. “We’ve heard from Schlosberg’s office. He wants to see us tomorrow at ten.”

Heart in the throat time. “How do you read it, Sal?”

“I’m positive he wants to go into screenplay.”

F
ROM THE TIME
Junkyard had left for Hong Kong, I never spoke with Val about the gist of our evening. Nonetheless his words preyed on my mind, constantly. If I were to make one last shot at being a novelist I had to find the courage to overcome my dread of loneliness. I knew that there were a raft of other phobias I would have to conquer in order to become a complete novelist. It doesn’t fall like manna from heaven.

I had made the decision that if Judd Schlosberg gave me the screenplay I would do it alone in St. Barthélemy. One of the cheapest commodities in the world is unfulfilled genius. All of us want to be known as a unique individual, the one who broke out of the pack. So, you offer yourself up as a sacrifice and what you’re afraid of is losing and being thrown back into the pack. One question taunts you. Do you want to have, or do you want to be?

I realized now that I’d have to prove something all my life. I could never go a hundred yards without a barrier blocking my way.

I had run out of time in keeping my plans from Val. Tomorrow Schlosberg might give me the screenplay and I’d have to tell her.