Scruples (70 page)

“Oh, shit! That’s got to be the worst idea I’ve ever had!

Valentine, I’m going crazy. Please, please, just let me order the pizzas? I won’t ask you for one more decision. I swear it.”

Reluctantly, uncertainly, Valentine agreed. She was suddenly terribly hungry. Whether it was filled with love, guilt, or anger, her stomach still functioned with French precision.

“Two pizzas with
everything
on them.” She agreed. “Tell them if they forget the pepperoni again you won’t pay.”

During the first week of December,
Mirrors
opened in the two hundred and fifty excellent first-run movie houses previously chosen for
Pickwick!
now still incomplete and almost four million dollars over budget Arvey didn’t put
Mirrors
in those houses because he wanted to, that was certain. But, faced with an empty stocking for Christmas, he had no choice. While other studios were each releasing their holiday blockbusters, he was stuck with a small-budget love story without stars, which had received virtually no advance publicity buildup. He called his faithful radiologist to make a date for yet another series of upper-GI X rays—he’d just avoided an ulcer for years, but this time the burning pain every time he swallowed a mouthful of food was too sharp for Maalox to soothe.

The newspaper reviews, as they started to come in, did nothing for his digestion. Everyone knew that critics don’t mean much of a damn any more as far as movie attendance was concerned. People had a way of going to pictures the critics hated and avoiding those they doted on. Arvey, like most of Hollywood, considered the critics out of touch with the average American, too intellectual, too artsy-craftsy. So what if
The New York Times
said it was “a wonder, the peak of a genre, an act of beauty, a masterpiece.” Who the fuck knew from genre out in the Midwest? And the Los Angeles
Times
said that Fiorio Hill and Per Svenberg “had writen another new chapter in film history.” Big deal. Film history was full of chapters.
Newsweek
said, “The cinema has never before given such amazing and disquieting visual emotion.” Do people stand in lines to see “disquieting emotion,” whatever that meant? The only reviews that mattered to Arvey were the trade reviews in
Variety, Daily Variety
, and the
Hollywood Reporter
. “Not since
Love Story
has there been …”—that just might be a money review. “Not since
Rocky …”—
knock wood, the guy should be right “Not since
A Man and A Woman
 …”—a foreign film, but still, it had done business.

But the first week was slow. The heads of his Advertising and Sales departments persuaded Arvey to put more money into advertising, particularly television advertising. They knew that both of their secretaries had gone to see it again, away from the masculine tyranny of the screening room, where they could sob to their hearts’ content. No matter what clichés they uttered about emotional women, they knew those girls were tough old tomatoes; you couldn’t make them cry with bamboo shoots under their fingernails—and if they were willing to pay to see a film, that was as good as the Oracle at Delphi.

The average motion picture does its best business in its first week of release.
Mirrors
doubled its box-office gross in its second week and almost tripled it in the third week, as the college kids, home for the holidays, began to hit the theaters. If a picture maintains its first week’s business for a period of time, it is considered to have “legs.”
Mirrors
was showing signs of being a centipede. What was doing it? Word of mouth? The critics after all? The holiday season? No one knew why—they never do—but
Mirrors
had become an indisputable “sleeper.” The studio allocated more money for advertising and the public relations began to take care of themselves.

Newspaper and magazine writers like nothing more than a movie they can discover for themselves, a movie that hasn’t been shoved down their throats three months in advance by public-relations men. Each reporter who went to interview Sandra Simon or Hugh Kennedy had the feeling of opening up fresh territory. They interviewed Fifi Hill; they even interviewed Per Svenberg, who was a cult figure in any case, the kind of cult figure that fewer than a thousand people know about. Now, millions had heard of him, and he basked in the recognition for which he had waited so long. No one bothered to interview Vito Orsini; he was only the producer.

By Christmas,
Mirrors
was number one on
Variety’s
box-office weekly chart, and Vito judged the time ripe to break the silence that still stretched between Arvey and himself. Every night he and Billy had driven into West-wood to feast their eyes on the long, patient, good-natured lines waiting to get into the theater in which
Mirrors
was playing. Both of them had had time to get back to knowing each other, Billy’s mansion was almost restored to its former tranquillity, and Vito wanted to put his particular house in order.

In Arvey’s office the atmosphere was chill. Arvey, having been outwitted in the matter of taking over the picture in postproduction, now clutched it even more possessively than he would have normally.
Mirrors
was “his” picture now, just as it had been Fifi Hill’s while it was being shot. Hadn’t he given Orsini the opportunity to make it? Hadn’t he released it in time for Christmas? Vision, that was what a studio president had to have, vision and daring.

“Vito, I’m putting
Mirrors
into over fifteen hundred houses all over the country next week,” Curt Arvey announced imperiously.

“What!”

“Face it, Vito, it’s a fluke. It’s the kids who’re making the box office. When they go back to school in ten days, the picture’ll die.” Arvey smirked with pleasure at Vito’s face. “I want to milk it bone dry before then. Take the money and run—don’t tell me you’ve never heard of that.”

“Curt, you just can’t do it.” Vito jumped up, keeping his voice logical. “This picture is just starting. When Christmas is over the parents of these kids will be coming to see it, young married couples will be coming to see it, everybody in the whole damn country will be coming to see it! If you ruin the distribution pattern now, if you book it into second-rate houses, you’ll dissipate the whole word-of-mouth buildup.” Arvey’s expression hardened. “In one week you’ll end up with half the cash—maybe less—than you would have if you keep it where it is, letting it grow, build, naturally. I’ve been talking to the kids on those lines; some of them are waiting to see it for the third or fourth time. Curt, those
lines
are just as important a lure as the picture itself. Book it in fifteen hundred houses and in a week you won’t have any lines left. Don’t you see that, for Christ’s sake?” Vito was leaning forward, both hands on Arvey’s large desk. He couldn’t believe the other man could fail to agree with such basic business logic.

Arvey looked at Vito vindictively.
Mirrors
was his, damn it, and he could do anything he liked with it. No
gigolo
of a Vito Orsini was going to tell him how to run his business. It was a nice switch to have Orsini by the balls for a change.

“You are entitled to your point of view,” he drawled, “but I happen to have another. And I’m in charge now. Cash, quick cash is what interests me, not pie in the sky. You’re a romantic, Vito, and a thief as well.”

Vito moved swiftly. Tall and lethal, he leaned over Arvey’s desk and switched the desk intercom to “Sales.”

“Oliver? Vito Orsini here. I’m with Curt. He plans to string
Mirrors
out in the dates we presently have instead of going into a wide break. What do you think?”

Arvey, gaping in his swivel chair, was about to bellow into the intercom when Oliver answered.

“He’s a hundred percent right, Vito. Anything else would be totally ridiculous, cost us millions in the long run.”

Vito released the switch and aimed a look like a rifle barrel at Arvey’s congested face.

“What would your board of directors think about that, Curt? Are you in a position to blow millions in box-office grosses just to prove you’re boss? How’s
Pickwick!
coming along? I hear you took full credit for that idea before it started to go sour.”

“Get the fuck out of here, you shit-ass, you—you—” Arvey, too angry for more invective, pushed the button for his secretary and screamed, “Get Security! Right away!”

“Careful, Curt. Remember your ulcer.”

Vito strolled out of the office like a big tawny panther. As he passed Arvey’s secretary, he blew a kiss at her frightened fece.

“Don’t celebrate yet, darling, unfortunately he’ll survive.”

In spite of the sprinkling of smugly overorganized women who delight in declaring by the first of November that they have finished their Christmas shopping, most retailers find that December 10th, not a day earlier, is the magic moment for the Christmas rush to begin. Scruples was no exception to that rule. Although few customers were buying clothes, they jammed the Country Store, and the entire first floor, being systematically stripped of its treasures, swarmed like an anthill under attack. Spider had spent the day exerting his benign influence, trying on dozens of sweaters for women unsure of their husbands’ exact size—“He’s about a head shorter than you, Spider, and weighs twenty pounds more, would you be a darling and just slip it over your head?”—and giving advice to the perplexed: “What would
you
send to your mother-in-law if you positively
detested
her but had to spend at least three hundred dollars? A Waterford jar of sour balls and a gold-plated nutcracker?—Spider, you’re a genius.”

By closing time on December 23rd, both he and Valentine felt that the worst was over. Christmas Eve was on Saturday this year and all of Valentine’s special holiday party dresses had already been picked up or delivered; tomorrow’s gift buying would be light, an in-and-out last-minute sort of business except for the few wise people who knew that the best day to shop after December 10th is December 24th. These were usually businessmen with imposing lists who made up their minds in seconds, the saleswomen’s delight.

Spider and Valentine sat facing each other on either side of the old partners’ desk. There should have been a comfortable, relaxed silence between them, as there so often had been at the beginning or the end of a Scruples day, but the air in the room was filled with watchfulness. Spider thought that Valentine looked troubled. Her impertinently tilted nose was held as delicately high as ever, but some of the aggressive, coruscating shimmer seemed to have been chipped away from her great green eyes. He knew his Valentine. She wasn’t happy.

From her side of the desk, Valentine was considering Spider Elliott. He looked tired, she thought. Older in a way that couldn’t be explained by the mere passage of time. It seemed difficult to connect this polished, sophisticated, elegantly dressed man of the world with the carefree blond boy in a UCLA sweat shirt who’d carried her wine bottles home from the market, made her countless melted-cheese sandwiches when she was miserable, and listened to her old Piaf records by the hour in her little loft room.

“Are you just exhausted, Val, my darling, or is there something wrong?” he asked gently.

Valentine felt an ignominious, totally unexpected prickle of tears begin at the sound of his voice. She was longing for someone to confide in about her situation with Josh Hillman, but, of all the people in the world, Elliott was the last one she would discuss it with. Some mysterious but imperative reason lay behind her obstinate determination not to let Spider guess how far matters had progressed or how confused she still was.

“Oh, it’s just these women, Elliott—so demanding, so difficult to please. They gain ten pounds between one fitting and another and they think it’s my fault.”

“Come on, darling, you know they dote on you. And you never hesitate to lower the boom on any of your ladies when she’s changed her measurements—why, you’re the reason behind half the diets in this town. What is it, really? Is the mystery man giving you any trouble?”

She sat bolt upright, alarmed and defensive. Her desire to weep disappeared.

“What are you talking about?”

“The mystery man, the one who keeps you so busy that I never get to see you alone anymore. If he’s not treating you right, I’ll kill the son of a bitch!” To his amazement, he found that his fists were clenched, every muscle in his arms and shoulders was tense with rage. Killing the son of a bitch seemed like a very good idea. Never mind a reason.

“You assume too much, Elliott. Your imagination is running away with you.” Valentine pressed her attack, suddenly as infuriated as he. “Do I ask you why you make all those women crazy over you? No wonder you look so tired—how do you tell them all apart anyway, all your little friends? Is there a magic in numbers, Elliott?” She was overcome by the injustice of the situation. “Am I not to have even
one
lover?” she blurted. “I’m not accountable to you, Elliott.”