Selling Out (6 page)

Mellis snapped shut all the projections of the Swiss Army knife except one. It was the nail file.

“We call it—‘The First Year's the Hardest,'” he said.

Then he began to file his nails.

There was a split second of silence, a hairsbreadth portion of time suspended when Perry could feel himself cringe, awaiting well-deserved hoots and jeers.

What he heard, however, was an audible intake of breath, something like a sudden gasp that sounded like a response to a thrill—most likely one of an erotic nature.

“I like it,” Amanda LeMay said huskily.

She stood up, smoothing her hands over her hips, licking her tongue lightly over her lips, as she began to slowly walk back and forth, smiling and nodding as if bringing all aspects of the title into balance and reaffirming its rightness. From the time he saw her as he first walked into the room, Perry had trouble keeping his eyes off this beautifully proportioned woman in the tight leather skirt and loose, puffy-sleeved sweater. She reminded him of Faye Dunaway in the movie
Network
, yet seemed, if such were possible, even sexier, perhaps a bit younger, and far more gracious and less aggressively grating than the character Dunaway created.

“For sure,” said Todd Robbie with a big grin, “it really does sing.”

Robbie was a friendly guy in his mid-thirties who wore faded jeans with suspenders and a long-sleeved checkered shirt, as if he'd just come in from a hayride. He seemed to agree with Amanda on everything, yet Perry hadn't figured out whether his deference to her came from a feeling of chivalry to a beautiful woman, or the toadying of a subordinate.

It was hard to psych out the power hierarchy among the network people, except for the fact—or so Perry automatically assumed—that Harry Flanders, even though he didn't say anything, was the real head honcho. Perry assumed that because he was the only
man
wearing a
suit
. Also, he was the oldest.

Smiling warmly, Flanders suddenly spoke.

“Well, maybe the first year
is
the hardest, come to think of it. Why, I often say to Marge—‘Marge, if we lived through that honeymoon, we can live through most anything!'”

No one seemed to hear him.

“‘The First Year's the Hardest,'” Amanda repeated, almost in a trance.

Todd chimed in to say, “You're right, it really works, Amanda.”

“This young married couple,” Amanda went on, seemingly oblivious to everyone else, caught up in her own fascination for the subject, “they're going to continue to grow. We'll see their real-life story evolve. That evolution will in a sense be what the series is
about
, am I right?”

“I wish I had said that myself,” Archer Mellis assured her.

“Then we have a problem,” Amanda sighed.

Perry was feeling dizzy. Trying to follow the sense of the meeting was like riding a roller coaster. The dramatic ups and downs, at least to a newcomer, were not only emotionally exhausting, but mentally disorienting.

Mellis, of course, betrayed no confusion at all, but squinted at Amanda, as if trying to get her in focus.

“Suppose ‘The First Year's the Hardest' goes right through the roof in the ratings?” she asked accusingly.

Mellis stretched his arms, and nodded.

“Shares in the high thirties, top ten every week,” he said, stifling a yawn.

“So we want to renew it,” Amanda continued, turning her back on Mellis and walking a few paces away, like a trial lawyer toying with a witness. She suddenly turned, bending toward the young executive, pointing a finger at him, and asked, “What if ‘The First Year's the Hardest' runs for a
second
year? What do we call it
then?
”

Mellis put away his Swiss Army knife and looked at his watch, with an air of impatience.

“We call it ‘The Second Year,'” he said casually.

“Look here, son,” Harry Flanders blustered amiably, “you can't say ‘The Second Year's the Hardest' if you've just said ‘The First Year's the Hardest.' You can't fool the people like that, no sir. They'll remember. They'll hold you accountable.”

“I couldn't agree with you more, sir,” Mellis said with almost military respect. He even smiled, and looked around the room with a benign air of explanation, like a patient guru. “We won't be saying ‘The Second Year's the Hardest,' we'll simply be saying The Second Year,' which by then will mean to the public the second year of this particular marriage between Jack and Laurie, and by extension the second year of every young contemporary marriage.”

Amanda LeMay stood immobile, her eyes enlarged, her mouth slightly parted.

“‘The Second Year,'” she whispered huskily.

“Don't you love it?” Todd Robbie asked, clapping his hands together gleefully.

“I get it,” Harry Flanders said amiably. “We'll just move right along from there—‘The Third Year,' ‘The Fourth Year,' and so on.”

Archer Mellis stood now, glancing at his watch again, then grinning his most charming boyish smile as he looked around the room.

“By ‘The Seventh Year,' everyone will be dying to know if Jack gets the old Seven Year Itch, and if this very human marriage can survive its next test.”

Amanda tossed her head back, laughing, her blond hair swinging over her shoulders.

“If they split,” she said, “we can have two spinoffs—‘Jack' back to back with ‘Laurie.'”

Archer gave her a wink, and started for the door, looking back over his shoulder to summon Perry with a quick nod.

“We've already taken too much of these good people's valuable time,” he said.

“
Thank
you, Archer,” Amanda said, grabbing Mellis's hand, “we'll get back to you
soon
.”

“Whenever,” Archer shrugged.

“I mean, like this afternoon,” she said.

“
Ciao
,” said Archer, practically breaking into a run now as Perry, waving his good-byes, scurried along behind him.

“Cars!” Harry Flanders called after the departing visitors. “Don't forget lots of cars—the people love 'em.”

“Pack,” Perry said, kicking off his loafers and flinging himself on the bed. “We're getting out of here.”

“Was it that bad?”

Jane came and sat beside him, instinctively putting her hands on his neck and beginning to knead.

“You wouldn't believe it,” he groaned. “I wish I had it on tape.”

“Didn't they like your short story? Hadn't they read it?”

“I doubt it, but that has nothing to do with it. The whole thing is bullshit. Archer spooned it out to them, and they ate it up.”

“But if they liked what he said, don't they want you to go ahead with it?”

Perry sat upright and placed his hands on Jane's shoulders, as if at the time trying to steady himself and convey to his wife the bizarre quality of what he had just experienced.

“You don't understand,” he said. “They probably
do
want me to go ahead.”

“So what's the problem?”

“I'll regret it. I'll wish I'd never got involved with it. I already do. It's impossible. We've got to go home.”

Jane kissed him on the forehead, and got up and went to the little kitchenette.

“How about some orange juice?” she asked. “I picked some up next door at that liquor place. It's like a little market.”

“I'm serious! I can't deal with these people. They aren't like people we know.”

“Who?”

“The network people. And Archer. He's like them too, at least when he's with them. They talk the same game. I think they're all on some kind of dope. Uppers and downers, mixed together.”

Jane brought him the glass of orange juice, with a couple of ice cubes in it.

“Darling, you've got an awful hangover, and jet lag thrown in. No wonder everything seems weird.”

“It
is
weird! Dammit, you've got to believe me!”

Perry slugged down the orange juice and got up and started yanking the drawers of the dresser open and tossing clothes on the bed.

“Call American Airlines,” he said. “Find out what's the next flight to Boston.”

“Darling. Slow down.”

Jane put her arms around him and guided him back down to the bed, where she started massaging his neck again.

“You don't believe me,” he said.

“I do believe you. I always believe you. I just want you to think this thing out.

“I already have. And you know what I think? I think all the faculty jerks back at Haviland were right about television and Hollywood. I'm the one who's misguided, imagining I could waltz out here and do something classy and ‘literary.' Oh, what a chump!”

Perry clutched his forehead, and fell back on the bed.

“You're not a chump,” Jane assured him, “you're a wonderful man and a sensitive writer.”

“All the more reason I should get the hell out of here.”

“All the more reason you should stay.”

Jane took Perry's chin and tilted his face toward her so he was looking at her.

“Darling, these people sound like wonderful
material
,” she told him. “This meeting you went to this morning, I bet you remember a lot of good dialogue from it, even though you didn't have a tape recorder.”

Perry lifted himself up on his elbows, smiling slightly.

“You mean like—” he said, then squinted his face into the hip attitude of Todd Robbie and went on with a nasal inflection, “‘For sure—it really does sing.'”

“You see?” Jane said brightly. “You're going to get some terrific stories out of this.”

Perry dropped back onto the bed with a sigh.

“It's a nice rationalization, anyway.”

“It's the truth. Look at it as material—almost like anthropology. And you're in the field, observing the weird rites of the Dippy-dos at work and play.”

“What if I turn into a Dippy-do myself?”

“No way. The first time anything or anyone violates your own sense of taste, or ethics, or whatever, that's when you pack it in. And if you don't know when it happens, I'll know, just from looking at you.”

Perry sat up again.

“It would be a shame to turn right around and slink back home, I guess. Before we even got the vacation out of it.”

“And before I had a chance to do some of the California coast with my camera. Like you promised me.”

“I forgot. Honest.”

“You also forgot this whole thing was supposed to be a lark.”

Perry smiled.

“Thanks for reminding me.”

He pulled Jane against him, hugging hard, happy again to have her good sense keep him on the right course.

More champagne!

Why not?

The network had commissioned the hour pilot script of Perry's show, which was surely a foregone conclusion after Archer's brilliant hype at the meeting, but anyway the official word provided an excuse to celebrate. Archer seized the opportunity to take Perry and Jane, along with a charming date of his own (an elegant UCLA grad student out of Westport, Connecticut, and Wellesley named Phyllis Clare), to dinner at Spoleto, the hot new celebrity restaurant in Beverly Hills.

Mel Brooks was across the room, simply having dinner. Digesting it, no doubt, much like everyone else. There was a woman—what was her name?—who used to play a detective's girlfriend on one of those nighttime series a couple of years ago. Every face was teasingly familiar. The sense that you either knew or ought to know who everyone was from having seen them in movies or TV or the pages of magazines or newspapers gave an interesting edge to the occasion, a sense of inherent drama, the illusion of being on the other side—the
in
side—of the screen or page or camera.

Perry was acutely aware of all this and was able to appreciate and enjoy it without being snowed by it. He had that light, buoyant feeling of being on top of things, of seeing and hearing everything around him with the special clarity that is the gift of an author. He was taking mental notes of his own reactions to what other people were doing and saying, and the realization of what a different scene this was from his usual academic and small-town Vermont milieus made it especially absorbing. What a ripe new setting for what Jane called his field anthropology! Yet part of the trick of being a good observer was not sticking out from the scene, not letting the natives know you had your eye on them, but rather, trying to relax and blend in. That was what Perry was doing as he listened in genuine fascination to the evening's host regaling his guests.

“Don't forget the cars, the people always love cars!” Archer said, doing his imitation of the old executive who had called out that exhortation to him and Perry as they left the network meeting. The women were delightedly amused at the comic rendition Archer was giving of the now historic meeting at which “The First Year's the Hardest” was pitched and sold.

“And then what?” Archer's date asked eagerly.

“And then,” Perry said, adding his bit to the entertaining account, “I held my breath, terrified that Archer was going to tell me in the elevator that I had to write a couple of car chases into my script.”

Everyone laughed at Perry's self-confessed naivete, and the misconception that Archer might be so gross.

“Perry didn't realize the car-chase man is simply one of those characters who's been around the business forever and has no power,” Archer explained.

“That's right—I thought because he was the oldest
man
present, and was wearing a suit, he must be the head honcho,” Perry admitted, to everyone's amusement.

“So who is he, really?” Jane asked with interest.

“Harry someone?” Perry asked.

“Harry Flanders,” Archer affirmed with a nod. “Worked on the old ‘Highway Patrol,' got a rep as a programming genius, and kept getting kicked upstairs at the network. He's part of the furniture now.”