The Diamond Lane (29 page)

As Tony sank into V.J.'s
faux
-cheetah skin loveseat, he once again felt nervous. He feared that this was the end, that somehow the deal would fall through. He was also afraid that it would happen. If it happened, he would have to tell Mouse. He stood up and paced restlessly around the room, stopping to examine a silver-framed photograph behind V.J.'s desk. It featured V.J. and two mates dressed as Maasai at what appeared to be a Halloween party. Tony was impressed by their costumes. They all wore striped togalike
shukas
, black wigs, plaited with braids, stained with red clay, and dozens of beaded necklaces and earrings. Of course, they did not possess the long, looping earlobes of true Maasai, although Tony had noticed when they came in that V.J. had several beaded pierced earrings in one ear.

“You know, I haven't yet mentioned this to Mouse,” said Tony. “Even though I went ahead and put in our real names.”

“Nothing's happened, why should you mention it?” said Ralph.

“No, but suppose it does –”

“– look, why make your life miserable? Once, I had an idea. Okay, it wasn't my idea, it was an idea I had with someone else. Actually, it was this other person's idea. We were going to collaborate on it, then this person decided to give up the business and go to law school. So I pitched this idea around. I felt guilty, it was not my idea, and I told this person, I admitted to him that I had pitched his idea around. It was the end of the friendship. Nothing ever happened, not a development deal, nothing, and I lost a friend over it. So sit tight, we're still in the courting stages here, we haven't even kissed yet, we haven't even
held hands
, we're still eyeing each other across the bar.”

“
Jambo
,” said V.J. at the door. He strode in, a script – Tony presumed it was
Love Among the Gorillas
– under his arm. Just as he hurled himself into his large leather chair, the phone rang. V.J. slung the receiver up to his ear. “V.J. Parchman's office – he's not here, please ring him later.”

V.J. tipped back in his chair, leveled a scrutinizing gaze at Tony and Ralph. He picked up a rubber band from his desk and stretched it between a thumb and forefinger. “So,
Love Among Gorillas
.”

Tony cleared his throat. “‘The' Gorillas.”

Beep-beep, beep-beep, beep-beep
. The discreet though insistent electronic ring of the telephone. “V.J. Parchman's office – he's not in right now.” V.J. hung up, readjusted his scrutinizing gaze. “
Love Among Gorillas
. I
love
this script, I do –”

“It's ‘the' gorillas,” said Tony, ignoring Ralph's disapproving glare. “
Love Among Gorillas
sounds as though it's a love story between gorillas.”

“Three words do much better than four,” said V.J.

“I like it,” said Ralph, “it's ironic, like humans are just a bunch of gorillas anyway.”

“That's exactly the point I was trying to make,” said V.J.

Beep-beep, beep-beep, beep-beep
. “Excuse me, that blasted Emily, how long can it take to get a root canal?” He jammed the receiver against his ear. “V.J. Parchman's office – Michael!” V.J.'s sallow face lit up with an expression of rapture, an apostle gaining an unexpected audience with the Lord. “Michael Michael Michael! You'll never guess who I have in my office –” V.J. winked at Tony. He nervously twirled a hank of dull brown hair behind his ear.

Tony and Ralph could not help exchanging confused glances.

Tony pinched the end of his nose, then tucked his hands under his thighs. Mouse had once tenderly advised him that this was not a particularly becoming habit. He tried to remember if he had ever met a Michael Brass. Someone in Bibliothèques? A friend of Sather and Darryl's?

“– Tony Cheatharn, old friend from Nairobi, personally involved with the Kenyan Wildlife Federation's crackdown on poaching – lovely, yes – let me put you on the speaker.”

V.J. pressed a bar at the bottom of his phone console, releasing a booming disembodied voice. “Tony Cheatham, do I know you?”

“He and Ralph Holladay, you remember Ralph, had that
Girls on Gaza
project –”

“The Script That Wouldn't Die? Sure, I remember.”

Ralph smiled to hide his wince.

“– they've got this terrific project
Love Among Gorillas
. At any rate, don't want to bore you with that now. We heard SAI was having a fundraiser after the first of the year –”

“Ten thousand dollars a head. You got ten thousand dollars, I'll see you there. How'd the operation go, Tony? Was on a fact-finding mission myself a couple of months ago with…” He proceeded to name three or four of the most famous movie
stars in the world. “We thought the situation looked terrible, just terrible.”

“Yes, quite,” said Tony helplessly.

“Considering the magnitude of the problem, some good was done,” said Ralph. He shrugged at Tony. Make it up.

“We were able to confiscate a ton, several tons of ivory,” Tony tried. “We also captured a few of the more vicious poachers in the –”

“– Tony was shot during one of the raids,” V.J. contributed, waving the script in the air as though to acknowledge he'd read the new draft and approved of this addition.

“– Jesus Christ,” said Brass. “Tony, tell you what, you got five thousand dollars you come on by, my guest.”

“Michael, the man just got back from
Kenya
. He's been
shot
. Maybe he could give a speech, a little update on how the battle is going, a view from the trenches.”

“Sure. Why not?” With that, Brass hung up.

V.J. replaced the receiver, looking as satisfied as Hannibal the day he crossed the Alps. He took off his greasy-lensed glasses, huffed them against his chest. “We did it, old chaps.”

Tony found himself nodding his head. “Right-o.” This must be how people are converted to bizarre religions, he thought.

Ralph said, “So. The script.”

V.J. steered his glasses onto his face, pulled his lank hair back into a tight ponytail. On the corner of his desk sat a handwoven basket full of red and green jelly beans. He tossed a few into his mouth, “You guys know I love this script.”

“– we think the ending needs to be stronger,” Tony said. “Right now it ends with the wedding on the mountain. We were thinking we should go more
Romeo and Juliet
. Take out the wedding, the Tony character dies, then the Mouse character finds him and kills herself.”

“The wedding is the most powerful scene in the script. It's the Happily Ever After part. Besides, this is a true-life story.
Although I do see your point, something is missing. The script is perfect, but lacking, isn't it?”

“That's just a
thought
,” said Ralph. “It's not engraved in paper.”

“What we have here is just a nice love story, isn't it?”

“I was under the impression that's what attracted you to it,” said Tony, “the sort of classical feel –”

“What are your thoughts?” Ralph asked V.J.

V.J. tipped back in his chair, held his hands together against his lips, pondering. Minutes passed. Tony could hear a woman talking on the phone through the other side of the wall. “Good, what's good?” he thought he heard her say. He tried to think back to V.J.'s filmic writing seminar. Was V.J., then Vince, as loony then as he was now? Mouse would say that teaching semi-illiterate tribesmen how to translate the stuff of their lives into a screenplay said it all. He could just imagine the “told you so” look on her cute little face. So V.J. was crazy. Visionaries often were. Mouse's old boyfriend Ivan was crazy, also stupid. He made documentaries. At least V.J. did things like
Lethal Red Attraction
or whatever the bloody hell it was. Tony rubbed the sides of his temples. He was having trouble following his own train of thought.

“Let me just toss this out. Feel free to disagree. What about heightening the elephant-poaching angle?”

“You want more about the documentaries they're working on?” said Tony in disbelief. That could only slow things down. “Wouldn't that be a bit boring?”

“My point exactly. Movies about movies are boring. They never do well. So let's make Tony and Mouse part of the wildlife team battling the poachers.”

“Interesting,” said Ralph.

“I thought you wanted a true-life story.”

“We do,” said V.J. “Though certainly you must agree that we can be a bit flexible in our interpretation of it. When you get down to it, what's the difference between making a movie about the struggle against poaching and joining the struggle itself?”

“There's a considerable –”

“– let's not split hairs. What about, Tony and Mouse are working undercover! That could be it. Working undercover – or no, no, no! This is it! I got it!” He dug his hand into the basket, stuffed a fistful of jelly beans into his mouth. The sound of candy and dental work clashing filled the otherwise silent room.

Tony and Ralph waited politely.

“Tony is working with the wildlife department and Mouse is working with some other group undercover, only he thinks she's an ivory smuggler. That could work very nicely –”

“– yeah!” said Ralph, leaping to his feet, “and what it is, she shoots him. Accidentally. Or here! Wait!” Ralph helped himself to the jelly beans, a few bouncing to the floor. “She's in with this group of poachers and she's scared shitless because maybe they
suspect
she's undercover, and so, to prove she's on their side, she shoots Tony, she wings him, then sneaks into his camp later and cuts the bullet –”

“– good, good, good,” said V.J. “Woman wounds Man, then heals him –”

“I know how
that
is,” said Ralph. “We should be writing this down. Tony, write this down.”

“Terrific,” said Tony, “smashing. One minor suggestion. Since it's no longer a true story, I would prefer not using our real names.”

“What are you –?” V.J. sputtered, then turned to Ralph. “What is – how is this not a true story?”

Tony looked at him blankly. “How is this not a true story? It's not a true story because it never happened.”

“Howz about we say not ‘this is a true story' before the title credit, but ‘
based
on a true story'?” suggested Ralph.

“I'll have to run that by my people,” said V.J.

“You still have to run the bleeding
script
by your people,” said Tony. “Can't you run it all by at the same time?”

“Did I mention Redford?” said V.J.

“He's interested?” asked Ralph.

“First, we need to make
Love Among Gorillas
as perfect as we can,” said V.J. He reached for more jelly beans, scrabbled around the bottom of the empty basket.

“Maybe we should change the title to
Love Among Elephants
,” said Ralph.

“Brilliant,” said V.J. He wagged the basket in the air over his desk. “Tony, old chap, could you? There's a big bag of jellies in Emily's closet out there. Dreadful for you, but 'tis the season.”

Tony rose slowly. He could not believe this. Had he, by broaching a perfectly reasonable objection, been reduced to the role of hostess? He took the basket stiffly from V.J.'s hand. He walked slowly out to Emily's office. He felt their eyes on his back.

The closet was out of V.J.'s line of vision. Tony leaned his forehead against the closet door. He stared down at the toes of his cowboy boots, listening to the roaring tale of evil ivory smugglers, noble elephants, automatic weapons, laundered money, and juicy sex being effortlessly spun in V.J.'s office.

He could leave right now. He could catch a bus back to the apartment. He could come clean to Mouse. They could find something to produce together. He could put
Love Among the Gorillas
at the bottom of his suitcase. Better, he could burn it.

As he set the basket on the edge of Emily's cluttered desk, his eye happened on a check sitting on top of her in-box. It was made out to V.J. Parchman for ninety-seven thousand dollars, written on the account of a production company Ralph had mentioned once in passing. It was dated the week before, no clue as to what it might be for, just a check, tossed there as though it was any niggling piece of paperwork. Under the check was a copy of the latest
Variety
. The lead story was about a twenty-two-year-old film school graduate who had just sold his second script for several million.

Tony filled the basket with jelly beans and returned to V.J.'s office.

As Ralph would remind him later, at a dead stop in the
diamond lane, this was probably not going to happen anyway. It was rush hour. Pairs of red taillights marched into the dusk.

“If it's not going to happen,” shouted Tony, “why are we doing it! Why are we wasting our time!”

“Same reason people don't want their brain-dead loved one taken off life support! Same reason my father had four bypass operations! The reason we open our mail and brush our teeth! The reason we get up in the morning!”