NEWSTIME INTEROFFICE MEMO
John Syms will be detached from senior-editing Nation to Future Projects for six months. Jim Daily will senior-edit Nation during his absence. David Bergman will fill in to senior-edit Business.
SHADOW BOOKS DEAL MEMO
Patty Lane, flat fee, $5,000 for untitled romance novel.
INTERNATIONAL PICTURES DEAL MEMO
Tony Winters hired to write first-draft screenplay on Concussion. William Garth. Jim Foxx producers. William Garth star. $50,000 draft and set against $175,000. Contracts to follow.
PART TWO
CHAPTER 7
For nine months Fred had lived a life once only dreamt of: he was a writer under contract for a novel. The legal agreement itself was precious. He kept the thirty-five-page document at the front of his file drawer. He saw the edge of its nineteenth-century typeface at the start and finish of each work session, when he would remove and replace that day’s writing. Sometimes, late at night, he would get out of bed and surreptitiously sneak into his study, quietly pulling open the drawer, and gaze at the contract: a teenage boy enjoying a stash of pornography.
At first the glances were passionate, their purpose to reexperience a thrill. But after two months, bogged down in the second chapter, feeling inadequate to the task of actually producing a novel, he made the nightly excursions for reassurance. A confirmation that he, in fact, had a contract.
After nine months, Fred started to read the legal agreement. By then he was close to finishing the first one hundred pages of his novel. Now he worried that his prose was bad, that Bob Holder would reject the novel when he handed it in. He knew, from Marion among others, that the five-thousand-dollar portion of the twenty-thousand-dollar advance he had received on signing the contract would have to be returned only if another publisher wished to accept Fred’s novel. Nevertheless, late one night he read through the document to confirm this fact.
The quest was pointless, in a way. If his novel were rejected by Holder, and then by every other publisher, not having to return the five thousand dollars would hardly compensate Fred for such a devastating failure. Better never to have gotten a deal than to have had one and blown it. He would rather have died of thirst in a desert of mediocrity than have had his lips cruelly wetted by a few drops of the rain of success.
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.