“I’m really impressed,” Betty said with feeling. “And not because I didn’t think you could!”
“I’m sorry.”
“I can’t believe you said that.”
“I’m awful, aren’t I?”
“Yes,” Betty said, exaggerating a frown of disapproval for a moment, before she relaxed into a smile. “I’ll read it tonight.”
“Call me when you’re done. I don’t care how late.”
Betty smiled, confidently back to her role of the calm, mature elder sister. “I’ll call you tomorrow. I might be on the phone with Tony late and have to fall asleep. So don’t wait up worrying.”
“You mean you’re going to sleep tonight instead of reading my manuscript? You care more about talking to your husband than my work?” Patty said, making it a great joke, but keeping enough of a glint in her eye to tell Betty that in fact it was the way things should be.
“No, I don’t,” Betty said, playing along. “But I have to keep up appearances or you’d gossip about me.”
And they laughed like girls again, playing at adulthood and giggling at the naughtiness of it. But something of Patty’s angry outburst — a faint echo of distant artillery — still rang in their ears and worried their happy tones.
CHAPTER 10
Fred’s life caught excitement. Fate tossed him a series of slow glamorous pitches right into a large infallible mitt. Tom Lear befriended him with a vengeance. He took Fred to see a rough cut of the movie that had been made of his screenplay, which meant that Fred got to sit with Tom. the famous director Jay Forsch, and Sam Billings, the producer, while they discussed what changes could be made in the editing. Tom solicited Fred’s opinion and he babbled away, inspired by Tom’s easy manner, feeling no pressure or self-consciousness. To his astonishment, Forsch and Billings listened and — agreed! Later that night, when he told Marion that the world-famous director and producer were going to cut two scenes at his suggestion, she nodded at Fred as if he were speaking in a foreign language and she had to fight in order to understand him.
Lear, Forsch, and Billings took him to Elaine’s afterward. All the important people in the restaurant — with the exception of Woody Allen — came over to their table to chat. Fred was introduced to each of them. Names that before then existed only on film credits, book jackets, magazine covers. Fred shook their actual hands and enjoyed considerable success. He frankly told the famous that he loved their work (didn’t have to lie once, he told Marion), and they not only didn’t despise his compliments, but seemed to enjoy them. The whole thing was unbelievable. It was as though he had merged into celluloid: after a lifetime of watching, he was up there playing the scene!
Lear took him along to a series of exclusive screenings for the movie-business crowd in New York. They usually ended up joining a variety of glamorous people for dinner afterward at Wally’s, or Cafe Central, or Orso’s, or Texarcana, a changing series of “hot” restaurants with subtle distinctions made over who merited what kind of table. In some, sitting in the back room was everything — in others, it was death. A few were presumably secret (like Raos, located on a Mafia-protected block in the midst of a devastated and scary section of Spanish Harlem), though in fact the chic crowd all seemed to know of those. Others, such as Elaine’s, were landmarks, sacred sites that demanded pilgrimage. Because of the people he accompanied, Fred experienced service he had never heard of — entrees cooked that didn’t exist on menus, complimentary drinks, waiters standing asleep on their feet at two in the morning waiting patiently for them to go home, even though they had finished eating hours before. He marveled at it. Like an astronaut viewing the surface of an alien world, he found every detail stunning.
Once he was known by these restaurants as part of the crowd, he found himself welcomed as though he were a celebrity. Sometimes he was even seated ahead of other famous people. The first time that happened he replayed the moment over and over in his mind, recalling it to memory blissfully, the way one might cherish an ecstatic night of love with an ideal mate, staring off in happy reverie for minutes on end. The way those famous faces watched him get in before them, their brows furrowing, attempting to place him. Who the hell is that fat little Jew? he imagined them thinking. I’d better smile at him, he must be important.
Only I’m not important, he would be forced to remind himself. But even that hardly depressed his elation. At least he was there. And he could talk to these people. They actually listened to him.
There was a price he had to pay for this happiness, however. Marion provided the bill. Since Tom’s invitations involved screenings, permitting him only one guest, she couldn’t come. She could have joined them for dinner after the movie, but she had refused on the basis of how late that would make the evening, too late for her to then get a good night’s sleep. Of course once she heard the stories of whom they were meeting, she changed. Asked to come along. By then Fred didn’t want her to. He didn’t know why, but her switch in attitude angered him. Maybe it was that having spent a few nights without her, he realized how much more relaxed he was. He seemed to be more intelligent when she wasn’t around. People liked him better. She wasn’t there to forever burst his balloon.
Keeping her away was hard.
“Where are you going tonight?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “We’re going to the Paramount screening room — you know, the one where it’s all Eames chairs.”
“Yeah, you told me. Where are you going later?”
“I don’t know.” A lie. They were going to Elaine’s. “We’re meeting Sam Billings, Tom’s producer—”
“I know who he is. When will you know where?”
“I guess, uh … not until we get there. Billings is meeting us at the screening room.” A lie. Billings wasn’t going to the screening. Fred realized only now that if he failed to dissuade her from coming, he had just told a falsehood that might be easily exposed. “I’ll call you from the restaurant.”
“I’m supposed to sit at home starving until you call?”
“You want me to cancel? We’ll go out to dinner.”
She sneered. Looked away and sighed with irritation. Then turned back to him and said, “Yes! Call Tom and cancel.”
Fred had done a good job while making the offer to cancel — spoke as though the matter was insignificant. That he’d be happy either way. And even though Fred suspected she was merely testing him, that all he’d have to do was go to the phone with a similar easy manner and start dialing Tom’s number, he couldn’t. The slight chance that she wouldn’t tell him to hang up worried him so much it showed on his face.
Marion snorted. “Forget it. Go ahead and enjoy yourself.” She spoke with hopeless disgust, the despairing resignation of a disappointed mother faced with a favorite son’s betrayal.
“You can join us later,” Fred said, relieved. “I’ll call—”
Marion got up, walking to the coat closet. It was time for her to leave for work. “Forget it. You don’t want me to.”
“Come on!” Fred whined. “That’s not true! I’ll call you from the rest—”
“Forget it,” she said, grabbing her coat, opening the front door, and going, letting the metal door swing shut behind her.
Its slam emptied the apartment. He listened to the refrigerator hum, sorrow vibrating into his crass manipulation. He didn’t feel guilt — or rather, shame at his own behavior and motives was too constant a companion for it to be noticed. He felt tragic, awesome despair at the hopelessness of things ever being carefree between him and Marion. They were like siblings, thrown together involuntarily by fate, personalities that clashed, but were somehow stuck to each other with a glue that never dried to fasten them, and also never evaporated to free them.