“Did you have your meeting?” she asked.
“Yes.” And he had no energy to continue.
“What happened?” she asked, fear creeping into her tone.
“They didn’t like it.” He couldn’t say more, and thinking about it, he really didn’t have to, That’s what it amounted to. pure and simple: they didn’t like it.
“So they don’t want to go on?” Betty asked, gently, very gently, testing a hair-trigger spring.
“Oh yeah.” Tony was surprised that she would think— even for a second — that it might be that bad. “No. they’re not firing me. They just want a total rewrite.”
“Oh.” she said with relief. “Oh, I’m sorry,” but with pleasure returning to her voice.
“Well, it’s kind of insulting.” Tony said, angry she found this situation relatively comforting. “I’m a …” for a second, he was going to say: I’m a genius. He caught himself with that monumental word of self-praise (and delusion!) right in his mouth, ready to sing out uncensored. Like his mad mother, capable of the most outrageous statements of egomania. I’m a genius? he asked himself. Since when?
Am I losing my mind? Like her, when she met defeat? But that wasn’t defeat. That was political oppression. He had met defeat. And his mother was a genius.
“What?” Betty asked into his uncompleted sentence.
“They wouldn’t fire me, Betty,” Tony said darkly, furious at her, angrier at her than he felt toward Garth and Foxx. That was nuts too. He was falling apart.
“All right,” she said. “Okay. Calm down. I didn’t say anything.”
Now there was a silence. A silence he could fill with a thousand speeches. All of them words of regret. What had happened to him? To his youth of sheer promise, of bold confidence? Who or what had blocked off his clear view of the horizon? He had failed. As a playwright. As a screenwriter. And as a husband. The image of himself that he carried like an icon, that he was a handsome, happily married, brilliant young playwright in the early stages of a long, glamorous career, had been revealed as a stupid object of worship, a childish understanding of life. He was none of those things. He was an unsuccessful writer with a fucked-up marriage in the midst of a tacky affair. How he had become that was a mystery still, but the truth of it was no longer a revelation.
“I love you,” he said in a low, cracked, despairing voice.
“I love you,” Betty said back.
“I’m tired. I’ll call you later, okay?” He thought of Lois. “Or maybe tomorrow morning. All right?”
“Sure. Don’t feel bad!”
“I won’t,” he said, hanging up, and feeling the weight of his sorrow crush him down onto the bedspread, forcing his legs up to a fetal position. He lay there, still, afraid to move, watching the afternoon California sun light up the curtains into a white neon glow, while he passed into a sleep of numb despair.
Patty couldn’t say why, but once she gave her pages to Betty, joy flooded her being. She went home, put an old Stones album on the stereo — loud — and danced wildly to it, using the cast-iron columns as her partners and the long smooth wood floors as a vast stage for a solo that could rival Mick Jagger’s for exuberance. She was alone. Late at night. And happy. There was no longing for someone to be there, creating a personality for her. She didn’t miss David — still working late at the office — as she had in the first months of living with him. She could bear to be there without watching television. Without calling a friend. Without going to sleep. To be awake and alone had become possible.
She exhausted herself dancing, and sat sweating, on the couch thinking all this. But soon she was drawn to the new manuscipt, to read the pages — she hoped — along with Betty. They were good. They excited her. She found herself mentally writing more when she reached the end, and soon she was drawn back to the typewriter. Concentration, always hard for her, had become automatic. She could break into the surface of her book as easily as diving into clear calm water and there was no effort in staying below, no need to come up for air. Nothing had ever been so completely her own.
The phone rang. She stared at it for a moment, unconscious of what it was. She answered it abstractedly.
“Hello, hello,” a male voice said with excessive cheerfulness. “Thank God it’s you. I didn’t know what I’d do if he answered.”
Patty, still picturing her characters frozen in position, unspoken words in her mouth, had no idea who this was. “Well, that’s lucky,” she said.
“I know it’s late. I’m sorry. Can you talk?”
“Yeah,” she said, puzzled. And then she recognized the voice. It was Jerry Gelb! Her old boss, the villain who had shattered her self-esteem. He sounded so odd.
“What? He’s asleep?”
“You mean David?”
“If that’s your boyfriend.”
“No, he’s at work. Is this you, Jerry?”
“Yeah!” he said with a combination of bravado and sheepishness. “I’m bombed. I’m snookered. I’ve been thinking about you. I had to call.”
“It’s one o’clock in the morning,” Patty said, but she knew, with a clarity that had utterly escaped her when she worked for him, why he was phoning.
“I know, I know,” he said, again with a mix of shame and pride. “I’m cracking up. I can’t forget you. Your beautiful big eyes. How are you? I miss you.”
“I miss you too.” she said with a sarcastic lilt.
“You do?”
“Sure. I always miss men who reduce me to tears on a daily basis.”
“Oh, come on. Surely I wasn’t that bad.”
“No. I was.”
He laughed. “Touché. You sound great. Any chance we could meet for lunch tomorrow?”
Patty wondered if she could have asked for a better revenge than this drunken call. She had control of him now. Sex had put him out of control, and being fired had put her out of his control. She could so easily torture him now, without any fear. “What do you want to have lunch for?” she asked sweetly. Too sweetly for it to be meant honestly.
But Gelb didn’t seem to notice. “My God.” He sighed. “You know.”
“No, I don’t.” Again, she almost sang the words. A siren luring him to disaster.
“Don’t make me say it. I’ve made enough of a fool of myself. I have to see you.’ You sound great. You sound beautiful!” he added.
This ceaseless flattery and boyish confession of adoration began to intrigue her. She tried to summon up her image of him as a middle-aged man, but the youthful voice on the phone interfered. “I am,” she heard herself say. “I’ve gotten thin and beautiful.”
“You were always thin and beautiful!” he protested.
I could get him to say anything. She marveled at this power, relished it. “I can’t have lunch with you,” she said.
“Why not?” That sounded more like the old Gelb. Demanding, arrogant, controlling.
“My boyfriend wouldn’t like it.”
“So don’t tell him.” Gelb laughed.
“That would be dishonest.” Patty cooed. I’m mean, I’m mean, she thought, delighted.
“Come on! Say yes. Go ahead and tell him. Tell him you’re having lunch with your old boss. Nothing strange about that.”
“He would think it was strange. Having lunch with the man who fired me. He would want to know what you wanted.”
“I need your advice,” Gelb said.
“My advice? What about?”
“It’s a secret.”
“How are you going to get my advice if it’s a secret?”
“I can’t talk about it on the phone. But …” He hesitated. “I may have a job for you.”
“You want to hire me?” Patty said, flabbergasted. Would he really go that far just to get laid? Hire somebody he believed was incompetent? Wouldn’t a whore be cheaper and less of a fuss?