He took a kind of pride in his desperation and sorrow. The worries of these people seemed so trivial compared to his. They were like children still, worrying over their grades in school. He was in a battle for his soul.
Over the weekend, he thought constantly of her, but he stopped watching the cable show and never attempted another call. The moment of real contact had at once deepened his curiosity and increased his timidity.
On Monday, Rounder asked him to drop by his office after lunch. A private meeting with Rounder was rare and David had no clue as to what it might be about. He tried to reach Chico, but couldn’t. When he arrived at the appointed hour, he was surprised to find Chico also present.
“Hi, David,” Rounder said cheerfully. “We’ve been discussing your problem with Nelson and, uh … uh, we’ve decided you can replace him. It’ll be expensive, but it’s time to make a change, bring in a new face.”
“But—” David stopped himself. It had never occurred to him that Chico might act on his complaints. Newstime never took decisive action so quickly. He was appalled that something had been done.
“That’s what you wanted,” Chico said, frowning at him. He had been beaming before, as though he were presenting a Christmas gift.
“Yes,” David said. “I was … surprised, that’s all.”
“My advice is to tell him quickly,” Chico said. “Get the figures from Hal Bunting, you know, his profit-sharing and all of that, to soften the blow.”
“You mean I tell him?”
The two Marx Brothers both laughed, not spitefully, but with elderly sympathy. “Welcome to the joys of responsibility,” Rounder said.
“Yeah, you tell him,” Chico said. “Don’t feel bad. Remember, later on you get to tell some hopeful out there that he’s got his big break — a job at Newstime.”
Back in his office, once he had the information from Bunting about the compensations for being fired after fifteen years at Newstime—they were considerable — David knew that if he delayed the confrontation, it would become harder. He asked Nelson to come in right away.
Nelson was a small man anyway, but he looked more shrunken than usual. He came in apologizing: “Sorry about the Disney story. I couldn’t get a fix on it.”
David nodded. Now that he had the human being in front of him, he had no idea how to announce the facts.
“There wasn’t a real peg,” Nelson went on, encouraged by David’s silence. “I’m not sure—”
“Uh, I didn’t want to talk about that,” David blurted out to stop him from continuing a conversation that implied an ongoing presence at Newstime. “I have bad news,” he said, the only line he had prepared in advance.
Nelson tensed, his eyes scared. “Oh,” he said, and folded his hands in front of him, his mouth closed, his shoulders hunched, like a flower closing.
David starting talking, speaking vaguely at first about how valuable a change can be for someone who’s worked for many years at one place. Nelson looked away immediately, staring at David’s radiator. David said that he had been satisfied with Nelson’s work, but wanted to bring in someone new. “Maybe I’m insecure,” he said with a laugh, starting to feel comfortable, “and need to have only people I’ve hired working for me.” This like everything else, got no response. He started going over the details, how long Nelson could take before leaving, the fact that David and Chico would both provide excellent references, and he began to give the current status of his profit-sharing.
“I know what’s in there.” Nelson said. “Can I go now?” he asked, his tone angry, but his body, like his choice of words, sullenly childish.
“Sure. I’m sorry—”
“Un-huh,” Nelson said, and walked out.
Chico phoned later in the day to ask if he’d spoken with Nelson. “I’m impressed, very impressed, you did it so quickly,” Chico told him after David recounted the story. “Well, you’ve made your bones,” he continued, and let out a grim chuckle.
“It wasn’t too bad,” David said. “But I sure hope I don’t ever have to fire somebody again.”
“For your sake,” Chico said, laughing, “I sure hope you do.”
Tony made two resolutions when he awoke in New York the first day back. He acted on them immediately, first calling Gloria Fowler and frankly reporting how badly the script conference had gone.
She listened, interrupting him only to call out (probably to impress him with her concern) to her secretary to hold all her calls. When he was done, she said, “Do you want to refuse to do the rewrite?”
Tony hesitated. “I have that option?”
“Well, you wouldn’t be paid the outstanding amount on the contract.”
“Would I have to return what I have been paid?”
“Uh, not if it’s handled properly. You might … The worst that would happen is, the studio might ask you to write a different script. Move you to some other project.”
“Without getting additional money?”
“Right, but I think I could get around that. Do you want me to try?”
“Do you think I should?”
“No,” she said. “I think you should knock their socks off with a terrific rewrite. You know, people hating first drafts is very common. They give you a few suggestions, you add the little things they want, and suddenly your script is a work of genius.”
Tony laughed. “They can’t be that stupid, Gloria. They’d know I hadn’t made real changes. Garth really wants a complete rewrite.”
“Well, do you think you can give him what he wants? Did he give you good notes?”
“Yeah, I know what he wants. He wants his character to stand on a street corner in the pouring rain, the gutter swamped with water, and no matter how many Mack trucks pass by, not a drop can splatter him.” Tony laughed with pleasure at his metaphor of the star’s desire to have an unblemished character in the most dubious of circumstances. Just to have conceived of such an image restored his sense of power and control.
But from Gloria there was a puzzled silence. “I … It’s a clever sentence, but I don’t know what you mean.”
That his verbal picture hadn’t been clear reminded him of his lack of popular success. “Just that he wants his character to have been in the movement, in fact to have been in the underground making bombs, and somehow be somebody who can never be perceived by the audience as a terrorist. Well, to some people he’s going to be a terrorist, to some he’ll be a hero. No audience sees a character, a real character, the same way. People bring their prejudices with them to the theater, like their raincoats, but they don’t fold them on the seat and sit on them. The prejudices stay in their heads and you can’t be afraid to confront them. Not if you want to make exciting drama.”
“He doesn’t want to make exciting drama, Tony. He wants to make a hit movie.”
“Yeah, you’re right. I’m being a child about this. This isn’t my Sistine Chapel, this is his next World’s Fair.”
Gloria laughed. “Right, exactly. You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. But then I think you’re going to have to reconsider writing for Hollywood. Because though you might have an easier time working with other people in the business, this kind of rewrite is going to confront you over and over. If you want the money and the glory, you have to pay your dues.”
Somehow, after he had spoken with her, he felt better. Nothing she had said altered anything, but the sting of his humiliation was salved. She had made him feel it was less personal, not a bullet aimed at him, Tony Winters, but rather at writers, any writer.
His next resolution was harder, both to bear and to execute. He had arranged with Lois that she would call him when she woke in the morning, since the three-hour time difference would mean that by then Betty would be out of the house.