“I was at ICM five years.”
“Well,” said Bernie, “it was nice meeting you boys.” Better not to pal around too long.
“Call me, at Showtime.” They shook hands while the others peeled off without saying goodbye. “I can rent those, right? The Undead—”
“Sure can. Blockbuster has ’em. You can get ’em anyplace.”
“Vaya con Dios,” said Pierre, flashing a peace sign.
“Don’t you mean Viacom?” he bantered. The executive laughed, then ran ahead.
Bernie dreamed this and the dream had been delivered, lapping at his feet like so much mother-of-pearl. That was the omen. To hell with the Studio Shuffle, he would sell The Undead cycle to Showtime without lifting a finger: the world was still magical, vivid, ultramarine. The world still held treasures for the likes of Bernard Samuel Ribkin — now hopping wood steps, scrubbing sand from ungainly feet, the fragile, knobby creepers of a courtly old player who’d seen a few things. He was hungry and wondered about dinner. Then a shiver of the abstract washed over him, and for an instant the mysterious seaboard of his destiny was illumined; but Edie’s second-story shout reeled him back to mundane shores and he lost what had been seen as quickly as the thread of a reverie.
“Old Man and the Sea!” she cried, leaning from the window of her room, smiling like there was no tomorrow. “Old Man and the Sea, do you love me?”
Zev Turtletaub
Taj sat in the bath and visualized the article from that day’s Reporter, a front-page piece about the Turtletaub Company’s “hefty slate”: a musical remake of a Spencer Tracy movie called Dante’s Inferno, planned for Broadway; two films already in the can and soon to be released — a Robert Redford and a Martha Coolidge; All Mimsy, a sequel to Mimsy, a spin-off of the hugely successful Jabberwocky chronicles; an unnamed Holocaust project with Richard Dreyfuss, plus the potential filming of a yet-to-be-announced Dreyfuss stage vehicle; an upcoming feature to be written and directed by David Mamet, with songs by Mamet and Sondheim; Middlemarch, to be adapted by A. S. Byatt and directed by Stephen Frears; three bestsellers — a romance, a policier (for Dustin Hoffman) and a dysfunctional-family drama — in active development; an animated film of a tale from the Brothers Grimm by the director of A Nightmare Before Christmas; a remake of The Four Hundred Blows, directed by David Koepp, the Jurassic Park scribe; Charlotte’s Web, by the Jabberwocky writers; an unnamed story by Poe to be helmed by actor Anthony Hopkins; a remake of Pasolini’s Teorema (with producer Phylliss Wolfe attached, Turtletaub serving as exec producer); and a teaser about Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut that vaguely implied J. D. Salinger might possibly have agreed to expand and adapt his original story. This, of course, was untrue. To his utter dismay and delight, the name Taj Wiedlin had been invoked as “associate producer” in the very last paragraph of page seven in connection with a “fast track” adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls, for which no writer or star had been set. Mr. Turtletaub called it “a priority project, a labor of love.”
The guest-house tub was empty. Taj wore a mask and gag, his wrists and ankles tied with leather. He could hear the voices of the party outside. The associate producer laughed through the gag as he imagined his mother stumbling in to find the toilet. She’d been visiting from Chicago and had only just left to see his sister, in Walnut Creek. He took her to City Walk and Rodeo Drive and the Ivy; Cybill Shepherd and Sarah Jessica Parker were there, but not together. His mother didn’t like the way Taj was looking. He was too thin, she said, too “drawn.” They bought a ton of groceries at Gooch’s and she packed them away while he sat at the kitchen table and smiled. When she asked if he was having “girl trouble,” his mind kinked up like a hose — for two seconds he thought she was hip to his errant faggotry. When Taj realized her earnestness he laughed so hard that if he screamed, he was certain the frequency would shatter her heart. Yes, he vamped, he had fallen in love but the girl wouldn’t love him back. Then it wasn’t meant to be. Do I not know my son?
He was cold. He went over the details of the Reporter article again. There it was on the mindscreen — Whole Document, Cursor here, Cursor there, Pg Up, Pg Dn — and it warmed him. What he really needed was a tape of Dante’s Inferno; as yet, Taj had only read a précis in TimeOut’s movie guide. Spencer Tracy played a “ruthless manipulator” who opened a carnival featuring the eponymous ride. The nineteen thirty-five film was supposed to have a spectacular “vision of hell” sequence that was technically ahead of its time. It was all so drolly ironic — in college, The Divine Comedy happened to be Taj’s favorite book; he even learned Italian to apprehend its beauty.
More voices outside as the party grew. Taj shivered. He thought about the Harvard years and hummed a little doggerel. Then it came back, inexorably. On the outskirts of Hell, the poets heard lamentations. Virgil tells him,
…Questo misero modo
tegnon l’anime triste di coloro
che visser sanza ’nfamia e sanza lodo.
“Such is the miserable condition of the sorry souls of those who lived without infamy and without praise.” In that snowy collegiate world — the dormitory of his own soul — Taj already heard his voice rise up unaccomplished to take its place in the infernal suburbs, a sad tenor among the meritless Dead, their complement unworthy of Hades proper.
A door opened. Voices. Men laughing. Splash of a Hockneyesque dive. Taj prepared to bolt — he hadn’t agreed to this. If Zev was accompanied, the associate producer would thrash and bloody himself, make a ruckus…The door closed, separating them from the sounds of the world. Zev was alone. He made a few calls, but Taj couldn’t hear. He hung up, rummaging in a drawer before coming to the bath. He smoked a cigar. His breathing was heavy, labored. The producer sat on the toilet and defecated. The air grew musty and fetid. Zev puttered in the other room, casually talking on the phone again. He came and stood over him, breathing calmer. Taj felt the mouth at his groin like a fish feeding on aquarium bottom. Then, mouth skirted nipple: hovered over belly while a stertorous groan scared Taj half to death: and gilded him with throw-up. The producer regurgitated a warm rhythmical hail of egesta that put the rookie in mind of Jeff Goldblum in The Fly. Zev finally off his knees, washing at the sink. Cigar relit. Dreamy party voices through the door as he leaves, locking it.
Taj shifted in the puky tub; he would endure. Tomorrow, the rewards would come — Prada jacket from Maxfield’s, vintage Rolex from Second Time Around, thousand-dollar gift certificate from Burke Williams — he was generous like that. Maybe Zev would bring him along next weekend when he sailed to Catalina with Dustin and the kids. Such a gift was precious and intangible, an investment in the great career unknown.
Taj Wiedlin, Associate Producer.
This was his time. He would live it with infamy and with praise.
Chet Stoddard
The dentist and his wife finally took the viatical plunge. When Horvitz brought the cashier’s check to Philip, the dying costume designer, Chet went along.