After A.D. went through his stack of one-dollar chips he went back to the room and found Walker asleep. The pages were on the floor beside the bed. After A.D. read them, he wrote out a rough contract establishing that he had paid Walker ten thousand dollars and therefore was part owner of the script, along with Wesley, who up until then had paid out seventy-five hundred. Before he went to sleep he found a secretary in the casino’s office to type up the contract in legalized English.
When Walker and A.D. found themselves awake at the same time, they ate, gambled for a few minutes, and drove down the road toward Las Vegas. It was night and the road was empty with calm humpbacked mountains on either side of them. After fifty miles of driving A.D. said, “I read the pages. Your old man is never going to go for that blow job. He’s had John Wayne and those other righteous old dudes riding through his flicks.”
“I owe him a blow job. He can do what he wants with it.”
“Well, that’s a family problem,” A.D. said. “And I never mess with family problems, not even my own.”
“We’ll red line the scene,” Walker said. “His films never get that close to sex, at least not the explicit kind.”
“Whatever you say, partner,” A.D. said, trying to promote his new image as skillful producer. “I don’t want to turn off your flow. I’m just telling you that the script doesn’t altogether play for me. If Jim and Lacey could take up with one of those weird hippies in the train and get themselves into a steamy triangle, then you’d have yourself a hook. I’d follow a hook like that into deep water, especially if you had two women on either side of the sandwich. And I’m not a deepwater man.”
“The main characters are pretty well set.”
“Does that mean you’re sticking to what went down over there? Because if you are, we might have trouble moving this one off the lot.”
“The facts have to be somewhere in the room or the old man won’t pay attention.”
“Herd them into the corner,” A.D. said. “Out of the story’s way.”
They stopped at a small hotel-casino in Ely, a run-down mining town halfway to Las Vegas. Over apple pie and coffee A.D. produced the contract for Walker to sign.
“You’re making your move,” Walker said, looking over the contract.
“It’s now or never,” A.D. said. “And I’m taking my inspiration from the now jar.”
“Who do you see in the middle of this triangle you’ve set up?” Walker asked. “Me, you, or the old man?”