Green tea had a lot of antioxidants, Billy said, and they were good against cancer. He cleaned off his plank of sushi, pulled the napkin off his chest, releasing a flock of rice, and dabbed his mouth. He was now ready to talk business. Momentary confusion compelled Joshua to take the last piece of sushi from his plate. He wondered all of a sudden what Kimmy would think of Billy and his macho projections, of his need to dominate with grins.
“Let’s pretend we don’t know each other at all,” Billy said. “Let’s pretend we’re at a party. Everybody’s drunk out of their minds. There’s an orgy with a rotating cast in the spare bedroom. You have exactly five seconds for your pitch. Sell me Zombie Wars.”
His mouth loaded with unagi, Joshua slowed down his chewing to think of the way either to avoid this test or, if that proved difficult, to get up and walk away. The waiter would understand. Ana would understand. Even Kimmy would understand. Joshua swallowed.
“Zombie Wars is a story of an ordinary man trying to survive in difficult circumstances,” he ventured.
“Not bad. Not bad at all. But let me give you some advice. Never, ever use the word ordinary when you pitch. Ever. Another thing: trying. Heroes don’t try. They either do it or they don’t. Mainly they do it. Survive: verboten! Unless it’s a Holocaust story. And circumstances has too many syllables, easy to fumble.”
“You know what?” Joshua said, standing up, fumbling the napkin. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”
“Sit down,” Billy said.
“I’m sorry. There’s been a misunderstanding. I’m not ready for this.”
“Sit down! Right now.”
Joshua sat down. Billy was glaring at him so intensely it seemed possible to Joshua that he might smack him. Nervously, he took a sip of his green tea.
“I know what you’re thinking: you think I don’t know shit. Fine! I don’t know shit,” Billy said. “But let me tell you something: I’m so sick of people like you, Joshua, who think they know what life is and they have no experience of it. None. Zero. Nada. They think they can bullshit me, like I know nothing. What did you expect when you came here? What do you think I do? What do I do? Do you know? Tell me: what do I do?”
Billy maintained his Botox grin waiting for a response, and it was its unchanging aspect that compelled Joshua to say something.
“You’re an agent. You represent clients.”
“Wrong! That is wrong! Try again.”
“I really can’t do this.”
“I make my people look good so I can sell their goods. I can sell a phone book page as a treatment for The Return of Titanic. I get things done. That’s what I do. I am an agent because I have agency. I know you don’t have an agent, but do you have agency, Joshua?”
As Joshua comprehended the question, Billy signaled to the waiter with a little twirl of his index finger as if demanding a pirouette. Instead, the waiter moved at deliberately slow speed between the vacant tables, pushing the chairs aside.
“No, you don’t,” Billy said. “Which is why you need an agent.”
The waiter arrived, visibly exhausted by his slow-motion slalom. Billy ordered a selection of mochi balls without consulting Joshua, shaking his head as if astonished at the perfection of his choices. This man’s energy was so abundant as to be desperate and therefore pathetic.
“You gotta figure out what to do with all that potential you have, because potential can fuck you up big time,” Billy said as the waiter retreated. “Yes, zombies could be killed all day long and no sane person would ever root for them. Yes, God made them for boys and video games. Yes, there are loads of redemption, and killer units, and heads exploding, and cultural references up your backside. Yes, the main guy is a doctor. Yes, there should be a lady. And yes, I can get someone real nice for the female lead, Gwyneth or someone like that.”
“Gwyneth? Gwyneth Paltrow? You know Gwyneth Paltrow?”
“Are you kidding me? Of course I don’t. Fuck Gwyneth Paltrow, she’s done for. I was thinking of Gwyneth Szpika. A star in the making. Brilliant in Improv Hamlet,” Billy said. “This is Chicago. We win big only if we place our bets early.”
The waiter spilled water all over the table while topping up Billy’s glass and then dropped a bundle of dirty chopsticks, which danced on the floor. Billy and Joshua were the only patrons in the restaurant, perhaps the last ones before it closed its doors for good and released its indentured staff to pursue greener tea pastures. The waiter kicked the chopsticks out of sight, under some other table, into some undetermined future.
“I’ll be honest with you, Joshie: I need you like I need a broken broom handle up my ass. I got so many clients I’m gonna have to start offing them. Why? Because nobody believes in my people more than I do. Every artist has to believe in himself. Yes, of course! It’s a cliché. But what happens when it feels like all your belief is drained away? When there’s nothing left in the tank? This is where I come in: I believe in you! I’m like a Swiss bank of belief. I keep it forever.”
He was mopping the water around his glass with a napkin.
“See that waiter? He’ll never make it in the world of waiting. Why? Because nobody believes in him. Do you think his boss believes in him? Do you believe in him? I don’t.”
Joshua looked at the waiter. He was there, so he was believable. To Joshua it seemed that the waiter’s biggest problem was plain, mind-crushing low-wage boredom: the pain in the calves, the same demanding assholes, the same Muzak loop, the same orders, over and over again. Meanwhile, elsewhere, everywhere, the world unfurled like a flag. The basic task in everyone’s life was pretending it was more than mere survival.
“I know what you’re thinking, Josh: Why would George believe in me — in me, in this fledgling novice? Why would George want to waste his resources on a client with another zombie idea when all the film crews in the world could spend the next bazillion years shooting only the optioned zombie scripts? Well, Josh, I’ll be honest with you.”
Billy deferred being honest for a long moment, his gaze fixated on Joshua, who asked the obvious question: “Who’s George?”
“I’m George,” Billy said.
“I thought you were Billy.”
“George for clients, Billy for friends.”
“Why?”
“This business, Josh, is a bitch. Let me worry about all that. There is no I in team.”
“But there is am,” Joshua observed.
“What’s that?”
“There is am. As in I am. T-E-am. The subject is implied in the verb.”
If it hadn’t been for the Muzak molasses dripping from the speakers at the bar, they would’ve been sunk in uncomfortable silence.
“Joshie, I like you,” Billy/George said, his face clouding, “but you don’t even know that you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
It was clear there was no hope available here. The pitching practice was now over, it was time to return to the dugout. And for the first time, Joshua thought of himself as a man who knew something others didn’t: he knew Ana; he knew his father’s cancer; he knew the little man in the crawl space. What he knew about all that exactly he didn’t know, but he felt the weight of knowledge in his head and muscles; the door opened, and he was stepping in.
“I tell you what: this is obviously not gonna work out,” Billy/George said. “But I like you, and Graham is a buddy of mine, so I’ll give you some free advice. First, get yourself in the writers’ room, work your way up from there. They’re shooting shitloads of TV in Chicago now, because we’re far more real than LA. Send around some samples, after you clean them up first. There’s lot of passive in there, a lot of college-level wrylies. And a lot of expensive set pieces. You amateurs shoot the movie in your head. An extra shot of espresso and galaxies collide. But get your first job, then get another one, and then a worse one, and before you know it, you’ll be writing for Michael Bay.”