On this particular Sunday afternoon, Danforth sat with the Central Intelligence Agency’s Deputy Administrator, George Grover, beneath the bougainvillea tree on Danforth’s small backyard patio, watching television. The two men had reached the same conclusion John Tanner had reached two hundred and fifty miles north: Charles Woodward was going to make news tomorrow morning.
«State’s going to use up a month’s supply of toilet tissue,» Danforth said.
«They should. Whoever let Ashton go on? He’s not only stupid, he looks stupid. Stupid and slippery. John Tanner’s responsible for this program, isn’t he?»
«He is.»
«Smart son of a bitch. It’d be nice to be certain he’s on our side,» Grover said.
«Fassett’s assured us.» The two men exchanged looks. «Well, you’ve seen the file. Don’t you agree?»
«Yes. Yes, I do. Fassett’s right.»
«He generally is.»
There were two telephones on the ceramic table in front of Danforth. One was black with an outdoor plug-in jack on the ground. The other was red and a red cable extended from inside the house. The red phone hummed—it did not ring. Danforth picked it up.
«Yes… Yes, Andrews. Good… Fine. Ring Fassett on Redder and tell him to come over. Has Los Angeles confirmed the Ostermans? No change?… Excellent. We’re on schedule.»
Bernard Osterman, C.C.N.Y., Class of ’46, pulled the page out of his typewriter and glanced at it. Adding it to the bottom of a thin sheaf of papers, he stood up. He walked around his kidney-shaped pool and handed the manuscript to his wife, Leila, who sat naked in her lounge chair.
Osterman was naked too.
«You know, an undressed woman’s not particularly attractive in sunlight.»
«You think you’re a portrait in beige?… Give.» She took the pages and reached for her large, tinted glasses. «Is this the finish?»
Bernie nodded. «When are the kids getting home?»
«They’ll call from the beach before they start back. I told Marie to make sure they phone. I wouldn’t want Merwyn to find out about naked girls in sunlight at his age. There’s enough aversion to that in this town.»
«You’ve got a point. Read.» Bernie dove into the pool. He swam back and forth rapidly for three minutes … until he was out of breath. He was a good swimmer. In the Army they made him a swimming instructor at Fort Dix. «Speed-Jew» they had called him at the Army pool. But never to his face. He was a thin man, but tough. If C.C.N.Y. had had a football team instead of a joke, he would have been its captain. An end. Joe Cardone told Bernie he could have used him at Princeton.
Bernie had laughed when Joe told him that. In spite of the surface democratization of the Army experience—and it was surface—it had never occurred to Bernard Osterman, of the Tremont Avenue Ostermans, Bronx, New York, to vault time-honored barriers and enter the Ivy League. He might have been able to, he was bright and there was the G.I. Bill, but it simply never entered his thinking.
It wouldn’t have been comfortable then—in 1946. It would be now; things had changed.
Osterman climbed up the ladder. It was good that he and Leila were going to the east coast, back to Saddle Valley for a few days. It was somehow akin to taking a brief, concentrated course in pleasant living whenever they returned. Everyone always said the east was hectic, pressurized—far more so than Los Angeles; but that wasn’t so. It only seemed that way because the area of action was more confined.
Los Angeles, his Los Angeles, which meant Burbank, Hollywood, Beverly Hills, was where the real insanity was practiced. Men and women racing crazily up and down the aisles of a palm-lined drug store. Everything on sale, everything labeled, everyone competing in their psychedelic shirts and orange slacks.
There were times when Bernie just wanted to see someone dressed in a Brooks Brothers suit and a buttondown broadcloth. It didn’t really mean anything, not actually; he didn’t give much of a damn what costumes the tribes of Los Angeles wore. Perhaps it was just the continual, overbearing assault on the eyes.
Or perhaps he was entering one of his downswings again. He was wearying of it all.
Which was unfair. The palm-lined drug store had treated him very well.
«How is it?» he asked his wife.
«Pretty good. You may even have a problem.»
«What?» Bernie grabbed a towel from a stack on the table. «What problem?»
«You could be stripping too many layers away. Too much pain, maybe.» Leila flipped over a page as her husband smiled. «Be quiet a minute and let me finish. Perhaps you’ll snap out of it.»
Bernie Osterman sat down in a webbed chair and let the warm California sun wash over his body. There was still a smile on his lips; he knew what his wife meant and it was comforting to him. The years of formula writing hadn’t destroyed his ability to strip away the layers—when he wanted to.
And there were times when there was nothing more important to him than to want to. To prove to himself that he could still do it. The way he used to back in the days when they lived in New York.
They were good days. Provocative, exciting, filled with commitment and purpose. Only there was never anything else really—just commitment, just purpose. A few flattering reviews written by other intense young writers. He’d been called penetrating then; perceptive, incisive. Once, even, extraordinary.
It hadn’t been enough. And so he and Leila came to the palm-lined drug store and willingly, happily trained their talents for the exploding world of the television residual.
Someday, though. Someday, thought Bernard Osterman, it would happen again. The luxury of sitting down with all the time in the world to really do it. Make a big mistake if he had to. It was important to be able to think like that.
«Bernie?»
«Yes?»
Leila draped a towel over her front and pushed the latch on the lounge chair so the back raised itself. «It’s beautiful, sweetie. I mean really very beautiful, and I think you know it’s not going to work.»
«It does work!»
«They won’t sit still for it.»
«Fuck ’em!»
«We’re being paid thirty thousand for a one-hour drama, Bernie. Not a two-hour exorcism ending in a funeral home.»
«It’s not an exorcism. It happens to be a sad story based on very real conditions, and the conditions don’t change. You want to drive down to the barrio and take a look?»
«They won’t buy it. They’ll want rewrites.»
«I won’t make them!»
«And they’ll hold the balance. There’s fifteen thousand coming to us.»
«Son of a bitch!»
«You know I’m right.»
«Talk! All Goddamned talk! This season we’ll have meaning! Controversy!… Talk!»
«They look at the figures. A rave in The Times doesn’t sell deodorant in Kansas.»
«Fuck ’em.»
«Relax. Take another swim. It’s a big pool.» Leila Osterman looked at her husband. He knew what that look meant and couldn’t help smiling. A little sadly.
«O.K., fix it then.»
Leila reached for the pencil and yellow pad on the table next to her chair. Bernie stood up and approached the edge of the pool.
«You think Tanner might want to join us? You think maybe I can approach him?»
His wife put down her pencil and looked up at her husband. «I don’t know. Johnny’s different from us …»
«Different from Joe and Betty? Dick and Ginny? I don’t see he’s so different.»
«I wouldn’t jump at him. He’s still a newshawk. Vulture they used to call him, remember? The vulture of San Diego. He’s got a spine. I wouldn’t want to bend it. It might snap back.»