"The Dramatists Guild contract…"
"Screw the Dramatists Guild and their contract," Stuart said. "Nobody can force you to make the changes, that's true, you're protected. But is the Dramatists Guild going to raise the money for your play?"
"Are you?"
"If we sign Hester, yes."
"Guaranteed?"
"Guaranteed. I've been on the phone all day. I've got more than enough promises already."
"That's right."
"Promises aren't cash," Arthur said.
"I can guarantee these promises, Arthur. I'm not exactly new in this business, these are people who've invested with me before. They'll come in if we get Hester."
"She's very hot, Arthur."
"Arthur, we have to know what you plan to do."
"I don't know yet."
"Will you call me later tonight?"
"I may have to sleep on it."
"Do me a favor, don't sleep on it. I want to be able to call Mitzi first thing in the morning and tell her you're eager to get to work on the revisions."
"I'm not."
"Fake a little enthusiasm."
"Stuart, I don't like this kind of pressure. I really don't."
"That's right, this is pressure," Oscar said. "We're all under pressure, Arthur, not just you."
"I don't like to make important decisions under pressure."
"Nobody does. But that's the way most important decisions are made."
"We may know about the trial early next week. Can't we—"
"And you may not know for six months."
"It never takes that long."
"It could."
"Anyway, even next week is too late. Arthur, maybe you still don't understand the situation. Hester's going to sign for that Osborne play unless you go along with these changes. Now which is it going to be? Everybody rich and happy, or everybody behaving in a highly unprofessional manner?"
"What's unprofessional about wanting to preserve what I wrote?"
"This is the theater, Arthur. Don't talk like a hick."
"Any play is a collaborative effort, you know that," Oscar said.
"I don't like collaborating with pants pressers."
"What are you talking about?"
"Mitzi Starke is a pants presser. What the hell does she know about playwriting?"
"She doesn't have to know anything about playwriting," Stuart said, "as long as she's got clients like Hester Miers."
"If you'd raised the goddamn money, we wouldn't be in this situation," Arthur said angrily.
"We tried our best. And we can still raise it, if you'll compromise a little."
"A little, sure," Arthur said.
"A little, yes. Will you call me later tonight?"
"If I've decided."
"Decide, Arthur," Stuart said.
"Good night, Arthur," Oscar said.
Arthur almost slammed the receiver onto the cradle, but something restrained him. He put it down gently, and then turned from the phone and walked to the rain-streaked window and looked down at the gleaming wet street outside. He went to the closet then, and put on his raincoat and an old rain hat, a battered corduroy he had bought six years ago and perhaps worn as many times since. He looked at the room unseeingly for a moment before turning off the lights, and then went out of the apartment and into the street.
The rain was cold. It fell from the sky in slanting sheets that swept sidewalk and gutter, driven by a sharp wind. He almost changed his mind, and then decided the hell with it and kept walking, the collar of his coat high on the back of his neck, his hat pulled down over his forehead, his hands thrust into his pockets. He did not know where he was going, or why he felt he could think better in the rain than in his apartment, but he continued walking nonetheless, heading west toward Lexington Avenue, and then continuing westward, turning downtown whenever he was stopped by a corner traffic light.
It seemed to him that his decision hinged entirely on the outcome of the trial. If he knew he were positively going to win the case, he could tell them all to go to hell, he would not need anyone's money to produce the play, he could produce the damn thing himself. On the other hand, if he knew for certain that the case was lost, there would be no hope for production unless he were willing to make the changes. Yes, he could take the play around again, but he knew Kent was right on that score, too, a dead duck was a dead duck. He had circulated the play for six months before Selig and Stern optioned it, showing it to most of the theatrical producers in town. It was highly unlikely that anyone would suddenly become interested in it again, not after word went around that they'd had trouble raising the money. Word had a way of getting around in this town, faster than the speed of light. He was willing to bet that Lincoln Center already knew Hester was planning to leave, and exactly why — to star in Arthur Constantine's new play.
If he made the changes.
All you have to do, he thought, is make the changes. It'll be easy to make the changes. God knows you made enough changes when you were working for the Hollywood pants pressers. Out there, anyone was entitled to a suggestion, including the studio typists. He would never forget the day Charlie Mandell asked the barber what he thought of a scene they were discussing, right there in Charlie's office, Charlie sitting in his big stuffed green leather chair with the barber's cloth around his neck. And the barber very seriously offered his advice on what he thought would be a better approach to the scene, and Charlie took the suggestion and said, "I think we ought to work it out along those lines. After all, Arthur, these are the people who go to see the movies. I'll never sell the little man short." If he made the changes now, he would indeed be selling the little man short because his play was about the little man, not about a barber of course, nor even about the little man Charlie Mandell had in mind perhaps, but certainly about a simple ordinary man who happened to be his father. It was an honest play. It was the first honest thing he'd written in a long long while, and now they were asking him to change it, make changes that might not damage its honesty but, yes, he thought, yes. The changes will damage the honesty. It will not be the play I wrote anymore.
He had let Freddie Gerard do that to Catchpole, well, wait a minute, it wasn't fair to turn on Freddie, if it hadn't been for Freddie the play would never have been produced at all. And yet he had allowed Freddie and the director, a man named Fielder Crowell, to turn the play upside down, to rearrange scenes, to emphasize here and to excise there, "This isn't working, Arthur, can you change it to…?" Of course, you can change it to. You can change it to anything. You can bring six hundred pink elephants on stage at any given point, and if you are a skillful enough writer, you can make those elephants seem plausible and reasonable and in fact necessary to plot and theme and character. Yes, you can change it to. You can change a whore to a nun, and a doctor to an Indian chief, you can put this scene at the beginning and that scene at the end, you can change words and lines and speeches, you can rewrite the entire second act in New Haven, and after you've changed everything to, you can change it back to again. You can juggle all these bits and pieces in the air like a circus performer and forget exactly what you intended in the first place. You can allow them to march right through the play with mud on their feet, tracking it up while you scurry along behind them trying to wipe up the footprints. Yes, I can change Carol to a social worker who has had one affair, I can change the father to a small business man or a minor executive, I can change the play, I can make it their play, the way I made Catchpole their play and therefore nobody's play. And then, maybe years from now, a James Driscoll will step in and really finish the job, just the way he did with Catchpole, step in and make it not my play, and not their play, but his play, steal it right from under my nose, and it'll serve me right because I didn't have the guts to stand behind what I'd written. You want to change it? Fine. Go write your own play. This is my play, and it's going to stay my play.