Lisa Atkinson - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 131, No. 5. Whole No. 801, May 2008

But no sooner he had blown out the candles on his birthday cake than it seemed he’d simultaneously blown out the wires on his phone. He would ask his agent about the lack of current assignments on a Monday and the man (one of his oldest friends) would wish him a happy weekend as they hung up. When his picture was taken down off the wall at the Palm, one of Hollywood’s premier steak houses, he knew immediately that the industry was reciting him his Last (W)Rites. All the new work was going to the army of young writers who seemed to love their computers more than their wives or girlfriends.

It was not that Jay was skirting the poverty line. He still owned his ranch house in Sherman Oaks, his once obese stock portfolio, membership at the health and tennis clubs, but his insatiable urge to write was like poison ivy— Ahhh, it was great scratching it even if it drew a little masochistic blood in the process. Goddammit, he had come up the hard way, poor kid from the Bronx, no money to go to college, just this starved monkey on his back, hungering to write, to get his words up there on the screen. Actually, down there on the screen since he was a TV scribe. But now...

He was sitting in his living room at eleven in the morning, unshaven, still in his bathrobe, when his ex called. As usual, she wanted at his wallet. There was always a justifiable reason: Jeffrey (their son) wanted to go to Baja with his friends for a weekend, the roof was leaking again, Jeffrey’s dental bills. Legally, he didn’t have to pay any of this but she always managed to make him a last-drop-of-blood donor. Even blindfolded, hands tied behind her back, she could unerringly find his guilt button. All this expressed in her usual harridan’s voice.

“You never see Jeffrey, you never even saw him in his school’s The Mikado, and he was the Mikado!”

“Gimme a break, I paid for his damn costume.”

“But you never saw him in it.”

She had him there: He saw his son maybe six, seven times a year. He just couldn’t relate to the kid, he was too Californian: too blond, too tanned, too arrogant even at five and even worse as a teenager. He called Jay “Jay.” Where was his respect, treating his father like one of his pot-smoking buddies? Jay had compounded the situation by getting him into a private school filled with the opportunistic offspring of the town’s actors, agents, entertainment lawyers. You could catch them in homeroom every morning reading the trades, looking forward to their lattes at lunch.

It was only after he had gotten Lynne off the phone with his usual promise of forthcoming lucre that the idea hit him. It came unheralded like most of his best story ideas, a gift-wrapped missive from the subconscious. But it had its downside: It meant a talk with the blood recipient. A very serious, probably hard-sell session which would finally give the kid, not being too Freudian about it, an upper cajone in their relationship. Could he deal with that? You betcha!

He always dreaded going back to the house he lost to Lynne in the marriage settlement: a faux-Tudor on Hillcrest in Beverly Hills. He even avoided driving by it if possible. But this was business!

In his ex’s now over-decorated living room (God, some of the furnishings actually looked Iranian!), he confronted Jeffrey, who sat sprawled on a sofa, scruffy in soiled T-shirt and cargo pants, drinking a soda. He was regarding Jay with a contemplative smirk like a used-car salesman evaluating his newest victim.

Before Jay could begin, Jeffrey said, “Jay, I’ve been thinking. You know, my name, Jeffrey Jordan — it’s a little over-the-top alliterative. Wouldn’t you say? It gets embarrassing.”

Jay wanted to throw up. But this was business. “You might have a point there,” he managed to concede. But he loved the fact that his son had used the word “alliterative.” Maybe they read more than the trades at that showbiz school.

“I want to change it,” Jeffrey said emphatically.

“That can be done,” Jay agreed. “We can do that legally, no problem. Let me know.”

“Great. You know what I’d like to change it to?”

Jay shrugged. “What?”

“Hunter. Hunter Jordan. Cool, don’t you think?”

“Very cool. Now — ah — I’d like to discuss something else.”

Jeffrey, future Hunter, rolled over on the sofa. He popped himself up, almost into Jay’s face. “Lay it on, Jay.”

Jay explained the situation in television, the young demographic the industry thirsted for, the dangers that faced Jeffrey and Lynne since the industry had pressed his delete button. Think of it — the lack of tuition money, the perks like Baja, etc. No new car next year. The newly christened Hunter without a Hummer!

If his son was disturbed by Jay’s dissertation, his face remained unperturbed. He took a hearty swig of his Big Red, said, “So what’s the climax of the plot? You’re the writer.”

“An impersonation. You.”

Jeffrey, ex-Mikado, straightened up on the sofa. “Me?”

“You go in, pitch the story to the producer. You get the assignment and I write the script. They’ll never know the old fart did the writing.”

Jeffrey pondered this, then his smirk surfaced again. “These guys are idiots? I never pitched anything in my life. They’d be on me like my shorts.”

Jay confided that most were bereft of brain cells. He would coach him on exactly how to tell the story, the little tricks to charm them out of their Guccis. If they wanted to buy the story and the teleplay, they would make a deal with Jay’s agent, who would be in on the scam.

Jay leaned closer, grabbed the Big Red can from Jeffrey, took a swig. Chums. Fellow conspirators. “Think it over, I’ll buzz you tomorrow.” He quickly got up to go.

“Just a minute,” Jeffrey said. “Cool it. What’s the back-end here?”

Money. Always the goddamn money. “I’ll give you points, a percentage, we’ll work it out.” He started out again.

“Not so fast. I got this rotten tough lit teacher, Mr. Haviland? Suppose you write me my next essay assignment for this bozo. Quid pro quo. Huh?”

Jay shrugged. “Quid pro quo. We got a deal — Hunter.”

It was easier than they’d both thought. Jay was his new teacher for a week, his Marine drill sergeant, drumming the story into his head, even how to sit (directly facing the producer, not his clones), no shave, his wardrobe (the scruffy T-shirt and cargo pants were perfecto). Jay was getting the distinct impression that the quid pro quo was more important to his son than the promise of compensation. He was actually beginning to like this California mutant he had somehow, improbably, hatched. The boy’s light-switch, on-and-off smirk seemed self-defensive now, hiding an innate shyness and insecurity.

Jay nervously drove him to the studio for the pitch meeting, parking right inside the gate because the studio cop remembered him from the “old days.” Last year?!

Jeffrey came out an hour later in an ecstatic trance. “They loved it,” he said. “Got a weed?”

“You never know if they loved it. These guys invented duplicity.”

But they did — love it.

Jay’s agent made the deal and he was happily pounding out the script, day and night, on his old Remington. He would never switch to a computer, words had to be driven into the paper, like Faulkner said, nails into wood.

Meanwhile Haviland had assigned Jeffrey an essay, “What is Morality?” Relishing the irony, Jay knocked it out in an hour, an easy two-Pepsi chore.

The producers finally read Jeffrey’s script, liked it even more than their on-lot parking stalls, his prodigy winding up with a multiple assignment on the show. Those bastards, Jay thought, I’ve still got the juice but they’ve forced me to pimp my own flesh and blood.