Adrian McKinty - Fifty Grand

Judging from the cars outside, the party appeared to be a small but upscale affair. Two Mercs, a Rolls-Royce, a Ferrari, and Jack’s Bentley.

We rang the bell and I admired the paintwork on the cars. In Havana all vehicles except for the very newest are finished in glossy outdoor house paint, but these were in subtle attractive shades: racing green, midnight blue, morning gray. As you got wealthier, I speculated, your tastes rebelled against the primary colors of the common herd.

Jack had yet to learn that lesson with his white Bentley.

We rang the bell again and someone said, “It’s open!”

We walked through a bare marble foyer into an equally spartan dining room that looked west upon a sunset and eight or nine layers of mountains. We were the last to arrive, and a fortysomething redheaded woman in a beautiful emerald couture dress hastily introduced us to the four other guests. Jack knew only one of them personally-a shaven-headed man wearing a black polo-neck sweater, black sweat pants, and diamond earrings.

“Mr. Cunningham, this is my friend María,” he said.

Cunningham took my hand and kissed it.

“Delighted to meet you, miss,” Cunningham said with such a warm smile and wonderful manners that I knew he was homosexual. Actually, it turned out that all the men were gay except for Watson, who, as Jack had predicted, proved to be a bit of a wacko.

I was seated next to the redheaded woman, who called herself Miss Raven, and a young man in a plaid shirt, jeans, and glasses who said he was “Mickey, just Mickey,” in a throwback New York accent straight from the Yuma movies of the fifties.

Miss Raven opened two bottles of sparkling wine and the chat flowed between the men. They talked fast and I found myself dipping in and out of their conversation.

“Jack, I loved you in that thing you were in. Your acting is an homage to a bygone age.”

“What about those writers?”

“What about them? Jack Warner said they were ‘scum with Underwoods.’ ”

“No shop talk. Did any of you see that Richard Serra show? It was appalling. What a confidence man that character is-all those pseudoscientific names for his pieces. That’s how you spot a bad artist-the pseudoscientific name. ‘Trajectory Number Five.’ ‘Tangent on Circle.’ Of course, the New Yorker review and Charlie Rose were positively supine.”

“I hardly read The New Yorker, not since they got a pop music critic called Sasha Frere-Jones. Frere-Jones indeed. I imagine some twenty-three-year-old Barnard girl whose parents are influential condo board members in the East Seventies. I occasionally glance at the odd movie review. Such poor grammar. Lane’s sentences have more clauses than a fucking Kris Kringle convention.”

“I saw him once in Vail.”

“Vail? Good God, I wouldn’t be seen dead in Vail.”

“Clooney loves it.”

“He’s a bullshit artist like all the others. I mean, do you really believe Clooney when he tells us that Budweiser is the King of Beers?”

Miss Raven didn’t speak but smiled at me from time to time, as if to apologize for my exclusion from the shop talk and gossip. I appreciated her concern but I wasn’t getting annoyed. The wine was delightful and the view excellent and from the kitchen came the smell of good things. I could see that Jack was frustrated, though, itching to jump in, but he lacked pluck. Why they’d invited him was a mystery-perhaps he was a last-minute replacement for someone else.

When we were halfway through the second bottle of sparkling wine, Watson appeared with hors d’oeuvres on a silver tray. He was wearing a leather bondage suit, a leather mask, handcuffs, and leg irons. When he served us he kneeled on the floor next to Miss Raven until she clicked her fingers and he removed the empty tray.

I had been in Havana’s many brothels dozens of times and had seen a lot worse. Jack, too, appeared unruffled, always acting, this time giving us the fixed smile of someone dancing with a little girl at a wedding.

More bottles. More food.

And gradually he and I were brought into the talk. I was passed off as an old friend who worked in the hotel business. I went along with the lie and let Jack build the cathedral-I was looking at land here in Fairview for the Mandalay Bay group. Vail was over and Aspen hopelessly passé-Fairview, with its easy access to Denver and a back road to Boulder, was the place to invest. I was pushed on the veracity of these claims and my unwillingness to confirm any of the details impressed everyone with my discretion. Miss Raven seemed pleased that I was there. Watson’s antics had long since ceased to amuse her and when the conversation became drearily shoppy she talked to me about the weather and clothes.

Jack found his niche and as he relaxed he allowed himself to speak more freely. He drank and began to enjoy himself. I suppose this was the kind of slightly risqué high-powered party he’d been expecting to find in L.A. and hadn’t ever gotten invited to. It wasn’t exactly the dinner feast of the Satyricon but it wasn’t bad. Oysters and shrimp were followed by duck, all three flown in from some picturesque spot in Alaska that very morning, and the excellent wine was from Watson’s own vineyard in Sonoma.

Time and food and conversation flowed, and when Watson went into the kitchen to load the dishwasher, Miss Raven produced a 150-year-old vintage Madeira and preembargo Monte Cristo cubanos.

With a bottle under his belt Jack was waxing on his favorite topic: the up-and-down career of Jack Tyrone. “Yeah, the Independent Spirit nomination was a real boost, I’m getting leads now. I’m doing this movie called Gunmetal , medium budget, I play a British Victoria Cross winner in the Crimean War. You wouldn’t believe the script changes. It’s based on the video game but it’s gone in a totally different direction. We’re throwing this Brit guy into the future, steam punk, all that.”

“You’re playing a Brit?” Mickey asked skeptically.

“But of course, my dear sir,” Jack said in his faux English diphthongs.

“Don’t like the title. Don’t see the connection,” another of the other producers said. He was a svelte, tanned man in a tailored polo shirt and an expensive toupee.

“But that’s the whole thing, you see,” Jack said. “All the Victoria Cross medals are made from gunmetal from cannons that the Brits captured in the Crimea. So the title sneakily refers to the medals but it’s also about the first-person shooter.”

The dishwasher loaded and the kitchen cleaned, Watson came back and kneeled next to Miss Raven. She drummed her fingernails on his leather-encased head while Jack went on and on. Some of the men were looking bored and I wished Jack would give it a rest, but unfortunately he wasn’t capable of that. Cunningham finally interrupted the flow.

“Who’s this with?”

“Focus, for Universal.”

“I’ll speak to them. Gunmetal won’t fly. Sounds too John Woo. Doesn’t work for a historical.”

Jack wanted to defend his picture, which hadn’t even begun rolling yet, but he had the sense not to offend the producer. “Do you have any suggestions?”

Cunningham puffed cigar smoke and considered it. “Keep it short, go with Crimea .”

“Well, it’s not really up to me,” Jack said.

The producer with the toupee looked at him, strangely, as if regarding a particularly rare specimen in a butterfly net: My God, who is this person that eats with us yet doesn’t have the power to change the title of a movie?

I sipped some of the Madeira. It was sweet, rich, very good.

Miss Raven stared at me, hoping that I had something to say.

Titles, I thought to myself, what do I know about titles?