Don Winslow: Way Down on the High Lonely

“Is your bacon nice and crisp?” Graham asked. “Mine was.”

Neal slipped a slice of bacon into his mouth. It crunched between his teeth. “I’ve dreamed about this,” he said.

“You’re a sick puppy.”

Neal selected a plain croissant, spread a sliver of unsalted butter on it, took a mouthful, and then dug into the rest of his breakfast. He didn’t even look up until all that was left on the plate was a shiny residue of grease.

Joe Graham watched in awe.

“You eat like you’re condemned,” he said.

“Let me see those Danish.”

Neal picked out an apricot pastry and devoured it in three bites.

“Now for the newspapers,” he said. “I don’t even know who’s president.

“Ronald Reagan.

“No, seriously…”

Neal tore into the papers while Graham wandered out onto the terrace and checked out the early morning swimmers in the pool below.

“Exercise is a wonderful thing,” he observed as the two young lady swimmers stretched limbs and torsos.

The doorbell rang.

“It’s for you!” Neal yelled, absorbed in The New York Times. He was on serious sensory overload.

Graham tore himself away from the view and answered the door. Richard was standing in the hallway beside a luggage cart.

“It’s your clothes!” Graham shouted to Neal.

“I don’t have any clothes,” Neal answered as he tried to figure out the changes in the Yankees’ roster from the box score.

“You do now,” Graham said. “Bring them in, kid.”

Richard rolled in the cart and started to hang up the clothes bags and put the boxes of shirts, underwear, socks, and shoes into a bureau.

“I don’t need any clothes,” Neal said. “I’m going to stay in this robe, in this room, for the next couple of months, eating and reading newspapers.”

“You got about an hour,” Graham said. “We have an eleven o’clock meeting.”

“Let’s meet on the terrace. I’ll bring the iced tea.”

“I don’t think so,” Graham answered. “We’re going to Hollywood.”

“They’re remaking Rumpelstiltskin and you got the part?”

“We’re going to meet Mommy.”

Neal looked up long enough to grab a blueberry muffin.

“What happened to Thurman Munson?” he asked, pointing at the Yankees’ batting order.

“Will you hurry up and get dressed?” Graham said. “The limo will be here in less than an hour.”

“The limo?”

“Short for limousine,” Graham explained.

“We are going to Hollywood, aren’t we?”

Neal felt a little stiff in his new clothes-khaki slacks, blue shirt, olive jacket, and cordovan loafers. He also felt a little stiff sitting in the backseat of the stretch limo, Joe Graham beside him and a fully stocked bar, a television, and the back of the uniformed driver in the front seat.

Neal found a club soda, filled a glass with ice, and sipped at it as he watched the scenery on Sunset Boulevard. “I’m into consumption these days,” he explained.

“I can see that.”

“You look good, Dad,” Neal said.

Graham glared at him.

Graham did look good, though, Neal thought, although somewhat awkward in a blue blazer, white shirt, gray slacks, and those black leather shoes with the little pinholes in them. A big change from his usual plaid jacket, chartreuse trousers, and striped tie.

“Levine made me go shopping with him at Barneys,” Graham explained grumpily.

“I like the look,” Neal said.

“You also like English poets,” Graham accused. True.

The limo pulled onto a side street and up to the gate of a film studio. Neal looked at the crazy quilt combination of nineteenth-century building facades, Quonset huts, and enormous movie billboards on the other side of the gate.

“I’ve seen movies about this,” he said.

The security guard at the gate approached the driver’s window.

“They have a meeting at Wishbone with Anne Kelley,” the driver said with no discernible effort at courtesy.

The guard gave him a placard for the windshield and opened the gate.

“Building Twenty-eight,” he said.

“No kidding,” the driver snapped, then steered the limo through the narrow streets of the studio, edging past a group of young men dressed as 1920s gangsters and a small platoon of harried production assistants carrying clipboards. He eased the big car into a slot marked guests-limo across from a big Quonset hut and opened the back door.

“Wishbone Studios, right through that door.”

“Oh boy,” Neal said.

The driver rewarded him with a wry smile. He had delivered any number of cocky screenwriters to this door and picked them up half an hour later when they weren’t so cocky, when that Oscar-winning screenplay in the briefcase had turned to just another pile of paper. If they didn’t hit the limo bar on the way in, they’d sure enough hit it on the way out.

Neal saw the big Hollywood sign on a hill behind the studio. It seemed less real than it did on television or in the movies, but maybe that was the idea. He followed Joe Graham into Building 28.

He’d expected the polished, plush setting of the stereotypical Hollywood mogul, but he didn’t get it. Wishbone Studios was stripped for speed. A utilitarian metal desk defined the edge of a small reception area. Posters of Wishbone’s latest films decorated the walls, which were colored in cheap blue industrial paint. The yellow carpet was worn with frenzied foot traffic. A small couch, a couple of chairs, and a coffee table littered with trade papers were set across from the desk to form a waiting area. On the other side of the reception room an open door revealed a small kitchen, where a Braun coffee maker struggled to meet the energy needs of the chronically undercaffeinated.

Graham went up to the desk.

“Joseph Graham and Neal Carey to see Anne Kelley.”

The receptionist looked like she belonged in a suntan oil commercial but was remarkably cheerful about sitting behind her desk. She checked her log book.

“Right, you’re her eleven. I’ll let her know you’re here.”

She got on the phone. Never releasing the dazzling smile she had fixed on Graham, she said, “Jim, Anne’s eleven is here.”

“Please have a seat. Someone will be here in just a moment,” she said to Graham. Graham sat down across from Neal, who already had plopped himself down on the sofa and was looking over a copy of Film Weekly.

“Joseph?”

“Shut up.”

“Yes, Joseph.”

A tall, thin young man came hustling down the corridor into the reception room. Open white shirt, jeans, immaculate tennis shoes. California blond hair, big smile.

“I’m Jim Collier, Anne’s assistant.”

He offered his hand to Graham, blinking for only a second at the sight of his artificial arm.

“I’m Joe Graham, this is Neal Carey.”

“Neal, hi, welcome. Come on down the hall. Anne is ready for you.”

Terrific, Neal thought. But am I ready for her?

They walked down to the end of the narrow hallway and into a room labeled simply kelley.

Anne Kelley sat behind a big desk that was stacked high with scripts and books. The office floor was likewise covered with piles of papers, books, magazines, and film reels. The ubiquitous coffee table was covered with papers, as were the chairs and the sofa. Ashtrays seemed to be everywhere, and they were all overflowing. Neal wasn’t at all sure that a good search of this room would not turn up the missing Cody McCall.

Anne Kelley was on the phone, and she didn’t look happy. Her long face was drawn further down in a frown. Her short hair was not quite blond, not quite silver, not quite brown, not quite combed or brushed. She wore a silk shirt under a denim jacket. A cigarette in the comer of her mouth puffed like a smokestack from a factory.