Dan Wakefield - Selling Out - A Novel

Of course Paragon couldn’t continue footing the bill for his living expenses all through the spring, but paying that himself would provide a tax write-off for him, Archer explained. He’d be actually making money by spending it out here!

“How can we lose?” Perry asked.

“We can’t,” said Jane, “if we keep on loving each other.”

They kissed and nestled into one another as they walked up the wet, voluptuous sand, in step. They began to sing together, softly, in harmony.

The Vardemans’ pool looked too perfect to actually swim in. Breaking the smooth surface of the water would have seemed like an act of vandalism, or, at the very least, a gauche violation of etiquette. It did not really seem like a swimming pool but rather a gigantic gem, a rectangular topaz, stunningly set in elegant tile, surrounded by tall, stately trees within a larger framework of manicured hedges and lawns as smooth and shimmering as glass.

It was like being on a movie set.

Except there weren’t any stars.

At least not today, not for the Sunday brunch to which Pru and Vaughan had finally invited their old buddy Perry and his wife. Though the Vees were famous for hosting the Hollywood “A List,” they must have reached back deep in the social alphabet for this occasion. Instead of Meryl, Glenn, Warren, or Joanne and Paul, the only other guests besides Perry and Jane were an expatriate English novelist and two lesbian librarians from Pacific Palisades.

Perry thought perhaps the Vees had thoughtfully rounded up the Hollywood literary set in his honor, but then, if this were really the cream of that crowd, where the hell was Gore?

“Of course we’re familiar with your books, Mr. Moss,” the librarian with the leather bracelets assured Perry politely, and her more demure companion said in fact she had read and admired a story of his in a recent O. Henry collection—something to do, she thought, with a rather naif young married couple?

“I’m frightfully afraid I’m not familiar with your oeuvre ,” said Cyril Heathrow, “but then I don’t keep up with you Yanks and your fiction.”

“Are you only here on a visit?” asked Jane.

“A rather extended one,” Heathrow said sardonically, as he crossed one jodhpurred leg over the other and lightly rubbed the leather of his riding boot. “Twenty some years now.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know your work,” Perry said, beaming. “Are you published here?”

Heathrow sighed.

“I’m afraid most serious fiction doesn’t travel well across the Atlantic,” he said.

“Cyril has been known to turn out a few sharp scripts between the heavy-duty stuff,” Vaughan said. “But I don’t think he’s done any television—that so, Cyril?”

The Englishman winced.

“One would have to purposely write down, wouldn’t one?”

“I guess I’m fortunate,” Perry said. “The first thing the guy I’m working with told me was to forget about any preconceptions of television and do my best work. Fact is, Archer Mellis demands quality.”

“He’s no wetback, huh?” said Vaughan.

“I’ve never had the pleasure of working with a more creative mind,” Perry declared.

“As long as it’s fun!” Pru said brightly.

“Of course my academic friends are convinced I’m selling out,” Perry said.

“Lordsies!” Pru exclaimed. “I haven’t heard that expression in eons .”

“‘Selling out’?” Heathrow asked, furrowing his brows with interest. “Isn’t that peculiarly an Americanism?”

“It’s pretty much a nineteen-fifties term,” Vaughan explained. “The sort of thing the Man in the Gray Flannel Suit got his migraines about.”

“Some people still take it seriously,” Jane said. “At least out in the sticks, where we come from.”

“Why not?” Pru said. “I think it’s charming. Freshen your Chardonnay?”

She tilted up her straw garden-party hat and summoned the man of the live-in Mexican couple who had served the brunch and now hovered in attendance.

Jane finished off her glass of wine in a single gulp.

“Why, we’re so deep in the boonies,” she said with bright ferocity, “grown-ups even discuss things like values and morals .”

Perry kicked her under the table. The cracked crab and avocado was elegant but not very filling, and he feared the mimosas followed by the Chardonnay might lead his wife to say some things she—or he, anyway—might regret.

“Speaking of the boonies,” Perry said quickly, taking Jane’s hand, “we better get you to the airport or you’ll never get to Boston tonight, much less on to Vermont.”

“She’s not leaving you out here alone, surely?” Pru asked with sudden concern.

“She’s just going back to rent the house, pack up our lightweight clothes.”

“Well,” Vaughan said with a leer, “don’t leave him too long out here with his casting couch.”

“Oh, I trust him,” Jane said with a withering smile. “It’s another sort of quaint old fifties thing we share—being faithful.”

“Hell, Pru and I have the same deal,” Vaughan said, “except we figure it’s null and void when we’re in different cities.”

“It really was great to meet you all,” Perry said, guiding Jane firmly toward the house, and their departure. “We’ll be in touch!”

“Don’t be strangers,” Pru called, “now that you know where we are!”

Thank God by the time they got to the airport Perry and Jane were giggling instead of fighting. They had a whiskey sour before the flight and then embraced, kissed, holding each other so tight that when Perry let her go he really felt part of him was being torn away. By the time the plane taxied down the runway for takeoff he was already missing her, wondering how the hell he was going to make it by himself for a whole week.

Perry scanned both Variety and the Hollywood Reporter over a late, leisurely breakfast Monday morning at the Hamburger Hamlet, and at first was disappointed not to find any screaming headlines announcing that his hour pilot was so terrific the network was doubling its length and launching the series with a two-hour TV movie! He figured, however, the network probably wanted to keep the plans for its hottest new property under wraps, so the rival webs (as the networks were called in the trades) wouldn’t frantically rush to start planning competitive shows about young married couples to try to compete with “The First Year’s the Hardest.”

Perry smiled, enjoying the secret of his own success, which was too hot to even be reported yet and was unknown by all the other aspiring show business moguls who were poring over the trades that morning at the Hamburger Hamlet. Leaving a big tip and whistling as he walked out onto Sunset Boulevard, Perry decided to reward himself, and at the same time put his mentor on notice that he wasn’t any longer the square academic who was fresh off the plane from the East. He sauntered into one of the hip men’s clothing stores on Sunset Boulevard.

Perry casually strolled into Archer’s office at noon wearing a magenta T-shirt emblazoned with a silver palm tree, and a pair of tight bright yellow beltless slacks, whose cuffless bottoms rode high over his shoetops, Michael Jackson—style, revealing quality argyles worn with old tennis sneakers.

Mellis himself was clad in the sort of three-piece London suit he had worn in New York when Perry first met him, though this one seemed, if anything, more somber, like something Brides-head himself would have found too grim, except perhaps for his own funeral.

Today, of all days, Archer was evidently taking him to some elegant Eastern-style restaurant to have lunch. Perhaps they were going to meet some top network executive, maybe even its president! Perry slunk down in a chair, crossing his arms over his silver palm tree.