Dan Wakefield - Selling Out - A Novel

But above all else, one message told him of the true dimensions of his triumph as the creator of a hit show, and the new status it gave him in the great world of entertainment.

Vaughan Vardeman had called to invite him and Jane to dine at their home Saturday night.

It was not going to be just any old potluck supper.

This was an invitation to one of Pru Vardeman’s New England Boiled Dinners.

Perry knew he now had really arrived in L.A.

Power had never been one of Perry’s dreams.

He had fantasized about fame and glory, even riches—not the great wealth of oil barons or shipping tycoons, but enough to afford the ease of luxury travel and nice homes in several choice spots around the globe—but he had never, even in his secret self, hungered for power.

Perhaps because he had never tasted it.

When it came to him, in his middle years, in the modest portion allotted the creator of a hit TV show—he was totally unprepared for its effects. Having never experienced it, nor even been interested by it as a subject of study or passing fascination, he didn’t even realize he had fallen under its influence. No one mentioned the phenomenon, since admission of it is the last true taboo, more so than any aspect of sexual preference or proclivity, no matter how bizarre. He was, then, completely uninformed about the nature of this crucial new force in his life, and only in retrospect did he come to understand its elements.

Power is addictive.

Power is a drug.

It is the only serious drug of the film and television industry. The rest of the stuff—cocaine, marijuana, acid, alcohol—is for lightweights, for kooks, for a few far-out actors whose talent is matched by their irresponsibility; for those on the way down; for fringe people. No person of any kind of power in the field would succumb to the frivolous lure of such indulgences, since addiction to them would threaten one’s maintenance of the headiest, most soothing, satisfying opiate of all: power.

No matter when it comes in life, power feels natural, as if it should have been there all along.

How could a feeling so natural be anything but right? How could anything the body and mind respond to so beautifully be wrong? Unlike drugs that gave you temporary feelings of elation or relief at a damaging cost to your physical and mental well-being, power did not in any way seem to endanger your health, but if anything, enhanced it!

That was surely true in Perry’s case in a very specific way. He had already cut down his habitual intake of alcohol from the sheer exhaustion and absorption of work, but now he felt even less of an urge to drink, beyond a few glasses of wine, since the very sensation he once frenziedly imbibed to achieve was no longer desirable. Why subdue what felt good? Alcohol is a depressant. Alcohol numbs.

Power exhilarates.

This is how it feels:

There is a rush, an exhilaration, a buoyancy, a feeling of command, a sense of being taller, stronger, wiser, of imperceptibly lifting off the ground and having the capacity to look down and see things from the advantageous perspective of pinnacle vision, as in viewing people and events from the top of a private mountain, or, more emotionally accurate, a Valhalla. You are not alone, but happily surrounded by your peers, the other gods.

Perry could feel the power swelling within him, transforming him.

His voice even changed.

“Hey, are you on something?” his old friend back in Vemont, Al Cohen, asked when Perry returned his call of congratulations about the show.

Perry laughed, with benevolent joviality.

“You been reading the Enquirer? Scare stories about drugs and TV?”

“I don’t know what it is, but I swear your voice sounds different.”

“How?” Perry asked, pleased and intrigued now, knowing he was different, delighted that other people could tell, even on the phone, a continent away. He leaned back in his chair, smiling, feeling the contented ease of a cat stretching in the sun.

“Different how?”

“Louder, for one thing.”

“I’m not shouting, Al. You must mean stronger —my voice sounds stronger. Is that it?”

“Hell, you sound kind of aggressive , you know?”

Perry chuckled, pleased with himself. It meant he was fitting in out here, as was only appropriate to his role as molder of taste and opinion, mores and morals, of the mass American audience.

“Well, I guess that’s what happens,” Perry said, “when your show gets more than a forty share.”

“Got what?”

Perry sighed, and looked at his watch.

“Never mind—I was talking Nielsen stuff. It just means more people watched us than any other show, the whole goddam night. We even beat NBC’s magic show special. Beat ’em to a pulp, as a matter of fact.”

“To a pulp? Well, I guess that’s good,” Al said, with some hesitancy, as if he didn’t really understand. “Anyway, everyone watched your program out here, of course. Big gathering in the Student Union. Packed house.”

“Mmmm,” Perry said, realizing those viewers wouldn’t even register in the ratings. The Nielsen boxes that calculated the audience were only attached to TV sets in homes.

“… was really high-quality stuff, especially for television,” Al was saying. “Of course some of the academic satire was a little broad , but I guess …”

Perry was drumming his fingers, impatient now. He hadn’t really asked for a goddam literary critique.

“Listen, Al, give my love to Rachel. Everyone. I’ve got to run, but I’ll keep you posted on what’s going on here.”

“Maybe I’ll come and check things out in person.”

“What’s that?”

“Someone mentioned there’s one of those charter deals from Boston to L.A. next week. I was thinking I might just drop in on you. See the Coast, as long-as you’re out there.”

“Oh? Well, hey—terrific,” Perry said, noticing his voice getting lighter. Damn. He didn’t want to tell his best friend not to come, but the prospect seemed awkward, especially now. He wanted to end the conversation without saying yes or no, so he’d have time to think up a good excuse. Fortunately, a brand-new phrase came to mind, one he had only heard and learned to use out here in the last month or so.

“Listen,” he said, “I’ll get back to you.”

It was a nice way of telling the other person not to hold his breath. He hoped Al would understand.

Perry took Jane to dinner that night at Spoleto. It was the first time they’d gone to the prestigious restaurant on their own, rather than just as guests of powerful people in the Industry like Archer Mellis or the Vardemans. A week before Perry would never have had the balls to call for a reservation there just for himself, for fear of being politely told they were all booked up for the evening—for all foreseeable evenings. A week before, hell, he wouldn’t have called the day before.

Perry’s seemingly reckless new confidence in his power, restaurant-wise, turned out to be more than justified.

Dom himself came out of the kitchen to tell the new TV hit creator and his lovely wife what special magic he was working with the veal that evening. It involved an unexpected shipment of truffles flown in that day direct from his home district of Umbria, something he was doing up only for his special guests.

Perry closed the menu and said he and his wife would put themselves entirely in Dom’s hands.

“Trust me,” said Dom with a wink, sounding like a culinary Archer Mellis.

Carlos, the captain, personally accompanied the sommelier, suggesting, to start, a California Schwamsberg Blanc de Blanc champagne ideal for “the celebration of a forty-four share.”