Dan Wakefield - Selling Out - A Novel

“This should be the first big feather in the otherwise bare bonnet of young Archer Mellis, whose blasts at the Industry earned him the top job at Paragon TV. If he can keep together the talented trio that produced the summer’s smash-hit pilot, he might well have a long-running ratings-buster. It’s already rumored that network executives, pleased with the early series material, may up their order from the safe three shows to something more substantial.”

Perry read the story to Jane as she drove him to work that morning, his voice sounding as profound and deep as a foghorn. When he finished, folding the paper on his lap and looking over at her, she said, without even smiling or looking over at him, “Oh shit.”

“Hey! What is it with you? Can’t you stand to hear your own husband’s show may be a big hit? Is that so awful?”

“They’ll want you to stay,” she said.

“Don’t be paranoid. They know I have to go back in September. It’s all understood.”

“If the show’s success depends on keeping the ‘talented trio’ together? You think Archer’s going to lose the ‘writer of crackling dialogue’? When his bonnet depends on it?”

“Love, you really are paranoid. I’m going to touch up the scripts from home. I’ll still be officially Story Consultant, a part of the team. Hal Hagedorn will probably take over as story editor, and do the real day-to-day work out here. All the network cares about is that I’ll still be officially connected to the show. ‘Put my stamp on it,’ as Archer said.”

“That was before this article.”

“This article doesn’t change any of that. My arrangement is all arranged.”

There was no time for the highly praised triumvirate to dawdle over their rave from the prognosticators, since the real news that Archer revealed when they arrived that morning meant that their efforts had to be accelerated at once.

As the advertising seers had so uncannily predicted (and by the very act of that prediction helped insure that it would come true), the network already—this morning!—had commissioned another three episodes of “The First Year’s the Hardest,” thus doubling the original series order to a total of six hour shows following the pilot!

This meant the already frantic pace and elaborate planning of the production campaign for the new show now had to be doubled, and, like World War II fighter pilots scrambling to get airborne, the three leaders rushed out of Archer’s office to get the logistics under way. But one of them was called back for a private high-level word with the commander.

“Perry!”

The writer turned, automatically straightening to attention.

“Sir?”

His young boss smiled, came forward, and gave him a comradely clap on the shoulder.

“Since when did you start calling me ‘sir’?” he asked.

Perry chuckled nervously.

“I guess it just slipped out,” he said.

“I know I’ve got to give orders sometimes, but remember, amigo —we’re in this together.”

Archer was now hugging the writer so close to him, as he walked him slowly around the room, that Perry was dizzied by his after-shave cologne.

“Let’s you and I slip away for a little lunch today,” Archer said. “Just the two of us.”

“You mean—off the lot?” Perry asked, both flattered and confused. On this of all days there was little time for such Eastern-style decadence. Perry had counted on wolfing down a container of yogurt while in conference with Ned and the writers, if in fact there was even time to swallow while working out a strategy for a whole new set of story lines. So much had to be accomplished in so little time, not only with the new order for shows but with Perry only having another week or so before retreating back to his consultancy position in the East.

“Sometimes we need to get away for a little perspective,” Archer said, giving him a squeeze and then releasing him. “Could you drop by at a few minutes after twelve?”

“Yes, sir,” Perry caught himself, then laughed nervously, blushing at the same time. “I mean— muy bien, amigo . And— muchas gracias .”

Archer winked.

“ Mon plaisir ,” he said.

The Bach Violin Partitas, as interpreted by Zino Francescatti, rang searingly, plaintively, through the quadraphonic sound system of Archer’s car as he drove Perry to lunch, moving at a steady, almost leisurely pace along Sunset Boulevard. To speak would not only have been acoustically difficult, but would also have seemed, against that music, uncouth, almost irreverent. The contrast between the soul-stirring music inside the car, and the zany, superhype billboards and marquees of the bars and rock clubs and restaurants, motels and movie houses, rent-a-car lots and T-shirt boutiques, the whole glitzy agglomeration of the famous thoroughfare, which seemed even more hallucinatory in the smoggy glare of midday, gave Perry the disorienting illusion of traveling inside some kind of space capsule that preserved the essence of an ancient civilization while it slid through the fantastic surface of an alien star.

They did not pull into the parking lots of any of the restaurants along Sunset, nor did they sweep on around the curve into Beverly Hills and the hip, show biz oasis of the Polo Lounge of the famous pink hotel, but rather, Archer guided them up into the hills, on winding streets, climbing to a pinnacle topped by a quaint-looking Japanese restaurant.

Through the glass walls, the view was fabulous, even though hazed by the smog. In fact, that element perhaps even served to glamorize the prospect, adding as it did a filmic glow of unreality, like looking at the world through a brown filter that perhaps was after all a glimpse of how all life would look in the future. This was the future. It lay before them, fascinating in its variety, a dizzying display of sparkling glass towers and raw, scrubby hills streaked with ribbons of roads, alive with metallic movement.

“Well, there it is, amigo,” Archer said, raising the tall, cool glass containing the drink he had recommended for them both, the Sayonara Sunset. Perry took a sip and nodded, momentarily choking on the emotional lump in his throat as well as the tangy concoction of citrus, saki, and Triple Sec. Hoarsely, he whispered, in affirmation:

“Hollywood.”

“Magic,” said Archer.

Perry felt a shiver, a thrill.

“It’s impossible to explain,” he said. “Isn’t it? To outsiders.”

“Exactly. Either you get it, or you don’t. The funny thing is, I had a feeling all along that you would . Most writers—especially distinguished literary artists, like yourself—are afraid of it, so they simply take on the easy, condescending pose.”

“Hell, I was too naive to be afraid. And then I guess I lucked out, getting on the air and all.”

“And getting renewed, before the first show of the series even airs? That’s more than luck. You’ve got the touch, the magic.”

“You got it out of me. And put me with the right people. Ned. Kenton. It’s like we’ve been working together all our lives. A team.”

“It’s one of those once-in-a-lifetime things.”

“I guess so.”

“I know. I also know it’s a shame to break it up.”

“But we’re not! I’ll probably be on the phone with Ned every day. We practically communicate in code now, anyway.”

“It won’t be the same.”

“Archer, you know I’d love to keep right on doing what I’m doing, right here, but I can’t.”

“Perry, I wouldn’t have the nerve to ask you to just keep on doing what you’re doing for the three new shows.”

“Well, thanks. For not trying to tempt me.”

“It would be an insult.”

“Not at all. But I just couldn’t do it.”