Dan Wakefield - Selling Out - A Novel

“Of course not. Postpone your obligations back East, just to continue as story consultant?”

Perry, relaxing, took a larger sip of his drink.

“You deserve a more important role in the show now,” Archer said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I am offering you the position of executive story consultant, starting with production of the three new shows just ordered.”

“I’m honored,” said Perry, “but I can’t.”

He took a large gulp of his drink, then asked, “But what would it mean, exactly?”

Archer shrugged.

“More money. Another five hundred a week.”

“I’d be making three thousand a week, then,” Perry said.

“I know it’s not much of a difference. The important thing is, once you’ve held an executive position on a series, you’d always be involved at that level, on any show you worked on in the future.”

“The future?”

“It could be whatever you wanted to make it. Once you’ve held an executive position, in your own series, and seen it through, you would write your own ticket on anything you wanted to develop next. You could take a break, go back to teaching, then come out and get a new show launched.”

“Archer, if I don’t go back for this fall semester, I could lose my tenure.”

“Your academic tenure.”

“What other kind is there?”

“Well, in the sense that ‘tenure’ means security, I’d say that having a prime-time series on the air, with royalties coming in from every show, not to speak of reruns, is about as nice a ‘tenure’ as a man could want.”

Perry finished off his drink. Archer ordered another round, plus the luncheon special sushi platter.

“Don’t give me an answer right now,” Archer said. “Play with the whole idea. See how it feels.”

“I’d have to discuss it with Jane, of course.”

“Of course. And remember—it’s not a matter of you or her choosing this life and work out here and giving up the life you had before. The beauty of all this is, you can have both. You can be bi-coastal.”

Perry, feeling giddy now, began to giggle.

“We could have our sushi and eat it, too. Or our Boston scrod.”

Archer smiled, sweeping his hand toward the vista that lay below them.

“You can have it all,” he said.

Perry brought home a dozen red roses for Jane that night. He wanted to take her out to dinner, maybe even up to the Japanese place with the fabulous view—it would surely be dramatic in the evening, a fairy-tale vista, fired by the million lights clustered in the flatland and flung through the hills. But Jane had already prepared a special favorite. The basil she had planted in her tiny, improbable garden had grown, and she had made her wonderful pesto with it to serve with linguine, along with a crisp green salad, fresh bread, and one of Perry’s specially selected fine California wines. She had even lit candles, as she used to do at home, not for any special occasion, but just to make things intimate and nice. She was cheery as she hadn’t been in some time, thinking now about preparations for going back home. She was in such a loving, accommodating mood, she even agreed to go sit in the hot tub with Perry after dinner and sip some more wine—not just on her lawn chair outside the tub, but right in it, sharing the experience with him as he liked her to do.

There was a Santa Ana wind, the dry, mysterious wind off the desert that supposedly spooks some people, causing migraines and melancholy, but Perry and Jane had both found the phenomenon to be enjoyable, romantic. Stray leaves and tiny sticks blew around the yard, and the air was cleansed of smog, made sharp and penetrating. You could even see some stars.

Jane said she’d like to have a little party before going back, just Ned and Kim and Kenton and his wife maybe, a closing out, a rounding out of the time together, a gracious end to the era.

That was when he told her about Archer’s new offer.

She listened in silence, sipping from her wine, her expression unchanging. He told her all the implications, what it would mean to be an executive, as well as the extra money, and his obligation to see the show through to success. He explained how it didn’t mean giving up the East for good; it meant they could go back for the spring semester, and then come back to L.A. the following summer perhaps. It would mean they could be bi-coastal, have the best of both worlds.

Still, she remained silent.

“Don’t give me an answer right now,” he said. “Play with the whole idea. See how it feels.”

She didn’t say anything, but slowly pulled herself up out of the tub and toweled off. Then she went inside.

Perry sat out a while longer, wondering if this was going to be a terrible scene. Finally he decided he’d better face it, whatever it was.

When he went in the bedroom, Jane was lying on the bed, nude, staring at the ceiling. He sat down beside her and put his arms around her.

“I love you,” he said.

He feared she might turn away but she kissed him, fiercely, then holding his face in her hands she stared at him, intently, as if she were seeing him for the first time, or had discovered he was a stranger or some kind of schizophrenic maniac, but before he could protest or question her, she was kissing him again, pulling him to her, and wildly, ferociously, she made love to him, leading, pulling, encompassing, enveloping, smothering, leaving him drained and dazed. He dropped, blank and mindless, to a deep maw of sleep.

Perry woke a little after dawn, revitalized and ready to roll into action. Jane was obviously zonked, curled into the fetal position, and he didn’t want to wake her. He was full of ideas and energy, and wanted to go in early to the office and dash off some memos for the new story lines to discuss with Hal and the other writers. He had to stifle a pleased chuckle at the little idea that was developing now in his teeming brain—Jack secretly goes to cooking school, and he and Laurie fight over who gets to make the meal for a party! Anyway, the important thing was to get as much work in as possible since he would have to spend a lot of time today on getting his other plans in order, now that he knew Jane was amenable to staying on for the next leg of the journey. He left her a love note, suggesting they go out to dinner that night, at the dramatic restaurant on the hill, to celebrate.

California, here I come,

You’re so tasty, yum-yum-yum

He sang as he drove to work, beating his palm on the steering wheel in time to the music.

Perry picked up a chilled bottle of Schwamsberg champagne on the way home from the studio, and was already undoing the foil as he swung in the door, calling to Jane on the way to the kitchen.

“Come and get it!” he crooned happily as he popped the cork, pouring the bubbly elixir into two of the tulip-shaped glasses, but there was no answer. He took a tantalizing taste from his own glass, and called again. Still getting no reply, holding the bottle by the neck, he went outside, wondering if Jane was working in the garden, but there wasn’t any sign of her. He went back in the house, swinging the bottle along at his side, wondering if maybe she had taken a walk or gone to the market or resumed the photography of Santa Monica Boulevard she had once given up as too depressing. She wasn’t in the study, or the bathroom, and finally, he found her, in the bedroom.

She was packing.

“Hey!” he said. “What’s going on?”

She didn’t even look up, much less answer.

“I asked you what you’re doing.”

She continued neatly taking her clothes out of drawers, folding them, and placing them in her big suitcase, which was lying, open on the bed, already half filled.

“Jane?”