Dan Wakefield - Selling Out - A Novel

Peroxide blond Christmas trees!

He loved it.

He still loved Hollywood, even after the ugly battle with Donn Gunn, the pain of leaving the show, his feeling of being betrayed by Archer Mells, and, even worse, his own betrayal of Ned Gurney.

All that was over now, past, done, finito . Not only that, but better still, in the incredible time trick of Southern California, the superacceleration of everything, yesterday was already prehistoric. An hour ago was dust. The present was already passing, before your startled eyes; only the future seemed real, glittering just ahead, promising and vast as the great Pacific.

The future was the deal with Vaughan Vardeman to make “The Springtime Women” a feature film, a modern classic. Harrison Ford in his first heavy dramatic role, maybe Meryl Streep and Teri Garr as the women. Of course the women in the story were older, more drab, but this was a film translation, a romantic dramatization. Not only the gold of the box office but also the gold of Oscar statuettes glinted off the project in Perry’s imagination. As soon as the holidays were over Vaughan planned to try to get the whole thing launched; in fact, one of the top executives of Unified Films, where Vaughan had done his last movie and wanted to pitch this one, would be at the Vardemans’ annual wassail buffet on Christmas Eve and Perry would meet him. The seed would be planted. This was how the real magic was worked. Informally. Casually. Among colleagues and friends.

Deck the peroxide Christmas trees!

Perry thought it might be a gas to get one of these evergreens dyed blond for his living room, but he feared Jane wouldn’t appreciate the joke. No, he was playing this safe, traditional. He found a lot on Melrose Avenue with fir trees as green as Vermont, and bought the old-fashioned kind of colored lights and ornaments at Bullocks Department Store. He wasn’t even taking a chance on getting any glitzy, expensive decorations in Beverly Hills, he was sticking with down-home values.

Gifts, though, that was something different. He really wanted to lay it on. For the first time in his life, he had the money (the power!) to give his beloved wife the finest, the best, without stint, to shower her with everything he saw that he thought would please her.

And oh, he wanted to please her, surprise her, make her smile and glow, atone for all the hurt he had unintentionally caused her by steering this new course in his career that even temporarily set them apart, put them against each other. One of the positive side effects of the break with Gunn and Archer was that it allowed him again not only to think about other aspects of life but even to experience emotions about matters other than the show. As he’d poured himself heart and soul into the series, spent every mental and emotional asset he had on it, he had simply put his other feelings on hold, especially the ones concerning Jane.

The only flaw in this practical if cold-blooded solution had been that Jane kept intruding into his consciousness. The most disconcerting part was the whole business of hearing her voice—that is, imagining he was hearing her voice—telling him what to do or not to do, what to think or not to think. The voice was so clear, so immediate, Perry had to take a moment or so to reorient himself whenever he heard it—dammit, when he had the illusion of hearing it. And after those occasions there was a kind of lingering sense of her, like a trail of perfume, an ineffable presence. He had to fight it off, close his mind against it as best he could, simply because the aura of Jane was too distracting, it got in the way of what he had to do here to achieve his goals.

Then almost the moment Perry freed himself from what had become—as Gunn himself called it—his serfdom, the feelings about Jane he had struggled to hold at bay came flooding back, with all the force of a dam breaking. In a way, the timing was perfect, coming as it did just before Christmas. He’ still didn’t want to go back to Vermont, afraid it would break the spell he was in, the concentrated effort to succeed in this new scene.

Shopping for Christmas presents for her was a fabulous high, a joy, a tangible way of expressing in action the powerful love he felt for his wonderful wife, the woman who, he now remembered with electrifying force, was the one he had felt from the first was his preordained, predestined mate for life.

He was clever enough to restrain himself, of course, respecting her taste for simplicity, her natural aversion to the very sort of treasures that spilled so seductively over the velvet displays of the exclusive shops and stores of Beverly Hills. He wished he could buy her something gold, something lavish, but knew it would only turn her off, so in the field of jewelry, he held his flagrant instincts in check and purchased for her only a simple string of pearls, whose elegance was in their very purity, the unadorned naturalness of their beauty, as opposed to any sheen or shine of flash and glitter.

He tried to keep that principle in mind in all his selections of other-type gifts as well—the softly beautiful but practical quilted bathrobe, the elegant but plain white silk blouse, the long, chocolate-brown, Italian-made leather coat, the stunning but simple three-piece fawn suede suit, the sporty Swiss watch designed for outdoor use, the powerful German binoculars she could use to intensify her viewing and appreciation of nature on her hikes and camping trips, the good telescope of a kind she had always wanted for studying the stars.

He spent a little something more than $7,000 on Jane’s presents, signing the slips with the power of the new Gold American Express card his accountant had secured for his greater convenience. It would simply come out of his money-market funds and soon be replenished with the flow of new fortune that would soon be flooding in from the sale of the “Springtime Women” project as soon as the holidays were over.

The presents, gift-wrapped by the stores in glorious colors set off by bright silken ribbons and glorious bows, further spangled with bells and stare and decorative toy figures of reindeer and elves and angels tied on for extra, dramatic effect, were artistically stacked cornucopia-style beneath the tree, looking like some ultimate symbol of lushness, largesse, the plunder of love.

Staring down at them, Jane looked out of place in the picture that Perry was about to flash with the new fully automatic camera he had given himself for Christmas. Holding her small armful of home-wrapped presents, bending down and placing them tentatively against the glistening flood of the others, she seemed like some Parisian match girl brought into a wealthy home to share Christmas.

She looked good, but a little gaunt, though maybe it was just her new hairstyle that produced that effect. It was hard to get used to—the shorter trim, cut straight at the chin line, parted in the middle, and combed straight down on the sides. It looked nice, damned attractive even, but it didn’t look like Jane. It didn’t look like the woman he had fallen in love with on the spot almost six years before, the woman who became his wife, mate, best friend, and lover, all rolled into one. He was disappointed with the subtle but significant transformation, and felt in some vague way he’d been duped, yet he tried to concentrate on the main, the real point of wanting her to come here: renewal of love, reconciliation of differences.

She gave him a pipe, a sweater, one of her new photographs, a pair of fur-lined moccasins he used to like to wear when he worked in his study, a first edition of Flannery O’Connor’s essays, a jar of his favorite Vermont maple syrup. He made the appropriate oohs and ahhhs of appreciation (as she had done when she opened her own presents) but there was something odd, out of kilter, about this whole transaction. It were as if each was making a silent statement by bringing to the other the treasures of the two distant lands they had come from—Marco Polo exchanging gifts with Pocahontas.