Dan Wakefield - Selling Out - A Novel

“What are you talking about?”

“That’s what’s wrong—I mean, what I was trying to tell you—that I just found out today.”

Perry leaned forward across the table, glanced furtively around the room to see if anyone was bending an ear toward him, then cupped a hand to his mouth and said in an urgent whisper:

“ I’m broke too! ”

Ronnie leaned back and guffawed.

“Welcome to Hollywood,” he said.

Perry insisted on paying the tab with his American Express card—what the hell, by the time the bill came in he might have struck it rich again—so Ronnie insisted on taking him out to Pablo’s in Santa Monica for a drink after dinner. Perry felt a little dizzy when they walked out of the restaurant, so he didn’t mind leaving his car in La Traviata’s parking lot and going in Ronnie’s rattling old Renault.

“I thought Stu Sherman—that’s my accountant—was pulling some kind of joke on me,” Perry said over his brandy at Pablo’s. “I mean, I never even heard of anybody paying forty-seven thousand dollars in taxes. Hell, that’s more than I used to make in almost two years! ”

“They got it all figured out, so you can’t get ahead.”

“I thought rich people didn’t have to pay taxes.”

“That’s really rich—you’re probably just middle.”

“I used to think one hundred and sixty-seven thousand in a year made you rich.”

“That just puts you in the fifty-percent bracket. Without any good tax shelters, probably. You got to have millions to come out ahead.”

“I just got enough to get through the next month or so.”

“Well, you own your own condo, don’t you?”

“Do I? I won’t be able to pay the mortgage after next month. Fuckin’ mortgage is three grand. If I can’t pay it, I guess they’ll take it away from me—so how can I own it?”

“Sometimes I’m glad I’m mainly poor.”

“Shit. When I only made twenty-six-five a year I was never broke.”

“Nah. That’s not enough to be broke on.”

“What the fuck am I going to do?”

“What about that deal you had with the Vees?”

“Fuck the Vees.”

Perry put his head down. He could feel himself shaking.

“Hey man, we got to get you up! ”

Perry lifted his head.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Forget it. We’re going to get you glad. I could use a little glad myself.”

Ronnie lived in a one-bedroom apartment in the Valley. Posters of sixties rock groups, names from psychedelic days, hovered and pulsed on the walls, fading in and out of Perry’s brandy-filtered vision: Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, Led Zeppelin. Perry thought of a Sunday afternoon in a farmhouse around Haviland when he first went up there to teach. There was sweet wine and homemade bread and Joni Mitchell on the stereo. “I’ve looked at life from both sides now …” It was another lifetime, a time of innocence. He saw the way the sun lay across the rug on that distant Sunday, like a visual echo. Ronnie only had beer, no brandy or wine. Out of a little bureau drawer, a tobacco can, a substance, he took something white, in a cellophane Baggie. He made tiny lines on a hand mirror. Ronnie rolled up a dollar bill. Perry laughed. “Don’t laugh near this, for God sake. You blow anything away, I’ll sue!” This was it, at last—the hip new Hollywood, just like in the newspapers. Coke!

Broke was all right after all. Money was funny. Perry was glad. Nothing was bad.

“Hey, I’m high!” he declared.

“Hi ho, hi ho,” Ronnie sang, “’tis off to glad we go …”

Down again. What goes up comes down. Law of nature. Law of supply and demand. Whatever happened to Ayn Rand? There is no brandy handy. Have no fear, there’s always beer. No good, but better with grass. Ronnie rolls a joint, passes to Perry. He tries, but only coughs. Damn. Dim. The outlook is dim, grim. Grimy. Dustballs growing in the corners. Ought to get out of here. Relax. Nothing to fear. Nothing to fear but fact. Fact is you’re broke. No joke. Walls of the world closing in. Head in a spin. Tailspin. Failspin. Fact: fucked.

Perry woke to the smell of old socks and stale beer. A pain was in his neck, a pounding in his head. He’d spent the night on Ronnie’s couch. Now it was day, you could tell by the glare behind the dusty drawn slats of Venetian blinds. Perry rose, staggering, walking on nails to the kitchenette, and opened the refrigerator. Beer. Mustard. A glass jar of dill pickles. Moldy piece of cheese. He sniffed a half-empty carton of milk and put it back, then leaned against the wall, seeing black. He blinked and went to the sink, ran some water in his cupped hands and splashed it at his mouth. He stumbled back to the couch.

He woke again later to sizzling sounds. Was he being electrocuted? Was the house about to explode? Like his head? None of the above. Ronnie was frying bacon. Making coffee, feeding it to Perry black. Trying to bring him back. Perry remembered he was broke, his car was miles away over mountains in the parking lot of La Traviata, his wife was on the other side of the country in a house that used to be his, too, in Haviland, Vermont. He pulled a pillow over his head and tried to blank out his mind, but the sizzling sound persisted. Hell.

The rain came. It was unrelenting, unceasing, day after day, for nearly three weeks. It was nothing to be concerned about, Ronnie assured Perry, it happened like this every year around January. It did not fall in scattered showers and storms that occurred throughout the year, like rain in the East, rain that lasted a day and night or at most a couple of days before the sun returned and the world was given a chance to dry out. This rain came in one dramatic, overpowering rush that overwhelmed the senses, leaving the mind as well as the body feeling drenched.

The rain filled up the streets and overflowed the swimming pools. The rain came down the hills and into the canyons, blocking roads with torrents and mudslides. The rain got under the hoods of cars and into the crevices of houses, dampening everything. The rain got into your soul. It never let up. It kept beating down.

Perry stepped in a puddle and suddenly realized that in Vermont at this time of year, the rain of course would have turned to snow. What a miracle! What a fabulous, brilliant conception it was to have the hard drops of water transformed into soft, lovely, intricately beautiful flakes of snow, snow that caressed and silently covered the earth with a clean blanket. Perry could suddenly see it, that winter world he had always known and taken for granted, covered with snow like a blessing. The vision of it was so intense it made him close his eyes, and when he blinked them open again he could feel tears. Hell. He was homesick, like a little kid.

He went back to his condo and got into bed and hid under the covers, trying not to think of where he was, and where he might have been. He got up after dark and had a big tumbler of a hearty Napa Valley Zinfandel. He needed to get a little buzz on to take his mind off the rain. And thoughts of Jane.

“Urgent.”

That was the last message left by Ravenna with his service. The two before had just said to call her, the last one said urgent . It was almost three in the afternoon when Perry got back to his condo from another night of carousing with Ronnie that ended up with his passing out on his buddy’s couch again. It was getting to be a habit. He had hoped to just sink into his own bed and “General Hospital” while sipping some Pepto Bismol and munching on a bag of nachos. When he really wanted to hear an “All clear” from his answering service he got an “Urgent.” Of course he had to return the call, even though his head was splitting.

“Darling, you’ve only got two hours!” Ravenna practically shrieked.