Rafael Yglesias - Hot Properties

Holder’s blustering, mostly self-congratulatory speech followed, embarrassing the group. People shifted restlessly from one foot to another, a few deserted to the bar, until Bart, correctly judging the limits of the party’s endurance of honoring The Locker Room, interrupted to say the buffet on the second floor was ready. There was ecstatic applause and a stampede upstairs on the old staircase that rumbled in the frail house’s chest like a death rattle.

What horseshit, Tony thought to himself, draining another glass of Scotch while he watched the eager faces go by. Keep it to yourself, he said as a reminder, going over the long list of vows he had made on the fateful drive back from his father’s office to Garth’s Malibu house a year ago. This party was a sore test of his fidelity to the new Tony. No carping at the success of others. No discussion of his own projects, no predictions of either success or failure. He had slipped twice already, allowing sarcasms about Fred to escape. Sarcasm was worse than an outright complaint. He had taken a swipe at Foxx, probably undoing a year of studious politeness. Sarcasm — the consolation prize of failed talent. His mother, now the ultimate symbol of a loser to him, used it often. And then he had been sexual with Patty, breaking another of his monk’s orders. Learn to be a good bit player, Tony, he ordered himself. Don’t step into the center spot; stand aside in the shadow and do your work. Do your work and one day the brilliant light will find you.

“Jim!” he called, spotting his producer edging toward the stairs

Foxx looked at him, his mouth tight. “Yes?”

“I’d love you to read my play, but … come here.” He gestured. Foxx, still wearing the cool look of a hurt parent awaiting an apology, stepped out of the flow. “I’m very insecure about it — especially being read cold in script form. There’ll be a reading in about six weeks — for me to discover what else needs to be done. I’d love you to come and help suggest revisions.”

Foxx’s face relaxed. “Sure. I’ll be in town for the sneak in Long Island.”

“That’s right!” Tony snapped his fingers. “Terrific. Will you really come? I’d appreciate—”

“Definitely! Why did you act so weird about it?”

“I’m scared … you know. It’s been a while since—”

“I understand.” Foxx put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t explain.”

“Hi!” Betty said, appearing. “You want to have some food? Or can’t you stand any more?”

Tony looked shocked. “What do you mean? This is terrific. Are you feeling all right? Can you stay?” he asked with nervous concern.

“Yeah, I’m starving!” she said. They joined the slow mass moving up the stairs to the buffet.

Patty had spotted Tony and Betty a few moments before and now pushed her way toward them. She had looked forward to spending the party with them — Tony had been so wonderful during the past year, so full of calm good sense; he seemed to be losing it in the face of Fred’s triumph. It was hard to bear.

While they toasted Fred, Patty had looked idly at the men in the room. She didn’t envy the women their male possessions. Most of the men talked away to other men, interrupting their women’s dialogue, joking whenever the subject of their wives’ or dates’ work came up, only to resume babbling nervously about their work, their hopes for promotion, and to indulge in graveyard humor about the failures of rivals. She had no desire to capture them with her cunt, soothe their restless yearning for a flattering all-encompassing embrace. She knew she was better than them. And she no longer planned to conceal it.

“Hey!” she called out to Tony and Betty. “Wait for me!”

“Patty!” a cheerful Tony called down, waving his hand to urge her up. “Sorry I bitched at you,” he said, sounding like his good self.

“Don’t worry,” she called back with a brilliant smile. “It’ll happen to us too.”

“Well, anyway,” Tony said with a sad look, “let’s eat his food.”

Patty squeezed in next to them and they continued their ascent on the rickety staircase, feet stamping, a herd in synchronous movement. Together, among the anonymous others, they continued their climb up — up to their only nourishment: the feast of success.

Rafael Yglesias (b. 1954) is a master American storyteller whose career began with the publication of his first novel at seventeen. Through four decades of writing, Yglesias has produced numerous highly acclaimed novels and screenplays, and his fiction is distinguished by its clear-eyed realism and keen insight into human behavior. His books range in style and scope from novels of ideas, psychological thrillers, and biting satires, to self-portraits and portraits of New York society.

Yglesias was born and raised in Washington Heights, a working-class neighborhood in northern Manhattan. Both his parents were writers. His father, Jose, was the son of Cuban and Spanish parents and wrote articles for the New Yorker , the New York Times , and the Daily Worker , as well as novels. His mother, Helen, was the daughter of Yiddish-speaking Russian and Polish immigrants and worked as literary editor of the Nation . Rafael was educated mainly at public schools, but the Yglesiases did send him to the prestigious Horace Mann School for three years. Inspired by his parents’ burgeoning literary careers, Rafael left school in the tenth grade in order to finish his first book. The largely autobiographical Hide Fox, and All After (1972) is the story of a bright young student who drops out of private school against his parents’ wishes to pursue his artistic ambitions.

Many of Yglesias’s subsequent novels would also draw heavily from his own life experiences. Yglesias wrote The Work Is Innocent (1976), a novel that candidly examines the pressures of youthful literary success, in his early twenties. Hot Properties (1986) follows the up-and-down fortunes of young literary upstarts drawn to New York’s entertainment and media worlds. In 1977, Yglesias married artist Margaret Joskow and the couple had two sons: Matthew, now a renowned political pundit and blogger, and Nicholas, a science-fiction writer. Yglesias’s experiences as a parent in Manhattan would help shape Only Children (1988), a novel about wealthy and ambitious new parents in the city. Margaret would later battle cancer, which she died from in 2004. Yglesias chronicled their relationship in the loving, honest, and unsparing A Happy Marriage (2009).

After marrying Joskow, Ylgesias took nearly a decade away from writing novels to dedicate himself to family life. During this break from book-writing, Yglesias began producing screenplays. He would eventually have great success adapting his novel Fearless (1992), a story of trauma and recovery, into a critically acclaimed motion picture starring Jeff Bridges and Rosie Perez. Other notable screenplays and adaptations include From Hell, Les Misérables , and Death and the Maiden . He has collaborated with such directors as Roman Polanski and the Hughes brothers.

A lifelong New Yorker, Yglesias’s eye for city life — ambition, privilege, class struggle, and the clash of cultures — informs much of his work. Psychiatrists and psychoanalysts are often primary characters in Yglesias’s narratives, and titles such as The Murderer Next Door (1991) and Dr. Neruda’s Cure for Evil (1998) draw heavily on the intellectual traditions of psychology.

Yglesias lives in New York’s Upper East Side.

Yglesias with Tamar Cole, his half-sister from his mother’s first marriage, around 1955. He was raised with Tamar and his half-brother, Lewis.