Rafael Yglesias - Hot Properties

He began to regard himself as having a terminal illness. He was dying as an artist. He had no faith that the cold engine of his imagination could be started, no matter how many times he replaced the batteries or friendly passersby brought out cables to jump-start it. The feeling wasn’t dramatic or desperate. It was the sure knowledge that came each morning when he stared at the typewriter, sipping his coffee, that every word in his mind, every character, every story, every setting, every theme that drifted out of the misty chill in his brain turned out to be a bore. A cliché, a character he knew nothing of, or a circumstance that had been done and done and done. The muscles were dying, paralyzed by dismay and hopelessness. He no longer believed that time would rescue him, that the inevitable accumulation of experience and writing would lead him to a final victory.

And if he turned to the screenplay, this numbness of creation was made worse, because after all, that wasn’t even art. If he couldn’t be a hack either, what was to become of him? He had to earn a living. He had to have something to say at dinner parties when asked what he did.

He started having trouble falling asleep, perhaps because his days were so lethargic. Often evening came without his having been more venturesome than going from his study to the kitchen. He watched television as though afraid of silence, keeping it on from the moment Betty left, turning it off only when they had dinner. The effort of conversing when, on his side, there was nothing to report other than despair, drove him to turn the TV back on after clearing the dishes, this time to create silence.

After a while Betty stopped asking if he had written that day, her studious avoidance adding to the sense that he was a victim of a fatal illness, that his condition was too terrible even to be mentioned. She took to reading in the bedroom and he stared stupidly at the set, excited only when a favorite movie was on, though even that would remind him of how miserably he had failed with his screenplay. For the first time in his life, he regularly watched his mother’s show, perversely waiting through the credits to watch Lois’ name scroll by. He began to play a sick little game, imagining a moment from their lovemaking at the instant the letters appeared — her head bobbing on his cock, the look of her cunt as he approached it with his lips.

When he tried to fall asleep, the long dreary day of inactivity and repressed thought would make his brain feverish. In the dark of the bedroom, incidents from his life were replayed each time he closed his eyes, startling him awake with their horror and pain. His mother screaming, his father greeting him at the airport with dulled eyes and perfunctory hellos, images of falling out of windows, the world detonating in the white blast of nuclear death, and he would be up, out again in the living room, watching late movies and all-night news programs, falling asleep only when fatigue was so great that no coherent thought could be formed to scare him.

Finally Betty couldn’t stand his mood. She appeared at three in the morning. Tony hadn’t shaved or showered for two days. He was sullenly eating a bag of potato chips and watching sitcom reruns. Betty stood in the doorway in her pin-striped nightshirt, squinting slightly from the bright light, but with no sleepiness in her eyes, though she had gone to bed hours before.

“Hi,” he said, worried. “I thought you were asleep.”

“What’s the matter with you?” she asked sternly.

“I can’t sleep.”

“Why not?” she snapped.

“I don’t know.”

“Sure you do. Do you want to tell me or not? Because if you don’t want to tell me, then maybe you shouldn’t be living here.”

Tony smiled. “Come on.” he said.

“Come on, what? You’re like a zombie. You think it’s fun living with you?”

“No, I guess it isn’t.”

“You can’t write because they didn’t like your script?”

“I guess.” he answered. He was glad that she was interrogating him, relieved that she was angry, but still not wanting her to know exactly how he felt.

“Well, then don’t do it. Why the hell did you want to write for them anyway? You’re a playwright. Why do you want to write screenplays?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think I do. Not anymore.”

She sighed, the stiffness in her body collapsing. She walked in and sat down, staring at him wearily. “Then why don’t you just drop it? Can’t you do that? Can’t you tell them you don’t want to do it?”

“Yeah, I can. I asked Gloria. She said I could. It means I won’t get the rest of the money.”

“I don’t care about that. Do you?”

“No.”

“Then tell them you’re not going to do it.”

Tony gazed off for a moment. “Okay,” he said.

“Good,” she said, and stood up. “You’ll tell them tomorrow morning?” He nodded yes. “Now come to bed. I’m tired.”

“You go ahead—”

“No! I want you in bed next to me. I didn’t get married to fall asleep alone.”

He laughed, delighted by her fury, and followed her to bed. As she fell asleep, snuggling into his arms, she said, “Shave tomorrow.”

“Okay,” he answered and slept also.

Patty couldn’t decide whether to tell Betty about the situation with Gelb, to stop her from submitting the manuscript as they had arranged. If it were not for this single thing, that her best chance to get a contract for her novel was at a publishing house where Gelb was soon to become the publisher, she would have no difficulties. She could have tossed the Four Seasons’ shrimp in mustard sauce in his face and gone home to put the scene in her novel while awaiting the good news from Betty that Garlands was willing to publish it.

Instead she went home and threw up her mostly empty stomach and took a sweaty restless nap. Betty called at five o’clock, excited, speaking in a whisper: “I think they’re gonna let us do it. I spoke to Jeffries before lunch. He said I should have Ann Wilson read it and if she liked it as much as I did, we could transfer the contract from Shadow. That means you won’t get any more than five thousand.”

Patty had pulled herself up and leaned against the pillows. Her mouth tasted of both alcohol and vomit.

“Patty! You there?”

“Yeah. That’s great,” she said listlessly, despite her desire to feign pleasure.

“What’s the matter? You worried about Ann? Don’t. I gave her the manuscript a couple of minutes ago, told her all about it. She was excited.”

“She was excited? What’s she got to be excited about?”

“My opinion!” Betty said, not kidding. “This is the first novel I’ve given anyone here with this kind of hype. Patty.”

She wants me to thank her. “I really appreciate it.”

“Well, it deserves it. I read it again last night, Patty, and it’s terrific.”

“Thanks.”

“Are you okay? What’s wrong?” Before Patty could answer, Betty rushed on. “Oh, today was the big lunch! What did he say?”

“Nothing. Just apologies.”

“For firing you?”

“Yep.”

“Well, that’s nice. The bastard. I can’t imagine what it must be like to work for him.”

“I feel a little sick from the lunch. Let me … can I call you back?” She hung up the moment Betty said okay, her mind reeling from the irony of Betty’s last statement. What could she do? She was trapped. There was absolutely no guarantee that she could get a book contract from another publisher. She knew how hard it was to get them to gamble on a first novelist. She didn’t even have an agent. She would have to accept Betty’s offer — assuming it came through— and then sleep with Gelb. In fact she’d probably have to start spreading her legs even before the public announcement of his hiring, judging from how eager he was in the cab. He had fired her because she refused once — what would he do to her book? She had been ruined once by her prudery, her reluctance to use sex as a career move. She wouldn’t allow a repetition, she couldn’t permit her book to be destroyed by naiveté. A year of screwing him and she might even get a big print run and a major advertising campaign. A year of saying no and her book would be screwed once and for all.