Daniel Price - Slick

Enjoying our surprise, he rummaged through his desk drawer.

“Since you were nice enough to let me in on your joke,” he announced, “I’ll let you in on mine.”

He dropped a fat stack of papers on the desk. Doug and I leaned forward to examine the top sheet. In the center of the page were three short lines of text.

GODSEND

a novel

by Alonso Lever

“It’s no secret that my heart has left my practice,” he told us. “This is where it went. For three years, I’ve nurtured and developed this manuscript. Writing it has been the greatest pleasure of my life. No, finishing it was the greatest pleasure. Selling it, however, has been a stygian nightmare. Through an agent, I’ve submitted a draft to virtually every publishing house, both large and small. Each time I was damned with excessive praise. Each time I was shunned with extreme encouragement. So unless I’m suffering from an acute delusion of quality, I can only assume the book is failing to sell for reasons of marketability.”

“What kind of novel is it?” asked Doug, failing to hide his fear of a long answer.

“It’s a futuristic love story, with a spiritual bent.” Alonso turned to me. “Please take this copy, Scott. I think you of all people would appreciate the premise.”

Politely, I took the bundle. I hadn’t read a novel in years, but I was curious enough to put his book on my skim list. I peeked at the top right corner of the last page. Christ, the thing was 444 pages. No wonder he couldn’t sell it.

He stood up. “Anyway, let me share my vision of a more immediate future. I pretend to be Harmony’s lawyer. I follow your every cue to the letter. Once she confesses, I close my firm in disgust. I then negotiate a deal to write a tell-all account of my experiences as an unwitting accomplice in the mass deceit of the decade. I’ll hold out, of course, until a publisher gets hungry enough to offer me a two-book deal. After that, I sit back and enjoy my long-awaited career transition. I’ve been thinking about this future all evening, gentlemen. It makes me smile. The real question: does it make you smile?”

It made me beam. Doug was a little less tickled but Alonso assured him that the tell-all would tell nothing. Of course it wouldn’t. What did Alonso care as long as Godsend got published? He had everything to gain by cooperating with us.

At long last, our business was concluded. This was the second night in a row I had toiled into the wee hours. I was on the verge of cognitive collapse. Doug was already flatline.

But Alonso showed no signs of slowing down as he walked us to the elevator bank.

“Well, my friends, I must say I’m excited to be part of the show.”

After pressing the call button for us, he leaned against the wall and gazed down at his expensive Italian shoes.

“I’m not proud,” he added. “But I am excited.”

________________

Until the 1920s, the Bennett Rancho was little more than a bazillion acres of wheat and barley. Then Charles Lindbergh started using it as a landing strip on his pioneering journeys. The owners thought that was kind of neat. In 1927 they leased out a big chunk of their field to the city of Los Angeles, which turned it into a municipal airport. They named it Mines Field, after William Mines, the real estate agent who brokered the deal. Lord knows how that happened, but it wasn’t fated to last. Eventually it became known as Los Angeles International Airport, or LAX.

There are millions of people whose experience of L.A. is limited solely to the airport, and yet many of them use their layover to not just support the claim that they’ve been to Los Angeles but to personally confirm some or all of the negative stereotypes associated with the city. Well, if you’re one of those people, I’ve got news for you. You’ve been to Inglewood. Congrats. And all the gang violence, road rage, mudslides, earthquakes, smog congestion, and phony attitudes you witnessed from your plastic seat in United Terminal 7 were most likely a product of your jet-lagged mind. Except maybe the phony attitudes. For that, we’re very sorry. They’re always so fake down there in Inglewood.

Harmony was a notable exception. Not only was she a refreshingly genuine person, but she truly did spy with her very own eye most of the above-listed enormities. She had every reason to complain about Los Angeles. She had every reason to complain, period. One of the many things I liked about Harmony was the fact that she didn’t.

“So what do you think?” I asked.

She laughed. “I think it’s just like the LAX I seen on TV. I wasn’t expecting much more.”

We dined at an overpriced wood-paneled franchise restaurant/bar in Terminal 2. By now I was way behind on the coaching I wanted to do, but screw it. I could finish the job by phone. There were only a few hours left for me to see her live, uncut, and unscripted.

“There’s this girl who works for me now,” I told her. “Whenever she wants to get away from her mother, she finds her way here.”

“You got an employee?”

“I’ve got an intern.”

“I didn’t even know you had an office.”

“I don’t. She works out of my apartment.”

Harmony raised her eyebrows suggestively. “I see…”

“You know, that’s the second time I’ve mentioned her to someone, and the second time I’ve gotten that joke. I’m not Bill Clinton, okay? This girl is thirteen.”

“Thirteen?”

“Yes, but I’m not Roman Polanski either. There’s absolutely nothing sordid going on. See, this is the problem with living in a tabloid culture. We see everything as a scandal in the making.”

“That’s funny, coming from you.”

“You think that,” I said, lowering my voice, “but what I’m creating here is an anti-scandal. This is a bomb that’s going to defuse itself. If anything, it should teach the cynics and moral mouths of this country not to be so quick to judge.”

“So that’s your message with this thing?”

“No. My message is ‘stop kicking my client.’”

For some reason, that tickled her funny bone. She just couldn’t stop chuckling. Once the waiter came by with our food, she looked down and giggled into her fist.

I grinned at her. “It’s not that funny.”

“I know. I know…”

Once the waiter left, Harmony sobered up and ate her meal. She had decided to “keep it light” with a Cobb salad. I didn’t want to tell her but she’d probably have to eat a ham steak the size of a Michelin in order to get the same number of calories as that thing.

Even as she ate, she had aftershocks of chuckles. I marveled at her.

“Harmony, I’ve got to tell you. You’re not the person I expected to find when I looked up your background.”

She lost her humor. “What do you mean by that?”

“It’s not an insult. I’m giving you praise.”

“I believe you. I just don’t know what you mean by it.”

“What I’m saying is that for someone with your life story, you’re a hell of a lot sunnier than I expected. I mean if I went through all the awful things you went through, I’d have a chip on my shoulder the size of a Lexus. I’d be an angry, bitter, hateful nutjob. And I don’t mean a standard, mutter-to-myself-on-the-street kind of nut. I mean I’d be building a death ray.”

Harmony stared at me with dark perplexity. “Okay…”

“Let me ask you a question I know the interviewers will ask. How have you managed to cope so well?”

After a moment of quiet reflection, she gulped a forkful of blue cheese. “Shit. I guess I’ll have to come up with something.”

“You must have some idea.”

“I think I know. I just don’t think it’s gonna play well.”