Уильям Голдман - The Princess Bride

"Of course. All thirteen. That's what we're going to do for you, and all we want from you is your goodwill."

"Goodwill?" If I'd have had an engagement ring with me, it would've been hers.

"Yes. It's so important that Buttercup's Baby be published. Here in America."

I signaled for coffee and a waiter poured us some. We fiddled with sweetener and low-fat milk and all that other yummy stuff we do to our stomachs these days. We sipped silently. And we looked at each other. Then I said the nuttiest thing: "How old are you, Carly?"

"How old do you want me to be? I know all about you. I know you were born at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago on August 12th, 1931. Pretty good?"

I nodded.

She opened her purse then. "All you have to know is this, Bill. I broke up with my boyfriend when I left Florin City. And he was fifty-five. I have a thing for..." And here she paused, smiled so sweetly. "...for vigorous older men."

Mark Antony was never this smitten.

She reached into her purse, handed me a piece of paper. "This is just legal boilerplate. Have your lawyer check it out, then sign it and mail it back to me."

"What is it?"

"It's called settling for peace. We agree to drop all the lawsuits. You agree that we did nothing wrong, and that you wish us the best on all future projects."

"I do more than wish you well. I'm going to kill myself doing Buttercup's Baby. "

"Of course you would," she said then, and do you know the most important six words in the last thirty years in World Culture? I'll tell you what they are. Peter Benchley came up with them when he was walking along a beach and the words were these: " What if the shark got territorial? " Because out of that came the novel Jaws, and then the movie Jaws, and nothing's really been the same since.

Well, Carly Shog's next six words weren't that important. Except, of course, to me. Before she said them I asked her, "Why did you say 'Of course you would ?' You meant 'Of course you will! I'm doing Buttercup's Baby. "

That moment, waiting for her to speak, looking at the glorious lady, at her pale blue eyes, I remember thinking something weird is going on, something bad, even. But in no paranoid nightmare could I have come up with what she said next:

" Stephen King is doing the abridgement. "

HERE'S WHAT I did not say: "What's the punch line?" Here's another: "You're killing me." Or: "He'll laugh right in your face." Try: "You rotten bitch." While I was busy saying nothing, Carly went smartly on.

"Here's what we get when you sign that letter: safety. See, you're nowhere near King in terms of sales, no one is, we don't have to go there. But a lot of people connect you with Morgenstern because of the movie and what we don't want is people wondering why you decided not to do the sequel. Goodwill is very important, and we can't have you running around claiming betrayal. I wrote this. I think you can live with it."

Here's what she put down: "I'm so excited Stephen King has come on board. Frankly, I'm exhausted as far as Mr. Morgenstern is concerned. So I wish everyone the best. And I don't know about you, but I can't wait to read Buttercup's Baby. "

I looked at her a moment before I spoke. She looked like Bela Lugosi now. "He won't do it. King. I know him a little, and there's no reason on earth he'd get dragged into something like this."

"Steve doesn't feel he's getting 'dragged into' anything. He's genuinely excited. We talk every day. Will, 'til everything's finalized."

"I don't believe you. I don't know what you're after but find another buyer." I stood up.

"His name wasn't always King," Carly said then. "He has ancestors who lived in Florin City way back when. He still visits in the summertime."

I sat back down.

"Does he know about me?"

"Bill, of course. And I told him just what the peace settlement says—that you're exhausted. That's easy enough to believe. My God, you haven't written a novel in well over a decade."

She now strongly resembled Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. "I'll see you in court," I said, tossing some money on the table, walking out. A stupid and hollow thing to say. She could keep pressuring me with the lawsuits. No question, she had all the cards.

All but one.

LATE THE NEXT morning I was sitting in the airport in Bangor, Maine. I knew King basically from Misery, a screenplay I wrote from one of his best and favorite novels. I'd come up to Bangor a couple of times, just your basic research, chatting with him, a few questions I thought could be better answered in person than over the phone. We had a sneak for him when the movie was done and Rob Reiner, the director, and I paced the lobby while it was on, hoping he'd like it. It meant a lot to us to please him. Rob's career really took off with Stand By Me, another work by King (a novella called The Body ).

We could tell as soon as we saw him walking out that he was happy about what we'd done with his baby. He loved Kathy Bates especially. (Not alone in that; she won the Oscar for Best Actress.) It's funny but what I remember even more was the moment before it started when he left us to take his seat: the look on his face was so hopeful. Like a kid. I commented on that to Rob who said, "I think he's as vulnerable now as when he started—which is how he's managed to stay Stephen King."

I don't think everyone realizes what a phenomenon he is. It's not just the hundreds of millions of books sold—it's that he has arguably been the hottest writer in the world for so long. Carrie came out in '74—a quarter century sitting closest to the fire.

I saw him through the window now. Jeans, lumberjack shirt, shambling walk. King's a lot bigger than you think. And remarkably unpretentious.

We sat in a private corner of the waiting room—I hadn't eaten since the legendary lunch the day before with the Fiend of Florin. And I'd been up half the night getting everything all set, just how to say it rationally, novelist to novelist, storyteller to storyteller, and the way it went in my head I wasn't even halfway through before he said, "Bill, that bitch lied to me, she said you didn't want to do it. I only said I'd get involved because she talked to a bunch of relatives I still have back there and they put pressure on me but I felt dragged into the damn thing from the beginning."

The silence went on. King looked at me. Waiting. I knew I was making him nervous, just sitting there, but I couldn't figure how to start. All I knew was I didn't want to embarrass him. Or, worse, humiliate myself.

Finally he asked, "How's Kathy? I liked her in Titanic. "

He's giving you a way to start, I told myself. So talk about Kathy Bates. You've got a great Kathy Bates story, tell him. "I don't see her much, but did I ever tell you how she got the Misery part? It's a great story."

King shook his head.

"I wrote the part for her. I'd seen her on stage for years—she's one of the great actresses but she'd never gotten her break in films—and before I started I was talking with Rob and I said, 'I'm going to write Annie Wilkes for Kathy Bates.' And Rob said, 'Oh, good. She's great. We'll use her.'"

"Then what?" King asked.

"That was it. The most sought after female role that year and it went to this unknown. I loved being part of that. Changing a life."

"Great story, all right," King said, trying to sound enthusiastic. But I knew his heart wasn't in it.

" No! " I said, way too loud, but I was not in the best of shape, as readers of these pages will have sensed. "No," I repeated, more conversationally. "That's not the story. Here's the great story."