John Irving - Until I Find You

Jack thought that the holier-than-thou subject might make a good starting point for a conversation about his father. Els had not only known him; unbeknownst to Alice, Els had often gone to the Oude Kerk in the wee hours of the morning to hear William play the organ. Jack gathered that Els had not heard any racket from the Lord—just the music. To his surprise, Els told Jack that she had taken him to the Old Church one night.

“I thought that even if you didn’t remember hearing William play, some part of you might absorb the sound, ” she said. “But I had to carry you there—you were asleep the whole way—and you never woke up or took your head off my breast the entire time. You slept through a two-hour concert, Jackie. You never heard a note! I don’t know what you could possibly remember of any of it.”

“Not much,” he admitted.

Jack knew how hidden the organist’s chamber in the Oude Kerk was. He knew that his father would never have seen him sleeping on the big prostitute’s bosom—which was probably just as well, knowing his dad’s opinion of what Nico had called “this environment.”

Because Saskia and Alice were more popular—because they had more customers, Els informed Jack—Els was Jack’s babysitter (what she called his “nanny”) most of the time.

“And I was stronger than your mom or Saskia, so I got to carry you!” she exclaimed. She had lugged him from bed to bed. “I used to think you were like one of us—one of the prostitutes,” she told Jack. “Because you never went to bed just once; because I was always taking you out of one bed and tucking you into another!”

“I remember that you and Femke almost came to blows,” he said.

“I could have killed her. I should have killed her, Jackie!” Els cried. “But Femke was the deal-maker, and something had to be done. It’s just that it was a bad deal—that’s what made me so mad. Lawyers don’t care about what’s fair. What’s a good deal to a lawyer is any deal that both parties will agree to.”

“Something had to be done, Els—as you say,” Nico said.

“Fuck you, Nico,” Els told him. “Just drink your coffee.”

It was good coffee; Marieke had made them some cookies, too.

“Did my dad see me leave Amsterdam?” Jack asked Els.

“He saw you leave Rotterdam, Jackie. He watched the ship sail out of the harbor. Femke had brought him to the docks; she’d driven him to Rotterdam in her car. Saskia would have none of it. She accompanied your mom and me and you to the train station in Amsterdam, but that was as much drama as she would tolerate. That was Saskia’s word for the good-bye business —drama, she called it.”

“So you took the train to Rotterdam with us?”

“I went with you to the docks. I got you both on board, Jackie. Your mom wasn’t in much better shape than your dad. It seemed to be just dawning on her that she wouldn’t see William after that day, although the deal was what she said she wanted.”

“You saw my dad at the docks?”

“Fucking Femke wouldn’t get out of the car, but your dad did,” Els said. “He just cried and cried; he fell apart. He lay down on the ground. I had to pick him up off the pavement; I had to carry him back to the fuckhead lawyer’s Mercedes.”

“Did Tattoo Peter really have a Mercedes?” Jack asked her.

“Femke had a better one, Jackie,” Els said. “She drove William back to Amsterdam in her Mercedes. I took the train from Rotterdam. In my mind’s eye, I kept seeing you wave from the ship. You thought you were waving to me—I was waving back, of course—but it was your father you were really waving good-bye to. Some deal, huh, Nico?” she asked the policeman sharply.

“Something had to be done, Els,” he said again.

“Fuck you, Nico,” the old prostitute once more told him.

When Jack got back to the Grand, two faxes were waiting for him; it didn’t help that he read them in the wrong order. He began with a surprising suggestion from Richard Gladstein, a movie producer. Bob Bookman had sent Gladstein the script for The Slush-Pile Reader.

Dear Jack,

Stay where you are, in Amsterdam! What do you say we have a meeting with William Vanvleck? I know you’ve worked with Wild Bill before. It strikes me that The Slush-Pile Reader is a kind of remake, maybe right up The Remake Monster’s alley. Think about it: the story is a remade porn film but not a porn film, right? We wouldn’t show anything pornographic, but the very idea of James “Jimmy” Stronach’s relationship with Michele Maher is a little pornographic, isn’t it? (He’s too big, she’s too small. Brilliant!) We should discuss. But first tell me your thoughts on The Mad Dutchman. As it happens, he’s in Amsterdam and you’re in Amsterdam. If you like the idea of Vanvleck as a director, I could meet you there.

Richard

Everything became clearer when Jack read the second fax, which he should have read first. It was from Bob Bookman at C.A.A.

Dear Jack,

Richard Gladstein loved your script of The Slush-Pile Reader. He wants to discuss possible directors with you. Richard has the crazy—maybe not so crazy—idea of using Wild Bill Vanvleck. Call me. Call Richard.

Bob

Jack was so excited that he called Richard Gladstein at home, waking him up. (It was very early in the morning in L.A.)

Wild Bill Vanvleck was in his late sixties, maybe his early seventies. He’d moved back to Amsterdam from Beverly Hills. No one in Hollywood had asked him to direct a picture for a couple of years. The Remake Monster had sold his ugly mansion on Loma Vista Drive. Something had gone wrong with his whippets. Jack remembered the skinny little dogs running free in the mansion, slipping and falling on the hardwood floors.

Something bad had happened to Wild Bill’s chef and gardener, the Surinamese couple. Someone had drowned in Vanvleck’s swimming pool, Richard Gladstein told Jack; Richard couldn’t remember if it was the child-size woman from Suriname or her miniature husband. (Possibly the drowning victim had been one of the whippets!)

So The Mad Dutchman was back in Amsterdam, where he was living with a much younger woman. Vanvleck had a hit series on Dutch TV; from Richard Gladstein’s description, Wild Bill had remade Miami Vice in Amsterdam’s red-light district.

Richard talked about the difficulty of bringing Miramax around to the idea of hiring William Vanvleck to direct The Slush-Pile Reader— that is, assuming Richard and Jack had a good meeting with The Mad Dutchman. But the idea, Gladstein and Jack agreed, had possibilities. (Bob Bookman had already overnighted Jack’s screenplay to Wild Bill.)

Richard and Jack also talked about the idea of Lucia Delvecchio in the Michele Maher role. “She’d have to lose about twenty pounds,” Jack told Richard.

“She’d love to!” Gladstein said. There was little doubt of that, Jack thought. There were a lot of women in Hollywood who wanted to lose twenty pounds—they just needed a reason.

The more he thought about Wild Bill Vanvleck, the better Jack liked the idea. What had always been wrong with The Remake Monster’s material was the material itself—namely, Wild Bill’s screenplays. Not only how he’d ripped them off from other, better material, but how he went too far; he always pushed the parody past reasonable limits. If you’re irreverent about everything, the audience is left with nothing or no one to like. Conversely, there was sympathy in Emma’s story—both for the too-small slush-pile reader and for the porn star and bad screenwriter with the big penis. Vanvleck had never directed a sympathetic script before.