Dean Koontz: Whispers

It was also obvious that Wally wanted the captain to hear the news and spread it. Grinning like Cary Grant, he leaned toward Hilary and said, "We've got the deal with Warner Brothers."

She stared, blinked, opened her mouth to speak, didn't know what to say. Finally: "We don't."

"We do."

"We can't."

"We can."

"Nothing's that easy."

"I tell you, we've got it."

"They won't let me direct."

"Oh, yes."

"They won't give me final cut."

"Yes, they will."

"My God."

She was stunned. Felt numb.

Eugene offered his congratulations and slipped away.

Wally laughed, shook his head. "You know, you could have played that a lot better for Eugene's benefit. Pretty soon, people are going to see us celebrating, and they'll ask Eugene what it's about, and he'll tell them. Let the world think you always knew you'd get exactly what you wanted. Never show doubt or fear when you're swimming with sharks."

"You're not kidding about this? We've actually got what we wanted?"

Raising his glass, Wally said, "A toast. To my sweetest client, with the hope she'll eventually learn there are some clouds with silver linings and that a lot of apples don't have worms in them."

They clinked glasses.

She said, "The studio must have added a lot of tough conditions to the deal. A bottom of the barrel budget. Salary at scale. No participation in the gross rentals. Stuff like that."

"Stop looking for rusty nails in your soup," he said exasperatedly.

"I'm not eating soup."

"Don't get cute."

"I'm drinking champagne."

"You know what I mean."

She stared at the bubbles bursting in her glass of Dom Perignon.

She felt as if hundreds of bubbles were rising within her, too, chains of tiny, bright bubbles of joy: but a part of her acted like a cork to contain the effervescent emotion, to keep it securely under pressure, bottled up, safely contained. She was afraid of being too happy. She didn't want to tempt fate.

"I just don't get it," Wally said. "You look as if the deal fell through. You did hear me all right, didn't you?"

She smiled. "I'm sorry. It's just that ... when I was a little girl, I learned to expect the worst every day. That way, I was never disappointed. It's the best outlook you can have when you live with a couple of bitter, violent alcoholics."

His eyes were kind.

"Your parents are gone," he said, quietly, tenderly. "Dead. Both of them. They can't touch you, Hilary. They can't hurt you ever again."

"I've spent most of the past twelve years trying to convince myself of that."

"Ever consider analysis?"

"I went through two years of it."

"Didn't help?"

"Not much."

"Maybe a different doctor--"

"Wouldn't matter," Hilary said. "There's a flaw in Freudian theory. Psychiatrists believe that as soon as you fully remember and understand the childhood traumas that made you into a neurotic adult, you can change. They think finding the key is the hard part, and that once you have it you can open the door in a minute. But it's not that easy."

"You have to want to change," he said.

"It's not that easy, either."

He turned his champagne glass around and around in his small well-manicured hands. "Well, if you need someone to talk to now and then, I'm always available."

"I've already burdened you with too much of it over the years."

"Nonsense. You've told me very little. Just the bare bones."

"Boring stuff," she said.

"Far from it, I assure you. The story of a family coming apart at the seams, alcoholism, madness, murder, and suicide, an innocent child caught in the middle.... As a screenwriter, you should know that's the kind of material that never bores."

She smiled thinly. "I just feel I've got to work it out on my own."

"Usually it helps to talk about--"

"Except that I've already talked about it to an analyst, and I've talked about it to you, and that's only done me a little bit of good."

"But talking has helped."

"I've got as much out of it as I can. What I've got to do now is talk to myself about it. I've got to confront the past alone, without relying on your support or a doctor's, which is something I've never been able to do." Her long dark hair had fallen over one eye; she pushed it out of her face and tucked it behind her ears. "Sooner or later, I'll get my head on straight. It's only a matter of time."

Do I really believe that? she wondered.

Wally stared at her for a moment, then said, "Well, I suppose you know best. At least, in the meantime, drink up." He raised his champagne glass. "Be cheerful and full of laughter so all these important people watching us will envy you and want to work with you."

She wanted to lean back and drink lots of icy Dom Perignon and let happiness consume her, but she could not totally relax. She was always sharply aware of that spectral darkness at the edges of things, that crouching nightmare waiting to spring and devour her. Earl and Emma, her parents, had jammed her into a tiny box of fear, had slammed the heavy lid and locked it; and since then she had looked out at the world from the dark confines of that box. Earl and Emma had instilled in her a quiet but ever-present and unshakable paranoia that stained everything good, everything that should be right and bright and joyful.

In that instant, her hatred of her mother and father was as hard, cold, and immense as it had ever been. The busy years and the many miles that separated her from those hellish days in Chicago suddenly ceased to act as insulation from the pain.

"What's wrong?" Wally asked.

"Nothing. I'm okay."

"You're so pale."

With an effort, she pushed down the memories, forced the past back where it belonged. She put one hand on Wally's cheek, kissed him. "I'm sorry. Sometimes I can be a real pain in the ass. I haven't even thanked you. I'm happy with the deal, Wally. I really am. It's wonderful! You're the best damned agent in the business."

"You're right," he said. "I am. But this time I didn't have to do a lot of selling. They liked the script so much they were willing to give us almost anything just to be sure they'd get the project. It wasn't luck. And it wasn't just having a smart agent. I want you to understand that. Face it, kid, you deserve success. Your work is about the best thing being written for the screen these days. You can go on living in the shadow of your parents, go on expecting the worst, as you always do, but from here on out it's going to be nothing but the best for you. My advice is, get used to it."

She desperately wanted to believe him and surrender to optimism, but black weeds of doubt still sprouted from the seeds of Chicago. She saw those familiar lurking monsters at the fuzzy edges of the paradise he described. She was a true believer in Murphy's Law: If anything can go wrong, it will.

Nevertheless, she found Wally's earnestness so appealing, his tone so nearly convincing, that she reached down into her bubbling cauldron of confused emotions and found a genuine radiant smile for him.

"That's it," he said, pleased. "That's better. You have a beautiful smile."

"I'll try to use it more often."

"I'll keep making the kind of deals that'll force you to use it more often."

They drank champagne and discussed The Hour of the Wolf and made plans and laughed more than she could remember having laughed in years. Gradually her mood lightened. A macho movie star--icy eyes, tight thin lips, muscles, a swagger in his walk when he was on screen; warm, quick to laugh, somewhat shy in real life--whose last picture had made fifty million dollars, was the first to stop by to say hello and inquire about the celebration. The sartorially impeccable studio executive with the lizard eyes tried subtly, then blatantly, to learn the plot of Wolf, hoping it would lend itself to a quick cheap television movie-of-the-week rip-off. Pretty soon, half the room was table-hopping, stopping by to congratulate Hilary and Wally, flitting away to confer with one another about her success, each of them wondering if there was any percentage in it for him. After all, Wolf would need a producer, stars, someone to write the musical score.... Therefore, at the best table in the room, there was a great deal of back-patting and cheek-kissing and hand-holding.