Dreams Are Not Enough (28 page)

“Uncle Desmond, we have here a delicate situation” -He bit off his words.

Desmond Cordiner had rested both arms on the desk and was leaning his head into them. His shoulders heaved and odd muffled snorts escaped from him. Worried about the high incidence of coronaries among elderly, top-of-the-ladder executives, PD jumped up, leaning across the huge desk.

“Uncle Desmond, are you okay? Let me pour you some water.”

His uncle looked up. PD saw that he was racked with uncontrollable laughter. Desmond Cordiner was nightmarishly unpredictable, and PD now worried that this entire negotiation had been a wild hoax.

Finally Desmond Cordiner’s guffaws calmed.

“Hap gets the final cut,” he said, wiping his eyes.

“To be worked over by my own sister’s kid, a snotnose.”

“I’m twenty-eight.”

“You’ve still got plenty to learn, frotz. You should’ve played me along a bit more. I’d have upped Alyssia to two fifty and Hap to one fifty.”

“I’ll have to remember not to jump the gun,” PD said.

He left the offices sedately. Once alone in the corridor, though, he permitted his highly polished black shoes to do a wild little tap dance. For the price of three Cobb salads at the Brown Derby, he had learned from the secretary with the great legs that Desmond Cordiner refused to go any higher than two hundred thousand for julie Christie and one twenty-five for the top-ranked director. Bill Kennelworth.

And he’d gotten that same amount plus a percentage of the gross.

Whistling, he drove to the writers’ building, which housed the story department. Beth was in conference, so he waited for her amid the neatly ranged galleys, books and manuscript boxes. His exhilaration drained as he considered how wondrously simple it would be if money were the sole obstacle that prevented him from making those serene evenings of theirs permanent.

Maxim had holed up on Izumel, a remote little Mexican island unconnected to the world by telephone lines. Desmond Cordiner dispatched a three-page telegram that laid out generous terms for his son to act as producer on The One Mary. Maxim replied with a terse sentence: busy on my own project.

A promising young studio line producer was assigned to The One Mary, and principal shooting began on February 17, ending on April 3.

Before Hap started the editing, and Alyssia her next film, they vacationed for a week in a tile-roofed bungalow high above La Jolla’s rocky beach. They never went into the pretty resort town. They made love between sheets that smelled of sea-must, they made love in front of the fireplace, they made love on the sunlit walled patio with the faraway roar of the Pacific in their ears.

Monday night as they drove the freeway back to Los Angeles, Alyssia drifted into a delicious, languorous silence.

Hap reached for her hand.

“Want me to get you a lawyer?” he asked.

Her spine straightened.

“Lawyer?”

“You’ll need one for the divorce.”

It was the first time either of them had brought up the subject of legalizing her separation from Barry. Turning, she gazed at the ghostly white surf. Partings of any kind, even a morning goodbye, were difficult for her. It was a profound form of loyalty stemming from multiple causes—her peripatetic childhood, her mother’s death, her lack of family. And to sever any relationship, no matter how tenuous, was a near impossibility for her.

“First, I’ll get together with Barry and discuss it with him,” she temporized.

The following morning thick gray clouds sagged, a match for her mood.

After Hap went off to a Magnum editing room, she steeled herself for nearly an hour before she could dial the Beverly Hills Hotel. A switchboard operator informed her that Mr. Cordiner was no longer a guest, but could be reached at Columbia Pictures, giving the number.

Mercifully, Barry didn’t inquire why she was calling after all these months, but agreed to meet for lunch at Musso & Frank’s, in Hollywood, which she suggested because it was geographically convenient for them both, and because she knew the choice would please Barry-the restaurant was renowned as a hangout for writers.

Being nervous, she was late, but Barry arrived even later. The booths were starting to empty out by the time he got there.

“Story conference ran over,” he explained, lifting his hand for their waiter.

“Whitney’s sorry, but she couldn’t make it.”

Alyssia said nothing. With personal matters foremost in her mind, she hadn’t considered Whitney might be present. The waiter was looking at her. She ordered a Coke.

“And I’ll have a Dewar’s on the rocks,” Barry said.

“Make that a double.”

Unable to get bluntly to the point, she asked about his job at Columbia.

“A vapid romance. I’m the third writer,” he said, downing his Scotch.

“They’re delighted with my structure.”

By the time they got their steak sandwiches, though, he was sloshed enough to admit that all was not cozy at Columbia. He was saddled with a producer who knew every one of the million plots ever to go before a camera—and expected him, Barry, to come up with a fresh twist.

His assiduous invocations of Whitney plus his ejection from the Whitney-Charles bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel drew Alyssia to an inescapable conclusion. Not only was he having professional difficulties, he was also in a deep hole personally. Pitying him, she longed to clasp his hand in their old, comradely way.

She found herself unable to bring up her reason for inviting him to lunch.

Rain was falling in hard, silvery lines when they left the restaurant.

“We ought to do this more often,” he said in the stiff tone he used when most sincere.

“I’ve missed you.”

And before she could reply, he darted across Hollywood Boulevard’s gold-starred pavement, weaving a bit after his shoe splashed in the running gutter. She watched him rush across the street before the light changed, a tall, harried, prematurely balding man with a slight paunch.

When she got home, Hap was stretched on the couch, scraps of paper covering his broad chest.

“You’re back early,” she said.

“I wanted to make sense of these notes I jotted down in the editing room,” he said.

“Did you and Barry get things settled?”

She kicked off her black patent pumps: the soles were wet through.

“Alyssia?”

She sighed.

“As soon as he sat down, I could smell the liquor. He never used to drink in the morning. And it was always wine. Today it was Scotch. He kept ordering doubles. I hope he made it back to the studio okay.”

Hap hadn’t shifted from his recumbent position.

“What about the divorce?” he asked.

“He’s so … I don’t know. Pathetic. They’re taking his guts out at Columbia. He kept dragging Whitney into every remark, as if he were rubbing a rabbit’s foot. He’s not at the hotel anymore, so things can’t be too great between them.”

“Am I right? Divorce was never mentioned?”

She sighed again.

“At the moment he has enough problems.”

Hap got up abruptly, scraps of paper scattering on the rug as he came over to her. In her stockinged feet, she felt like an insignificant dwarf.

“Barry’s problems,” he said in a low, contained voice, “are no longer your problems.”

They had not fought since the night of the Wandering On premiere. Even during those frantic final days of shooting The One Mary, when all tempers were frayed, they had remained kind to each other.

“He’s between a rock and a hard place!” she snapped.

“And you’re not even trying to understand!”

Hap squatted to retrieve his scraps of paper.

“Stop being the perfect gentleman—yell at me!” She bent, helping him to gather the notes. After a few moments, she asked quietly, “Would you kick him when he’s down?”

Hap shook his head.

“Nope. But that doesn’t stop me from being jealous as hell of him.”

The banal concept of masculine jealousy had never occurred to her before for one simple reason: she held Hap in too high esteem, herself in too low. How could anyone from his background, with his looks, his talent, be jealous of her?

“It won’t be for long,” she said.

“Soon he’ll find another girl, a more understanding producer.”

Kneeling, he kissed her lightly.

“You have any idea how much I want us to be married, to have children?”

“I do, because I feel exactly the same,” she said, pressing her cheek against his.

At Hap’s suggestion, she registered with a Beverly Hills real estate broker, and within a couple of weeks they leased an old Mediterranean house whose grounds sprawled across three acres in Laurel Canyon.

Beyond the cracked, Olympic-sized swimming pool stood a three-room guesthouse for Juanita, and behind that, chaparral-covered hillside.

The exploitation press devoted much space to the family intertwinings of Alyssia del Mar and Hap Cordiner as well as their housekeeping arrangements, but the country’s moral climate had altered drastically in this, the sixties, and the publicity had no negative effects on their careers.

In their rambling, isolated old house, they found something remarkably akin to paradise.

A little after eleven on the hazily sunlit morning of September 20, 1969, PD found himself once again taking in the view. Though he had already been in his new offices three weeks, he couldn’t prevent himself from sneaking glances at the plate glass wall that gave him the whole goddamn smoggy Los Angeles basin. Everything about his new quarters—even the astronomical rent—pleased him. The thick beige carpet, the teak paneling, the spacious reception room presided over by Lana Denton, his stunning black secretary, the two smaller offices occupied by a bright and bearded agent of amorphous sexual preferences and by his original secretary, a plump blonde who now took competent if not inspired charge of the geriatric clients.

PD himself was constantly on the go. Alyssia’s name, and Hap’s, had enlisted several stars, two of whom had their own long-running series.

The PD Zaffarano Agency was no longer a joke in the Industry. Though PD’s extravagances prevented him from being completely solvent, his financial prospects were auspicious.

“Mr. Zaffarano.” Lana’s disembodied voice sprang from the intercom.

“Mr. Cordiner’s here—Mr. Barry Cordiner.”

“Ask him to take a seat, Lana,” PD said.

“I’m tied up right now.”

It seemed to him that the gaze from Beth’s black and white photograph in its oval sterling frame was reproaching him, but he brushed off his guilt about stalling his fiancee’s twin. Barry was fifteen minutes late, and PD, positive his cousin wanted representation, knew it to be a tactical error to start off on the wrong foot with a floundering TV writer.

After that rewrite job at Columbia, Barry had been unable to find work on another feature. Television also had proved inhospitable. He sold sporadically to a couple of low-rated detective series.

Momentarily PD’s attention remained fixed on Beth’s portrait.

When they had announced their engagement, his parents had put up the anticipated squawks, which echoed his own initial reluctance.

Constantly reiterating that they adored Bethie, that she was like one of their own girls, Lily and Frank Zaffarano never lost an opportunity to remind PD of what he knew far too well; that such a marriage was not only invalid in the eyes of the Church, but also incestuous.

Uncle Tim and Aunt Clara had not given their blessings either. Indeed, Aunt Clara had gone around looking sallow for months. Not because of the cousin angle, but because he could not bring himself to promise that the kids would be reared Jewish.

He looked away from his fiancee’s picture, opening Variety to the page with the review of Ace of Clubs, Alyssia and Hap’s latest effort. In the three years since The One Mary, Hap had made four movies, Alyssia starring in them all. (Under PD’s aegis, she had also worked with other topflight directors: Lean, Nichols and Penn. ) The review ended, “Ace of Clubs should be another solid hit for the team of del Mar and Cordiner.”

After a half hour, he buzzed Lana, telling her to send Barry in.

Barry’s paunch had expanded, and PD, who pumped iron at the Beverly Hills Health Club, sucked in his well-muscled gut with a sense of superiority. As he gave his cousin a warm hug, all his boyhood affection surfaced.

“Sorry about the delay,” he said.

“Well, how goes it with the writing?”

Barry blinked rapidly.

“My work’s precisely what I wanted to discuss with you.”

“Any advice I can give, I’ll be happy to. But, Barry, it’s a rule of mine never to step on another agency’s toes.”

“TCM has quagmires and quicksands, eddies and currents,” Barry said.

“You know … the Whitney and Naderman situation.”

PD didn’t comment. In 1967 Martin Naderman, head of TCM, had left his wife to live with Whitney Charles in Malibu. Within six months, Whitney had lost interest in a film career—and Naderman. In the ensuing years Naderman had hooked up with a succession of long-legged, libidinous beauties. But Barry, poor SOB, was still vociferously blaming his being Whitney’s previous lover for the neglect with which TCM routinely treated minor clients.

“What about your contract there?”

“It expired the first of the month.” Barry leaned forward.

“I need to sink my teeth into another feature.”

“Barry, that’s not exactly a lead-pipe cinch. You’re a TV writer.”

“Wandering On” — “That was years ago.”

“The film was Magnum’s biggest box-office smash, and my script earned the highest critical accolades.”

“Barry, any writer would give his left testicle to have that particular credit. But you’re my cousin, my pawn, my future brother-in-law, my friend, so I can’t bullshit you. The only thing the producers want to know is what you’ve done lately.” He spoke with difficult sincerity, then added, “Listen, I’ve got a terrific in at Ironside.”

“Ironside! Exactly the genre of garbage I want to get away from!”

A flush showed on PD’s tanned cheeks, but he said easily, “Their ratings are fabulous, and that’s the name of the game.”

The half hour in the waiting room had subdued Barry.