Prizes (51 page)

Sandy was genuinely pleased.

“I’d never believe you could get this type of food outside Paris.”

“That’s where we went on my first honeymoon,” she remarked. “Do you go often?”

“I had a congress there once.”

Elaine blushed. “Oh Sandy, you naughty boy. You shouldn’t be telling me that.”

He politely laughed at what he assumed was her attempt at humor.

And pleased that she’d seemed to find favor, she smiled back.

Elaine was sure she’d reached first base. Moreover, her profession licensed her to ask innumerable personal questions. She had succeeded in putting Sandy so at ease that he not only discoursed at length about his family situation, but was almost lulled into narrating the story of his downfall at the hands of Gregory Morgenstern.

“What about you, Elaine?” he inquired.

“Usual Hollywood scenario,” she answered, forcing an insouciant smile. “Husband a producer, married twelve years, turned me and his Jaguar in for newer models. Then
she
divorced him and he went bankrupt, so I became the breadwinner. I was lucky. Now, every so often, I write him a check.”

“Oh, that sounds very generous,” Sandy said gallantly. “Do you have any children?”

“Two teenage girls. Lovely, lively, and exhausting.” Before he could ask, she offered, “I, uh, they’re sleeping at a friend’s.”

No sooner had she spoken these words, than she realized her miscalculation. How could she have foreseen that Sandy was one of those rare men who would have
actually welcomed dinner with a family? For his part, he suddenly felt claustrophobic, and after a short but decent interval for coffee, excused himself to return to the lab.

Elaine consoled herself with the fact that she would have many other opportunities. She politely commented on Sandy’s dedication to his work, and promised to call him the next day with a list of possibilities.

It seemed to be the story of Elaine’s life: she won the commission but lost the man.

In the end, she found Sandy an unlisted gem—a seventeen-acre estate just south of Santa Barbara, with an almost overbearing twenty-room, Spanish-style house. Not an easy commute, but worth it for its privacy and European atmosphere.

She could not help but sense that part of the attraction of this property was the fact that in its distant past, when California was Spanish, it had been a monastery. In any case, it needed a lot of renovation—which explained its “bargain” price of two and a half million—but Sandy fell in love with it. And Sidney—whom he had of course consulted—pressed him to buy, hoping that his son’s emotional life would expand to fill the rooms.

Sidney put up only token resistance when Sandy urged him to move into what his father grandiosely referred to as the “Raven Compound.” “Without you, we can’t be a family,” Sandy insisted.

How could Sidney Raven refuse the lure of an entire wing of his own, with a separate pool and patio for entertaining his own guests? Not to mention a twenty-seat screening room.

“Holy moly,” he exclaimed. “Now all I need is something to screen.”

At which point he turned to his son again and demanded, “Now, how about you, sonny boy?”

“I’ve got a pool too,” Sandy countered.

“Nah, you know what I mean. When are you gonna
splurge
on yourself?”

“What do you call this whole deal?”

“Basic, sonny boy, basic. Like a gal’s black dress—you gotta buy some diamonds to go with it.”

“A tennis court?” Sandy suggested.

“Sure, why not.”

“Neither of us plays.”

“There are teachers. And Olivia would really like it.”

“Yeah,” Sandy agreed. “I’ll get in a builder this week to give us some quotes.”

“Okay,” Sidney pursued. “That takes care of your daughter’s treat. Now, back to you. What have you always dreamed of but never thought you could ever have?”

Sandy thought for a moment and then answered half jokingly, “A Nobel Prize.”

“No. That you can’t buy—at least I don’t think so. But dream up something crazy—something really wild.”

Sandy obliged his father and attempted to let his imagination run amok. Finally, almost as a capitulation perhaps, he answered, “What would you say if I built my own lab?”

“You mean right in the compound?”

“Yeah. A kind of mini-institute. I could transfer some of my work here and even have lab assistants on duty day and night. Well?”

The old man smiled. “It isn’t the harem I would have constructed, but it’s something, sonny boy.”

It took longer to get the planning permission than for the industrious crew of Mexican–Americans to erect the imposing low-roofed laboratory building in a vaguely Spanish style, set in a secluded corner of the estate. Before he moved in, Sandy, ever in the vise of paranoia, took steps to protect his future inventions, hiring a security company to patrol his grounds at all times.

He even installed a direct phone line to his office at
Cal Tech to reduce his on-campus time to the barest minimum.

His daughter’s visits were the high point of Sandy’s year. And yet, in a way, they also saddened him. For Olivia had grown up so swiftly that he wished he could make time stand still and have her be his darling little girl forever.

Yet he had also used their time together for propaganda purposes. The two of them played a special game in which they made up songs composed of the silliest-sounding scientific words. For example, to help her learn physics, Sandy boned up on the latest advances and wrote ditties like “If You Knew SUSY,” the name standing not for a girl, but for supersymmetry theory.

There was also “Every Quark Needs a Squark,” not only a love song, but an accurate physical statement. Their subatomic bestiary included everything from particles and sparticles to winos and zinos. It was a hightech
Alice in Wonderland.

Young Olivia had laughed with delight at his true tales of left- and right-handed genes, the fingers on a flu virus, and even the adventures of the scientists working on gloves for them.

“Did you know, honey, that the smell of oranges and lemons is due to the right- and left-handed forms of an otherwise identical molecule?”

“Actually, I did.”

“What?”

“Yeah, you taught me that last summer.”

His indoctrination had worked.

“Guess what, Dad,” Olivia exclaimed the very instant she deplaned on her next visit. “My science teacher says I have real aptitude for chemistry. Doesn’t that make you proud?”

“I was already proud, honey,” he replied, inwardly congratulating himself. Then, unable to keep from testing
the waters, he remarked, “Besides—your grandpa Greg’s a Nobel Prize winner.”

“I know,” she retorted. “But you should hear the way he talks about
you.
”

I’m not sure I should, Sandy thought to himself.

“He says you’re the brightest scientist he’s ever met in his life.”

Jesus, the sonovabitch never ceases to surprise me, he thought.

In the corner of his own lab-within-a-lab, Sandy installed a special bench for his daughter, who, by force of circumstances or by nature, had become a deep thinker at a remarkably early age. She also showed an interest in her father’s private life, although this was an area where she had to tread lightly.

One day she came up to Sandy in the lab with a tattered movie script under her arm.

“Hey, Dad. You should really read this. I mean actually
read
it.”

“What is it honey?”

“One of Grandpa’s old screenplays. He asked me for an opinion because he’s thinking of shopping it around again. Remember ‘Frankie’?”

“Oh, yeah,” Sandy remarked. “Musical chromosomes. That project was before its time.”

“Right,” his daughter agreed. “But I was thinking of the love interest.”

“Did it have one?”

Olivia’s eyes twinkled. “If you believe Grandpa, every good story has to.” She hesitated and then braved, “Even yours.”

Aha, so that was where it was leading. Sandy laughed to himself.

“Frankie’s way of finding a wife should appeal to you,” she continued.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. He concocts her in a test tube. Sound interesting?”

“Sort of,” Sandy equivocated. “But what makes you think
I
would do it that way?”

She smiled wistfully. “Because honestly, Dad, you don’t seem to want to try any other.”

He was touched and amused. Clearly his daughter understood that he was still so affected by the betrayal and acrimonious divorce, that even after so many years, the only partner he might trust was one he himself could create in the laboratory.

By now the new science had even permeated the awareness of schoolchildren. Olivia’s generation had grown up knowing what DNA was, and she also knew about the Genome Project, and took pride in the fact that her father was contributing to the great undertaking in Washington.

“Tell me, Dad, when you guys finish mapping every single gene in the human body—all hundred thousand of them—does that mean every disease will be cured?”

“Oh, we’d still be a long way from that, honey. Having a map doesn’t mean we’ll have a vehicle to get there. But sometime in the next century, when you’re a full professor, you might be able to perform the last act of curing ever necessary.”

Olivia secretly resolved to do just that.

Even prostrate on the Hollywood scrap heap, Sidney remained ever hopeful, and still held captive by the Hollywood myth that just one picture—just one—could reverse the tide of his fortunes.

Naturally, Sandy offered to bankroll one of his father’s cinematic projects, but the older man was a proud patriarch.

“No, sonny boy,” he insisted. “Like Sinatra, I gotta do things my way.”

Father and son now shared a curious trait. They were
each preoccupied with showing Rochelle that she had been wrong to underestimate him.

At the outset, Sidney had found it difficult to find a company that would employ him even without a salary, and with just an illusory promise of points of the profit.

And yet he was a veteran with a track record. Admittedly, it was for what the trade regarded as “schlock,” but that was precisely what the television industry demanded. And with the passing of time, the stigma of Kim Tower’s banishment began gradually to fade.

One of the network chiefs, whose first job in the business had been as Sidney’s office boy, sensed what a potential treasure the old man still was.

When pictures for the tube have schedules of fifteen days, they must be shot in precisely that time and not an hour more. Sidney had a reputation as a dependable producer who got pages filmed. His former assistant signed him on.

Sidney was so stirred emotionally when the young man reached across the desk and shook his hand, that he was unsteady on his feet. Though he tried to drive home carefully, he could barely keep his mind on the road.

When the electronic gates opened, he drove straight to Sandy’s lab and hurried in without even knocking. He burst into his son’s inner sanctum and blurted out, “Hey, kiddo—great news—I’m in business again!”

Sandy was elated. “Oh Dad, that’s wonderful.”

As he embraced his father, they both broke down and began to sob.

Sidney was a man reborn. He tackled his new duties with gusto. Though he had his own kitchen, he and Sandy dined together most nights. With persistent frequency, Sidney would turn the discussion to the latest medical therapies.

“The audience loves diseases, kiddo. They can’t get enough of them—as long as the people get cured in the
final minute. That’s why we stockpile AIDS stories—as soon as the doctors lick it, we can be on the air within a week.”

His father went wild when Sandy told him of the true case of a woman in South Africa who had given birth to her own grandchildren. He had read about it in one of the journals.

“Can you believe it, Dad—a woman gave birth to her own grandchild?”

Sid’s eyes widened. “What’s that, sonny boy? Can you run that by me again?”

“It was in South Africa. It seems her daughter couldn’t have kids, so the doctors took out the girl’s ova, fertilized them in vitro, and then implanted them in her mother. Nine months later—”

Sidney’s expanding imagination finished the thought. “I dig, I dig. The baby’s not just a double daughter, she’s also a grandchild—and her own aunt!”

The thought suddenly sent them both into hysterics.

“Isn’t that wild?” Sandy gasped.

“Yeah. It’s absolutely dynamite.” He then leaned over and whispered conspiratorially, “Who else have you told about this, sonny boy?”

“No one, Dad. But I told you, it was published in—”

“I’ll take down that stuff later. Right now, you have another 7UP, while I go and make some calls.”

Fifteen minutes later a radiant Sidney reappeared.

“Did it, kiddo—did it. I caught Gordon Alpert at home and cut a deal with CBS to develop ‘My Mother Had My Baby.’ Like the title?”

“Yeah, Dad. It’s neat.”

“Well, I got you to thank for it, sonny boy. I owe you one.”

“Forget it, Dad. You already gave me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, look at it this way,” Sandy reasoned. “That
film and I have something in common. We’re both Sidney Raven Productions.”

The old man beamed with love.

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