The Fictional Man (3 page)

Fictionals paired off with each other occasionally, although rarely. The ratio of male to female Fictionals – mostly Fictionals were male, white and straight, thanks to the prejudices of the Hollywood system – meant such couplings were few and far between. When they did happen, the press found such ‘slash pairings’ utterly adorable, like a wedding between two of the cutest little puppies in the world.

Other Fictionals usually didn’t comment.

But Fictional sex – no matter who with – was a very rare thing. In the main, Fictionals were carefully designed to sublimate their sexual desires into their roles – there was nothing unusual in a Fictional falling deeply in love with an actor’s portrayal of a character, and then treating the actor his-or-herself as a completely different person, a fellow professional doing a job. For a Fictional to fall in love with a human being rather than a fellow fictional character would be a rebellion against everything they knew, against their very nature.

They just weren’t built that way.

R
ALPH GROANED, AND
Niles could see the distaste in his face deepening to disgust. “Some days, I wish I
was
a real therapist. Some of these people need help.” He shuddered. “Try this on for size – I had a client once who walked in, dropped his trousers and started literally beating off in the chair. I tried dragging him out of it, but that just sent him over the edge. He was calling me his
Daddy.
”

Niles blinked for a moment. “Wait. When you say
over the edge
...” He shifted in the chair, nervous.

Ralph had the decency to look embarrassed. He nodded to the chair. “I did clean it. Thoroughly. With bleach. It’s been completely disinfected – hell, I’d sit in it myself.” Noticing the look on Niles’ face, he indicated the chair he’d been sitting in earlier – a stiff-backed wooden chair that looked like it would have been more at home around a dining table. “But feel free to sit in that one.”

Niles hesitated for a moment.

The author was a man of the world, of course. He didn’t want to give the impression that he was bothered by something as minor as sitting on a chair that had once been –

– he got up hurriedly.

Ralph sighed, looking at the chair with venom, and then returned to the sideboard to pour another drink. Niles opened his mouth to ask for one, but he reminded himself that it was only apple juice. What he needed after that revelation was whiskey.

Ralph took a sip of the drink and smiled. “You’re meeting Maurice after this?”

Niles fell greedily on the change of subject. “That’s right. I am indeed.” He leaned back on the creaking new chair, trying to keep his voice from getting too smug. “Apparently, he’s been talking to a studio – one of the big ones, in fact. Talisman Pictures. They might just have some screenplay work lined up for me. According to Maurice, it could –
could –
be the big one.”

Cutner raised an eyebrow. “You’re kidding. They’re doing a Kurt Power movie?” He sounded shocked.

Niles ignored the implicit criticism in the tone. He’d been wanting to see a Kurt Power film for years, ever since he’d created the character in his exciting debut novel,
Power Of Attorney: A Kurt Power Novel.
(He’d dropped the lawyer angle after he’d realised how much research was involved.)

For the leading man, he could just about see Cruise, or Clooney, or Pitt. But those were second choices. He knew there was only one person who’d really be perfect for it.

He could picture the scene now.

The author watched, breathless, as the adult body of Kurt Power grew in the translation tube, day by day. Like a proud papa, he would lay his hands on the tube, gazing in wonderment at the creation of life taking place before him. A life that could not have been without the first spark of genius that had come from his very pen.

Then the first meeting with him, in some executive’s office.
They shook hands, the author smiling paternally. “Welcome to the world,” he said, in gentle tones that rang with a hidden steel. Kurt Power could only look upon his Creator in silent wonder.

Niles knew that Kurt Power, when he emerged, would know all about him – what he’d done, the part he’d played in Power’s existence. He’d be grateful for that – intensely grateful. But it wouldn’t stop the two of them becoming close friends. After all, Niles reflected, Niles Golan, ground-breaking author, was just the sort of person Kurt Power would count as a close friend. Just the kind of person he’d respect.

“You’re a good Joe, Niles,” Kurt drawled, in the authentic voice of the American working man. “You sure are a gosh-darned good Joe.”

And people would see him on the streets, on sets, in gossip magazines.
“That’s Kurt Power,” breathed the beautiful stenographer, her full, firm breasts heaving with undisguised admiration. “The new Fictional. Based on the Niles Golan books – have you read them? He’s like a young Thomas Pynchon, with just a hint of Ernest Hemingway,” she sighed, orgasmically.

It would be all he’d ever wanted.

Niles couldn’t help but smile. Cutner was right - it would be like being a god. A benevolent god.

He chuckled modestly.

“Well... we’ll see.”

CHAPTER TWO

T
HE
M
AN
F
ROM
Talisman Pictures had the smile of someone intimately acquainted with success,
used to getting exactly what he wanted. The easy smile of a winner at the game of life.

The author, not to be outdone, shot back a steely grin, fire glinting in his elegant hazel eyes. He was amused at all the Hollywood game-playing, but he knew he could eat this man for breakfast, if necessary.

Niles smiled back, weakly, his clammy hands shifting to and fro as he tried to work out where to put them. After another few awkward seconds, he stuck out his hand to be shaken, hoping his palm wasn’t too sweaty.

“Miles!” said The Man From Talisman Pictures, smiling wider. “Baby!”

N
ILES HAD MOVED
to Los Angeles eleven years earlier, after a brief period in San Francisco. He’d moved to America on a whim, after England lost its appeal for him following a particularly scathing review in the
Times Literary Supplement.

During his first month in San Fran, he’d met a young and vivacious woman named Iyla Johri, with a smile that – at the time – he’d found captivating. On their second meeting, he’d compared it to the smile of the Mona Lisa, and he’d been able to tell just by her surprised reaction –
“really?” –
that nobody else had had the imagination to make such an off-beat comparison.

By their fourth date, he’d found out that she handled public relations for a publisher of children’s books, she liked tea with a dash of honey and lemon, and she had two small moles on the back of her shoulder, like a figure eight. The two of them were soon living together, and when Iyla found a much higher-paying job with an animation studio in Los Angeles, Niles had followed her there. On their first night in the new place, he’d proposed.

Part of him had expected Hollywood to open itself up like a flower within a few weeks, bestowing the sweet nectar of celebrity on him almost the moment he arrived. He’d imagined that people would know him there – know Kurt Power, at least – but, as it turned out, he was just one more D-List semi-somebody in a city that had far more than its fair share of them. Like everyone else in town, he had a screenplay he’d made a couple of desultory attempts to sell – a powerfully erotic thriller centred around the outbreak of an infectious skin disease, which he still secretly believed was a masterpiece. His agent, however – a conservative woman in her sixties named Agnes Cowan who lived in Dorset – was far more interested in keeping the Kurt Power money flowing than in helping his client on any risky changes of career. Before long Niles was back to his old routine, putting out at least one new Kurt Power novel every year and spending the remaining time on other projects, which somehow never included the movies.

And so things had continued for almost eleven fruitful years – punctuated here and there by a little personal stress, but that was life – until the summer of 2012, when Agnes had died suddenly after being gored by a ram during an ill-fated visit to a petting zoo, a tragic event that had forced Niles to take on a new agent. Maurice Zuckerbroth, who claimed to be thirty-nine – and had been making that claim for years – was a short, chubby, slightly oleaginous man with a black moustache, a dyed-black comb-over and a perpetual air of slightly anxious over-enthusiasm. Niles wouldn’t have gone to a man like that under ordinary circumstances, but Zuckerbroth was the man who’d somehow sold
The Wizard Games
to Fantasia Films, which had made the original author – Helen something – a household name. If he was willing to do something similar for Kurt Power... well, Niles wasn’t about to say no.

Maurice, on their first meeting, had promised faithfully that not only would he keep all Niles’ current contracts running smoothly, but he would personally see to it that Kurt Power was given the green light for a big-budget picture within the year.

And now, just over eight months later, here they were.

N
ILES HAD EXPECTED
to be having the meeting in the Talisman offices – he’d had visions of dazzling a trio of sharp-suited executives at a mahogany boardroom table until they rose as one to deliver him a standing ovation – but instead Maurice had taken him to a greasy diner with a badly-painted mural taking up one wall, which was apparently where the man from Talisman Pictures liked to have his lunch meetings. As they sat and waited for their entrées
,
Niles found himself trying not to look at the poorly-proportioned Elvis, or the lumpy Marilyn, or the Bogart whose arm didn’t seem to be connected to his torso in any meaningful way, but he couldn’t quite tear his eyes away. They looked disdainfully back at him. “So retro,” said The Man From Talisman Pictures, whose name, it turned out, was Dean.

He wore a grey suit of undistinguished cut, close-cropped blonde hair and an uneven tan. Niles wondered if his slightly shabby look was a sign that he had less power within the studio system, or more. “I just can’t get enough of the décor here. It’s like outsider art. You should try the fries, they’re just... like a statement, you know?” Dean already had a bowl of the fries in front of him – they were cold and greasy, thin strips of potato that seemed like they’d been made days before and then left in a dingy corner of a walk-in fridge to congeal. Dean picked one up, looking at it for a moment, and shook his head. “It’s the irony, you know? I think Adam Sandler eats here.”

“They’re fantastic, buddy. I’ll get a bowl myself. Oh, waitress!” Maurice lifted his pudgy fingers, trying and failing to snap them. The waitress brought laminated menus, handing them over with a disdainful roll of her eyes. Maurice scanned the plastic for a moment, then shook his head. “I’m gonna have to go off-menu here, honey bun. Give me a hummus wrap, feta salad with aioli and a diet old-fashioned lemonade – no corn syrup.” He grinned wide enough to show the gold of his left molar. The waitress looked back at him as if he was an ant.

Niles coughed, feeling sheepish. “I’ll, ah, just have a glass of water.” The waitress narrowed her eyes.

“Just water?”

Niles smiled brightly. “Ah, yes. Thank you.”

She pursed her lips. “I don’t know if we do
just
water.”

Niles’ smile became fixed. “Tap water,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be bottled.”

“Tap
water.” She shook her head slowly. “I can check for it, I guess.” She looked at him out of one eye, then slowly shuffled away.

Maurice turned to Niles and nodded, looking impressed.
Power play, bro,
he mouthed. Niles didn’t really know what that meant, but it seemed good. Maurice turned his attention back to Dean. “So, is it time to talk turkey here? You got something for my boy? Maybe a little
K-to-the-P
action?” He waggled his eyebrows and grinned.

Dean grinned back, dangling another limp fry between his fingers. He still hadn’t put one in his mouth. “‘Turkey’! You’re on my wavelength, Maurice!” The two of them laughed uproariously. Niles had no idea what the joke was. He felt increasingly lost. Dean dropped the fry back in the bowl, sucking on his finger for a moment, then leaned back in the plastic seat. “Okay, let’s do it to it – let’s talk for real. Like
real
for real. Okay? Miles?”

Niles shot Maurice a quick, frantic look. He should have corrected Dean the first time, but it was too late now. Wasn’t it?

The author coughed, drawing attention. “My name,” he said quietly, with a hidden steel ringing in his voice, “is Niles. With an N.” The man from the studio blinked, then shook his head deferentially.

“I am
so
sorry, Mister Golan,” he said, putting his head in his hands. “I stand revealed before you as a fool. A cringing simpleton, unworthy to even kiss the fingers that created such masterpieces as
Murder Force: A Kurt Power Novel.
Please, let us make this grievous error up to you. Let us breathe life into the majesty that is... Kurt Power.”

The author nodded, graciously.
“You can make the attempt, I suppose. Of course, I’ll have to direct it myself.”

Yes. He should say something. The situation was becoming ridiculous. “Um... Dean?” He licked his lips, wondering how to phrase it.

“What is it, Miles?”

“Actually,” the author murmured, quietly, so as not to cause a fuss, “my name is Niles –“

For a moment, the studio executive only stared, the veins in his forehead seeming to inflate like balloon animals. Then, eyes bulging, he grabbed hold of the Formica table and wrenched it out of the concrete floor, the flex of his muscles tearing the jacket from his back in two pieces. “You son of a bitch!” he howled, “You hopeless, cringing piece of nothing! How DARE you correct me! I have had pus drained from my genital warts that was more important than you! You couldn’t even cut it in this town as a disease!” With that, he lifted the table into the air, spittle flying from his perfect teeth, and slammed it down on the heads of the two cowering men in front of him with enough force to crack their skulls like eggshells.