Agent to the Stars

  One more minute of the thoughtful thing. “All right, fine,” Roland said. “I don’t suppose it could hurt to give her a look. And if, God forbid, she pans out and we get this production on track, all the better. To tell you the truth, Tom, I was thinking of abandoning Hard Memories altogether for another project, which is actually along the same lines—Holocaust drama, that is.”

  “Really,” I said.

  “Yes. Well,” Roland ducked his head in what I suspected was his version of a shrug, “it’s not really a project yet. It’s just a script—came into our slush pile by a student at NYU, but it’s marvelous. It’s about a Polish poet, a Catholic, who is put in a Nazi concentration camp for helping Jews during World War II.”

  “Krzysztof Kordus?” I asked.

  Roland looked surprised. “Yes, right, that’s the man. Again, Tom, I’m impressed. Most people in this business don’t know about anything they didn’t read in Variety. Anyway, this script is brilliant, really moving. They did a thing on this Kordus fellow a couple decades back on television,”—again, the word was almost spat—“but this script is far beyond what they did with that. The problem now, of course, is getting clearance to use the man’s works in the film. I’m going to have Rajiv chase down who’s in charge of Kordus’s literary estate, and see what we can come up with. Probably will charge us an arm and a leg for clearance. That’s the way these things work.”

  “You don’t have to have Rajiv track anything down,” I said. “I can tell you who administers Krzysztof’s literary estate. You’re looking at him.”

  Roland slipped his arm off the couch and leaned forward. “Get out,” he said. “You can’t be serious.”

  “I am,” I said. “My father was Krzysztof’s agent. When Krzysztof died, he named my father administrator of his literary estate. When my father died, I inherited the role. I tried to place Krzysztof’s estate with a real literary agent, but his family asked me to continue on. They wanted to keep it in the family, as it were. I couldn’t very well say no, so I stayed with it. It’s really not very difficult, since the deals for his books are already in place. All I do is sign off on the current arrangements and mail his daughter a check every three months.”

  “Tom,” Roland said. “I am so very glad you dropped by. Hold on a moment, and I’ll get you the script for this project. Read it and let’s talk.”

  “Two scripts, if you don’t mind,” I said. “Remember why I came here in the first place.”

  “But of course,” Roland said. “By all means, let’s set up the screen test. Will a week from today be good? Say, noon?”

  “That would be just fine.”

  “Brilliant,” Roland said, and got up. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be back in a flash.” He went out to get the scripts from his assistant. I finished my scotch. It was very good scotch.

  I called Michelle with the good news as soon as I got home. She squealed like a happy pig, which in my mind didn’t bode well for her chances for the role.

  “Thank you, Tom, thank you, thank you, thank you!” she said. “I’m so happy! I can’t believe it!”

  “Settle down, Michelle,” I said, not unkindly. “All you’re getting at this point is a reading. You haven’t got the film yet. You could go in only to find out they hate you.” This was my subtle way of getting her ready for the disappointment.

  It wasn’t working. “Oh, I don’t care,” she said. “I’m ready. I’ve been doing my reading. They’re going to be surprised. You’ll see. You’ll be there, right, Tom?”

  “Uh … ,” I said. “Oh, what the hey. I’ll be there.”

  “Tom, I could just kiss you,” Michelle said.

  “Let’s not try to ruin our client-agent relationship,” I said. Michelle giggled. I cringed inwardly and changed the subject. “Miranda tells me you called earlier with a problem with the Earth Resurrected folks. Something about a latex mask?”

  “Oh, that,” Michelle said. “Tom, they want to pour latex on my head so they can make a stand-in dummy, or something. I don’t want to do it.”

  “Michelle, it’s not that bad. They have to make those masks so they can get shots of your head doing things it doesn’t normally do, like having veins pop out or your eyes explode. Things like that. It’s a little old school, but it’s not unusual. All the great action stars have to have them made. Arnold Schwarzenegger did it before they made him governor. Really, you’re not an action star until you have one made.”

  “But they pour goo on your head, and then you sit there for hours.” Michelle said. “How do you breathe through that?”

  “As I understand it, they stick straws up your nose,” I said.

  “No way,” Michelle said.

  There was a scratching at the back door. I looked over and saw Ralph the retriever standing on the other side of the door.

  “Michelle, hold on a second, I have to let my dog in,” I said.

  “Tom, I can’t do the latex mask thing,” Michelle said. “I don’t want straws in my nose. What if I have a cold? What if they fall out? How am I going to breathe?”

  “Michelle, let me just, oh, just hold on a sec.” I placed the phone down, ran over to the door and slid it open. I ran back to the phone. Ralph walked through the door.

  “Michelle, you still there?” I asked.

  “I’m not going to do it, Tom,” she said again. “I’m claustrophobic. I can’t even put a blanket over my head without freaking out. I don’t care if they fire me or not.”

  “Don’t say that,” I said. “Listen, when are you supposed to have your mask made?”

  “A week from today,” she said. “Three in the afternoon. I have to go to Pomona.”

  “Damn,” I said. “That’s the same day as your reading.”

  “Well, then,” Michelle said. “I can’t get the mask made.”

  Ralph walked over to me and sat. I started knuckling his head, absently. “How about this,” I said. “I’ll go with you to both. I’ll pick you up, we’ll go to the reading. Once the reading is done, we’ll go to have the mask made, and I’ll make sure the straws stay in place. Okay?”

  “Tom … ,” Michelle began.

  “Come on, Michelle,” I said. “We’ll go to Mondo Chicken afterwards. I’m buying.”

  “Oh, all right,” Michelle said. “You always know the right thing to say, Tom.”

  “That’s why you love me, Michelle,” I said. I hung up, set the phone down, and knelt down to rub Ralph’s ears and coat.

  “Hey, there, Ralph,” I said, in the goo-goo voice you use with dogs. “Where’s your little friend Joshua? Yeah? Your little friend? The one that I’m gonna kill for heading off into the woods when I told him not to go? Huh? Where is the little bastard, Ralphie?”

  “Why the hell are you asking me?” Ralph said. “I’m just a dog.”

  I screamed for a really long time.

  CHAPTER Twelve

  “Eeyow,” Ralph said, after I stopped hollering. “That hurt. I would have been happy with a simple ‘Welcome back.’”

  “Joshua?” I asked.

  “Of course,” Ralph/Joshua said. “But I’m also Ralph now, too. Ralphua. Joshualph. Take your pick.”

  “Joshua,” I said. “What have you done?”

  “Tom, snap out of it,” Joshua said, irritably. “It’s obvious what I’ve done. Look, I’m a dog!” Joshua barked. “Convinced? Or do you want me to hump your leg?”

  “I know what you are,” I said. “Now I want to know why you did it. I thought you liked Ralph. I thought he was your friend, Joshua. And now look what you’ve done.” I gesticulated, looking for the right words. None came. I used the next best. “You ate him, Joshua!”

  Joshua laughed, which sounded unbelievably bizarre coming from a dog. “I’m sorry, Tom,” he said, finally. “Now I know what you’re getting at. You make it sound like I was waiting for the right moment to body-snatch Ralph. It didn’t happen that way. I told you before that the Yherajk don’t do that sort of thing. Tom, Ralph was dying.
And this was the only way to save him.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “Well, if you promise not to yell at me anymore, I’ll tell you. All right?”

  “All right,” I said.

  “Good,” Joshua said. “Let’s go into the living room. Could you do me the favor of getting me a beer?”

  “What?”

  “A beer, Tom. You know. A brew. Oat soda. Suds. I don’t have any tendrils to open things with anymore. And just because I’m a dog doesn’t mean I couldn’t use a drink every now and then. I’ll meet you in the living room.” He padded out. I went to get him a beer, a bowl to drink it out of, and a couple of aspirin for myself, and then joined him in the living room, taking a seat in my lounger.

  I downed the aspirin, took a slug of the beer to chase them down, and put the rest of it in the bowl. Joshua lapped it up. I reached over to pet him, but then I stopped. It didn’t seem appropriate anymore. You don’t pet thinking things.

  “That’s better,” Joshua said. “Thanks, Tom.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said. “Now, what happened out there?”

  “Ralph had a heart attack,” Joshua said, and I watched his mouth as he spoke. His mouth hung open as the words came out—it was like he had swallowed a radio. “We were a couple of miles from here, going up a hillside. Ralph had been fine up until then. But on the way up the hill, I heard him give a little whimper. I looked back and he had collapsed. I went back to see if there was anything wrong, but I didn’t see any cuts or bone breaks. So that’s when I entered his brain, and found out he had a heart attack.”

  “How could you tell?”

  “I could read where he was feeling pain,” Joshua said. “His whole chest felt like it was being squeezed. Ralph was confused, of course; he’s just a dog, after all. He didn’t know what was going on.”

  “Why didn’t you call me then?” I asked. “I would have come back and taken Ralph to the vet.”

  “Think about it, Tom,” Joshua said. “You were in Venice Beach at the time, remember? By the time you got back here and hiked out to where we were, Ralph would have been long gone. And even if you had got back in time and had taken him to a vet, the vet would’ve just told you there was nothing to be done. And besides, he’s not really your dog. You couldn’t have done anything.”

  That stung. Joshua must have picked up on it. “I don’t mean to imply that you had done anything wrong, Tom,” he said, gently. “Just that there wasn’t time. Even if there was, this was a better way. Ralph deserved better than to die on a vet table with strangers over him.”

  “So Ralph had a heart attack,” I said, my voice slightly husky. “What did you do then?”

  “The first thing I did was I cut off the pain,” Joshua said. “I didn’t want him feeling any pain. I also cut off his motor control, so he wouldn’t go bounding off because he was feeling better. Then I sent a tendril into his chest to see how bad it was, and whether or not we could make it back to the house. As it turned out, it was pretty bad. Ralph was old and his heart was in bad shape.

  “By this time, Ralph was pretty much out of it—his little brain was blipping all over the place, Tom. I didn’t want him to die, so I did two things. First I called your assistant and told her that we’d be late. And then I inhabited Ralph.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “Well, look at me,” Joshua said.

  “I mean, how it that different from Ralph just dying?” I said. “After all, it’s not Ralph in there, Joshua. It’s you.”

  “Not quite accurate,” Joshua said. “All of Ralph’s memories and feelings are still here. I distinctly remember being a dog and doing doggie things.”

  “But you’re not Ralph,” I said.

  “No,” Joshua admitted. “But on the other hand, Ralph didn’t die. His personality just … melded into mine. From Ralph’s point of view, he suddenly became a lot more intelligent. He’s the dog with the 180 IQ. On my end, I now know the world from a dog’s-eye point of view. I, being Joshua, am obviously going to be dominant. But don’t be surprised when I do something that reminds you of Ralph. It’s all here, in one big package. Which is why I said, ‘Ralphua.’”

  “What did Ralph think of this, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “He was good with it,” Joshua said. “Though not in any way you’d understand. I basically let him know not to worry, and he basically let me know that he trusted me. Then he and I became we. Which then became me. And I’m pleased to be alive, so there you have it.”

  I leaned back in my chair. “This is making my head hurt.”

  “Have some more aspirin,” Joshua suggested.

  I looked back down at Joshua. He sat there like a typical retriever. “What did you do with your old body?” I asked. “Did you leave it up there on the hillside? Do we need to go find it and bury it or something?”

  “Nope,” Joshua said. “It’s in here. Timesharing, as it were. Right now my old body is in Ralph’s digestive system and in his blood vessels. He’s not eating anything that I’m not eating, obviously, and my cells are doing the role of blood, transferring oxygen to his cells. See, look at my tongue,” Joshua’s doggie tongue rolled out, an albino sort of pink, “not nearly as red as it used to be. Anyway, this is only a short-term solution—controlling two bodies is a lot of work, even when I have my old body more or less on autopilot.”

  “What’s the long-term solution?”

  “Well, eventually my cells will take the place of all his cells,” Joshua said. “It’s more efficient, especially since I won’t have all these damned specialized organs to deal with. The only thing I’ll need to be concerned with is maintaining my shape and appearance, which won’t be that difficult. It’ll take about a week.”

  “What happens to the old cells?” I asked.

  “I digest them.”

  “Oh, man,” I said. “You are eating him.”

  “Tom,” Joshua said. “It’s not nearly as gross as you think. And anyway, it needs to be done—I can’t keep controlling both bodies, and my Yherajk body is more flexible.”

  “And none of this,”—I waved my hands—“conflicts with your ‘don’t take over other life-forms’ thinking.”

  “Hmmmm, well,” Joshua said. “It’s a borderline case. The limitation is ‘sentient life forms.’ We could argue whether or not Ralph, character though he was, truly qualified as sentient. Now, I think he was—a low-grade variety, you know, but that’s a matter of degree, not of kind. But I also feel that he gave me consent. Sort of. It’s something that could be argued. But I don’t feel wrong for having done it. Besides, I like being a dog. I marked every tree on the way here, you know. It’s all my territory now.”

  “Good thing my cat’s not still alive,” I said. “I think you and he may have had words about that.”

  “Hey, that reminds me,” Joshua said. “Was your cat a striped tabby?”

  “He was,” I said. “Orange. Big.”

  “Don’t know about the orange part, but I’ve got a memory of chasing a big tabby down the road a couple of years back and seeing it get squashed by a big truck.” Joshua squinted, which is a funny look on a dog. “A Ford Explorer, it looks like.”

  “Great. Ralph is a cat murderer. Just what I needed.”

  “He was just playing around with the cat, Tom,” Joshua said. “He felt really guilty about it afterwards.”

  I slapped my hands on my legs and stood up. “On that note, I’m going to get another beer. I think I could use it.”

  “Could you bring me another one, too?” Joshua asked. “Can’t open one myself, you know.”

  “Now wait a minute,” I said. “If you can’t make tendrils anymore, how did you make the call earlier today?”

  “The cell phone has a ‘redial’ button, Tom. And believe me, it was a pain in the ass to try to hit it.”

  “Where is the cell phone?” I asked.

  “Uh … .” Joshua hung his head. “I left it out on the hillside.
Sorry. I didn’t want to have to carry it in my mouth for two miles.”

  “Joshua, you’re a retriever,” I said. “That’s what you do.”

  “That’s what I did,” Joshua said. “I’m in another line of work now.”

  The next morning, Joshua and I visited Carl.

  “Well, isn’t that just the most adorable puppy!” Carl’s assistant Marcella said, leaning over her desk to look at Joshua.

  “Only on the outside,” I said.

  “Why, Tom, what a terrible thing to say,” Marcella said. “You know that dogs can pick up on what you’re saying about them.”

  “I have no doubt whatsoever about that,” I said. “Is Carl in? I’d like to speak to him, if he has a moment.”

  “He’s in,” Marcella said. “Let me see if he can see you.” She motioned us over to the waiting area. As we sat, Joshua put his paw on my foot, our signal for when he had something he wanted to say to me. I leaned down, very close to his mouth. “What?” I whispered.

  “I just want you to know, I’m having a rough time of things at the moment,” Joshua said, his voice barely above a whisper itself. “My dog nature is getting the best of me.”

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “I mean I have this incredible urge to stick my nose in every crotch that goes by,” Joshua said. “It’s driving me insane.”

  “Try to control yourself,” I said. “After this meeting I’ll take you to the park and you can sniff some other dogs’ butts. Good enough?”

  “You’re mocking me, aren’t you,” Joshua said.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “Tom?” Marcella looked over to us. “Carl will see you now.” She crinkled a smile and wiggled her fingers at Joshua. Joshua surged, as if to make a beeline for her lap. I held him by his collar and dragged him into Carl’s office. Carl was at his desk, glancing at a Hollywood Reporter. He set it down as I closed the door.