“This so-called crisis,” she continued, “I’ll bet it’s nothing. She’s just making it sound important for the fun of shutting me out.”
“Actually,” I said, “she did seem pretty upset when we got here.”
“Yes,” said Gilbert. “She told us something really bad had come up.”
“See!” she cried in bitter triumph. “She tells you about it and she doesn’t even know you. But I have to hear it from strangers!”
We assured her that Diana had confided no details of the crisis to us except that it involved her sister. Then Gilbert, spotting the houseman trembling in the foyer, suggested that he might know the scoop, having been tantrum-adjacent all morning.
“What a good idea! Phelps knows everything that happens around here!”
She raced off to intercept him, and when she returned it was clear from her malicious smirk that the shakedown had yielded results.
“Well!” she said, plopping herself between us. “No wonder she’s upset—she’s writing her memoirs!”
“Diana?”
“No, Lily. Her sister.”
“And that’s bad?” asked Gilbert.
Her laugh was as merry as it was vindictive.
“Well, yeah—for Diana. They hate each other. Apparently she’s just signed with a publisher and Diana’s going nuts.”
“Why?” asked Gilbert, thrilled to be privy to such inside stuff. “What’s Lily going to say about her?”
“That’s just it — she doesn’t know. And it’s making her crazy. She got wind of it this morning and called Lily demanding to know what she planned to say about her. Lily just blew her off—said she could read it when everyone else did. Poor Diana!” she hooted, giddy with sympathy.
I said I failed to understand why Diana should be so upset, noting gently that this would not be the first time she’d been denigrated in print.
“This is different. Lily knows everything. Gawd, if she tells even half the stories she told me at my wedding —!”
“She trashed your mother-in-law at your wedding? ”
“She wanted me to know what I was getting into. I thought it was pretty tacky myself. We’d just met and there she was telling me all this really personal stuff. But some people are like that. No boundaries.”
Gina, fearing perhaps that her lip smacking over Diana’s woes had made her seem less than kind, softened her tone. She assured us she sincerely pitied Diana even if she had brought this upon herself through a lifetime of “negative karma.” As she continued in this vein, my mind began to wander.
It wandered, of course, to Stephen. It began by conjuring once more those piercing amber eyes, loitered briefly around his sweaty, still-heaving chest before drifting due south. It then swerved painfully to the depressing likelihood that I’d never see him again after this interview. What could I possibly do to win his favor and the job? My mind went into overdrive, searching desperately for some argument or angle that might sway him.
I was much vexed by Gina’s jabbering, as the need to feign attention was hampering my concentration. But then something she’d said earlier echoed in my mind. And that’s when it hit me.
It was a cunning little plan, so cunning, in fact, that I couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to Gilbert, in whose brain “guile” is the default setting. I glanced at his face but saw no hint of the smirk that would have been blooming there had he thought of it.
As Gina droned on I pondered my plan further. Its one drawback was that, centering as it did on Lily’s memoir, it served Diana’s ends more than Stephen’s. How much better for me if my beloved shared his mother’s anxiety over the book’s possible contents. Gina had betrayed no hint of concern as to how she and her rumor-plagued husband might be portrayed. Was this because they were so friendly with Lily they had no need to fear her wrath? Or was Gina just too busy savoring Diana’s discomfort to wonder what grenades might be lobbed their way?
“Well,” I said when she finally paused for breath, “I’m glad for your sake Lily seems to like you. ”
“Why?”
“So she won’t write nasty things about you. Or Stephen. You two get along with her all right, don’t you?”
I’ve watched many a face fall in my day, but I’ve never seen one bungee quite so spectacularly as Gina’s did now.
“Gawd!” She gasped. “You think she’ll go after us too?”
“No!” I said, exulting in her fear. “I mean, you’ve always been nice to her—haven’t you?”
She made no reply, but I surmised from her stricken frown that neither she nor Stephen had ever extended to his aunt those small kindnesses that do so much, come memoir time, to stave off the stink bombs. Gina rose and began to pace fretfully.
“Gosh,” I said, “don’t tell me she’s mad at you guys too?”
“Who knows? She’s a very bitter woman! We’ve tried to be nice but that doesn’t mean we can rush off to every stupid play she does or give her parts in our movies.”
“Has she asked for them?”
“She’s constantly dropping hints. Which we ignore, of course. She was never a good actress.”
“Hmm.” I frowned. “I doubt she sees it that way.”
“Dammit!” she exclaimed, tears welling in her eyes. “Now you’ve got me all worried!”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to.”
Gilbert, blind to my purpose, kicked my shin to remind me that we were here to charm the stars, not to panic them. He rushed to comfort Gina, offering his handkerchief. She gratefully accepted and it was this fraught tableau that Diana and Stephen beheld on reentering.
Diana, finding us still infesting the place, froze. It was clear from her outraged stare that she felt our presence had ceased to constitute a creative meeting and was now more of a home invasion. Stephen wore a harried frown—proof, I hoped, that news of the memoir had perturbed him as well. His frown deepened when Gina turned to him, revealing her tear-streaked face.
“Jeez! What’d you guys do to her?”
“It’s not our fault!” mewled Gilbert. “She heard about the book— your aunt’s memoir.”
“Who told you about that?” demanded Diana.
“Phelps,” sniffled Gina. “It’s nice that someone around here lets me know what’s going on.” She raced melodramatically to her husband’s side. “Gawd, this is awful! What do you think she’ll say about us?”
Stephen’s response was an incredulous stare, which I interpreted as meaning, “You expect me to answer that?! With people here?! Why did I ever marry you, you penis-lacking albatross?”
“We’ll talk about it later, okay?”
“I’m sorry,” she replied sulkily. “I’m upset. You know how crazy she is, how desperate for attention! Who knows what kind of horrible lies she might make up about us just to sell books?”
“Nobody knows,” snapped Diana. “That’s the maddening part! She can write whatever she wants and until the damn thing comes out we have no way of knowing what she’s saying.”
“But you could know,” I said, rising suavely to my feet. “You could know everything.”
It was an elegant gambit, worthy of the best courtroom drama, and succeeded in drawing the eager gaze of all present.
“How?” asked Stephen.
“Yes, how?” echoed Diana. Her tone was withering and skeptical but her eyes betrayed a glimmer of hope.
“Well,” I began, “I’m assuming Lily won’t write the book by herself. These things are always ghostwritten. So what I propose to you is this...”
I paused for effect, then took a step toward them.
“ I go to Lily, butter her up royally, and win the ghostwriting job. Then you can read every page the very day it’s written because I’ll be the one writing it and I’ll give them to you. What you do with it all, well, that’s between you and your lawyers. But the point is, you’ll know. And you’ll know early when you can still maybe take some action—not when it’s in print and every gossip in the country’s talking about it. S
o, what do you say? Interested?”
I have seldom beheld anything so gratifying as the look that now shone on the faces of all three stars. It was a look of sudden, glowing reassessment, and basking in it, I felt like some lovely stenographer who’d finally removed her glasses. Equally satisfying was the look of upstaged consternation adorning Gilbert’s puss. I couldn’t blame him. Not only had I managed in one bold stroke to cast myself as the brains of the team and him as my slack-jawed sidekick — I’d done so employing techniques he regarded as proprietary.
The stars’ stunned and admiring silence was at last broken by Diana.
“Well,” she drawled prettily, “aren’t you a clever boy?”
“I’ll say!” marveled Stephen. “You would actually do that?”
“Happily.”
“Just imagine,” purred Diana. “Our own private pipeline into Lily’s diseased imagination.”
“That’s one smart friend you’ve got there!” remarked Gina to Gilbert, who responded with a small, curdled smile such as Iago might have mustered for Othello Appreciation Day.
Stephen asked how I could be certain I’d win the ghostwriting job. I’d already considered this obstacle but pretended not to have, the better to dazzle him with my improvisatory brilliance.
“Hmm,” I murmured, frowning thoughtfully. “Well, perhaps —”
“Don’t bother,” pounced Gilbert. “I’ll take it from here. What we need, Stephen —”
“I can manage, thanks!”
“— is someone close to Lily who’s greedy and who’d go for a bribe.”
“ Exactly where I was heading. A friend, perhaps, or an agent —”
“Her manager.” This from Diana. “Lou Perlmutter.”
“Weaselly?” asked Gilbert.
“He’d steal the freckles off a child star.”
“Perfect!”
“So!” I said loudly, determined to regain control of my presentation, “I contact Lou—”
“He doesn’t say a word about you people, of course.”
“I should think that was obvious. I say I’m an aspiring writer—”
“— who adores Lily —”
“Her biggest fan and I’d be grateful if he’d recommend me for the job. I offer a bribe —”
“— which Lou, being Lou, takes.”
“Then I meet Lily, lay it on with a trowel—”
“And voilà! We’re in!” concluded Gilbert, bowing like a proud magician—as if the rabbit had so much as glimpsed the interior of his own hat!
“I love it!” Diana said gleefully. “Using her own vanity against her. Just what the vengeful cow deserves.”
“So you think she’ll hire me if I flatter her enough?”
“Please! Tell her you like her movies and she’ll adopt you.”
“Gawd, we are so lucky you two showed up here today!” twanged Gina, and Stephen, to my delight, hastened to concur.
“I’ll say. You’re like the goddamn cavalry!” As he said this he reached over and squeezed my shoulder, triggering an erection so swift it was nearly audible.
“Selwyn and Cavanaugh, at your service,” chirped Gilbert, saluting buffoonishly.
“I’m just happy I can help,” I said, striking a more modest tone. “I mean, I admire you all so much. And when I see someone trying to exploit you—your own family yet—well, it’s an honor to help defend you.”
My words, I could see, had touched the stars.
“How veddy kind of you,” said Diana in that warm, quasi-British voice she reserves for period dramas and acceptance speeches.
“We really appreciate it,” said Stephen, his gorgeous eyes boring like some divine augur into mine.
“And we want you to know,” vowed Gilbert, “that Philip’s ghostwriting won’t interfere one bit with our work on the screenplay. There are three of us, after all, and Claire and I will be writing away during the hours Philip has to give to Lily.”
It is impossible to know Gilbert without periodically wishing to disembowel him with a grapefruit spoon, and I’ve never felt the impulse as keenly as I did in the moment following this demand. For it was a demand, however artfully disguised as a promise, and while this sailed over Gina’s head with ample clearance, it was not lost on Stephen or Diana. Their eyebrows arched ever so slightly and their smiles turned cool and inscrutable. What had mere seconds ago been the tenderest lovefest now felt more like a poker game and a none too friendly one at that.
Had he lost his mind? Couldn’t he grasp as I did that Stephen and Diana knew we wanted the job badly and were on the verge of offering it in gratitude for my heroism? By twisting their arms he’d accomplished nothing but to annoy them and make my offer seem less generous than calculating.
“By the way,” he added lightly, “we want to be careful who we mention this ghostwriting business to. If the wrong person got wind of it—a disgruntled ex-employee, say—they might tip off Lily and spoil everything.”
“Holy fuck!” I thought, utterly beside myself. “Now he’s THREATENING them?!” For clearly the remark was meant to warn them that if they passed over us then stole our idea we’d rat them out to Lily. The stars did not fail to grasp this (excepting, of course, Gina, who nodded gravely and said, “Good point”).
“Oh, yes,” said Diana with lethal coyness. “We wouldn’t want that, would we?”
“You’re right, Gilbert,” said Stephen, sounding for the first time like his debonairly dangerous Caliber character. “We should all be careful what we say.”
Stephen and Diana exchanged a freighted glance as though conducting a telepathic debate. Should they banish us for our effrontery? Or should they accept as reasonable the terms Gilbert had laid so discreetly on the table? It was an excruciating moment and seemed to last longer than The Iceman Cometh. At last Diana shrugged and stared languidly out the window, leaving the decision to Stephen. He turned to us, his face maddeningly unreadable.
“So... you guys know Bobby?”
“Oh, yes,” I croaked, my throat having gone very dry.
“Wonderful guy!” said Gilbert.
“We love Bobby,” said Gina.
“And he, uh, offered you this job? Before we got involved?”
“Yes, he did,” I said. “We had a really great meeting.”
“He flipped for our spec. By the way, what’d you think of it?”
“We haven’t seen it.”
“Really?” frowned Gilbert. “Make a note to send them one, Philip.”
Gina changed the topic to Greta, asking how we’d liked it. I perjured myself with gusto. She echoed my sentiments, then pointed to Stephen.
“This one, he just went nuts for it. Didn’t you, hon?”
He leaned forward in his chair. The move caused his gym shorts to ride up, exposing another inch of his thighs, which were tan, powerful, and, as thighs go, oddly expressive. He spoke in a quiet, heartfelt voice with none of the coolness he’d displayed following Gilbert’s gauche finagling.
“I think it’s an astonishing book. By the time I got to the end, I was weeping.”
“Me too,” I said, truthfully enough.
“The themes are so... universal.”
“Yes. Resonant.”
“Morality. Conscience. Courage. Growth. Transformation.”
“They’re all in there.”
“That struggle to find the humanity inside you and...”
“Push it along.”
He continued describing the book’s powerful effect on him, and the more I listened to his deep, masculine yet strangely musical voice, the more ashamed I felt at my own more cynical response to it. How shallow I’d been! How snide and flippant not to have grasped the story’s richness and beauty simply because its author, a woman of the loftiest aspirations, had an adjective problem. Stephen hadn’t missed it, and this glimpse into his deeper, more soulful side left me more besotted than ever. Here was no brainless Hollywood hunk. Here was a man of vision, a passionate and sensitive idealist, and I prayed
with all my heart that he might someday instill these noble qualities in me, preferably via fellatio.
“You’re right. It’s a magnificent book,” I declared, my admiration now unfeigned, “and we would consider it an incredible honor to help you bring it to the screen.”
I could see from their faces that this sincere, appropriately humble petition had gone over much better than Gilbert’s vulgar machinations. Stephen in particular looked relieved to see that at least one of us was a like-minded artist and not just another Tinseltown careerist. He pursed his lips thoughtfully and gazed out the window. After a moment he said, “Well, if Bobby thought you were right for it, who are we to second-guess him? Let’s do it.”
“We’re hired?” I asked in joyous incredulity.
“Yes.” He smiled. “Congratulations.”
Gilbert, never restrained in victory, leaped to his feet with an exuberance Roberto Benigni might have found unseemly.
“Thank you!” he cried. “This is great! This is fantastic!”
“We really do appreciate this,” I said, my warm professionalism a welcome contrast to Gilbert’s jejune display.
“I am so glad this worked out!” said Gina, clapping her hands like a little girl. “I have to say, Stephen didn’t think it would.”
“Well,” he amended gallantly, “we hadn’t met you guys yet.”
“And we were only doing that as a favor to Max.”
Stephen let this pass with the wan smile of a man long inured to his consort’s leaden faux pas. He extended his hand to me and I clasped it, exerting as much pressure as I dared.
“I’m really looking forward to this,” I said, flashing my most winning grin.
“Me too, Philip,” he said, smiling back.
As I gazed into those exquisite eyes, no effort at restraint could conceal the adoration shining in my own. Stephen, as though in response, gave my hand an extra little squeeze, and as he did an astonishing thing happened. His smile changed subtly; it became slyer, more playful, a discreetly salacious look such as a Rat Pack member might have bestowed on a showgirl whose husband was inconveniently present. The look came and went in the merest instant, yet I was sure I hadn’t imagined it.