Fridays at Enrico's (39 page)

Ziggie laughed. “They're paying you for a draft, and they want to get ten drafts for their money. Ignore them. Unless they say something you can use.”

At the end of his six weeks Charlie was halfway through the story, and the script was already a hundred pages long. “Keep writing,” Fishkin told him, and the checks kept coming. Charlie finished his first draft at the end of ten weeks, looked at himself in the full-length mirror, and discovered to his amazement that the writing had cost him forty-six pounds. Otherwise he looked healthy, except for his eyes, which were bloodshot from marijuana. Of course he didn't smoke while working, only afterward, before he showered. He wasn't drinking, it made him muzzy in the morning. How could Jaime still go out and get roaring drunk and then get up at six the next morning and start writing? Charlie was getting old. Maybe Jaime wasn't.

He sent the script down to be professionally typed at Barbara's Place, a typing service they told him to use, and when the copies came back in covers he was surprised to see that the count was two hundred and forty-five pages. Barbara's Place had sent copies to Fishkin-Ratto and Zeigler-Ross, and Charlie set himself to hear the bad news. Far too long. Too many gloomy characters. Too much profanity. Not enough women. No sex. No good guys. Gunfire without resolution (Fishkin had told him that gunfire had to resolve something or it was exploitative). Ziggie told him to relax, that this often took a couple of weeks, but Charlie wasn't ready to relax. He'd tossed a hand grenade and he wanted to hear it explode.

Kenny Goss was getting to be a problem. Jaime told Charlie about going looking for Kenny and finding him quite crazy, wandering North Beach muttering about angels. Kenny had wiped himself out on speed. Charlie remembered when speed had first run through North Beach in the late fifties, turning hipsters into murderous punks. Charlie hated speed. It made you think you were smarter and faster, but when you reach for your dick, you can't
find it. He preferred cocaine, a cleaner, clearer high, and also natural. Speed, he'd heard, was something thought up by Hermann Göering and his Luftwaffe scientists, because Göering was afraid the war would cut off supplies of cocaine from South America. Charlie didn't care. The shit was wrecking Kenny Goss.

Kenny seemed to have developed a crush on Jaime. He thought she had the answers. Famous, successful, a really fine writer, and yet nothing had spoiled her. She was still a fine human being. These were all Kenny's words. Kenny reminded him, sadly, of the young thief who wrote pulp stories and then vanished. Charlie couldn't believe he wasn't able to summon the name. The thief, too, had come around Jaime wanting to find love. He too had been quiet and secretive. Thinking of him made Charlie recall Linda McNeill and his only act of adultery. Wherever Linda was, he imagined her tanned and beautiful, hauling in sail somewhere out in the deep Pacific. He hoped.

Many afternoons Charlie would emerge from his office to see Kenny's white pickup out in the gravel drive, and find Kenny in the kitchen or out in back, talking to Jaime or Kira, or even Mrs. Hawkins. Charlie had to explain to Kira why Kenny was sometimes so strange.

“He's taking medicine that's bad for him,” Charlie said. Kira knew what speed was, and said so. “Well, that's what he's taking,” Charlie admitted. “And it makes him crazy.” He didn't add that he preferred Kira not taking drugs, but she said, “Daddy, all your friends take drugs,” which kind of ruined his moral position in advance. So far as he could tell Kira didn't even drink. Charlie had started drinking at ten or eleven. Everybody knew he had.

“How's your book coming?” he asked Kenny one day, right after he'd turned in his script. They were both at the no name bar in Sausalito, drinking beer on the patio, in the dappled light from the overhead greenery. Kenny smirked down at the table, then said, “I can't do it anymore.”

Charlie let that sit. There wasn't anything to say. Here was a fine young mind blown to pieces by amphetamines. Was there anything encouraging to say? He drank his beer.

“What's it like, being married?” Kenny asked him.

Charlie was surprised. “Why do you want to know?”

Kenny smiled at him. He was a handsome man, with pale blue eyes. He'd have no trouble attracting women. But Charlie had never seen Kenny with a woman, except talking to them in bars. He wondered if Kenny Goss was homosexual. No, he couldn't be, he was in love with Jaime. Charlie said, “You looking for a wife? Maybe that's a good idea. To answer your question, being married is good. For me, necessary. Without Jaime I'd be dead meat.” In saying it he realized it was true.

“I'm dead meat,” Kenny said. He drained his beer.

“No, you aren't,” Charlie lied. “You're a good man and a good writer. But you need to get off that shit.”

Kenny smiled sadly and stood. “I need to do something,” he said. Charlie watched him leave the patio and walk through the dark of the bar.

He saw Kenny again just after getting the call from Hollywood. “Come on down,” said Ratto cheerfully. “We have to pitch this thing.” Kenny wasn't so cheerful, but he too had good news. He showed up at their house at night, nearly ten o'clock, and had a woman with him. She was thin and freckled, a nice-looking person, maybe twenty-five. She and Kenny stayed next to each other throughout the fairly uncomfortable fifteen minutes of the visit. Her name was Brenda Feeney, and they were to be married. They'd met in a bar in the city and fallen in love in three days. Now they were driving down to Modesto to meet her parents and get hitched. Brenda was a student. After they left, full of good wishes from the Monels, Charlie asked Jaime, “What do you think?”

Jaime shrugged. “Maybe a little nookie will do him good.”

Charlie had to laugh. Women were something.

72.

Charlie's weekly pay had come from Fishkin-Ratto's own bank account. Now the job was to take the gigantic mess Charlie had written and turn it into a
“selling document.” Something to show the bankers. Something that would excite their greed. “What we need is a treatment,” Bud Fishkin said. Charlie sat in one of the red leather chairs opposite Fishkin. In the other, a fake Thompson machine gun, a prop from Fishkin's last movie. Charlie wondered at the symbolism of the machine gun resting barrel-up in Bill Ratto's chair. Bill was in New York. “We don't need him for this, do we?” Fishkin asked Charlie slyly.

“What's a treatment?” Charlie asked. “I mean, technically.”

Fishkin shrugged. “Whatever we want it to be,” he said. “The point is, we want something on paper we can leave with them, that they can read over in our absence. But make no mistake,
we
have to sell the story.” Charlie understood that he and Fishkin were eventually going to have to walk down the corridor of the third floor to the office of the head of the studio and pitch their movie.

“But first, there's somebody I want you to meet, another writer. If you guys get along, maybe you can work together on pulling this script together.” Charlie must have made a face. Fishkin smiled. “I know, you'd rather work alone. You're a novelist. But in the movies nobody works alone.”

“I don't mind,” Charlie said. “I can use all the help I can get.”

Fishkin looked at his watch. “He should be here soon. You'll probably get along. This guy's an ex-con.” Fishkin gave Charlie a deep look. “But he's also a writer with three books, very tough pulp stuff.”

“What's his name?”

“Stan Winger,” Fishkin said. “Have you read any of his stuff?”

How strange. Charlie had so recently been trying to summon that name. He grinned happily. “Yes, I have.”

Even so Charlie didn't recognize him when he came into the room. Charlie remembered Stan as a twenty-four-year-old with an unformed face and a body without definition. The man who entered the room was lithe and muscular, darkly tanned, with a face both hard and humorous. He wore a faded blue workshirt and faded jeans, and suddenly Charlie knew where Fishkin got his taste in clothes.

Charlie stood. It was obvious Stan didn't recognize him. Of course Charlie was older too, and bearded now, and even slimmed down was heavier than he'd been in Portland. He held out his hand and saw the polite expression on Stan's face, felt his hard grip. “Stan Winger,” Stan said.

“Charlie Monel,” Charlie said.

“I'll be a son of a bitch,” Stan said. He hugged Charlie.

“You crazy asshole,” Charlie said. They looked at each other, still holding onto each other's shoulders.

“Charlie,” Stan said, his eyes glistening.

“Ex-con, huh?”

“Sorry I didn't write.”

Fishkin came up to them, smiling. “You know each other?”

“This guy was my creative writing teacher in Portland,” Stan said.

“And this guy was my best student.”

“Well look at this,” Fishkin said. “I must be a genius.”

Once they'd finished with Fishkin they walked down the third floor corridor to the stairwell, Charlie with his arm over Stan's shoulder, like he didn't want to let him go again. The meeting had fallen apart, of course, and they agreed to come back and try tomorrow. All Charlie wanted to do was sit with Stan and talk. Once outside, they crossed the wide, sunbaked lot to their cars.

“How's Jaime?” Stan asked. “How's Kira?”

“They're fine. How about you? Married?”

Stan smiled at the ground and said, “Well, sort of,” and Charlie shut up about that. Stan had published three books and Charlie hadn't even heard of them, but Stan knew all about Jaime's career. Nothing had to be said about Charlie's. At his rental Volkswagen, parked in the shade of one of the big sound studios, Stan said, “Let's go in my car.” A brand new Cadillac, Charlie noted, a black convertible, whose top automatically folded back when Stan pushed a button on the dashboard. They drove out through the gate and Stan said he knew a bar.

“I'm new to Los Angeles,” Charlie said. “You can take me anywhere you want.”

They got roaring drunk at a little neighborhood bar out in the middle somewhere, not in Hollywood or Westwood or any of the places Charlie knew. After they were drunk, Stan whispered to him that it was a thieves bar, and everybody in it except he and Charlie were thieves. Charlie looked around. They looked ordinary to him. “Sometimes I just have to be among thieves,” Stan said.

As they drove back to the lot for his car, Charlie was reminded of their project. His former book. “Can we do this thing?” he asked Stan.

“They didn't tell me anything except that they had this new writer who needed help,” Stan said. He told Charlie that Fishkin-Ratto wanted to produce his new book, which was due out in a year.

“What's it about?” They pulled up next to Charlie's Volkswagen.

“Some guy in prison,” Stan said, almost shyly. They agreed to meet in twenty minutes at the Troubadour. Charlie felt wonderful, drunk as he was, and waved cheerfully at the cop as he went out the gate. The Troubadour wasn't open yet, and Stan stood arguing with some guy at the door. Charlie parked.

“He won't let us come in and sit down,” Stan said.

“We're not open for twenty minutes,” the guy said. A tall thin hippie with a leather hat and greasy yellow curls.

“Can't we just come in and sit down?” Stan asked. “We won't make any trouble.”

“Yeah,” said Charlie.

“The place is closed,” the guy said.

“Fucking Hollywood,” Stan said. “Let's go to Dan Tana's. More high class.”

“Aren't we too drunk?” Charlie asked. “We could go to my motel. Two fucking blocks away. Pick up a sixpack, drink beer, and talk over old times.”

“Fuck that noise,” Stan said. He'd certainly changed a lot, good old Stan Winger. They got into Stan's car and drove to Dan Tana's, which turned out to be an Italian Restaurant where a lot of Hollywood people drank and even sometimes ate. Seated at the bar, they began putting away Wild Turkeys. “Let's get really drunk,” said Stan. “I'm not on parole anymore. I can do any fucking thing I want.”

“Okay,” said Charlie happily. “We have to call Jaime.” The place was noisy as hell, and he had to cover his free ear to use the payphone. Kira answered, and Jaime wasn't home. “Guess who I met in Hollywood?” he said.

“I don't know.” Obviously Kira didn't care.

“Stan Winger,” he told her anyway. “An old friend, from when you were a baby.”

“Oh, I remember him.”

“You couldn't possibly,” Charlie said. He told her to wait and brought Stan to the telephone. “Here, it's my daughter, she says she remembers you.”

Stan took the phone, looking at Charlie. “Hello?” he said. He listened for a while, and then a smile appeared on his face. “My God,” he said softly. “You do remember.” When he handed the instrument back to Charlie there were tears running down his face. At the bar they ordered fresh shots. “She remembers me carrying her down the hill, over at Latourette's. Jesus Christ.” He turned to Charlie. “I thought about you people, when I was in the joint.”