The Wisdom of Perversity (35 page)

The Best Laid Plans

February 2008

FIRST THING IN
the morning Jeff called with what seemed to Brian to be the best possible news: after fighting with the studio over the ending for two hours, he had phoned his LA home and told Halley everything.

“Everything?” Brian said, winking at Julie who, very domestically, happened to be serving him scrambled tofu and tempeh bacon, both of which she regarded skeptically. For Danny, the Moran with the bad heart, she had run out to the supermarket and to his delight made a deadly breakfast of eggs and pork sausages.

“Everything about Cousin Richard, Sam, you, and Julie. Not everything about me and I'd appreciate it if you didn't talk about you-know-what.”

“I don't really know you-know-what, Mr. Jeff. Mostly what I know are assumptions.”

Jeff reported that although Halley was angry he had kept these painful childhood secrets from her, she agreed he must go public. She was frantic about how that might affect their family—she was removing their two kids from school for the week, flying to Phoenix to stay at her mother's while the media storm raged. “And she's really pissed, totally furious at me for never telling her anything about all this. She says we have to go into therapy to work on intimacy issues.
My
intimacy issues, she means. Therapy. Fuck. If only it was just therapy. I've got to start going to her spiritual adviser, her aroma therapist, and Bikram yoga.”

“Yoga.” Brian laughed.

“Get in touch with my body in a good way.”

“That's why I'm laughing,” Brian said. This hilarious report relaxed him about Jeff's commitment. With Halley's drowning him in chicken soup for the soul LA-style, and reassuring him he wasn't going to lose his children, Jeff wouldn't waver.

An hour later, he felt a fool for that confidence. Jeff called back. Brian was alone. The day nurse had arrived, given Danny his medications, made sure he didn't need help showering and dressing before taking him out for a slow healthful walk by the river. Julie had left to update Amelia over coffee before they went into work.

“Can you and Julie get to my hotel by eleven, eleven thirty at the latest,” Jeff demanded more than asked. “Rydel's agreed to meet us. And he's bringing Cousin Richard.”

“What the fuck for? Who asked him?”

“Me. I want to tell them, especially Cousin Richard who's old and who can't possibly want to die in prison, that after we go public that's likely to happen if they don't voluntarily confess and make a deal with the prosecution.”

“I see.” Brian was restored to the familiar bitterness and bleak comfort of his low opinion of humanity. Since last night, he had allowed himself a few hours of giddy optimism that his life might substantially change. Julie had relaxed the tension that had kept him clenched against affection, allowed him to hope that from now on he needn't always hold his heart in reserve from the people he loves. “So you're still trying to save your ass, Mr. Jeff.”

“All our asses!” Jeff said. “Don't tell me you really want to go public. You want every shmuck to have the Rosetta stone to your sex life? Have every fucking reviewer go: ‘We can't help but look at the theme of this new play in light of his unfortunate sexual history.' ”

“So what you're telling me, Mr. Jeff—”

“Stop calling me Mr. Jeff. You only called me that when you were trying to beat me at Slug.”

“Trying? I used to cream you at Slug. So what you're saying is that you've arranged a meeting with the man who molested me to spare me condescending reviews?”

“To spare all of us. Sure, me. Julie too. You think she wants her fifteen-year-old son to have all his friends at high school reading about how his mother had a cock shoved down her throat?”

“Jesus,” Brian mumbled. Of course sparing Julie was worth the effort. Bad enough Klein had poisoned the well of sweetness in her nature. Her black eyes shined, her soft voice strengthened whenever she talked about Zack. Why let Klein spoil everything in her life?

“Jesus, what?”

Brian did not want to explain why today he felt Julie's wounds as if they were his own. “Just disgust. At what he did to her.”

“We all had something disgusting done to us. I was raped.” He cleared his throat noisily. “Happened once. But it happened.”

“Sorry, Jeff.” He had to stop thinking only about himself, his ridiculously tender feelings. “I'm sorry.”

“Not you, huh?” Jeff loudly cleared his throat again. “Glad to hear it.”

“Yeah, I got off easy. I was merely . . . diddled, as my father put it.”

“You told Danny!” Jeff was flabbergasted.

Brian ignored that. He was back to being suspicious of Jeff's plan. He didn't believe Klein or Rydel would admit guilt, no matter what they were threatened with. They had too much to lose. More likely what would happen during the meeting is that Jeff would find some reason to back out of his agreement to go public. As all Hollywood successes tended to be, Jeff would be adept at convincing himself that any compromise of principle was actually for the best. Klein and Rydel would agree to pay a private penance and penalty and Jeff would insist that was good enough. The face-to-face would become an about-face; Jeff, Klein, and Rydel would gang up on Brian and Julie for being stubborn. He and Julie would be put into the same hopeless position of screenwriters bullied by director, producer, and studio executive into making changes that would eviscerate their story's truth, or else their movie wouldn't be made at all. “Why don't you tell Klein what we're going to do on the phone? Why do we all have to meet? Julie and I could eavesdrop. Or even watch. You could Skype!” He announced with mock excitement.

Now it was Jeff's turn to ignore Brian. “What did your father say when you told him?”

“Like you, he worries more about critics than about Christ's forgiveness.”

“He's totally fucking right. How long do you think it'll take before people start seeing creepy stuff in my movies and suddenly I'm not every American family's favorite director.”

So here was the panic's source: his reputation as an artist was threatened. Brian paced his cramped kitchen, desperate for a compelling argument. When his eyes lit on the window's view of the multimillionaire's garden, he was inspired to appeal to Jeff's true love. “You know, you're being really stupid about this. Critics' finding out about your tortured childhood will allow them to reevaluate your blockbuster hits and claim they have gravitas. They'll discover all kinds of profundities in your car chases and aliens. At long last you'll win your Oscar and you can look Spielberg in the eye. Best thing: you won't even have to do a movie about the Holocaust.”

“Fuck you.”

“I'm serious. Sure the macho asshole agents and studio execs will make jokes about your taking it up the ass, but the rest of the world will have a reason to stop envying you and start feeling sorry for you. There's nothing that makes an artist more beloved than the audience pitying him because his work comes at a price they would never pay.”

A silence. During it, Brian wondered if he believed his clever pitch. It seemed plausible enough. Of course his rosy scenario wasn't all-encompassing: contrarians would point out that Jeff had avoided treating the subject directly, thus forfeiting providing insight, and eventually someone would figure out that Jeff had covered up Klein's and Sam's proclivities long after he was a mere child, that as a newly successful young director he had lent his name to the broadcasting school and given money to Klein's charity. He claimed to be totally ignorant of what Sam was doing, but he could have denounced Klein.
Nor did I,
Brian reminded himself.
Let the self-righteous judge him. I can't.

Jeff was having his own difficulty with setting a moral compass. “Brian, all this is still really about Cousin Richard—”

Brian interrupted sharply: “Stop calling him Cousin Richard, for chrissakes. Were you permanently infantilized by Klein? What kind of therapy were you in? Didn't your shrink at least make you examine why you can't stop behaving like an abused little boy?”

“Okay, okay, okay,” Jeff said, pleading as if he were being hit. “I'll call him Dick,” he said, reverting to his usual sarcasm. “Dick, Dick, Dick. That more grown-up?”

“I'd prefer Klein, but anything other than Cousin Richard, please.”

“Okay, but my point is, whatever anybody else thinks, this is all about Klein. I mean, let's be honest, whatever Rydel is now, he's not that different from us.”

“Really? Have you been raping children? It's something I've managed to avoid.”

“Come on! He was an orphan. He had no one else. He was at Cousin Rich—Sorry. He was at Klein's mercy twenty-four/seven. You could easily get away. Julie too. Me less so, but Sam was totally vulnerable. Klein took over his whole life.”

“Are you saying that anyone—you, me, Julie, anyone who suffered what Sam did at Klein's hands—would have become a child rapist? Don't you think there's some choice? Some part of who we are fundamentally that is finally able to find the strength to say, ‘No.' ”

Another silence. “Maybe. Rydel's not an artist,” Jeff said, his voice faint. “He has no talent, no way of working through it.”

“How did Julie ‘work through it' ?”

“She's a woman.”

“So what?”

“They're nurturers. Even when they're monsters, they think they're taking care of you. Julie could raise her son. And she had a husband—you saw him, he's her big overgrown toddler.”

Brian wasn't happy to be discussing Julie's marriage. “He seems grown-up enough to me,” he mumbled. “And Jeff, here's a tip in case you find yourself discussing this with Charlie Rose or Oprah: don't mention this theory that women don't need to be artists because they can have children. They'll take away the Oscar you don't have.”

“Jesus, I didn't mean it like that. I meant—”

“This is just delaying the inevitable. What the hell are we supposed to do in your hotel room with Klein and Rydel? Scold them?”

“I'll do the talking. You back me up, so they know all three of us mean business. They can't buy us off and they can't make all three of us look like liars.”

Brian leaned his forehead against the chilly window's glass. On the second floor of the investment banker's townhouse, a little dark-haired boy was riding an enormous plastic tricycle designed to resemble a toddler's version of a Harley chopper. A very young woman, maybe a teenager, a tall colt with blonde hair halfway down her back was following him as he pedaled around the playroom, hovering as if every inch of him was precious. Was she the au pair? Imagine being a little rich boy with a beautiful loyal girl for a caretaker.
Well,
Brian consoled his envious heart,
with any luck there'll be justice and he'll grow up to be a meth head.
“I'll talk to Julie and get back to you,” he said.

He didn't call Julie's cell until he was uptown, emerging from the subway at Sixty-fifth and Broadway. “I'll be right out,” she said after he relayed Jeff's request.

In the raw, hopelessly gray February day, Julie immediately kissed him on the lips and snuggled against his down jacket, so he had almost no choice but to put a puffy arm around her. She beamed a giddy look of romance at him. He disengaged gently, facing her. “So . . . ? What do you think? Should we indulge Jeff or not?”

Julie nodded vigorously. “Definitely. I want to tell Klein to his face what we're going to do. I definitely want to tell him. Don't you? And I want to see him. I don't care how old and sick he is. I won't pity him. I'll spit in his face.” She looked angry and disgusted: a bitter taste tightening her mouth, making her wince. Her feelings made sense to Brian but he didn't share them. He was a little frightened of meeting Klein, old wreck though he might be. He wasn't sure of what precisely he feared. Not of anything Klein might do or say.
What I might do?

“Okay,” he told Julie, “But that's not what Jeff is up to. He thinks we're going to convince Klein and Rydel to confess, like a
Law & Order
episode.”

She shrugged, retook his arm, leaning on him as they walked to the curb. “That won't happen,” she said.

Again he extricated himself from her clutch. “Just be prepared. If they offer some kind of bullshit compromise, paying a lot money, some kind of rehabilitation therapy but no admission of guilt in exchange for us not going public, don't be surprised if Jeff jumps on it.”

“Nothing will stop me, Brian. Nothing. I'll do this alone. Even without you.”

He unzipped a pocket to reach his iPhone. “I'll call Jeff, tell him we're coming over now. He's a director so he wants to rehearse.”

In the cab, she slid across to his side and rested her head on his shoulder. She lay her hand on top of his, trying to insinuate her fingers between his knuckles. He moved away sharply, his hip pushing her off.

She studied him solemnly for a moment, then asked, “What's wrong?”

“Well, lots of things are wrong with me, as you know, but mostly at the moment what's going on? You're married. And not to me.”

“I was just holding your hand.” She thrust her strong chin forward, black eyes flashing.

“You're acting like we're lovers,” he said.

She stared. The beauty marks under each of her shining eyes were clearly visible today. He had told her what they meant to him, requested she not pancake them away. “We are lovers,” she said finally. “If you don't want to be, say so.”

“Lovers? It was just . . .” He hesitated, ashamed of his cruelty. He gestured helplessly.

“It was just what?”

“An encounter. That doesn't make us lovers. It certainly doesn't merit threatening your marriage.”