The Wisdom of Perversity (8 page)

“Exactly. The doctor in
Sleep of the Innocent
knows he is a monster. Aries thought what he did with that girl was naughty, nothing more. He didn't believe it was rape. He didn't
know
it was rape. How could he? He was seven years old when the Nazis took his mother. He was seven and a half when his father sent him off alone to the countryside to escape the death camps. He managed on his own until the war ended and was finally reunited with his father at age eleven. His father had survived Auschwitz. While being repatriated, he had married another woman. This stepmother, a noble Jewish survivor of Buchenwald, by the way, took one look at eleven-year-old Aries, a child who had survived the war all by his lonesome, and decided she didn't like him, didn't want to live with him. So Aries's father left motherless eleven-year-old Aries in an abandoned apartment building in postwar Poland to fend for himself. ”

Veronica gasped. Brian was relieved, felt lucky that she didn't already know the full details of Aries's youth. Most people didn't; the rape charge overwhelmed the rest of his horrific past. “She . . . she actually refused to let Aries live with his father?”

“Said she couldn't stand the brat.”

“And I thought my three stepmothers were bad . . .” Veronica mumbled.

Brian laughed. “Good line. Anyway, that's why Aries didn't think a nearly fourteen-year-old girl is a child. He hasn't been a child since he was seven, since the Nazis took everything from him: mother, father, friends—all of Kraków, for that matter. The idea to Aries that a thirteen-year-old is being coerced who takes a quaalude, doesn't gag while giving you a blow job, and doesn't scratch your eyes out when you fuck her is nonsense.
I
know it isn't nonsense,
you
know it isn't nonsense, the editorial page of the
New York Times
knows it isn't nonsense, but Aries didn't, and he still doesn't know. What he did to her was appalling and disgusting and it was rape, an insidious and despicable rape, the overwhelming of a child's will, but Aries is not, in his heart, a rapist.”

“Okay,” Veronica conceded. “I don't agree with you. But I see your point.” A waiter hovered at her elbow while another removed Brian's salad. Veronica put her knife and fork on the plate over the uneaten asparagus stalks. The waiter reached for her plate.

Brian warned him off. “She's not done,” he said.

“I'm finished,” she explained to Brian. “I only eat the tips,” she added with an apologetic shrug. “It's a shameful waste. But the stalks are yucky. Like eating soggy celery.”

Brian smiled. “I'll have to tell that to my father.”

“Really?” Veronica leaned her elbows on the table, the long fingers of her hands forming a plateau for her chin to rest on. “Your father would be interested in my eating habits?”

“Fascinated.”

“Did you get your lovely coloring from him, your Irish father? And those china blue eyes?” She gazed at Brian as if he were the only male on Earth.

Ignore it,
Brian ordered himself. That's the autonomic seductiveness of her profession. “Thank you. Actually the eyes come from my Jewish mother. I haven't answered your question.” He glanced outside the tall window. New York was wearing its gray flannel sky today, the surly town of finance. “You asked why Aries wanted to make
Sleep of the Innocent.
People assume it's a kind of apologia, and I suppose some will think it's a weird form of community service, that the rapist in the play is a metaphorical equivalent of what he was accused of. That's all crap.” Brian returned to look at Veronica. He was relieved to see she had dropped the flirtatiousness. She was squinting with concentration while she smiled slyly, another signature look, the scheming murderess in
Passage Home,
the desperate gambler in
Hole Card,
the brilliant scientist in
Curie.
“Aries knows, better than anyone I can think of, what it is to live a life haunted by the past. His mother, friends, family, were murdered by the Nazis. And yet he rebuilt that life, became a success as a Polish filmmaker and made a family out of the film community there. Then, because of Soviet censorship he had to flee that home, that family. And when he created a third life for himself as a director in Hollywood, that too was destroyed, first by a madman who murdered his wife and unborn baby and finally by his own act of rape. This play is about the destruction of three people's lives by evil social forces: the doctor, a healer who is turned into a torturer; our brave heroine who is left dysfunctional by his torture; and her husband who is forever branded as a coward for betraying her. The movie is about trying to resolve the past for all three of these damaged people. At one time or another Aries has been each of them. He isn't doing this story to reclaim his reputation or make excuses. Aries lived without a family from seven to thirteen. At thirteen, he got into film school. He boarded there, a child among adults, and there he learned how to act, how to write, how to operate a camera, how to direct. He grew up at last, up and out of the terror of his childhood, all the while surrounded by people who wanted the same thing: to make movies. They became his family. And they are still the only family he can rely on. He's making this picture with us, with members of his family, to heal himself.”

Veronica's supple features transformed in a instant from skepticism to wonder. “To heal himself . . .” she whispered.

“To heal himself,” Brian repeated.

Her eyes glistened with tears. Brian felt a heart stopping stab of pure pleasure.
I've moved her. I've moved her with my words,
he congratulated himself, then immediately conceded the possibility:
And she's a great actress.

“Well . . .” Veronica looked contrite. “I thought I was cutting my fee in half because you can't expect a big audience for a political drama. I didn't realize I was doing psychotherapy. Now I'm ashamed I'm asking for any money at all.”

Brian chuckled.
Tears in her eyes and steel in her heart.
“You should bill Blue Cross,” he said.

She grinned. He noticed a single freckle nestled below the strong line of her jaw, as dark as chocolate.
Oh, no,
he thought with horror.
I'm starting to memorize her body.
He averted his head, pretending to look for a waiter.
What should I ask for—a side order of saltpeter?

Instead he saw their producer approaching. The legendary Gregory Lamont strode with the harried confidence of a man who had been head of a studio at twenty-four, four-time Oscar-winning independent producer by thirty-three, bankrupt by forty-five, and now in the up-ramp of a comeback at fifty. He was wearing a blue blazer over a gray crew neck cashmere sweater too tight for his swelling belly. He completed his out-of-date semicasual Hollywood look of the cocaine eighties with tailored jeans and gaudy cowboy boots—a handcrafted souvenir of his top-grossing picture,
The Yellow Rose.

“How's lunch so far?” Gregory asked as he sat down in an empty chair between them at their table for four. He smoothed his eyebrows with the index finger and thumb of his right hand, then pinched his nostrils, and lastly stroked his mustache—a nervous tic that was irritatingly familiar to Brian.

“Thanks to our brilliant writer, lunch is excellent,” Veronica said.

The producer turned from Veronica to Brian, following the flight of the movie star's compliment to its object. “He
is
brilliant.” Although seated, he buttoned his blazer as if the announcement demanded a more formal dress code. “I have good news,” Gregory said. “Aries is available to have our video-conference call now. We can do it from my office, two blocks crosstown. I've arranged a car.”

“Okay. But we haven't had our entrées.”

Gregory nodded, took a moment to consider this information, and declared, “And, of course, you want your entrées.”

“I know I'm supposed to keep my figure, Gregory, but even for a light lunch this is the anorexic special.”

Gregory announced grimly, “I'll see about them.” He stood and walked confidently toward the swinging service doors.

“He's actually going into the kitchen?” Brian wondered aloud.

“Maybe he'll make our food. Gregory's a good cook. Used to make lasagna for Scorsese no less. By the way, speaking of directors,” Veronica said, leaning in again. Those shoulders and long arms—he imagined how they would looked raised above her in handcuffs. Ah, but in his arty script, there were no tasteless flashbacks to her torture. “I just finished doing ADR on
Mother's Helper II,
” Veronica said with a mischievous look.

“Oh. Right.” His back ached. His stomach fluttered.
What does she know?
Surely Jeff had kept his mouth shut.

Lamont burst through the swinging doors like a gunfighter, heading their way.

“Guess who went out of his way to ask me to say hello to you?” she teased.

Hurry up! Say it!
He nodded to encourage her. Unfortunately, Veronica paused for him to guess. “Your director?” he whispered.

Too late. Lamont arrived in time to overhear Veronica say, “Exactly. Jeff Mark told me you were BFF as children. In fact, he told me a funny story about how you used to tape-record his parents without them knowing . . .”

“What?” Lamont, still standing, frowned down at Brian with the irritation of a boss who hasn't been kept in the loop. “You and Jeff Mark were what?”

Veronica looked up. “Our entrées?”

Lamont sat down. “They'll be right out.” He snapped at Brian, “Did you order the vegan salad?” Brian nodded. “Didn't you have a salad for an appetizer?”

“I'm vegan,” Brian said. “Everything else here is cooked in butter. Or worse.”

“God, you're even more of a fag than I thought.” Lamont could use the F-word because he was openly gay. That is, openly gay since his bankruptcy and release from the Betty Ford Center.

Veronica defended Brian's diet: “Well, it's good for you. You look great.”

Lamont stroked his eyebrows, pinched his nose, caressed his mustache and said to Brian, “What the fuck is this BFF bullshit about Jeff Mark and you?”

Veronica grinned, proud to have information the all-knowing Lamont didn't. “They grew up together. They were ‘bestest of friends,' Jeff said. He was adorable about it.” She turned to Brian. “Jeff said you used to put on shows together, that's how you both learned to be storytellers.”

So now Jeff thinks of himself as a storyteller. Oh really.

Lamont made a face. “Brian Moran, I've known you, what? Ten years. We've done three projects together. You never said anything about knowing the Mark Man.”

“I don't know him. I haven't seen him since I was eleven.”

“That's what he said!” Veronica announced triumphantly. “Even though you and Jeff were best friends, he said you haven't spoken or seen each other since you were eleven.”

“You just finished ADR on
Helper II,
” Brian tried to steer off this course. “Isn't that late to be doing ADR?”

“We did some reshooting after the first previews. The studio is very nervous. They've got three hundred and sixty million in it.”

“Jeff can't fail. He's a genius,” Gregory grumbled, as if that were a damning fault. He shifted in his chair to confront Brian. “You're in the movie business. He's the top box-office director and the most powerful and active producer in the business—the little prick. Why the fuck aren't you in touch with him?”

Brian shrugged. “I don't
not
talk to him. I just don't know him.” He saw their entrées coming. “Ah, lunch.”

“What happened? You fought? Please tell me you punched his lights out. Of course I love Jeffrey. He's a genius, there will never be another like him, but it would be a gas to think that, just once, a writer decked him.” Jeff was notorious for hiring Pulitzer Prize – winning playwrights and novelists, pampering them during their first drafts, firing them after the second, replacing them with more compliant screenwriters who composed the script he actually shot and then later, during awards season, Jeff would only mention the famous writers because their names lent more prestige to the project. So far, although nominated four times for Best Director, Jeff had yet to win the Oscar. Brian believed Jeff would win in a landslide if the category was Best Fucking Over.

“No,” Brian said. “I didn't punch him. My parents divorced and we moved away.”

Lamont gave up on Brian. He turned to Veronica. “What did Jeff say our writer did to offend him?”

“Nothing. Jeff said they lost touch. In fact, he spoke fondly of our writer. Said to say hello.”

Lamont tried Brian again. “Spoke fondly? Lost touch?” He shook his head as if trying to wake up. “This is the fucking movie business. Movie people work all over the world, but they live in a small town. You're an A-list screenwriter—”

“Let's not exaggerate,” Brian interrupted. “I'm no better than B-plus.”

“Fuck off. If I say you're A-list, you're A-list. And Jeff! My God he's an A-plus hyphenate. And you were BFF as kiddies. How the fuck could you not know him today?”

Brian ordered his muscles to form as pleasant a countenance as possible given that he wanted to kick the producer in the mouth. “Doesn't seem so weird to me,” Brian commented. “We were kids who lived a million years ago two floors apart in Rego Park, Queens. My mother moved us to the Upper West Side in '69, when I was eleven. Jeff's right: we just lost touch.” He smiled at the skeptical producer and sympathetic actress, and beyond them the Four Seasons audience neglecting their lunches, wondering who was this ordinary, balding middle-age man that the great Veronica Stillman was listening to so intently. “We were just childhood friends,” Brian said to the famous and the bankrupt, “and let's face it, Jeff and me, we're not children anymore.”