There are three things to understand first. My red phone. My second cousin Irving Sussman. My position in American letters.
I.
By 1974 I had been sharecropping on the plantation of a prominent San Francisco personal injury attorney about four years. A client would walk in and tell the receptionist he wanted Llewelyn Darkstar to handle his smashed pinkie. “I am sorry,” she would say. “Mr. Darkstar does not handle such matters personally, but he has an associate who specializes in smashed pinkies.” Then I would kick back a portion of my fee.
The unofficial office line was, “Lou’s a genius. But when he’s in town, use the back door.” He may have revolutionized trial practice, but when it came to personal relationships, his behavior resembled Neanderthals with clubs. He once fired half the staff because not enough bodies were on hand when he arrived, 8:00 a.m., the Saturday after Christmas. He placed a popular restaurant off-limits because it did not immediately seat his party of 12 when it walked in at noon without a reservation. He did not introduce me to a guest at a cocktail party because… “See what I mean about deadwood, Stan. I don’t know half these assholes’ names.”
It was fine. I had the freedom of the self-employed without having to worry – because of the Darkstar prominence – where my next smashed pinkie was coming from. The freedom was crucial because, while I wanted success as much as the next guy, I was relying on fiction, not jurisprudence, to satisfy me. The law was dusty, dry, and stank of black suits sealed too long in libraries. Writing was sporty, fresh, and set you splashing in fountains with Scott and Zelda. So in my free moments, I pushed aside my files and set my Smith-Corona desk-central. I typed and I imagined. When my novel was published, my paperback rights auctioned, my film rights acquired…
Another Darkstar peeve was overhead. Though he owned a Pacific Heights mansion, Napa vinyard, and Aspen condo, Lou signed off on all paper clip orders and set the Xerox machine outside his office to deter photocopying abuse. He also decided my message unit calls to hand specialists in Oakland could not be comfortably borne and told me to get my own phone.
It was red. I kept it in a desk drawer so passers-by would not reduce their overhead by raising mine. The only calls I received on it were from clients too strung out to hang onto my card, boiler rooms selling tickets to Police Association circuses, visiting aunts hoping to report back to my parents I remained employed.
One morning it rang. “Robbie! Great to hear your voice! What’s it been, kid, 15 years?”
II.
Irving always stood apart. When other male teenage Levins, Sussmans, and Steins assembled Friday nights for cherry Cokes and fries at Deweys in our khakis, crew necks and Oxford button downs, he arrived looking like his Dad, my uncle Moe, West Philly’s pre-eminent bookie, in blue vicuna overcoat, pearl grey fedora, and white silk scarf. And when we went off to college to be brushed with social conscience, artistic integrity, and the reason for existence, Irving stayed home, his eye on point spreads and turf conditions.
I came to San Francisco when that seemed the place for lives to be fulfilled. I checked the scenes, hippy to New Left, then settled into the Darkstar roost while pursuing my breakthrough on the written page. Irving tended a South Street bar and em-ceed between go-go dancers. Now, over a bacon/blue cheese burger at Perry’s, he recounted his epiphany.
“It’s Labor Day weekend in Atlantic City. I’m shooting the shit with Vinnie Abrussezze in the Ambi Lounge when this chick sits down. Not bad looking. Little depressed. She’s telling Vinnie she’s got to unload this property her old man’s left her so’s she can move to Royal Palm, and I’m thinking, Good legs, good ass; if I can get her in the Jag, I’ll schtup her. ‘Let’s me ‘n’ you take a walk,’ I say. ‘I’m always looking for a good investment.’
“So she shows me this block of Boardwalk Quaker Storage couldn’t move, her tenants being a Who’s Who on Public Assistance. Water ice stands. Hot dog places. Ski ball, pokerino, miniature golf. But, Robbie, y’unnerstan what I’m sayin’, soon as I seen the property, I forget the chickie.”
Irving watched me. “You went to summer camp?” he said.
“Right,” I said.
“Yeah, everybody went to summer camp but me. For two weeks, my folks’d schlep us down the shore; but my old man’d hit the track, my mom’d play canasta and me…? The ocean was for fish, the beach for crabs, and softball for saps who believed in Mickey Mantle. So I’d hang out in places like the chickie’d brought me, imagining a time I’d play all the games and eat all the crap I wanted.
“‘Five thousan’ down’ she says. ‘Ninety days to pay another ninety-five.’” Irving diced his pickle with his butter knife. “I figure for the nut to hock my car, my watch… Y’unnerstan what I’m saying? But where’m I gonna go from there? I got nothin’ Nobody knows me gonna loan me nothin’ Banks won’t front me ink for a pen.
“‘Deal!’ I say. I had this shot at all the things I wanted. Didn’t matter they weren’t worth nothin’ to nobody but me.”
A week before Irving’s option was up, the governor announced casino gambling in A.C. For a license though, a property needed square footage like Irving possessed. Now instead of people acting like Looney Tunes was playing when he called, he needed an unlisted number. Irving became a real estate syndicate. Then he cashed out and came west.
.
Each time we had lunch, it was like Irving was juggling 10 balls. Each ball was a potential deal, and though each deal seemed nuttier than the next – Irving would finance an X-rated cable TV news network, produce an all-black musical Hamlet, market Leroy Nieman designed toilet fixtures – but one connected, he had another fortune.
And Irving made clear his syndicate had already made him a big one. He came to every lunch wardrobed by Wilkes Bashford. He grabbed every check. He filled every moment in-between talking offshore accounts and insider information. And if lunch was cancelled, it was because he was on a junket to Las Vegas or auditioning a movie starlet in Mazatlan or exploring a joint venture with Al Davis.
I had never been so close to the world where the object was wealth – more wealth – and the means and ethics of acquisition simply factors to be weighed like interest rates and start-up costs. Irving was soon featuring me in his plans – on the board of a dummy corporation, of counsel to some nebulous firm – and while I envied his evenings in the Vegas pits, not to mention on Mexican beaches, I doubted I had the nature for the job. Worse, I feared some calamity would befall me if I did. Still I bought the burgers Irving paid for and nodded as the balls flew.
I interested Irving too. He enjoyed that, having known his past, I could be dazzled by his present. Frequently he’d mention someone from the neighborhood. “Wonder what Ike Caniff’s doing?” he’d muse. “Probably working some deli counter.” “Remember Arnie Hymowitz? The putz broke down when his ex- got custody of the schnauzer.” Always he referenced someone who’d looked down on him. Always the lesson was life had crushed them while raising him triumphant. I would recall I had been tight with Ike and Arnie and wonder if Irving did.
Then there was my writing. When it came up, Irving looked at me peculiarly. I supposed it was my one card he was not sure he could trump. He had faced down many lawyers, but he seemed uneasy about the pens up my sleeve. Once, when I was detailing revisions in a story at which a quarterly had nibbled, he snapped, “You been working on this, what… A month?”
“Five, six weeks.”
“And what’s it gonna make you?”
“$25. Maybe nothing.”
“And how many people gonna read it, say you the greatest thing since meatball subs?”
“That is not the point.”
“What’s the point, Robbie?”
“The point is being a writer.”
“And you a writer, you write a story no one reads and makes you no money, and if you don’t, you dog shit.”
“That isn’t what I said.”
“I heard what you said. And youse laugh I say ‘Leroy Nieman.’”
.
Shortly after this, Irving invited me to a party in his townhouse in St. Francis Wood. Though he served only one supper, booked a jazz trio, not an orchestra, and lacked guests named Leech and Civet, I felt like Nick Carraway at Gatsby’s. I don’t know if I was more impressed by the Rauschenberg on the wall or the Supreme Court justice in the hot tub with the airline stewardess.
At some point, dizzied by the glamor, I retreated into Irving’s game room. I dropped a nickel into “Wheel of Fortune,” a pinball machine with which I’d once tussled at Frumkin’s Pharmacy.
The only other person present rose from the divan where he’d been swigging from a bottle of champagne. “Put it on your toes. It’ll cut down the angle of the drop.”
I recognized my adviser from an old dusk jacket. Then reviews had linked Lafcadio Orion with Mailer and Styron. Now his dark mane had thinned and greyed and his piercing gaze required bifocals. I asked what brought him to the party.
“I’m to develop a screenplay from an original story by our host.”
The ball disappeared into a black hole. “I didn’t know Irving wrote.”
Orion shrugged. “You only need 26 letters. Maybe less.”
I felt betrayed Irving had not told me – and wounded he had not asked me to do the screenplay. “So how’s the story?”
“A unique vision.” Lafcadio Orion mimicked a frame with his two thumbs touching and his two index fingers at right angles. “Long shot of a small mid-western town. Zoom in on scrubbed and spunky boys at play. Cut to one who stands apart. Close-up of fat and sloppy Ivan. Follow him into the woods. See his friends. Not rabbits and squirrels. They run. Snakes and toads. See Ivan follow the fattest, foulest toad into the woods. Deeper. Darker. To this tin can shack where out steps this creature, fatter, fouler, more fetid than any toad. THE HERMIT. Who’s taught Ivan the tricks of cruelty and deceit he needed to survive in the forest.”
I caught the next ball on the flipper and held it.
Orion took another swig of champagne. “Fast forward 20 years. Ivan is busted, living in a flop house. A telegram arrives. The Hermit has died and left him his fortune. An oil field? A gold mine? Something big. Something visual. Ivan uses this wealth and the tricks the Hermit taught him to track down and destroy all the Andy Hardys.”
“And does he? Destroy the other boys?”
“I’ve only read 20 pages of the treatment.”
I left the party shortly thereafter. I wondered what Irving was doing in San Francisco and where his money came from.
.
I never heard about Irving’s screenplay again. But other balls appeared and vanished. In return for all story rights, Irving would finance an ex-LURP’s search for U.S. POWs still held in Vietnam. Irving would front a Libyan purchase of a national newspaper chain. Irving held a personal services contract with a Stanford post-doc who’d patented a way to clone everything from the Kentucky Derby winner to Miss America.
Irving assured me that when things happened for him, they would happen for me. And things were this close from happening. But while he assured me, he not only diced his pickle, he shredded his napkin, he chewed his toothpick to splinters and spat them on the floor. The idea that he might not repeat his success must have gnawed at him. That his moment had passed. But Irving said none of that.
What he said was “What kind of city you can’t get a corned beef sandwich after two a.m.?”
We were in Ciao. I had been content to eat in restaurants where motorcycles did not hang on walls. Now Irving insisted on a place that featured one.
“There’s no pace, no action, nothing for a guy with energy. I’m thinking Washington.”
“State or D.C.?” I was not surprised. I was even relieved. Irving’s scramblings still fascinated, but also distracted. I had sold two stories. A New York publisher had asked if I had a novel. I had decided to leave my glasses on when Jill Krementz took my photograph.
“I’m consulting for a company wants contracts to dispose of toxic waste.”
“I didn’t know you were into ecology.”
“Into. Schminto. Plenty opportunities, y’unnerstan what I’m saying.”
“Ralph Nader will be glad to hear that.”
“Meanwhile, Robbie, there’s a few loose ends you could tie up for me.”
An ex-wife’s suit for alimony arrearage.
An ex-dentist’s suit for unpaid gold work.
An ex-girlfriend’s suit because, before Irving walked out, he set fire to her clothes.
“She’s a sick girl, Robbie. Pathological. I’d have to be nuts to do a think like that.”
Maybe he was innocent. Maybe he was incapable of contesting every claim. Certainly he figured I would charge less than his adversaries’ attorneys. And Irving always liked an edge.
“I’ll need a retainer.”
“Sure. This is cousin Irving.” He wrote me a check larger than a dozen story sales. “I’ve left you for a mail drop. Anything for me, stick in a box. A fellow goes by Cisco comes by, give it to him.
III.
In 1978, my novel The Best Ride to New York was published. It concerned a minor league basketball player in a worked-out western Pennsylvania town. “An existential sports novel,” I called it, “like Fat City or The Hustler.” It received fine reviews in the Times and Chronicle – and was purchased by six or seven people I did not know.
I did not feel terrific. I had ignored warnings that first novels did not sell by telling myself that was because they were not good. It did not help when Llewelyn Darkstar, accepting a personally inscribed copy, said, “I’m looking forward to reading this, Gerald.”
Then in the spring of 1980, my red phone rang. “Robbie! Fantastic! Next time I’m on the coast, we’ll celebrate the book.”
I breathed slowly. “It’s been out of print six months, Irving.”
“Where can I get a copy?”
“Outside of the 400 in my basement, I couldn’t tell you.”
“Send me one. Anybody working for you in Hollywood?”
“No.”
“Big mistake. Send me two. I know a super agent.”
A month later a telegram arrived. BRUCE DERN LOVES LAST RIDE. MEET ON 23RD? CABLE REPLY WEIN/MAN.
.
My new agent, Allen Weintraub was waiting when my plane landed. He was younger than me. He wore Levis, sports shirt, corduroy jacket. He drove a red MGB.
“Ever meet Bruce?”
“No.”
“Great guy. Loved your book. Me too. So east coast. So real. Bruce’s wrapping Tattoo, so the meet’s with his agent, Shep Shapinsky. Okay by you?”
It was fine with me. We whipped along the freeway to Century City. The top was down, the sun gold, the palm trees regal. I decided to have the film premiere at the Pacific Film Archive.
“Bruce’s a basketball nut. Me too. And you caught it. The heart. The drama. The essentials for a super film.”
“Thanks.” ‘Essentials’ suggested alterations, but I could accept a changed word here, a shaded characterization there. “All along, I told myself, if ‘Fat City’…”
Allen Weintraub hit the brake. “Do not say that name. That name does not exist. Fat City lost money. If you have to say a movie, say Rocky.”
“But Best Ride is nothing like Rocky.”
“I see that. You see that. But Shep Shapinsky, God willing’s near-sighted. Rocky had sports. You got sports. Rocky had Philadelphia. You got Philadelphia.”
“Pennsylvania.”
“Close enough.”
He cut the wheel to the right. “See how these numbers sound. One hundred thousand for the book. One hundred thou for you to do the screenplay.”
The numbers sounded fine. They sounded, in fact, like monopoly money.
“Irv and I were kicking it around. Irv said, ‘You go in high, you can always come down.’ You know Irv, the big thinker.”
Something not unlike a fetid toad had hopped into the car. “Irv?”
“Your cousin. My partner. The Weintraub-Sussman Agency. He is quite a guy.”
Stop the car, I thought. Let me out. By the time I have walked home, I will have an explanation for everyone to whom I have mentioned Bruce Dern.
“Oh, there’s this contract you should sign.”
Of course, I thought. In blood.
.
The most intimidating office I had ever been in belonged to a New York literary agent. I had arrived for my appointment clutching the manuscript I had carried past plexi-glass shielded check points, down security guard-posted halls. “Ms. Graul is in the Hamptons,” her male secretary said. “Drop it here. And for God’s sake, comb your hair.”
The manuscript beat me home.
The Shapinsky suite made that one feel like a Welcome Wagon.
“Mr. Levin and Mr. Weintraub,” my agent said.
“Would you like a cappuccino,” the receptionist said. Her desk was as wide as the Enterprise. From the window, you could see Shangri-La. She stabbed her Sherman out on a Ming vase.
I had to hand it to Irving. I had already set a P.B. for Length-of-Time-at-a-Power-Agency.
I sipped my cap. I watched the office boys and secretaries – all young, all cute, all shaggy-haired with floppy shirts and jeans – bop by. “Hi, Bobby,” the receptionist said. “Hi, Jeannie; Hi, Jackie; Hi, Jill.”
“Hi, Billy,” the receptionist said to one of the office boys. His floppy shirt was orange. “What’s happening?”
“I have a meeting with Bob Levin.”
I hardly spilled one drop on the rug.
“Loved the book,” William “Shep” Shapinsky said.
.
It was not Bruce Dern’s fault that no movie was made from Best Ride. He loved my book. It was not Allen Weintraub’s fault. He loved my book and did not want to continue selling used cars, which was his actual profession. It was not Shep Shapinsky’s fault. He loved my book, but if his client insisted on dribbling around western Pennsylvania, it made more sense to attach him to a property like That Championship Season, which won a Pulitzer Prize, than a novel which sat, boxed, in my basement. Certainly, it was not Irving’s fault. If it had not been for him, I would not have gone to Hollywood or nearly met Bruce Dern or had this story to tell.
If it was anyone’s fault, it was mine, for not having written a novel that won a Pulitzer or, like Rocky, made you “Feel Good Again.” But I had written the book I wanted, and the more I thought about it, the more that seemed the important thing. The rest was something else. I meant to tell Irving that, but he never called again.
When I got around to returning the unused portion of his retainer, the envelope came back “Addressee Unknown.”
***
This essay first appeared as “Hollywood and Me,” in Frying Pan, December 1983.