—Oh no, brilliant? with a smile dazzling in its modesty, —all quite simple, he held the glass he’d been burnishing with a napkin up to the light, —the old woman had had a fight with her broker when she’d told them to sell the minute that October crash came along and they’d taken a week to do it, lost her a few thousand so she moved her account over to a new broker and there was nothing left in the account named in the will but a few hundred in delayed interest payments, so as residual legatee everything in the new account goes right to . . .
—To me! To me, my God I mean if you could have seen their faces, the blood drained right out of them they stood there like living corpses which of course is exactly what they are and that little roach actually crossed himself, can you imagine? with Mary sitting there all in black fumbling her beads and her eyes red from weeping of course it was gin, I mean even a saint couldn’t get through a day with Mummy without putting away a quart washing her and the bedpans and all the rest of it, haven’t you got that wine open yet?
—Still it does seem a little harsh Trish, I mean the poor thing . . .
—We gave her something didn’t we Jerry? a thousand or something? I mean my God Teen it’s not as though she were a blood relative or anything, I only wanted justice didn’t I? Do you think the poor thing would ever have seen a penny in the hands of that little black roach telling her she’s a sinner every time she turns around when she’s never been offered a stiff proposition in her miserable life till they’d squeezed every cent out of her they hadn’t already squeezed out of Mummy? They’re monsters Teen, all of them, simply monsters, did you find those capers? and the lemon? It’s quite inedible without them. Do I smell something burning?
—You’re not smoking one of those things are you Oscar?
—In the kitchen, it’s those things I put in the oven to . . .
—My poor beignets!
—Let them go, old sport. Let them go, gives us a chance to talk. A drop of wine?
—It’s too sweet. I don’t like it.
—Not a bad year. Of course if you insist on the forty five it can run you twelve hundred a bottle. Never occurred to either of us we’d have a chance to just sit down and have a chat, did it. That’s a nice suit.
—What’s so nice about it.
—A nice cut, you don’t see worsted like that anymore do you.
—Oh. This suit yes, it was made in, had it made in England. Thresher and Glenny.
—Down in Bond Street, they finally went under didn’t they? You thought I meant this lawsuit? Can’t blame you for being put out old boy, always annoying to lose a lawsuit, isn’t it. Good to see you up and about though, that scar of yours healed up nicely didn’t it. Hardly notice it.
—Well it’s, what about it. That’s what you want to chat about?
—No, no your play. Your play, a chance to . . .
—We’ve talked about it haven’t we? You sat right here and talked about it for one solid day didn’t you? You think I want to stand here and listen to all that again?
—All water under the bridge old sport, sit down, do sit down.
—Why. I don’t want to sit down, sit down and talk to you about my play? my scar? that ridiculous story you got in there about that oaf in the movie being bitten by a cab driver? Her hand down there unbuttoning his trousers and the whole revolting spectacle, dragging these great themes through the mud just as an excuse to get her up there spreading her legs and pour blood and gore all over the screen? You won the case for your, for those swine, to use your word, you won didn’t you? What else do you want.
—Of course I won it. Look, I think you’re getting hold of the wrong . . .
—You got paid didn’t you? What else are you asking for.
—Of course I’m being paid, and let’s not start that squabble over the professional and the amateur. Afraid I’m getting a little bit impatient myself, old sport, I . . .
—You’re, you? getting impatient with me? Barging in here and, getting impatient I’m the one who’s getting impatient with this old sport business and the rest of your, I’m not old and I’m not, I’m certainly not a sport, expect to see me out playing baseball?
—Afraid you’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick here. I just wanted to talk about your play. I don’t want to talk about your lawsuit. You want to talk about your lawsuit. Find some back street lawyers out looking for business who drum up grounds for a nuisance suit happens every day, get you steamed up over a few similarities and her hands down there unbuttoning his trousers what’s all that got to do with your work. You have your play, you’ve still got your play don’t you? I get paid to win a case because it’s my job to win, I lose it and I lose my bonus, lose a shot at a partnership, lose a few more and I’m out selling pencils. My clients never claimed to be artists did they? We can’t all be artists can we? We don’t all have the talents to be poets, writers, most of us just have to be content to do the world’s work. Boring, repetitive, work anybody can do if they put their minds to it so you’ve just got to do a better job of it than they do. Nobody can write a better poem than Endymion. There’s no such thing. It’s unique. That passage in your prologue, when he’s met her for the first time out hunting and the pheasant he’s shot trying to escape into a stone wall, fighting to flee from what was happening, who else could have written that? The cadence, the poetic anguish of your imagery, we don’t all have your gifts do we?
—Well I, that’s not the . . .
—Go a step further. Suppose there were anything to your lawyers’ claims that my clients stole your work, suppose they had actually seen your play, actually read it and suppose they’d come to you with a straight up front deal, two hundred thousand for the film rights. Have they ever claimed to be artists? Do you think you’d recognize one particle of your own work up there on the screen ten writers and twenty rewrites later? one scrap of your lofty Socratic dialogue on justice? one shred of the bleak lyric soliloquy on the battlefield that brings down the curtain on your second act? the poetry in that wrenching description of chance and panic in battle? No, they’d show you the battle. That’s what movies are. They’d pour blood and gore all over the screen. They’d have her hands down there unbuttoning his trousers. In other words they’d make exactly the movie they did make. Only difference would be you’d be standing here with two hundred thousand in your pocket that wouldn’t be wiped out in legal fees.
—But that’s not my, I didn’t sell it they stole it, I mean I think you’ve got the wrong end of the stick there. They stole it and desecrated it that’s what this lawsuit is about, I only want . . .
—Talking about the real world out there old fellow, red in tooth and claw with ravin, tried to give you a second chance didn’t we? You see nine in ten of these cases settled out of court, I even talked my clients into offering that substantial settlement, about what you would have got if you’d simply sold the rights, tried to clean things up considering your sister and Trishy, all in the family so to speak but your people turned it down. Just running up your costs, go to trial and run up your costs that’s their business, win or lose. Our business too, keep running up your costs until you cry uncle and my clients have deep pockets, filing this appeal of yours you’re just running up your costs a little further.
—But, it’s filed? the appeal’s been filed?
—All routine, just going through the motions. I ran through their brief and they’re trying to get a reversal on some minor technicality, oral arguments the next day or two but it’s just a formality the Second Circuit requires. Just running up your costs.
—But what is it, what technicality, they didn’t show me the . . .
—I won’t waste your time with it old boy, sit you down with a law book like looking for your symptoms in Merck’s Manual and telling your doctor the diagnosis, leave it to the professionals. It’s what we get paid for, what I just finished saying isn’t it?
—But that’s what I . . .
—Just stop here for a minute and let me put i
n a disclaimer, want to be clear that I’m not giving or even purporting to give you legal advice, just another formality. That’s what you pay for. You think I want something else out of it? I got something else. I got a chance I’d have never had otherwise. I got the chance to read your play. You remember Conrad describing his task, to make you feel, above all to make you see? and then he adds perhaps also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask? That’s what I’m talking about, that’s what you’re giving us in your play old fellow, what you can do that none of the rest of us can. Maybe you’re not even aware of how many of us envy these gifts you’ve got, look around at all the bad poems and bad art by people who can’t spell and can’t draw, bad books by somebody not because he wants to write, he wants to be a writer, millionaire stock peddler, car maker, general but he wants to be an author while the brilliant work of some real writer lies there gathering dust, a play like yours courts oblivion because there’s no one around with the wit to grasp its possibilities, to see what you saw there and put it up on the stage where it belongs.
—Well there’s a, matter of fact there’s a director, there’s a very prominent director who is interested.
—He’s read it?
—Well he, not exactly but he’s expressed his interest and it’s just a matter of getting together with him, he . . .
—Splendid! Why didn’t you tell me? and he swept the bottle up from the table between them, —here. Let’s drink to it, shame you don’t care for this it’s really first class. Get someone like that behind it you shouldn’t have much trouble lining up backers, people all over the place with nothing to do and money they don’t know what to do with, no act of their own so they buy their way into somebody else’s like the ones who litigate because they don’t know who they are and it makes them feel real, gives them an identity when they see their name on a docket. Incidentally old boy, just between us, some time you or your sister get the chance to speak to Trishy about this retainer the firm’s been billing her for, running up a lot of hours and the partners are on my back about it. I heard you’re having a little billing problem with your people too.
—Well it’s, I think it just comes down to the, to what you might call careless accounting procedures, they . . .
—Hardly surprised, I spotted that black they palmed off on you for a fraud the minute we got into your deposition, glad to see you’ve got new representation on your appeal. It’s all a question of genes isn’t it. The blacks lack a counting gene, you knew that didn’t you? what keeps them right down there at the bottom of the heap? Lebanese, Palestinians, Pakistanis, weren’t the Arabs the backbone of the African slave trade? Jews right through the subcontinent to the Pacific, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans that’s where you find the counting gene. The Russians haven’t got it, they can’t count either, the only one who could was Chichikov and he was probably a Russian Jew at that, if you, what’s the matter . . .
—Damn dog look what it’s, Christina? Christina!
—Ghaa! and the flurry of white was caught square in the ribs with the polished thrust of a Ferragamo loafer and a splash of wine, —damn!
—Where are they, brought the plates in here and took the basket to the kitchen, Christina!
—Pookie? I heard Pookie yelp . . .
—Look at that!
—Be careful Trish, I think he had a little accident.
—Little! It was not an accident Christina, I saw him, he did it deliberately what have you been . . .
—Just put all that down here Lily and get some paper towels, will you take this Oscar? We put the food out on platters so we can see what we’re doing, be careful Trish.
—No, they left out the squab, I’d hoped we could have it flambé if you had any Calvados but oh look! These zucchini flowers stuffed with chicken mousse and black truffles aren’t they exquisite, poor little Pookie, here . . .
—For God’s sake Trish don’t feed him any more!
—Got hold of a great theme in your play there haven’t you. Can’t be too subtle about it with your theatre audience though, come right out with it.
—You’re going to start in again with your narrow elitist notion of the theatre going public? I don’t . . .
—Nothing like that no, problem with a real play of ideas like yours you try to keep things moving up there on the stage and they’re liable to miss the whole point. Where’s the real civil war going on, it’s really raging inside your main character isn’t it? what’s tearing him to pieces from the minute he walks on? You’ve set up half your equation right there in the prologue with the old woman babbling about this runaway black slave, this John Israel she’s loaded down with all her baggage about the Lord’s everlasting mercy and laying up treasures in heaven, he’s a living reproach by the time we get to what’s the brother’s name in the second act there who helped him escape.
—They do something divine with oysters in an oyster aspic with caviar and a sliver of smoked salmon, did we leave it in the kitchen? could you look while you’re out there dear?
—That’s Will yes, but it’s in the first act, he . . .
—Noble savage and all the rest of it yes, rather heavy going with all the Rousseau you laid on there, and then you get the Major quoting Aristotle on natural slaves, bit of a stick isn’t he.
—Well he’s supposed to be, he . . .
—No no, high marks old boy, high marks, smug, dense, the inert status of property got him down to a T, his whole world flying to pieces around him in that passage you lifted from the Republic where the ones who haven’t earned their money don’t care much about it, but the ones who have take it seriously?
—It’s what I’ve said before isn’t it Teen, you don’t leave the money to the children you leave the children to the money, I mean my God look at my Deedee.
—You’d just think they could see a breakdown like that coming and do something about it before it happened.
—It was really her own fault Teen, she’s never had to learn to take care of things. I mean Jerry says money means entirely different things to different people but it doesn’t mean anything to her at all. Isn’t that what Jerry told us, Pookie? Run over there and tell him I need a little more wine. Of course if you look around you today it’s all in the hands of exactly the wrong people. What is that awful smell.
—I think Harry would tell you it’s the smell of money, Trish. Harry’s read Freud. You’ve got the paper towels, Lily? Over there, under the sideboard, can you help her Oscar?
—Listen Christina, we’re not . . .
—Here, give me the towels old fellow, no reason you should both dirty your hands is there? he came on, arm’s length under the sideboard —for some people it’s credit, for some people it’s a way to make more, buy stock in pharmaceuticals, the big drug companies have got a license to steal, say they need the profits for their R and D, government puts a ceiling on one product so they reconstitute it and bring out a new one that’s what their R and D is for. Some of them just use it to create envy, some of them pile it up as a bastion against death itself, read Tolstoy’s Master and Man but she’s right, listen to Freud these days and it’s like diarrhea. Rock stars, ball players, developers, stock traders and arbitragers and your celebrity general who gets five million to write a book written by somebody else yes and who else? He straightened up holding away the wadded toweling, —the lawyers they bring in to clean up the mess. Money’s become the barometer of disorder. Wealth and privilege, that’s what it was with your Major there at Quantness wasn’t it, money was the barometer of order, better go wash my hands. Down this way isn’t it? second on the right?
—It’s just the greed everywhere, that bandit in the shoe repair shop taking me to small claims until Jerry got a couple of postponements and he was losing business closing up shop to come into court till we finally won by default the day he didn’t show up. I thought that was frightfully clever, don’t you?
—It might turn out to be frightfully expensive, had you thought of that?
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—It just costs a lot more to be rich today than it used to, I mean my God Teen I’m the living proof aren’t I? Just getting Deedee out of this latest mess, can you imagine what that’s cost already?
—Well a breakdown’s a breakdown, they always cost money who knows better than you but after all it’s the girl Trish, isn’t it? the poor girl after all, whatever it costs?
—It’s the car Teen, the car. It was one of those Lamborghettis or whatever they are she paid two whole months’ allowance for, one of these high performance things you’re supposed to change the oil every ten miles they told me and I said she’d never learned to take care of things didn’t I? So the bearings or something burned out and it broke down on her way back from Diddy’s wedding in Newport at four in the morning and she left it standing on the Merritt Parkway for a carload of I won’t say what to run into on their way to work so they told the police but I’m sure you could smell whisky a mile away and the whole thing was simply demolished, the poor dear thought she was saving money not buying collision insurance so that’s eighty thousand dollars right there Jerry thinks she hasn’t a hope of recovering from the dip who hit her and even if she could on his salary it would take five generations, and then of course you’ve got the whole carload of them claiming broken legs and concussions and God only knows what, they’ll say anything. I mean the rich are always lied to, it’s one of our perks.