But there was no reason for him to look dirty at her like that, Lila thought. She buttoned her cardigan. They didn’t pay him to look like that.
Maybe the Captain would like them when he saw them. Then he could give her some money to pay the restaurant and they could go back and have a meal and he wouldn’t give the waiter any tip. No, they’d give him a super big tip just to make him feel bad.
She didn’t have any money to take a cab now. She couldn’t call the police. Maybe she could call the police. They probably wouldn’t remember her. Nobody remembered her. But she didn’t want to do that.
Everybody was gone. Where has everybody gone? she wondered. What’s happening that everybody’s gone? First the Captain is gone and then Jamie is gone. And Richard too, even Richard is gone. She never did anything to him. Something really bad was happening. But they weren’t telling her what it was. They didn’t want her to know.
Lila began to feel her hands shake a little.
She reached in her handbag for her pills and then remembered they were gone too.
She began to feel scared.
This was the first time since the hospital that she didn’t have them.
She didn’t know how far it was to the boat… It was toward the river, in this direction, she thought… Maybe not… She’d try not to think about anything bad and maybe her hands would stop shaking… She hoped this was the right direction… It was so dark now.
19
It’s dark out, Phædrus thought. Beyond the large sliding glass doors of the hotel room there was no trace of light left in the sky. All the light in the room came from the wall lamp where the moth was still fluttering.
He looked at his watch. His guest was late. About half an hour late. That was traditional for Hollywood celebrities. The bigger they are the later they come, and this one, Robert Redford, was very big indeed. Phædrus remembered that George Burns had joked that he’d been at Hollywood parties where the people were so famous they never showed up at all. But Redford was coming now to talk about film rights and that was vital business. There was no reason to think he wouldn’t be here.
When Phædrus heard the knock on the door it had that special metallic sound of all the fireproof hotel doors in the world, but this time he was suddenly filled with tension. He got up, walked over to open it, and there in the corridor stood Redford with an expectant, unassuming look on his famous face.
He seemed smaller than his film images had portrayed him to be. A golf cap covered his famous hair; odd, rimless glasses drew attention away from the face behind them and a turned-up jacket collar made him even more inconspicuous. Tonight he didn’t look anything at all like the Sundance Kid.
Come on in, Phædrus said, feeling a real wave of stage fright. This was suddenly real time. This is the present. It is as though this is opening night and the curtain has just gone up and everything is up to him now.
He feels himself force a smile. He takes Redford’s coat, tensely, trying not to show his nervousness, being smooth about all this, but accidentally he bunches the coat in the back, clumsily, so that the Kid has trouble getting one arm out… My God, he can’t get his arm out… Phædrus lets go and the Kid gets the coat off by himself, and hands it to him with a questioning glance, then hands him the hat.
What a start… Real Charlie Chaplin scene. Redford goes ahead into the sitting room, walks to the glass doors and looks over the park, apparently orienting himself. Phædrus, who has followed behind, sits down in one of the overstuffed silk-upholstered gilded Victorian chairs they have put in this room.
Sorry to be so late, Redford says. He turns from the glass doors and then moving slowly, at his own discretion, settles down on the opposing couch.
I just got in from Los Angeles a half-hour ago, he says. You lose three hours coming this way. At night they call it the "Red-Eye" flight… His eyes dart in for a reaction. Well named… you don’t get any sleep at all…
Redford is saying this but as he is saying it he is becoming somebody real. It’s like The Purple Rose of Cairo, where a character comes off the screen and shares the life of one of the audience. What is he saying?
Every time I go back I like it less, he says. I grew up there, you know… I remember what it used to be like… And I resent what’s happened to it… He keeps watching Phædrus for reactions.
I still have a lot of beautiful memories from California, Phædrus says, finally taking hold.
Did you live there?
I lived next door once, in Nevada, Phædrus says.
He is expected to speak. He speaks: a jumble of random sentences about California and Nevada. Deserts and pines and rolling hills, eucalyptus trees and freeways and that sense of something missed, something unfulfilled, that he always gets when he is there. This is just rilling time now, developing rapport, and as Redford listens intently, Phædrus gets the feeling this is his normal habit. Real stage presence. He’s just flown across the whole country, probably talked to a lot of people before that, yet he sits right here with his famous face listening as though he had all the time in the world, as though nothing of any importance had occurred before he walked in this room and nothing of importance was waiting for him after he walked out.
The rambling goes on until a common point of connection is found in the name of Earl Warren, the former Supreme Court chief justice, who Phædrus says represents a kind of personality not too many people think of as Californian. Redford concurs wholeheartedly, revealing personal values. He was our governor, you know, Redford says. Phædrus says yes, and that Warren’s family came from Minnesota.
Is that right? Redford says, I didn’t know that.
Redford says he’s always had a special interest in Minnesota. His movie Ordinary People was a Minnesota story, although they filmed it in northern Illinois. His college roommate came from Minnesota, and he’d visited his house there and never forgotten it.
Where did he live? Phædrus asks.
Lake Minnetonka, Redford says. Do you know that area?
Sure. The first chapter of my book touched down for a second at Excelsior, on Lake Minnetonka.
Redford looks concerned, as though he had missed an important detail. There’s something about that area… I don’t know what it was…
There was a certain "graciousness," Phædrus says.
Redford nods, as though that is right on.
There was a Minneapolis neighborhood called "Kenwood" that was the same way. People there seemed to have that same Earl Warren "charm" or "graciousness" or whatever it was.
Redford stares at him intensely for a moment. It’s an intensity he never shows on the screen.
What caused it? he asks.
Money, Phædrus answers, but then, realizing that isn’t quite right, he adds, and something else too.
Redford waits for him to continue.
There was a lot of old wealth out there, Phædrus says. Fortunes from the lumber days and the early flour mill days. It was easier to be gracious when you had a maid and chauffeur and seven other servants running around the place.
Did you live near Lake Minnetonka?
No, nowhere close, but I used to go to birthday parties there back in the thirties when I was a kid.
Redford looks engrossed.
Phædrus says, I wasn’t one of the rich kids. I was on a scholarship at a school in Minneapolis where the rich kids went… by chauffeur usually.
In the morning these big, long, black Packard limousines would pull up outside the school and a black-uniformed chauffeur would jump out and dash around and open up the back door and this little kid would pop out. In the afternoon the limousines and chauffeurs would all be back again and the kids would pop in, one kid to a limousine, and they’d be off to Lake Minnetonka.
I used to ride my bike to school and sometimes I’d see in my mirror one of these big Packards was coming up behind me and I’d turn and wave to the kid inside and he’d wave back and sometimes the chauffeur would wave too, and the funny thing is I always knew that kid was the one
who envied me. I had all the freedom. He was a prisoner in the back of that black Packard, and he knew it.
What school was that?
Blake.
Redford’s eyes become intense. That’s the school my roommate went to!
Small world, Phædrus says.
It certainly is! Redford’s excitement indicates something has connected here, a high spot in the surface of things that indicates some important structure underneath.
I still have kind memories of it, Phædrus says.
Redford looks as though he would like to listen some more but that, of course, is not why he is here. After some more conversation about desultory subjects, he comes to the matter at hand.
He pauses and then says, I guess I should say, first of all, that I admire your book greatly and feel challenged and stimulated by it. The ideas about "Quality" are what I’ve always thought. I’ve always done it that way. I first read it when it first came out and would have contacted you then but was told that someone else had already bought it.
A funny woodenness has crept into his speech, as though he had rehearsed all this. Why should he sound like a poor actor? I really would like to have the film rights to this book, Redford says.
You’ve got them, Phædrus says.
Redford looks startled. Phædrus must have said something wrong. Redford’s biographies said he was unflappable, but he looks flapped now.
I wouldn’t have gotten this involved if I hadn’t intended to give it to you, Phædrus says.
But Redford doesn’t look overjoyed. Instead he looks surprised, and retreats to somewhere inside himself. His engrossment is gone.
He wants to know what the previous film deals were. It’s had quite a history, Phædrus says, and he relates a succession of film options that have been sold, and allowed to lapse for one reason or another. Redford is back to his former self, listening intently. When that subject is covered they turn cautiously to the question of how the book will be treated. Redford recommends a writer whom Phædrus has already met. Phædrus says OK.
Redford wants to make full use of a scene where a teacher faces a classroom of students for a whole hour and says nothing, until by the end of the hour they are so tense and frightened they literally run for the door. Apparently he wants to build the story in terms of flashbacks within that scene. Phædrus thinks that sounds very good. It is remarkable the way Redford has homed in on the book. For that scene he completely bypasses all the road scenes, all the motorcycle maintenance, where other script writers have bogged down, and goes right to the classroom, which was where the book started — as a little monograph on how to teach English composition.
Redford says that the road scenes will be made on location. He says that Phædrus can visit the sets whenever he wants to, but not every day. Phædrus doesn’t know what this involves.
The central problem of abstract ideas comes up. The book is largely about philosophic ideas about Quality. Big commercial films don’t show ideas visually. Redford says you have to condense the ideas and show them indirectly. Phædrus is not sure what that means. He would like to see how this is going to be done.
Redford senses Phædrus' doubts and warns that, No matter how the film is done, you won’t like it. Phædrus wonders if he says this just to keep himself covered. Redford talks about how the author of another book he filmed saw the movie and tried to like it but you could see that no enthusiasm was there. That was hard to take, Redford says, and then adds, But that’s the way it always seems to happen.
Other subjects come up but they don’t seem to be quite to the point. Eventually Redford looks at his wrist watch.
Well, I guess there are no big problems at this point, he says, I’ll go ahead and call the writer and see where he’s at on this.
He sits forward. I’m really tired, he says, and there’s no point in romancing you all night about all this… I’ll call the others and then, sometime after that, our agency will get in touch with you.
He gets up, goes to the hall closet and, by himself, gets his cap and coat. At the door he says, Where are you living now?
In my boat. Down on the river.
Oh. Is there any way of reaching you there? No, I’ll be gone tomorrow. I’m trying to get south before it freezes around here.
Well, we’ll contact you through your lawyer then. At the door he adjusts his hat and glasses and jacket. He says goodbye, turns and moves down the corridor with a tense springiness, like a skier or a cat — or like the Sundance Kid — and vanishes around a corner.
Then the corridor becomes just another hotel corridor again.
20
Phædrus stood in the hotel corridor for a long time without thinking about where he was. After a while he turned back, went into the room and closed the door.
He looked at the empty couch where Redford had been sitting. It seemed like some of his presence was still there but you couldn’t talk to it any more.
He felt like pouring himself a drink… but there wasn’t any… He should call Room Service.
But he didn’t really want a drink. Not enough to go to all that trouble. He didn’t know what he wanted.
A wave of anticlimax hit. All the tension and energy that had been built up for this meeting suddenly had nowhere to go. He felt like going out and running down the corridors. Maybe a long walk through the streets again until the tension wore off… but his legs already ached from the long walk getting here.
He went to the balcony door. On the other side of the glass was the same fantastic night skyline.
It looked more stale now.
The trouble with paying high prices for places with a view like this was that the first time it’s wonderful but it gets more and more static until you hardly notice it’s there. The boat was better, where the view keeps changing all the time.
He could see from the blurring of the skyline lights that rain had started. The balcony wasn’t wet, however. The wind must be blowing the rain away from this side of the building.
When he cracked open the door a howling rush of cold air poured through. He opened the crack wide enough to pass through, then stepped out onto the balcony and closed the door again.
What a wild wind there was out here. Vertical wind. Crazy. The whole night skyline was blurring and clearing with squalls of rain. He could only see distant parts of the park from the way the lights stopped at its edges.
Disconnected. All this seemed to be happening to somebody else. There was excitement of a kind; tension, confusion; but no real emotional involvement. He felt like some galvanometer that had been zapped and now the needle was jammed stuck, unable to register.
Culture shock. He guessed that’s what it was. This schizy feeling was culture shock. You enter another world where all the values are so different and switched around and upside-down you can’t possibly adapt to them — and culture shock hits.
He was really on top of the world now, he supposed… at the opposite end of some kind of incredible social spectrum from where he had been twenty years ago, bouncing through South Chicago in that hard-sprung police truck on the way to the insane asylum.
Was it any better now?
He honestly didn’t know. He remembered two things about that crazy ride: the first was that cop who grinned at him all the way, meaning We’re going to fix you good, boy — as if the cop really enjoyed it. The second was the crazy understanding that he was in two worlds at the same time, and in one world he was at the rock bottom of the whole human heap and in the other world he was at the absolute top. How could you make any sense out of that? What could you do? The cop didn’t matter, but what about this last?
Now here it was all upside-down again. Now he was at some kind of top of that first world, but where was he in the second? At the bottom? He couldn’t say. He had the feeling that if he sold the film rights big things were going to happen in that first world, but he was going to take a long slide to somewhere in the second. He’d expected that feeling might go away ton
ight, but it didn’t.
There was a something wrong — something wrong -something wrong feeling like a buzzer in the back of his mind. It wasn’t just his imagination. It was real. It was a primary perception of negative quality. First you sense the high or low quality, then you find reasons for it, not the other way around. Here he was, sensing it.
The New Yorker critic George Steiner had warned Phædrus. At least you don’t have to worry about a film, he’d said. The book seemed too intellectual for anyone to try it. Then he’d told Steiner his book was already under option to 20th Century-Fox. Steiner’s eyes widened and then turned away.
What’s the matter with that? Phædrus had asked.
You’re going to be very sorry, Steiner had said.
Later a Manhattan film attorney had said, Look, if you love your book my advice is don’t sell it to Hollywood.
What are you talking about?
The attorney looked at him sharply. I know what I’m talking about. Year after year I get people in here who don’t understand films and I tell them just what I told you. They don’t believe me. Then they come back. They want to sue. I tell them, Look! I told you! You signed your rights away. Now you’re going to have to live with it! So I’m telling you now, the attorney said, if you love your book don’t sell it to Hollywood.
What he was talking about was artistic control. In a stage play there’s a tradition that nobody changes the playwright’s lines without his permission, but in films it’s almost standard to completely trash an author’s work without even bothering to mention it to him. After all, he sold it, didn’t he?
Tonight Phædrus had hoped to get a contradiction of all this from Redford, but it was just the opposite. Redford had confirmed it. He agreed with Steiner and the attorney.
So it looked as though this meeting wasn’t as important as Phædrus had expected. The celebrity effect had created all the excitement, not the deal itself. He’d told Redford, You’ve got it, but nothing was settled until the contract was signed. There was still a price to settle on and that meant there was still room to back off.