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  AJ turned ashen. “That’s a suicide mission.”

  “We’re flying under the radar to drop a hydrogen bomb—that’s the fucking fun!”

  Why should he bet his professional life on Bluhdorn? What if he turned out to be another Mike Todd? Like Todd, Bluhdorn had reckless faith in his own ideas and was a charismatic salesman. But Bluhdorn was a businessman, not a “showman.” In other words, he wasn’t full of shit. At least AJ hoped so—because he was hooked. “Suppose we succeed. Where do I fit in the long run?”

  “If we get control of Paramount, you name your job at the studio.”

  “Vice president of production.”

  “You got it. By the way, what’s a vice president of production do?”

  They laughed together. AJ liked this guy, more so when Bluhdorn offered to loan his new VP money to buy another two thousand shares of Paramount stock. They schemed together, with Charlie giving him inside information that he could use to convince Drummond. AJ was curious how he knew so much, but the raider refused to reveal his sources.

  Shaking hands, Bluhdorn inquired if AJ knew anybody who might be “good company” for dinner. No translation was needed. He called Gail Suchinsky, a casting director who kept track of which young actresses were on the make, and booked a scrumptious blonde with a continuing role in Get Smart. Bluhdorn exploded into the shallow end of the pool. The girl would have a good time because, despite his piggy features, Charlie’s bravura energy made him seem dashing. Disappearing into the lobby, he heard Dick DeWitt paging himself again. It made AJ feel marginally less of a pimp.

  On Monday AJ arrived to find a pall over William Morris reminiscent of the morning of JFK’s assassination. Agents slumped at their desks, whispering to each other rather than answering phones. The mail-room guys steadied their eyes on the new shag carpeting. Even visiting clients seemed dispirited. The reason, AJ learned from agent Benny Gelvin, was that Natalie Wood had fired the agency to sign with CMA. Fields and Begelman had wooed her with the siren song that if she was to be the movie star of the future, she needed modern agents, not fossils. “Are you certain?”

  Gelvin nodded glumly. “Mr. Lastfogel heard it from his wife, who heard it from her hairdresser, who also tints Natalie’s hair. The letter from her lawyer confirmed it.”

  Because of their self-absorption and fragility, clients rarely demonstrated the compassion or courage to deliver bad news personally. Instead, they worked themselves into a frenzied anger at their former agent—recalling every past slight—so that they could say that it was better for the agent if they avoided a direct confrontation. The self-deception worked for the client, but the lack of closure was maddening for the agent.

  “How’s the boss taking it?” AJ asked.

  “The rumor is . . . he tried hanging himself.”

  Come on—the man couldn’t reach a scaffold. AJ embraced Benny with a hug and a chuck on the chin. Secretly, he couldn’t help smiling at his home team’s defeat.

  Stan gave him the real skinny as they drove to Fox to discuss the latest delays on The Sand Pebbles. “I spoke to Abe,” Kamen reported. “He feels like Ralph Branca in 1951.”

  “After Bobby Thompson hit that home run for the pennant, Branca never pitched a decent game for the Dodgers,” AJ reminded him.

  Stan parked in the VIP lot. “Lastfogel will hang in. He’s not the guy I’m worried about. Your body may be showing up for work, but your head’s somewhere else.”

  AJ was immediately defensive. “Who’s complaining about me?”

  “Me. I’m complaining.” His pique caught AJ unawares. “Dustin Hoffman called me—”

  “Stan—”

  “I know what you were doing on the trip to New York.”

  Word of his upcoming meeting with Nate Drummond in Palm Springs must have leaked. Suddenly the job he hated seemed like the best in the business. “Let me explain.”

  “Cut the shit, AJ. You’re having an affair with Romy Schneider, aren’t you?”

  Plead guilty to the lesser charge. “How did you know?”

  “Never mind. I know what a great girl Stephanie is. Why don’t you?”

  AJ hated seeming an adulterer in Stan’s eyes, but he also resented his friend’s lecture. What the hell did Kamen know about love and marriage? Homosexuals didn’t have to face the wife and kids every day. They could move on whenever the affair they were in bored them. “There’s a line from The Philadelphia Story—’A husband’s philandering has nothing to do with his wife.’ ” He offered an ironic smile. “That’s me, I guess.”

  “Can the movie quotes and clean up your act, okay?” Without waiting for an answer, Stan slammed the door.

  CHAPTER 26

  AJ lane-hopped through the orange traffic cones that reduced Interstate 10 to a parking lot. The holdup was a battalion of bulldozers gouging access roads to the chocolate hills of El Monte and Pomona, where hundreds of hard hats constructed variations of the identical model home. The last time he’d traveled east of downtown there hadn’t been a Covina, much less a West Covina. Blame the Beach Boys, the Dodgers, and tourists with motor mouths—the city was spreading as fast as the good word on the sybaritic life in southern California.

  Beyond Riverside, where L.A.’s sprawl faded into the bleached vastness of the Mojave, he floored the accelerator and powered down the windows to let the wind ward off his anxiety. All he managed was a cinder in his eye. Through tears and blinks he spotted a lonesome sign saying, WE’RE HALF-NUTS—THE OTHER HALF IS FRUITS and pulled off the highway at Hadley’s Orchard, the mecca for figs and pistachios. He remembered his first visit with his parents on a trip to Palm Springs in the days before air-conditioning, when the resort town had been a hideaway for publicity-shy celebrities. Hadley’s still made a great date shake, all foam and bits of silky brown fruit. It coated the butterflies in his stomach, but by the time he checked into his bungalow at the La Quinta resort, they were fluttering again.

  At the squeal of burning rubber, AJ stepped outside to greet his fraternity brother. Jerry Roblin was as juiced as his golf cart. “When I told my father-in-law you were a scratch golfer at Northwestern, he thought we should play to get acquainted, so we’re meeting on the first tee.”

  “Hello, Jerry.”

  “Hello to you.” Roblin looked chagrined. “Sorry, man, but I’m feeling a lot of pressure.”

  “All you did was arrange the meeting. I’ll take it from here.”

  “Nate’s suspicious. He keeps pressing to know what you want.”

  “Then let’s go tell him.” AJ jauntily grabbed his clubs from the trunk, but his mouth was drier than the dunes.

  In his Lacoste shirt and plaid Sansabelt slacks, Nate Drummond looked like a fleshy midwestern burgher rather than a multimillionaire businessman. He was so remote that AJ worried he would be impossible to approach—until “Mr. Sara Lee” hit his first three golf shots in as many directions. The way to a duffer’s heart was to help him break ninety. But AJ withheld advice, choosing to let the grace and rhythm of his own swing function like a letter of recommendation. After hitting a bullet within a foot of the pin on the fifth hole, he noticed Drummond staring in awe. “What I’d give to be able to do that even once.”

  “You can, but not until you stop swaying.”

  “Swaying?”

  “Yes, sir. You think you’re turning your hips and shoulders, but you’re just swaying your body. All your weight is shifting to the outside of your right foot, and from there it’s impossible to hit with force or accuracy.”

  “Can you help me?” A visitor to Lourdes couldn’t have been needier.

  AJ took a golf ball and placed it under the right side of the man’s right foot, then held him gently while he took a practice swing. “See how that forces your weight to stay on the inside of the foot, which then requires you to make a real turn.”

  “That feels completely different.”

  AJ’s hands moved confidently as they swung the club with his pupil in a pseudodance. “You�
��ve picked it up fast. That means you’re a natural athlete.”

  Drummond beamed. “I played varsity football for Iowa.” He laced a six-iron down the middle and followed its progress with pure delight. “Amazing.” His next swing was equally impressive. “I’ve never hit two in a row like that.” AJ thought the man might kiss him. Cruising down the fairway, Nate looked contented. “Now that you’ve solved the tough problem, you want to tell me how to fix Paramount?”

  “Let’s concentrate on making pars. We’ll talk later.”

  Back in the clubhouse, AJ found Drummond unexpectedly savvy about the movie business. “All the studios hit these cold spells, don’t they?”

  “Yes, but Paramount’s reminds me of our Chicago winters. The films they released in 1965 lost five million dollars.”

  “Paul Herzog believes that his head of production will turn things around.”

  “Howard Koch? No one in Hollywood buys that—not Herzog, not even Howard. Remember The Magnificent Seven?” Drummond nodded. “Paul’s the Mexican mayor who hires gunfighters to protect his town. He’s sucked up to high-profile producers like Joe Levine and Ingo Preminger, praying they can make the hits that his people can’t.”

  “Maybe they can.”

  AJ laughed cynically. “It won’t matter. Their deals are so obscenely rich the studio can’t possibly make money. He’s paid fortunes for scripts that have no commercial value. Case in point: Herzog bought Reflections in a Golden Eye from a friend of mine, a producer named Ray Stark, but Paul was so preoccupied saving his corporate ass that he didn’t bother to read it. According to Ray, the guy assumed the movie was a James Bond clone when it’s actually a kinky drama about a homosexual Army officer in the South. On page eighty there’s a scene in which a woman’s nipple is sliced off.” Drummond gulped. “I’ve got a copy in my room. By the way, it cost a bundle to kill the picture.”

  “Why are you trying to help me?” Nate glanced to the practice putting green, where Jerry had waited to give them privacy. “And don’t yank my chain that you and my son-in-law share a secret handshake.”

  AJ leaned forward. “Paul Herzog and my father worked at Paramount twenty years ago. I’ve watched him systematically destroy the company I grew up loving. When I learned about your investment, I debated whether to say anything.” AJ paused as if he were making his agonizing decision at this moment. “Herzog’s an incompetent who shouldn’t be allowed to run a studio. You deserve to know that. But he’s also a bad guy, and to be brutally honest, seeing him in power offends my sense of justice.”

  “ ‘Revenge is mine, saith the Lord.’ ”

  “Something like that.”

  “Enough. Let’s go work on my grip.”

  An hour later, showered and shaved, AJ waited at the Palm Springs airport. As a turboprop circled the field for its final approach, he deposited change into a pay phone and dialed Gulf + Western in New York. For a man controlling a far-flung empire, Bluhdorn was fast to pick up the call and the situation. “I’m not sure if I made any impact,” AJ admitted sourly.

  “The fish doesn’t bite when you bait the hook. He swims a bit. That story about the nipple, believe me, Drummond didn’t like the taste of that with his Sara Lee Danish. We’re going all the way, my friend.”

  “We better be. How’d the stock do today?”

  “Down a point and a half. It’s just under seventy.”

  AJ perspired, even though the desert at dusk had turned cool. “Maybe it’s time for me to sell and take a profit?”

  “Don’t touch it.”

  It was easier for a shark to smile than an overextended family man to follow that advice. AJ bid Bluhdorn good-bye, then turned to confront a more devilish test of his willpower—the beauty in black jeans descending the ramp from the Air California commuter.

  AJ knew he had to end the affair. Beyond fear of exposure, the double life made him feel schizophrenic. During sex with Steph he superimposed Romy’s face or breasts—once he’d even mumbled her name into a pillow.

  “Hi. How was your flight?”

  “AJ, I missed you so much.”

  “I have something I need to say.”

  “Later.”

  They kissed . . . away his resolve. Tire tracks from the highway trailed to a rock formation. Parked behind it, they tore at each other’s clothes while semis and sports cars roared by. AJ barely made it back to the bungalow before the games began again.

  Dinner was now or never. The Mexican joint he found for his declaration was blessedly dark and served margaritas the size of swimming pools. Romy wiped hot sauce from her lips and leaned across the table till the heat of the chilies on her breath dried his lips. “I want you to leave your wife.”

  He nearly bit through his tongue. “Oh, jeez . . .”

  “We’ve made love in three cities. I thought that would satisfy me, but now I want to fall in love, and we cannot do that while you are married.”

  Her lines weren’t in his script, so he improvised with the truth. “I don’t want to get divorced.”

  Romy sat back stunned. “You love her . . . but you prefer to fuck me?”

  “Yes. And yes.”

  “And you’re willing to give up the passion we have—for what?”

  Aphorisms about loyalty, commitment, and kids convinced neither of them. “I can’t explain what my marriage means to me.”

  “Whatever it means, it doesn’t satisfy you—otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”

  “I’m here because you’re—”

  “The ‘Sexiest Woman in Europe.’ ” Romy pushed aside a half-eaten taco. “But you don’t believe I could be a good wife.”

  She would be awful. “It’s not you. I’m sorry.”

  Romy reacted with Germanic steel. “You probably assume I’m going to fire you, but I insist we continue working together, so you have to see me. Every time you fuck your wife—if you do—you’ll think of me. I need twenty minutes to clear my things out of the bungalow.” When he protested that she shouldn’t leave tonight, Romy silenced him. “The only advice I want from you is about my career.”

  AJ paid the check and took a walk in the desert. All he could think of was never seeing her naked again.

  Room 342 reeked so much of sex, perfume, and cigarettes that Steph was sure the idiot at the front desk had misdirected her. But the sight of AJ’s Dopp kit on the sink doubled her heartbeat. Perhaps the maid had enjoyed a quickie with someone while turning down the bed. Then Steph spotted a pair of bikini panties in the crack between the headboard and the mattress. The lacy Oriental silk seemed an unlikely choice for the cleaning staff. Touching them triggered a sickening, psychic flash of what had recently transpired in the room.

  Goddamn Redbook. Their article “100 Ways to Spark Your Marriage” had inspired her to surprise AJ by driving down to spend the night. Steph slumped on the bed, only to jump up in horror upon hearing the creak of the springs. In the mirror she looked for any freshness or fun. Reflected back was a has-been. She’d always feared that she was cold in bed. What if it was more . . . what if her husband realized how boring she’d become? The romantic cooing of a couple returning from dinner ended her self-pity. Storming out the door, Steph smacked headlong into AJ. In a different situation his sudden palsy might have been comical.

  “You miserable, cheating piece of shit!”

  “Steph?”

  Bastard—he was trying to peer over her shoulder into the room. “No, AJ, she’s not there. Too bad, we could have compared notes.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Are you going to pull a Richard Pryor? ‘I should believe you, not my lying eyes’? That’s right, you did his routine for me. Who is she?”

  “She’s no one—I swear. Bluhdorn arranged a hooker—his idea of a surprise. I don’t even know her name. Before I could say no, she was giving me a blow job. That’s it. I swear.”

  Stephanie glared. “Your hooker stripped off her panties to give a blow job?” She hurled the offending underwear
into his face. “It stinks like you.”

  “The woman was naked when I walked in. I’m sorry, Steph. It was nothing.”

  When he tried to take her in his arms, she slapped his face, her wedding band leaving a welt on his cheek. “I never should have married you. I didn’t want to. But I did—because of how much you said you loved me.”

  “I did love you. I still do.”

  “What an idiot I was.”

  “Don’t talk like that.”

  She felt a break in her panic, which gave her just enough time to get away. “I left Ricky and Jess with your mother. Go take care of them. I don’t know when—or if—I’ll be back.” She hurried to her car but couldn’t get the damn door open.

  “Let me help.”

  “Don’t you dare touch me! Not now or ever again!”

  Steph peeled out of the parking lot, her brain too fried to form a coherent thought. The next thing she noticed was a road sign welcoming her to Barstow, a couple of hours to the north. Steph pulled into a diner with a fritzing neon sign that promised “Home Cooking.” The ladies’ room smelled of mildew and dime-store perfume. A mild sandstorm was rattling off the glass. Better not to drive in these conditions—or hers.

  Over coffee the consistency of sludge, Steph tried to believe her husband. The alternative was that Fancy Pants was his mistress and AJ was in love with another woman. Steph shivered. The hooker scenario was more palatable—and more likely. If AJ did have a lover, where was she when they’d run into each other? And a stunt like Bluhdorn’s was exactly the kind of boys’ club bullshit Hollywood encouraged. But just as Steph got comfortable with the lesser of two evils, she remembered the lie in AJ’s eyes.

  She was hungry after not eating for hours, so she ordered an omelette, then made an unusual request. Since there was no one around, the waitress agreed. Steph stepped behind the industrial stove and drowned her woes cracking eggs and sautéing onions.

  AJ stared at the cottage-cheese ceiling, counting contradictions. The affair was wrong, he was wrong to hurt Steph. But it was a miserable, intractable reality that his wife couldn’t provide the passion he needed. What was he supposed to do—spend his one lifetime whacking off in the bathroom to pictures of Romy? Even now, even as he held the panties that convicted him, he became hard. Like a career criminal, he was more frustrated about being caught than contrite about what he’d done.