Derailed

TWENTY

I was looking over the bid for the aspirin job.

Think of this as a kind of avoidance therapy. If I was looking over the bid for the aspirin job, I couldn’t be asking myself

What was I going to do? How was I going to survive this?

So that’s what I was doing.

Meticulously going over that aspirin bid; something was wrong with it, but I didn’t know what. What was wrong with it?

This avoidance strategy was only partially successful.

In the middle of scanning down a line of neatly typed-in figures, I saw Vasquez with his hand on my daughter’s head.

If he didn’t get one hundred thousand dollars, he would be coming back.

I thought about telling Deanna.

But as much as I tried to say, She will forgive me, she will. As much as I told myself that Deanna loved me, and wouldn’t that love survive an indiscretion? As many times as I postulated the theory that every marriage has its ups and downs and that okay, this down might be subterranean, but wouldn’t it naturally be followed, after much anguish and restitution, by another upswing? As much as I rationalized, ruminated, debated, and what have you — I couldn’t quite convince myself that I could for one minute withstand that look in Deanna’s eyes. The one that would inexorably come immediately after she found out what I’d been up to.

I’d seen that look before. I’d seen it the morning they’d diagnosed Anna in the emergency room. The look of being utterly and hopelessly betrayed. I’d had to stare it full in the face as the news slowly sank in and she’d fastened on to me like a swimmer being pulled off by an undertow.

I didn’t think I could bear to see it again.

Back to the sheet in front of me. It listed every expense associated with the commercial.

Director’s fee, for instance. Fifteen thousand dollars day rate. Which was about average for a B director, A directors being somewhere up at twenty or twenty-five. Then there was set construction. Forty-five thousand — pretty much the going rate for one suburban kitchen on a New York stage set.

All these thousand dollars reminding me of the thousands I myself didn’t have. Why was I looking at this estimate, anyway? There was something wrong with it. What, exactly? I didn’t know.

There was editing. Film-to-tape transfer. Color correction. Voice-over costs. And there was music. Yes, T&D Music House; that was the name all right. Forty-five thousand dollars. Full orchestra, studio record, mix. Seemed okay.

I called David Frankel.

“Yep,” David answered.

“It’s Charles.”

“I know. It says your extension on my phone.”

“Right. I’ve been trying to call the music house, but I can’t seem to find the number.”

“Whatmusic house?”

“T and D Music.”

“Oh. What are you calling them for?”

“What am I calling them for? I wanted to talk to them about the spot.”

“Why don’t you talk to me about the spot. I’m the producer of the spot.”

“I’ve never heard of T and D Music,” I said.

“You’ve never heard of T and D Music.”

“No.”

“Why are we having this conversation, exactly?” David sighed. “Did you talk to Tom?”

“You mean ever?”

“Look, what do you want the music to be? Just tell me.”

“I’d rather talk to the scorer.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I want to convey my feelings directly.”

“Okay, fine.”

“Okay, fine, what? ”

“Convey your feelings directly. Go ahead.”

“I need their number. ”

Another sigh now, the kind of sigh that said he was dealing with an idiot here, a complete and utter moron.

“I’ll get back to you on that,” David said.

I was going to ask why David needed to get back to me since all I was asking for was a number. I was going to ask him why he was acting as if I were brain-damaged. I was going to remind him that a producer’s job was to produce, and sometimes that meant producing something as simple as a phone number.

But David hung up.

It was only then, as I heard that familiar question whispering in my ear again — What are you going to do, huh, Charles? — that I realized I was a little brain-damaged after all. That I’d been a little slow on the uptake here.

T&D Music House.

Tom and David.

Tom and David Music House. Of course.

I followed Winston for five or six blocks in subzero temperature.

Winston smoked a cigarette. Winston window-shopped — a Giuliani-ized video store — once plastered with triple-X-rated posters promising the raptures of the flesh, now plastered with kung fu posters promising the pulverizing of it. Winston leered at two teenage girls in miniskirts and woolen leggings.

I hadn’t intended to follow Winston. What I’d intended to do was walk right up to him at closing time and ask him if he wanted to have a beer with me. But I’d felt strangely reticent about doing it.

It was one thing to joke around twice a day with a man who delivered your mail, to ask him what left-handed baseball player had the highest batting average in history, to trade wisecracks and earned run averages. It was another thing to go drinking with him. I wasn’t sure Winston would want to go drinking with me.

On the other hand, hadn’t we traded confidences? Or hadn't one of us done that? And now the other ready to do the same? But that brought me to the other reason I hadn’t been able to just walk up to Winston and suggest a drink.

Winston blew on his hands. He waltzed through a traffic light, narrowly avoiding a taxicab seemingly intent on mayhem. Winston stopped at a pretzel man and asked how much.

I was close enough to make out the words. I wished Winston would turn around and acknowledge me. A few more blocks and I was in danger of freezing to death.

Across the street was a Catholic mission with a biblical statement I remembered from Sunday school emblazoned over its door: “Oh Lord, the sea is so large and my boat is so small." True enough, I thought.

When I looked back toward Winston, he wasn’t there. I ran over to the pretzel man and asked him where his last customer had gone to.

“Eh?” the pretzel man said.

“The tall guy you just sold a pretzel to. Did you see where he went?”

“Eh?”

The man was Lebanese, maybe. Or Iranian. Or Iraqi. Whatever he was, he couldn’t speak English.

“One dolla,” he said.

I said never mind. I walked away and thought: I will talk to Winston tomorrow. Or maybe tomorrow I will change my mind and not talk to him at all.

Someone grabbed me by the arm.

I don’t want a pretzel, I started to say. But it wasn’t the pretzel man.

“Okay, Charles,” Winston said, “why the fuck are you following me?”