Fletch’s Moxie

15

While Fletch was reading of the Midsummer Night’s Madness filmscript, a woman screamed.

Sitting in the back garden of The Blue House he looked up at the second storey.

It had been Edith Howell who screamed. Now she was shouting. Despite the theatrical timber of her voice, Fletch could not make out what she was saying.

He turned.

It was a drowsy afternoon.

When Fletch was, Frederick Mooney stumbled around the corner of the house. He stood in a patch of ground cover.

“There is what says she is a lady in my bed,” Frederick Mooney announced.

“Is that a complaint?” Fletch asked.

“I’d rather a woman,” admitted Mooney.

“It’s Edith Howell,” said Fletch.

“Is that who it was? I thought I recognized her from some similar scene… let’s see, was it The Clock Struck One?”

“And down fell the other one?”

“Neither a lady nor a woman: Edith Howell.” Mooney’s feet tangled in the ground cover as he stepped forward. “Umbrage in feminine flesh.”

“She asked for you the minute she arrived.”

Mooney lowered himself into a shaded wrought-iron chair. “I think we did a play together once. Can’t think what. At least, I remember seeing her night after night for an extended period. You know, like a hotel bathtub.”

“You did Time, Gentlemen, Time together. On Broadway.”

“Oh, yes—that damned musical. How did I ever come to do that damned musical? I was miserable in it for months… although the audience seemed to like it. Bad advice, I guess. Are you a theater buff?”

“No more than anyone else.”

“Always amazing to me how much other people know about theater and films than I do.”

Fletch smiled. “You are theater and films, Mister Mooney.”

“I’ve done my job,” Mooney said. “Like anyone else. If I remember correctly, Mister Peterkin, you said you have nothing to do with the entertainment hindustry.”

“Right. I don’t.”

Mooney tried to read the title of the filmscript on Fletch’s lap. “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” he said. “Call you me fair?” he said in a sad, light voice. “I am as ugly as a bear. Marvelous the annual income Sweet Will still produces. He should be around to enjoy it.”

“Midsummer Night’s Madness,” Fletch said. “The film Moxie is now doing.”

“Oh, yes. Shakespeare in modern togs, I suppose. With this year’s psychiatric understandings thrown in.”

“No.” Fletch bounced the script on his knee. “There seems no relation between the two midsummer nights.”

“Just cribbing the title, eh? Wonder someone hasn’t written a play called Piglet, ‘bout a chap who sees the ghost of last night’s supper. Alas, poor supper, I ate you well…”

“Moxie hasn’t talked to you about this script?”

“Moxie does not talk to me.” Mooney hiccuped behind his hand. “Moxie does not seek my advice. I am her drunken father. ’Tis well and just, I say. There were many years when I was caused to ignore her.”

“What caused that?”

Mooney’s eyes approached Fletch from both sides of his head, and consumed him. “Talent is the primary obligation,” said he. “Many men can love a woman and produce children; few can love the world and produce miracles.”

Fletch nodded. “Mind if I seek your advice?”

Mooney said neither yes nor no. He searched the ground around his chair. He had not brought his bag of bottles. He had been convivial in the bars of Key West since before lunch, though.

“Why would anyone make a bad movie?” Fletch asked.

“It’s like any other business,” Mooney said. “People make mistakes. No. Allow me to amend that. No other hindustry operates with such a stupifyingly high mistake factor. Could you run your business, Mister Peterkin, with a ninety percent error factor?”

“How could that be?”

“Making a good film means bringing together exactly the right talents with exactly the right material. Not an easy job.”

“I still don’t get it. No business can keep running if ninety percent of everything it does is wrong.”

“And then I can point out to you—as a bitter, burned out old man, mind you—that any business of glamour and big bucks attracts to it more than its share of incompetents and charlatans.”

Fletch tried to wrap his eyes around Mooney. “Why should you be bitter?”

“Because I have had more than my share of incompetents and charlatans ruining my sleep and my waking, damaging my work, advising me ill, treating me badly, robbing me—”

“Ho down,” said Fletch. “Didn’t mean to heat your blood. Too hot a day for that.”

Mooney inhaled deeply through his nose. He turned his profile to Fletch and exhaled slowly. Fletch wondered if such was an actor’s exercise.

“I don’t see how any business—or hindustry, as you call it—can run with such a high failure ratio.”

Mooney’s smile was sardonic. “There are many ways this business operates. The simple answer to your question is that just often enough the right materials come together with the right talents. The miracle of art happens. Even people like you put down your barbells and rush out, money in hand, crazed to see what mammon has wrought. And its payday for the hindustry. A single flash of light in the night makes safe the dark.”

“I’m just reading this filmscript.” Fletch jiggled his knee under it. “I don’t know, of course. Never read a filmscript before. It strikes me as pretty terrible. The characters all seem to be like people you meet at a cocktail party—all fronts and no backs. They don’t talk the way people really talk. I do a little writing myself—on days when there are hurricanes. It seems to me, in this filmscript much time and space are wasted while the author is floundering around trying to arrive at an idea. All that should be cut away. Don’t you think writing should begin after the idea is achieved?” Mooney was looking at him like a bull bored with the pasture. “It treats controversial old issues in an insulting, offensive way. Instead of trying to create any sort of understanding, my reading of it is that it is trying to provoke hatred—deliberately.” Again Mooney was surveying the ground around his chair for the bottle bag. “Not a critic of filmscripts, of course,” Fletch said. “But I think anyone would have to be crazy to invest a dime in this rubbish.”

“Ah, Peterkin,” said Mooney, obviously sitting on his own restlessness. “You just said the magic word: dime. Like any other business, the film hindustry is about money. Lots of it. Consider this: never does so much money come together over the creation of an illusion.” Mooney moved to get out of his chair but did not make it. “Think about that, if you will. Count your illusions, Mister Peterkin.” Finally, Mooney succeeded in standing up. “The time for a nap has passed,” he announced to the banyan tree, which never napped. “I need a drink to smooth the wrinkles of my day. May I bring you one, Peterson?”

Slowly, he hoped in a theatrical manner, Fletch squinted all around him before asking, “Who’s Peterson?”

“Why, you’re Peterson, aren’t you? Oh, I’m sorry. Peterkin. You’re Peterkin. You just said that, I believe. You should have seen an early film of mine, Seven Flags.”

“I have.”

“Cast of thousands,” said Mooney. “And I kept every one of them straight.”