Sacred Monster

Flashback 10

The views were magnificent, or would have been, if Los Angeles had anything magnificent to look at. From this corner office high in one of the silvery godless megaliths of Century City, one view was northward across the smog and over the boxy little houses in peach and coral toward the low but steep hills serving as the only redan against the proles of the Valley, while the other view was westward over flatter and peachier but less smoggy Santa Monica toward the eternal Pacific. Just down that way to the left lurked Venice, waiting for a far-sighted developer.

The office had been decorated with an eye to the exudation of casual power: relaxed, but potent, the spider’s parlor as a philosophical statement through the art of interior design. In this light, well-cleaned space, Jack Pine sat transfixed on a beautiful but uncomfortable chair in the middle of the room while Irwin Sandstone paced slowly around him. Irwin Sandstone, a pear-shaped man with a bald-headed toad’s face and a scalloped wrinkling of the ears, held a small slender bronze art deco figure of a naked, nubile girl in the short, stuffed fingers of his hands. As he walked, and as he talked, he fondled this statue, the light gleaming from his rings and from the clear nail polish his manicurist had assured him no one would notice. He said:

“Your career is important to me, Jack. And the reason your career is important to me is because it’s unique. If I wanted to be in the shoe business, eight million shoes all the same, I’d be in the shoe business. The business I’m in, this crazy mad business of show business, not shoe business, in which I thank God I’ve had a certain modicum of success, in this business, every new face, every new body, every new voice, every new talent that comes through that door is a separate and unique challenge, another opportunity for me to prove myself. Do you know what I mean, Jack?”

“I think so, sir,” Jack said. Today he wore brown loafers and tan chinos and a polo shirt with an alligator on it and an open, welcoming, guileless expression.

Irwin Sandstone’s blunt thumb caressed the statue’s budding breasts. “I am a mere servant of the creative impulse, Jack,” he said, circling and circling. “It’s your unique gift we’re concerned with here, not the life or goals or dreams of Irwin Sandstone.”

“Yes, sir,” said Jack.

Irwin’s fingers oiled and warmed the bronze. “How to mold, how to shape, how to bring out to the acclaim of the multitudes that unique talent deep within you, that is my humble duty, that is my mantra, to serve great talents, to be the willing stepping stone on which they rise, to do whatever is within my small powers” — with a wave at the power-reeking office — “to bring each wonderful unique private talent to its greatest glory. That is what I wish to do with you, Jack. If you agree. Will you give me that task, Jack? Will you order me to make you great?”

Accommodating, Jack said, “Sure.”

Suddenly more businesslike, clutching the statue’s legs, Irwin nodded. “Okay,” he said, and stood still, to Jack’s left, appraising him, nodding slowly to himself, while Jack struggled to decide whether he was supposed to meet Irwin Sandstone’s gaze frankly or face forward to be studied. Compromising, he faced more or less forward, and flicked constant glances toward the man hefting him in his mind.

“Okay,” Irwin Sandstone said again, the statue forgotten, its head in his fist. “For your type,” he said, “we start with the biker picture, then your pathologic killer, then your patient picture. By then you’re established, you can do whatever you want.”

Jack, manfully smiling, said, “Patient picture?”

Irwin Sandstone negligently waved the hand with the statue in it. “Nut house or hospital,” he explained. “You’re a person with an affliction, see? Gives you that human dimension, rounds you off after the psycho.”

“Oh, yeah,” Jack said. “I see what you mean.”

Irwin Sandstone brought his hands together. They found the statue again, apparently on their own, and the fat fingers stroked and fumbled as their owner gazed appealingly at Jack to say, “Is that what you want, Jack? Stardom? Fruition? Will you put yourself in my hands?”

Jack watched those hands fondle the thin bronze girl. He shrugged. “What have I got to lose?” he said.