Created By (7 page)

Alan waited for the fatherly advice that always followed the question about Norman Lear.

“You know, that’s what you oughta start thinking about with your writing.” It never failed. “I mean, long as you’re doing something other than selling deodorant from eight to eleven every night.” He tried to clarify but Alan was already upset. “I’m talking about the limits of television … not your talent. You understand what I mean.”

Alan said nothing. His father never realized what a fucking elitist he was and there would be no point in Alan telling him. He hated the way Burt always made him feel small and trivial for being in TV. Like he put toy whistles in Cracker Jack boxes for a living.

Mr. Broadway. Mr. Lime-fucking-light. Mr. I’m-fucking-better.

“Having fun?” Burt was smiling.

Alan said nothing, staring out at a goat.

There was snow.

A giant Georgia O’Keeffe desert way down there and up here, all this cold, white stuff. The tram car docked drunkenly at the top and doors slid open.

The restaurant perched, as if some avalanche lookout station in Grenoble, complete with blond behemoths walking around like Robert Shaw in
From Russia with Love;
Third Reich knights.

It was deserted. Chairs turned upside down on redwood plank tables, making the whole place a warehouse full of reverse gravity picnic sets.

Alan dipped chicken chunks in teriyaki sauce as he and Burt stared out over the desert, seated on the balcony. Tall pines swayed and wind dropped cones on the roof.
Clonk.

“So … how’s your novel coming along?” Burt tried so hard to make decent conversation, to Alan it always sounded like it was learned from a bad article on improving human relations in some retiree’s magazine.

“Okay. I mean, it’s a first novel.” He laughed a little. Spread lost hands. “I basically have no damn idea what I’m doing. Not like writing scripts at all. It’s all about internal, not external.” He took a sip of espresso; a giant’s hand holding a doll cup. “Anyway, it’s tough making the time.”

Burt pointed with his fork, gobbling fettucine.

“Gotta make the time. Always more you can do.” He slid back slightly from the table, expanding his pulpit. “When I was doing Broadway, I always thought … you know, I’m maxed-out, time wise, energy wise. But you find a way when you care.”

“Television is a little different. The pace …”

Burt waved his hand in wordless agreement; a Helen Keller comment. Wiped his mouth of Alfredo. “I understand. Not comparing the two. You know, I’m not questioning what you do as a way of life … even an art form.”

Bullshit, thought Alan. He meant every fucking word.

“Look, Alan … you know how highly I think of what you can do with your writing. “He burped, softly. “Sometimes I just feel TV can’t capture what you have to offer as an artist. It’s inveterate to the medium. That’s my point.”

Alan could never be sure exactly what his point was. But it always made him uncomfortable and ill at ease. Like his father was knocking it all under there somewhere; under the pretty words.

“Maybe we should change the subject.”

Burt agreed. Then, couldn’t.

“Alan, you’re too good. I know you hate it when I remind you, but you are. You’ve got more talent in your little finger than a hundred Norman Lears or Bochcos or … who’s that damn heroin addict that did that Miami thing with Don Johnson …?”

“Michael Mann. ‘Miami Vice.’ He’s not a heroin addict. He wrote about drugs.”

“Good-looking show. Great production values. But what are the damn characters saying to each other? Too esoteric. That’s what I like about what you’re trying for with your stuff.” He played with the salt shaker, screwing, unscrewing. “You’re never afraid of your own voice. You know, you were always a fearful boy … afraid to confront, afraid of so many things. It’s good you don’t do that in your work.”

Burt tried to remember, face doing a quiet flashback. “Maybe your fear early on … I don’t know … maybe it’s because of Mom. Guilt, maybe? Possible, I suppose.”

Alan didn’t like the way his father’s thoughts were facing; didn’t want to be in another plane crash together.

“Dad, it’s your birthday remember? We didn’t climb fifty miles above the earth’s surface to discuss what I do for a living, or what happened to Mom. Maybe I should give you your present.”

“What is it?”

“A blue sweater.”

“Great idea!”

“Should be. You’ve been asking me for seven months.” He mocked Burt’s low voice. “I want a blue sweater. Hey, I’d love a blue sweater. Know what I don’t have? A—”

“Okay, okay.” When Burt laughed, he was handsome the way Newman was. He sipped some cappuccino and lit his pipe. A cloud of Chart Well lounged between them.

“So … how’s the new place in Malibu where the people were murdered in cold blood?”

Alan chuckled, patiently.

“Tell you what, I’d rather talk about my career and get lectured than answer questions about my house.”

Burt’s eyes twinkled; an opening blade on a pocket-knife.

“I got a question for you. You think television is real?”

“Real?
”

“In your mind? Does it really exist? Or is it a lot of craft, however heartfelt?”

Alan was right. Dad was moving in for the kill.

“You mean, of course, like the stage has heart and soul? Something like that?”

Burt said nothing but it was clearly something like that. Alan went back to his julienne fries, holding their yellow heads under ketchup. Burt kept puffing, thinking.

“I don’t know too many writers … true writers … who wouldn’t agree the stage has more life. I mean, shit, Alan … it’s right up there, pumping away like crazy. Reaching out. Grabbing you by the ears and saying ‘hey,
motherfucker, I’m
here.
I
exist.
And I will leave you a different person when you leave this theater.’ ”

Alan felt his stomach tightening.

“And television is what? Some … I don’t know … mindless contrivance that just sands corners till you can’t feel them?”

“Can you feel them? I can’t.”

“Dad, with all due respect, you’re full of it. Maybe it’s time for the blue sweater portion of the show?”

Burt wasn’t interested.

“How about we go for a walk, then?”

“Just let me finish the point.” Burt sat higher; passionate. “C’mon, let’s face it, in TV they sweeten the audience reaction with laugh tracks. They hose migraine music all over sequences that don’t work. Actors are picked by demographics.
Demographics.
You know what that means?”

Alan knew.

“It means,” explained Burt, “a goddamned computer picks ’em for you. ‘TV-Q.’ Now if that’s soul …” He was tamping the pipe, slowly shaking his head.

Alan realized he was going to have to fight back if this meal wasn’t going to turn into the lunch from hell. “And you didn’t think about audience reaction when you directed a Plummer or a Preston? Elizabeth Ashley? Pacino? Gimme a break. What you’re saying is supercilious and condescending.”

“Do you
have
to use such big words?” Burt was smiling.

Alan hated it when his father teased him but continued. “Listen, Dad … I
remember.
I was there. I heard you bitching at the dinner table back in the Gramercy Park
apartment when I was a kid. You used to
suffer
over the casting. If you didn’t get a major name, you practically had to be peeled off the roof, and things for Mom and Marie and me were lousy till you cheered up and got somebody you could splash on the marquee.” Alan was breathing hard. “Your memory is playing games with you.”

“Casting stage isn’t the same thing.”

Alan placed his water glass down, irritably. “Exactly the same thing! You think because it’s put on film it’s not
real?
It has no substance? What’re you talking about?”

“Ah, ah, ah,… hold it. Film isn’t the issue. Lotta fine films have come down the pike. But they were the expression of a single artistic vision …”

“Right, sure. And the studio had
nothing
to say about it.”

“… those visions were not preprogrammed, clinically manipulated, and analyzed. They were not paint-by-the-number regurgitations of a bunch of fucking TV executives. Suits who know
nothing
, not one goddamn thing, about art. They’re in the business of programming Mars bars for a nation of
brain-dead.
”

Alan hated Burt when he got like this. It had driven his mother crazy. Maybe it was part of what happened. Made as much sense as anything else. Burt always assumed people found this behavior stimulating. But one by one, they backed away, put off by his exhaust in their face.

But Alan was stuck up on a mountain. A lonely citadel in the clouds where old St. Bernards came to die. He couldn’t leave and wondered if his dad had chosen this place deliberately. It was getting chilly and Alan crossed his arms.

The two were suddenly surrounded by singing waiters carrying a burning cake. They sang “Happy Birthday” and Burt blew out the sixty-one candles that were sunk to the waist in frosting. The waiters cut two pieces and left proudly, feeling they’d spread Alpine cheer.

“Musta been Wanda’s idea,” said Burt, delighted by the surprise. “She amazes me. Always puts me first. Even after the life she’s had …” He pressed lips; philosophical sadness.

Alan nodded, properly grave; tried to feel bad. But it was impossible. Every time he ran it through his head, it always struck him as absurd she was so fucked up. How bad could it be? She’d been a top sandal model with perfect feet and as if that weren’t dumb enough, she’d had a vapid-eye-movement marriage to a guy who did lighting for huge New York stage productions. The bulb-hubby was booted after Wanda met Burt, who was directing one of the productions.

According to giggly legend, as told by an always breathless Wanda, she’d been backstage, giving herself a pedicure, waiting for her husband to finish work, and Burt, taking a note break, had been instantly struck by her; the uncoaxed smiles, radiant curiosity. Her inordinate level of health. They fell in love and she’d only told him after the marriage about the epilepsy. She hadn’t wanted to scare him off, knowing he’d been living with an ill woman.

But Wanda had two seizures on the honeymoon, in Acapulco, the worst during waterskiing, when her ski binding had refused to release, as her tongue flushed into her throat, and she’d shorn off three perfect toes. Her modeling agency had been compassionate but the
phone instantly died. And the seizures timeshared her world.

Over years, the epilepsy had gotten worse and any little upset seemed to make Wanda stop breathing for seconds, waiting for her throat to form hands and strangle her. She drank teas, visited acupuncturists. Wore sandals with hundreds of rubber nubs, to calm her nervous system. But seven toes just weren’t providing enough surface and every couple of weeks, she’d go wolfman, foaming, snarling.

As father and son licked frosting from forks and Burt tried on the blue sweater, Alan chose his words carefully.

“Dad … I wanted to tell you, I may have sold a series.”

“Oh?”

“Still waiting for network go-ahead. But if I can get it on, it’s going to be a breakthrough show … that’s what they’re all saying.”

Burt was nibbling on a frosting-flower like a big bee.

“Well, can I say congratulations?”

“Yeah. But not yet.”

“Your creation?” Alan nodded and Burt looked at him, proudly. “Well, I hope you win those bastards. Get something good on the air.”

Alan watched his father, chomping on the birthday cake like a six-year-old. He was so damn cute sometimes. With blue frosting on his chin and matching blue sweater, he looked like a child model in a Kodak commercial; fucking adorable.

On the drive home at dusk, Alan thought he could feel his father’s cells moving inside him. The sun was a bloody gunshot wound over L.A. and he swore every gene
his father passed him was playing Chutes and Ladders under his skin; roaming, hiding behind nerves and muscles.

Crouching. Murmuring.

Scheming for a way to take over, in tiny blue sweaters.

M
irror on closet door, eyes staring back. Lamp shades tilted; lights glare. He squeezes the razor.

The hooker stirs, bruises laking. He glares, goes back to mirror. Begins to cut himself, razor across sternum, down at an angle, to navel; two sides of a blood triangle.

Decides to leave no note. His body will be the message. Raw scrawls; how he wants out. How nothing works worth shit. Everybody promises everything. Lies. Nothing comes true. He should’ve killed his agent. Make the world better.

She starts to cry. He tells her to
shut the fuck up.
She won’t stop. It feels like everything. Nothing he says matters. He’s furious. Watches blood run, skin drain white. Years of training; expectation. Now just anger. Feels himself go nowhere.

She opens the door. Runs.

He lets her.

The motel room is crap. It’s enough. He doesn’t miss the apartment. Tampa. His wife. Workshops; résumés. Dead nights of Neil Simon, equity-waiver tombs. Special abilities: horseback riding, akido, hypnosis. He sits on the bed, stares at bureau mirror, watching blood roam.

The phone rings. Her. Wanting to know how it goes. How interviews are coming. Callbacks. He lets it ring. Hates her. She’s infection. Her love is greed.

The cuts give off heat. The A.C. rattles. Hollywood Boulevard pisses desperate sewage past his window. He turns on TV, watches a soap. Pouty mannerisms; a doll show.

Eyes close. Cold.

Angry black voices next door. Tempers shove accusations. A.C. rattle. Tourists laughing; diving in the tiny pool, lunging up into poison air; mindless
fucks.
Blood slips past ribs, onto sheets. Staring at roof shadows; drape leaks. Tired. Car horns fade. Heat thins. Poolside voices; gone.

Sleep.

Sleep …

A knock.

Again. Twice. Footsteps; gone. Eyes opening. Listening to blood; sheet’s soft suction. Crawling to door. Listen. Reach up, open a crack. A manila envelope. Delivered. A studio. Tear it open.

The pilot script. A note clipped.