The Princess Bride

he was such a huge star we couldn't afford him in our budget.) 'I liked him. Very bright young guy.'

Jason could not take his eyes off the picture.

Then I said what I guess turned out to be the magic words: 'He was pudgy once too.'

Jason looked at me then. 'I don't think so,' he said.

I didn't think so either, but it didn't hurt to say it.

'It came up in conversation.' I said. 'He said he thought he had gone as far in the bodybuilding world as he could. What drove him was he didn't like the way he looked when he was young.' An aside about Arnold, which I bet you didn't know: he was friends with Andre the Giant. (I guess strong guys all know each other.) Following is a story he told me. I used it in the obit I wrote when Andre, alas, died.

Andre once invited Schwarzenegger to a wrestling arena in Mexico where he was performing in front of 25,000 screaming fans, and after he'd pinned his opponent, he gestured for Schwarzenegger to come into the ring.

So through the noise, Schwarzenegger climbs up. Andre says, 'Take off your shirt, they are all crazy for you to take off your shirt, I speak Spanish.' So Schwarzenegger, embarrassed, does what Andre tells him. Off comes his jacket, his shirt, his undershirt, and he begins striking poses. And then Andre goes to the locker room while Schwarzenegger goes back to his friends.

And it had all been a practical joke. God knows what the crowd was screaming for, but it wasn't for Schwarzenegger to semistrip and pose: 'Nobody gave a s——if I took my shirt off or not, but I fell for it. Andre could do that to you.'

'I wonder how much that picture book is?' Jason said then. (We're still outside of the Strand, remember, and we didn't know it, but the earth has moved.)

Are you surprised to learn I bought it for him?

This is what happened to Jason in the next two years: he went from 308 to 230. He went from five-foot-six- and-a-half to six-foot-three. He had always been tops in his class at Dalton, but now, ripped and gorgeous, he was popular too.

This is what happened to Jason in the years after that. College, Medical School, the decision to be a shrink like his mom. (Except Jason's speciality is sex therapy.) New York magazine rated him tops in the city and he also met this lovely lady Wall Streeter, Peggy Henderson, and they got happily married.

And and and had a son.

I went to the hospital as soon as he was born. 'We're calling him Arnold,' Peggy told me, holding him in her arms.

'Perfect,' I said. The truth is, obviously, I was hoping they might remember me too, somehow. But down was down.

'That's right,' Jason said. 'William Arnold.' And he took Willy and put him in my arms.

High point of my life.

FOR THOSE OF you who have not yet thrown the book across the room in frustration, let me explain that this all really does have to do with why only the first chapter of Buttercup's Baby. And I promise to get there so fast you won't believe it.

OK. Willy the kid. Jason and Peggy live only two blocks away and I am careful not to drive them nuts, but I never had a grandson before. Not a toy at Zitomer's escaped me. Not a cough from him didn't keep me up all night going through my health encyclopedias.

I could refuse him, obviously, nothing.

Which is why my behavior in the park was so odd. Gorgeous spring day, Peggy and Jason holding hands up ahead, me and seven-year-old Willy tossing a Wiffle ball back and forth a step behind. We already go to some weekend Knick games together. (I've had season tickets since Hubie Brown was sent down to earth to destroy me.)

'We have a request,' Jason began things.

'Guess what we finished last night?' Peggy went on. 'The Princess Bride. We took turns reading it out loud.'

Trying for casual, I asked the youngster what he thought of the entire enterprise.

'It was good,' Willy replied, ''cept for the end.'

'I don't like the end all that much, either,' I said. 'Blame Mr. Morgenstern.'

'No, no,' Peggy explained. 'He didn't dislike the ending. He didn't like that it ended.'

Pause. We walked in silence.

'I told him about the sequel, Poppa,' Jason said then.

Peggy nodded. 'He got really excited.'

And then my Willy said the words: 'Read it to me?'

I knew at that moment I was losing it. I remember exactly my fear—what if I couldn't bring it to life this time? What if I failed? Failed us both?

'That's the request, Dad. Willy wants you to read him Buttercup's Baby. We all want you to do it.'

'Well it's too bad about what 'we' all want, isn't it,' I started, my voice too loud. 'It's sure too bad 'we' can't have everything, isn't it? You all better get used to disappointment,' and before I did anything even worse, I looked at my watch, gestured that I had to go, took off, went home, stayed there, didn't answer the phone, had early Chinese sent in from Pig Heaven, started drinking, was gone by midnight.

And woke before dawn with a dream, so vivid; I went out to my terrace, paced, started trying to figure out the dream, and more than that, I guess, my life and how had I screwed it up.

It was a memory of that second pneumonia, and Helen was reading the screenplay of the movie to me—only this time she was young and wonderful, and she was also crying.

On the terrace I knew why—we are all the writers of our own dreams—she was me, she was me crying for me, for what I had become. And then I remembered she wasn't reading The Princess Bride, she was reading about Fezzik and the madman on the mountain, the start of Buttercup's Baby, and I realized that twice I had almost died and Morgenstern had come to save me and now here he was again, saving me again, because I knew this, standing there looking out at the city as the sun rose: I would be a real writer once more, not just some schmuck with an Underwood, as screenwriters are still thought of Out There.

I didn't think I was ready to go from zero to sixty, to start a novel from scratch. I didn't feel confident that I could make everything up, as I had done for my thirty novel-writing years.

Let me explain what I was not ready to do.

Take Szell, the Nazi dentist in Marathon Man (Olivier in the movie, and wasn't he great? Remember the 'is it safe' scene with the dental tools?). There is this street in Manhattan, 47th between Fifth and Sixth, and I was walking along it one day, decades back, on my way somewhere, can't remember, doesn't matter, but that block is called the 'diamond district.' It is filled with an amazing number of diamond shops, most of them run by Jews, and on a lot of them, you could see they still had their concentration camp numbers. I thought that day what a great scene it might be if I could have a Nazi walking on that street.

Which Nazi I didn't know, but probably I started doing some mild research, reading and asking people, and I finally came across the most brilliant of them all, Mengele—the double doctor, Ph.D. and M.D.—then thought to be living in Argentina, the guy who did the heartless experiments on twins.

OK, great, I've got my guy—but why does he risk everything to come to 47th Street? I knew this much: it couldn't be to go to the prom. The most wanted man on earth had to have an unshakable reason.

Years go by, with Mengele stuck in the corner of my head and gradually Babe started to appear, the marathon man of the title. Then I caught a break: I read about a surgeon who had invented a heart sleeve operation, somewhere, maybe Cleveland, but I could put him in New York.