“That’s too bad. And ain’t it the way it always happens with science? We spent a godzillion dollars sending people to the Moon and Mars, and the Moon’s just a rock and Mars’s just a damn desert.”
“Well, I don’t know anyone honestly expected-”
“Now,dinosaurs, dinosaurs’ve been hot sellers forever. Dino toys, VR-they had all that stuff when I was a kid, and it still outsells every damn thing in sight. And every two, three years, regular as laxatives, another big dino movie. But what’ve you got? You got nothing, I’m sorry to say.” He began to count on his fingers the things which Ivan did not have. “You got no big concept. You got no merchandisable angle. You got no crossover potential. Crossover potential’s very big these days. You know, like Tarzan meets Frankenstein. James Bond versus Mata Hari. But, most of all, you haven’t got dinosaurs, though.
Everybody knows if you’re going to tell a story set in the prehistoric past, there have to be dinosaurs.
Without dinosaurs, there’s no drama.”
“I guess not,” Ivan said, and took a long sip of his drink, and looked at the shimmering blue-green water in the pool. The slowly stirring air seemed to carry a faint smell of burning. He said to Rubis, “Let me bounce an idea for a different kind of time-travel story off you. Tell me what you think.”
“Sure. Shoot.”
“Okay. You have to bear in mind that when we speak of traveling backward through time, into the past, what we’re really talking about is traveling between just two of infinite multiple Earths. Some of these multiple Earths may be virtually identical, some may be subtly different, some are wildly different-as different as modern and prehistoric times. Anyway, what you actually do when you travel through time is go back and forth between Earths. Earth as it is, here and now, and another Earth, Earth as it was in the Paleozoic Era.”
Rubis murmured, “Weird,” and smiled.
“Now let’s say someone from our present-day visits a prehistoric Earth and returns. After a while, after the initial excitement’s died down, he starts to ponder the implications of travel back and forth between multiple Earths. He’s come back to a present-day Earth that may or may not be his own present-day Earth. If it’s virtually identical, well, if the only difference is, say, the outcome of some subatomic occurrence, then it doesn’t matter. But maybe there’s something subtly off on the macro level. It wouldn’t be anything major. Napoleon, Hitler, and the Confederate States would all’ve gone down to defeat. Or maybe the time-traveler only suspects that something may be subtly off. His problem is, he’s never quite sure, he can’t decide whether something is off or he only thinks it is, so he’s always looking for the telling detail. But there are somany details. If he never knew in the first place how many plays Shakespeare really wrote or who all those European kings were…”
Rubis nodded. “I get it. Not bad.” He chewed his lower lip for a moment. “But I still think it needs dinosaurs.”
Ivan chuckled softly, without mirth. “You should look up my niece’s boyfriend.” He turned on his seat, toward the burning hills.
They swept down Mulholland. Ivan said to Don, “Thanks for taking me. I can’t remember when I’ve had so much fun.” Don gave him a curious look. “No, really. I had a very good time, a wonderful time.”
“Probably a better time than I did.”
Ivan made a noncommittal sound. “I needed this experience as a kind of reality check.”
Don laughed sharply. “Hollywood isn’t the place to come for a reality check.”
“Well, okay. Let’s just say I had a very enlightening and entertaining poolside chat with our host.”
“Johnny Rubis? Christ. He wasn’t our host. Our host was a swine in human form named Lane. He was holding court indoors the whole time. I went in and did my dip and rise and got the hell out as fast as I could. Whatever Rubis may’ve told you he was doing by the pool, he was just showing off. See what a big deal I am. There were guys all over the place doing the same thing-women, too. Dropping names and making a show of pissant phone calls. See what big deals we are. Whatever Rubis may’ve told you, he’s not that high in the food chain. A year ago he was probably packaging videos with titles likeTrailer Park Sluts. He’s an example of the most common form of life in Hollywood. The self-important butthead.
I know, I’ve worked for plenty like him.”
“Writing novels based on movies based on novels?”
Don shook his head. “Not me. Not lately, anyway?”
Ivan wondered if Don despised himself as much as he apparently despised everyone else in Hollywood.
He hoped it was not so. More than anything, he hoped it was not so. “Don,” he said, “I’m sorry I said that. I’m really terribly sorry.”
Don shrugged. “No offense taken.” He gave Ivan a quick grin. “Hey, big brother, I’ve been insulted by professionals. It’s one of the things writers in Hollywood get paid for.”
They rode in silence for a time.
Then Don said, “Do you know what a monkey trap is? “Pretty self-explanatory, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but do you know how it works? You take a dry gourd and cut a small hole in it, just big enough for the monkey to get its hand through. You put a piece of food inside the gourd and attach the gourd to a tree or a post. The monkey puts his hand into the gourd, grabs the piece of food, and then can’t pull his fist back through the hole. He could get away if he’d only let go of the food, but he just can’t make himself let go. So, of course, he’s trapped.”
“Is the money really that good?”
“Christ, Ivan, the money’s incredible. But itisn’t just the money. What it is, is that every great once in a long goddamn while, against all the odds-remember, before all this happened, I worked in the next best habitat favorable to self-important buttheads, which is politics. While you were off exploring prehistoric times, I was writing like a sumbitch on fire and trying to get the hell out of Texas. I paid the rent, however, by working for the state legislature. Whenever a legislator wanted to lay down a barrage of memorial resolutions, I was the anonymous flunky who unlimbered the ‘whereases’ and the ‘be it resolveds.’ Every now and then, I wrote about forgotten black heroes of the Texas Revolution, forgotten women aviators of World War Two-something, anyway, that meant something. But, of course, in those resolutions, everything was equally important. Most of my assignments were about people’s fiftieth wedding anniversaries, high-school football teams, rattlesnake roundups. Finally, I was assigned to write a resolution designating, I kid you not, Texas Bottled Water Day. Some people from the bottling industry were in town, lobbying for God remembers what, and someone in the lege thought it’d be real nice to present them with a resolution. Thus, Texas Bottled Water Day. When I saw the request, I looked my boss straight in the eye, and I told him, This is not work for a serious artist. He quite agreed. First chance he got, he fired me.”
“Maybe you should’ve quit before it came to that.”
“Well, I’d’ve quit anyway as soon as the writing took off.” Don changed his grip on the steering wheel.
“But while I was a legislative drudge, I lived for those few brief moments when the work really meant something.”
His face, it seemed to Ivan, was suddenly transformed by some memory of happiness. Or perhaps it was just the car. The car cornered like a dream.
The Thing About Benny - M. Shayne Bell
