“This is the dumbest asshole trick I’ve ever heard of!” Gabriel was screaming. “I don’t want to go to Canada! There’s nothing and nobody in Canada! All the good Canadian directors and actors are here, in California, for Chrissakes! We’ve got everything we need right here. Going to Canada is crazy! With a capital K!”
He was heading for the phone again when Morgan lifted one hand a few centimeters off the armrest of his chair. “Ron,” he said quietly.
Gabriel stopped in midstride.
“Ron, the decision’s already been made. It’s a money decision and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Gabriel frowned furiously at his agent.
“That’s the way it is,” Morgan said blandly.
“Then I want out,” Gabriel said.
“Don’t be silly,” Morgan countered.
“I’m walking.”
“You can’t do that!” Sheldon protested.
“No? Watch me!”
Gabriel started for the door. Halfway there, he stopped and turned back toward Sheldon. “Tell you what,” he said. His face still looked like something that would stagger Attila the Hun. “If I have to go to Canada, I’m going first class.”
Sheldon let his breath out a little. “Oh, of course. Top hotels. All the best.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“What then?”
“I’m not going to let this show get stuck out in the boondocks, with no pipeline back to the money and the decision makers.”
“But I’ll be there with you,” Sheldon said.
Gabriel made as if to spit. “I want personal representation from top management, right there on the set every goddamned day. I want one of Finger’s top assistants in Canada with us.”
“Ohhh.” The clouds began to dissipate and Sheldon could see a Canadian sunrise. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I could get Les Montpelier… or Brenda Impanema…”
Gabriel pointed an index finger at him, pistol-like. “You’ve got the idea.”
Nodding, Sheldon said, “I’ll ask B.F. tonight, at the party…”
“Party?”
“Party, huh?” was all that Gabriel said.
After he and Morgan left the office, Sheldon went to his private john and took a quick needle shower. Toweling himself off, he yelled through the open door to Murray:
“Well, what do you think of our star writer and creator?”
The computer hummed to itself for a few moments, then the screen lit up:
SUCH A KVETCH!
5: THE DECISION MAKERS
Sheldon was dressing for the party. It had been a long, exhausting day. And it wasn’t over yet. Bernard Finger’s parties were always something of a cross between a longdistance marathon and being dropped out of an airplane.
After Gabriel and his agent had left, Sheldon spent the rest of the morning recuperating, popping tranquilizers and watching Murray run down lists of Canadian production companies. There weren’t very many. Then the computer system started tracking down freelance Canadian directors, cameramen, electricians and other crew personnel. Distressingly, most of them lived in the States. Most of them, in fact, lived in one state: California, southern, Los Angeles County.
At a discreet lunch with Montpelier, Sheldon dropped the barest hint that he would have Titanic money to shoot the show in Canada. Montpelier scratched at his beard for a moment and then asked:
“What about Gabriel? What’s he think of the idea?”
“Loves it,” exaggerated Sheldon.
Montpelier’s eyebrows went up. “He’s willing to leave that sex palace he’s got in Sherman Oaks to go to the Frozen North?”
“He wants the show to be a success,” Sheldon explained, crossing his ankles underneath the table. “When I explained that we’d be able to make our limited budget go much farther in Canada, he agreed. He was reluctant at first, I admit. But he’s got a huge emotional commitment to this show. I know how to lever him around.”
With a shrug, Montpelier said, “Fine by me. If Gabriel won’t screw up the works…”
“He, eh… he wants one favor from us.”
“Oh.”
“It’s not back breaking; don’t get worried.”
“Tell me about it.”
“He wants Brenda up there with him.”
Grinning, Montpelier asked, “Does she know about it?”
“That Gabriel wants her?”
“No. The Canada part.”
“Not yet.”
“So if she doesn’t go, Gabriel doesn’t go.”
Feeling somewhat annoyed at Montpelier’s smirk, Sheldon replied, “Yes, I suppose that’s so.”
After a long silent moment, Montpelier finally said, “Well, I guess that means Brenda’s going to Canada.” Sheldon let his breath out. It was going to work!
“I mean,” Montpelier justified, “if its vital to the company’s interests, she’ll just have to go to Canada.”
“Right.”
“Her relationship with Gabriel is her own business.”
“Right,” Sheldon said again.
“We’re not responsible for her private life; after all. She’s an adult. It’s not like we’re forcing her into Gabriel’s clutches.”
“Right.” It was an important word to know.
Their lunch went on for several hours while they discussed serious matters over tasteful wines and a bit of anticaloric food. Sheldon tried to suppress the nagging memory of a recent magazine article about the carcinogenic properties of anticaloric foods. Muckraking journalism, of course. Who could work in an industry where more business was conducted in restaurants and bars than in offices, without the calorie-destroying active enzyme artificial foods? Besides, the news from the National Institutes of Health was that a cure for cancer was due within another few years. For sure, this time.
By the time lunch was over, Sheldon was too exhausted to go back to the office. So he drove home for a short nap, before getting ready for the party. Gloria was out when he got home and he gratefully jumped into the unoccupied bed and was asleep in seconds.
She woke him when she returned, but it didn’t matter. She was already beginning to look slightly fuzzy at the edges, becoming transparent to Sheldon’s eyes. Not that he could see through her, so much as the fact that now he could look past her. Beyond her swollen belly and sarcastic mouth he could see lovely, pristine Canada.
She whined about not going to the party, of course. Sheldon just stared at her bloated body and said, “Now really!” Instead of starting one of her scenes, she cried and retreated to the already rumpled bed.
Sheldon didn’t tell her about Canada. He wanted to be barricaded in his office, with Murray at his side, when he popped that surprise. On the phone he could handle almost anything.
