Mitla Pass - Leon Uris [29]
The money failed to come in, even though the book went back for a third printing before publication. So here was Gideon with a book about to go onto the bestseller list and we had to take a second mortgage on the house.
When a Hollywood sale and screenplay were offered by Pacific Studios, we grabbed it in order not to sink.
I don’t know the answer. If his publisher had kept his word, Gideon might have passed up the screenplay job and started The Tenderloin. I didn’t know and neither did he. It had become a matter of survival and the studio salary of seven hundred dollars a week seemed like the end of the rainbow.
For me, my dream of tranquility was shattered, forever. I was locked in with a warrior.
GIDEON
San Francisco Bay Area, 1953
FROM THE TIME I was a little guy I rehearsed the moments of future glory a thousand and one times. When it did happen, I, Gideon Zadok, would be ready. During the dark years, the fantasy of reaching the top had become an overwhelming driving force that kept me going.
Now, it began to happen. Dream after dream came true. Val enjoyed some of it—the TV shows, the newspaper articles, the good reviews, the recognition and attention. For the first time, I saw a completely different side of her. She was very uncomfortable with the spotlight on her. She wasn’t getting the kicks I was getting.
For years, when I was working on the newspaper and writing in the attic in Mill Valley, I would get to a radio every day and listen to the Mary Margaret McBride show. She was a pleasant little fat lady who broadcast from her flat on Central Park South in New York and interviewed an author a day who was having a new book published. When I was summoned to her show, I was ready.
I was ready for my suite at the writer’s mecca, the Algonquin Hotel. Bloody suite cost over twenty bucks a day, but what the hell. I was ready when I was invited to lunch at their famed Round Table, graced by the literary lights of the day. Halfway through the meal I realized these assholes took their one-upmanship seriously. The New Yorker crowd. Would-be Oscar Wildes. I stopped the show with a couple of blunt, crude remarks to watch them gag and turn pale. Val didn’t catch the drift of my humor at all. In fact, she was furious with me.
“I suppose you think your vulgar Marine gutter talk was amusing.”
“Oh, for Christ sake, Val. Don’t you see what a bunch of fakes they are? The whole goddam gang of them haven’t written anything for ten years. Who in the hell are they to dictate public taste?”
“You had a chip on your shoulder the minute you entered New York.”
“This scene runs on too much bullshit. Look at the bullshit at the ‘21’ Club. Look at the bullshit with the owner himself, in person, ushering us past the peasants into the chummy Cub Room reserved for the hotsy-totsy elite. The publisher picked up a tab of over sixty dollars—over sixty dollars. For what? Bullshit.”
“Relax, buddy, enjoy,” she said. “You’ve made it. Stop waving a red flag. Everyone knows G. Zadok isn’t a member of the establishment. Take a cold shower.”
Maybe Val was right. I’m nice to most people. I just don’t like phonies. I was just mixed up. I wanted to be me but I was having difficulty finding out who me was. I couldn’t hang out around the newspaper and suck on beers at the corner bar anymore. My old buddies looked at me differently these days. Like I was some kind of tin Jesus, or something.
Are guys like J. III my new life? Fight, don’t fight. I don’t know how I’m supposed to act.
“Rough transition, Gideon,” Val said. “They’ll find out how tough you are soon enough. So, relax.”
“Yeah, I guess I’d better.”
“How about you and me taking a walk up Fifth Avenue to look for the real Gideon Zadok?” she said.
“The real Zadok’s in this room with you, baby, and he wants to put you flat on that bed.”
“You