his tirade continued. His yellow tie dotted with little purple crowns didn’t quite cover his belly, which protruded in a horizontal glob over his belt. “You gotta say what I tell you to say publicly or you’re screwed. Plain and simple. I hate to state the obvious, but the cover-up is always worse than the crime, buddy. Just admit your mistake and move on. Otherwise you’re toast. Trust me, that’s what you’re paying me for. I’ll get a good reporter to take your mea culpa. Someone important. I know: I’ll get Delsie Arceneaux to do it for you. Sound good? She’ll be gentle.”
Arrayed on the coffee table was Bouley Bakery’s freshest assortment of chocolate croissants and buttery Danish and muffins, delivered daily the minute Murray arrived. As he listened to the diminished soul on the other end of the line, he gestured toward the coffeepot for me to pour him a refill. I felt like a stewardess.
Murray suddenly threw the phone down the length of the couch, grabbed a giant blueberry crumb muffin, tore off the top, and bit a large section from it, spraying balls of sugar everywhere in the process. “I’m so happy Delsie is ready to emcee the Fulton Film Festival media lunch, and some panels. It’s like some light went on for her after your pitch and she’s excited. But now we gotta create even more buzz. Remember I got Max Rowland to invest in the festival, so he’ll have his jail buddies break my kneecaps if we mess this up.”
“Okay,” I said and wrote more buzz on my notepad. Murray always liked people to take notes, no matter how simple his demands. He knew damn well the buzz we were going to find was already in the pipeline. The Fulton Film Festival was practically running itself.
“Whatever you have, I’m not impressed, it’s not enough for Delsie or Max—”
“Murray,” I interrupted. “Why did you get that criminal Max Rowland to invest in a do-gooder festival like ours and put extra pressure on us to please him as well? I’m managing so many projects I don’t know if I have the time to …” My home situation was sapping so much energy out of me that I could barely listen to his commands, let alone execute them.
“Bullshit. You got spunk and intelligence.” He counted these attributes on his fingers without releasing the raspberry pastry in his grip. “You like to argue. Delsie likes that. I like that. I need to be told when I’m off base.”
For the past ten years, Murray had never once listened to me when I told him he was off base. I put down my pen.
“So what do you want me to do?”
“I want you to promise me everything will go okay with the festival.”
“First of all, as much as you’d like me to be, Murray, I’m not your mommy. And second, why do I have to go it alone? Why can’t you be more involved?”
“You are to deal alone with Max on festival business; I’m not doing it anymore. Have a pastry. You’re too goddamned thin.”
Why was every man in my life acting like a little child who had to have everything the way he wanted just now? Maybe I courted them. That thought depressed me as I thought about making an effort to expunge the next generation of too many man-babies. I decided I’d let Blake handle his friend issues on his own and give him praise when he did.
I turned to Murray. “You have to talk to me about the other business with Max Rowland; he’s a felon so I deserve to know you are being careful, or I refuse …”
Selena peeked into the room and said, “Sorry, Mr. Hillsinger. Your mother. Line two. You know how she reacts when I say you’re in a meeting so the light will be blinking until you pick up.”
“Shit!” Murray slammed the table. “Never satisfied. She’s working on me now to go to the Venice Film Festival at the end of summer, thinks she’s a film expert because her son has a few fuckin’ famous clients in Hollywood.” He picked up the receiver and completely changed the tone of his voice. “Yes, Ma.” He sounded like a little boy and slumped his shoulders. “Yes, sure, Ma. I’ll work on it. I thought you’d like the idea of Boca with your girlfriends again, but Venice it is.” He slumped deep into his sofa at her latest request. “No, Ma. You know the hotels are all booked. No, Ma. Doesn’t matter what they say, the Cipriani isn’t the only good one, but, yes, Ma, I’ll try to get you a room, but please remember if I can’t deliver for you, it’s because it’s been booked for celebrities for a year now.”
He had to pull the phone away from his ear as she reacted to that bit of news.
“Ma, I’ll try to get you in. I’ll call you later.” Pause. “Yes, I love you.” He put down the receiver.
“How come you look like a dejected eight-year-old every time you talk to her?”
“Because she terrifies me, that’s why,” he admitted in total defeat. “She purposely asks for the hotel that’s booked out five years in advance. They want Clooney and DiCaprio in the Cipriani that week, not my mom in her fuckin’ fanny pack and Mephisto shoes! Jesus.”
I looked at the explosion of crumbs in front of me and shook my head. “Do you want me to write something specific for Delsie’s speech at the festival?”
“You decide what to put in it. You wrote those great environmental speeches when I hired you. A kid out of college who writes speeches with that much impact, I want going full tilt on this.”
“Okay, Murray. And there were a lot of people I wrote them with; it wasn’t all me.”
He dusted his hands and heaved into a standing position, getting ready to dismiss me. “I don’t give a shit if all your environmental writing success back then was genetic talent from your dad’s love of the sea, or dumb luck on timing with the globe going green and the fuckin’ terrorists controlling all the oil. Point is, you’re gonna do what I ask and you’re the best writer I got … and I’m very indebted to you, even though I don’t say it enough.”
“Of course, Murray,” I said, my feelings for him warming back up as they invariably did.
“Look, kid,” he said. I turned at the tender sound in his voice. “Your dad would have been proud. Too bad the good die young and he never saw your work promoting a cause that championed the ocean he lived in.”
“Something like that.”
He put his arm around me, ushering me out. “I remember when I first heard you give a speech. I knew that instant you could coach all my clients and write all their speeches. You sounded like a senator: junior fucking Barbara Boxer or something. Just don’t get all lesbo on me.”
“Excuse me?” I said.
“I mean, that short hair, all tough …”
“I don’t think Barbara Boxer is known to be gay; I think she—”
“I don’t give a fuck about whether she is or isn’t. Just don’t start takin’ yourself too fuckin’ seriously.” He grabbed his cordless phone, started punching numbers into it, and looked at it as though it were shouting obscenities in his ear. “Goddamn it, Selena, get in here and dial this thing.”
Selena scurried in, her Kardashian ass bouncing up and down like a beach ball, and took the phone while Murray finished lecturing me. “I want you to write more press releases on each film to create more press buzz for everything we do here. You know, groundbreaking shit lesbo senators pay attention to.”
Selena
