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I finished and sipped my drink and shut up.
“Is the train in Murder on the Orient Express pulling into the station?” said Fritz, lying back full-length like Caesar in his bath.
“Yes.”
“Furthermore,” said Fritz Wong in his fine Germanic guttural, “are you free to accept work on a screenplay titled The Many Deaths of Rattigan, starting Monday, five hundred a week, ten weeks, twenty thousand bonus if we finally shoot the goddamn film?”
“Take the money and run,” said Henry.
“Crumley, you want me to take his offer?” I said.
“It’s dumb thinking but a great film,” said Crumley.
“You don’t believe me?” I cried.
“Nobody could be as nuts as you just said,” said Crumley.
“Good God, why have I stood here upchucking my guts?” I sank in my chair.
“I don’t want to live,” I said.
“Yes, you do.” Fritz leaned forward, scribbling on a pad.
Five hundred a week was there.
He threw a five-dollar bill on top.
“Your first ten minutes’ salary!”
“Then you almost believe? No.” I pushed the paper away. “Got to be one of you here gets my idea.”
“Me,” a voice said.
We all looked at Blind Henry.
“Sign the contract,” he said, “but make him sign saying he really believes every word you say!”
I hesitated, then scribbled my own manifesto.
Rumbling, Fritz signed.
“That Constance,” he growled. “Damn! She shows up at your door, flings herself on you like a goddamn snake. Hell! Who cares if she kills herself? Why should she run scared of her own phone books and look up all the stupid people who led her down the garden path? Would phone books scare you? Christ, no! There had to be a reason for her setting out to run, to seek. Motivation. Why, goddammit, why all that work, to get what? Hold on.”
Fritz stopped, his face suddenly pale, then slowly suffusing with color. “No. Yes. No, couldn’t be. No. Yes. Is!”
“Is what, Fritz?”
“I’m glad I talk to myself,” said Fritz. “I’m glad I listen. Did anyone hear?”
“You haven’t said, Fritz.”
“I’ll talk to myself, and you eavesdrop, ja?”
“Ja,” I said.
Fritz shot me through the heart with one glare. He doused his irritation with a swallow of his martini and said, “A month ago, two months, she threw herself across my desk, with heavy breaths. Was it true, she cried, I was starting some new film? A movie yet nameless? ‘Ja,’ I said. ‘Yes, maybe.’ ‘And is there a part for me?’ she said, on my shoulder, in my lap. ‘No, no,’ I said. ‘Yes, there must be. There has to be. Tell me, Fritz, what is it?’ I should have never told her. But I did, God help me!”
“What was the film, Fritz?”
