The Reluctant Success of Sal Bellows (short fiction)

     Sal Bellows didn’t like cuteness, he didn’t like nonsense. He was a businessman where he really lived; he liked business, dammit. Having become a successful TV producer of daytime soaps, he now found himself having to deal with writers, directors, set designers, actors and even sometimes the odd composer or two. He always had the sense, in dealing with these creative types, that he might get a smell on him that wouldn’t wash off. It always reminded him of the time he found that tick burrowed deep into George Smalley’s arm, after they had gone hiking through some brush while on a corporate retreat in upstate New York, and how every random itch he felt for several weeks afterward made him want to crawl right out of his skin.

     Dealing with the inanities and eccentricities of creative types made him miss the clean, sterile math of the boardroom, and the no-nonsense men and paradigms that drove things there, where business made things make sense. Matters were quantified, and easily understood. No semi-abstractions, no ambiguous metaphors or symbolic vapors. Just the bottom goddamned line, in its unequivocal, black-and-white, elegant and unassailable truth.

     The fluke that had opened the door into this job, and all its madness, had been a timely favor from a very well connected brother-in-law. In 1978, Sal’s thirty-million dollar investment brokerage had tanked due to no fault of his own, and the timing was too good for him to turn this down without being ostracised by his wife and family. Lo and behold, just like that: He had become a studio boss. But dammit, he didn’t have to like it. It had already been a year, and he was still here.

     The lot smelled. During the long, hot walk from his parking spot to his office, his nose was assaulted by everything from fog machine glycol to the acrid edge of cordite from pyro; paint fumes and toxic plastic fumes from props and sets being perpetually built or struck; diesel exhaust, dust and chaos got kicked up into his nostrils from all sides…and it was noisy: Power tools, pounding hammers and skil saws, all killing his ears…even the ground itself was never guaranteed to be in a settled state. It was like running an obstacle course through a dirty construction zone. It made him miss, all the more, the stately poise with which the valet held the door of his limo open as he got out at the old office building he had owned in uptown Manhattan, and the quiet polish of the elevator ride up to his penthouse. This new office was no damned penthouse. It smelled musty, the air conditioning was noisy, the big picture window wasn’t tinted and glare from the afternoon sun irritated his eyes unless he closed the cheap blinds.

     And nothing ever happened punctually. Sitting alone behind his massive desk and rubbing his temples from the glare, he was about to get up and close the blinds when the intercom squawked and Gloria announced the arrival of his 4:00. He glanced up at the gaudy wall clock he had inherited from the office’s previous occupant – a hideous homage to an emmy award, badly painted on a sun-warped pane of cheap, hi-gloss black plexiglass, the minute and hour hands helplessly plodding through their vicious cycles as they counted time. Counting down to what, he mused: until his first failure got him fired and sent him happily packing, leaving the clock to the next victim to inhabit this cursed place. As far as Sal was concerned, it couldn’t happen soon enough.

     The Emmy clock said it was 4:43. Why did these people have such a flexible goddamned association with time? Then the timid knock on the door. It was Gregg Shearson, a faded-glory, award-winning screenplay writer who had fallen from grace, wound up here in TV hell, blown a deadline and been almost impossible to reach for several days.

     “Come in!” Sal said a little too loudly.

     “You wanted to see me, sir?”

     “Yes, at four o’clock, dammit.”

     “I’m sorry sir. I got here from the hospital as fast as I could.”

     “Hospital?”

     “My wife, sir. She’s very sick.”

     Sal took a beat to consider the possible angles here. Gregg’s shirt looked like it had been slept in, not that that was uncommon. But his face looked like the drying mud in a moshpit the morning after an outdoor punk rock festival, and that was new. Sal couldn’t remember ever catching Gregg in an untruth and, though this was Hollywood, Gregg’s reputation was solid. Sal decided to grant the sick wife premise and take the ride.

     “I’m very sorry to hear that. What does she have? Will she be okay?”

     “Well sir, without oversharing, the best way to get the situation across is this: If she were an airplane…”

     “Ohgawd” Sal thought, but remained quiet. Gregg moved to a point between Sal and the window, an animated silhouette against the glare.

     “…she was cruising along in pretty good form at about ten thousand feet, took an unexpected catastrophic bird hit and lost both engines, entered into an uncontrollable flat spin and would have been dead within twenty four hours, if paramedics hadn’t been called to deploy a drogue ‘chute. ER docs were able to restart one engine and get her leveled off before she cratered, but not before she skimmed some treetops and took some pine boughs in the intakes. She’s currently limping laboriously along, trailing smoke in a very gradual climb, and should eventually be able to regain enough altitude and airspeed to resume a semblance of normal flight, but—and this is a big but—only if the upcoming terrain doesn’t rise up, or present unexpected obstacles. And begging your pardon sir, but we can’t see the future to know what that terrain looks like. You might say her instrument array is down.”

     “I understand.”

     “You do?” asked Gregg.

     “HELL NO, I DON’T!” hollered Sal in his imagination, while biting his tongue and feigning calm empathy. For all his disdain of creatives, he recognized talent when he saw it, and knew how valuable Gregg was. He didn’t want to scare him out the door, didn’t need to fire him. The objective of this meeting was to redress Gregg enough to put some fear into him, then restore him to duty. But this sick wife thing required a different angle.

     “Of course I do. You think I can’t understand a metaphor?”

     Gregg’s silhouette seemed to smile ambiguously, and had the tact to remain silent.

     Sal cleared his throat and moved things along.

     “Say, what’s next for you after ‘Vampire Housewives of Hog Calling’ wraps next month?”

     “Nothing, as far as I know. Why?”

     “I think I’ve got your next project. It’ll be a bit of a change from the usual grind around here, but I think you’ll like it. I’d like you to head the writing team for a new action / adventure series centered around aviation”, he heard himself say.

     “Really?” Gregg said, eyebrows raised in genuine interest.

     “Yes, I’ll have my people get with you on the details. Now get outa here, take care of your wife, and for crissake, answer your goddamned phone when we call.”

     “Yes sir, thank you!”

     After Gregg left, Sal leaned back in his big cushy leather executive chair, feeling the pain it caused his lower spine, drumming his fingers on the desk in thought while squinting out the window at the Hollywood Hills for several seconds. Then he picked up the phone and buzzed the outer office. Gloria immediately picked up.

     “Yes sir?”

     “We need to arrange meetings with Gotlieb, Kramer, Roman…all the investors in the rolodex. We’re gonna do a new series on aviation. Tell Gregg Shearson I said it’ll be set in World War Two, focused on how the P51 saved our asses, oriented around an American pilot who’s the central character, co-starred by his girl, either Rosie the Riveter or a nurse, Gregg can decide which. Or maybe both…and there’s a love-triangle sub-plot…but we don’t wanna get too soapy. Supporting cast will be fellow pilots, airplane mechanics and ground crew, he’s got his rival pilot frenemy he’s in competition with for everything…there’s gotta be a squadron leader who’s always got his boot up our hero’s ass, and there’s a design team of eggheads in Lancaster and some test pilots at Edwards Air Force Base. Maybe they know our main character…or better yet, the test pilot is his brother. Yeah, that’s it: he’s his brother, and he dies tragically in an accident during the testing. But our hero goes on to become an ace once the P51 is a reality, and save a bunch of grunts on the ground in Germany, using the airplane that his brother died to help bring to the world. Real red, white and blue apple pie hero stuff. Tell him to start on a storyline for 12 episodes immediately, and to prioritize the synopsis for the sizzle reel, because we’ll need that for the investors. Got all that?”

     “Yes, sir.” He could hear Gloria scribbling her unerring shorthand. Gloria was the one thing he was truly thankful for here in this godforsaken job: she was smart, fast, educated and highly competent at her job, a real engine of organization. She always got things done, in good form. And she seemed to know everything…the lady was a walking encyclopedia. Maybe he should give her a raise. Someday.

     Sal leaned back in his chair, opened the lid on his hand-carved, gold-trimmed honduran mahogany humidor, and reached inside. From its cedar-lined interior, he took out a Cohiba Corona. Trimming the tip with a familiar expert “snip!” and lighting it from the perfect blue flame of his gold-plated cigar lighter, he once again leaned back and looked out at the hills, savoring the perfect laminar flow of delicious smoke as it curled delicately out from his mouth.

     “Fucking creatives think they’re the only ones who can pull stuff outa their asses,” he chuckled.