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  "That means old," a grinning blond man on Bronzini's right said helpfully. Bronzini thanked him for the clarification.

  "TV is the next big thing." Bernie Kornflake beamed.

  "TV is old," Bronzini countered. His face, flat-cheeked and sad, grew stony. What kind of a game were they trying to run on him?

  "You're thinking of old TV," Kornflake said pleasantly. "The new technology coming in means every home will have wide-screen high-definition television. Why go to a sticky-floored movie house when you have the next-best thing in the privacy of your own home? This is the new trend, staying home. It's called cocooning. That's why Dwarf-Star is opening a new home-video operation. And we want you to be our first big star."

  "I'd like to talk about the script first."

  "Okay, let's. Give me the concept."

  "There's no concept," Bronzini said, sliding the script across the table. "It's a Christmas movie. An old-fashioned-"

  Kornflake's hands came up like pale flags. "Whoa! Old is out. We can't have old. It's too retro."

  "This is classic old. This is quality. That means good," Bronzini added to the blond man. The blond man thanked him through perfectly set teeth.

  Dwarf-Star president Bernie Kornflake leafed through the script. Bronzini could tell by his glazed eyes that he was simply checking to see that there were words on the pages. His eyes had that shine that comes from pulling white powder into the brain through the nostrils.

  "Keep talking, Bart," Kornflake said. "This script looks good. I mean, check out all these words. A lot of scripts we see these days, they're mostly white space."

  "It's about this autistic boy," Bronzini said intently. "He lives in a world of his own, but one Christmas he wanders out into the snow. He gets lost."

  "Hold up, I'm getting lost. This sounds complicated, not to mention heavy. Think you could give this to me in six or seven words?"

  "Seven words?"

  "Five would be better. Just. give me the high concept. That's what it's all about now. You know, like Nun on a Skateboard. I Was a Teenage Dumpster Diver. Housewife Hookers in Vietnam. Like that."

  "This isn't a concept film. It's a story. About Christmas. It's got feeling and emotion and characterization."

  "Does it have tits?" someone asked.

  "Tits?" Bronzini said in an offended tone.

  "Yeah, tits. Boobs. Knockers. You know, if there's enough boom-cheechee in this thing we can maybe get around the fact that the audience has to sit through a story. You know, kinda take their mind off it. We expect escapism to be very major in the nineties."

  "What do you think I built my career on?" Bronzini snarled. "Ballet? And I don't want them to take their minds off the story. The story is what they're paying to see. That's what movie making is about!" Bartholomew Bronzini's voice rose like a thermometer in August.

  Every man in the room got very, very still. A few edged their chairs away from the table in order to give them leg room so they could bolt if, as some of them imagined, Bartholomew Bronzini pulled an Uzi from under his black leather jacket and started spraying the room. They knew he was capable of such atrocities because they had seen him mow down entire armies in his Grundy films. It could not have been acting. Everyone knew what a terrible actor Bronzini was. Why else was he the top-grossing actor of all time, but had never won a best-actor Oscar?

  "All right, all right," Bronzini told them, throwing up his hands. A few people ducked, thinking he had tossed a grenade.

  When no one exploded, the room relaxed. Bernie Kornflake extracted a plastic nasal-spray bottle from his coat pocket and took a couple of hits. His blue eyes were sixty candlepower shinier after he put it away. Bronzini knew that it was not filled with a commercial antihistamine.

  "I want to make this movie," Bronzini told them seriously.

  "Of course you do, Bart," Kornflake said soothingly. "That's what we're all here for. That's what life is about, making movies."

  Bartholomew Bronzini could have told them making movies was not what life was about. But they wouldn't have understood. Every man in the room believed that making movies was what life was about. Every one of them was in the movie-making business, as was Bartholomew Bronzini. There was just one difference. Every man at the table had the drive and ambition and connections to make movies. None of them had the talent. They had to steal their ideas, or option books and change them so much that the authors no longer recognized them.

  Bartholomew Bronzini, on the other hand, knew how to make movies. He could write screenplays. He could direct them. He could star. He could also produce-not that that was even a skill, never mind a talent.

  None of the men in the room could do any of those things. Except produce, which in their case was the same as unskilled labor. And each of them hated Bartholomew Bronzini because he could.

  "I have an idea!" Kornflake cried. "Why don't we cut a deal? Bart, come in with us on this TV thing, and during the summer hiatus we can knock out this little Easter film of yours."

  "Christmas. And I'm not some frigging TV actor."

  "Bart, baby, sweetheart, listen to me. If Milton Berle had said that, he'd never have become Uncle Miltie. Think of it."

  "I don't want to be the next Berle," Bronzini said. "Then you can be the next Lucille Ball!" someone shouted with the enthusiasm usually reserved for scientific breakthroughs.

  Bronzini fixed the man with his sad eyes.

  "I don't want to be the next anyone," he said firmly. "I'm Bartholomew Bronzini. I'm a superstar. I've made over thirty films. And every one of them made millions."

  "Uh-uh, Bart, baby. Don't kid us. You forgot Gemstone."

  "That one only broke even. So shoot me. But Ringo grossed over fifty million bucks at a time when nobody went to prizefight films. Ringo II topped that. Even Ringo V outgrossed nine out of any ten films you could name. "

  "That's if you include foreign markets," Kornflake pointed out. "Domestically speaking, it was a dud."

  "Half the world's population saw it, or will."

  "That's wonderful, Bart. But the Filipinos don't give Oscars. Americans do."

  "I don't pick my fans. And I don't care who they are or where they live."

  "You know, Bart," Kornflake said solicitously, "I think you made a mistake killing off that boxer of yours in that last Ringo. You could have ridden him another five sequels. Extended your film career a little."

  "You make me sound dead," Bronzini challenged.

  "You've peaked. Variety said so last week."

  "I'm sick of Ringo," Bronzini retorted. "And Grundy and Viper and all these other action-film characters. I spent fifteen years doing action films. Now I want to do something different. I want to do a Christmas film. I want to do the next It's a Wonderful Life."

  "I never heard of that one," Kornflake said doubtfully. "Did it hit?"

  "It was filmed back in the forties," Bronzini told him. "It's a classic. They show it every Christmas week. You could turn on your TV right now, and somewhere, on some channel, they're showing it."

  "Back in the forties?" one of the others asked. "Did they have movies then?"

  "Yeah. But they were no good. All in black and white. "

  "That's not true," a third man said. "I saw a film like that once. Copablanca, or something. It had some gray in it. A couple of different shades of it, too."

  "Gray isn't a color. It's a ... What is gray, anyway. A tone?"

  "Never mind," Kornflake snapped. "Look Bart, tell you what. I have a better idea. We can do your Christmas story here. What's it called?" He flipped to the cover. It was blank. "No title?" he asked.

  "You have it upside down," Bronzini told him. Kornflake flipped it over. "Oh, so I did. Let's see . . . Johnny's Christmas Spirit. Stunning title." Bronzini leaped forward.

  "It's about a little autistic kid. He gets lost in a blizzard. He can't speak or tell anyone where he lives. The whole town is looking for him, but because it's Christmas Eve, they give up too soon. But the Spirit of Christmas saves
him."

  "The Spirit of Christmas?"

  "Santa Claus."

  Kornflake turned to his secretary. "Find out who owns the rights to Santa Claus, Fred. There may be something in this."

  Bronzini exploded. "What's the matter with you people? Nobody owns Santa Claus. He's public domain."

  "Somebody probably got fired for letting that property go public domain, huh?" a sandy-haired executive co-producer said.

  "Santa Claus is universal. Nobody created him."

  "I think that's true, Bernie," a co-executive producer said. "Right now, back east there's a guy running around in a Santa suit chopping off the heads of little kids with an ax. It's on all the talk shows. I think it's in Providence. Yeah, Providence, Massachusetts."

  "Providence is in Rhode Island," Bronzini said.

  "No, no, Bart," the co-executive producer said. "I beg to differ. This is happening in an American city, not some nothing foreign island. I read it in People."

  Bartholomew Bronzini said nothing. These were the very people who laughed at him behind his back at cocktail parties. The ones who dismissed him as a lucky musclehead. Five best-picture Oscars and they were still calling him lucky....

  "I read about it too," Bernie Kornflake said. "You know, maybe we could bring that in. What do you say, Bart? Do you think you could change your script a little? Make this Christmas Spirit an evil demon. He kills the kid. No, better, he kills and eats a bunch of kids. It could be the next major trend. Maniacs killing teenagers is getting stale. But preteens, even infants . . When was the last time anybody did a movie where babies were being devoured?"

  Everyone took a minute out to think. One man reached for a leather-bound book containing the synopses of every movie plot ever filmed, cross-referenced to theme and plot. He looked in the index under "Babies, devoured."

  "Hey, Bart may have something here, Bernie. There isn't even a listing."

  At that, everyone sat up straight.

  "No listing?" Kornflake blurted. "How about reversing it? Any killer-baby movies?"

  "No, there's nothing under 'Babies, Killer.' "

  "How about 'Babies, Cannibal'?"

  There were no cannibal babies listed in the index. Every man was out of his chair at that point. They crowded around the book, their eyes feverish.

  "You mean we got something entirely new here?" Kornflake demanded. His eyes were as wide as if he'd found a tarantula on his shell-pink lapel.

  "It's not based on anything I can find."

  Twelve heads turned with a single silent motion. Twelve pairs of eyes looked at Bartholomew Bronzini with a mixture of newfound respect and even awe.

  "Bart, baby," Bernie Kornflake croaked. "This idea of yours, this killer-baby thing. I'm sorry, babe, but we can't do it. It's too new. We can't do something this original. How would we market it? 'In the tradition of nothing anybody's ever seen before'? Never hit in a million years."

  "That's not my idea," Bronzini grated. "It's yours. I want to do a fucking Christmas movie. A simple, warm story with no guns and a happy fucking ending."

  "But, Bart, baby," Kornflake protested, noticing that Bronzini's street upbringing was creeping into his manner, "we can't take a chance. Look at your track record lately."

  "Thirty films. Thirty box-office successes. Three of those are among the top money-makers of all fucking time. I'm a superstar. I'm Bartholomew Bronzini. I was making movies while you assholes were counting the first hairs in your crotches and wondering if you'd seen too many werewolf flicks!"

  Kornflake's voice became stern. "Bart, Grundy III bombed. Domestically. You should never have used that Iran-Iraq story line. The war was over by the time you got into the theaters. It was yesterday's news. Who needed it?"

  "It still made eighty million worldwide. They can't keep it in the video stores!"

  "Tell you what," Kornflake said, sliding the script back across the polished table. "Put Grundy or Ringo into this script and we'll read it. If, after we kick it around, we don't think it will fly theatrically, we'll talk about turning it into a sitcom. We're going to need a gang of sitcoms for our new TV venture. Normally we only offer a thirteen-week guarantee, but for you, Bart, because we love you, we'll commit to a full season."

  "Listen to me. I can act. I can write. I can direct. I've made millions for this industry. All I am asking is to do one lousy Christmas movie, and the best you can offer me is a sitcom!"

  "Don't sneer at sitcoms. Do you know that Gilligan's Island has grossed over a billion dollars in syndication? A billion. That's a million with a B. None of your films ever did that, did they?"

  "I'm not in Bob Denver's league. So sue me. You're talking to a superstar, not some comedy reject. My films kept this industry afloat during the seventies."

  "And we're about to turn the corner into the nineties," Kornflake said flatly. "The parade is marching on. You gotta get on the train or walk the tracks."

  Bronzini jumped onto the table. "Look at these muscles!" he shouted, tearing off his jacket and shirt to expose the lean tigerish muscles that had sold fifty million posters. "Nobody has muscles like these! Nobody!"

  The men in the room looked at Bartholomew Bronzini's physique, then at one another.

  "Think about redoing the script, Bart," Bernie Kornflake said, flashing a good-riddance smile.

  "Go piss down your leg and drink from your sneaker," Bronzini snarled, scooping up his script.

  As he stormed down the corridor, Bartholomew Bronzini heard Kornflake call after him. He half-turned, his dark eyes smoldering.

  Kornflake approached Bronzini fawningly and flashed him a capped-tooth smile. "Before you go, Bart, baby, could I get your autograph? It's for my mother."

  When Bartholomew Bronzini kicked the stand down on his Harley again, he was in his ten-car Malibu garage. He walked into his living room. It looked like an art-deco church. One entire wall was covered with custom-made hunting knives. Three of them he had used as props in the Grundy movies. The others were for display. The opposite wall was covered in authentic Chagalls and Magrittes, purchased as tax shelters.

  Nobody believed that Bartholomew Bronzini had selected them because he appreciated them too, but he did. Today, he didn't even notice them.

  Bronzini sank into his Spanish leather couch, feeling like a man at the end of his rope. Movies were his life. And now the public laughed at the much-larger-than-life roles that a decade ago they had applauded him in. And when he did a comedy, no one laughed. And everyone wondered why this street-kid-turned-millionaire-actor was so unhappy.

  Woodenly he noticed that his message-machine light was on. He flipped a switch. His agent's voice boomed out.

  "Bart, baby, it's Shawn. I've been trying to get you all afternoon. I may have something for you. Call me soonest. Remember, you're loved."

  "I'm fucking half your income, too," Bronzini growled. Bartholomew Bronzini came to life. He lunged for the phone and hit the speed-dial button marked "Agent."

  "Yo! Got your message. What's the deal?"

  "Someone wants to film your Christmas movie, Bart."

  "Who?"

  "Nishitsu."

  "Nishitsu?"

  "Yeah. They're Japanese."

  "Hey, I may be having a bad streak, but I haven't sunk to doing cheap foreign films. Yet. You know better than that."

  "These guys aren't cheap. They're big. The biggest."

  "Never heard of them."

  "Nishitsu is the biggest Japanese conglomerate in the entire world. They're into VCR's, home computers, cameras. They're the ones who landed the contract to produce the Japanese version of the F-16."

  "The F-16!"

  "That's what their representative told me. I think it's a camera."

  "It's a fighter jet. Top-of-the-line Air Force combat model. "

  "Wow! They are big."

  "Damn straight," Bartholomew Bronzini said, noticing for the first time that his message machine had the word NISHITSU on the front.

  "They have money
to burn and they want to go into films. Yours will be the first. They want to take a meeting with you soonest."

  "Set it up."

  "It's already set up. You're on the red-eye to Tokyo." I am not going to Tokyo. Let them come to me."

  "That's not how it's done over there. You know that. You did those ham commercials for Japanese TV."

  "Don't remind me," Bronzini said, wincing. When his film career had started to slip, he accepted a deal to do food commercials for the Japanese market, on the understanding that they never appear on U. S. TV. The National Enquirer broke the story as "Bartholomew Bronzini Goes to Work in Slaughterhouse. "

  "Well, that ham company is a Nishitsu subsidiary. They've got their hands in everything."

  Bronzini hesitated. "They want to do my script, huh?"

  "That's not the best part. They're offering you one hundred million to star. Can you believe it?"

  "How many bucks equals one hundred million yen?"

  "That's the beauty of it. They're paying in dollars. Are these Japs crazy, or what?"

  Bartholomew Bronzini's first reaction was, "Nobody pays that much to any actor." His second was, "What about points?"

  "They're offering points."

  "Against net or gross?" Bronzini asked suspiciously. "Gross. I know it sounds insane."

  "It is insane and you know it. I'm not going near this."

  "But it gets better, Bart, baby. They lined up Kurosawa to direct."

  "Akira Kurosawa? He's a fucking master. I'd kill to work with him. This can't be real."

  "There are a few strings," Shawn admitted. "They want to make a few script changes. Tiny ones. I know you usually get complete creative control, but I gotta tell you, Bart, there may be a lot of fish out there, but this is the only one biting."

  "Tell me about it. I just came back from Dwarf-Star."

  "How'd it go?"

  "It was a bad scene."

  "You didn't tear off your shirt again, did you?"

  "I lost my head. It happens."

  "How many times do I gotta tell you, that won't work anymore. Muscles are eighties. But okay, done is done. So are you on that plane or what? And before you answer, I gotta tell you it's gonna be either this, or you'd better start thinking seriously about Ringo VI: Back from the Dead."