Brain Drain Read online

  “Sure,” said Wanda, running her hand over the corner of the desk. It was smooth.

  “Sit down, kid,” she said. Maybe this delivery boy could help her. After all, wasn’t it a busboy who had got her into the men’s room at the Brown Derby where she cornered Biff Ballon and wouldn’t let him get up or have the toilet paper until he signed. She had stood with her heel on Biff’s underwear down by his ankles. Some lesser lights, some jealous ones, might call that crude. But success was never crude.

  “Kid,” she said, “my problem is this. I’ve got a beautiful package I’m trying to sell. Perfect. And some studio head is too stupid to see it. What’s your solution?”

  “While there is some leeway to improve the working of the human mind, basic intelligence does not improve, not even with chemical drugs which affect the species, usually negatively.”

  “Which means he’s not going to change his mind,” said Wanda.

  “You did not say it was a matter of altering an opinion. That is very possible.”

  “How?”

  “Pain.”

  “How come you’re only a delivery boy, kid?”

  “I only appear to be a delivery boy. This I used to enter your office without alarming you.”

  “Do you love me, kid?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Kid, if you’re going to work for me, there’s one basic rule you’ve got to understand. There are times when honesty is definitely not called for.”

  “Please let me know those times.”

  “Figure them out for yourself, kid. Now tell me, what kind of pain?”

  “Wrenching limbs from sockets creates an enormous pain level in a human. They will do anything to stop that pain.”

  Wanda Reidel imagined Del Stacey getting his arms torn out of his sockets. She thought of his legs snapping off also. She thought of Del Stacey a writhing trunk on the floor, and she thought of dropping him into a pail of boiling water and seeing if the crustacean really did turn red.

  “Did I say something amusing? You are smiling,” said Heublein, the delivery boy.

  “No, no, just thinking. Uh, do you have something that doesn’t kill? You know, sort of just terrorizes.”

  “Yes, I can create terror.”

  “Hmmm. And if you get caught, no one would believe a delivery boy’s word against mine. Well, no court at least. Let me explain the package I’m trying to sell. An Academy Award director combined with an Academy Award writer along with an actor I know would be super. I just need a little stiffening on the package and then a sell to Stacey.”

  “What stiffening?”

  “The Academy Award director won’t talk to me because I don’t have Marlon Brando. The Academy Award writer won’t talk to anybody. I need them. I already have Biff Ballon.”

  With an admonition that she wanted to know nothing about how Heublein did it, she gave him the addresses of the writer and the director and told him to take off that silly white jacket.

  “If anything goes wrong, I don’t know you.”

  “Oh, you are experienced in self–hypnosis,” said Heublein.

  “Very,” said Wanda Reidel, the Octopussy. “Is Heublein your real name?”

  “No.”

  “What’s your real name?”

  “Gordons. Mr. Gordons.”

  “Never heard of anybody changing his name from Gordons. What was it before Gordons?”

  “Since I am, it is Gordons.”

  She gave him a one–page treatment of the movie he should try to sell—to the writer and the director. She already had Biff Ballon.

  · · ·

  Walter Mathias Bledkden was catching the Beverly Hills sun while reading The Wretched of the Earth when he felt something tug at his left foot, dangling in the lung–shaped swimming pool.

  “Stop that, Valerie,” he said.

  “What did you say?” said his wife, wading through another script she would reject. She sat behind him.

  “Oh. I thought you were in the pool. I thought you tugged at my foot.”

  “No,” she said.

  “Well, I know that. You’re not in the pool.”

  Suddenly he couldn’t move the foot. He yanked, but it wouldn’t move. It felt as if it were in a vise.

  “Help,” yelled Walter Mathias Bleekden and his wife dropped the scripts and ran to the edge of the pool where she saw his foot caught in the chrome ladder. She untangled it and went back to her scripts.

  “That chrome ladder wasn’t there before,” said Bleekden. He was in his late fifties and suntan lotion glistened off the white hair of his chest.

  “It must have been, dear,” said Valerie.

  “I know it wasn’t,” said Bleekden.

  “Maybe it’s your white guilt, reading that book.”

  “I’m through my guilt phase. I’m into my activist phase. Only those who stay beyond the fray should feel guilty. My next picture is going to be significant. Socially and morally significant. I don’t have to feel guilt. Guilt is bourgeois.”

  “Your next picture had better be box office.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about. Morally significant is box office. Black is money. Poverty is money.”

  “I saw a nice treatment of an Indian theme. There’s this wagon train surrounded by the Seventh Cavalry and it’s rescued by the Sioux.”

  But Walter Bleekden did not answer. He was struggling with his beach chair. Somehow his neck was through the webbing and his hands grappled furiously at the arms. Valerie tugged but he could not be freed. Underneath the chair his face turned blue and in the insane moment he could have sworn he heard a voice:

  “Phone Wanda Reidel.”

  It seemed as if it came from the legs of the chair.

  “Yes,” he gurgled and he felt his wife’s hands yanking him free.

  “My lord, this is freaky,” said Valerie. “What are you doing, strangling yourself?”

  “The chair grabbed me.”

  “Let’s get out of the sun, dear,” said Valerie.

  “It grabbed me.”

  “Yes, dear. Let’s get out of the sun anyhow.”

  Settled in the spacious living room with leather furniture built into the floor, Walter Mathias Bleekden mixed himself a tall light scotch and, still shaking from the beach chair incident, drank it down. He clapped his hands for his houseboy, who did not appear immediately. If there were two things that bothered Walter Bleekden, it was oppression of racial minorities and uppity servants.

  “Where is that houseboy?” grumbled Bleekden.

  “He’ll be here, dear. After all, this isn’t that Wanda Reidel garbage. This is real life.”

  “What Wanda Reidel? Did you say Wanda Reidel?”

  “Yes. She’s trying to put together a package with you and that hot young writer, Bertram Mueller. A gross theme. It’s a takeoff on Hitchcock’s The Birds. The furniture and all the surroundings turn against people. Gross. Awful.”

  “She promised me Marlon Brando. And now she wants to give me Biff Ballon. I won’t talk to her.”

  “You’re very wise, dear. It’s a loser.”

  Bleekden nodded. He felt very pleased with himself until later in the day when he went to the bathroom to relieve himself. He opened the door to the bathroom, looked inside and suddenly returned to the living room with his fly still open.

  He picked up the silver–handled telephone and dialed.

  “Hello, Wanda darling,” he said, eyes glazed in terror. “I hear you want to talk to me.”

  Valerie, surprised, looked in the bathroom. There was the houseboy, kneeling at the bathtub, his shoulders resting on the rim. The bathtub was full. His hair floated above his head at the water line. There were no bubbles coming from his nose or mouth. A massage spray hose was wrapped around his throat.

  “Give Wanda my love,” yelled Valerie from the bathroom.

  · · ·

  Bertram Mueller was finishing a script for Warner Brothers that afternoon when he thought he felt the orange cr
ate move. Mueller typed his work on leftover newsprint using a thirty–five–dollar–and–ninety–eight–cent Woolworth typewriter. His films never failed to gross less than fifteen million dollars, this despite no dialogue ever containing a word with a “Y” in it. That key had broken in the late 1960s when the desk he had built collapsed with the typewriter on it. Normally, such a small fall would not damage even a cheap typewriter, but Mueller had also installed the floor himself.

  It took a week to dig the typewriter out of the basement. Mueller hated to waste money on nonessentials. Why spend money on furniture if you could build it yourself? Why waste money on a new typewriter if you could write films that grossed fifteen million each without using a “Y,” which wasn’t even a legitimate vowel and not much of a consonant either.

  Mueller thought it was strange that the crate he sat on moved. He hadn’t built the crate.

  He looked out over the Pacific from the living room in the newly rented Carmel home for which he paid eight thousand dollars a month. If he was going for eight thousand a month, he certainly wasn’t going to squander forty–two dollars on a store–bought chair. Eight thousand a month was more than enough to spend on living quarters, especially when supermarket chains were giving away orange crates.

  There was that tug again and now a strangling sensation. He’d have to switch brands of cigarettes. His head felt clouded as if someone were pulling a cord around his neck. The room became dark and he heard the words: “Call Wanda Reidel.” He came to on the floor. That was the first strange incident. Then he discovered that someone had taken his lawnmower and thrown it into the Pacific. The waves lapped up against the handle. And he heard that voice from nowhere again.

  “Call Wanda Reidel.”

  That was a strange thing for a Carmel beach to say.

  Back at the house, he phoned Wanda Reidel.

  “Are you trying to reach me for something, Wanda?”

  “Yes, Bert. I’ve got the right package for you.”

  “Not that thing where the environment rebels? What is it called? Racket Lover?”

  “Bleekden is going to direct it.”

  “How did you get him?”

  “Same way I’m going to get you.”

  “Are you doing something to my furniture?”

  “You know me, Bert. I just try to do my best for my clients. Besides, cardboard boxes aren’t anything to worry about.”

  “My furniture is wood now, if you want to know.”

  “Stick with me and I’ll put you in velvet, love.”

  “Not with Racket Lover.”

  “Bleekden’s in.”

  “I will not have my name associated with that second–rate farce you’re trying to peddle, Wanda,” said Mueller.

  “Two points off the top,” said Wanda, meaning Mueller would get two percent of the film’s gross after negative costs.

  “It’s trash, Wanda.”

  “Four points, Bert.”

  “It is an abomination and a waste of time and money and talent. Biff Ballon. Phooey.”

  “Six points, Bert.”

  “When do you want the script?” said Bertram Mueller and could have sworn that he heard the phone handle tell him he made the right move, just before Wanda signed off with a “Kiss, kiss.”

  Before cocktails, Wanda Reidel had put together another “Wandaful package.” She made sure she was seen eating out, stopped in on a party to which she was not invited so that those people who viciously asked her how everything was going could be singed to the marrow.

  “Just put together a Bleekden–Mueller–Ballon deal with Summit today. Glad you asked,” said Wanda.

  “Great,” said the hostess, with a most rewarding gulp, showing her panic at not having invited Wanda in the first place. The anguish of competitors was what made Hollywood worth living in.

  “How did you do it, darling?” asked the hostess. “Make a deal with the Mob?”

  “Talent, sweetheart,” said Wanda, passing up those tempting little bowls of caviar and sour cream, refusing even those crunchies that she normally couldn’t resist. She didn’t even bother with a midnight snack. She might even become thin.

  Of course, there were some worries. Gordons was a find of finds. She’d have to get him signed up, one of those contracts just short of violating the emancipation proclamation. And she’d have to find out what he wanted. Everybody wanted something.

  She would handle all that in the morning, she thought. But as she prepared for bed. rubbing her one–hundred–and–seventy–pound, five–foot–four blimp of a frame with Nubody oil that cost thirty–five dollars an ounce—she used a pound a night—she noticed that the door to her bedroom opened quietly behind her. It was Gordons, but now, instead of the white delivery boy’s coat, he wore a beige pants suit open to his navel, marcelled hair and a neckchain with half a dozen amulets. She did not ask how he had gotten into her estate or through the electronic guarded door or past the butler. Anyone who could get Bleekden and Mueller through terror in one day could certainly get into her itsy–bitsy eighteen–room mansion.

  “Hi, doll,” said Gordons.

  “You’ve gone Hollywood, precious,” said Wanda. “I adapt to all situations, love,” said Mr. Gordons. “I’ve done my part in the tradeoff, hon. Now it’s your turn.”

  Wanda turned to uplift her breasts. “Whatever you want,” she said. And Mr. Gordons explained, telling his life story and his difficulty with the two humans.

  “Oh,” said Wanda when it was clear he did not want her. She put on a light fuchsia gown with ermine collar.

  “You have got a problem there, love,” said Wanda. “You say this House of Sinanju has lasted a thousand years? More than a thousand?”

  “As far as I know,” said Mr. Gordons.

  “I like what you tried with their boss, Smith. Good thinking.”

  “It was an attempt. It did not work. Still, it might if they go back and attempt to free him.”

  “Well, if you’re not exactly a normal man, then I shouldn’t feel bad that you don’t want me physically.”

  “Correct. It is not a comment on your sexual desirability, love.”

  “Let’s go downstairs to the kitchen,” said Wanda. She had ordered that her refrigerators be cleared of all fattening foods and stocked only with garden vegetables and skimmed milk. Therefore Wanda went to the servants’ refrigerator and stole their ice cream and doughnuts.

  “Creativity, creativity. How do we get you creativity?” She dunked a chocolate–coated doughnut in the fudge ripple. A crust broke off and she ate that with a spoon.

  “I have come to a decision about the creativity,” said Mr. Gordons. “I have decided that creativity is a uniquely human attribute, and I have resigned myself to doing without it. Instead, I am going to ally myself with a creative person and use that person’s creativity to help me attain my goal. You are that person.”

  “Of course,” said Wanda. “But we need a contract. You don’t do anything without a contract. You sign with me for say, sixty–five years, with an option for thirty–five more. Not a lifetime contract. That’s illegal.”

  “I will sign any contract you wish. However, precious, you must live up to the bargain,” said Mr. Gordons. “The last person who failed to live up to a deal with me is in a refrigerator, love.”

  “All right, all right. What you need is creative planning. New thought. Original ideas. Boffo dynamite ideas. How do you kill those two guys?”

  “Correct,” said Mr. Gordons.

  “Cement. Put their feet in cement and drop them in a river.”

  “Won’t play in Peoria,” said Mr. Gordons who had heard that phrase used recently.

  “Blow them up. A bomb in their car.”

  “Too common,” said Mr. Gordons.

  “Machine guns?”

  “Stale.”

  “Find a woman to seek out their strength and then betray them?”

  “Biblical themes haven’t moved since Cecil B. DeMille,” Gordons said.


  Wanda went back to the servants’ refrigerator. There was a cold pot roast and cream cheese. She spread the cream cheese on a piece of pot roast.

  “I have it.”

  “Yes?”

  “Ignore them. They’re nobodies. The best revenge is living well.”

  “I cannot do this. I must destroy them as soon as possible.”

  “What business are they in again?”

  “Assassins, as well as I can determine from the fragmentary information available to me, sweetheart.”

  “Let’s think a little longer,” said Wanda. She thought as she ate the pot roast. She thought about what Gordons could do for her. He could help her sign up everybody. All of Hollywood. All of the New York television crowd. She could run the show. And more. He had those computer papers, whatever he called them. They revealed the existence of some secret killer organization. Wanda Reidel could use that to monopolize the press. She would own Page One. Nobody could get in her way.

  “Are you done thinking yet?” asked Gordons.

  “How old are they again?”

  “The white man is in his thirties. The Oriental may be in his eighties. They use traditions passed on from one generation to the next, I believe.”

  “Traditions, traditions,” mused Wanda. She sucked a sinew of pot roast from a lower tooth. “Join their traditions. Adopt them. You said you were adaptable. Become them. Become what they are. Think like them. Act like them.”

  “I attempted that,” said Gordons. “It was why I did not attack the younger one when I had him alone. I thought of what they would do and I decided that if either of them was me, he would wait to get both his targets together. So I waited, and I failed in my attempt to blow them up.”

  “Have you tried praying?” said Wanda.

  “Sweetheart, loved one, precious,” said Mr. Gordons, “you’re running out of time before I ram that cream cheese through your vestibulocochlear nerve.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Your eardrum, love.”

  “Let’s don’t be rash. What else do you know about them?”

  “The older one is enamored of the daytime television shows.”

  “Games?”