The Bear Went Over the Mountain Page 4

  “We’ll make the Hemingway comparison, I hope you don’t mind. Sportsman, adventurer, larger than life, the man of action who can also tell a love story. You have a wonderful physical presence, I can feel it with you just standing there, can’t you, Elliot, a sort of raw vitality? Forgive me, Hal, I have to treat my authors as objects. You have charisma, and I want to capitalize on it. We’ll play up your love of the outdoors but I’d like to put an environmental slant on it, the sacredness of nature, how you respect it. If you’ve shot any endangered species play that down—in fact I wouldn’t mention it at all. I don’t mind if you killed any cute little animals, but some people might.”

  “I kill when I have to.”

  “Certainly, perfect, kill when you have to.” Bettina spun toward Gadson, as if he were a waiting flower, and shot toward him. “Hal’s voice is amazing. When audio rights are sold, he should be the one reading it, he’s perfect.” She darted back toward the bear, her high-pitched voice chirping on about all that she had in mind for him. The bear rose from his chair and stepped over to the door frame, where he vigorously rubbed his back against it. A suggestible brute, he was seeing fields of flowers again, with hummingbirds darting over them. He went down on the floor and rolled around on his back.

  Gadson was on the phone immediately to Boykins. “Your client is in my office, rolling on the floor.” Gadson looked at Bettina. “Chum says he does this kind of thing, but that it passes.”

  Bettina stared at the bear in horrified fascination. His feet were pedaling at the air as he manipulated his spine, twisting first one way and then the other, with a vaguely obscene look in his eyes. Would Good Morning America appreciate a guest who might go down on all fours? She looked at Gadson. “Can we tour with this?”

  “Not to Dalton’s in the mall, we can’t.”

  Bettina looked back at the deliriously squirming novelist. “What if we called it performance art?”

  “Performance epilepsy is more like it,” said Gadson.

  Bettina’s gaze remained fixed on Hal Jam. Uncontrollable velocity sometimes sent her tumbling to the floor herself, and though her recovery was always swift it was nonetheless embarrassing. The interesting thing about Hal Jam was that he was making it pay off for him. Far from looking embarrassed, he seemed incredibly self-confident and vital. “I can work with it,” she said decisively.

  “His book is so solemn,” said Gadson. “It’s hard to square it with what I’m looking at now. I don’t say I mind him rolling around on the floor, but I do think it’ll be hard for you to package it.”

  The bear was about scratched out, however. The faces of the two people in the room came back into focus and he realized his perspective could only be that of one who was on the floor making a spectacle of himself again. A sheepish grin crossed his face, and he sat upright.

  “Feeling better?” asked Gadson with concern.

  The bear was looking at Bettina. Little birds had always seemed so intelligent to him, their dainty ways of food gathering so different from his own rough methods; and this hummingbird woman was so intensely focused, her eyes glittered with such interest in him—he sensed she was to be his teacher. He stretched out a paw toward her.

  “Yes, dear, I’m here.” Bettina was used to needy writers.

  “I confess I’m touched,” said Gadson. It was obvious that Jam’s gruff exterior hid a sensitive nature, vulnerable as a child’s. He whispered to Bettina, “A touch of autism, valiantly overcome? Is there an angle there for you?”

  Bettina gazed at Jam thoughtfully as he climbed up off the floor, his ungainly form seeming to balance itself with difficulty. Yet once his feet were set, he exuded that same tremendous presence. “Christ, what a combination. Strong but wounded. Women are going to love him. I’ll need to know a lot about your life, Hal. Because somewhere in all of it are the charming little bits that make great publicity.”

  “Well, good-bye,” said the bear, who could only take so much human company at a time. Central Park was calling to him; he needed the gnarly emanations of trees to settle his mind, which the city greatly agitated. He turned toward the door, and Bettina rocketed off after him. Her sleeve caught on the outstretched cardboard arm of Barton Balfour III, and the display dummy toppled over, his hand running down her back and catching in the bright scarf that circled her tiny waist. “Oh god, he’s following me. Elliot!”

  “Coming, darling,” said Gadson, and he disentangled Bettina from Balfour’s arm.

  “Did I ruin him?”

  “He’s resilient. You’d better hurry if you’re going to catch Jam.”

  “I like him, don’t you?”

  “With certain reservations.”

  “Well, at least he hasn’t served anyone in mushroom sauce.” Bettina made another quick attempt to straighten her flyaway hair and raced off down the hall; editors in their cubicles had the sense of a brightly colored projectile sailing by. Cavendish Press was owned by Tempo Oil, and when Bettina shot into the elevator after the bear, it was into the company of conservative Texas oilmen. They knew that Bettina was quite high up at Cavendish, but they couldn’t imagine how she’d ever got to that position careening through the building as she did, like a prairie dog shitting chili peppers.

  As she and the bear stepped out onto Madison Avenue, a taxi pulled in beside them at the curb and Boykins leapt out. “I came as soon as I could. Hal, are you all right?”

  “Let’s eat,” said the bear, pointing at a hot dog vendor’s cart.

  “He seems all right,” said Boykins to Bettina. “Was it a severe attack?”

  “I’d say moderate.” Bettina and Boykins were a striking pair, gesturing simultaneously with the fine frenzy of a windmill farm.

  “Hal, do you know what causes these seizures?” asked Boykins.

  “Hot dogs,” said the bear, holding up one in each paw.

  “I suppose I shouldn’t ask,” said Boykins. “After all, it’s none of my business.” Boykins was repeatedly running his finger out into the air and back to the tip of his nose. Since taking Jam as a client, his obsessions had started to increase, after years of moderate hibernation. He looked at Bettina nervously. “Where are you two going?”

  “We’re just getting to know each other. Why don’t you walk with us, Chum?” Bettina was studying Jam from the corner of her eye. He was as quiet as a plate of toast. Would he be able to provide the media with snappy sound bites?

  “We got a Book-of-the-Month Club sale, Bettina, did you know?” asked Boykins.

  “I heard, congratulations.”

  The bear strode along, his equilibrium restored. There was food everywhere. Mine, he said to himself, all mine.

  They passed a toy store with a huge Mickey Mouse in the window, and Boykins had a terrible memory of himself at age twelve in Disneyland, immobilized because he’d had to genuflect every time he saw Mickey Mouse.

  “Park,” said the bear, turning west toward the scent of brackish water.

  A balloon vendor stood at the edge of the park, large inflated animals floating on strings above his head, among them—Mickey Mouse.

  Kneel, said Mickey to Boykins. Or terrible misfortune will befall your client.

  “Did I drop something …” Boykins went down on one knee in front of the imperious balloon.

  “Come on, Chum, he’s getting ahead of us.” Bettina grabbed Boykins by the elbow and hauled him upright. Boykins turned his head back toward the floating mouse. “I was thinking … of … of buying it for my children.”

  “I didn’t know you had children.”

  “I have one … a distant one …”

  “A distant child?”

  “Cousin.”

  “Chum, are you all right?”

  “No, I’m not. I’m having an attack of obsessive-compulsive disorder. I’m going to wind up in a straitjacket, Bettina.”

  “Are you worried about having left the stove on, something like that?”

  “I’m worried about Hal.”

  Th
ey were descending the path into the park. The bear was already below them, beside the lake.

  “He’s erratic,” said Boykins, “and I keep wanting to control him.”

  “I’m a good judge of character about three days a week,” said Bettina, “so don’t take my view of the matter. But—” She pointed toward Jam, who was staring into the lake. “—this isn’t someone you can control.”

  “He’s a gold mine, Bettina. He’s the jelly on the bagel of my life. What if he has an attack in traffic?” They reached the bottom of the sloping path and walked toward their author.

  At the edge of the pond a child in a sailor suit was operating a radio-controlled submarine. His English nanny was seated on a nearby park bench reading a tabloid whose cover story was Princess Di’s new romance, with a handsome space alien, who beamed her up out of London each night and gave her the tender sex she so deserved.

  The bear was staring at a faint turbulence on the pond. His eyes narrowed into slits as the turbulence came nearer. He saw a smooth, elongated shape glistening beneath the water; his tongue raced over his snout. He jumped into the pond and swiftly struck.

  “Hal!” Boykins and Bettina reached him just as the bear’s jaws closed on the submarine. There was a sound of crunching plastic. Springs and computer chips appeared in the bear’s teeth.

  “Nanny, Nanny, he ate my submarine!”

  Tough, thought the bear, munching on what he assumed were the fish’s skull and bones. Very little flavor at all. Must be old.

  Bettina tried to pull her new writer out of the water. He pivoted away from her, she held on, and found herself dangling in the air. A moment later she was standing in the muck of the pond. “Oh god, these are my three-hundred-dollar French rip-off shoes. I just know they’re going to dissolve …”

  “Nanny, Nanny!”

  The bear spit out more pieces of the fish. The submarine’s rudder and conning tower sank into the pond as he shook his head in disgust. Not a tasty bit of flesh on that catch, he remarked to himself.

  “Nanny, it’s ruined!”

  Nanny put down her paper reluctantly and walked over to the bear. The bear looked at Nanny, then at Bettina and Boykins. He looked down at his feet and saw his new shoes were full of water and his pants were wet up to the knees. Am I making a bad impression here? he wondered, removing the last bits from his mouth. “Fish,” he said by way of explanation.

  “Bettina,” said Boykins, helping her out of the pond, “are you all right? I’m so sorry.”

  “Not your fault, Chum. Publicists are used to wading in shit.”

  The sailor-suited little boy angrily threw his radio control into the pond.

  “I’ll pay for it,” said Boykins. “How much?”

  “A thousand dollars,” said the child, whose father was a bond trader.

  Boykins held out two fifties. Nanny took the money quickly and slipped it in her purse. Profitable incidents like this came a nanny’s way all too rarely.

  Boykins, pretending to look into the pond, genuflected.

  “All bones,” said the bear, thinking his agent was trying to spy out a fish for himself.

  Boykins rose to his feet and stared at his client. Jam seemed indifferent to having just eaten a child’s toy. The child was being led away in tears and Jam was calmly picking his teeth. He knows something about life I don’t know, said Boykins to himself, and I’m going to learn it.

  Bettina fell into step on the other side of Jam, her three-hundred-dollar French shoes squishing water. Apart from that, her get-acquainted period with her new author was no worse than usual. A public figure who destroyed children’s toys could be an interesting publicity sell, with the right angle. “Did you do it because you think children have been exploited by the toy industry?”

  “Bad fishing,” said the bear. He was, as Bettina’d hoped, an environmentalist.

  Bettina reflected on his reply. Hal Jam, renowned sportsman, sums up society’s problem this way: Bad fishing.

  A sound bite with potential.

  “She’s all that’s left of the old Spooner place,” said Vinal Pinette, laying his hand against a dilapidated henhouse. “Titus Spooner was the greatest hand for inventing stuff I ever saw. The problem was he invented things which had no earthly use. Put your shoulder against it with me—”

  Bramhall pushed with Pinette. “Harder,” said Pinette, “she’s froze up.”

  Bramhall was adrift in Pinette’s literary suggestions, wherever they might take him. Lately they all seemed connected to hens. He pushed harder, felt the henhouse give, and a creaking sound came from somewhere below its floor.

  “That’s it,” said Pinette. “Get your back into it.”

  They strained and the structure began to slowly rotate, bending the grass beneath it. They turned it several degrees against the horizon before stopping, out of breath. “It used to be you could turn it with one finger,” said Pinette.

  “But why would anyone want to turn it?”

  “For rotating hens in their nests. Titus felt a hen should face each direction once a day.” Pinette peered through the broken window of the henhouse. “The mechanics were first-rate, but the basic idea was weak because it don’t matter which jeezly way a hen faces. Everything Titus come up with had that sort of flaw in ’er. Titus’s old woman used to give him hell about wasting time on inventions, said it were going to ruin them.” Pinette brought his head back out of the window. “And now the whole damn shooting match has rotated off the face of the earth, Titus and his old woman included.”

  Pinette peered at his friend, trying to see if he was getting his point across. “Don’t that sound like a better book than the one you lost? We’ll write it up together, you and me, and put the son-of-a-whore in a cast-iron safe.” Pinette pushed against the henhouse again, and this time it gave more easily, moving several degrees on its rusted track. “I don’t say Titus’s rotating chicken house were the Seventh Wonder of the World, but the look in them hens’ eyes when they started spinning was notable.”

  Bramhall stood in silence with Pinette then, paying his respects to the vanished inventor’s dream.

  A weasel stuck its head up from beneath a corner of the building.

  “He’d eat us if he could,” said Pinette. “Fears nawthing on god’s earth, if he can get a neck bite.”

  The weasel examined Bramhall with what seemed to be disdain for one so clumsy, so slow, so hopelessly out of touch with the currents that shape a weasel to its purpose.

  “Comes from a long line of chicken killers,” said Pinette as the weasel vanished.

  Bramhall felt a lethal swiftness still quivering in the air, a sort of disturbance the weasel had left behind. Bramhall turned abruptly, sensing the direction of the invisible ripple as his gaze tracked over the high grass. Precisely where his gaze stopped, the weasel reappeared. The animal rose up on his back legs, and Bramhall could feel the little killer reassessing him, perhaps more favorably.

  “It’s so fortunate I happened to be in New York just now,” said Zou Zou Sharr to the bear over cocktails at Elaine’s bar. Before becoming an agent for the Creative Management Corporation, she’d directed the Bel Air Diet Doctor’s empire and maintained her slender shape with his naturally artificially flavored products. She had a fiery-red crown of power hair and a meltingly compassionate smile, which, when she was challenged by anyone, congealed to ice, as did her bright blue eyes. “It’s so much nicer to deal with an author in person,” she said to Jam. “I’m wild about the book, of course,” she added, having read the coverage on it written by her agency’s eighteen-year-old reader.

  The bear looked at Zou Zou Sharr from under the peak of his baseball cap. It was the first time he’d been this close to a human female for any length of time, and he liked the experience. If she had some fur on her face and the backs of her hands she might be good-looking.

  “We’ve already handled some of the biggest books of the season,” continued Zou Zou, “and I know we’ll be able to run with
yours.” Zou Zou was genuinely enthusiastic despite not having read the book. In showbiz, books were always a question mark, because books were just books, but buzz you could trust. Zou Zou understood buzz, was a connoisseur of buzz, and went from buzz to buzz like a flower looking for bees. And the buzz on Hal Jam’s book was big.

  The bear adjusted his tail with a surreptitious move of the paw, getting himself more comfortable in the restaurant chair. He was in the mood for some soda pop. Fizz on the lips, little tingly bubbles up the nose, that was life in the fast lane for a bear. Why should he have any regrets? A bear lives in the moment. He ignores the tiny voice, like that of a flower, that whispers inside him, There’s a stream below the wooded hill, there are fish in the pools, come back, come back.

  “I’ve talked to your editor and your publicist,” said Zou Zou. “Your campaign is going to be tremendous.” Zou Zou leaned back in her chair and let her gaze wander momentarily around the tables at Elaine’s; she was glad to be out of L.A. She’d recently broken off a relationship with a young director who liked to make love while watching uncut footage of The Battleship Potemkin. Now whenever she thought of becoming intimate with a man her mind filled with the image of a baby carriage bouncing down a flight of stairs. She leaned closer to the bear and fixed him with her compassionate blue gaze. “You’ve got a great team going for you, and CMC wants to be part of it. My associates are standing by their telephones right now, waiting to hear that you’re going to sign with us.” In fact, she’d been remiss in not getting to Jam earlier, but she’d been too destroyed by the battleship Potemkin to focus on the buzz.

  Her perfume was curling past the bear’s nostrils, a light, delicate scent. He gave himself a strong reminder that he must not express his emotions by rolling around on the floor, although it’d be a good way to look for more briefcases. Chum Boykins had told him that a lot of writers went to Elaine’s, and a lot of writers meant a lot of briefcases.