The Bear Went Over the Mountain Page 5

  “What I love about your book,” continued Zou Zou, “is that it’s so believable, and yet politically correct. I adore how unashamedly you bring in the issue of women’s rights.”

  “You smell good.”

  Zou Zou Sharr smiled uncertainly. Generally, she’d have thrown a sexist comment like that back in the face of the man who made it, but she’d just got done complimenting Jam for his position on women’s rights. Also, since he hadn’t yet signed the agreement with Creative Management—which was her fault entirely—she decided to be old-fashioned about the insult, and let her smile spread to its dazzlingly fullest. But even while turning up the wattage of her eyes, lips, and teeth, she wasn’t perfectly at ease with Hal Jam. He didn’t talk money or percentages and when a potential client didn’t talk money or percentages it could mean they’d already written her and her agency off. Which was a nightmare she couldn’t allow to happen because she’d have to face the totally justified anger of Creative Management. They might even fire her, because she’d been sensing that she was a threat to certain fragile male egos there. Zou Zou’s ego was fragile too, but it was contained in indestructible packaging, like a Bel Air Diet Cookie, whose shelf life was 750 years. “I want you to feel free to call upon me anytime, Hal, night or day. I’m sure you’ll have lots of questions about the way things work in Hollywood, and you should get straight answers. I’ll have them for you. You’ll always get the truth from me.”

  The waiter laid a basket of bread and buns on the table, and a dish of butter patties. The waiter’s clothing was saturated with the smells of the kitchen, and the bear fought down the urge to butter the waiter’s arm and eat it. Moments like these are the hardest, he reflected to himself. He made himself reach politely for a bun, and buttered it slowly. His method was to completely cover a bun with butter patties, all of them.

  Zou Zou watched, transfixed. She hadn’t eaten butter in a decade.

  The bear swallowed the bun. A dab of butter remained fixed to his nose. His long red tongue came out, nabbed the morsel, and swirled it inward.

  “I see that you enjoy eating,” said Zou Zou nervously. Over the years, she’d had a recurrent dream of floating in an ocean of warm butter, on a buoyant bun. If she ate the bun, she’d drown in her own cellulite.

  “More,” said the bear to the waiter, pointing at the empty butter dish.

  Zou Zou turned her wineglass slowly in her long, delicate fingers and tried not to think of the number of calories that’d just been devoured in front of her. “When you think of Destiny and Desire as a movie, who do you see in the leading role?”

  “Popcorn,” said the bear. He’d followed its haunting scent one day, and in this way discovered movies. The movies had meant little, but the hot buttered popcorn had been a revelation.

  There’s something going on here, thought Zou Zou to herself. Hal Jam is playing the country bumpkin role to put me off my stride. I know he’s not a bumpkin, because bumpkins don’t get big buzz. Bumpkins don’t get to talk to women like me.

  “You’re saying you don’t care who plays the lead. You’re indifferent. I understand, of course. You’re an artist, you live in god’s country. What we do in Hollywood doesn’t matter to you, and after all, why should it?” Zou Zou leaned closer and spoke more intimately, the way she used to speak to people who didn’t know they needed a diet shake composed entirely of edible foamy plastic, who didn’t know how truly nutritious plastic was. “But perhaps it does matter, Hal. Creative Management can deliver big stars, and big stars mean bigger profits at the back end.”

  “Popcorn and butter,” said the bear.

  “I admit it, back-end money is just puff with a little grease on it, I admit there’s no real substance there. But no other agency can guarantee back-end money for you either.” She stared deeply into his dark eyes. His expression of innocence was deceptive. Obviously he knew how the negotiation game was played, was hinting he had an alternative. She shifted gears. “You’re from Maine,” she said. “It must be paradise to live there.”

  “Not enough honey.”

  Zou Zou frowned. He wasn’t going to be diverted. “Hal, I promise that we’ll get you the sweetest deal in the business. We’re dedicated to getting bonuses for our clients all along the line, beginning from the first day of production.”

  “Ice cream every day,” said the bear. If they were talking about contracts, he wanted to nail the important points.

  She shook her head sadly. “I can’t get you a bonus for every day of shooting. I wish I could. But nobody can get you that.”

  “With nuts sprinkled on.”

  She could see he was going to be unreasonable.

  “And lots of whipped cream.” He banged his paw on the table. He knew how these things should be served, and he wouldn’t take it without nuts and whipped cream.

  “Well,” she sighed, “we do have one actress—I don’t want to mention names—but we got it into her contract that every day when she appears on the set there’s a fabulous gift spontaneously waiting for her. Some days it’s a fabulous bracelet, some days it’s a fabulous watch, whatever. We’ll see if we can get you a fabulous gift for every day of shooting, fabulous to be defined by our lawyers, not the studio’s. How’s that?”

  “With a cherry on top.”

  God, thought Zou Zou, with men it always comes down to sex. She crossed her legs, her skirt riding up to midthigh; then she turned toward him in her chair, though she’d never use sex to make a sale. “I hear the sailing in Maine is wonderful. Do you sail?”

  “I fish.”

  “Well, of course your book is filled with it.” She leaned toward him, wanting him to know that in spite of her business orientation, she was sensitive to literature. “I suppose you can tell—I’m passionate about your work.”

  The bear looked down at her legs. It was too bad she shaved them. He glanced back up at her. “Let it grow,” he said.

  Not dreaming that a man could be telling her to let the hair on her legs grow, Zou Zou placed his remark in the general texture of their conversation. “Letting it grow is the organic approach to the artist/agent relationship, of course, but we can’t let that relationship grow too slowly, Hal. We do need a signed agreement.” She reached across the table and touched his arm. “As I said, I’m passionate about the project.” Zou Zou intended to spend her old age in the South of France with two young weight lifters to carry her around. A comfortable retirement required that she make big money now, and so she allowed her hand to remain on Jam’s wrist.

  Her nails were long and red, a cosmetic touch the bear found hard to adjust to. He growled, and she drew her hand back, her blue eyes focusing like particle-beam weapons. “All right, Hal. Why don’t you just level with me? What else is it about the agreement you’re not happy with?”

  The bear sipped his wine and tried to contribute something meaningful to the conversation. “I hear you like pie.”

  “You think Creative Management’s cut of the pie is too big? Any agency that takes less than we do doesn’t have the clout. They’ll promise you a lot, but they won’t deliver. We have the directors, and we have the stars. Believe me, Hal, your piece of the pie is just what it should be, and so is CMC’s.”

  “When I eat a pie, I eat it all.”

  “Of course you do, and I understand. The book is yours, it’s your creation, and you want your fair share.” Zou Zou was sweating now as she realized that he must be talking to other agencies. “I know what you’re unhappy about. It’s the percentage we take, isn’t it? Well, we’ll cut it from fifteen to fourteen and a half. Do you know why? Because your book reached me on a visceral level, and I must have it. I know I’m destined to be the one representing it.” She put a hand to her chest, spreading her fingers dramatically.

  The bear stared back at her, bearish thoughts moving in his head, of loping along a country road at sunset. The old territory was signaling him. Would he ever see it again? Zou Zou took his mournful stare to mean no sale. She felt the flo
or of Elaine’s turning into edible plastic foam, and she saw herself doggie paddling in diet shakes again.

  The Creative Management suite in the Plaza hotel is furnished like a little piece of Hollywood away from home. The bear stood in this den of opulence, deeply embarrassed, because a female stood across from him, waiting for him to perform the mating act, and he couldn’t.

  Zou Zou, standing in her underwear, was equally embarrassed. She’d panicked about losing him as a client and had started coming out of her clothes. He’d gone along with it, had seemed to encourage it, but now his eyes were darting around nervously, and clearly he wanted to leave. God, she thought to herself, he’s impotent, and I’ve forced him to admit it. How could I have been so stupid? She took a step toward him, then hesitated. “I’m so sorry, Hal. I’ve acted like a fool.”

  The bear struggled to reply. People talked, that’s what they did the most of. But he had so little to say, and anyway what do you say to a human female in heat? He growled under his breath. When she’d taken him to this den of hers, he thought it was for more dessert. Then she’d made some suggestive movements, but they weren’t big and lumbering, with drooling and growling. She hadn’t snarled and wriggled her backside suggestively. That’s what turned a bear on. Human females just didn’t know how to get a bear going.

  “Hal, I’ll tell you the truth. My job may be on the line. Money is tight and if I don’t get you signed, I could be fired.” Zou Zou straightened her slip strap, edged her stockinged feet into her shoes. “Please, can you forgive me?”

  The bear’s nostrils widened as he desperately sought for a smell that would put springtime in his heart and restore his pride. He was a sovereign of the forest. With lady bears he’d struggled valiantly and they’d surrendered as he’d subdued them with his majesty. Then he’d strolled off for something to eat, and everyone was satisfied. But now he’d failed and was mortified.

  · · ·

  An exhausted Zou Zou stood at the window of the Plaza suite, staring down through the twilight to the lake in Central Park. Hal was asleep. She sat down beside him and ran her hand lightly along his leg. “You’re an animal in bed,” she said softly.

  He’d been slow getting started but once he was in motion, she’d never known anything like it. He’d suddenly lifted her right off the floor and tossed her around like a doll. That, and the prospect of drowning in diet shake, had acted as a powerful aphrodisiac. And then his noises—the grunts and the bellowing, the thrillingly incomprehensible things he’d growled in her ear—just amazing. And his technique was so totally original, the way he’d spun her around and bitten her on the back of the neck and then—well, when he came it felt like someone christening the battleship Potemkin.

  Zou Zou gazed at Hal’s deceptively corpulent figure. Behind that shy, backward facade was a heroic lover. The incongruity of it all was so intriguing, that this quiet pudge was as great a lover as he was a writer. But he still hadn’t signed the contract. Now, she thought, while he’s mellowed out. But first, let’s get some champagne into him. She took a bottle from the ice bucket and pried up against the cork.

  The cork blew and the bear sprang out of bed, knocking over the table lamp, whose bulb burst with a noise like another rifle shot. The hunters were after him! He thundered toward the window, ripped the drapes down, and butted his head through the glass, his only concern to reach the trees he saw beyond him. Zou Zou grabbed him from behind just as a knock sounded at the door. She shouted over her shoulder, “Come in! Help me!”

  The room service waiter entered. He was a middle-aged Frenchman with a face of boundless guile. “How may I be of assistance, madame?”

  “How? Jesus Christ, he’s trying to jump!”

  “Very good, madame.” The waiter ran to the window, grabbed the guest by the ankles, and gave him a good yank backward, a maneuver he was practiced in, for rock stars frequently stayed at the hotel.

  “Don’t let go!” cried Zou Zou.

  The waiter dutifully held the guest’s brawny legs and said to him, “Monsieur, you have everything to live for.” He was, as he said this, looking through Madame’s open nightgown.

  “Yes, Hal! You’re going to be rich! You’re it! You’re going to be a household word!”

  The bear sniffed at the air. He was smelling the steak he ordered. He turned slowly and saw the food-laden cart in the doorway.

  “You’re in my hotel room,” said Zou Zou softly. “You’re safe.”

  The bear glanced down at the room service waiter clinging to his legs. “Am I under arrest?” He didn’t ask the more terrible question, And will I be put in a zoo?

  “Of course not, monsieur,” said the waiter. “This is the Plaza.” He rose, adjusting his tie.

  The bear lifted the silver lid covering his steak, and Zou Zou gave the waiter a fifty. “I’m grateful for your help.”

  “Not at all, madame.” The waiter turned with a soft, discreet step, and the door made hardly a sound as he closed it behind him.

  The bear was nibbling from the food cart. His panic was forgotten now, because he was eating, and because he was a bear.

  Zou Zou stood beside him. “You had a nightmare. You woke from it suddenly and were disoriented. At Creative Management we’re used to working with disoriented artists. We understand the pressures that rise up inside a man like you. Hal—” She laid the CMC writer/agent agreement on the food cart. “—we’re in your corner. Let’s make it official, shall we, and put your mind at rest on that point? With CMC representing you, you’ll have agents who care for you.” She handed him the pen. “Just your signature, Hal, so you can feel more secure.”

  With great slowness, the bear managed to sign his name, his brow furrowed as he gazed down at the slowly forming letters that spelled his human identity. When he’d finished the signature, he looked up, not without a little pride in his accomplishment.

  “I’m so happy, Hal,” said Zou Zou as she saw the sea of diet shake receding from her; its billowing plastic foam would remain the business of other eager sea goddesses running the weight-loss industry, tridents prodding the too-plump backsides of humanity. She quickly folded the agreement back into her briefcase. “And now we can relax.” She put her arms around his neck. His intoxicating scent was like nothing she’d ever smelled before. “I usually don’t let this happen,” she said, pressing her body against him.

  He sensed she wanted to repeat what they’d done earlier. She couldn’t know how difficult it had been for him to perform with her, how he’d had to imagine her covered with fur.

  Vinal Pinette led the way toward the cookhouse of the logging operation, his dog trailing behind him, and Bramhall bringing up the rear. “The crew’s out cutting,” said Pinette, “but Ransome Spatt’ll be here. He’s the feller we want.”

  Bramhall heard the far-off buzzing of chain saws, and then a nearer buzzing caught his ear, of a bee sailing past him. His jaws snapped, and the bee was imprisoned his mouth. He spit it out in horror, and the stunned bee fell onto a blade of grass, where it clung momentarily, using its legs to wipe the saliva off its wings.

  Bramhall heard a splash of water and turned toward the cookhouse. A portly man in a gray sleeveless undershirt stood in the doorway, a dripping basin in his hands. “Why, Vinal Pinette! You old mushrat, how you been?”

  “Still standing, Ransome.”

  Bramhall and Pinette followed Ransome Spatt inside. Two large wood stoves were at the center of the room, with pots steaming on both of them. Pans of fresh bread and rolls were on a rough-hewn table by the window. “Tear into them buns,” said Spatt, sliding butter and jam toward Bramhall. “It might be all you’ll get today.”

  “Got a full crew?” asked Pinette.

  “We do.” Spatt stirred six spoons of sugar into his tea. “But we could use an experienced man, Vinal. Teach these young Turks what it’s all about.”

  “I’m into the book writing business now,” said Pinette.

  “Didn’t know you was a hand for writing.
”

  “I’m providing the raw material,” said Pinette. “Art’s the writer.”

  Bramhall nodded cordially, but he was still trying to deal with the fact that only minutes ago he’d nailed a bee midflight with his jaws.

  “But all Art can think about is bears,” Pinette was saying, “so I figure that our book’ll have to be about bears.”

  “Well, you come to the right person.” Spatt broke off a bun and sliced it carefully open. “I found my little bear cub in the woods out back. He’d got separated from his mama and was crying his goddamned heart out, so’s I moved him in here. He had a bunk right there behind the stove.” Spatt pointed with his knife. “We arm-wrestled that little feller every night right at this here table, and there wasn’t a man in the camp could beat him. Ain’t that so, Vinal?”

  Pinette nodded. “And that cub weren’t but six months old.”

  “The little son-of-a-whore loved ice cream,” said Spatt. “He’d sit there with a cone just like you or me and lick it all up with that big tongue of his. The ’spression on his face was something to see. Then at night when we was jawing, he’d sit where you’re sitting—” Spatt directed his gaze at Bramhall. “—and listen to the men talk.”

  “I believe,” said Pinette, “he understood every word we said.”

  “When you get to know a bear,” said Spatt, “you see how much brains they got.” He blew across the edge of his teacup. “Well, sir, one night his mama come for him.” He pointed toward the back of the cookhouse. “Started digging a hole underneath the floor. There ain’t nothing more dangerous than Mother Bear when she’s been separated from her cub. She’d have torn the foundation right out of the place to get in, so I opened the door to let the cub run join her. But do you know, the little son-of-a-whore didn’t want to go. He just stood there staring at his mama, and then he turned around and climbed back up onto his bunk, as if he had something important to do there.”

  “He liked ice cream that much,” explained Pinette to Bramhall with a knowing nod.