The Fictional Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

just called me a prick.”
    “Right, right.” Maurice shook his head. “Listen, buddy, you can’t just ask the man from Talisman Pictures to make your book into a movie for you. There’s a process – a comme-ci-comme- ç a, you know? Scratching backs. You know what I’m saying?”
    “Not really.”
    “This,” Maurice sighed, pulling off the trick of making his patience seem infinite but not completely boundless, “is not that meeting. Maybe that meeting comes after this meeting, but this is not that meeting. This is the meeting where he tells us how we can get to that meeting. He’s gonna leave a little trail of breadcrumbs through a little maze. And we’re gonna follow it, right?”
    He was getting quite animated now. “We’re gonna run his maze, and at the end there’s gonna be a little button we can hit with our noses that’ll deliver food or cocaine, and we eat the cocaine because this is Hollywood! ” He banged the table. “This is Hollywood, Niles! Fuck the food! We eat the cocaine!”
    Niles blinked. “I don’t actually do...”
    Maurice leaned forward, whispering confidentially. “The cocaine is Kurt Power. It’s a metaphor. We’re gonna get you Kurt Power on the big screen, with a Fictional for leading man, first refusal on directors, a trailer, hookers, the works – you just gotta let me drive, buddy. You gotta let me do my magic.” He looked around, as if they were being watched. “Listen, I’ve got things going on, buddy. I’ve got irons in the fire, you know? I got things going on you wouldn’t believe. ” He stared at Niles for a moment, evaluating. “You ever ghost-written?”
    Niles stared back. He wasn’t sure if he liked being evaluated. “Not really, no.”
    Maurice nodded. “Could you write in a kinda Victorian style? You know – fancy?”
    Niles settled back into the plastic chair, keeping an eye out for the waitress. She seemed to be taking quite a long time, considering he just wanted a water. “Well, I suppose... ” he said, trying to change the subject, “but, um, one thing at a time. Is this how things usually go? With meetings, I mean?”
    Maurice shrugged. “Who the hell knows? We’re in the jungle here. I don’t make up the rules about which bugs we eat to get stars, y’know?” The toilet flushed, and Maurice quickly re-assumed his glassy smile.
     
     
    D EAN RETURNED TO the table, rubbing his nose with the back of his hand. Niles decided he was just being paranoid. Dean probably had a cold.
    “Kurt Power,” he said, in an odd, strangled voice. “Kurt. Power.” He let the words hang in the air for a few seconds, rocking in his chair, then spread his hands wide, conjuring an invisible movie screen. “Open on the rain.”
    Or not, thought Niles.
    On the other hand, Dean was at least discussing Kurt Power, which was more than Maurice had led him to expect. “Well, I suppose this is the meeting,” the author smirked, casting a sideways look at his fatuous agent, who clearly knew nothing about the very business he claimed to work in, as well as being disarmingly short and quite ugly.
    “Open on the rain. Kurt Power. He’s... he’s wearing a coat.” Dean stared into the middle distance for a moment, his jaw clenching and unclenching. “No! No coat. He’s stripped to the waist! Rain coursing down his back. Female thirty-five-to-fifty-fives go wild!”
    “I suppose...” Niles murmured, brow wrinkling slightly. “I mean, I never thought of Kurt Power as a sex symbol per se, more as the wounded dignity of the disenfranchised working man, but...”
    “Yes! ”Dean yelled, slamming his hand down on the table. “Wounded dignity! He’s been shot! Stabbed! With a pitchfork! Wait – that’s third-act stuff. Okay, okay, okay, so Kurt Power is in the rain, he’s shirtless, he’s wounded, like, emotionally, and with a pitchfork... the camera angles around... ”
    Niles leaned forward, his breath caught in his throat. This, at last, was the