The Autobiography of Benjamin Abbott - Chapter 3: The Offer
Richard pulled me aside on my third Monday and took me into the little alcove that separated the wheat from the chaff. He had a concerned look on his face, or as concerned as he gets. Okay, he had the same look he always had, but I thought I could detect an extra half-furrow in his brow, so I was worried I was about to be fired.
“Uh, Benjamin.” He was holding a piece of paper in his hands. It was an interoffice memo. I’m telling you, this place still typed up memos on their memo template on their PCs, printed them out and put them in goldish-brown interoffice envelopes with a little red string that tied around a little red button on top, to be shipped from department to department, instead of sending emails.
“I have a strange message for you.”
“What’s up, doc?”
“We’re not at Warner Bros., Benjamin, no Bugs Bunny humor.”
“How about some Disney humor?”
Richard didn’t say anything. He kept looking at me with the same Richard look of droll concern for my sanity.
“Okay, what’s the news?”
Confused by the words on the paper he was holding, Richard started reading from the memo very slowly as if he were reading a foreign language he had just started to learn. “It says you are to report to David Humphrey’s office at 2:30 today.”
“Hmmm, that is interesting.”
“You know who David Humphrey is, don’t you?”
“Of course.” (I didn’t know who David Humphrey was.)
“He’s the head of the company, Benjamin.”
“I knew that.”
“Why does he want to see you?”
“No idea. But I would say it is about time we met.”
“You’re odd, Benjamin. Even for Los Angeles, you’re odd.”
And that’s what finally set my plan into motion. An interoffice memo dropped from the sky, actually, the 178th floor, from one of the most powerful people in the entertainment business, hell, any business.
At 2:25, I took the elevator to the 177th floor. (You couldn’t take the elevator directly to the 178th floor unless you had some kind of special key card.) I told my name to the receptionist on the 177th floor and she gave me a laminated badge with Benjamin Abbott spelled in black letters to pin to my shirt and then she gestured to one of the goliaths serving as a security guard who was standing by a special elevator. He pressed the special button to the special elevator and used his special keycard and the elevator doors closed leaving me inside.
The elevator doors opened one second after they had closed and there was another receptionist sitting at a desk that was identical to the one on the 177th floor. I briefly thought the elevator hadn’t moved and the doors only closed and opened again. I peered at the receptionist behind the desk trying to tell if she was the receptionist who had given me my name badge or if someone had taken her place. The elevator doors started to close again with me still in the elevator, so I had to think quickly and wedged my hand between the closing doors at the very last second. The beeping that accompanies trucks as they back up into alleyways and elevator doors that have stayed open too long started, so I felt I had no choice but to step out of the elevator hoping that I was now on the 178th floor.
The receptionist looked up at me and smiled as I approached her desk, still unaware of who she was or what floor I was on. I fingered my name badge as I introduced myself, “my name is Benjamin Abbott.” She nodded approvingly, which meant I was on the right floor. “I have a 2:30 appointment with David Humphrey.”
“Yes,” she said smiling politely at me even though I was dressed like a mailroom employee and not one of Mr. Humphrey’s normal high-powered appointments. “We were expecting you. Please have a seat.” Her left arm opened towards the couch like one of the beauties on a game show presenting a prize to the contestants. The couch, which was empty (must be a slow day for appointments), was bigger than my apartment. I tiptoed across the marble or maybe fake marble floor afraid of making too much noise because the reception area had the general feeling of a library where everyone spoke in hushed tones, walked in hushed tones and thought in hushed tones, with only the quiet hum of the industrialized air conditioning serving as the soothing backdrop.
Once seated, I looked down at the glass table that was in front of the couch and was bigger than the bigger than my apartment couch. Magazines were spread over its glassiness. (Like newspapers, magazines still existed back then as well. For the benefit of future generations, I would love to include a footnote describing not only what magazines were in a factual sense but their general overall importance to society during the second half of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first century, however, after the last footnote got completely out of control, my publisher has insisted that for “space reasons” we can’t include any further unnecessary notation.) David Humphrey was on the cover of every single magazine that was on the table. I counted fifteen magazines in total. There was Daily Variety and Weekly Variety and the Hollywood Reporter, of course, and there was also Time, Fortune, Newsweek, US News & World Report, American Sportsmen, Cigar Aficionado, Loaded, GQ, Esquire, Slap and a few others I can’t remember.
I waded through the magazines, briefly pulled beneath their undertow and came back up for air, picking up the American Sportsmen in the process. I stared at the cover. David Humphrey was dressed in full khaki with an outer covering of bright orange like a piece of taffy that had been turned inside out.
He was holding a shotgun in one hand and the head of a deer in the other. It was a six pointer. I think they had photoshopped out the blood that should have been dripping from the neck of the severed head of the deer. Or maybe when you sever the head of a deer, it stops bleeding rather quickly. Or maybe Humphrey waited until the blood stopped flowing before holding up the severed head. Even though I’m from Minnesota, and despite what the citizens on both coasts would like to think about my home state, I have never handled the severed head of a deer or any other wild beast, so it was difficult for me to process what exactly went on behind the scenes of that photo shoot. Wait. It was a photo shoot.
I looked closely at the background trying to determine if it was a stage or if they really were in the woods somewhere. Did they bring a deer to Los Angeles and kill it and chop off its head in a studio so Humphrey could look rugged? The more I looked at the cover the more questions I had.
“Mr. Abbott.” A hushed voice floated to me on the wings of doves with still attached heads. I didn’t look up, fixated on hunting David Humphrey. Now I was focused on his look of satisfaction, his broad manly grin. Was that photoshopped, too? “Mr. Abbott.” I looked up as several men, better dressed than I was, exited the office behind the receptionist. It was my turn.
I entered David Humphrey’s office cautiously like I was moving through a haunted house. I was hit by blue sunlight. It was shining through giant floor to ceiling windows that were located behind Humphrey’s desk. Even with that giant window it was darker in the office than an office should be at that time of day. The overhead lights weren’t on and the blue sunlight had a haze filtering through it even though no one was smoking. I looked to the half-drawn blinds that covered the giant window wondering how the rays of the sun had been turned blue. I was hypnotized by the blue. I had no idea if anybody else was in the room. Finally, I forced myself to blink and readjust my sight. Now I could see David Humphrey, his back to me, as he stared out the blue window down at the city below. It was a dramatic sight. I wanted to turn around and find the cinematographer and the production designer to congratulate them on a job well done.
“Have a seat.” David Humphrey’s back spoke to me.
I sat down in one of the two chairs in front of his desk. It felt like a child’s chair or that the legs had been shortened. My chin barely cleared the top of his desk. It was an old salesman’s trick, or an old asshole’s trick. Like the cover of American Sportsmen, it told me something about Humphrey. His back was still to me, the silence now uncomfortably long. There was a bowl of bite-sized Snickers on his desk. Or maybe they were Milky Ways. There was no way of knowing without taking a bite into one because they had been removed from their wrappers and placed carefully into a porcelain dish. I examined them closely since they were at eye level. All of the curiosity about my visit was gone. I really wanted one of those chocolate bars.
There was movement. Humphrey slunk along the wall like a lounge singer making his way onto stage. I still hadn’t figured out if they were Snickers or Milky Ways. Personally, I prefer Snickers. I really really really wanted a Snickers. Instead, Humphrey offered me a drink.
“I probably shouldn’t. I have to return to work after this.”
“Oh, come on. One drink between friends won’t hurt. How about some scotch.” It wasn’t a question. The bar was along the far wall. That’s why he had slunk there and before I could respond to the word, ‘scotch,’ ice cubes were clinking into glasses, liquids were flowing from bottles, and, eventually, a tumbler was thrust into my face. I was at crotch level. Humphrey stood over me smiling. I took the drink and smiled back up at him.
“I’ve seen your work.”
I had no fucking idea what he was talking about.
I didn’t really like where this was heading. Did they have cameras in the mailroom? Yes, yes, they did have cameras in the mailroom. They had cameras all over the building. Perhaps Humphrey’s been watching them, maybe that’s how he gets his kicks, maybe he’s been watching me. I don’t know why he would watch the mailroom, there’s plenty of other employees he should be checking up on before us. Is this sexual harassment? Maybe he likes my ass. I suppose that’s the most likely answer. He takes advantage of the mailroom employees, we’re expendable, who’s going to take our word over his?
I wondered if I was going to let him take advantage of me. My head was still at penis level, Humphrey was still smiling down at me. I mean, I’m not gay, and I’m not especially curious either, but we all have our price. If he made it worth my while, I’m sure we could come to some kind of arrangement. Now, what did I want from Humphrey?
He walked away and sat down behind his desk. Maybe he didn’t want to have sex with me after all. I could clearly see him for the first time. He seemed kind of normal and small. He was definitely shorter than me, which explained the chair trick. But the hair, my god, the hair. It was silver and beautiful. I admired its fluffiness, its structure, a man with hair like that should run a large corporation. I think I was having second thoughts about the sexual favors.
He was still smiling at me. We had hit another lull. I smiled back and despite the immaculate hair, the rest of him kind of reminded me of my stepdad. He looked at me the same way my stepdad used to look at me over the dinner table, with a forced smile as I forced a smile back and we sat there in silence waiting for my mother to present us with roasted chicken and mashed potatoes.
Humphrey leaned over his not-fake marble desktop, “I have a friend who’s on the screenplay committee of the Malibu Film Festival…”
Aha, a screenplay! That’s why he wanted to see me. Now which one did I send to Malibu?
“…and if he sees something that looks promising he’ll slide it over to me.”
Was he talking about the superhero cop movie?
“It’s a little arrangement we have and when I saw your work, well, I was just blown away.”
Definitely not the teen sex comedy.
“In the final scene when that young boy gets on the back of that dolphin…”
Aaaaa, the terminally ill boy and his dolphin.
“…and they ride into the sunset out in the Pacific, well, I never cry, ever, not even at my son’s funeral, but I’m not ashamed to admit your story got to me more than I can even describe.” He was tearing up as he talked about it. He took a white hanky out of his suit breast pocket that I thought was there for decoration and blew his nose with it. “It’s such a touching piece of work.” And then dabbed his eyes with it and put it back into the pocket.
Amazingly, the script didn’t have a happy ending. Unless you consider an annoying young boy drowning in the Pacific Ocean to be a happy ending. I suppose I didn’t describe him actually drowning, but I think it’s fairly implied. I always thought Humphrey couldn’t stand anything that doesn’t have a happy ending. I don’t think his studio had made a film without a happy ending in over five years.
“I know I always tell our production people that our films must have happy, upbeat endings.” He pounded his fist on the marble for emphasis. I think it cracked a little. “That we can’t have any of this depressing artistic shit. I’ve worked tirelessly to get that kind of film out of the industry. But sometimes a special work comes along that breaks all of the rules. We can sell this. I know we can. I think it can be a franchise.”
Humphrey took out a gold pen from his gold penholder and started writing something on a gold piece of paper. It didn’t take him long. He folded the paper in half and slid it over to me.
“I think you’ll agree this offer is more than fair.”
I took the piece of paper and opened it. I stared at the lines on the paper but they didn’t make any sense. They were numbers, I was pretty sure they were numbers, but I couldn’t figure out how they related to each other. I looked to Humphrey, who was reclining confidently in his chair. Ten seconds passed. I looked down at the paper again. Twenty seconds passed. I looked up at Humphrey again, we were approaching a full minute of silence.
Humphrey began to fidget in his chair. I looked down at the number again. I finally decided these were not individual numbers, that it was one long unbroken number. I wasn’t sure of that at first, how could I be sure, Humphrey had scratched out an incomprehensible code to a better life and handed it to me on a golden piece of paper and I was supposed to decipher it. It felt like I should have to decipher it, that there had to be more work involved than simply saying ‘yes.’ But that’s all I had to do, my life could irrevocably change simply by reciting the number back to him like I was a second grader solving the simplest of math problems as I stood in the front of the classroom. (A math problem with a dollar sign at the end of it!)
Humphrey was leaning forward again, his elbows now on the marble desk, waiting for my inevitable, ‘yes.’ I looked deep into his eyes and tried to move my jaw and say that simple word, but my jaw wouldn’t move, it remained stuck, bottom lip stapled to top lip in pursed thoughtful posture. I brought my hand up to help it move, which probably made it look like I was thinking even harder about my answer since I was now unconsciously reenacting “The Thinker” pose when in actuality I was just trying to pry my own jaw open. Still, it wouldn’t move, locking tight in the delirious delirium of the confusion that accompanies good fortune.
Humphrey broke the impasse I had unwittingly created. “I’ll tell you what, Ben. You don’t mind if I call you, Ben, do you. Why don’t you take the rest of the day off to think it over, talk to the wife, to the girlfriend, to the boyfriend, whoever, make sure that Landmark is the right place for your screenplay.”
He stood up and walked around his desk. My right hand was still unsuccessfully trying to open my mouth. Humphrey stood me up like a cornerman does with a boxer in the later rounds when the bell rings. “After all, you are part of the Landmark family. This is your home.” He smiled. I was unable to smile back. We walked to the door of his office. I think we shook hands. I think I walked out of his office, his reception area, his building, and into the street. I do remember standing on the sidewalk outside the Landmark Building clutching a golden piece of paper, the sweat from my fingers and palms smudging the gold numbers on that golden paper.
I wasn’t playing with him in there. I wasn’t negotiating, either. When he first slid me that piece of paper with all of those zeroes, all I could think about was all of the things I could do with all of that money. How I could buy anything I wanted. How I didn’t have to worry about next month’s rent or next month’s phone bill or next month’s water bill. The amount he offered probably didn’t mean anything to him, it was a fraction of his annual salary (not to mention stock options), but to me, to me it meant everything. I was going to accept the offer, I really was. I’m not a total idiot. But he took my silence as hesitation instead of the awe it was. To Humphrey’s mind my silence was about leverage and playing the odds and psychology. When he’s presented with an opening offer that looks too good these are the things he thinks about, so he only naturally assumed it’s what I was thinking during those seconds, minutes, when I couldn’t get my jaw to move.
I said, “yes,” to no one in the street. I said, “yes,” a second time and nodded emphatically as people in suits moved by me, around me, through me. But no one was listening now. I was five minutes too late. Humphrey was in his office probably in another meeting or on a conference call with London. I had missed my chance.
After saying my ‘yesses,’ my mouth froze again. This time into a smile, the ends of my mouth tearing into my cheeks, the muscles in my face burning from the intensity of my grin like they had just completed a triathlon without the help of the other muscles in my body.
I walked for miles with that Joker-sized smile on my face. I walked from the Landmark Building to Wilshire Boulevard, which runs from downtown all the way to the ocean. I didn’t make it to the ocean, but I walked down Wilshire quickly making it out of the skyscrapers and past the deteriorating neighborhoods west of downtown where I parked my car for $5 a day during my first week at Landmark before they gave me a permit to park in the building ramp. I walked through McArthur Park with a song in my head avoiding the homeless and drug dealers and student film shoots. I kept walking into Koreatown where I picked up a BubbleTea and some frozen yogurt and kept walking, picking up my pace, past the faded lime awning of the Wiltern Theatre where I had yet to see a concert, where I still have yet to see a concert, the streets got busier and the cars flowed like mice in a building that had been abandoned for many years and I saw 7-11s and Radio Shacks and the type of squeezed in strip malls that have Radio Shacks and 7-11s and food places that serve chicken and hamburgers and Chinese food and fish and pizza all out of the same kitchen that I’m sure I would never want to see the inside of.
There were bland office buildings and squeezed in houses that made the squeezed in strips malls look like Hampton-sized mansions. I ended up in the area they call Miracle Mile (I had read that somewhere, although I have never in my life heard anybody refer to it as such), which wasn’t very miraculous but more suburban or as suburban as L.A. gets, walking past the Koo Koo Roo to LACMA and the La Brea Tar pits, where I watched dinosaurs drown and saw art that looked like dinosaurs drowning, all the while the grin still on my face, the golden paper still held tightly between my two hands, dark splotches from my sweat now near completely obscuring the number I didn’t believe was real and now when I looked down maybe I could convince myself wasn’t real, maybe I had misread a zero or two.
I finally stopped near a dollar store on the other side of the art museum and caught my breath and looked around. I was underneath a billboard for Bakers Grocery Stores that occupied the northwest corner of Wilshire and Fairfax above a diner that wasn’t really a diner, that was only used by movie studios to pretend to be a diner so was vacant most of the time serving mainly as an additional parking lot for the very busy dollar store. There was a Bakers a few blocks back right before the tar pits and the Koo Koo Roo, my mouth had watered Pavlovianly as I passed, briefly thinking not about the gold in my hands but about one of their delicious deli sandwiches I could no longer afford.
Or could I? I looked down at the piece of paper again, the sweat stain now blotted out the number completely like an unhealthy bacterium that had overtaken a healthy cell. I looked up to the colorful billboard. It starred Bakers’ mascot, an aggressive smiling chimp who was holding a bag of potato chips and screaming the chain’s slogan of “Buy More Food!”
I had seen that chimp’s face on billboards and television commercials and heard him screaming on radio so many times since I had arrived in L.A. (they don’t have Bakers in Minnesota, their largest grocery chain is Bear Grocery, “The Home of Comfort”) that he was my second closest friend in the city, after Angel. I stared deeply into the face of that screaming chimpanzee trying to find the meaning of life. He blinked. So I did, too.
Frightened at what I saw, the meaning of life, I turned away and looked at the line of shops on the other side of Wilshire Boulevard. The shop directly across from me was The Truth, a clothing chain I had never had the courage to enter because I didn’t have enough confidence in my body image. Posters of several barely teen models lined the window posing in Roman or Greek inspired clothing. The chain’s tagline, “Don’t Judge Me By What I Wear” was emblazoned on the tops of each one of those posters in fire red block lettering of the type Bolsheviks used on their old posters during the Russian Revolution. The cries of the models briefly overtook the shouts from the Bakers’ chimpanzee, but then I could hear him again so I looked back up to the billboard and stared harder into the chimp’s soul. I could see my reflection.
And you know what? A funny thing happened as I stared at that monkey and tried not to judge those adolescent models of indistinguishable gender by what they were wearing. I thought. And kept thinking. And had my second epiphany. Here was this man, one of the most powerful people in the country, hell, on the planet, who shaped the opinions of millions, maybe billions, and I had something he desperately wanted.
A moment of Zen washed over me. It must be the way Buddhist monks feel before they start moving stones around with their minds. It was a powerful feeling. A feeling I didn’t want to lose.