Free Selling Out by Dan Wakefield

little uncomfortably sheepish in this photograph, wearing Hawaiian-style leis around their necks—but the incongruity was explained in the headline over the picture:
    VARDEMANS TO HOST LUAU FOR LEUKEMIA
    The story said top directors’ agent Pru Vardeman and her producer husband, Vaughan, were generously offering their Bel Air estate for this charity event which was being backed by the top people in the industry.
    Perry grinned and shook his head in affectionate amusement.
    â€œI can’t wait to put them on about this,” he chuckled.
    â€œYou may have to wait,” Jane said. “I doubt they’ll have time for their poor country cousins.”
    â€œNow, now, let’s be fair. They took us to Locke’s the last time they were in Boston.”
    â€œThat was before they made their millions on that vampire movie. Besides, what was the alternative? A stroll down the Freedom Trail? Hang out at Quincy Market?”
    â€œDarling, love of my life, as a big favor to me, do you think while we’re out here you could try to just accept the Vardemans the way they are, maybe even enjoy them a little bit?”
    Jane pulled down her chin, squeezed her nose with her fingers, and did an imitation of Pru Pinchel Vardeman’s Radcliffe accent.
    â€œOh, Lord sies, why don’t we all get ’faced and go skinny-dipping?”
    â€œWhy don’t you think of them as your very own field anthropology? Something like ‘At home with the Dippy-dos.’”
    â€œOkay, touché. But promise me you won’t go fishing for an invitation to their cozy little mansion. I don’t want to have to plead to be invited anywhere.”
    â€œDarling, we’re inviting them .”
    â€œFor a tuna melt at the Hamburger Hamlet?”
    Perry grinned, pleased with his plan.
    â€œI’m going to invite them to be our guests at Spoleto. We’ll take them to the hottest new restaurant in town.”
    Jane pinched her nose.
    â€œOh Lordsies,” she said.
    Archer Mellis was impressed with the ten pages Perry brought him. He said it was just what he hoped it would be—natural, fresh, charming; sad and funny at the same time.
    Archer was even more impressed that Perry was such good friends with the Vees (as the Vardemans were popularly known around town) that they had agreed to go to dinner with him and Jane at Spoleto.
    Archer knew them himself, of course. “If I didn’t know the Vees I might as well be living in Tulsa,” he said. He had met them around town, at screenings and parties, but he didn’t go way back with them, like Perry did. At any rate, he was more than happy to ring up Dom and make sure Perry was welcomed with honor at Spoleto and given a choice table when he hosted his important friends.
    Archer said to give the Vees his best, and tell them they were welcome on his lot anytime if they wanted to see their old amigo ’s first pilot in production when it got under way.
    â€œThe Vees talking up your show won’t hurt us a bit,” Archer said with a wink.
    Spoleto was all aglitter. It was, as Vaughan Vardeman observed, “ass-deep” in stars the evening he and Pru joined Perry and Jane there for dinner. All the stars stopped by their table to say hello and pay court to the Vees—and, as was only natural, meet their dear old friends Perry and Jane Moss.
    It was a long way from Haviland, Vermont.
    The satisfying part of it for Perry was that he was not just sitting there like an outsider, listening to the in stories of Hollywood from the Vees like some visiting hick from the sticks—hell, he was talking shop with them.
    â€œTell me frankly,” Perry said, sipping his Napa Valley Chardonnay, “what would you think of Renna Greaves as a bright, fairly kooky, recently married graduate student?”
    Earlier that very day, when Archer Mellis had posed the same question to Perry, he had never even heard of Renna Greaves. Now he