Free American Dream Machine by Matthew Specktor

steady look. Beau, I forgive you, but please, straighten up and fly right. Also . . .
    “What is it?” he said.
    She shook her head. Recognizing, I suppose, that to say anything would be a mistake. What good might come of telling him I existed, if indeed I did?
    “Nothing.” She turned on her heel and went back into the hall. Settled down at her desk, cool as could be. Beau could hear the friction of a match, and her inhalation on a cigarette, before the phone rang and she spoke.
    “Beau Rosenwald’s office. Hold please.”
    Beau had a lot to think about already. Even without his children—even without yet knowing I would exist—he had to deal with Sam, who was giving him hell.
    “What have you brought in?” That punctilious old fucker was always ducking into his doorway, prodding. “What are you working on, Beau?”
    “Something for Stanley.”
    “Stanley.” Sam’s hand described a circle of contempt. “Stanley doesn’t need you. He made Singin’ in the Rain .”
    That’s why he needs me , Beau wanted to say. No more musicals, you sad queen. He needs something stylish, like Bedazzled again .
    “Why don’t you get a job for one of those circus geeks you represent?”
    Because they don’t need me , Beau wanted to say. Because that’s the way the business is turning. It’s men like Stanley, your clients, who are in danger of extinction .
    “I need to go to New York,” Beau said.
    “Why? To slack off? See those ugly kids of yours?”
    “No.” Temper, Beau. Temper . “I’m trying to sign someone. A kid from Yale drama.”
    “No,” Sam said. “No travel.”
    “I have to—”
    “Do your job,” Sam snapped. “Or drive a cab, I don’t care. But you work for me. And putting together Corman movies ain’t cutting it.”
    No, it wasn’t. But the smug satisfaction on Sam’s face, the animal disgust with which he treated Beau—he wouldn’t even set foot in his underling’s office, made a point of drawing back into the hall, as if the very air repelled him—was the most anguishing.
    Day after day after day. How did you love, if the world forever insisted you were appalling? If even the women you slept with cringed?
    “Do your job.” Sam strode away, stiff-legged, military. “You worthless puddle of whale crap.”
    Yeah. Beau rocked back in his chair, took a deep breath, then another. His heart was hammering, his palms were wet. It took everything he had not to charge down the hall and smack Sam. But he couldn’t. This job, besides being the one thing he could imagine now, the sole alternative to ignominy in Queens, also kept his kids. He sent Rachel money every week. What would he do if he couldn’t?
    “Why don’t you come see me?” she pleaded.
    “I can’t.”
    “Your children miss you. I miss you.”
    “I know. I can’t. Sam’s killing me.”
    “Is there another reason?”
    Was there? He closed his eyes, rolled his palm against his forehead. His face felt hot.
    “I think you’re afraid, Beau.” She spoke softly, gently. Who would have known that under that cold woman he’d met in a taxi lay someone who’d understand him? “Afraid of what home might do to you.”
    Did she? Sometimes it seemed she really did.
    “What about you?” he said. “What about your future?”
    “It isn’t the future I’m worried about.”
    Times like this, he felt like a different man. All around him there was the mania of Hollywood in 1968: elfin little hustlers, goatish Jews and bullies. Somewhere in the world were his children, and somewhere, in his ear and yet nowhere to be seen, there was this woman he’d married, whose very absence felt like love.
    “Are you all right?” she asked, after he’d been silent awhile.
    “Yeah.” He was afraid, of her, and his children, what softness they made him feel. “I’m fine.”
    But there was more to it than this, of course. An open insurrection, closer each day to all-out warfare, had broken out in the motion picture department. Jeremy Vana,