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in Hollywood at the time for one of those television festivals, where they even have an award, rather than an electric chair in place, for the director of the “most brilliant” commercial. I had not come in quest of prizes but in search of markets for my rubbish. Mike said, “Buy
Time
shares.”
    â€œNo ‘hello.’ No ‘How are you, Daddy dear?’ ”
    â€œPhone your broker as soon as I hang up.”
    â€œI can’t even read that magazine any more. Why should I invest in it?”
    â€œWill you please do as I say?”
    I did, and bastard that I am, I was already anticipating the satisfaction I would squeeze out of dropping my bundle and blaming him for it. But a month later both Warner and Paramount pounced, the shares more than doubling in value.
    I’m running ahead of myself. Filling my peddler’s office that evening in Beverly Hills, I was obliged to take two functionally illiterate NBC - TV executives to dinner at La Scala; and mindful of Miriam’s parting admonition, I was resolved to be civil. “You should send somebody else to L.A.,” she had said, “because you’re bound to end up having too much to drink and insulting everybody.” And now, into my third Laphroaig, I espied Hymie Mintzbaum at another table with a bimbo young enough to be his granddaughter. Following that brawl in London, whenever Hymie and I ran into each other here or there over the years, at the international stations of the show-business Cross (Ma Maison, Elaine’s, The Ivy, L’Ami Louis, et cetera, et cetera), we acknowledged each other’s presence with no more than anod. I would occasionally see him, accompanied by a fawning starlet wannabe, and pick up his gravelly voice drifting over tables in one restaurant or another. “As Hemingway once said to me …” or “Marilyn was far more intelligent than most people realized, but Arthur wasn’t right for her.”
    Once, in 1964, Hymie and I actually got to exchange words.
    â€œSo Miriam didn’t take my advice,” he said. “She finally married you.”
    â€œWe happen to be very happy together.”
    â€œDoes it ever start unhappily?”
    And that night, twenty-five years later, there he was again. He nodded. I nodded. Hymie had obviously endured a face-lift since I had last seen him. He now dyed his hair black and wore a bomber jacket, designer jeans, and Adidas. As luck would have it, we all but collided in the men’s room. “You damn fool,” he said, “when we’re dead it will be for a long time and it won’t matter that the film we did in London was from Boogie’s original story.”
    â€œIt mattered to me.”
    â€œBecause you were consumed with guilt?”
    â€œAfter all these years, the way I look at it is Boogie was the one who betrayed me.”
    â€œThat’s not the way most people see it.”
    â€œHe should have turned up at my trial.”
    â€œRising from the grave?”
    â€œFlying in from wherever.”
    â€œYou’re incorrigible.”
    â€œAm I?”
    â€œPrick. You know what I’m doing now? A film-of-the-week for ABC - TV . But it’s a very exciting script and could lead to big things. I’m with a Freudian analyst these days. We’re working on a sensational script together and I’m fucking her, which is more than I ever got from any of the others.”
    Back at my table, one of the young executives, his smile reeking of condescension, said, “You know old Mintzbaum, do you?”
    The other one, shaking his head, said, “For Christ’s sake, don’t encourage him to come to our table, or he’ll start to pitch.”
    â€œOld Mintzbaum,” I said, “was risking his life in the Eighth Army Air Force before you were born, you smug, insufferably boring little cretin. As for you, you cliché-mongering little shit,” I added, turning to