"Femke had a better one, Jackie," Els said. "She drove William back to Amsterdam in her Mercedes. I took the train from Rotterdam. In my mind's eye, I kept seeing you wave from the ship. You thought you were waving to me--I was waving back, of course--but it was your father you were really waving good-bye to. Some deal, huh, Nico?" she asked the policeman sharply.

"Something had to be done, Els," he said again.

"Fuck you, Nico," the old prostitute once more told him.

When Jack got back to the Grand, two faxes were waiting for him; it didn't help that he read them in the wrong order. He began with a surprising suggestion from Richard Gladstein, a movie producer. Bob Bookman had sent Gladstein the script for The Slush-Pile Reader.

Dear Jack,

Stay where you are, in Amsterdam! What do you say we have a meeting with William Vanvleck? I know you've worked with Wild Bill before. It strikes me that The Slush-Pile Reader is a kind of remake, maybe right up The Remake Monster's alley. Think about it: the story is a remade porn film but not a porn film, right? We wouldn't show anything pornographic, but the very idea of James "Jimmy" Stronach's relationship with Michele Maher is a little pornographic, isn't it? (He's too big, she's too small. Brilliant!) We should discuss. But first tell me your thoughts on The Mad Dutchman. As it happens, he's in Amsterdam and you're in Amsterdam. If you like the idea of Vanvleck as a director, I could meet you there.

Richard

Everything became clearer when Jack read the second fax, which he should have read first. It was from Bob Bookman at C.A.A.

Dear Jack,

Richard Gladstein loved your script of The Slush-Pile Reader. He wants to discuss possible directors with you. Richard has the crazy--maybe not so crazy--idea of using Wild Bill Vanvleck. Call me. Call Richard.

Bob

Jack was so excited that he called Richard Gladstein at home, waking him up. (It was very early in the morning in L.A.)

Wild Bill Vanvleck was in his late sixties, maybe his early seventies. He'd moved back to Amsterdam from Beverly Hills. No one in Hollywood had asked him to direct a picture for a couple of years. The Remake Monster had sold his ugly mansion on Loma Vista Drive. Something had gone wrong with his whippets. Jack remembered the skinny little dogs running free in the mansion, slipping and falling on the hardwood floors.

Something bad had happened to Wild Bill's chef and gardener, the Surinamese couple. Someone had drowned in Vanvleck's swimming pool, Richard Gladstein told Jack; Richard couldn't remember if it was the child-size woman from Suriname or her miniature husband. (Possibly the drowning victim had been one of the whippets!)

So The Mad Dutchman was back in Amsterdam, where he was living with a much younger woman. Vanvleck had a hit series on Dutch TV; from Richard Gladstein's description, Wild Bill had remade Miami Vice in Amsterdam's red-light district.

Richard talked about the difficulty of bringing Miramax around to the idea of hiring William Vanvleck to direct The Slush-Pile Reader--that is, assuming Richard and Jack had a good meeting with The Mad Dutchman. But the idea, Gladstein and Jack agreed, had possibilities. (Bob Bookman had already overnighted Jack's screenplay to Wild Bill.)

Richard and Jack also talked about the idea of Lucia Delvecchio in the Michele Maher role. "She'd have to lose about twenty pounds," Jack told Richard.

"She'd love to!" Gladstein said. There was little doubt of that, Jack thought. There were a lot of women in Hollywood who wanted to lose twenty pounds--they just needed a reason.

The more he thought about Wild Bill Vanvleck, the better Jack liked the idea. What had always been wrong with The Remake Monster's material was the material itself--namely, Wild Bill's screenplays. Not only how he'd ripped them off from other, better

material, but how he went too far; he always pushed the parody past reasonable limits. If you're irreverent about everything, the audience is left with nothing or no one to like. Conversely, there was sympathy in Emma's story--both for the too-small slush-pile reader and for the porn star and bad screenwriter with the big penis. Vanvleck had never directed a sympathetic script before.

Jack wished he could ask Emma what she thought of the idea, but he didn't think that his working with Wild Bill Vanvleck as a director would necessarily make Emma roll over in her grave.

Jack went back out in the rain. He passed the Casa Rosso, where they showed porn films and had livesex shows--more advice-giving, Jack had once believed. He wasn't tempted to see a show, not even as research for The Slush-Pile Reader.

He walked once more to the Warmoesstraat police station, but Nico was out working in the red-light district. A couple of young cops, both in uniform, told Jack that they thought William Vanvleck's TV series about homicide policemen was reasonably authentic. Wild Bill had spent time in the Warmoesstraat station; he'd gone out in the district with real cops on the beat. It was a favorable sign that real policemen actually liked a TV series about cops.

Jack worked out at a gym on the Rokin. It was a good gym, but the music was too loud and relentless; it made him feel he was rushing, though he was taking his time. His appointment with Femke, which Nico had arranged, wasn't until four o'clock that afternoon. He was in no hurry. When Jack returned to the Grand from the gym, Nico Oudejans had left a package at the reception desk--a videocassette of Vanvleck's homicide series.

Jack showered and shaved, put on some decent clothes, and went out again. The address of Marinus and Jacob Poortvliet's law firm was on the Singel. Femke, their mother, was retired. Jack saw at once how easy it had been for his mom to confuse him into thinking that Femke occupied a prostitute's room on the Bergstraat. The Poortvliets' law office was roughly halfway between the Bergstraat and the Korsjespoortsteeg--virtually around the corner from those streets where the more upscale prostitutes were in business.

Some small details about the office were familiar; both the cars on the Singel and the pedestrians on the sidewalk were visible from the leather reading chair and the big leather couch. On the walls of the office, a few of the landscapes were also familiar. Jack even remembered the rug, an Oriental.

Femke was late; Jack talked with her sons. Conservatively dressed gentlemen in their fifties, they'd been university students in 1970. But even people of their generation remembered the controversial organist, William Burns, who'd played for the prostitutes in the Oude Kerk in the early-morning hours. University students had made the organ concerts in the Old Church a favorite among their late-night outings.

"Some of us considered your father an activist, a social reformer. After all, he expressed a profound sympathy for the prostitutes' plight," Marinus told Jack.

"Others took a view that was common among some of the prostitutes--I'm referring to those women who were not in William's audience at the Old Church. William was a Holy Roller in their eyes; converting the prostitutes meant nothing less than steering them away from prostitution," Jacob explained.

"But he played great," Marinus said. "No matter what you thought of William, he was a terrific organist."

Tags: John Irving Fiction
Source: readsnovelonline.net