The Boy Who Never Grew Up Read Online Free Page B

assistant. Matthew’d be totally lost without her. We’ve all made sure he could keep on telling those sweet, wonderful stories that make so many millions of people around the world feel so good. All along, I’ve felt I was doing the right thing. He was so happy, so productive …” He sat back down heavily. “Now, I’m not so sure. Because I’ve left him totally unprepared for all of this shit. He can’t deal with any of it. What she’s doing to him. What the industry is doing to him. He honestly doesn’t understand what’s happening to him.”
    “Everyone has to grow up some time,” I pointed out.
    “That they do,” he acknowledged readily. “Matthew is finally going through puberty. And it’s not pretty.”
    “It seldom is. I take it he’s working?”
    Up went the shield. “That’s correct,” Shelley Selden replied briskly. “He just finished writing the script for Badger Four last week. He’s casting it now, scouting locations. Goes into production in a few weeks.”
    “How’s the script?”
    “Great!” he exclaimed.
    I tugged at my ear. “Let’s try that again—how is the script?”
    “I try to stay out of the creative end,” he replied tactfully. “I know my limitations. I’m just the numbers man. So I’m really the wrong person to ask.”
    “I’m asking.”
    He hesitated. “Okay, sure … My feeling is he needs to do a big, noisy, fun, Matthew Wax kind of picture right now. Something with maybe some nice, fuzzy aliens in it …” He trailed off. And, slowly, began to deflate before my eyes. I could almost hear the air hissing out of him. “Instead, he wants to do an adult drama—in black and white. It’s a Badger, only this one’s darker and much more personal than anything he’s ever done before. I—I think the script still needs a little work. I don’t think it hangs together yet. But it’s what Matthew wants to do next. He keeps saying he wants to be taken … seriously.”
    “Tell him to start wearing glasses. That’s what Daryl Hannah did.”
    “He already wears glasses,” Shelley said miserably.
    There, he was good and deflated now, like a beanbag chair. I could have lounged atop the man if I cared to.
    “Does he know how you feel?” I asked.
    “Not totally.”
    “Is he happy with the script?”
    “Not totally.” He brightened a little. “That’s why he wants you.”
    “I’m not a screenwriter.”
    “He knows. But, see, this is the first movie that Matthew’s ever done that’s about him . He’s not used to introspection. In fact, he’s avoided it his whole life. Writing this book, he hopes, will help him to examine his life. Which will in turn help the script. This is a major step for Matthew, Hoagy. For him, it’s like going into therapy.”
    “I’m not a therapist.”
    “But you do possess a certain …”
    “Effortless style?”
    “Knack,” he said.
    I shrugged. “Everybody ought to be good at something.”
    “Go to work on him, Hoagy. Draw him out. He’ll give you as much of his time as you need. This isn’t just a book to him. Or a movie. This is him becoming a man.”
    I sampled a Danish. There was only one left, and I didn’t think he’d leave it there for long. “Exactly how much of this is because of Pennyroyal?”
    “It has everything to do with Pennyroyal, and it has nothing to do with Pennyroyal,” he replied. “It has to do with real life. He’s face to face with it for the first time, and he’s finding it pretty ugly.”
    “Only because it is. Are you actually trying to tell me the man’s never been fucked over before? Not once?”
    “Oh, he has been,” Shelley conceded. “Sure he has. Schlom’s done it to him in every imaginable way, and then some.” That would be Norbert Schlom, the president of Panorama City Studios. “He’s the one who discovered Matthew, and first put him to work. Became like a father to him. And cheated him every single step of the way. Cheated him out of millions. This is a man with