Looking For Peter Mehlman, serialized, Pt. 6 (Finally!)

7:30pm (one week later)

I return to my apartment from yet another visit to the local Starbucks to see the telltale flashing light on my answering machine. I listen. Oh my God. It's Peter Mehlman. He's calling me, himself, to give me the date and the name of the article ("Star Trekking", The New York Times Magazine, Oct. 16, 1988). It’s like that scene in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” when Indy just gets annoyed with all the flash and flourish of saber and knife combat and just shoots the guy. One quick call, and my search, my agonized, obsessive search, is over. Deus Ex Answering-machina.

He’s surprisingly relaxed and open for someone who is as famous as he, calling someone who is as not famous as me. Mensch that he is, he even left me his phone number. My hand is trembling as I fumble for a pencil to write it down. This phone call has me swearing that, down the line, I myself will call some other fledgling writer and do this pro bono gesture for them. If only I could become someone whom they’d actually care to hear from. I lean in and listen as each digit is offered.

“… 4-3-7 [beep]” “Beep”? BEEP? Wait a minute, “beep” on the 8th digit?? What have I ever done to my answering machine that it hates me so much it must cut off the last digits of Peter Mehlman’s phone number?

I become very still. Perhaps this is not my path. Perhaps I am not meant to write in the world of Hollywood where there are so many layers between the writer and the writing. Perhaps I should just be watching TV, perhaps “The Office” where this kind of stuff happens in a really hilarious way that ends up with some kind of gentle moral.

10:00pm:
Called it a typical day as a New York freelance writer. Turned on the TV. Finished wine. Tomorrow I’ll go back to work on my play, perhaps adding a scene wherein the woman with one too many cats finds a message on her answering machine from an old boyfriend, asking for her hand in marriage, only the last two digits of his number get cut off.

You gotta admit, it’s not a bad twist.

(Coda: I called Mehlman’s agent back, gave him my email address and Peter and I emailed for a while, and eventually actually met. We became friends of a sort; he’s a great guy by the way.)