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.)

Looking For Peter Mehlman, serialized, Pt. 2

11:00am
Buoyed by the fact I live in a city with one of the greatest libraries in the world, and grateful for an opportunity to side-step any actual writing of my own, I head jauntily out the door of my building, when - bam! I'm flattened by a sixty-something, ipod-wearing roller-blader. "Sorry!" he yells back to me. "No problem" I respond, noting yet another example of the under-reported courtesy New Yorkers consistently offer after nearly killing someone. Up on my one good leg, and about to retrieve my backpack, I watched the grey-haired figure recede, marveling at the eclectic variety of personalities the city spawns when - squash! My backpack is neatly bisected by the wheel of a hurtling bike messenger whose sleek, aerodynamic helmet makes one wonder about the shape of the head inside. "Watch it you idiot!", he suggests, advising me, in his way, that the streets of the city can be dangerous if one is not wary. Grateful for the reminder and not entirely sure he was unarmed, I shout back "Thanks!" with not a trace of sarcasm.

11:15am
Looking for somewhere a little safer, I head to the subway: down the stairs and toward the token booth. A small line has formed, and I arrive just as the electronic beep begins to sound: the train is on its way. Those in line look anxiously over their shoulders at the tracks. From the distance, we hear the click-clacking, bad horse-gallop sound effects that signal the near arrival of a train, just as I reach the front of the line and put my $20 down.

"What?" the clerk asks.

The man behind me groans, "Oh, c'mon." His immediate future, along with those of the rest of the line, is in my hands and we can all hear the train sliding in and squealing to a halt.

"One."
"One what?"
"One fun pass."

(I feel ridiculous even as I say it down here in this place that is so far from "fun" it may as well be Hades.) The guy behind me suggests helpfully: "Hurry the f- up!" Obligingly I do, predictably I drop my change and my quarters roll under the token booth, just as we hear the hissing of the doors opening behind us and the rumble of passengers tumbling out. I bend down quickly, and the man behind me straddles my head as he leans in to the agent. From my crouched position, I look up and I'm in a Rugby scrum: there's a canopy of hands above me, moving en masse toward the token booth. Down below, I crab-walk toward the turnstiles to avoid being trampled, but it's too late. A loud hissing and screeching marks the departure of the train.

The train itself makes noises too.

(continued tomorrow)