The Bear Went Over the Mountain by William Kotzwinkle Read Free Book Online Page B

for more briefcases. Chum Boykins had told him that a lot of writers went to Elaine’s, and a lot of writers meant a lot of briefcases.
    “What I love about your book,” continued Zou Zou, “is that it’s so believable, and yet politically correct. I adore how unashamedly you bring in the issue of women’s rights.”
    “You smell good.”
    Zou Zou Sharr smiled uncertainly. Generally, she’d have thrown a sexist comment like that back in the face of the man who made it, but she’d just got done complimenting Jam for his position on women’s rights. Also, since he hadn’t yet signed the agreement with Creative Management—which was her fault entirely—she decided to be old-fashioned about the insult, and let her smile spread to its dazzlingly fullest. But even while turning up the wattage of her eyes, lips, and teeth, she wasn’t perfectly at ease with Hal Jam. He didn’t talk money or percentagesand when a potential client didn’t talk money or percentages it could mean they’d already written her and her agency off. Which was a nightmare she couldn’t allow to happen because she’d have to face the totally justified anger of Creative Management. They might even fire her, because she’d been sensing that she was a threat to certain fragile male egos there. Zou Zou’s ego was fragile too, but it was contained in indestructible packaging, like a Bel Air Diet Cookie, whose shelf life was 750 years. “I want you to feel free to call upon me anytime, Hal, night or day. I’m sure you’ll have lots of questions about the way things work in Hollywood, and you should get straight answers. I’ll have them for you. You’ll always get the truth from me.”
    The waiter laid a basket of bread and buns on the table, and a dish of butter patties. The waiter’s clothing was saturated with the smells of the kitchen, and the bear fought down the urge to butter the waiter’s arm and eat it. Moments like these are the hardest, he reflected to himself. He made himself reach politely for a bun, and buttered it slowly. His method was to completely cover a bun with butter patties, all of them.
    Zou Zou watched, transfixed. She hadn’t eaten butter in a decade.
    The bear swallowed the bun. A dab of butter remained fixed to his nose. His long red tongue came out, nabbed the morsel, and swirled it inward.
    “I see that you enjoy eating,” said Zou Zou nervously. Over the years, she’d had a recurrent dream of floating in an ocean of warm butter, on a buoyant bun. If she ate the bun, she’d drown in her own cellulite.
    “More,” said the bear to the waiter, pointing at the empty butter dish.
    Zou Zou turned her wineglass slowly in her long, delicate fingers and tried not to think of the number of calories that’d just been devoured in front of her. “When you think of
Destiny and Desire
as a movie, who do you see in the leading role?”
    “Popcorn,” said the bear. He’d followed its haunting scent one day, and in this way discovered movies. The movies had meant little, but the hot buttered popcorn had been a revelation.
    There’s something going on here, thought Zou Zou to herself. Hal Jam is playing the country bumpkin role to put me off my stride. I
know
he’s not a bumpkin, because bumpkins don’t get big buzz. Bumpkins don’t get to talk to women like me.
    “You’re saying you don’t care who plays the lead. You’re indifferent. I understand, of course. You’re an artist, you live in god’s country. What we do in Hollywood doesn’t matter to you, and after all, why should it?” Zou Zou leaned closer and spoke more intimately, the way she used to speak to people who didn’t know they needed a diet shake composed entirely of edible foamy plastic, whodidn’t know how truly nutritious plastic was. “But perhaps it does matter, Hal. Creative Management can deliver big stars, and big stars mean bigger profits at the back end.”
    “Popcorn and butter,” said the bear.
    “I admit it, back-end money is