Page 57 of Code 6

“How much compression?”

“Get it down to one act. No intermission. Ninety minutes.”

“That’s impossible.”

“It’s not only possible; it’s imperative. My plays start at eight p.m., and eighty percent of my audience are boomers who want to be in bed by ten.”

“I’d rather cut scenes.”

“We can’t. Not with the additions I have.”

“What additions?”

“Charles Lindbergh. He received the Nazi Merit Cross a year after Watson did. Watson must have met him at some point.”

“He did. His son wanted to be a pilot, so Watson took him to meet Lindbergh.”

“Perfect! Work that into the narrative. And we need another minute or two of Watson meeting Joseph Kennedy and Father Coughlin.”

“Father who?”

“Father Charles Coughlin, the radio priest. He had thirty million listeners. The Roosevelt administration finally forced the cancellation of his show when his message turned anti-Semitic and pro-Hitler.”

“Are you sure Watson actually had a meeting with Father Coughlin and Joseph Kennedy?”

“I’m sure he didn’t. But he could have.”

“Except that he didn’t.”

“I’m asking you to take artistic license. Coughlin was an anti-Semite, no doubt about it. The verdict is out on Joe Kennedy, but he made some pretty questionable remarks when he was FDR’s ambassador to Great Britain.”

“I thought we were in agreement that Watson was not an anti-Semite.”

“It’s up to the audience to decide.”

“It’s up to us not to lie to them. I can’t portray Watson as an anti-Semite based on meetings that never happened with men who may or may not have been anti-Semitic.”

“Fine. Cut Joseph Kennedy.”

“And Father Coughlin.”

“Oh, all right,” he said, grumbling. “But Watson as narrator is non-negotiable.”

Kate hesitated. “I’m not sure I’m the right playwright to pull this off. Watson is a sixty-something-year-old man. I’m a twenty-seven-year-old woman.”

“No. You’re a writer. You have the tits of Aphrodite and a dick so hard you could cut diamonds with it. You have whatever your director wants and everything your director would give himself, if only he had the talent to write. Give me a play, Kate.”

Irving was such a contradiction to Kate. He could be the crudest, biggest ass on the planet and, in the same instant, he could lift her up like no one else, as if there were nothing she couldn’t do.

“I’ll give it a shot,” she said with a sigh.

“Attagirl. Then it’s all set. I’m pulling the plug onTrillary. Your play opens January fifteenth. I’ll need a finished script by Thanksgiving at the latest.”

Kate’s mouth fell open. “But you’re essentially asking me to start over.”

“Do you want the slot, or don’t you?”

It had been Kate’s dream since middle school. Crazy as it was, the answer was obvious: “I want it.”

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