"And as a lover of film?"

"You'd have to be out of your mind to give her the role," I said.

"Well," Roland said, sounding impressed. "That's something you're not going to hear out of the mouth of every agent."

I shrugged. "I'm not telling you anything you don't already know," I said. "And I'd look like an idiot if I said anything else."

"What I find interesting," Roland said, "is that you think I'd be mad to give her the role, and yet here you are, about to ask me to do just that. It's a near-Orwellian example of doublethink. I'm fascinated to hear how you are going to reconcile the two."

"There's no need for reconciliation," I said. "I think she'd probably be no good for the role. I'll be honest about that. But — and here's something you're not going to hear an agent say much of, either — I could be wrong, and wrong in a big way. I can name you any number of actors and actresses that no one suspected would be able to take on a role, who have turned around and made it work. Sally Field was Gidget for years. Now she's got two Oscars. Hell, Ellen Merlow's first film role was a straight-to-video horror flick."

"I didn't know that," Roland said.

"Blood City III: The Awakening," I said. "It also features Ellen's first and currently only nude scene."

"Really. I'll have to find that."

"Now Ellen has two Oscars as well. My point here is, just because I think Michelle is wrong for the part, doesn't mean she is."

"All right, point noted," Roland said. "But there is the complication of Miss Beck not being the right age or, let's put this delicately as possible, having the right amount of intellectual stamina."

"We have 40 year old actresses who move heaven and earth to make themselves look 25," I said. "I think we have the cosmetic technology to go the other direction as well. We might have to reel back the age of the character half a decade or so, but that's not going to make a real impact on the thrust of the story. As for the intellectual end, it may surprise you to know that Michelle has recently been reading Hannah Arendt."

"It does surprise me," Roland said.

"She and my assistant Miranda were discussing the book just this afternoon," I said. I left out the part about Michelle mangling the title of the book.

Roland put his arm on the top of the couch and sipped his scotch, thoughtfully. Then he shook his head. "I'm sorry, Tom," he said. "But I just have a very hard time seeing any way that Michelle Beck could work this role. I wouldn't want to give it to her, just to have it be a fiasco for both her and me. You can see the position I'm in."

"I'm not asking you to give her the role," I said. "All I'm asking is that you give her a reading. If she flubs it, fine. But she'll know she had a shot at it. She'll know I made the effort for it. Knowing Michelle, it'll make her work harder for the next thing that she does. And again: we could both be wrong about this. It couldn't hurt to cover the bases. Roland, what's the status of the movie right now?"

"It's been pushed back, of course," Roland said. "We were in the process of hiring crew and now we've had to let them all off. It's damned inconvenient — I'm going to lose Januz, my cinematographer, to another project. Some child's film. About primates." He grimaced. "Those things never do well. I don't know what he's thinking."

"Do you have any other actresses lined up?"

"Not any of the really good ones," Roland said. "Once we selected Ellen, they all went off to other commitments. The earliest we'll have any of our A-list choices open is nine months from now. We have some B-listers who could do it, but this isn't the sort of film that will succeed without an established name."

"Well, then," I said. "You've got nothing to lose."

Roland did his thoughtful thing again. "Even if Michelle confounded our expectations," he said. "I don't see how we could afford her. You know that the studios don't throw any sort of money at all to these things."

Inwardly, I did a victory dance. When a producer starts talking about money, it means he's cleared off any philosophical problems he might have with your client. We were now moving through the final steps of the dance. Outwardly, of course, I showed no change in emotion. "Michelle's not looking to do this picture for the paycheck," I said. "I think that, should she confound us, we could come to an accommodation concerning salary."

One more minute of the thoughtful thing. "All right, fine," Roland said. "I don't suppose it could hurt to give her a look. And if, God forbid, she pans out and we get this production on track, all the better. To tell you the truth, Tom, I was thinking of abandoning Hard Memories altogether for another project, which is actually along the same lines — Holocaust drama, that is."

"Really," I said.

"Yes. Well," Roland ducked his head in what I suspected was his version of a shrug, "it's not really a project yet. It's just a script — came into our slush pile by a student at NYU, but it's marvelous. It's about a Polish poet, a Catholic, who is put in a Nazi concentration camp for helping Jews during World War II."

"Krysztof Kordus?" I asked.

Roland looked surprised. "Yes, right, that's the man. Again, Tom, I'm impressed. Most people in this business don't know about anything they didn't read in Variety. Anyway, this script is brilliant, really moving. They did a thing on this Kordus fellow a couple decades back on television," — again, the word was almost spat — "but this script is far beyond what they did with that. The problem now, of course, is getting clearance to use the man's works in the film. I'm going to have Rajiv chase down who's in charge of Kordus' literary estate, and see what we can come up with. Probably will charge us an arm and a leg for clearance. That's the way these things work."

"You don't have to have Rajiv track anything down," I said. "I can tell you who administers Krysztof's literary estate. You're looking at him."

Roland slipped his arm off the couch and leaned forward. "Get out," he said. "You can't be serious."

"I am," I said. "My father was Krysztof's agent. When Krysztof died, he named my father administrator of his literary estate. When my father died, I inherited the role. I tried to place Krysztof's estate with a real literary agent, but his family asked me to continue on. They wanted to keep it in the family, as it were. I couldn't very well say no, so I stayed with it. It's really not very difficult, since the deals for his books are already in place. All I do is sign off on the current arrangements and mail his daughter a check every three months."

"Tom," Roland said. "I am so very glad you dropped by. Hold on a moment, and I'll get you the script for this project. Read it and let's talk."

"Two scripts, if you don't mind," I said. "Remember why I came here in the first place."

"But of course," Roland said. "By all means, let's set up the screen test. Will a week from today be good? Say, noon?"

"That would be just fine."

"Brilliant," Roland said, and got up. "Don't go anywhere. I'll be back in a flash." he went out to get the scripts from his assistant. I finished my scotch. It was very good scotch.

I called Michelle with the good news as soon as I got home. She squealed like a happy pig, which in my mind didn't bode well for her chances for the role.

"Thank you, Tom, thank you, thank you, thank you!" she said. "I'm so happy! I can't believe it!"

"Settle down, Michelle," I said, not unkindly. "All you're getting at this point is a reading. You haven't got the film yet. You could go in only to find out they hate you." This was my subtle way of getting her ready for the disappointment.

It wasn't working. "Oh, I don't care," she said. "I'm ready. I've been doing my reading. They're going to be surprised. You'll see. You'll be there, right, Tom?"