I sat in the white leather guest chair; peering up at Otto on his Mussolini platform, desperate not to reveal any inner terror by a shaking hand or dry mouth. Not that it mattered; Otto, like all feral beasts, could smell fear. This was not my first freelance gig, but it was the first since leaving a regular job. I was young, we had two children hardly more than infants, and I needed to keep this assignment that paid weekly. I had been warned by older, wiser hands that Otto destroyed people for fun, particularly workers. But I had the assurance of youth and the certainty that comes with a young man's passions. "Ah, well," Carl Foreman had shrugged, "perhaps you will be the one to tame the tiger, just remember: Otto never hears the sound of his own voice."

I failed -woefully- to tame even the tiger's office staff, let alone him. He had lived up to the most awful predictions. He was a hard and unforgiving man who enjoyed terrorizing all who came near him — particularly writers, especially writers. William Goldman, whom I had met in London, had befriended me when he learned I was in Otto's indentured servitude and would take me to lunch regularly. He explained, "Otto hates writers most because he can't write himself. You'll find that in a lot of producers and directors."

"What do I do?"

The Master shrugged, smiled softly. "Always protect that part of you that writes."

And, sitting in the dazzlingly bright room, that would be my task: To survive the next half-hour with the part of me that writes intact.

I had come into Otto's service because he wanted the rights to a book I had previously acquired, the story of Henry Norman Bethune, a Canadian doctor who had gone from the Spanish Civil War to China, accompanied Mao on the Long Route March, and become the only person mentioned by name in Mao Tse-Tung's famous Little Red Book. (My view of political virtue has changed since the Seventies...). Trideau's Canada had recently normalized relations with the People's Republic and Otto wanted to be the first to shoot in what, at that time, was a deeply mysterious place. I had transferred the rights with the commitment that I could be the screenwriter. On that basis, Gloria and I and our kids moved back from London to America, living as modestly as possible in the suburbs while building this new career.

It had been a nightmare. From day one. Otto would terrorize, tease, taunt, demean, embarrass and humiliate all who came near - and a writer in a notes meeting is unbearably near.

The morning was especially painful. As a weekly writer, I delivered pages daily, and we had become mired in a scene where Bethune was living ménage a trois, and Otto hated every stab I made at revealing the tensions. It had become clear that this was his particular fantasy, and until the tensions were replaced by a profusion of naked, damp bodies intertwined, he'd never be happy.

The night before, he had thrown my pages in my face and ordered that I rewrite overnight and present him with a "correct" scene or he would fire me and have me arrested for grand larceny for having presented myself as a writer. Such was the impaler's thrall, I'd actually called the Guild to see if such a thing was possible. "Of course not," they told me. But they lived in the normal world and I worked for Otto.

I had stayed up all night crafting words on the empty page— again and again, refining, polishing, rethinking. In that precomputer night, I must have run through a ream of paper. As dawn broke, I stared at the telephone, waiting until the hour was decent enough to call someone, read them the scene, ask their help.

By 6 a.m., the pain was too great. I dialed my Agent's home number; began reading as soon as he answered. "Sounds great to me," said Leo. "But I'm only an agent. What do I know? Besides, the man's insane."

Leo was right. He was an agent, not a screenwriter. 6:32 a.m. Almost a full sun in the sky. Somewhere a dog barked, an early-morning commuter's car coughed to life.

I presumed on a delicate friendship, dialed a number, and woke Bill Goldman. He understood. He empathized. He listened calmly as I read the four-and-a-half pages. A brief silence. And then, "Lionel, that's as good as I might do myself. Present the pages with confidence. With pride. And protect that part of you that writes."

Five minutes ago, I handed them to Otto who had grunted "Are they any good?" I failed to answer quickly enough with Bill Goldman's advice and Otto had snorted with derision, cut me off with "You see, you are a failure and a fraud. A true writer would have pride and confidence in his work. You are... you are..."

He had shrugged as if unable to find a phylum low enough to accommodate me, then put the pages in front of him, hunched over them, began reading. I watched with mixed dream and hope. The rent was due next week. We were broke. Please love them. Please. I need this job. Gloria's out of work, we can't feed the kids if you don't like—

But he smiled at what he read. He glanced up, looked at me while a trace of grin was still visible — barely, but definitely there. My heart soared. On to page two. A similar reaction. A broader smile, a better grin. So too, page three. I was going to survive!

Until page four. His face contorted in Hitlerian fury, spittle formed at the corners of his mouth, veins throbbed out on his signature bald head, his eyes popped out. He screwed the pages into a ball, threw them at me. I ducked, prayed he'd regain control.

He did. He smiled the cold smile of a Prussian Aristocrat.

"Chetta-veend" he whispered in his deceptively soft High German accent. "Life is a curious thing, you know? For example, all my life I have felt we are too free with gun laws in this country. And you see, that is because in America, anybody might own an instrument of death."

I wasn't sure where this was going, but I didn't like it. "Instrument of death," huh? If any one I knew in the world had one of those, it was the bald-headed Junker across—actually perched above—me.

He continued. "You see, Chetta-veend, in such a regime, I might have here..." He paused, and indicated the small (white) cabinet of drawers beside him. ".. a weapon. A firearm."

No. He couldn't. Not even this ogre. But he opened the top drawer. I thought I heard something heavy go "clump" as it slid forward.

"And, provoked as I am by your failure and, in a righteous rage at your uselessness to humanity, I would reach into this drawer for that firearm..."

God save me, he put his hand in the drawer. This time I definitely heard a heavy thud. My palms sweated, I was gripped by an urge to flee but seemed unable to move. It was all happening so fast, yet in slow-motion.

"And I would remove that weapon—no doubt a finely made German Luger piston that never misfires..."

The sonuvabitch was about to murder me. Suddenly, in rapid fire:

"And-I-would-remove-the-pistol—"

I saw him take something dark and heavy from that drawer. He had finally lost control, and I was to become a headline. I wouldn't even get decent billing given the murderer was Otto. As he raised the object I did what the Army had taught me to do: I hit the floor, crossing my arms over my chest, rolling side-over-side until I was behind the only available cover— the chair I had been sitting in a split second ago.

A beat of silence. And then a strange buzzing sound. I peered around the edge of the chair.

The heavy object was a Remington Cordless Razor. Otto was shaving his head.

"I have decided you might as well live long enough to try one last time. Get back to your office."

I stood up, turned to do his bidding.

And then I remembered: protect the part of me that writes.

"Screw you, Otto," I smiled warmly. "I quit."

The morning air of Fifth Avenue never smelled sweeter.

ŠLionel Chetwynd. All rights reserved.