The hordes who hated him for his success, gone. The hordes who toadied up to him wanting to feast off his success, also gone. Here, in this dream, he could simply be and be valued for his essence, or so it seemed. Specifically, he had discovered that he’d written a novel, a Tom Wolfe-like chronicle of political, sexual, and economic machinations in American publishing, a work that turned out to have made Michael Korda’s ruminations on power seem sophomoric. A Times review had said he’d not only outdone Wolfe, but Wolfe’s own idol, Dickens himself. Redford’s company had already bid twenty million on screen rights. He suspected the ringing phone signaled a call from Bob himself—how would Rosenhaus feel about an older guy playing the lead… …but before Rosenhaus could press the button that would put Redford onto speakerphone, the dream evaporated, leaving him tangled in the bedsheets and flailing about to find the source of the incessant, wretched ringing that had disturbed his sleep.
