Louis Jon had won shelfloads of awards and his plays were performed on five continents. But he had not yet worked with Dillon Hook, because Jon was an unashamed old-school communist of the New York variety and Hook had one of the most beautiful faces in show business but, when all was said and done, his politics were somewhere to the right of Torquemada. Hook’s wife was a waifish thing and his children wore little suits or plain dresses with ribbons in their hair. He hosted fundraisers for bad people. He had informed on many colleagues over the years.
         Still, there was a temptation. The circles they both moved in, though not small, had considerable overlap, and rumors would sprout: Hook had written a play (his first) and was pressing Jon to direct—or Jon had written a play on the life of Julius Evola and wanted Hook for the lead—or the two of them would put differences aside and celebrate human forgiveness in a new production of The Winter’s Tale. All of it nonsense, but neither man had completely ruled out the possibility. At the Met Gala they shared a vape and talked about Bertolt Brecht.
         Finally, the announcement: Hook would play Galileo in the new season. Immediately there were problems. Photographers captured a fistfight at rehearsal. Hook was recorded, drunk in a bar, spouting anti-Semitic slurs. Jon announced that he would not dedicate the play to the memory of a deceased right-wing podcaster. Still the production advanced.
         Opening night. The play begins thirty minutes late. The audience is in a bad mood. Hook, when he takes the stage, is stiff, and his performance is strange, almost self-mocking.
         By the second act it is clear that the play is a disaster. Two hours later it mercifully ends and it does not have a second performance. Louis Jon will not comment to the press, but this leaves the field to Hook, who controls the narrative and shatters Jon’s hitherto-invulnerable career. One wonders if this was his intention all along.
         Hook moves into film work, then pundithood. Jon drops out of sight, except from his neighbors on the Upper West Side who say hello while walking their dogs. Years later on a podcast, Hook tries to defend his performance as Galileo from a flat-earther interviewer, and comes off like an out-of-touch old fool. His pretty face has had too much work done, it is decided. He is memed and shamed online. His friends in the industry no longer return his calls. His wife’s influencer business is brigaded and destroyed. The family moves from DC back to New York. Uptown looks much the same. He meets Louis Jon for lunch every Tuesday.
         On one of these occasions he drinks too much and accuses Jon of destroying his career. The nerve of him! But Jon is sanguine: he knows what they say about frogs and scorpions, etc. Next week it is like it never happened.
         Some time later Jon drops dead from a stroke, and his wife, surprisingly, asks Hook to deliver the eulogy. Once in front of the crowd Hook impulsively discards his anodyne remarks and delivers a scathing indictment of Jon’s politics, intelligence, trustworthiness and sex life. The crowd boos him out of the synagogue. This performance does nothing for his career, but is favorably reviewed in what remains of the left-wing press.
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