by Gore Vidal
The typical specimen was Charlie Flagler Junior, lawyer. He gave me the whitest of smiles, the firmest of handshakes and then, at Buck’s insistence, he let me have it. “Mrs. Breckinridge, as you know, in representing my client, Mr. Loner, or any client, I—we must of course try to leave no stone unturned in order to—like make it crystal clear what their position is.”
Buck clapped his hands together, as if in applause. Then he said, “I think, Myra, you should know that Charlie’s dad and me have been pals for lo! these many years, ever since he handled me when I had that big row with the Blue Network.”
“I guess we value Mr. Loner’s account more than almost any single noncorporate account, not only for old times’ sake—like Dad says—but because Buck Loner has a reputation in this town”—Charlie Flagler Junior’s voice became very grave and solemn—“for being like a straight-shooter.”
“For Christ’s sake,” I said, no doubt in the same tone that Dr. Margaret Mead must have used in trying to extract a straight bit of folklore from her Polynesians, “stop gassing and tell me what lousy trick you’re up to now.
Buck’s face half shut; he looked pained. Charlie Flagler Junior gave me a curious look. I imagined him stretched out before me the way Rusty had been; a satisfying vision except, curiously enough, so complete was last night’s experience that any repetition of it would be redundant, even in fantasy. I have accomplished what nature intended me to do and except for one last turn to the screw, I am complete.
“No lousy trick, Mrs. Breckinridge.” The young lawyer wanted to appear grieved but the Polynesian face has only two expressions: joy and incomprehension. He looked quite stupid. “I simply must respect my client’s wishes and defend his interests which in this case are your claim to like half the value of this Westwood property, due you as the alleged widow of his nephew.”
“Alleged?” I was ready for battle.
Joy filled the brown Pacific face, as though a toasted breadfruit had been offered him after a long swim with Dorothy Lamour. “Alleged. The marriage certificate you gave us is an out-and-out forgery.”
I was not as prepared to answer this charge as I thought I would be. The game is now becoming most tricky and dangerous. One false move and all will come to a dead halt, like the ominously stationary ten-times-life-size chorine outside my window. “Mr. Charlie Flagler Junior and you, Buck Loner, brother of Gertrude and cheerful thief, I am the heiress to half this property, and I am going to get it. So don’t think for one moment you can hold out on me.”
“Honey, we’re not trying to keep what’s yours from you.” Buck was plaintive. “That’s the last thing on our minds but we’ve got to make sure you really are entitled to it. I mean you could be some kind of impersonator, saying you are who you are.”
“Gertrude gave you two hundred dollars back in Philadelphia when you were twenty years old to pay for the abortion of the daughter of the Rexall druggist you knocked up and refused to marry.”
Buck turned white. The Polynesian remained brown. Buck cleared his throat, “I’m not saying you didn’t know Gertrude and the boy well. Obviously you did . . .”
“The point is like this,” said Charlie Flagler Junior, you have to prove you were married. That’s all.”
“I shall prove it.” I rose to go. The men rose, too, with a new respect. At least they don’t underestimate their adversary. “Proof will arrive before the end of the week. Meanwhile, Uncle Buck, I shall list all the loans Gertrude made you over the years, and I shall expect repayment, with interest.” I slammed the door as I left.
I have just talked to Dr. Montag in New York. He dithered. I was firm. “Randolph, you owe this to me. You owe this to Myron. I don’t want to blackmail you emotionally but you also owe it to the insights we exchanged, the three of us, at the Blue Owl Grill. We made you just as you made us. Now we are at the crunch . . .”
“The what?” His nervous wheezing often keeps him from hearing what others say.
“‘Crunch’ is a word currently favored by the keener journalists. It means the showdown, the moment of truth. Well, this is the crunch, and I am appealing to you, not only as Myron’s analyst and my dentist but as our only friend. Fly out here tomorrow.”
“But, Myra, I can’t. Your appeal reaches me at every level, there’s no doubt about that. I am touched in every department from lower id, as your husband used to say, to upper superego, but there is the problem of my other patients. They need me . . .”
“Randolph.” I was peremptory. “I’ll cut you in for ten per cent of the take.”
There was an alarming series of wheezes and coughs at the other end of the line. Then Dr. Montag said what sounded like “Between, Myra.”
“Between what?”
“Fifteen!” he shouted from the Island of Manhattan. “Fifteen per cent and I’m in L. A. tomorrow.”
“Answered like a true Adlerian! Fifteen it is” I knew my man. Many was the night that the three of us used to sit until the Blue Owl closed discussing Randolph’s inordinate greed for pastry and money. It was–is—the most likable thing about him. With that taken care of, I can now
31
Life continues to support Myra Breckinridge in all her schemes to obtain uniqueness. As I write this, Mary-Ann is asleep in my bed (I have fixed up the daybed in here for myself). It is three in the morning. We have talked and wept together for five hours. I have never known such delight. Last night with Rusty was religious ecstasy; tonight a rebirth.
While I was writing in this notebook, there was a rap at the door. I opened it. Mary-Ann stood in the doorway, pale and bedraggled and carrying a Pan Am overnight zipper bag. “Miss Myra, I’ve got to talk to you. You’re the only person I can.” With that she burst into tears and I took her in my arms, reveling in the full rounded warmth of that body, so reminiscent of the early Lana Turner. In a curious way, though she is so much younger and more vulnerable than I, she suggests a mother figure to me, which is madness since in our relationship I am, necessarily, the one who is wise, the one who comforts and directs. I daresay my hatred of my own mother must have had some positive element in it since I am now able to feel genuine warmth for another woman, and a mere girl at that. I must discuss the matter thoroughly with Randolph.
Soon the sobbing ceased, and I poured her a glass of gin which she drank neat. This seemed to steady her.
“Rusty’s gone again.” She sat on the daybed, and blew her nose. Her legs are every bit as beautiful as Eleanor Powell’s in the last reel of Rosalie, on those drums.
“Gone where?” I was about to say that any boy on parole is not apt to take a long trip, but I thought better of it.
“I don’t know. It happened last night.” She dried her eyes.
“Yes?” I was cautious. “You were with him last night?”
She nodded. “We were supposed to have dinner but he said you wanted to see him at ten . . .”
“A routine chat.” I was casual. “I’m sorry I picked such an odd hour and ruined your dinner but I was busy with Miss Cluff and . . .”
She was, happily, not interested in his visit to me. “Anyway he didn’t pick me up till after eleven, and I’ve never seen him in such a bad mood . . .”
“Strange,” I added to the official record, “he seemed quite cheerful when he left me. In fact, he thanked me profusely for the help I’d given him.”
“I know you were nice to him. You always are now. Anyway he didn’t mention you. He just picked a fight with me, over nothing, and I got angry and then he said maybe I’d better go back to the dorm and not spend the night with him. He said he was . . .” she paused, tears beginning, “sick of me, sick of women, and wanted just to go off by himself . . .”
“Sick of you or of women in general?” This was a key point.
“I don’t know exactly what he said, I was so upset. Both, I guess.”
Apparently I had done my work better than I expected.
“On top of that, he said he was feeling lousy and he’d pulled a
muscle or something and it hurt him to sit down oh, I don’t know, he was just awful. But then I told him about the date I’d made for him, and that cheered him up a bit.”
“What date?”
“You won’t be mad at me?” She looked so frightened, young, vulnerable that I wanted to hold her in my arms. “Of course not, dear.” I was Janet Gaynor. “I could never be angry with you.”
“You are a friend.” She gave me a dim watery smile. “Well, I had got us both invited to Letitia Van Allen’s home at Malibu, in the Colony.”
I sat up straight. I have never been invited to Letitia’s house but then of course I have yet to be of any use to her as a purveyor of studs. Now poor Mary-Ann had fallen unwittingly into Letitia’s trap. “Just how did this invitation come about?”
“Well, I was in her office and we were talking about this date she’d made for me with that record company and then, I don’t know, the conversation got around to Rusty and she asked to see a picture of him, and I showed her the ones I always carry and she said he was very handsome and had star quality and I asked her if she wanted to meet him . . . oh, I know you didn’t want him to talk to her until June . . .”
“It would have been better after his closed-circuit TV performance. Anyway the damage is done. So you took him to Malibu last night.” She nodded bleakly. “There were a dozen people there, all so successful and rich. One was a star. You know, the one who’s in that television series that was just canceled by CBS, Riptide? He was nice but drunk. Anyway Letitia made a big fuss over Rusty, who was rude as could be to her and to everybody else. I’ve never seen him act like that before.”
“Perhaps he had something on his mind.”
“Well, whatever it is it was eating him up, for suddenly he gets up and says to Miss Van Allen. ‘I got to cut. This isn’t my scene.’ And left just like that, without me. I was never so embarrassed and hurt. Anyway Miss Van Allen couldn’t have been nicer and said she wouldn’t hold it against Rusty and since it was so late I’d better sleep over, which I did, though I didn’t sleep much, with that boy from Riptide banging on the door all night.”
I poured her more gin which she drank. Her spirits improved. “Anyway, today I called Rusty at the place where he’s staying and they said he didn’t come home last night, and then I called the Academy and they said he didn’t go to any of his classes, and then I got scared that maybe he was killed or something so I called the police but they didn’t know anything. Then I waited in the dorm all evening for him to call and when finally he didn’t, I came here . . .” Her voice had become quavery again.
“You did the right thing,” I said. “And I want you to stay here with me until everything’s straightened itself out.”
“You’re so good, Miss Myra!”
“Not at all. Now don’t worry about Rusty. Nothing’s happened to him. He’s probably in a bad mood because of the situation he’s in.” Then I told her in detail about Rusty’s Mexican adventures. “So you see he’s on parole and that means the probation officer must always know where he is. So if Rusty ever really did disappear, Uncle Buck and I would be the first to know about it.”
Mary-Ann frowned, still absorbing what I had told her. I gave her more gin which she drank as though it was her favorite drink, Seven-Up. “He promised me he was never going to see any of those boys he used to hang out with.”
“Well, he’s young. Let him have his fun. As long as he stays out of jail, of course.”
She shook her head, suddenly grim. “It’s them or me, I told him.”
“And of course it will be you.” I was soothing as I began to spread and arrange my net. “Don’t worry. Now lie down and rest while we chat.”
She gave me a grateful smile and stretched out on the daybed. It was all I could do not to sit beside her and caress those extraordinary breasts, made doubly attractive for me since they are Rusty’s to do with as he likes, or so he believes. Having raped his manhood, I shall now seduce his girl. Beyond that, ambition stops and godhood begins.
We talked of everything. She is totally in love with Rusty, though shaken by what has happened as well as by my revelation of his Mexican capers. She has had only three lovers in her life, all male. Lesbianism is repulsive to her. But she did agree, after the fourth glass of gin, that she felt entirely secure and warm with me, and that one woman could offer another, under the right circumstances, great reassurance and affection.
Finally, slightly drunk, I took her into the bedroom and helped her to undress. The breasts are better than Lana Turner’s in They Won’t Forget. Smooth and white with large rosy nipples (in a curious way they are an exaggerated version of Rusty’s own), their shape is marvelously subtle . . . at least what I could see of them, for she promptly pulled on her nightdress and only then removed her panties, hiding from me that center of Rusty’s sexual being in which he has so many times (but never again if I can help it!) spent himself.
The thought that soon I shall know intimately the body he knew so made me tremble that I did not dare embrace her good night but instead blew her a kiss from the door, shut it, and promptly rang Mr. Martinson, who was angry at being waked up. But he did tell me that Rusty had decided to leave the Academy and take a permanent job with a firm that sells foreign cars on Melrose Avenue; however, when I asked where Rusty was staying, Mr. Martinson told me that it was none of my business. Needless to say, I told him where and how to head in, and hung up.
Now I must find some way of breaking the news to Mary-Ann. This will be tricky because under no circumstances must they be allowed to resume their love affair. That is at an end.
A miraculous omen! I just looked out the window at the enormous woman and she is again turning gaily upon her axis, beautiful and omnipotent, the very image of deity!
32
Dr. Montag is sitting on the daybed reading my description of the conquest of Rusty. I sit at the card table, writing these lines, waiting for his comment. Tomorrow we meet Buck and his lawyers. The showdown.
Randolph is wheezing through clouds of pipe smoke. He is frowning. I suppose he disapproves. Yet of all people he should understand what it is that I have done. He looks simply God-awful. He thinks he’s in Hawaii. He is wearing a flowered short-sleeved shirt that hangs outside his shiny black rabbinical trousers and
33
Randolph has returned to his motel for a nap; he is still not used to the change in time and wants to be at his best for tomorrow’s meeting. We have prepared two lines of attack; at the worst, one will succeed.
The description of my life’s triumph did not entirely please him which, naturally, does not please me, and that is what matters.
“Am I to understand all this really happened?” Ashes fell upon the page which I snatched from his hand. Randolph’s pipe often produces cinders as well as smoke, for he has a tendency to blow through the stem when ill at ease.
“Exactly,” I said. “At least you’ll have to agree that I’ve got him down in black and white, once and for all, every detail, every hair, every pimple.”
“You’ve got his outside, yes.” Judiciously he arranged a screen of smoke between us. “But that’s just Rusty’s skin, you haven’t shown his inside.”
“I haven’t shown his inside, dear Randolph, because I don’t know it. And, if I may say so, it is presumptuous for anyone to even pretend he can know what another person’s interior is really like, short of an autopsy. The only thing we can ever know for certain is skin, and I now know his better than he does himself.”
“Possibly. Possibly.” Randolph still appeared distressed.
“In fact,” I improvised, “nothing matters except what is visible to the eye. For me to write, as I shall when you go, that you looked distressed at this moment could very easily be a projection on my part, and misreading of your mood. To be accurate, I should simply write that while you were reading my notes there was a double crease between your brows, which is not usual, since . . .”
“It is not a projection to say that
I am distressed. And up to a point we can, more or less, assume that we know what others are feeling, at least at the more accessible levels of consciousness. At this moment, I am feeling a certain distress for that young man, a certain male empathy. After all, it is a most unpleasant thing to be assaulted anally and I think we can both assume that he was not happy, no matter how mute the skin.”
“I agree and that’s why in my review of what happened, I not only recorded his conversation but tried to give what I believed were his feelings when he spoke. Yet I realize that at best my interpretation is entirely subjective, and perhaps false. Since I wanted to frighten and humiliate him, I chose to regard his groans and grunts as symptoms of fright and humiliation.”
“Which, no doubt, they were. Although we must never rule out the possibility that he was enjoying himself.”
“If that is true, my life’s work has failed.” I was very grave. I have never been more serious.
“Or succeeded in ways you do not yet understand. In any case, his girlfriend is living with you, isn’t she?”
“Yes, she came to me. Of all the people she knows, I am the one she turned to. The irony is perfect.” So is my delight!
“Does she know what you’ve done?”
“Of course not.”
“What will happen if she finds out?”
“I have no intention of telling her. As for Rusty, I don’t think either of us needs a degree in psychiatry” (Randolph looked momentarily unhappy; he has only an M. A. in psychology) “to know that he will never tell anyone what was done to him.”
“Perhaps not.” Randolph’s pipe went off again. One bright cinder burned a hole in the carpet. “But aren’t you afraid he may want compensation for what you did, particularly if he is as healthy and ‘normal’ as you think?”
“What sort of compensation?”