Only Rosemary Schmiel was in the outer office, and she was on Birdy Peters' phone. She waved for me to sit down, but I was full of my plans and, telling Martha to take it easy, I pressed the clicker under Rosemary's desk and went toward the opened door.
"Your father's in conference," Rosemary called. "Not in conference, but I ought to---"
By this time I was through the door and a little vestibule and another door, and caught Father in his shirtsleeves, very sweaty and trying to open a window. It was a hot day, but I hadn't realized it was that hot, and thought he was ill.
"No, I'm all right," he said. "What is it?"
I told him. I told him the whole theory of people like Martha Dodd, walking up and down his office. How could he use them and guarantee them regular employment? He seemed to take me up excitedly and kept nodding and agreeing, and I felt closer to him than I had for a long time. I came close and kissed him on his cheek. He was trembling and his shirt was soaked through.
"You're not well," I said, "or you're in some sort of stew."
"No, I'm not at all."
"What is it?"
"Oh, it's Monroe," he said. "That goddam little Vine Street Jesus! He's in my hair night and day!"
"What's happened?" I asked, very much cooler.
"Oh, he sits like a little goddam priest or rabbi and says what he'll do and he won't do. I can't tell you now--I'm half crazy. Why don't you go along?"
"I won't have you like this."
"Go along, I tell you!" I sniffed, but he never drank.
"Go and brush your hair," I said. "I want you to see Martha Dodd."
"In here! I'd never get rid of her."
"Out there then. Go wash up first. Put on another shirt."
With an exaggerated gesture of despair, he went into the little bathroom adjoining. It was hot in the office as if it had been closed for hours, and maybe that was making him sick, so I opened two more windows.
"You go along," Father called from behind the closed door of the bathroom. "I'll be there presently."
"Be awfully nice to her," I said. "No charity."
As if it were Martha speaking for herself, a long low moan came from somewhere in the room. I was startled--then transfixed, as it came again, not from the bathroom where Father was, not from outside, but from a closet in the wall across from me. How I was brave enough I don't know, but I ran across to it and opened it, and Father's secretary, Birdy Peters, tumbled out stark naked--just like a corpse in the movies. With her came a gust of stifling, stuffy air. She flopped sideways on the floor, with the one hand still clutching some clothes, and lay on the floor bathed in sweat--just as Father came in from the bathroom. I could feel him standing behind me, and without turning I knew exactly how he looked, for I had surprised him before.
"Cover her up," I said, covering her up myself with a rug from the couch. "Cover her up!"
I left the office. Rosemary Schmiel saw my face as I came out and responded with a terrified expression. I never saw her again or Birdy Peters either. As Martha and I went out, Martha asked: "What's the matter, dear?"--and when I didn't say anything: "You did your best. Probably it was the wrong time. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll take you to see a very nice English girl. Did you see the girl that Stahr danced with at our table the other night?"
So at the price of a little immersion in the family drains I had what I wanted.
I don't remember much about our call. She wasn't at home was one reason. The screen door of her house was unlocked, and Martha went in calling "Kathleen" with bright familiarity. The room we saw was bare and formal as a hotel; there were flowers about, but they did not look like sent flowers. Also, Martha found a note on the table, which said: "Leave the dress. Have gone looking for a job. Will drop by tomorrow."
Martha read it twice but it didn't seem to be for Stahr, and we waited five minutes. People's houses are very still when they are gone. Not that I expect them to be jumping around, but I leave the observation for what it's worth. Very still. Prim almost, with just a fly holding down the place and paying no attention to you, and the corner of a curtain blowing.
"I wonder what kind of a job," said Martha. "Last Sunday she went somewhere with Stahr."
But I was no longer interested. It seemed awful to be here--producer's blood, I thought in horror. And in quick panic I pulled her out into the placid sunshine. It was no use--I felt just black and awful. I had always been proud of my body--I had a way of thinking of it as geometric which made everything it did seem all right. And there was probably not any kind of place, including churches and offices and shrines where people had not embraced--but no one had ever stuffed me naked into a hole in the wall in the middle of a business day.
*
"If you were in a drug-store," said Stahr, "--having a prescription filled---"
"You mean a chemist's?" Boxley asked.
"If you were in a chemist's," conceded Stahr, "and you were getting a prescription for some member of your family who was very sick---"
"--Very ill?" queried Boxley.
"Very ill. Then whatever caught your attention through the window, whatever distracted you and held you would probably be material for pictures."
"A murder outside the window, you mean."
"There you go," said Stahr, smiling. "It might be a spider working on the pane."
"Of course--I see."
"I'm afraid you don't, Mr. Boxley. You see it for your medium, but not for ours. You keep the spiders for yourself and you try to pin the murders on us."
"I might as well leave," said Boxley. "I'm no good to you. I've been here three weeks and I've accomplished nothing. I make suggestions, but no one writes them down."
"I want you to stay. Something in you doesn't like pictures, doesn't like telling a story this way---"
"It's such a damned bother," exploded Boxley. "You can't let yourself go---"
He checked himself. He knew that Stahr, the helmsman, was finding time for him in the middle of a constant stiff blow--that they were talking in the always creaking rigging of a ship sailing in great awkward tacks along an open sea. Or else--it seemed at times--they were in a huge quarry--where even the newly-cut marble bore the tracery of old pediments, half-obliterated inscriptions of the past.
"I keep wishing you could start over," Boxley said. "It's this mass production."
"That's the condition," said Stahr. "There's always some lousy condition. We're making a life of Rubens--suppose I asked you to do portraits of rich dopes like Bill Brady and me and Gary Cooper and Marcus when you wanted to paint Jesus Christ! Wouldn't you feel you had a condition? Our condition is that we have to take people's own favorite folklore and dress it up and give it back to them. Anything beyond that is sugar. So won't you give us some sugar, Mr. Boxley?"
Boxley knew he could sit with Wylie White tonight at the Troc raging at Stahr, but he had been reading Lord Charnwood and he recognized that Stahr like Lincoln was a leader carrying on a long war on many fronts; almost single-handed he had moved pictures sharply forward through a decade, to a point where the content of the "A productions" was wider and richer than that of the stage. Stahr was an artist only, as Mr. Lincoln was a general, perforce and as a layman.
"Come down to La Borwitz' office with me," said Stahr. "They sure need some sugar there."
In La Borwitz' office, two writers, a shorthand secretary and a hushed supervisor, sat in a tense smoky stalemate, where Stahr had left them three hours before. He looked at the faces one after another and found nothing. La Borwitz spoke with awed reverence for his defeat.
"We've just got too many characters, Monroe."
Stahr snorted affably.
"That's the principal idea of the picture."
He took some change out of his pocket, looked up at the suspended light and tossed up half a dollar, which clanked into the bowl. He looked at the coins in his hands and selected a quarter.
La Borwitz watched miserably; he knew this was a favorite idea of Stahr's and he saw the
sands running out. At the moment everyone's back was toward him. Suddenly he brought up his hands from their placid position under the desk and threw them high in the air, so high that they seemed to leave his wrist--and then he caught them neatly as they were descending. After that he felt better. He was in control.
One of the writers had taken out some coins, also, and presently rules were defined. "You have to toss your coin through the chains without hitting them. Whatever falls into the light is the kitty."
They played for half an hour--all except Boxley, who sat aside and dug into the script, and the secretary, who kept tally. She calculated the cost of the four men's time, arriving at a figure of sixteen hundred dollars. At the end, La Borwitz was winner by $5.50, and a janitor brought in a step-ladder to take the money out of the light.
Boxley spoke up suddenly.
"You have the stuffings of a turkey here," he said.
"What!"
"It's not pictures."
They looked at him in astonishment. Stahr concealed a smile.
"So we've got a real picture man here!" exclaimed La Borwitz.
"A lot of beautiful speeches," said Boxley boldly, "but no situations. After all, you know, it's not going to be a novel. And it's too long. I can't exactly describe how I feel, but it's not quite right. And it leaves me cold."
He was giving them back what had been handed him for three weeks. Stahr turned away, watching the others out of the corner of his eye.
"We don't need less characters," said Boxley. "We need more. As I see it, that's the idea."
"That's the idea," said the writers.
"Yes--that's the idea," said La Borwitz.
Boxley was inspired by the attention he had created.
"Let each character see himself in the other's place," he said. "The policeman is about to arrest the thief when he sees that the thief actually has his face. I mean, show it that way. You could almost call the thing Put Yourself in My Place."
Suddenly they were at work again--taking up this new theme in turn like hepcats in a swing band and going to town with it. They might throw it out again tomorrow, but life had come back for a moment. Pitching the coins had done it as much as Boxley. Stahr had recreated the proper atmosphere--never consenting to be a driver of the driven, but feeling like and acting like and even sometimes looking like a small boy getting up a show.
He left them, touching Boxley on the shoulder in passing--a deliberate accolade--he didn't want them to gang up on him and break his spirit in an hour.
Doctor Baer was waiting in his inner office. With him was a colored man with a portable cardiograph like a huge suitcase. Stahr called it the lie detector. Stahr stripped to the waist, and the weekly examination began.
"How've you been feeling?"
"Oh--the usual," said Stahr.
"Been hard at it? Getting any sleep?"
"No--about five hours. If I go to bed early, I just lie there."
"Take the sleeping pills."
"The yellow one gives me a hangover."
"Take two red ones, then."
"That's a nightmare."
"Take one of each--the yellow first."
"All right--I'll try. How've you been?"
"Say--I take care of myself, Monroe, I save myself."
"The hell you do--you're up all night sometimes."
"Then I sleep all next day."
After ten minutes, Baer said:
"Seems O.K. The blood pressure's up five points."
"Good," said Stahr. "That's good, isn't it?"
"That's good. I'll develop the cardiographs tonight. When are you coming away with me?"
"Oh, some time," said Stahr lightly. "In about six weeks things'll ease up."
Baer looked at him with a genuine liking that had grown over three years.
"You got better in thirty-three when you laid up," he said. "Even for three weeks."
"I will again."
No he wouldn't, Baer thought. With Minna's help he had enforced a few short rests years ago and lately he had hinted around, trying to find who Stahr considered his closest friends. Who could take him away and keep him away? It would almost surely be useless. He was due to die very soon now. Within six months one could say definitely. What was the use of developing the cardiograms? You couldn't persuade a man like Stahr to stop and lie down and look at the sky for six months. He would much rather die. He said differently, but what it added up to was the definite urge toward total exhaustion that he had run into before. Fatigue was a drug as well as a poison, and Stahr apparently derived some rare almost physical pleasure from working lightheaded with weariness. It was a perversion of the life force he had seen before, but he had almost stopped trying to interfere with it. He had cured a man or so--a hollow triumph of killing and preserving the shell.
"You hold your own," he said.
They exchanged a glance. Did Stahr know? Probably. But he did not know when--he did not know how soon now.
"If I hold my own, I can't ask more," said Stahr.
The colored man had finished packing the apparatus.
"Next week same time?"
"O.K., Bill," said Stahr. "Goodbye."
As the door closed, Stahr switched open the dictograph. Miss Doolan's voice came through immediately.
"Do you know a Miss Kathleen Moore?"
"What do you mean?" he asked startled.
"A Miss Kathleen Moore is on the line. She said you asked her to call."
"Well, my God!" he exclaimed. He was swept with indignant rapture. It had been five days--this would never do at all.
"She's on now?"
"Yes."
"Well, all right then."
In a moment he heard the voice up close to him.
"Are you married?" he asked, low and surly.
"No, not yet."
His memory blocked out her face and form--as he sat down, she seemed to lean down to his desk, keeping level with his eyes.
"What's on your mind?" he asked in the same surly voice. It was hard to talk that way.
"You did find the letter?" she asked.
"Yes. It turned up that night."
"That's what I want to speak to you about."
He found an attitude at length--he was outraged.
"What is there to talk about?" he demanded.
"I tried to write you another letter, but it wouldn't write."
"I know that, too."
There was a pause.
"Oh, cheer up!" she said surprisingly. "This doesn't sound like you. It is Stahr, isn't it? That very nice Mr. Stahr?"
"I feel a little outraged," he said almost pompously. "I don't see the use of this. I had at least a pleasant memory of you."
"I don't believe it's you," she said. "Next thing you'll wish me luck." Suddenly she laughed: "Is this what you planned to say? I know how awful it gets when you plan to say anything---"
"I never expected to hear from you again," he said with dignity; but it was no use, she laughed again--a woman's laugh that is like a child's, just one syllable, a crow and a cry of delight.
"Do you know how you make me feel?" she demanded. "Like a day in London during a caterpillar plague when a hot furry thing dropped in my mouth."
"I'm sorry."
"Oh, please wake up," she begged. "I want to see you. I can't explain things on the phone. It was no fun for me either, you understand."
"I'm very busy. There's a sneak preview in Glendale tonight."
"Is that an invitation?"
"George Boxley, the English writer, is going with me." He surprised himself. "Do you want to come along?"
"How could we talk?"
She considered. "Why don't you call for me afterwards," she suggested. "We could ride around."
Miss Doolan on the huge dictograph was trying to cut in on the line with a shooting director--the only interruption ever permitted. He flipped the button and called "Wait" impatiently into the machine.
"About eleven?" Kathleen was saying confidentially.
The idea of "riding around" seemed so unwise that if he could have thought of the words to refuse her he would have spoken them, but he did not want to be the caterpillar. Suddenly he had no attitude left except the sense that the day, at least, was complete. He had an evening--a beginning, a middle and an end.
He rapped on the screen door, heard her call from inside, and stood waiting where the level fell away. From below came the whir of a lawn mower--a man was cutting his grass at midnight. The moon was so bright that Stahr could see him plainly, a hundred feet off and down, as he stopped and rested on the handle before pushing it back across his garden. There was a midsummer restlessness abroad--early August with imprudent loves and impulsive crimes. With little more to expect from summer, one tried anxiously to live in the present--or, if there was no present, to invent one.
She came at last. She was all different and delighted. She wore a suit with a skirt that she kept hitching up as they walked down to the car with a brave, gay, stimulating, reckless air of "Tighten up your belt, baby. Let's get going." Stahr had brought his limousine with the chauffeur, and the intimacy of the four walls whisking them along a new curve in the dark took away any strangeness at once. In its way, the little trip they made was one of the best times he had ever had in his life. It was certainly one of the times when, if he knew he was going to die, it was not tonight.
She told him her story. She sat beside him cool and gleaming for a while, spinning on excitedly, carrying him to far places with her, meeting and knowing the people she had known. The story was vague at first. "This Man" was the one she had loved and lived with. "This American" was the one who had rescued her when she was sinking into a quicksand.
"Who is he--the American?"
Oh, names--what did they matter? No one important like Stahr, not rich. He had lived in London and now they would live out here. She was going to be a good wife, a real person. He was getting a divorce--not just on account of her--but that was the delay.
"But the first man?" asked Stahr. "How did you get into that?"
Oh, that was a blessing at first. From sixteen to twenty-one the thing was to eat. The day her stepmother presented her at Court they had one shilling to eat with so as not to feel faint. Sixpence apiece, but the stepmother watched while she ate. After a few months the stepmother died, and she would have sold out for that shilling but she was too weak to go into the streets. London can be harsh--oh, quite.
The Love of the Last Tycoon Page 12