“We’d better go inside.”
“I — They don’t seem to have cared whether we share the same trailer.”
“I can find another if you like.”
“No, it’s not — I just — Oh come on, let’s get inside.”
The arrangement was similar to the quarters shared by Vicki and the Director. They examined the furnishings in both rooms. “Which do you want?” Jay asked pointlessly. The rooms were nearly identical.
“This one’s fine. I want to shower …”
“I’ll get the bags,” Jay said.
They stood looking at each other uncomfortably, like ancient players on a grade school stage, lines long forgotten, prompters vanished from the world, as the ceaseless, shifting desert wind gnawed at the trailer walls.
He had wanted to kiss her then, but turned instead and went to get the bags. They had not touched each other since the week before when Arthur Fenstemaker brought the business with Vicki out in the open. He remembered the look Sarah had given him when he agreed to help the Governor get his “movie queen wife” to come to the party — a look reserved for some alcoholic husband about to come down off the wagon for a first drink …
He remembered the newsstand, later that day. He had slipped into the narrow stall out of the afternoon sunlight, pushing past piles of outdated papers and rows of withered fruit laid out in thin wooden boxes. He paused before a display of pocket fiction, thumbing through several selections, before moving to the magazine rack. His fingers moved over the magazine covers, eyes searching for the familiar face and platinum hair. Twice he was fooled by comely imitations (they simply did not interest him) and once he came across an old copy of The Vicki McGown Story that he had purchased two months before and destroyed almost immediately.
He took the magazine down from the shelf. There was a half partition toward the end of the stall, and from beyond that came the “thwack” and “thwack-thwack” of a domino game.
He examined the cover photograph. They had done something with her faintly irregular front teeth — he could not tell what — and there was the inevitable stretch of bosom cleavage; otherwise, except for the white hair that never seemed to photograph the same color twice, scarcely any change was discernible in the months since he had begun averting his eyes from such things. Across the top of the cover the editors exulted: “Six New Intimate Portraits of Vicki McGown!”
He found the section with the color photographs. They had Vicki lying in what appeared to be a field of clover in exquisite disarray, and the expression on her face ranged in stages of arousement, from bemused interest to vague pleasure to the teeth-grinding ecstasy of orgasm. On the facing page there was a full-length nude of her, laid out in the grass in deep, untroubled sleep.
It meant nothing to him now, he told himself, although there had been a time when the caterwauling memories of her pursued him everywhere he wandered, when it had been impossible not to think or talk about her or react to the mention of her name. That had been in the early days when she had become a “personality” with no visible means of support. She had been a phenomenon, all right, a household word before she ever made a picture.
So many photographs … There had been so many. The first had been the “Miss Rocket-Launcher” thing while he was still stationed in Japan, and there had been a maddening succession of others, but the one that really got her career underway was after he had returned, when he was living in San Francisco and seeing the little girl, Victoria Anne, on weekends. Vicki had called him from Los Angeles one Friday.
“How would you like to keep Victoria Anne for several days?” she asked.
“I could arrange it. Why?”
“I’ve got a free ride to Cannes for the Film Festival. It’s a tremendous opportunity.”
“Cannes! Good heavens, Vic, that’s —”
The several days stretched into several weeks, and Jay, unable to hold down his new job in the interim, had sat in the silent heat of the furnished room with the little girl, teaching her the new words (Eyes … Ice … Nose … Noss … Mouth … Mouse) until the predictable photographs preceded Vicki’s return, pictures of Vic stripped down to the bottom half of a two-piece suit, standing calf-deep in the surf in the arms of an aging, out-of-fashion male star. An unretouched version of it appeared the next week in a news magazine, and it had done both their careers some good. There were a succession of substantial character parts awaiting the older fellow; for Vicki it was her long-awaited “discovery.”
But he did not really mind about the pictures; he had begun vaguely to enjoy them. It was the image he had of Vicki in his mind that nagged and badgered his emotions. There was the scene set in his head at college, the evening they announced their secret marriage to the others, with the celebration that followed and Vicki tight on champagne, swinging on the arm of his roommate, the two of them standing together in some dim corridor of his brain, the roommate kissing her lightly on the lips and Vicki laughing and unconcerned, dizzy with the wine, returning the kiss with more meaning than he thought possible. There were the other episodes in the months that followed, and always Vicki unable to fathom his objections, mentally or morally incapable of grasping the distinctions, until he began to feel slightly limited and priggish himself, like an old woman crabbing after her husband’s muddy shoes.
There was the episode with the Kruegers. They had been to a dinner party that had begun to disintegrate like so many of the others, the guests drunk on rum and dinner never being served. He had seen Vicki leaving with Ben Krueger, and out of self-defense or possibly a last, thundering avowal of his manhood, he had begun to flirt with Evelyn Kreuger. The others left sometime afterwards and the two of them remained in the darkened house, Jay and Evelyn Krueger, and whatever it was they sought from each other was realized in one of the front bedrooms.
When the door came open they lay terrified together, unable to move or reason or crawl out of their perspiring bodies, agonized by the searing patch of flesh where their hips touched. But then there was only the darkness and presently the sound of Vicki’s muffled laughter.
“They’ve all gone.”
“Without us? They couldn’t have gone without —”
“Well, it’s twelve-thirty. It’s —”
“I wonder where Jay-Jay went?”
“With the others probably … Will I see you tomorrow?”
“Oh yes, yes, I —”
“God you’re great …”
“I’m worried about Jay-Jay.”
“You shouldn’t be. Why bother about Jay? Jay doesn’t possess you. How can any person possess any other? How can you possess a nymph?”
“It’s not that. I just wonder where he went.”
“I’ll take you home. Come on …”
There was the sound of the door being pulled shut and then the enormous silence of the house, with Evelyn next to him sobbing in her pillow.
It had come to them suddenly, and with finality, that there was nothing to be done, nothing to savor, no moral bludgeon, even, with which to flail the other lovers. They had been denied something, furthermore, something terribly important, whatever it was that at least could have made the moment seem significant for themselves. There was nothing for them — no hope or want or simian grace; they were left defenseless by an awful knowledge, while Vicki and Ben were carried along in the animal heat of renewal and discovery.
All the fun was suddenly gone out of revolt. Where had they been wrong? They had strewn the altars with garbage, but now the bedsheets smelled of coffee grounds as well. Was it because there had been no moral tradition to begin with — no real values to revolt against? Was there only the intense gesture in the empty air? Perhaps all of it was first generation: new rich, new smart, new wicked, as gauche and false and phony as the oil wealth around them, which wasn’t wealth at all but a kind of stage money used for buying unpronounceable brandies and football coaches.
The thing between Vicki and Ben Kreuger soon collapsed, but the precedent was there and was subsequently
resumed, in one way or another, after college and in California, from that time to this. Jay had hoped he could pass it off philosophically, but it did not get any better for him — and soon the sensation was very like discovering Vicki in bed with another man, other men, ten or twenty of them, hundreds and thousands, and the cumulative effect of the photographs, the stories, the endless chatter in the Hollywood columns, the images in his head of the early days, pursued him like some king-sized cuckold in stereophonic sound.
And the truth was that he had begun to enjoy it, in some twisted, despairing way, deriving an awful pleasure from lying awake nights, comforted in his indifference toward other women — evoking the picture in his mind of Vicki in coitus, with one sideshow performer and then another, thousands of them, standing around in disorder, stamping their feet and clapping their hands, hooting and whistling and pawing at their loins …
Seven
NOW THE SUN BEGAN to descend, slowly at first as if it were unwilling to give up the promise of the morning, and then in a headlong thrust toward the distant hills, the heat rising off the floor of the desert, blistering the pavement of the highway, bathing the colorless dunes in sudden refractions of violet light. The shifting crowds of people outside the camp, no longer repopulated by late arrivals, began to disperse. They came together in one last vicarious enthusiasm at the approach of a studio car, which scarcely acknowledged the witnesses as it turned quickly off the highway and moved toward the tents and trucks and trailer houses.
Several teenagers in the crowd thought they had recognized Greg Calhoun in the car, but they could not be sure. Several others said a little girl’s head was visible next to the young man in the backseat; they were fairly certain about the little girl.
Studio employees sat under the big mess tent, talking together at the wooden picnic tables, puncturing cold cans of beer and passing them around. Others showered in newly constructed stalls near the tent and talked about driving into the nearest town for the evening. Edmund Shavers was going into town to watch the rushes. There was an ancient theater in the town — open only on weekends — at which he had arranged to have the rushes run. Shavers wore fresh khakis and examined his face in the marble bathroom of the trailer house he shared with Vicki McGown. Vicki examined her face at her dressing table in the other end of the trailer. She felt curiously void of any feeling. She was not a calculating person; most of the time she was pushed along on impulse. Now she waited for something, anything, an idea or an event, to seize her.
In another trailer Sarah Lehman stood in her shower stall and watched the beads of water move down her marvelous little breasts. Here in the pink-tiled privacy of herself she was not reminded of any of the people around her. She could have been in her own shower in her own bathroom in her own apartment, anywhere away from the moment. She had not wanted to come here; she had not wanted to stay: now she wished she could remain in the shower stall with the mist falling on her perfumed body. Jay McGown lay on his bed in the adjoining room and listened to the water running in Sarah’s quarters. He had fallen asleep thinking of Vicki, had dreamed of her fitfully, none of which he could remember on awakening, but still thinking of her now he concentrated on the sound of the water running in Sarah’s apartment. He tried to picture the way Sarah might look in the shower stall; but she kept looking like Vicki.
Arthur Fenstemaker was on the telephone again. His wife lay asleep on the bed and shifted in the covers only when the Governor raised his voice. His wife lay asleep wearing only a half-slip. Arthur Fenstemaker wanted to move over to the bed and put his hand along the sweet curve of his wife’s neck and shoulders, but he could not get off the phone.
“… Well a lie will go round the world several times, my friend, while truth is tying its shoelaces.”
“Well it’s a bad business — it’s —”
“How many members of the Legislature went down to hear that nigger-baitin’ son of a bitch?”
“Well we ain’t learnin’ nothin’ on the telephone. See if you can get an advance copy of his speech and call me back …”
In the studio car Gregory Calhoun (né Rabinowitz) put on a miner’s helmet. He turned to the little girl.
“How does it look, Annie?”
The little girl giggled, shifting sideways in the seat and reaching for the helmet. Greg Calhoun took off the miner’s helmet and set it on the little girl’s head. Now she laughed aloud and clapped her hands together.
“But what are you going to do with it?” she said. “Are you going to wear it in the picture?”
“If they’ll let me. What it’s really for, though, is for jackrabbits.”
The little girl thought this was hysterically funny.
“Jackrabbits!”
“Jackrabbits. Not these little Easter bunnies you read about in your picture books, but ugly, buggy, long-legged jackrabbits. Jackrabbits bug me, Annie. I’m goin’ to shoot ’em all dead.”
“With the helmet? You can’t shoot a rabbit with a helmet.”
“With a gun. A forty-five gun. I wear the helmet at night so I can see the rabbits in the dark.”
“You’ve got forty-five guns?”
“No, no. A forty-five automatic. That’s a type of pistol. I just bought it. And the helmet. For the rabbits.”
“Are there rabbits out there?” Victoria Anne McGown looked out the window, at the scarlet sun and the range of mountains miles away and the strange pile of tents and trailers up ahead.
“There are ten thousand jackrabbits out there, Annie. You can bet your life on that. You can smell ’em. You smell ’em?”
“Smell rabbits?”
“In their native habitat. They smell worse than the rabbits. The habitats.”
“My mother’s an actress,” the little girl said abruptly.
“Oh no she isn’t. You shouldn’t go around talking like that.”
“She is too! She is an actress. That’s what —”
“No, no, you’re getting it all mixed up. Your mother’s a star. Your mother’s a moom-pitcher star!”
“Oh.”
“Exactly.”
“Are you an actress?” Victoria Anne McGown asked.
“Yes. I’m an actress,” Greg Calhoun said.
“You’re not a star?”
“No. I’m an actress.”
The little girl subsided and the two of them sat quietly as the studio car moved toward the trailer houses. Edmund Shavers sat in an aluminum folding chair in front of his trailer, and he pulled himself out of it as the car approached.
“You’re early,” Shavers said. “I wasn’t expecting you until — what the hell is that on your head, Greg?”
“It’s a miner’s helmet,” Victoria Anne said. “A miner’s helmet for shooting jackrabbits — only you shoot the rabbits with forty-five guns. You can smell the rabbits out here.” She turned toward the young man. “You smell any rabbits, Gregory?”
“I smell ’em. Out there ruttin’ around … You smell ’em, Edmund?”
Shavers looked around him in brief confusion. “What? There aren’t any — Hey, Victoria Anne, we’ve got a big surprise for you.” He bent down toward the little girl, taking hold of her hands.
“Have you got some jackrabbits?”
“No … No jackrabbits. Something else though. Your father. Your father’s here, and I bet he wants to see you.”
“My father? Oh good! I want to see him because I don’t remember what he looks like!”
“I don’t remember what mine looks like either,” Greg Calhoun said.
Jay heard the voices, but not-listening, lying on the chenille bedspread trying not to think, conscious of only himself in the gathering darkness of the trailer, conscious of the weight of his body on the bed, the feeling gone out of his arms and legs, not-listening and not-thinking, the voices did not really come to him.
There was that old Mexican.
There was that old Mexican who must have symbolized all he’d left undone, all the forgotten promises and vague r
esolves. So many promises to himself and to others and so much promise. Before he had turned away, shifting his horizons from the murderous social forces around him to the narrow perspectives of inward observation and dislike. Now there was only a certain vapidity of the spirit. Once there had been so many alternatives. There had been the commitment; the French would call it that. There had been that old Mexican, and the next day at the tennis courts, bending down at the water fountain, mopping his face with a clean-white towel, examining the specks of clay clinging to the dampness of his legs, the picture of the old Mexican stooping in the headlights of the car, showing his broken smile, had come to him again. He remembered looking around the courts, at the other young people, brown skin, white shorts, all of it seeming gorgeous; and the old Mexican pissing in the rain. Ten years ahead in time Mr. and Mrs. Jay McGown would have been entertaining at LaGloria Country Club. He remembered thinking that, and making the promise, no, they won’t; no they won’t. There was the commitment, and it was easy afterwards because he had all the gifts, all the graces, all the emotional and mental equipment, to get the job done.
Before the balls conspired to disable the intellect.
Coming back from California he had thought it might be possible to be seized by some of the old enthusiasms. All the bright young people were coming home to help Arthur Fenstemaker, all the dedicated people moving together to put the man in office and bring in the new day. But he had not really been seized by any of it — not the way Sarah was, back from Wellesley for the summer with all those shrill ideas in her head; not the way any of the others were, caught up in the crazy rush of a “crusade,” most of them a little envious of Jay as a former student body president and of the intimacy with Arthur Fenstemaker such dead glories gave him.
None of the old urgency was there. It was all a little flat — an ashes in the mouth. There was that old Mexican, but the memory of him was dim in his head now, diluted by his own despair. Dear Mister Governor, the letter said, we live on a farm and dont make any money and we have a beautiful little girl who has the palsy. She cant do anything for herself, she cant talk or is able to hold up her head, and she likes to hear music and take baths. It costs us a thousand dollars a year in treatments, and that’s more than we make some years. I cant stand the thought of putting her away, but …
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