Nowhere City

by Alison Lurie

  “I didn’t even think about that!” she said, terrified. “I found the plans; and I knew they were important, and I had to get them to you; that’s all.”

  “Ah, don’t kid me. You didn’t have to bring them all the way over here. You could have called me on the phone.” It was true; why hadn’t she thought of that? “Now couldn’t you have?” Iz smiled. Katherine recalled how she had run across Westwood, and wanted to run right back.

  “I didn’t think of the telephone,” she said in an embarrassed voice. “I just rushed over. I’m sorry. Of course you’re right. That wasn’t necessary.”

  “Depends what you need.” Iz leaned back, and let his arms fall. Though he continued to look at Katherine, she felt that the threat had diminished. “And why did it have to be me?” he went on. “How was it you didn’t try to get in touch with Charlie or Bert up at school?”

  This idea, too, had simply not occurred to Katherine. “Well, but it’s you I usually ... she began feebly, but could not think how to end the sentence, and let her voice trail away.

  “Another thing,” Iz continued, really grinning now. “Why did you jump at the conclusion that the plans you found are going into effect? How are you sure that our project hasn’t already been taken care of?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Has it already been taken care of?”

  Iz nodded. “Uh-huh. Charlie and I saw Jekyll Saturday. He’s talked to Dr. Braun and it’s all set: we’re going to have two lab rooms and an office on the third floor.”

  “Oh, that’s good.” But Katherine’s pleasure was extremely dim compared to her nervous embarrassment. “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I was stupid. I don’t know why I didn’t think of all that.”

  “You really wanted to come over here,” Iz told her. “You don’t have to feel sorry about it. I’m flattered. It’s a great thing, the unconscious mind.” He smiled, and stepped back.

  “But I didn’t think—” Katherine began, and stopped. “I mean, it never occurred to me that you—I suppose I thought I was safe,” (she attempted a joke) “because I know psychiatrists don’t sleep with their patients.”

  “Yah, they don’t,” Iz said. “They sleep with their secretaries.” He laughed. “But I’ll let you off this time,” he conceded. “You can go—” He broke off, looked at her, and said in an offhand way, “No; I don’t want to be rude. I’ll give you five—no, ten minutes. You can stay ten minutes and talk to me, before you have to leave. ... I think I’ll have another cup of coffee.” He walked across the room towards a wall kitchen. “Would you like some coffee?”

  Should she go now? But everything had become so casual and ordinary that Katherine could hardly believe what had just taken place. Maybe it had all been a joke. “That’s very kind of you,” she said.

  “Cream? Sugar?”

  “Just cream, please.”

  Iz handed Katherine her cup and sat down at a round table not unlike the tables at the ice-cream shop.

  “Thank you,” Katherine said, and sat down opposite. He must have been kidding her. Still, she felt something had to be said to make sure, and fit the scene together; it couldn’t just disappear; that would be too weird, and really rather awful.

  “Well, at least I did get to see your apartment,” she remarked. “It is pleasant. That long window, and all the plants, like a jungle.” Iz smiled, but made no other contribution. “Wouldn’t you really ever have invited me here? Even if I brought my husband? Wouldn’t that have been safe?”

  “Of course. But he isn’t here, is he?” In pantomime, Iz leaned down and peered under the table, and then behind a low bookcase by the wall. The implication was that Paul was an insignificant object, small enough to be overlooked. Actually, of course, he was five or six inches taller than Iz. But Iz was somehow more concentrated, denser.

  “How is Paul, incidentally?” Iz felt his face to see whether he had shaved the outlines of his black beard properly.

  “Oh, he’s all right.” Though she felt much easier, Katherine could not quite manage to continue her confidences to Dr. Einsam. “How’s Glory?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to her for almost two weeks. She’s keeping busy, I suppose.” Iz’s voice was so dry and sour that Katherine felt a wave of sympathy.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Iz looked up. “You really are, aren’t you?” he said without irony. “You’re about the only one. Do you want to know what Dr. Robinson said to me yesterday?” She nodded. “He had the stupidity to come up and congratulate me on my separation.”

  “What, really? How could he do that?”

  “For him it was easy. You don’t know that department, Katherine. You should have been around here two years ago, when Jekyll first put me up for a teaching appointment. It was quite incredible. Academically I looked great, but they had also to take into consideration my character. They are all of course self-appointed clinical diagnosticians. They concluded I was immature, and my personal life was unstable. Because I had been married and divorced, and now they heard the rumor I was going around with an undergraduate. I told Jekyll, ‘I am not “going around with an undergraduate.” I am living with a very attractive and intelligent girl who happens at the moment to be taking some courses in the Department of Social Sciences.’ Only from their point of view it was as if I had deliberately selected some abstraction called an undergraduate to sleep with, exactly because it was against their rules. ... Jekyll’s a good guy; he tried to see it my way, but he just wasn’t flexible enough. If she had only been a graduate student, he kept saying, even a first-year graduate student, that would have been better. But, I pointed out to him, none of the first-year graduate students were as good-looking as Nancy. They were really a sad lot that year.” Iz looked quietly at his watch.

  “That’s awful,” Katherine said. She was fascinated, though really shocked by the behavior of both sides. “I mean trying to interfere with people’s personal lives like that.”

  “That’s not the end of it. Jekyll and Charlie Haraki brought me up again last year. By that time I wasn’t living with Nancy any longer, but I was engaged to Glory; they liked that even less. Two unsuccessful relationships, they said to Jekyll, and now he wants to marry a movie star. Isn’t there something rather unhealthy about that? I was furious. Unhealthy, to want to marry Glory! I said to Jekyll, what about them? What about Mrs. Braun: don’t you think anyone who would stay married to her for twenty years is pretty unhealthy? What about Robinson? He’s never been married at all; I bet he couldn’t even get it up for Glory; isn’t that pretty unhealthy?”

  Iz looked at his watch again. A smile slowly appeared on his face. He drained his coffee cup and put it down. “Well, Mrs. Cattleman,” he said. “Look what time it is.”

  “Oh, that’s right.” Katherine checked her own watch. “I’ll go now.” She stood up and started towards the door.

  “No,” Iz said, getting up. “You’ve missed your chance. You see, you wanted to stay.” He spoke casually, and began casually to walk towards her.

  “I’m sorry; I forgot to look at my watch,” Katherine explained, a little nervously. “I was too interested in what you were saying, I guess.” She picked up her pocketbook, and turned towards the exit. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

  “Uh-uh.” Iz put his hand over Katherine’s on the doorknob, so that she could not turn it.

  “Now come on, Iz,” she exclaimed. “I’m leaving now. Don’t be difficult.” She twisted and pulled to get her hand free, and open the door, but unsuccessfully—Iz only tightened his grip. The muscle of his arm pressed against hers. “Oh, really, don’t be so silly again,” she continued, putting on a primly humorous tone. “I only stayed a moment longer than you said I could. You’re not going to make anything of that, surely!”

  “I’m sorry,” Iz said in a not-sorry voice. “But I’ve never let any woman make a fool of me twice.” With his free hand he took hold of Katherine’s hair at the back of her neck, and turned her face forcibly to
wards his. “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do.” He spoke in a friendly, reasonable tone, almost as if he were dictating a report. “I’m going to give you what you came here for. Don’t play coy with me. If you won’t take your clothes off, I’ll tear them off. If you won’t lie down, I’ll knock you down. If you won’t make love with me, I’ll rape you.”

  He smiled, but behind his dark-rimmed glasses his pale gray eyes were serious, looking into hers. Katherine began to tremble violently.

  “No,” she said. “Please, no.” Iz put his arms around her.

  “Ah, Katherine,” he said, holding her. “You don’t have to be frightened. You’ll see. It will be a good experience.”

  PART FOUR

  Hollywood

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  17

  THE EMPTY SOUND STAGE was like the inside of an immense dark cardboard box; a vast cube of obscure space. Against the distant walls hung painted drop cloths representing in meticulous detail the landscape and architecture of the imaginary planet Nemo, setting of Glory’s current picture, a science-fiction musical comedy. Assemblages of platforms and steps rose here and there in the darkness like hillocks on a plain, among herds of folding chairs. On the dusty ground, black electrical cables and wires of all sizes were coiled and crossed, in some places resembling a nest of enormous snakes. Steel and aluminum skeletons supported the spotlights and floods, and the immense cameras on their traveling booms. More hanging lights, microphones, ropes, flats, and cables disappeared into the shadows far above.

  All these lights were dark now; the only illumination came from the long strip of hot sunshine slanting in from the open doorway, fading as it fanned across the cement; and from the electric bulbs around the make-up mirror in Glory’s trailer dressing-room.

  It was hot everywhere today; densely hot and smoggy outdoors; only a little less so where Glory and her agent Maxie Weiss were sitting in front of her trailer on two wooden chairs. Glory’s makeup was caked with sweat, for she had been working for three hours, rehearsing dance numbers; or standing about waiting in the excruciating boredom of film-making while other members of the cast rehearsed, or while the choreographer conferred endlessly with the director, the assistant director, the musical director, the dance coach, the man in charge of the extras, and his and their assistants. The tower of pink-blonde hair, though skewered to her head with innumerable pins, had begun to fray at the edges; her rehearsal clothes (black tights and loose sleeveless white top) were wrinkled and damp.

  She sat in the naturally graceful pose of a dancer, one leg tucked under her, the other pointed out along the floor, drinking from a Thermos bottle a health-food drink called Frozen Tiger’s Milk. Maxie was eating two pastrami sandwiches which had been wrapped in waxed paper; he looked hot, fat, and worried. He would have been lunching at Scandia, an air-conditioned restaurant near his air-conditioned office on Sunset Strip, and Glory would have been at the studio lunch-room, if they had not had to confer about a crisis.

  The trouble had all started yesterday. It had been a bad day for Glory, an unlucky day. While she was eating breakfast, her girlfriend, a starlet named Ramona Moon, had called up to warn her that Pluto was square with Neptune in her tenth house and she ought not to engage in any new or important professional ventures. Also she should avoid all occasions that might lead to serious emotional conflict; in fact about the best thing she could do would be to get right back into bed and stay there. Glory was not, like Mona, a follower of astrology; all the same, it would have been better if she had listened to her.

  The first thing that happened was that she broke off one of her fingernails starting the T-Bird. The traffic on the way to the studio was hell, and when she got there Roger, the best make-up man, was out sick. Then, while they were waiting around between takes, Petey Thorsley, a little dancer who was playing one of the other natives of Nemo, came over. He leaned on the back of a chair, in his green rubber costume with pink polka-dots and webbed hands like a duck, and remarked to Glory that Dr. Einsam had been seen eating cheesecake in Zucky’s out in Santa Monica with a brunette, and what was the story? “You tell me, don’t ask me,” Glory said, thinking that Mona had been right. “Gee, that’s all I know,” Petey said, his wire antennae quivering. “Listen, don’t let it get you down. My friend said she was nothing anyhow, kind of an intellectual type. ... Aw hell, Glory, I’m sorry.”

  “That’s okay, Petey, it doesn’t bother me,” she had replied, manufacturing her smile.

  Her real mistake had been to think that the stars were through with her after that one. She grew careless when nothing more went wrong on set the rest of the day; when she even got off early and beat some of the traffic driving home. She forgot about astrology; she had a big evening ahead.

  There was a première that night of a picture called Dancing Cowboy, starring Rory Gunn. Rory was also the star of the musical that Glory was making now, and in which she had for the first time what might be called a second female lead, even if she did have to play it with antennae and green hands. As it was, naturally, top priority that Rory Gunn should be well disposed towards Glory, ever since the picture started Maxie had been putting out stories about how much she thought of him as an actor, and what a tremendous thrill it was for her to have the chance to play with him. For that evening he had arranged that after the showing, when Rory was on his way out of the theater, Glory would rush up to him and kiss him in a spontaneous demonstration of her admiration; kind of kooky, but lovable, and really sincere. He had cleared this with the studio and with Rory’s agent, and alerted the local papers and also two wire services. Glory had a new dress for the occasion, short white bouffant satin printed with pink roses, and she had borrowed a white mink stole from the studio. So it was all set.

  Rory Gunn came out of the theater first, right on schedule, taking it slow and giving the crowd behind the ropes a good look at his profile. Glory was close behind him, but at the door of the lobby she held back a couple of seconds, waiting for a good clear space to open up between her and the photographers. Then she stepped out, saw Rory, did a big take—excitement, adoration—and began to run.

  She had waited a moment too long. As she approached Rory, a girl in the crowd, one of his fans, broke through the police line and also started racing towards him. They got to the star about the same time, and Glory stepped in front of the kid, but before she could open her mouth to speak this juvenile delinquent put her hand in Glory’s face and gave her a violent push. Glory staggered back on her three-inch pink satin heels; tripped, screamed, and fell on her ass on the sidewalk, with a noise of ripping cloth. From this position she saw the girl fling her arms around Rory Gunn and kiss him passionately, while he just stood there looking dumb. Without stopping to think, boiling with fury, Glory scrambled up in the ruins of her dress, one shoe off, limped forward, and slammed the kid in the jaw. Even as the blow went home she knew she had made a terrible mistake; she heard a louder howl rise from the crowd and the flash bulbs popping, like all Mona’s unlucky stars machine-gunning her down together.

  Maxie had done what he could to mop up the mess. First he got the girl back into the lobby and started talking to her; come on, after all, he told her, Glory is a fan of Rory Gunn’s same as you are; you ought to appreciate what she felt like when you shoved yourself in like that; besides you ruined her new two-hundred-dollar dress for her. It went over pretty well: at least the kid stopped crying, and Maxie got a taxi around to the stage door and sent her home before the newspaper guys could get to her again. I
n the morning he ordered two lots of flowers delivered to the kid’s house: some daffodils and a whole lot of other spring stuff from Glory, and three dozen red roses from Rory Gunn. Of course Maxie couldn’t kill the story—but he spoke to the guys, giving them pretty much the same line: that Glory was so stuck on Rory Gunn and his marvelous performance in Dancing Cowboy that she just saw red when anybody got in her way. This story had appeared in the morning papers which lay about on the floor at Maxie’s and Glory’s feet. As he said now, it could have been a lot worse, even the photos.

  “Uh-huh,” Glory uttered. “Listen, thanks for everything, Maxie,” she added in a dull, throaty voice, and drank some Tiger’s Milk. “You’re a doll.”

  “That’s okay. At least you appreciate.” Maxie wiped his face and began stripping the crusts off half a sandwich. “I wonder should I check up on that kid again this afternoon, how she’s feeling, is she okay?”

  “No,” Glory said. “Let’s drop it.”

  “Maybe you’re right. I sent flowers already; we don’t want to start a correspondence.”

  “Yeah. Besides, she hit me first,” Glory pointed out, not for the first time.

  “She’s a fan,” Maxie said. “It doesn’t make any difference what she did. You can’t sock a fan. Also she’s only fourteen years old. A kid.”

  “Yeah, well, shit: how was I supposed to know that? You tell her next time she wants to push somebody in the face bring her birth certificate.”

  Maxie winced. It always bothered him when Glory’s language became too vulgar; he was trying to put her across as basically a sweet kid. He shifted around and sat sideways in his chair, facing her. “Something else I got in my mind,” he said. “I want to suggest a new image. We got to black out this picture you don’t like fans. I thought of a gimmick this morning we could use, maybe. I want to put out a release—how does this sound?—Glory Green, now working in Superb’s big new musical, etcetera, has a very personal relationship to her growing number of fans all over the world. Glory reads every day all the letters she receives, and she says she picks up lots of acting tips and good advice about her career from the girls and boys who follow her pictures: how does that sound?”