Miguel glanced back at the terminal. Policemen were moving in to break up the crowd and blue-white flashes were everywhere as Ayula’s cameramen took pictures. Miguel could imagine the story Ayula was improvising in his mind: NORA AMES IN NEAR RIOT AT IDLEWILD! Screen star Nora Ames was mobbed by excited fans at New York International Airport today. Usually blasé Gothamites overflowed restraining lines of police—He felt a little sick. Ayula had his mob scene. Miguel could not wipe out the image of Nora in that mindless press, that fixed, professional smile on her face. What was there about it that disturbed him so? It was as though she had suddenly turned into a smiling automaton, a robot keyed to stimulate erotic dreams in Technicolor. A fragment of a song parody of the forties floated crazily through his head. Tangerine, she’s my sex machine—Nora Ames, he thought. Nora Ames, my God. Was it all going to be like this?
Seated in the car, Ziegler said, “Tony should have checked up. That’s part of his job.”
Miguel fought the fatigue that seemed to be coming over him in waves. He understood Ziegler meant Ayula should have made it his business to know about Alaine and Dorrie.
“They say bad publicity is better than none, but it isn’t so. Bad publicity is bad publicity and no good for business. I’m glad you warned Tony.”
It occurred to Miguel that Ziegler had misinterpreted the object of his concern. Ever since making up his mind to return to America, he had been procrastinating about writing Allie, but he did not want her to learn of his return from the newspapers.
Ziegler looked out the window almost shyly and then said, “Forgive me if I meddle, but there is something—“ He cleared his throat and added apologetically, “It affects your relationship with Artfilm. Otherwise I would not mention it.”
When Miguel said nothing, the older man went on. “Your wife—I was under the impression you were divorced.”
“No,” Miguel said. “Where did you get that idea?”
Ziegler shrugged. “I must have misinterpreted something Nora said.”
“We’ve been separated since 1952,” Miguel said. “But there has been no divorce.” He did not elaborate, nor did he give any hint of the revulsion that shook him when the word “divorce” was even mentioned. It would have to come to that eventually, he knew. But not yet.
“I don’t mean to be prying into your personal affairs,” Ziegler said. “But you and Nora—?”
“I guess you understand about that,” Miguel said shortly.
“You have known one another for a long time.”
“Off and on,” Miguel said. And without knowing quite why, he added, “Her first husband was my best friend.”
“You flew together in the war.”
“You could say that.”
Ziegler cleared his throat again. “Your wife, Mike—she is very troublesome?”
Miguel was taken aback. He had never thought of Allie as “troublesome.” There was a look of genuine concern on Ziegler’s face, as though the animation engendered by the excitement in the terminal was slowly dissipating itself into a kind of gentleness.
“Why in the world should you think that?” Miguel asked.
“I am sorry. Truly sorry. I should mind my own business. But I feel that we are going to be friends and I take liberties.”
“I’m flattered, Victor,” Miguel said with a touch of irony.
“Nora speaks of you often, as you might guess,” Ziegler said. “She says many good things about you. She is a great performer.”
Miguel wondered if the odd juxtaposition of phrases were deliberate. The man seemed devoid of malice.
Ziegler leaned forward and asked the driver to please go see if Miss Ames and Mr. Ayula could speed it up a bit. He moved back again and said to Miguel with a smile, “Nora is a trouper, Mike. You have to understand that.”
“I understand it, all right,” Miguel said.
“I hope you do, Mike.”
Miguel felt a twinge of tired annoyance. He could see no reason for Ziegler, who was, after all, a stranger, to explain Nora.
“I’ve known Nora a good long time, Victor,” he said. And who could know her better, he wondered? Certainly Tom had never understood the forces at work in her—
“While we’re waiting,” Ziegler said, “can we speak of the work? I want to get your point of view on this Green Hills thing.”
Miguel gazed blankly at him. “Green hills?”
“The Green Hills of Home,” Ziegler said. “Kathryn Bellamie’s new book. Artfilm has bought the property for Nora.”
“Can we start at the beginning?”
Ziegler shrugged. “The script you will be working on. You have read the book?”
“I haven’t read a Bellamie book since I was twelve years old,” Miguel said a trifle testily.
“It sold over half a million copies,” Ziegler murmured gently. Miguel understood that he was applying the only measure of success Hollywood understood, success itself. It should not have been unexpected. He had worked in Hollywood before. Nor, for that matter, was the book publishing business so different—successful books were pushed hard, unsuccessful ones were sold at remainder prices.
“Nora tells me you know Mrs. Bellamie.”
“I wouldn’t put it that way. She lived for a time in Palo Alto, and I went to school there. I met her once or twice, but it was a long time ago.”
“Anyway, you’ll be at home with Green Hills,” Ziegler said pleasantly.
Hardly at home, Miguel thought, depressed. He was disappointed in the material Ziegler and Artfilm had selected for him to make into a screenplay.
He remembered Kathryn Bellamie as a stout and prosperous woman who had discovered—in her own words—that she “had a knack for cooking up (and Miguel could think of no more apt expression) best sellers.”
It was significant, Miguel thought bleakly, that Bellamie and her quondam collaborator, a woman named Annalee de Wolfe, were known around Palo Alto as the Bobbsey Twins.
Annalee de Wolfe had died a rich woman in 1946, but Kathryn Bellamie, apparently, was destined to go on forever.
Miguel compared her string of best sellers, book club selections, and movie sales with his own rather meager literary successes and decided he was, as he had long suspected, out of touch with the popular market.
He said quietly, “I didn’t know you had a property in mind.” He felt, somehow, more depressed than ever.
“Artfilm paid three hundred thousand for the picture rights,” Ziegler said proudly. “Only I think it lacks something. I don’t like to say just yet. I don’t want to give you any preconceived notions of what I want.”
“Unless Kathryn Bellamie’s style has changed since the last time I read one of her books, I can tell you what it lacks. Gonads. If that’s what Artfilm wanted—“ and he could not help but add—“and it must be, if the book was bought for Nora—I can’t imagine why a Bellamie book was selected. She doesn’t write that way and never has.”
“It’s very visual,” Ziegler said. “You’ll see that when you read it.
That was a slap on the wrist, Miguel thought wryly. Don’t criticize until you know. Only it wasn’t necessary to read the book to know about it. Kathryn Bellamie had been writing the same book for years. The costumes and the scenery changed, but it was always the same book.
Experience should have taught him that a discussion like this could get exactly nowhere. Story was a word that meant one thing in Hollywood and something else everywhere else in the world. The phrases, so familiar, whirled in his mind. Fresh approach. New ideas. Unique treatment. Creative advance. They all meant the same thing done in the same way by the same people. The motion picture industry was one of the most conservative, timid and downright reactionary groupings of economic power in history. It would be foolish to suggest that Bellamie repeated herself endlessly. Repetition was what Hollywood understood best.
“I suppose you’re right, Victor,” he said wearily. And he thought: Already I’m assuming the Culver City Crouch. Yes, sir. Ye
s, yes, yes. Someone always had to do the agreeing in these conversations. Generally, it was the writer. And somehow, the result was nearly always the same. Trite, artless repetition.
Ziegler took a cigar from an ostrich leather case. “While we wait, perhaps I could brief you on the story line.”
Would it be impolite to ask him not to? Miguel wondered. Yes. It probably would. Ziegler’s voice was dropping into a monotone. Apparently, his question had been rhetorical. He assumed, quite naturally, that Miguel would like having him tell the plot of Bellamie’s book.
Miguel swallowed some of the dryness in his throat and ran a hand across his cheek. He needed a shave. He needed some breakfast, too, and about eight hours sleep. But he wasn’t going to get eight hours’ sleep. There was Olinder to see. That wasn’t going to be pleasant.
Ziegler said: “This Spanish galleon is going down. Off the Irish coast, you see. There’s one survivor. We’re trying to get Montgomery Clift if we can, but he may have other commitments. Anyway, it will be somebody like him. This one survivor. Try to visualize it, Mike.”
Miguel nodded, trying to keep his eyes focused on Ziegler’s face. The tip of his nose moved up and down with a barely perceptible motion as he spoke. For the first time, Miguel could detect the faintest trace of a middle European accent. What was keeping Nora, damn it?
“Nora plays Corinne. Shes an Irish girl. The daughter of a lord. Sir Cedric Hardwicke type of person, very dignified. He’s seen the English smash the Armada and he’s angry because he hates the English, see? Then this survivor is washed ashore on his land. A Spanish nobleman. A sea captain, even though he’s quite young. He’s being washed ashore right where Nora is bathing in the sea. We thought we could shoot the ocean scenes at Carmel. It would be tremendous in wide screen and color—“ Miguel fought to hold his eyes open by thinking of Nora bathing in the icy waters of Monterey Bay, with Elizabethan swimwear by Cole of California and Anamorphic Lenses by Bausch & Lomb. And his mind sought the past.
On March 8, 1945, General Kirbee went on leave, leaving Lieutenant Miguel Rinehart with ten days of time on his hands.
In that busy season of the war, ten days without assigned duties were a rare gift to any pilot of the Western Air Defense Command’s Flight Section. All winter Miguel had been flying staff officers from San Francisco to the east coast in weather that kept the commercial airlines on the ground. A hundred and fifty to two hundred monthly flying hours in Kirbee’s temperamental, stripped B-25 Mitchell had Miguel nervous and on edge and Alaine suggested that he take a day off, away from airplanes and flying.
“Stinson Beach is only thirty miles from here,” she said. “And hardly anyone has the gas to get there. It’ll do you good to spend a day sunning and fishing. You could take Tom with you.” Tom, who was attached to the Headquarters A-4 Section, had been assigned to the Hamilton, Tonopah, Paine Field and Moses Lake shuttle rim, carrying replacement parts from the Hamilton Sub Depot out to the training squadrons of the Command. He spent one night in three at home and the rest of the time he was out on the run.
“I don’t know about Tom,” Miguel said. ‘Til ask him. But what about you?” He was rather concerned about the way her early pregnancy was going. Major Race, the base surgeon, had said she must be very careful lest she lose the child.
“I can’t go, but that’s no reason for you to stay.”
The idea of a day by the sea appealed to him. “I could leave early and come back late,” he said thoughtfully.
“Any way you want to do it, Mike. You look beat, darling. You need a change.”
The subject came up again at Major Cavell’s party two days later, and Tom said, “If I’m here when you decide to go, just give me a blast.”
Nora came through the uniformed confusion in the room and said, “You two look like conspirators.” Miguel hadn’t seen much of Nora during the winter and he noticed that she had changed her way of fixing her hair. The pompadour was gone and with it most of the metallic brightness. It was smoother, more becoming now. And her clothes were different, too.
“The Spick’s got himself some free time. We want to take off and go fishing on the coast.”
Nora smiled at Miguel. “Sounds like fun.”
“For men only, baby,” Tom said.
Nora looked directly at Miguel and asked, “Won’t you invite me, Mike?”
“Sure, Nora.”
“I’m serious. I’d like to go.”
Pete Wallace and Major Cavell were sitting beside Pete’s wife at the piano and singing, “Parachute of nylon, wings of silvery hue, you’ll fly a bomber like your daddy used to do—“ Everyone was a little drunk on rum and Coke and the room was a bedlam of noise. Miguel caught sight of Alaine across the room talking to Captain Brigandi, the engineering officer. She glanced over and smiled at him and he smiled back. Alaine wasn’t drinking much.
In a corner near the window an infantry officer was explaining the capture of the Remagen Bridge to Tina Cavell. He was quite unsteady and he would lean on the wall and stand on the balls of his feet each time Tina looked as though she might escape him.
“Tina needs rescuing,” Nora said.
‘Til go bring her back to this side of the Rhine,” Tom said. “Shes going to spoil those pretty legs associating with paddle-feet.”
Miguel watched Tom make his way through the living room toward Tina and the infantryman.
“Do you think she’s pretty?” Nora asked Miguel.
He grinned and said, “Pretty enough.”
“You don’t really.”
“Of course I do. Tina’s one of the best.”
Nora laughed. “Oh,” she said, “I was afraid she might be an old love of yours.”
“Afraid, Nora?”
She was looking at him challengingly. “I shouldn’t have said that, I suppose.”
He finished his drink and smiled vaguely. The liquor felt warm and pleasant in his stomach. “I won’t tell Uncle Tom,” he said. “Can I get you a drink?”
Cavell and the rest of the singers at the piano started in on, “I’ve got sixpence, jolly jolly sixpence—”
“I’d love a drink,” Nora said.
She followed him to the kitchen, where he mixed two rum Cokes. “This all right?”
Nora leaned back against the range and sipped. “Perfect.” She displayed no inclination whatever to rejoin the party in the living room.
Miguel could hear Pete Wallace telling one of the nurses from the Base Hospital, “Well, they told me at Roswell no one had ever slow-rolled a B-Two Dozen, so I talked it over with my crew and we decided to give it a go—”
Nora smiled and gestured with her glass. “You like this, Mike?”
“It’s a living, Nora,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s a living.”
“What about you? Is it better than what went before it?”
She looked into his face with sudden defiance. “Just what went before, Mike?”
“I didn’t mean that the way it sounded, Nora,” Miguel said. “I’m no tart, Mike,” Nora said in a flinty voice.
“I know you’re not, Nora,” Miguel said honestly. “We’re friends, aren’t we?”
“Yes?”
“Does that mean yes-we-are or yes-are-we?”
She shook her head and lifted her glass. “I don’t know,” she said. “I know what I want.”
Pete Wallace, having captured an audience, was shouting happily, “So there we were, flat on our backs at thirty thousand feet-”
Someone yelled, “Oh, no, not that one again!”
“Back off, for chrissake, I’m telling the lady a story!”
“Thirty thousand feet, hell. Pete gets a nosebleed on the second floor of the BOQ. We had to donate blood to get him through Primary!”
Miguel smiled at Nora and she smiled back. Their momentary friction now seemed to have brought them closer together.
“It’s not really so bad, is it?” he asked.
Nora shook her head. “For
a start. No, it’s not so bad.”
“Tom’s happy,” Miguel said.
Nora regarded him strangely. “You really think so?”
“Yes. Isn’t he?”
“I thought you knew him so well.”
“I do,” Miguel said. And then he added thoughtfully, “Let’s say I’ve always thought I knew him.”
“Did you know he hates to fly?”
Miguel frowned, remembering that Billy Alberg had said something very like that.
Nora laughed mirthlessly. “He hides it from you. Did you know that? What’s so special about you?” She looked down into her glass, studying the ice cubes intently. “I know,” she said as if to herself, “I know what’s so special.”
“Are we going to fight again, Nora?” Miguel asked.
Nora shook her head violently. “Oh, Mike. I’m going to be somebody some day. I swear to God I am.”
“Don’t worry about it so, Nora.”
“Father Michael. You should have been a priest.”
Miguel smiled slightly. “You know, I think Uncle Tom would be surprised to hear it,” he said.
“The snowman,” Nora said. “The ice-and-snowman. Did you know that’s what I called you?”
“Priest. Snowman. What else, Mrs. E.?”
She shook her head again and looked down at the linoleum floor with a secretive, half-smile on her lips.
The song in the living room ended with a crashing chord and, “—no pence to send home to my wife, poor wife!” Pete Wallace was saying mournfully, “I was cut out to be a fighter pilot, but I’m six and a half feet tall. Oh, God, how I lust after a Mustang!” The radio was turned on and the rugs rolled back. Miguel leaned against the sink watching Nora. She wore a red dress with a plain, tight bodice and a deep V neckline. The shimmering cloth clung to her like a second skin. He felt numb and warm inside, but not really drunk. I should go out and see how Allie is getting along, he thought, not moving.
Nora glanced up at him. Red was a good color on her, he thought. It heightened the effect of those slanty gold-flecked Magyar’s eyes.
Music, slow and viscid, came into the kitchen. Nora put down her glass and raised her arms.
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