by Howard Fast
“Did you give him money?”
“That is a personal matter. I don’t intend to discuss my relationship with him.”
“Did you ask him to drop the charges against Barbara?”
Again Tom hesitated, but for a longer interval. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because Barbara can drop those charges anytime she wants to. All she has to do is stop being a goddamn Joan of Arc and answer the question they asked her.”
“Do you know that she was arrested yesterday?” Tom shrugged.
“She’s digging the hole for herself.”
“All right,” Dan said, “you’re my son. I find you a contemptible sonofabitch, but you are my son. If you weren’t, I think I’d kill you here on the spot. As it is, I don’t want to see your face ever again.” He slammed the office door behind him, strode past the astonished Miss Loper, and left the building.
That evening, he told Jean what had happened, leaving nothing out. “What in hell did we do wrong, Jean? How did this happen?”
“That way lies madness, Danny, so let it be. No one in this ridiculous society is equipped to raise children, the rich least of all. I don’t like the notion of closing the door on Tom forever, but I am far more worried about you putting yourself through this kind of an emotional explosion. It’s no good for you.”
“I’m all right. And if you want to see Tom, see him.”
“I certainly don’t want to see him now. How I’ll feel in six months or a year, I don’t know. More to the point, what about Barbara? Do we tell her?”
“I have to tell her why Fredericks wouldn’t take the case.”
“Tell her the other reasons. Don’t drive any wedge between them, Danny. She has enough misery.”
***
One morning, about an hour after Joe had left for the clinic, Sally’s telephone rang. The woman at the other end informed her that she was Alex Hargasey’s secretary, and that if it were possible, Mr. Hargasey would like to see Mrs. Lavette at his office at three o’clock that afternoon. “Can you be there?” she asked Sally.
“You bet! Absolutely!”
“The Paramount Studios. The gate is at Marathon, just east of Gower. If you come down Melrose—”
“Yes, I know where it is.”
“We’ll leave a pass at the gate. The guard will tell you where to go.”
Trembling with excitement, Sally put May Ling in her restraining chair in the car and drove to the clinic. Her car was an eight-year-old Ford that had fits of temper and whimsy, and now she prayed that it would perform through the day.
At ten o’clock, the clinic was overflowing, and she waited impatiently for Joe to come out of his consulting room. She sat at one end of the row of chairs, looking at the Mexican women and children and a sprinkling of men, all of them sitting listlessly, hopelessly, the way people sit in the waiting room of a free clinic, displaying a sort of subdued, sad patience.
Billy came out and saw her, and his face lit up. “Why didn’t you tell us you were here?”
“Because Joe gets so angry when I interrupt him.”
“Ah, no. Joe doesn’t get angry.”
“Billy,” she said, “will you be an absolute darling? You know that screenplay of mine. I sent it to Alex Hargasey at Paramount, and now he wants to see me. His secretary called, and I have an appointment at three. You talk to Joe, please. I need a baby sitter—just for a few hours. If you can come by at two, that will give me plenty of time.”
At that moment Joe came out, and Sally repeated her story. “Aren’t you pleased?” she asked. “Isn’t it exciting?”
“We have a terrible day. I need Billy here.”
“Is that all you can say? I don’t believe you!”
“Come into my office,” Joe said. “I can’t discuss it here.”
Billy had said nothing, only watching Sally in a kind of dumb admiration. In his office, Joe said, “You could have telephoned. You didn’t have to drag the baby down here.”
“I thought you’d be at the hospital and I’d have to talk Frank into letting me have Billy for a few hours. This whole thing is crazy. Do you know what the chances are of selling an original screenplay—maybe one in a thousand—and they pay tremendous sums, sometimes twenty or thirty thousand dollars, perhaps more. And I finally get this chance, and it doesn’t mean anything to you.”
“Of course it means something to me, Sally. All right, I got a little uptight. There are times when this place drives me insane. Our patient load gets bigger and bigger, and the city doesn’t give a damn. No one gives a damn.”
“I know. I’ll take May Ling with me. They’ll survive the sight of a baby.”
“Forget that. I’ll send Billy over.”
When Billy arrived that afternoon, Sally was still trying to come to terms with her face and hair. She applied lipstick and then wiped it off; she applied rouge and then wiped it off. She stuffed Kleenex into her brassiere and then removed it in disgust. She stared at her hair, thinking that it was straw, it had always been straw, and it would always be straw. She stared at her face—the high cheekbones, the deepset, bright blue eyes, the wide expressive mouth—and decided that nothing would help. She had changed clothes three times, deciding finally on a gray pleated skirt, a white blouse, and a gray cardigan. I’m dowdy, she told herself. Always have been, always will be. Then she said to Billy, “How do I look? Perfectly horrible? Go ahead, you can tell me.”
“I think you’re the most beautiful woman I have ever known,” Billy said seriously.
“I think you’re nutty. I should have known better than to ask you. Do you know, Billy, you have an absolutely crazy notion of what I am. I am not pretty. I am selfish, I am vain, and I’m slowly driving my husband out of his mind.”
“Oh, no, no. You mustn’t be upset about the way Joe acts. You can’t imagine what it’s like these days. After you left, they brought in two kids who were in a knifefight, both of them bleeding like pigs. It took us two hours to stop the bleeding and sew them up, and then they needed blood, and we couldn’t find a place to admit them for transfusions—”
“Do you know,” Sally interrupted, “this is all my life has been for two years now. Look, Billy, about May Ling. She’s still napping. When she wakes up, she’ll be wet. Can you change a diaper?”
“I think so.” He smiled.
“Then put her in the living room. Give her the teething stuff. She’ll be fine, only keep an eye on her. She walks, you know.”
“I like her. We’ll be all right.”
Sally put her arms around him and kissed him. “I like you. You’re absolutely an angel, only you’re too good to be true.”
Billy shook his head. “No, I’m hopeless.”
At the studio, the guard at the gate regarded Sally’s car dubiously. “What can I do for you, miss?”
“I have an appointment with Mr. Hargasey. I’m Sally Lavette.”
He checked his board, then nodded. “You turn right, Miss Lavette, and then park anywhere along that wall. Then just follow the yellow line and you come to a kind of half-timbered building on your right. There’s a receptionist there who’ll show you where his office is.”
After she parked her car, it was still only ten minutes to three. Sally walked slowly through the studio grounds, treasuring each step. It was the first time she had ever been in a film studio, and she found herself utterly enchanted by the place—the great sound stages, the people in costume hurrying by, cowboys, Indians, lovely women in evening gowns and men in tails walking through the hot sunlight, two pretty blondes in Little Bo Peep dresses. Oh, I do love this place, she thought, and wouldn’t it be wonderful to work here! A sign on a building to her left caught her eye: writers building. I’d be there, she thought, right in there doing my own work and feeling that there is some reason for me to be alive. Well, we’ll see…we’ll see w
hat Mr. Hargasey has to say. Who knows? Maybe I’ll be in there tomorrow, revising my script.
She found the half-timbered building, and the receptionist told her that Mr. Hargasey was down the hall, number four. Her hand was trembling as she opened the door of number four. The room appeared palatial enough to house Mr. Hargasey, but it was evidently the habitat of his secretary, a well-rounded, pretty woman with bleached hair and heavy make-up who conformed to Sally’s notion of what a desirable woman should look like.
“You’re Mrs. Lavette,” she said, smiling mechanically. “Please sit down. Mr. Hargasey will see you in a few minutes. Would you like to look at the trades?”
Sally had not the vaguest notion of what the trades were, but she nodded, and the secretary handed her copies of Daily Variety and the Hollywood Reporter. She leafed through them, feeling more and more a part of this wonderful world of filmmaking. Then the phone on the secretary’s desk rang, and Sally was informed that she could now see Mr. Hargasey.
“Through there,” the secretary said, pointing to a connecting door.
Hargasey’ s office was large, about twenty by twenty-five feet, all of it carpeted in oyster white. There was a couch, two overstuffed chairs in black leather, and an enormous desk. Hargasey rose from behind the desk as she entered, a totally bald, stocky man in his late fifties. “Sit down, sit down,” he said, smiling and pointing to the chair beside the desk.
He spoke with an elusive foreign accent, explained perhaps by a brass placard on his desk that read: “It’s not enough to be Hungarian. You must also have talent.”
“So you’re Danny’s daughter-in-law,” he said. “By God, I am glad seeing anyone related to Danny Lavette. That is one hell of a man. How is he? Tell me.”
“He had a heart attack.”
“Oh—no.”
“But he’s fine now, just fine. My husband—that’s his son, my husband, he’s a doctor—he tells me Dan made a fine recovery.” She was chattering nervously, foolishly.
“And that beautiful Chinese wife of his, she is still just as beautiful?”
“May Ling? No. Poor May Ling was killed at Pearl Harbor, almost eight years ago. My baby is named after her.”
“Ah! Such a damn shame! Such waste! You tell Danny my heart goes out to him, yes?”
Sally nodded. She waited. Hargasey was studying her with interest. The silence dragged on. Finally Sally said, “Can we talk about my screenplay?”
“Your screenplay?”
“The one I sent you.”
“Oh, yes. Positively. It stinks.”
“What?”
“You ask me about the screenplay. What’s to say? It stinks. Darling, there is such a thing as a way to write for the screen, a manner, a technique. You don’t know any of them. Forget it.”
Sally stared at him for a moment, then leaped to her feet and, leaning across the desk, said, “Is that what you called me in here for, to tell me that my screenplay stinks?”
“I call you because you are Danny’s daughter-in-law. I love Danny.”
Her voice rose. “You love Danny! That really gets to me! You love Danny enough to get all my hopes up, to put me through this wretched charade, and then you can’t spare the time to tell me what was wrong with my work! Oh, no! Only that it stinks! Well, you may be Dan’s bosom friend, Mr. Hargasey, but I can’t help returning the sentiment! You stink, sir!”
She stood in front of him trembling with anger, her pale eyes flashing; behind his desk, Hargasey stared at her intently, not annoyed, not provoked, simply staring intently.
“You—you—” The words choked off.
“Go on, go on,” Hargasey said.
Sally swallowed, breathed deeply, and clasped her hands together to stop their trembling. “I’ll take my manuscript and go,” she whispered.
“Walk across the room,” Hargasey said.
“What?”
“I said, walk across the room. It’s possible, yes.”
“Why should I?”
“You want your manuscript. Walk across the room, I’ll give you the manuscript.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Maybe. Who knows?”
She took two paces and then turned on him, her eyes blazing. “Damn you, no! You can’t make a fool of me! You can tell me my writing stinks, but that’s all you can do.”
“Take off your sweater.”
“No! Give me my script!”
Hargasey rose and came around the desk. Sally backed away. “Now look,” she said to him. “I may be skinny, but I’m strong. And I’m taller than you. I was raised on a farm with two brothers—so just don’t try anything.”
He burst into laughter. “Oh, Sally, little darling, all the stories about Hollywood! You believe it all, yes? That’s what’s wrong with your screenplay. How old are you?”
“Twenty-two.”
“Beautiful. You could be my granddaughter. There are men my age who play with children. I don’t. Take off the sweater. I want to see you without it.”
His whole manner had changed. He was gentle, cozening, intriguing. She found her anger dissipating as she pulled off the sweater, at the same time asking herself why she was doing it, why she was obeying him? He studied her for a few moments, appraising her from head to foot.
“You ever acted, Sally? Anywhere? Amateur theatricals, anything?”
She shook her head.
“It don’t matter.” He went to his desk and picked up a manuscript. “Sit down over there and look at this. There’s a part in there for a woman. Lotte. That’s the name of the woman. You read it and think about that woman.”
“I can’t act. I never acted in my life. Anyway, I can’t sit down and read. I have a baby at home. I have to get back.”
He pointed to the phone. “Make a call. You want me to get a nurse to go to your home and sit with the baby? Or I’ll send my secretary. Whatever you want.”
“I don’t know what you’re thinking,” she said plaintively.
“So just let me think. You call your house.”
“I’m not even pretty,” she said woefully.
“Sally, pretty is what this town stinks from. On every corner is pretty. Outside there is fifty girls who are pretty. Means nothing, positively nothing. They are the same, like cut out of cardboard. You got that thing Garbo had. I know, you don’t look like her, thank God. She ain’t my favorite. I won’t even call you beautiful, but you got a face like you don’t see. And with passion, that’s it. Positively. All right, so I’m crazy. Outside on the lot, fifty girls come crawling with tears, I should tell them to read that script. Do me a favor. Call your house.”
She walked to the desk, picked up the phone, and began to dial.
“No, first nine. Then dial.”
She dialed again. Billy answered. “Billy,” she said, “will you be a dear and stay an extra hour or two—or until I come back?”
“Sally, what’s wrong? You sound awful.”
“No, it’s not awful. I’m fine.”
“I guess I can stay,” he said. “What shall I tell Joe? Will you be back in time for dinner?”
“Oh, yes.”
“And I’m good with the diapers. Don’t worry.”
“And Billy, if I’m not there by five, there’s a bottle in the fridge. You warm it to skin temperature. And with it, a bowl of Pablum. The directions are on the box, and just let her eat as much as she wants.”
She put down the phone and turned to Hargasey. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I think I’ve lost my mind.”
“So you lost your mind.” He handed her the script. “Read it.” She took the script, dropped into one of the leather chairs, and began to read. Hargasey picked up the telephone, and Sally heard him say, “Get me Mike Bordon.” And then, after a moment, “Mike, I think I found our Lotte. I want you to set up a screen test.”
Pause. “I know it don’t happen, but it happened. You got to see her. Tall, wide shoulders, yellow hair that ain’t from a bottle, looks like she just climbed out of a covered wagon. And a face like an angry angel. And she is valid.” Pause again. “Can she act? Mike, tell me, who the hell can act in this lousy industry? This one, I think of Lauren Bacall, only she has a quality Bacall should give her eyeteeth for. What can I tell you—you’ll see her. In an hour.”
***
It was almost eight o’clock when Sally got home. Joe had been sitting in the kitchen, and he leaped up when he heard her at the door, then embraced her and held her as she came into the house. “I was so worried,” he said. “I was just about out of my mind. I tried calling the studio, and all I got was an answering service that told me they had closed for the day.”
“Then you’re not angry at me?”
“I’m never angry at you, Sally, I love you so much. Don’t you know how much I love you? I just couldn’t imagine what had happened to you.”
“Oh, Joey, the most wonderful, crazy, impossible thing happened to me. You know, I went over there to Paramount because this man, Hargasey—you remember him, your father built a yacht for him—had his secretary make an appointment for me to see him. I thought he would tell me that my screenplay was wonderful. He’s a funny little man, fat and bald as a billiard ball, and he didn’t tell me that at all, but he just wanted to see me because he’s so crazy about your dad—”
“Slow down, slow down,” Joe begged her, laughing in spite of himself. “Come on into the kitchen. I made coffee. I’ll pour you a cup.”
Sally held it in until they were sitting at the kitchen table. “Just listen, Joey, and don’t laugh at me and don’t be angry, but almost the first thing he said to me was that my screenplay was rotten, that it was worthless, and that I didn’t know the first thing about writing a screenplay. Well, I got so angry, I began to scream at him and call him names—I guess I was never so angry before—and he just sat and stared at me. He kept looking at me and telling me to walk back and forth, and then he asked me whether I had ever done any acting, and I thought he was making passes and I was so nasty to him, but he’s really a darling little man. Well, he gave me a script to read, and he arranged for a screen test right there—”