There Should Have Been Castles

by Herman Raucher

  He didn’t bat an eye. “You’re describing every army not just the US Army. How come you never dropped me a card or something? I’m the Big Boss, you know.”

  “I thought it might be a little presumptuous. I didn’t want you to think I was—sucking around.” Did it again.

  “The least you might have done was thank me for sending you a little farewell present the night before you left.”

  “Thank you. Why’d you do it?”

  “Two reasons. First, I figured you could use it. And second, I figured you could keep it quiet.”

  “Right on both counts.”

  “How was she?”

  “Enthusiastic.”

  “She took care of you?”

  “Nobly.”

  “Good.” He looked quickly at his wristwatch. “Okay, I see that something’s on your mind. Spill it.”

  “Two things are on my mind. Sam Gaynor and Alan Morse.”

  “What about them?”

  “One has my job and the other gave it to him.”

  “You’ll have to let it alone for a while.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s too complicated. You’ll have to trust me.”

  “I trusted Josh and he’s gone.”

  He laughed. “I’ll be here for a while.”

  “How do I know?”

  “I’ll not let you exact any promises out of me. You and I we kind of respect one another. I think you’re good and that you’ll go far. Not because of any special talent—I haven’t seen any of that—but because of your attitude.”

  “Lately I’ve been told it isn’t too good.”

  “Not for the Army maybe, but it is good for you. You want something, you go after it, and you still manage to preserve your individuality. You’re the only man in this company who is distrusted by his management and hated by his own union. That takes some doing, and it’s good. We all know you’re here. Either you’ll go quickly to the top, like cream, or you’ll drop slowly to the bottom, like shit. But you’ve never going to hang around in the middle like most everyone else, pushing for a raise, hanging on with white knuckles until retirement. As such, I’ll help you all I can. But right now I can do nothing about Gaynor and Morse.”

  “They’re both idiots. Certifiable. One can’t grow and the other won’t stop.”

  He looked at me through his squinty eyes. “You have no problem, Ben. Sam Gaynor is no problem because he’s going on to bigger and better things, and the sooner the better. You’ll just have to sweat him out. Alan Morse is my problem—and that’s all I want to say on the matter. So beat it.” He was smiling and it buoyed me. W. Charles Gruber obviously knew more than he wanted to talk about, and he obviously saw both of my problems as being highly soluble.

  I finished out the morning saying hello to people, able to tell by the way they acted which of them had been for me and which had been against.

  I stayed as far away from Alan Morse as I could, running imaginary errands and avoiding his horse of a secretary at every turn. Willa Nichols and her new nose had blown with Josh Meyerberg, and everything seemed out of whack in that people just weren’t where I had left them. Except Pat Jarvas, who called me on the phone and sweetly offered to blow me between the hours of three and four because she owed me and that was when Gruber would be out playing tennis and she’d be free. I told her that if I wasn’t there by three thirty she should begin without me and she failed to see the humor of it. Still, game girl that she was, she probably tried.

  I had lunch with Mickey, after which we went over to McGirr’s and played snooker. Mickey was the best snooker player in the world—never lost—and said he was the captain of the 1948 US Olympic Snooker Team and that, as soon as he got a new agent, he’d be turning pro. I loved Mickey Green. We both knew that he couldn’t help, me yet we both pretended that he would.

  The rest of the afternoon I sat at my desk, reading scripts. Mickey and Dora quietly worked. And Sam Gaynor was off somewhere, either talking or frightening people to death. I read three scenarios of upcoming films and began to feel that a caveman could do better.

  At three forty-five, Pat Jarvas called to remind me that I still had fifteen minutes in which to get blown. I thanked her for her thoughtfulness, but precisely at five I went home to Ginnie because it was Ginnie with whom I wanted to be. Even if we did nothing but hold hands and hug, Ginnie was my love and I needed the sweet safety of her company—and when was the last time I ever felt that about anyone?

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Ginnie

  1952

  Ben got home Monday evening after six. He had walked all the way from 20th to “clear his head” and he had brought with him an armful of movie scripts, at least five of them. He was very down, nowhere near the high-spirited stallion he had been when leaving for work that morning. He told me why and I couldn’t blame him. It was hardly a great way to resume civilian life. I hated them all.

  I had planned a romantic little dinner—a little chianti, a tossed salad, a beef bourguignon dish, and, for dessert, I figured we’d have each other. But, as it often is with mice and me, I fucked up the beef bourguignon, got cork in the chianti, and had neglected to buy dressing for the salad. So we had ham sandwiches and potato chips, though the dessert (as planned) was delicious and we both went back for more.

  He made love with a frenzy, not at all his usual gentle and thoughtful self. But that was alright, too, because it was like being in bed with a different man (my second). He apologized for being a boor, promising that it would never happen again so I scolded him until he promised that it would happen again—and again—and again.

  We lay in bed just talking, mostly about things at 20th. I had known that Roland was leaving but had no idea that Sam Gaynor would be taking his place. I knew about Sam Gaynor from Don who also didn’t much care for the man.

  “It’s bad enough he’s an egocentric prick,” said Ben, “but the sonofabitch never stops talking. If verbosity was a crime, he’d be executed, unless they made the mistake of asking him if he had any last words, in which case the turn of the century would come around and he’d still be talking.”

  “Other than that, how’d it go today?”

  “You—” and he grabbed me.

  “No! Ben! I want to tell you about my day!”

  “And I want to hear.”

  “Then get your hand out of there! I can’t talk when you do that to me and, for God’s sake, file your nails.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Now, tell me. What kind of day did you have?”

  “Well, our numbers are getting better all the time. I almost think we can do ’em backwards. I only hope that, by the time we go on, we’re not so over-rehearsed that we do do it backwards.”

  “It’s this Saturday, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Am I allowed to be at the studio?”

  “I’ll sneak you in. I want you to be there in case I sprain an ankle or something.”

  “I don’t think I know it well enough to go on.”

  “You can try, can’t you?”

  “Oh, I’ll try anything.”

  And we made love again and fell asleep and it was wonderful because it felt like we were married. I don’t know why feeling married was so marvelous. I guess maybe it took some of the “evil” out of it. My upbringing again—as if marriage were so great. Judging from my family, marriage was exactly the wrong thing to inflict on a love affair.

  I fell asleep snuggled next to him and I dreamed I was the little flower that miraculously grew through the big rock. It was my room and my Ben. It was my time, Ginnie’s time. I had rhythm. I had music. I had my man. You know the rest.

  Deep in the night I was awakened by Ben, or rather, by the lack of him. I got up and walked quietly through the hall and peeked at him where he sat, in the living room, poring over one of the scripts he’d brought home. Somehow I knew not to disturb him and I went back to bed. I fell asleep again, more deeply than before. I had worked hard that day and the old bones, push
ing nineteen, really gave out. I didn’t wake up until almost eleven the next morning.

  We ran through the act eight times that day. I thought it was getting terribly automatic but Richie was pleased. It was exactly what he wanted. He felt that the emotionality would come later, when we did it to full orchestra. Florrie and I were too pooped to debate it with him. We hoped he knew what we were doing. Besides, it was his trio. When the day came that we’d call ourselves Florrie, Ginnie and a Guy, we’d debate. Until then, we’d dance.

  I got home early, bathed and fell asleep before I could even get dressed. I was awakened by a man lying on top of me whose face I couldn’t see because I was lying on my stomach. He was making love to me in a most beautiful manner, gently, delicately, slipping into me slowly like a small burglar, poking around tenderly so as not to trip the alarm, then withdrawing stealthily because why rouse the dog. Then, as if realizing that he hadn’t made a complete enough search, he made another illegal entry, and another, and another, each entry followed by a lingering and a withdrawal, all of it so magnificently unhurried and performed with such a jewel thief’s perfection that I really couldn’t tell whether or not I was being burgled or banged, rummaged or ravaged, filched or fucked.

  We ate dinner out—the Sixth Avenue Delicatessen because I felt like a pastrami omelet and Ben said I looked like one. We filled each other in on the day’s events.

  His second day was no better than his first. Maybe worse. Alan Morse had him rearranging the supply cabinets, running to the drugstore for prescriptions, and was generally making Ben fell sorry that he’d ever come back. At four o’clock he had gone to see Sam Gaynor’s film, The Color Is Red.

  “How was it?” I asked.

  “About what I’d expected. He showed the film while playing Stravinsky. Rite of Spring. The music was great. The film was an atrocity.”

  “Did he ask your opinion?”

  “Yes. I told him to try another color.”

  We laughed all the way home, figuring that Sam had about three thousand colors left that he might one day work into a film. But he had used up red. Red was dead. It would never again be the same. Nor would Sam’s attitude toward Ben be the same. Up until then it had been condescendingly tolerant, but following Ben’s candor it could only take a turn for the worse. Nor would Alan Morse be too thrilled that Ben had taken off without getting his permission.

  Ben didn’t seen to care. It would just be one more test for his union. I didn’t like his attitude because it was the same attitude that Don had manifested before chucking the whole thing and running west. Ben didn’t impress me as being a runner, but then, until he had run, neither had Don. I could see that, despite his flippancy, Ben was very concerned. I knew that if he indulged in that kind of depression too long I’d have to say something about it. But it was too soon for that and I was too scared. I hadn’t known Ben a week. Too soon, too soon. And too scared.

  And too premature a judgment as I discovered when we got back to the apartment. Because Ben had no intention of lying around and letting things happen while he did nothing more than complain. Yes, he was pissed off, and hurt, and disappointed, but no longer depressed. Now he was motivated. And it had to do with a script he’d been reading. With all the scripts.

  “They’re crap. They’re so god-awful, I don’t know how they get made. Yes, there’s Mankiewicz and Nunnally Johnson and Jean Negulesco and a few others, but the rest of ’em? They write camera angles and ‘cut to’ and ‘dissolve.’ They know how to indent, where to line up the dialogue passages, how to number their scenes, but what the hell is that? There’s no people, no stories.”

  I said the magic words. “Then why don’t you write a script?”

  He hated to be patronized. “You make it sound like I can’t.”

  “I didn’t mean it to. I meant it to sound like you can and you should.”

  He tossed the script at the wall. “It’d be a waste of time.”

  “Why?”

  “First of all, they don’t buy many original screenplays. Everything is an adaptation. A book or a play. Unless it’s appeared somewhere—in print or on a stage or on a men’s room wall—it just doesn’t get bought by the movies. Second of all, all the screenwriters are out in California, sitting around their pools. And third of all, even if they weren’t, how in Christ’s name could I ever get a job as an adapter? I’ve never written an adaptation. I’ve never written anything.”

  “Maybe you can find a book you like and adapt it yourself.”

  “On spec?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Well I thought about it. I mean, it’s occurred to me, but I think there’s something else that makes more sense.

  “What?”

  “Television. Just about everything on television is an original. A lot of New York guys are busting into it. Guys who’ve never written or directed before. Bob Mulligan—Jesus, he started out getting coffee for people. Sidney Lumet, there’s another director. They’re good and they’re not much older than I am. Somebody said ‘Hey, anybody know how to direct a TV show?’ and they raised their hands—and they were directors. A lot of writers are surfacing. I mean aside from Paddy Chayefsky and Reggie Rose and Rod Serling. A lot of good talent, guys who couldn’t get arrested in Hollywood. Tad Mosel. N. Richard Nash. Robert Alan Aurthur. Gore Vidal.”

  “I didn’t know you watched that much television.”

  “Neither did I. But evidently I did because all those names jump out at me and from before I ever went into the Army. Ginnie, what I have to do is watch the dramatic shows. See how they break down into scenes. See where the commercials go. See how the half-hour shows are constructed, too, as well as the one-hour shows. I don’t have to shoot right away for Studio One or Kraft, I could do a Lights Out or a Suspense. Most of them are derived from other things if not stolen outright. In a single volume of Edgar Allen Poe there’s probably enough material for a hundred television scripts.”

  “Okay, so what’s stopping you?”

  “What’s stopping me is I don’t have a fucking typewriter!”

  “Get one.”

  “What’s stopping me from getting one is, I don’t know how to type!”

  “Learn. Take a course.”

  “Learning to type while I’m learning to write?”

  “I can type. I learned in school. You can dictate to me.”

  “How many words can you do a minute?”

  “Three. If they’re small. How many can you dictate in a minute?”

  “Two. But big.”

  “Let’s give it a try.”

  “You’re on.”

  We got Ben a secondhand typewriter, which the man at the store swore once belonged to a first-rate writer whose name escaped him because the writer died in obscurity. The moral: Don’t ever sell this typewriter because it’s bad luck, and, if you do sell it, bring it back to Handleman’s East Side Typewriters where you’ll get a trade-in that’ll knock your shift-lock off.

  Handleman threw in, for good will, a little booklet titled Typing, Self-taught by Experts. Ben worked at it as diligently as he could, but between his job at 20th and his script-writing at home, there wasn’t much time left for learning how to type. So, after two days of trying to do it all, Ben abandoned the course, choosing to write in a cluttered longhand that I, later, would attempt to decipher and type up.

  We managed. It was slow but we managed. The important thing was to establish a routine. Equally as important was for Ben to hang in at the office, even if it meant taking a lot of guff. We needed the income of his job in case my career went ka-flooey. It wouldn’t be easy, especially for someone as volatile as Ben, but it had to be done—so it would be done.

  It wasn’t easy for me, either, because I had to do all the shopping and cooking and cleaning, three things I was as proficient at as flagpole-sitting. But I did it. Together we did it. He would come home at night, we’d make quiet love (cocktail-hour love, very chic), we’d have dinner, after which he’d go to his room whi
le I cleaned up. He’d quit around eleven and go to whichever bed I was in. We’d make love (midnight love, mucho racy), say nice things to each other, and go to sleep.

  He’d get up in the morning and go to work, catching coffee and a doughnut along the way. I’d get up at ten, stick some breakfast into me, and type up what he’d done in longhand the night before.

  His first script I thought just dandy, a little horror story about a sculptress who seduced men in her studio, poisoned them, and then made statues around their corpses that she’d then sell to whoever would buy them. That was Ben’s approach, too. He’d kill himself writing and then sell it to whoever would buy it. The play was titled “Come Into My Studio, Said the Sculptress to the Guy,” and when it was properly finished it would be simultaneously submitted to Lights Out, Danger, and Suspense—after which I went to rehearsal.

  Florrie was very concerned. “You look lousy.”

  “Do I?”

  “Yes. By fucking him you’re fucking us.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so.”

  “I do. In two days we go on. Richie’ll lift you once and your cunt’ll fall off.”

  “Ought to bring down the house.”

  “And what’ll you do for an encore? Throw your tits to Baltimore? Listen, kid, there’s too much at stake. We’ve worked too hard. We’ve got a chance to showcase our act that comes maybe once in a lifetime. Don’t fuck it up. Give him a couple hand jobs, all he wants. Give him head, but for Christ’s sake, save your body for us.”

  I guess Florrie was right, but I was so in love that I actually thought I was dancing better than ever before. Still, just to make sure, I told Ben of Florrie’s fears. He was very good about it and we agreed to curtail all sex until after the Pickering Trio went on. The agreement lasted one night, being torn into bits when what had started as a neighborly hand job turned into fellatio fabulo, followed by coitus colossus, followed by the alarm clock. We were addicts who could not go cold turkey. Whatever was to become of us?

  Ben came home Friday having somehow survived the week. He had had to apologize to Alan Morse for going AWOL to Sam Gaynor’s screening, and Morse humiliated Ben by chewing him out in front of Mickey and Dora as if he were a kid who had wet his bed. But Ben took it. As to Sam Gaynor, that sonofabitch was really giving it to Ben just for Ben’s being honest about his fucking home movie. But Ben hung in, telling me (oh, so romantically) that it was easy for him to eat crow when he knew he could come home and eat me.