I touched Richie’s arm and he propped himself up. “You okay?” he asked.
“It’s my birthday.”
“Happy birthday.”
“I’m nineteen.”
“Happens to everyone. You’ll get over it.”
“Richie?”
“Yeah?”
“Will you make love to me? It’s my birthday and—I need a present.”
“You know, I’ve always wanted to. Make love to you.”
“Here’s your chance.”
“I don’t think so.”
“No?”
“Piss-poor timing, Ginnie. Right now you’re too—”
“I really need a present, Richie.” I found him in the dark, erect before I’d even gotten there.
“Jesus.”
“Richie?”
“I’m only human, Ginnie.”
“I know. And you need a present, too. It’s been such a lousy twenty-four hours. Let’s give each other a present, Richie. No strings attached. Let’s just be two very nice, very hurt people who need a little present. Please, Richie. Please?”
“Happy birthday, Ginnie.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Ben
1952
There were no words. Not for me. What had she said? Ginnie was her daughter? Her daughter?
Maggie kept talking, so unsettled that she had to put her cigarette aside. “What the hell she’s doing knocking on my door in the middle of the night—I thought she was in some girl’s school in New England somewhere. What was that nonsense with the chambermaid and the towels? How did she know I was here?”
“She didn’t know you were here. She knew I was here.” She looked at me, understandably confused. “I must’ve written the hotel room number on some pad, and she found it. Only thing is, she’s supposed to be in Pittsburgh. Oh, shit, Maggie—Ginnie and I have been living together.”
My announcement should have stopped her cold. It didn’t. It just seemed to fortify her. “I told you I had children. Ginnie’s the youngest. Must be eighteen—no—nineteen, by now. And isn’t she pretty? She used to be such a scrawny little thing. We could almost carry her around in the glove compartment of the car. My daughter and your girlfriend—one and the same. How baroque.”
I started to gather my clothes, determined to keep my head because, wherever Ginnie had gone, it was a good bet that she had lost hers. “I’d better go after her. Try to explain.”
“Her mother jerking-off her boyfriend—right in her face. Vive la France. How are you going to explain that?”
“Well, I think I’ll start out with the truth and work up. Right now, I just hope she’s all right.” I glanced over at her as I slipped into my trousers. She seemed to be shoring up, getting back into control. “Doesn’t any of this bother you?”
“I’m not going to let it. I made my decision—my move—a few years ago, knowing full well that—”
“That was your daughter running off into the night! Aren’t you worried about her?”
“Yes. Yes, I am, but the terrible truth is, she’s your worry, not mine. I can’t do anything about it. You can. That is to say, my friend, that my image in her eyes—if it ever was good—has now had the crap kicked out of it forever. Whereas yours, yours still has a shot. How long have you been living with her? Is she good in bed? Her mother, I hear, will fuck anything that moves. And her father’s a faggot only he doesn’t know it yet. When he finds that out, anything can happen.”
“Maggie, you are some cold cookie.”
It seemed for a moment that she might care to protest that designation. But she let it slide by. “I guess you won’t want to be seeing me again.” Her hand flew up, as if to stop traffic. “Don’t say anything. Just—leave it at that.”
“Come on, Maggie. I never meant anything to you.”
“Past tense already.”
I was shouting at her. “Why do you demean yourself like you do? Why do you fuck around so indiscriminately?”
“Tell me about Ginnie. What does she do?”
“She is a brilliant goddamn dancer!”
“Ah. Of course. The Ugly Duckling to the Dying Swan. I should have known.”
“I’ve got to go. Your daughter may be lying under a car somewhere.”
“Yes. She’s going to need you.”
“Maybe she needs her mother.”
“She never had one.” She placed her arm through mine and walked me to the door, as if we were strolling in the Easter parade, except that my clothes were askew and hers were on the floor.
She had the door opened and kissed me on the cheek. “Take care of my little girl, Ben. It pleases me that she has such good taste. Now get out of here.”
And I was standing in the hallway looking at the closed door, about as confounded as I’d ever been in my young and idiotic life.
I cabbed immediately to the apartment. Cabs are the red corpuscles in New York’s bloodstream. They carry energy from one part of the city to the next. Without them the city dies. With them the city clots. Choose your poison. I didn’t expect Ginnie to be in the apartment, but that was the only place I knew to go to. I found her bag in my room, where she’d left it, still locked, the airline luggage sticker still on it.
Over on the table, next to the phone, I saw my scribble: “St. Regis Hotel. Room 735.” In the ashtray beside it, three snuffed-out cigarettes—Ginnie’s brand, Ginnie’s lipstick on them. I wish she’d have thought a carton’s worth before knocking on that hotel room door. I was becoming quite the detective. All I had to figure out was where she had gone at half past midnight and where she was then at well past one.
I didn’t care to start telephoning people at that hour so I just lay down and tried to think it all through. If Ginnie was back from Pittsburgh, then so were Florrie and Richie. And flying from the St. Regis as she did, Ginnie could only have gone to Florrie, unless, of course, Florrie had earlier gone directly to Monty. And if Florrie had gone to Monty, would she have found him with her mother? After all, if Oedipus slept with Jocasta, could Betty Boop and Pope Pius be far behind?
There was nothing for me to do with the rest of the night but be miserable, and I was determined to do that without any reliance on the bottle. I lay on my bed in that half-sleep—half thinking, half dreaming. Maggie and Ginnie, mother and daughter. Maggie was right, it was baroque. And what if Maggie hadn’t called that night? What if she had never called at all, never again? Would Ginnie and I have ever learned that I had once been sleeping with her mother? Would I one day, on our tenth anniversary, have told her of this woman, this “Maggie”? And would we then have figured the rest of it out for ourselves? And how would we have reacted to the news so many years after the fact? Would we have laughed and attributed it to life? Or would we have been mutually shocked, revulsed, destroyed, and would we have argued in front of the kids?
The next thing to cross my mind was the similarity of the two ladies. Now that I knew of their kinship, those resemblances fairly jumped up and punched me in the brain. Only the twenty or so years between them had masked them. And suddenly I could see how Ginnie, older, and Maggie, younger, could easily have passed for sisters. The smile. The set of the head upon the delicate neck. The lithe walk. The whacky wit. And the way they made love—the all-out passion combined with the offbeat humor. How many stories I had heard of young men who had bedded both a mother and a daughter, lascivious stories, exaggerations and downright lies. But there it was, having happened to me, only I wasn’t laughing, and I didn’t feel like bragging. I was only staggered and shaken, and worried for Ginnie wherever she was in the dark.
And if I was shocked at the sight of her, imagine her surprise at the sight of me and Maggie, the pair of us like lewd Cranachs cavorting in a Cruikshank alley. Even if I were to find Ginnie, how does one explain the inexplicable or apologize for the unforgivable? Easier to take to the moon. Better to go out the window.
Morning came. I had watched it every inch of the way. Would it be a good day? Would it g
ive me answers and help me find my love? It was five A.M. and it no longer paid to try to coax any sleep from the little time till dawn. I had yet to touch Ginnie’s bag, allowing it to stand just where she had left it, as if it might suddenly open and out she’d dance, singing “Oh, You Beautiful Doll” while spraying me with a Thompson submachine gun. I walked around it respectfully, knowing that I had no right to touch it. I had no right to touch anything of Ginnie’s and less right to touch Ginnie herself.
Guilt, my old friend, had come to town and I was the first one he called. He had only wanted to say hello, but while I was telling him that I was away for the weekend, the sonofabitch had set up house in my head, putting his feet up on my conscience and smoking my best cigars.
“Ignorance of the law is no excuse,” he said imperiously. “The fact that you did not know Margaret to be mother to Virginia and Virginia to be daughter to same does not mitigate against the jurisprudence involved; i.e., you fucked them both, which is a double carnal sin with a half-twist, for which you must hang by your cock until dead, and may the Lord have mercy on your appeal.”
I got into the shower and upchucked therein, and the coffee would not stay down, and the mouthwash was as effective as spit in the ocean. I paced, I sat, I smoked, I conjured, all the while watching the hands of the clock. And at seven thirty A.M., I called Barry Nadler at his home.
He filled me in on what had happened in Pittsburgh, that Florrie was still there but that Ginnie should be with me because that’s where Richie and he had dropped her. Worried, he gave me Richie’s phone number.
Richie told pretty much the same story. Also concerned, he said he’d call me if Ginnie either showed up or called him.
I called Maggie at the St. Regis. Surprise. She had checked out almost as soon as I left her—at two A.M. So long, Maggie, don’t suck any wooden cocks.
I had no one else to call.
My feeling of helplessness was overwhelming, burying me. Then I thought to call the various YWCA’s. Ginnie Maitland? No, nobody by that name. None of them had heard of her. Nor had the Barbizon or thirteen randomly selected hotels. Wherever Ginnie was was unknown to me. I could only hope that she was well and safe. If she was still in New York, I’d find her. If she had left New York—I dared not wrestle with that alternative.
I walked to work. It took almost an hour and a half. Ginnie was the most vital thing in my life. If I were to establish priorities, Ginnie would be first, my play second, my job a distant third, breathing an out-of-sight fourth.
I was late getting to the office and went directly in to see Buddy Connors. He smiled at me and I wondered how such a boob, as nice as he was, could ever hold down such a job without worrying that the law might one day catch up with him. A few months later I found out that Buddy had married Skouras’s niece, had converted to Greek Orthodox, and was safe from all travail for the remainder of his days. Good boy, Buddy. If you can’t do it with talent, do it with your cock. And wasn’t it Napoleon who said that the best way to the boss’s stomach is through his niece’s vagina? Maybe it was Norman Thomas.
I told Buddy that, with my play going into rehearsal, I’d like to take a couple weeks leave of absence—without pay, of course. Or, if that couldn’t be arranged, I’d take whatever vacation time I had coming; or sick leave; or time off.
Buddy said it would be fine, that he’d take care of it. He slapped me on the back and wished me well. I liked Buddy Connors. He knew where it was at. Unlike so many others who had married into wealth and power only to become all-time pricks, Buddy simply relaxed, serviced his wife, and became a friend to all mankind. Buddy. He was well nicknamed.
I told Mickey and Dora that I’d be out for two weeks. Mickey wished me well and Dora blew her nose, which meant the same thing, only louder.
I went in to tell Gruber but he was in London so I told Pat Jarvas to tell him. She thawed a little and wished me luck, running her tongue around her lips then smacking them as though she had just eaten something delicious. One thing about Pat Jarvas, she let you know just where you stood with her. In my case, I stood with my belt buckle against her forehead. All I had to do was tug her earlobe and heaven was mine.
I went over to the Fraternal Clubhouse on West Forty-eighth Street where they were holding readings for “Tony”—in the Brandeis Room—from eleven A.M. to six P.M. As the author I had been sent a mimeographed schedule, though I was not personally invited. If Harvey Epstein was insisting on my presence, he certainly wasn’t insisting to me. I went anyway, feeling that I would not get kicked out if I showed up unannounced.
I knew no one there other than Harvey Epstein and his baggy sweater and his slidey eyeglasses. He didn’t seem to recognize me so I didn’t bother to go over and say hello. Besides, he seemed very busy and I didn’t know what the protocol was. Certainly, as uninformed on the matter as I was, I was not of a mind to interrupt the director with a “Hi, Harvey, baby, how goes it, kiddo, whaddya say?”
I had not been consulted about casting and it was just as well, as I never would have agreed to any of the all-male cast, even if it meant the play’s not being done. For the role of Tony they had come up with a thin, dark fellow who looked about as physical as Margaret O’Brien. For Johnny they had a heavy, freckle-faced redhead. For me, a handsome aryan who I’d have died to look like—but not in my play. For Holdoffer they got some kind of scar-faced club fighter whose nose was in his ear. And so on and so forth, with nobody looking at all the way I had described them. Nor did any of them speak their lines as I had heard them in my head when setting them down on paper. The part of Deyo was played by a chubby, forty-year-old, balding homosexual, with a lisp. Kuyper was played by a wavy-haired twenty-year-old with an even lispier lisp. All of the names, with the exception of Tony, had been changed, and it seemed to me that I should go the necessary one step further and change the name of the playwright.
The imminent death of my play, coming so closely on the heels of the disappearance of Ginnie, raised a fury of frustration in me so great that on the first break I practically leapt at Epstein and herded his nonbody into a corner.
“That’s not my play,” I said.
“Swell,” he said, “but who are you?”
“The fucking author!”
“Oh,” he said, catching on quick, and he took me into another room, smaller, with urinals. “Listen, kid, I know it must look and sound awful to you, but—”
“It looks and sounds disastrous!”
“It’s only the first reading.”
“The casting is ridiculous! It’s all wrong!”
He stiffened and his back arched. “That may be. But I’m the director and that’s the way I see them.”
“Each character was carefully and clearly described—”
“Look, you want to stay for the reading? Fine. But just stay the fuck out of the way, okay? I’ve got ten days to get your masterpiece on and I don’t have any time to pander to your ego.”
“I’ll take the play off.”
“You can’t. It belongs to Kemper and NBC. Now you either sit down and behave yourself or don’t hang around. I’ve got enough trouble with actors without having to explain myself to writers.”
“You’ve got two guys so queer—there’s no subtlety! Where’s the subtlety? They lisp! The both of them! They get too near the camera and it’s gonna look like we’re shooting the whole thing under water!”
“That’s the way they see it, and that’s the way they want to read it. When the time comes, I’ll bring ’em down.”
“With what, a torpedo? They’ve got speech impediments!”
He pushed his way around me, catching his eyeglasses as they skied right off his nose. “I’ve got no time for this bullshit. If you create any disturbance, I’ll have you thrown out. Excuse me.”
Epstein returned to the Ping-Pong table; his serve. He called the cast to order and they resumed reading, only worse than before. And all through it he never said a word, never made a suggestion or gave a direction. I
knew I was in deep and grievous trouble and that there was nothing I could do about it. I left, as unnoticed as I had entered. Maybe I could change my name. Better still, maybe I could get hit by a car—a glancing blow. Not fatal, just enough to bring about total amnesia.
I went to a drugstore and called Barry Nadler. If Richie was working on getting a replacement for Florrie, Barry would know about it. He would also know where Ginnie was.
He knew but he wasn’t telling me.
“Listen, Barry, regardless of what you’ve heard, I still want to know where Ginnie is.”
“I haven’t heard anything, except—she don’t want you to know where she is. So what can I do?”
“Is she all right?”
“Yes. Though I got a feeling, we’d all be better off if she broke the ankle and Florrie came home.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
“She’s in New York, yes?”
“Somewhere. Yes. They’re looking for another girl. The quicker they find one, the sooner they’re back in business.”
“Barry, if you know where she’s staying, you have to tell me. I have to see her.”
“I don’t know where she’s staying. They don’t tell me either.”
“Barry, please. Does Richie know where she’s staying? He has to know, damn it! He has to know where to call her!”
“So ask him. I’m not Information.”
“Okay, I will.”
“Listen, before you hang up, what’s with the play?”
“The play stinks!”
I called Richie. No answer. I called my own apartment on the chance Ginnie might have gone back. No answer. I went to see a movie. Halfway through it it dawned on me: If Richie and Ginnie were auditioning girls, they’d have to be working in a rehearsal studio somewhere. I didn’t know them all, but I knew most of the studios they used.
There Should Have Been Castles Page 36