by Paula Fox
She could make out his grin even in the dark.
“La Siciliana,” he said when she remained silent, then in a melancholy voice, “Your father never writes me, never calls. He’s afraid of me, you see. It’s too bad about you, but he always was the slave of grown-up women—and how they hated him for it! When your mother died, he was fair game. He would have left her in the long run, I fear. She didn’t beat him sufficiently. She was a pale thing, from a nice Irish Protestant gang, not the ghastly mad Catholic sort at all.”
“You knew her well? I didn’t know you’d known Tony so long.”
“Oh, hardly. She was not knowable, being so modest and still and nearly dying at the sight of a human face.”
“I might have liked her.”
“Like?” he cried. “Oh, no! I like my old sweaters and my golf clubs. But not my children. Nor they me. Nor my dead mother and my brothers. Like is no word for such things. It’s all passions…”
“The water’s coming up,” she said, one of her feet slipping forward in the wet. He rose silently and stood behind her. There was a tinge of gray in the black sky. “I suppose you don’t have a watch?” he asked. “Well, no matter. We’ll get that gang and take you home.”
They went back to the shiphouse, passing other houses, dark, silent, facing the sea. As they mounted the steps of the deck, they saw through the windows that the room was almost empty. A man slept on the floor, his mouth open; a woman lay curled up on a wicker couch, near her shoe protruded the head of a dachshund, resting on his paws. But upright and awake in a corner chair, a half-filled glass in one hand, sat Karin.
Through the window, her eyes met theirs.
“She won’t make it here,” Jim muttered. “She can’t dissemble her greed, and she has no style at all. She’s just a little whore.”
The girl was strangely still as though listening to an absorbing account. A whore?
Jim opened the door into a silence broken only by a low crackling sound which, Annie saw as she moved toward the back door, came from eggs frying on a stove. Looking down at them, a fork in one hand, was a thickset man in white tennis shorts. Annie recognized the man from the bedroom. Evidently he was hungry; there were four eggs in the pan.
“So long, Jack,” said Jim over his shoulder. The man waved the fork, his unwavering glance fixed upon his food.
The driver was asleep in the back of his taxi. Jim shook him gently. The dark, runty little face lit up with a smile of expectancy. Jim laughed softly. “The party’s over…”
They drove south toward a great expanse of pale-gray sky which gradually turned into the penetrating blue of a California morning. The driver smoked a bent cigarette and said he’d had a fine time of it, seeing how the other half lived.
Karin lived in a bungalow off Melrose which, she said, she shared with two other girls. She asked Annie for her address. Just before she slipped out of the taxi, she looked back at Jim. “Well, Herr Jim, I suppose I must thank you for this Hollywood, California, evening. And you, Annie, I will hope to see again.” She walked sedately up the cement walk to her door.
“A bad girl,” Jim said. “But smart. She knew I’d not help her! Oh, I don’t feel good!” he said, sighing, and fell back against the seat. He looked suddenly old. Then he opened his eyes. “It’s all right, I’ve not really left you…”
Annie saw the familiar Model T parked near her apartment house. It was, unexpectedly, a welcome sight. Just before she got out, Jim reached into his pocket and took out some bills which he pushed into her hand, opening her closed fingers one by one with a last flicker of energy. “I’d give you more,” he said, smiling, “but our friend up front gets my fortune for tonight.” His eyes closed, his jaw went slack. The driver assured her, “I’ll get him home. I’m used to them…” Next to him, on the front seat, sat the stuffed bear from Venice Park.
The air was sweet with the first freshness of the new day. Annie peered in through the window of the Model T. Johnnie Bliss was lying on the back seat on his rat’s nest of things, his stocking feet sticking up over the front seat. He was snoring softly. She leaned against the car, looking around at the palmettos, the silent houses, the shaded windows of her apartment house, the wide heavens. It had been a long long day. She’d been to the sea in the morning and then at night, to that same coastline along which Walter’s ship was even now making its way. She thought of Max Shore and the woman with the white gloves. Their meeting, or whatever it was they had been going to, must be long over.
“My God!” Johnnie’s cross voice broke into the stillness. “I thought you’d never come back! I suppose you’ve been out catting around, you sly thing! Oh, oh! My back is broken in three places.”
When they reached Annie’s room, they counted the money Jim had given her, thirty-five dollars. All was silent in Germany next door. She told Johnnie little fragments of the evening, but he showed no special interest. He’d been to all those parties, he commented, and better ones than she’d ever see. Then she pulled down the wall bed while he yawned and scratched his backside, complaining about the spools of thread that he’d been sleeping on.
They both lay down, fully dressed, too tired to take off anything except shoes and jackets, he with his head at the foot of the bed, she with her head on a pillow. He was asleep at once. In the light that filtered through the gray window shade, she looked at the heavy, elderly man. A faint rancid smell of perspiration and cigarette smoke emanated from his clothes. She tried to visualize him as a young film star, a lover with a profile to cherish. She thought she heard a scrabble of dog claws against the wall from the next room. But then, comforted by Johnnie’s presence, she too fell into a deep sleep.
Chapter 6
“The dog may like it,” Johnnie Bliss said irritably. “You could do a lot worse than this place.” He looked with disgust at the shoe in his hand. “Look at that! I’ll be walking around in newspapers yet. I’m too mortified to even take these things in to a shoemaker.” He pulled the shoe over his foot, groaning with the effort of leaning over.
“Coming back here at night, it’s like being punished,” she said. She dried her face and hands and went to the window. A breeze rustled the window shade.
“You’re a boob, Annie. Some absolute stranger tells you to call another stranger, and you think you’ve got a swank suite to move into. What if the rent is five times what it is here? What are you doing with your suitcase open? You haven’t even called the man yet!”
“It’s not only the dog—it’s the German grunting and crying all night. And these crazy old people who live here.”
“Listen, my dear, with the money we have, that’s our crowd you’re being so hoity-toity about.” He giggled.
Annie split open a brown paper sack and emptied her handbag over it. Shreds of tobacco and a dozen or so pennies fell on the paper along with a New Jersey bus timetable and a square piece of cardboard to which had been stapled a dozen small vials of the world’s greatest perfumes Annie had bought in the five-and-ten. She sniffed at the card.
“I’m going out to call that actor. Where’s Sycamore Street?” she asked.
“Up by Grauman’s,” Johnnie answered, snatching the perfume samples from her hand. He uncorked one of the miniature bottles and rubbed the entire contents over his chin. “What do you intend to pay the rent with? Faith?” he asked.
He looked grimy and unlovely sitting there on the mussed bed. She understood that he liked the way things were; he didn’t want her to move.
She was wearing an old white shirt of Walter’s and a pair of Levi’s he’d bought for her at a seamen’s supply shop in New York. She sat down next to Johnnie to put on her sneakers.
“Bring back something to eat, will you?” he asked.
“I have to find another room before Walter comes,” she said.
“Walter! Some sailor whistles and you fall down all in a heap!”
“He’s not some sailor. He’s an actor and a playwright.”
“I know actors. You’d
be better off with a sailor.”
They wrangled while she made the bed and Johnnie shaved over the sink with the razor he carried in the pocket of his jacket.
She went off to the drugstore to call Jake Cranford. A woman with a speech defect answered the phone; it seemed to have affected her hearing also, for Annie had to repeat Cranford’s name several times. All at once a bell clanged loudly, drowning out the woman’s voice. There was a momentary silence, then a man said, “Yeah? Jake Cranford here.”
“Mr. Cranford, I met Max Shore yesterday. He said you were giving up your room. He said I might be able to rent it.”
“Not for two weeks I’m not, I don’t think. Who are you?”
“Annie Gianfala,” she said. “Well, do you think I could come and look at it anyhow?”
“Right! Any time.”
“Today?”
There was a deep groan, a whispered “Just a minute.” Had he hung up?
“Mr. Cranford?”
“I let my prescription run out,” his voice came back strongly. “I’m all right now. I’ve got colitis.”
“I’m sorry to call when you’re sick.”
“Never mind. I’m always sick. Yes, come today, after five, all right? The room isn’t bad.”
“I’ll be there then.”
He gave her the house number. “There’s one thing though,” he added. “The place is full of cats. That’s a drawback. It can smell pretty bad.”
“As long as nobody beats them…”
“What?”
“I hope you feel better soon.”
“Never!” he said gaily.
She bought a pack of cigarettes, some oranges and a loaf of bread at a grocer’s. After they had eaten, Johnnie said he had some sewing to pick up from the wardrobe department. She drove out to Paramount Studios with him and waited in the car while he went to fetch it. Outside the gates, on a triangular patch of wiry grass, sat a canvas tepee. In front of the tent flap, spread out on a wooden camp chair, socks and a man’s undershorts were drying in the sunlight. As Annie looked at the tepee wonderingly, the tent flap was pushed aside and a young man emerged wearing cowboy boots, tight jeans and a plaid shirt. With a flourish, he placed a ten-gallon hat on his big head. He felt the underwear, shook his head, then did some fast kneebends. Not one of the people passing back and forth through the studio gates gave him so much as a glance. Johnnie returned after a few minutes clasping a box tied with a string.
“Thank God for old lovers,” he said, flinging the box into the back seat. As they drove away, she asked him if he had noticed the cowboy. “Oh, he’s been there for months,” he said. “He thinks he’ll break them down someday. But movie people are funny. He’s trying too hard and they’re used to freaks. They only get interested if you ignore them. Then they feel insulted and have to give you something to do just to save face.”
“But how does he live?”
“Oh, Annie, how do I live? Maybe he’s a hustler. Maybe he saved up a little money before he pitched that tent. Maybe he eats babies. What’s that address on Sycamore? Listen, could you buy a little gas for this poor old biddy? Now that you’re so rich!”
She opened a little cloth change purse and gave him a five-dollar bill. “My God! You’re keeping me!” he said.
“If you drop me off now, I’ll be too early.”
“Well, dear, you’ll just have to be too early.”
He’s up to something, she thought. He glanced at her quickly as though aware of her suspicion. He pursed up his lips. She braced herself for one of his fits of obscene reminiscence. But he merely smiled.
“I’m hungry. Let’s go eat something at the Greek’s.”
He said, “I won’t be able to keep my mind on food with all those young caddies bending over the ski-ball game.”
He parked near the Greyhound station on Cahuenga and they went into a small restaurant owned by a hugely fat, bald Greek. The place was deserted at this time of the afternoon and no one was bending over the ski-ball game near the bar. The Greek brought them minute steaks, and they ate with passionate absorption. Annie thought if she could just have three meals a day, she’d be willing to sleep on the sidewalk.
Just as they were leaving, a prosperous-looking, middle-aged man with a shaggy mop of red hair walked in. The Greek laughed and clapped his hands over his ears. The man gave him a sly wink and went to the jukebox and made his selection. Annie peered curiously over his shoulder and saw he had pressed the button for a record called Finlandia. As it began to play, the red-headed man hid his face in his hands and swayed back and forth as though grief-stricken. The Greek shouted, “Why you play that goddamn thing alla time. I’m going to throw that record out. Whyn’t you go back to Finland, for crissake?” He winked at Annie and shrugged his shoulders.
Johnnie dropped her off in front of a ramshackle shingled house bulging with oriel windows. Several cats lay on the steps leading to the wide porch like merchandise on shelves, asleep in the late-afternoon sunlight.
“Listen, darling,” Johnnie said. “Don’t give in to impulse. Don’t just take the room because it’s available. I know you and men! I think you’d lay down on a third rail even if it was me asking you to. Don’t be so available yourself!”
Annie walked up the steps, over the cats, through the open front door into a dim hallway that smelled of dust and cat urine and age-soured wood. She heard the noisy flush of a toilet somewhere up the stairs. An elderly woman limped toward her from a room leading off the hall and stood silently, looking at her.
“You wanted something?” she asked at last, her voice shaped into a squeak by a mouth so small it looked as though it been stitched solidly at either end.
“Mr. Cranford.”
“Mr. Cranford,” repeated the woman, and shook her head as though she’d hoped for better news. “Go on up, then. He’s on the third floor, first door as you pass the clock.”
A cat padded down the stairs. Except for the black-painted doors, everything in the house, wallpaper, furniture, ceilings, was faded brown or gray. Cats came out of corners, from beneath tables, ignoring Annie’s presence, in search of patches of warmth beneath the dusty windows.
She passed a grandfather clock, its pendulum stilled, and knocked on the door to its right. She heard the sound of bedsprings, then footsteps. Next to the door she read a hand-lettered sign: “I won’t ring the bell more than once for your phone calls, tenants.”
The door opened, and she gazed into the hazel eyes of a very young man. His light-brown hair, wavy, as insubstantial-looking as loose feathers, was combed back from a wide, unlined forehead.
“Mr. Cranford?”
“Yes. You Max’s friend?”
She nodded; she’d explain that later if she had to. He stood aside to let her pass. The room, compared with her own, was spacious. Three large windows looked out on an old house that was the twin of the one she was in. Across the bed—a real bed with two pillows stacked up on one side—was a bright afghan throw. There were two wicker armchairs, several small worn rugs on the floor, and a table with a colored glass lampshade.
“It’s a nice room,” she said, staring at the afghan.
“My mother sent me that blanket,” he said. “I’d have to take that with me but everything else stays. It’s pretty quiet here except when things start popping at old Ivan’s.” He pointed toward a shadeless window in the house across the way. Annie looked straight into the other room. Piles of manuscript lay heaped up on the floor, and a number of chairs were arranged in a circle as though for a meeting.
“When you can’t sleep,” Jake Cranford was saying, “it’s as good as a movie, watching those crazy people over there.” He waved her to a chair. “I’d offer you a cigarette but I’m broke at the moment.”
Annie gave him her pack. He took a small frying pan from a shelf over a hot plate and placed it on the floor in front of her. “An ashtray,” he said.
She puzzled over what kind of acting parts he could possibly get. He looked so f
rail; his expression was obliging and bland. But when she looked at his hands, she saw they were worn and hard as though he’d done physical labor with them.
“Where are you living now?”
“Out on Hollywood Boulevard, near Los Angeles,” she answered. “The room is bad but that’s not the trouble. It’s the man who beats his dog. He’s right next to me, and the walls are so thin.”
He made no comment, only continued to look at her with calm eyes. “This place is six bucks a week,” he said. “You’re not supposed to have cooking privileges but you can, because of Mrs. Corrigan’s cats. I mean, since the tenants have to put up with her cats, we get to cheat a little. It’s a kind of bargain.”
Her spirits lifted. The room was two dollars less than she was paying now. Walter would be pleased with her.
“I’d love to have it,” she said.
“Why not? But you know, it’ll be three weeks or so.”
“I thought you said two—”
“Since I talked to you, my agent called. He’s got something for me in some musical about New Orleans. That’s the way it goes. You never know.”
Annie was silent. Perhaps she could sleep in Johnnie’s car for the week. Then when Walter came, maybe he would do something about the man and the dog.
“I don’t have my own agent, really,” Cranford said, smiling. “That sounded important, didn’t it? It’s only an agency I’m registered with. They always stick me in the boys’ chorus lines, in the back, because I’m tall.”
“Mr. Shore said you were going to New York. Is that where you’re from?”
“Oh, no…my home is just outside of Phoenix. My folks have a little ranch. Well, it’s a farm really. We just call it a ranch. I thought of going east, thought I might do better in the theater. Only if there’s a war, I suppose I’ll go into the army. Actually, I don’t have much hope about the theater. Any job will do, now. I don’t want to be in Arizona or Ohio. I only like coasts.”
“You like the ocean?”
“No, no. I just don’t like being inside the country, you know? I want to be on the very edge! How old are you?”