by Paula Fox
Kuyper shrugged.
“So you’re a foreigner, like me,” said Gunther to Annie. Regretfully, she shook her head; it was pleasant to be included in a group, even a group of two.
Israel Kuyper looked at her impersonally. “Are you in the industry?” he asked.
Wildener barked with laughter. “The industry! Oh, Israel, you’ve sold out and not even been bought yet! No, she’s not in the industry. She’s with Walter.” He looked across the room at Walter. “He wasn’t a good actor, you know. Too much self-drama. He got into hideously knotted relationships with people in authority. Israel, do you remember the time he lost his voice because he hated the director so much? He’s a pretty fellow. Oh, this country …it takes boobs and stirs them all up with poetic fancies. Then they’re worth nothing, nothing!” Wildener seemed really angry for a moment. Israel drifted back to the piano. He was standing over the keyboard, his fingers resting lightly on them. “He wants someone to ask him to play,” whispered Wildener. “But no one will.”
“What do you teach?” she asked him.
“For the moment, I’m supposed to be teaching German. They’ll probably ban it from the universities pretty soon. I have no qualifications for anything else. Actually, I teach more than that. Those students—they can’t learn German anyhow, so we talk about the Depression and French literature and even the movies—anything to keep them from going to sleep.”
“But weren’t you an actor?”
“No, no. Never. I wrote a play and it was produced and then I met these types here. Then Lowe—who used to be Murray Gold —wrote and told me to come out. He’s a kind fellow. For an actor, extraordinarily kind. He knew I was without a cent and he mailed me a money order with the fare. For all his narcissism, he thinks well of other professions. Especially writing. I find that endearing in an actor. Once here, I got a teaching position. Now I’m hoping nothing happens, no war, no earthquakes, let the stupid sunlight bathe me…It is the first time in many years I have had money coming in regularly, a place to put my books, my records, a basin in which to wash my socks, and socks to wash. My dearest friend back east has lost his senses as a result of having had no steady work for a dozen years. He’s now writing continuity for comic books and has had the horrible idea of writing Hamlet in modern-day slang. Poor Fishbein! But, of course, there will be a war. And an earthquake too, probably.”
Israel Kuyper had begun to play softly. Annie lifted aside the drapes. She saw the glimmer of a swimming pool near a grove of trees. The branches of the trees were swaying. There must be a wind blowing. She had a momentary sense of being in her own dream.
“You know that joke,” Wildener was saying, “about a Communist get-together. ‘You bring the gin, I’ll bring the Negro.’”
“I heard that same joke in New York,” Annie said in surprise. Wildener laughed heartily. But Natasha had heard him.
“That’s a very bad joke, Gunther,” she said severely. “I do not like chauvinism. It is very serious. It is an attack on the Communist party, on Negroes, and it is nasty bourgeois sneering of the lowest order!”
Gunther bowed. “You lack humor, Nat,” he said. “But I suppose no revolutionary can afford it.”
Lowe and Lottie called everyone into a large kitchen where they all sat around a marble table and were served coffee and black bread and cheese. “I’m sorry there isn’t more bread,” Lottie apologized. “But Murray forgot…”
Kuyper commented that he hadn’t thought Hollywood was civilized enough to have such amenities as black bread, and Gunther remarked, “The trouble with Jews is they are so hopelessly parochial.”
“That makes two anti-Semites among us,” Lowe said. “We are a little microcosm, aren’t we, Annie?” He smiled at her with his whole face. Kuyper told a long story about the machinations of some Trotskyist screenwriter who was keeping Communist writers from getting assignments. “What abominations they are!” he said.
“What is a narcissism?” she asked Walter when they’d gotten back to their room.
He looked at her gravely, then sat her down on the bed.
“Narcissus was a boy,” he whispered. “And he wouldn’t love anyone. So the gods punished him by making him fall in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. But whenever he reached out to embrace his image, it disappeared, and so he began to die of this awful love.”
She looked at him, then impulsively flung her arms around his neck and kissed him. “And a Trotskyite?”
“Same thing,” he murmured.
“Come on.”
“That’s too long to tell. We’ll talk about it later.”
“Lottie didn’t like me. But she likes you.”
“The only person she cares about is Murray. Anyhow,” he added brutally, “she wouldn’t be interested in someone like you.”
Stung, Annie got up. “You were phony with her,” she said. “All that significant silent hugging. And she’s phony too, that grim beauty and talking about bread…everyone there was putting on an act.”
“Everyone everywhere puts on an act.”
“I don’t!” she cried. “I’m natural.”
“That’s your act,” he said, grinning and pulling off his shirt.
“It isn’t an act.”
“Yes, it is, the biggest act of all.” He grabbed her and hugged her. “My Annie is the biggest phony of them all!”
Over his shoulder she caught sight of Walter’s square black seaman’s wallet on the bed, its link chain hidden in a fold of sheet. She’d looked through it that morning while he’d been closeted in the toilet, and found a faded brown picture of a young girl in a bathing suit leaning against a tree trunk, a vapid smile on her face. Another penny of Walter’s?
The following evening, she came home to find him drunk, crouched in the chair, his legs drawn up, a bottle of whiskey on the floor. She felt an inexpressible resentment, and dread, too. Walter, drunk, played cruel games with her. Her job had taken an unexpected turn. The store manager, a man of dark moods, apparently caused by his firm expectation of insubordinate behavior from his salesladies, had taken special measures with Annie, calling her out of the quiet, dead dark of the basement to set her on a new task, taking her from it before it was completed, setting her something else to do, interrupting that in turn, and so on until Annie was ready to scream with frustration. Every time she looked up, the manager’s face was turned toward her, swollen, lipless, and implacably stupid. She had to get some suitable clothes; the Los Angeles streets shimmered in the heat, the air was dense with dust. She sweltered in the tweed suit, the crape dress was wrinkled and stained with perspiration. The women in the store looked at her disapprovingly and one had said, “You ought to buy yourself some little blouses and skirts—you don’t want to look worse than our customers.”
And here was Walter, drunk, but clean and fresh and mean. “Annie, I’ve got a funny story.”
She let her pocketbook drop to the floor.
“I want to wash up,” she said coldly.
He gave her a quizzical look, which, for some reason, made her feel a little better.
As she walked to the basin, she saw a letter addressed to Walter lying on the three-legged table. He came to stand behind her. She rinsed the soap from her face. “You’ve got soap in your hair,” he said.
She shrugged. He smiled. “I like you when you’re stern and soapy.” She went and sat on the bed. Walter lifted a bottle of whiskey to his lips, then held it out to her. She shook her head.
“I went to see Paul Lavan today and I was there all day.”
“Where?”
“He’s a film cutter. At a studio. Listen, have a drink…”
She took a swallow. It was warm, unpleasant, medicinal. She didn’t want to hear the story. It was bound to be something nasty, she could tell by his expression. She wanted him gone; she wanted to be by herself; she wanted to look out the window at the miserable boring street and turn around and find the room empty and the bed up against the wall.
&n
bsp; “Well, what about the story?”
“They had a strip of film of a Brazilian dancer doing a samba, one of those South American things, for a movie. She wasn’t wearing pants.”
She looked at him questioningly. His face darkened and he stood up. “She wasn’t wearing underwear,” he said, enunciating his words carefully. “The camera was shooting from below. That’s all. They’ve made thousands of prints of this particular strip of film, and the dancer has taken off for Brazil.”
“I don’t see what the story is.”
“All right. There isn’t a story, then.”
“You spent the whole day looking at the picture?”
“Hardly the whole day. It doesn’t take long to look at something like that. What the hell’s eating you?”
“And does she look different from other women? Was it wonderful, all of you staring at that?”
“Yes. It was wonderful!” he shouted. He took another drink, then stared at her. He looked, she thought, confused, and for the first time since he’d arrived, she felt she’d won a small victory. He was watching her intently.
“Who’s the letter from?” she asked.
“A friend in New York,” he replied. “Come to bed.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
“I can’t.”
“Can’t?”
“I’m tired and I’m hungry.”
“I bought some things to eat,” he said. “We can’t go to a restaurant every night.” She walked very slowly over to the counter where he’d left groceries. He said nothing. She wondered how far she could push him.
There were oranges, canned luncheon meat, bread, a small piece of butter wrapped in wax paper, a bottle of milk. She prepared supper. After they’d eaten it in total silence, he asked her if she wanted to go to a movie. She was too tired, she said. Later, he went out to buy cigarettes. Annie read the letter.
Most of it referred to people she didn’t know, events in which she took no interest, but the last few sentences were about her. “Oh, Walter,” she read, “for God’s sake, what have you gotten yourself into with that little blonde filly? Cradle snatching! You’re not serious, are you? Come back here before somebody eats you up alive!” It was signed “Lily.”
She didn’t mention the letter until they were in bed, the room in darkness except for the light filtering in beneath the window shade. “Who is Lily?” she whispered. There was no answer, only Walter’s even breathing. “Lily!” she cried. Walter sat up, turned on a light and reached for a cigarette.
“You read the letter.”
“Yes.”
“Lily, and a friend of hers, Beth, helped me when I was out of work. They’re nice girls. They were nice to me.”
“I’m the blonde filly?”
He smiled. “Yes, Annie.”
“What did you write them about me?”
“Not much.”
“But it makes me feel terrible!” she burst out.
“Terrible!” he mocked.
“Did that man give you one of the pictures of that Brazilian dancer?”
“Maybe,” he said. Then he jumped out of bed and went to his sea bag, taking out a small oilskin pouch and bringing it back to her. “Open it,” he said. She drew two rings from the pouch.
“I’d pawned them,” he said. “Years ago. But I kept up the interest. They belonged to my mother. We’ll get married, Annie.”
The gold band didn’t fit, but the one with the three sapphires slid over her small finger.
“She was little?”
“Normal-sized,” he said. “Not a giant like you.” He lay down on top of her. “A giant dummy,” he said.
She slid out from under him and pushed him away.
“Married?” Was that what he’d had in mind all along? Because of these days they had lived together? Had it been a kind of test? But married? She could not think why. In movies, young people held hands and dreamed of the house furnishings that would someday be theirs. Brides wore white gowns, in order, her father had said, to celebrate their deflowering. What she needed was a pair of new shoes.
“We’d better,” he said, as though speaking of medicine.
He had some other surprises in store for her that week. She came home to find him dangling a car key from one of her bobby pins. He took her down to the street, to a 1937 Chevrolet convertible. The leather was cracked, the fenders dented.
“You drive,” he commanded.
She did. “Who taught you?” he asked.
“My father.”
“I’m going to reteach you. Don’t ride the clutch to start with.” They went for several miles. He said her father must drive like a fool.
When they got back in the room, he told her he’d been to the shipping-line office that day. They’d only paid him enough to buy the car, a hundred and twenty-five dollars. Then he started to laugh.
“You should see your expression!” he cried. “Oh! There’s no point in teasing you.” And reaching into his pants pocket, he took out handfuls of money and tossed the bills at her. Money rustled down her skirt, settled on her lap and thighs. “Buy some clothes, for God’s sake,” he said.
She held handfuls of money, in a voluptuous trance that made her limbs soften. “There’s so much,” she murmured.
“Not much,” he contradicted.
She got off early the next day from work, telling the manager she was sick, about to faint, about to throw up…The manager glared, but let her go. She went to meet Walter in a department store on Hollywood Boulevard.
She bought three cotton dresses, some blouses, something called a broom-skirt, which, the salesgirl told her, would keep its pleats if she wrapped it around a broomstick after she’d washed it. She bought two pairs of shoes and a pair of sneakers. Walter took a trench raincoat from a rack in another part of the store, plucked a brown felt hat from a display dummy. “Wear the coat and the hat,” he said. He took her to a bar. She looked at her reflection in the long mirror behind the line of bottles. He was grinning.
She was conscious of a kind of thrilling arrogance. Her new clothes made her complete. People looked at her. She didn’t smile.
“Annie! You’ve got a car, clothes…you’ve come up in the world!”
“Anything would have been up,” she said distantly. She stared at her reflection as though it were daring to presume on short acquaintanceship.
“Look. You’ve got to get permission from your father for us to get married because you’re underage.”
“I don’t know his address, just that he’s in New Mexico.”
“You’ve got to do it right away, today. Now drink this.”
He pushed a shot glass of whiskey and a large glass of beer toward her. “That’s a boilermaker.”
“I don’t want it.”
“Go on. Be tough!”
She swallowed the whiskey quickly and followed it with the beer. It had an instant and delicious effect. It added to her new sense of immunity. The hat was beautiful. “I’ll have another,” she said grandly.
He hugged himself and laughed. She wished to preserve her disdain—a laugh would destroy it. But he looked so funny, huddled on the bar stool, egging her on. Reluctantly, she smiled.
How could she get her father’s address unless she telephoned Samuel in New York? But the expense made that out of the question. To imagine Samuel’s hectoring voice was to be touched with the point of a knife. Then she remembered that James St. Vincent had said Bea was working in Hollywood. Bea would have the address. She knew her father was still paying Bea alimony. How he’d cursed her!
It was hard for Annie to ask St. Vincent for information. She felt the fragility of her connection with him. Asking for information was almost as bad as asking for money. But Walter pressed her relentlessly. Finally she called. St. Vincent was still away. It was the same woman she’d spoken to before. She asked her timidly if she knew where Bea Gianfala lived. The woman—mistress or mistress’s sister?—laughed harshly.
“We always k
now where Bea lives! She sets up such a ruckus! She works for MGM. You can get her through them. Ask for the story department. And when you talk to her, tell her I’ll call the cops if she ever tries to stick her face in my house again!”
Annie called the story department and after swearing she was Bea’s stepdaughter—the news that Bea had one seemed to astonish the woman she spoke to—managed to get a home phone number.
Even after so many years, she quailed upon hearing that rough voice.
“This is Annie, Bea.”
“Annie? Annie who, for crissake?”
“Gianfala.”
“Oh! You!”
“I’m sorry to bother you.”
“Then why bother me?”
“I need to get hold of my father. I thought you might know…”
“What for?”
“Well—”
“You used to be such a foul little liar. Don’t start up with me!”
“Please. Give it to me?”
“He owes me alimony. I could put him in jail.”
Restraining a flood of rage, Annie took a deep breath. “You could sell all those paintings of his you took.”
“Ha! Sell them! Are you crazy? I couldn’t sell them to a junkman.”
“Please, Bea.”
There was a pause. Annie heard the clink of glass against glass. Bea was drinking—noisily. She coughed. “He’s a painter so he can live like a bum,” she said sullenly. “He’s too cheap to make money anyhow. He’d only have to spend it. I suppose he informed you he married again?” There was another loud gulp. “He has himself a lush this time,” she said with satisfaction.
It was as if no time had passed. Bea had always spoken to her in this same way.
“You remember, Annie, how I taught you patience?” Bea was asking insinuatingly. “You liked that. I showed you eight different kinds of solitaire. Remember?”
“I remember.”
“I wasn’t so bad, was I?” the voice wheedled.
“No.”
Then, hard and combative, she asked, “What do you want with him?”
“I’m going to get married. I have to have his permission because I’m not eighteen yet.”
Annie heard a shriek of laughter, the phone dropped with a crash, then Bea came back on.