“So does a dick,” I said. “Tell me about these harassments you’ve been suffering.”
Salzman came back with a dinner plate on which, carefully arranged, were small portions of nearly everything on the serving line. He put it down in front of Jill and slipped into his seat. Jill looked at the plate with distaste and drank more wine.
“I don’t wish to discuss it in front of her,” Jill said.
Susan looked at her quietly for a long moment.
“Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy,” I said softly.
Then Susan smiled beatifically and said, “Of course.”
“Of course?” I said.
“Please, Dick,” Susan said.
She picked up her tray and moved over to another table and sat down with a couple of people at the end of a long table across the room.
“A girl has a right to privacy,” Jill said, her eyes cast down on her untouched plate, her hand fluttering again near her mouth. I looked across the room at Susan. The force of her look was palpable. Don’t make trouble, the look said. I took in a large amount of air and let it out slowly through my nose.
“So tell me,” I said.
She looked at her empty wineglass. Salzman reached over and filled it.
“We got four and a half pages to shoot this afternoon, Jilly,” he said.
“Fuck you,” Jill Joyce said without looking at him. The lilt left her voice for a moment, when she said it.
Salzman nodded as if she had said something interesting. He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms quietly. He didn’t seem upset. Jill drank some of her wine.
“I think it’s one of those creepy crazed fans,” she said and smiled at me. When she smiled there was a deep dimple in each cheek. She was something to look at.
“Un huh,” I said and waited. I thought of steepling my hands before me and placing them gently against my lips when I said it, but decided to hold it in reserve. So far un huh seemed enough.
“Well,” Jill said, “do you?”
“It’s a little hard to decide yet,” I said.
“But it could be,” Jill said.
“Un huh.”
“I mean, you know about these people, like the one that killed John Lennon, people like that, crazy people.”
“Um,” I said.
“I need prodection,” she said.
“How clever,” I said, “combining the words like that.”
“Huh?”
“You need protection during production so you put the two together and formed a neologism.”
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, Dickie-do, but I sure love to listen,” she said. She didn’t wait for anyone to fill her glass now; she poured the rest of the bottle out and looked around.
“Hey,” she yelled toward the serving line. “I need some wine, for Christ’s sake.”
The same dark-haired guy in the T-shirt came over with another bottle, already opened. He put it down beside her and walked back to the line. Most of the crew had started to leave the dining room. Susan had eaten enough of her lettuce. She stopped by at my table for a minute.
“I’ll be in the wardrobe trailer . . . Dick.”
I nodded. Susan moved off and out of the room. Sandy Salzman was gazing at the ceiling, his arms still folded across his chest.
“So you gonna protect me, Dickie-do? Or what?”
“Soon as I find out from what,” I said, “I’m going to protect the ass off you.”
Jill Joyce giggled.
“I’m sick of it here,” she said. “Come on back to my mobile home and I’ll dishcuss it with you in more detail.”
“Sure,” I said.
“Sandy, you go shoot some fucking film, or something. This will be just me and Dickie-bird.” She giggled again. “Are you a dickie-bird?” she said.
Salzman smiled as if Jill had suggested a new approach to lighting.
“Sure, Jilly,” Salzman said. “Maybe a little nap before the afternoon is gone. The four and a half pages await.”
“Four and a half pages of shit,” Jill said. “C’mon, Dickie-bird, we’ll fly over to my mobile home.”
She picked up the second wine bottle and her glass and waggled on out of the dining room ahead of me. I looked at Salzman. He shrugged.
“No reasoning with her when she’s drunk,” Salzman said.
“Or when she’s not,” I said.
3
THE mobile home was parked on the Common behind the Park Street subway kiosk. It was big enough for Jill Joyce, or four hundred boat people. I wasn’t sure it was big enough for Jill Joyce and me.
“Sit down, Dickie,” she said.
She put her bottle of wine on the table in the breakfast nook and slid her black mink off her shoulders and let it fall to the floor. She slid in on one of the bench seats and let her long legs sprawl. The tight red dress was forced to hike up over her thighs.
“Want a little wine?” she said.
“Makes me sleepy,” I said. “I drink at lunch and I’m no good the rest of the day.”
“Wouldn’t want that,” Jill said.
She giggled and poured wine into a glass.
“You know what I’ve been looking for since I came to Boston?” she said.
“Two tickets to Symphony,” I said.
She made a measuring gesture, holding her hands about two feet apart.
“About that long,” she said. “I been looking for something about like that.”
I studied her measure.
“Looks to be about two feet,” I said.
She held her gesture, staring at me with her head canted back. Her eyes were narrowed. She jiggled her hands as if weighing the two-foot length.
I grinned and nodded. “You’re in luck,” I said.
Her eyes got narrower and something that looked only a little like a smile moved on her lips.
“You?” she said.
I shrugged becomingly.
“Unless I’m excited,” I said.
The tip of her tongue appeared at the center of her mouth and moistened her lower lip.
“Are you excited now?” she said. The huskiness in her little-girl voice had shaded into hoarseness. Her eyes had narrowed until they were barely slitted. Her body had gotten more lax as she talked and her thighs had slid forward on the banquette seat until her skirt was merely ornamental. Her breath was short now, and audible. Her body seemed entirely inert, almost boneless, and yet the tension in her was manifest; physical slackness over tight-coiled emotion.
“No,” I said.
There was silence. Jill Joyce stared at me through her barely open eyes.
“Whaaat?” she said.
I shrugged and flipped up my palms. I smiled engagingly.
More silence. More staring with her reptilian slits. She picked up her wineglass and drank most of it and lowered the glass and gazed at me over the rim of it. Then she threw the contents at me. She missed.
“Probably better than drinking it,” I said.
“Sonovabitch,” she said.
The flaccidity left her body. She rolled suddenly out of the banquette and stood in front of me and threw a punch with her clenched right fist. I blocked it with my left forearm.
“Oww,” she said. “You bastard.”
She swung at me with the other hand and I blocked that and she said “Ow” again and called me a bastard.
“Does this mean you’re not going to call me dickie-bird anymore?” I said.
She was rubbing both wrists where I blocked her punches with my forearms, her shoulders bent, huddling over the sore arms.
“Limp dick motherfucker,” she said. Her voice sounded tight, as if her throat were closing. “Get the fuck out
of here. You’re fired, you prick.”
“Fired,” I said. “How can I be fired? I haven’t been hired yet.”
She lunged against me suddenly. Her face tilted up at me, her eyes closed all the way, her face very white except for two red spots that glowed feverishly on her cheekbones. Her mouth was open, her tongue protruded a little.
“You bastard,” she gasped. “You better, you bastard. You better.” Some tears squeezed out under the tightly closed lids. “You better,” she said. Then she passed out on me. I caught her under the arms as she started to slide.
“Star quality,” I said aloud.
I looked around the mobile home. Across the back was a big double bed with a pink puff on it, and half a dozen white pillows with lace ruffles. I turned and dragged Jill Joyce to the bed. Her legs were entirely limp. Her heels made little drag marks in the carpet. When I reached the bed, I got her over my hip and plumped her backside onto the bed and eased her down. She lay crossways, her feet still on the floor. Her skirt bunched up around her waist.
A voice said, “This would be more exciting in the pre-pantyhose era.”
It was my voice and it sounded extraordinarily normal. I got hold of her ankles and half spun her around so her head was among the pillows and her feet were on the bed. Then I arranged her head so she wouldn’t smother, and rearranged her skirt and put the mink coat over her.
The voice said, “What becomes a legend most.”
It was me again. I sounded sane.
I stood back and looked down at her. Her cheeks were still wet with the faint tracing of tears. Her mouth was slightly open. She was snoring, not very loudly, but quite clearly. The only other noises in the mobile home were the faint hum of the refrigerator somewhere forward and a faint tingling sound which was probably from the heaters.
My voice seemed booming when it spoke again.
“You are a mess,” my voice said thoughtfully, “you are a terrible mess.”
I went out of the mobile home and closed the door carefully behind me.
4
I collected Susan from the wardrobe trailer, and we walked down across the Common toward Boylston Street. As the afternoon shortened it had gotten colder, and now in the late half-light of a winter afternoon the temperature was maybe ten above. The wind had died and it was still and brittle among the black trees. Around the Common the city lights had begun to show weakly, pale heatless flickers at the fringe of the hard silence. There was no one on the Common. Susan’s shoulder touched mine as we walked. Her hands were jammed into the big pockets of her coat. Only a small white oval of her face showed inside the turned-up collar, under the fur hat, framed by the black hair. I had my hands in my jacket pockets. There were times for holding hands, and times for not. I had my watch cap pulled down over my ears too. It wasn’t raffish but I knew Susan would let it pass.
“Cold, cold, cold, cold,” Susan said.
“Cold,” I said.
“Ah, the master of compression,” Susan said. “How far is Biba?”
“Other side of Charles Street,” I said.
Susan had been to Biba exactly as often as I had, since she’d always gone with me. But she always asked distances like that as if she was just in from Boise.
At Charles Street the commuter traffic had started to develop and the exhaust of newly started engines plumed in the iron air. We crossed Charles and then Boylston and went past the Four Seasons Hotel and turned in under Biba’s blue awning.
The bar was not crowded. The cold slowed everything down. Susan ordered a cup of tea with Courvoisier on the side. I had a brandy and soda. She had draped her coat open over the back of her chair and pulled off her gloves. Her face was bright with the cold. She kept the fur hat on and it seemed almost to blend with her thick black hair. Her chin rested on the heavy fold of a black turtleneck sweater. With our drinks we ordered some crab tacos and some empanadas. It was warm in the bar and I knew that upstairs the brick oven was baking bread. A hint of its warmth and smell drifted down, or it seemed to. I could feel the stiffness leave me as I drank maybe a third of the brandy and soda and felt the warmth under the cold soda ease through my system. I looked at Susan, at the width of her mouth, the fullness of her lower lip, the line of her cheekbone. I watched her dab a microscopic portion of salsa on one corner of a crabmeat taco and bite off an edge. It was a small taco, the kind you pop into your mouth all at once, if you’re any kind of an eater at all. It would take Susan fifteen minutes to finish it. She chewed her tiny bite carefully, watching me look at her.
“So,” she said, and her teeth flashed white and even as she smiled at me. “How do I stack up against Jill Joyce?”
I popped one of the empanadas into my mouth and chewed. I washed it down with more brandy and soda.
“I think I’d need to see you both naked before I can make a full judgment,” I said.
Susan nodded thoughtfully.
“Well, I could arrange that at my end,” she said.
“Nicely phrased,” I said. “Jill has already made a similar offer.”
Susan poured a splash of cognac into her tea, took a small sip, and put the teacup down. She watched a couple of guys in tweed overcoats and plaid scarves come in, rubbing their hands and hunching their shoulders from the cold. They crossed to the bar, put briefcases on the floor, and ordered Jack Daniel’s on the rocks. Susan looked back at me. Her big dark eyes seemed bottomless.
“Hard to blame her,” Susan said.
“Yes,” I said, “of course it is. I think for her it was love at first sight.”
“It happens to her a lot, I understand.”
“You mean there’s someone else?” I said.
Susan’s smile widened. She sipped a little more tea, assessed its impact, added another small splash of cognac. “I think so,” she said.
“Oh, well,” I said. “There’s always you.”
“I adore it when you sweet-talk me,” Susan said.
“Emphasis on the always,” I said.
“Yes,” Susan said. She finished the first crab taco. “So,” she said, “she made a pass at you?”
“Almost an assault,” I said.
“And you turned her down.”
“I didn’t get the chance to. She passed out.”
“Tell me about it,” Susan said. “Everything. Every detail.”
I did. By the time I’d finished it was time for another brandy and soda. When it arrived I slid down a little in my chair and stretched out my legs in front of me and watched the amusement play on Susan’s face. Outside in the darkness life barely moved in the sullen cold. Inside was food and drink and Susan and the whole evening ahead. Susan made the measuring gesture with her hands, mimicking Jill Joyce.
“This long?” she said. “Good heavens.”
She looked at me, looked back at the measured distance between her hands, looked at me again, and slowly shook her head. I shrugged.
“I thought I could bluff it through,” I said.
“You think that about everything,” Susan said. “Are you going to take the job?”
I turned the glass around in little circles on the table in front of me, holding it lightly with both hands, watching it revolve.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“She’s awfully difficult,” Susan said. She had her elbows on the table and she held her teacup in both hands, talking to me over the rim.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Today was not unusual,” Susan said.
“What about the four and a half pages they had to shoot this afternoon?” I said.
“Sandy will shoot around it,” Susan said. “He’s amazing.”
“Why don’t they just fire her?” I said. “Get someone who’s sober all day?”
“TVQ,” Susan said and smiled lik
e she does when she’s able to kid me and herself at the same time.
The maître d’ came over and told us our table was ready for dinner.
“Whenever you’re ready, sir. No hurry.”
He went back to his post near the door.
“TVQ?” I said sadly.
“Television Quotient. It’s a way of rating star appeal,” she said.
“Of course,” I said.
“Jill Joyce has the highest TVQ of anyone now on television,” Susan said.
“And to think she wanted to jump on my bones,” I said. “Makes you feel sort of humble, doesn’t it?”
“And a TVQ like that translates into ratings which translate into renewal which translates eventually into a big syndication deal which translates . . .”
“Into money,” I said.
“Bingo,” Susan said. “Mucho dinero, sweetheart.”
“Have you gone, just a twidge, ah, Hollywood?” I said.
“I’ll say. Film is my life.” Susan’s eyes crinkled and her smile was brighter than Jill Joyce’s TVQ.
“And it doesn’t cut into your work?”
“My patients? No. Nothing cuts into that.”
“Nothing? I remember a Monday morning three months ago . . .”
“Except you,” Susan said. “Occasionally, and, if it’s the Monday morning I’m thinking about, I feel that you overpowered me. That doesn’t count.”
“Then how come I was on the bottom?”
“Just never mind,” Susan said. “It’s time to go up for dinner.”
We went up and sat and looked at the menus. The room looked out over the Public Garden which was lit with concealed spots and stiller than death in the brute cold evening.
“Actually,” Susan said as she scanned the menu, “my formal duties don’t require me to be on the set. I read scripts and make suggestions. That’s really the extent of my technical advice. The rest of the time I come around and watch because it fascinates me.”
I nodded, contemplating the herbed chicken with mashed potatoes.
“It doesn’t fascinate you?” Susan said.
“Fascinated me for about ten minutes,” I said. “But I gather they do this for more than ten minutes.”
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