Love Among the Cannibals

by Wright Morris

  Her pretty little duckies pulsing in the spotlight, Billie asked them all “What Next?” her voice a little shaky, and even before she had given them the answer I knew this was it. A talk piece, in the tradition of the “Two Black Crows,” the piano supporting the swimmer like a pair of big loving hands. We had a new song, a new star, a new hit.

  Mac would have banged the piano all night—he can time an entrance but not an exit—so I had to come forward and remind him that we had to run to make a TV date. The fact that Mac could forget something like that pleased everybody almost silly, being so much like what Reader’s Digest says show people are really like. The management wouldn’t think of our paying the check, gave Billie the floral offering they had in the lobby, and turned the spotlights on our car when we left.

  We had this wind in our sails going back, a sea with the moonlight painted on it, and in fifty-five minutes we were going up the canyon, where we could see our mansion was full of lights.

  “What the hell’s this?” I said, parking in the drive.

  “Guess Hoppy an’ the boys are here,” said Mac. “I told ’em if we weren’t back yet to make themselves at home.”

  They had come up in Hoppy’s new Lincoln Continental. Nine of them. The Continental, as you may have read, is that conservative sort of car that so clearly reflects your quiet good taste. They’d left the radio on and it was playing rock ’n roll.

  All the lights in the place were on, but when we came in, the crowd was up front, the rugs rolled back, and they were rehearsing a little show. As a rule Hoppy’s parties are stag, if that’s the word for it, but this performance included a pair of chicks. One about forty-five, I would say, an imported hand-rubbed-calf sort of item, very cool, with a long cigarette holder and calf-length pants. A chaperone, that is, for the little full halter on the sofa beside her, café au lait, with the emphasis on the lay. They spoke only French. So “fery lil inklish to be shamt.”

  It’s wonderful to see how one chick’s mind begins to triumph over another chick’s matter—both of them, of course, starting from scratch. Billie Harcum took one cool glance at the halter and transformed herself into Katharine Hepburn. All Bridle & Bit, suh, of the Hound and Horn class.

  When Mac introduced her to Hoppy she gave him a nod, her pretty hands tightly clasped, the pleats in her upper lip very prominent. Hoppy is a man about my own age, one of those contemporaries you hate to meet, since you have to face it, the way he does, with a smile. The first four or five times we met I was absolutely certain I had met him before, knew him well, in fact, but the man he turns out to resemble is himself. Head bald, body hairy, a look that is both penetrating and friendly, and finds you smiling with him at yourself. What I dislike about him most is that I can’t resist liking him. He’s got money, he buys and sells people, but he does it with so much infectious good humor that you don’t mind it at all when you see your own head on the block. He bought Mac at a bargain, and sold him at a nice markup. That deal included me, so I’ve always resented it. But he had Miss Harcum sized up so well that her little cool act actually pleased him, like the mother of a brat who knows there’s money in the nasty type.

  “Ah, the poet,” he said, taking my hand, “if you just had someone to write the music.”

  “Wait’ll you hear it,” bellowed Mac. “Man, it’s great.”

  “Miss Harcum just stampeded the Mambo,” I said, and about five of them hollered:

  “Where’s the Mambo?” In this racket any place that might stampede is the Great Good Place.

  “Just a smart little club up the coast,” I said, “near Santa Barbara.”

  Besides the birds of prey on the sofa, Hoppy had a crew aus Las Vegas, where one of the smaller clubs had just closed. Three tall boys, of the boat-crew type that came in, I’d say, with the Ivy League concept, all of them nervously langorous and sloppy in something from Italy. Young enough to be boys, old enough to be dissipated. They were the talents, but each of these boys had his own man Friday, a slice of the same cheesecake, the song-and-dance boys you see around the piano in the bars. Modified duck’s ass hairdos, teeth that need repairing, and the sunny smile of hand-carved soap favors. These boys once kept Sir Gawain’s armor polished, reported on dragons, delivered notes to wooded castles, and picked their man up when he took a prat fall from his horse. Now all they polish is his apple. Their big job is to applaud.

  “You got a show on your hands?” I said to Hoppy, and took a quick smiling glance at the talent. One of the boys on the sofa sprang to life. Not all of them, mind you, just one, and the way this pecking order operates, in this hen yard of egos, is a wonderful thing to behold. The one who has a talent, or a job, bides his time on the sofa in a casual manner while the washed-up side-kick goes through his washed-up little act. A big, good-looking, almost healthy youngster led off. Black hair, sparkling eyes, with a certain Harold Teen sort of touch in his manner, he sang a sad little ballad about young love, then wet his lips, leered and said:

  “Do the Duke an’ the Duchess?”

  You get the effect? He did. While he hoped you were laughing he leaped from the piano, yanked an accordion out of its case, and gave us the “Lay of Capri,” the screaming lyrics all by himself. Between choruses, in his stocking feet, he did an original soft-shoeless number, the sort of thing we owe to Martha Graham and the time on our hands at night. His man Friday slipped in at that point with his clarinet, a Ted Lewis-type top hat, and acting like Fred Astaire he sounded like Benny Goodman, and looked like himself. He followed that with a guitar, collapsing on the floor to sing an Afrikander ballad and a prison song, then leaped up, sobered, to impersonate Maurice Chevalier. Like Smirnoff’s vodka, it fairly took your breath away. His man Friday screamed and ran around the room with his hat extended, scratching himself like a monkey, and in the friendliest manner possible Hoppy said:

  “When he learns about the musical saw, he’ll have an act.”

  But he wouldn’t. Not in Hoppy’s night-club circuit.

  I went to get myself a stiff one at that point, so I missed the one who played like Fats Waller, but the applause came in pretty well through the heating system. When I got back, the talented number, this loose rubbery boy with the dissolute smile, was giving his impersonation of Marlene Dietrich in Las Vegas. He wore a lamp shade, and had pulled his pants halfway up his thighs. He had the sort of talent, the uncoached, untutored natural talent all Americans love, beginning with his mother who was the first to say that he did what he did without a single little lesson. He did, all right. And that was how it looked. Even Mac in this particular case had a look of cynical pity on his face, and later he would tell me what a goddam shame such a waste of talent was. The kid sensed that, so we couldn’t shut him up. He dug around in his old bag of parlor tricks for one that might work. His man Friday could neither shut him up nor help him—you little pimp, he yelled at him, you’re just jealous—then he saved us all a nasty scene by gulping down his drink and passing out. We laid him out on the floor where there was a cool offshore breeze. He had a beardless teen-ager’s face, pimpled at the hairline and around the lips, and with his hands finally quiet you could see that he’d chewed his nails to the quick. The second knuckle on his right hand was actually raw. Not having been able to eat for days, that sort of cannibalism interested me.

  To pick the party up a little Hoppy said:

  “Should we have the pee-ass de resistance now?”

  And Mac bellowed, “Let’s have it now,” being full of heart but five days without sex.

  “Den I moos chanche—” said the little girl in the halter, by which she meant a slight rearrangement, since there was little she had on that would come off. I led her back to an empty room, where she could chanche, and she asked me, “Pliss, for a gol glas wadr. No boooos. Jus wadr an lil ize.”

  I got her the glass of water, full of ice cubes, then I stepped out on the roof over the garage. The glittering jewel box along the coast was all lit up. Lights were on around the pool a little lowe
r in the canyon, the water so clear and smooth I could see the pattern of the tiles at the bottom of it. There was no music, but having stood there for a moment in the morning I seemed to hear the words of that song about the street where she lived. It made me, as it had at the time, just a bit weak. I stepped into my bedroom and stretched out on the bed until it passed. My room was dark, but the door to the bathroom was open, and this little girl with her glass of ice water stood facing the mirror. I watched her empty the water into the sink, but retain the ice. She put the loose cubes in a face towel, whacked them on the edge of the sink until she had crushed them, then took the crushed ice, a handful of it, and slipped it into the cups of her halter. All the ice she had; then she cupped it to her breasts. I saw her face reflected in the mirror, the eyes closed in a grimace of pain, the teeth clamped down on her lower lip till it turned white. She stood there till the ice had produced a numbness and the pain had passed. Then she took off the halter, examined her breasts as though they were tires that had been recapped, felt the firmness of the flesh, and applied a yellow cream that she took from a jar. She turned off the light switch, then stood there, turning from left to right, seeing in the mirror how her breasts glowed in the dark. Still in the dark, her fingers glowing, she painted her lips and eyes with the luminous salve, daubed a bit on her navel, then left the room.

  I didn’t see the performance. From the way they applauded, it must have been good. I fell asleep with my clothes on, shoes and all, my stiff drink on the floor beside me, and I slept until the ringing of the telephone woke me up.

  “Hello?” I said.

  It was the Creek. I was too astonished to believe it.

  “Did I get you up?”

  “I’m getting up.”

  “I got the night off,” she said.

  “Night? When?”

  “Nine, but I have to be back at twelve.”

  “Where?”

  “Here. Come at nine,” she said.

  “I’ll be there,” I replied, and heard her hang up. Mac had come to the door to see who the hell would call at that time in the morning. His plastic hat was still on his head. He looked like a freak. I put the receiver on the hook, said:

  “I take it everything went all right?”

  “Man, she was terrific.”

  “With or without the lights?” I said.

  “Not her, man!” he said. “I mean the chick. Hoppy says she’s got a great future.”

  “Hmmmm,” I said, and wondered what she would think of her future in his skullcap.

  “He says she’s great. He took her home personally in his car.”

  Was I saying—until I met her—that the pitch of this age is phony? It’s phony as hell, but as Mac once said, “What the hell, man. What else is there?” The phony is; I mean it’s here and now, and all that once was or is yet to be isn’t. You’ve got to take what’s phony, if it’s all you’ve got, and make it real.

  “You hear me, man?” said Mac. “Hoppy says she’s great.”

  “I heard you,” I said, then got out of bed and went into the kitchen, where I peeled a banana, since you have to eat to live, whether its phony or not. Mac slipped some ice cubes into the lining of his skullcap and went back to bed.

  IV

  We didn’t go to the beach. We stayed in bed most of the day. Mac called Billie Harcum to say that the pressure of work would keep him at home during the day, but we would pick her up for a drink about six o’clock. In the afternoon I lay out on the roof drinking tomato juice. As Mac said, “You got to eat, man. It’s good for the team.”

  I suppose Mac lives, if that’s the word, in the sand-lot world of Toots Shor, where every man has his own set of goal posts and his own team. I was on Mac’s team, he was on mine, and we were going to face the music to-gehhh-thurrr.

  He paced up and down the porch in a terry cloth bathrobe once given to him by a Golden Gloves boxer, the words “ST. DAVID’S BOYS” stitched across the back. He’s just pitiful when he gets upset and man to man. In the army you could put a helmet on him, stick him in the turret with some guns, then let him just shoot hell out of everything in sight. The song-and-dance business lacks that sort of fire power. I’ve often wondered what I would do if Mac cracked up—do with him, that is—since most people would hardly notice the difference. He has about all the symptoms. He simply doesn’t go to bed with them. What he was suffering from now was the trouble he could feel at headquarters—me, that is—and he can’t stand trouble like that. So long as I have things under control, so does he. About a quarter to four he blurted it out:

  “Man, what’s this chick want?”

  “Me,” I said. “I’m part of her development.”

  “You’re just lettin’ this woman use you, man. You can’t let a woman use you—”

  “You can’t?” said I. I had often said as much. “She can,” I said, “bless her, and she does.”

  That really scared the hell out of him, as well it might. Here I was out of my mind with a chick he had never set eyes on.

  “You gotta snap out of it, man,” he barked. “We got this show. We got this—”

  “Mac—” I said, soberly, “how long will it take you to pack?”

  “Look—” he said.

  “We’re going to Mexico,” I said, “to work. I want to get the feel of the place, the people.”

  “Great!” he bellowed. “Christ, man, that’s great.”

  “You want to take that little chick along?” I said.

  “Chick?” He just eyed me.

  “I’ll be taking mine along,” I said, “and you might feel left out.”

  For two, three minutes, which can be a long time, he just stood there. The disadvantage of an ice pack is what it does to promote what is seldom referred to as pallor. I was the one who was weak, but he looked it.

  “Look—” he peeped.

  “You better give her some time to think it over,” I said, “just so she’ll know how thoughtful you are. You might just throw in, casually you know, that we’ll be picking up the cast as we go along. We can’t help but be a little influenced by the people we have handy.”

  “Look—” he said once more, but not like he meant it.

  “You better go call her,” I said, “since we’ll be leaving in the morning. It’s a long drive. We’ll need about a week to get the feel of the place.”

  He said, “What place?”

  “Acapulco,” I replied. That was one place she had heard of.

  He started off, then he turned and said, “You sure?”

  “About what?”

  “This chick of yours?” I was not.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, “she’ll see that it’s part of her development.”

  He went and put through a call, then he came back and said, “I told her to take a cab and come right over. I told her we had an important decision to make.” I knew that wasn’t all he told her, and he added, “Man, suppose we put it to her. She likes to hear you talk. It’s quite a proposition. You know what I mean?”

  I put on a lounging outfit Mac once gave me that I’ve never known what the hell to do with, but I could see it was just the thing for a quiet little talk. When her cab pulled up in the drive I went in and sat at the piano, put a score on the rack, and a pencil over one ear. When Mac brought her in I was bent over the score, frowning. They waited. I let them wait. I scribbled down a few words, then I turned and said:

  “Billie, the heat is on. We got to do a little location work in Mexico, and if you could spare a couple weeks at this time—we need someone along to track the new stuff—and it might be the sort of thing you would find interesting. We tend to write the stuff for a certain performer, and—”

  “Uhl, honey, if ah could be of any help—”

  “Think you might,” I said, “and if Mac thinks so—”

  “She’s great, man!” barked Mac. She gave him her hand, and while she gazed into his eyes, he gazed into hers.

  “Break it up, kiddies,” I said, “we leave
in the morning, so you probably have a few little things to do.” “

  Uhl, honey—not tomorra mornin’?”

  “At about ten A. M.,” I said, picking up my pencil, the score, and brought the scene to a close on just the right pitch. “You’ll need something to show you were born,” I said, “and we’ll have to pick you up a smallpox vaccination. Acapulco, as you know, is not a pasteurized sort of place.”

  About fifteen minutes later they went off together in the cab she had come up in, and I made some black coffee, opened some sardines, and actually finished them off. I would need what strength I could muster when I faced the Greek.

  With past experience to guide me I put on some comfortable slacks, a light nylon sweater, some canvas sneakers, and at half-past eight drove over and parked on the street where she lived. Sitting there in the car the scene I had in mind arranged itself. “Any place in particular?” I would say, and she would reply.

  “Any place.”

  Then we would go back to that place in Malibu where she would kick off her shoes as she entered the door. I would have made the trip, I think, just for that. And then, after first things first, we would talk, in the vein of the previous occasion, and very casually I would pull Mexico out of my hat. I’d say just one week, rather than the two I had in mind, since she might find it hard to get two weeks off at this time of year. I would say, absolutely frankly, that I didn’t really know what the hell I was doing, but I had to be with her if I was going to do anything. Come what may. I had no idea what it might be. If she had one I would like to be part of it. All I hoped was that Mexico might fit in with her current development—but I’d use some other word.