“Sure is,” Mark said. “You like Elvis?”
“Never seen him, but my fourteen-year-old has got every record he made. Myself, I don’t like his singing much. I’m a Perry Como man.”
The elevator came to a smooth halt, the door opened, and the line formed. Mark managed to find a place at the rear as they moved into a large room with panels of glass at one end allowing in the bright May sunshine.
The tables that had been set up were covered with spotless white linen; Mark took time to observe the man in front of him and began to put the food on the tables. The guests were coming in even now, and he searched the incoming group but did not see Elvis. He lingered as long as he dared, but a tall man with a white carnation in his lapel said, “All right. Go get the rest of the food and the drinks.”
Mark was forced to leave, and the crew of servers made their way back down to the service room, loaded up, and then returned to the dining room. As soon as Mark entered he saw Elvis sitting at the center table. He was wearing a black tuxedo with a white carnation in his lapel. His black hair was well combed, and a lock hung down on his forehead. He was turning to speak to his bride, who was one of the most beautiful women Mark had ever seen. He had seen her picture, of course, and now that he saw her in person, he understood the fascination that Elvis had for her. She was wearing a white chiffon gown embroidered with tiny pearls. Her black hair cascaded down her back, and her dark eyes flashed as she laughed at something that Presley said.
Mark had determined to stay in the area, and when the rest of the crew filed their way out he ducked behind a pillar and began to take mental notes. He listened, trying to pick up some of the conversation, but he knew he would never get close enough to Presley and his bride, nor could he just walk up and begin speaking to him. As he waited, he really hoped that Presley would make some sort of speech and perhaps the bride as well.
He remembered reading that the couple had met in 1959 in Germany while Elvis was serving with the U.S. Army. The bride was the daughter of an Air Force Lieutenant Colonel and had attended high school in Frankfurt. Both Elvis and Priscilla were from Memphis, Tennessee.
Finally someone cried out, “Let’s hear a speech from the new bridegroom, and the bride!”
Elvis grinned as the applause, and calling, and cries continued. Finally he stood up and waved his hands, his face flushed as he said with his thick southern accent, “I’m not makin’ no speech on my weddin’ day. All I got to say is I’m glad I kept myself for my bride, and I’m glad she kept herself for me.” He turned and said, “You want to say somethin’, honey?”
The bride shook her head but lifted her voice, saying, “Thank you all for coming, and for being so kind.”
Mark stood behind the pillar as the breakfast continued. Finally, in desperation, he thought, I’ve got to do more than this. Taking a deep breath, he moved out from behind the pillar and walked along the lines of tables. He came to stand slightly to Elvis’s left and cleared his throat. When Presley turned around, Mark said, “I’m sorry to bother you, Mr. Presley, but I did want to congratulate you on your wedding. I hope you have the happiest marriage in the world.”
“Why, thank you, pal,” Elvis said. He stuck out his hand and Mark took it, and then the famous grin flashed. “With a girl like this I think I’ve got a pretty good chance.”
“I’m sure you do, and to you, Mrs. Presley, may you be very happy in your marriage.”
Priscilla Presley smiled brilliantly and said, “Why, thank you very much. It’s so nice of you to come and wish us good fortune.”
Mark started to say something else, but he felt a hand grip his arm; he turned around to face a large man whose eyes were hard as flint. “You’re not one of our waiters,” he said.
Mark started to speak, but he was pulled away. He turned back and called out loudly, “Have a good life, both of you!” The man’s grip was like iron. When they were outside came the inevitable question. “What are you? Some kind of a reporter?”
“Not a very good one,” Mark said cheerfully, “but at least I got to wish the bride and groom a good life.”
“Get out of here before I bust your back!”
Mark left the hotel, went back to his room, changed clothes, and then took the uniform back and got his deposit. A sense of satisfaction filled him, and he thought, Well, at least I got to shake hands with Elvis. That’s something.
Mark had come to Las Vegas to see Bobby Stuart’s opening at the Sands. He wasn’t disappointed; it was a smash, as he had thought. The crowd had been standing and begging for more, and Bobby gave them encore after encore. He used some of the hit tunes, including, “You Can’t Hurry Love,” made popular by the Supremes, and James Brown’s “I Got You.” Then he did “Turn, Turn, Turn” by the Byrds and the Rolling Stones hit “Paint It Black.”
After the performance Mark went backstage and was finally permitted into the huge dressing room. As usual, Bobby was surrounded by his group: D. J. Heinzman, a tall, lanky man who played rhythm guitar; Ossie Peabody, black and militant, the drummer; and Jimmy Franz, small and eager with blond hair and blue eyes. He took a lot of abuse as the gofer.
Faye Harlow, a pretty young woman with reddish blond hair and gray eyes, looked as if she was high on drugs, and the rest weren’t far behind.
Bobby appeared to be on something too. His eyes were bright and glassy, and his laugh was high and artificial. Finally Mark got him off to one side, and the two had a talk, of sorts, although it was hard to talk with anyone as stoned as Bobby Stuart.
“I like your writing. I read all I can get a hold of, Mark,” Bobby said, his speech slurred.
“Thanks, Bobby. I really came down here to do a piece on you.”
“Is that right? Well, go ahead. What are you going to call it?”
“Just ‘Bobby Stuart.’ Thought I might give the fans an inside view of what it’s like to be the acquaintance of a famous star.”
Bobby talked for some time, but much of it was disjointed, and finally Mark understood that he would get nothing out of Bobby Stuart when he was in this condition. He suggested that the two have breakfast.
“Breakfast? Man, I don’t get up in time for breakfast! Maybe at noon. Come around, and we’ll see.”
A sadness filled Mark as he saw the wreckage in Bobby’s eyes. He got up and left, and nobody paid any attention. They were all busy with their drugs and their liquor.
“I liked the story you did on Las Vegas, Mark.” Jake Taylor was thumbing through the pages that Mark had left with him the previous day. They were sitting in Taylor’s office, and now Taylor looked up and said, “I think you’ve got some good stuff. Not too happy with the one on Bobby Stuart though.”
Shifting uncomfortably, Mark shook his head. “I guess I’m too close to it, Jake. I talked to him twice, but I couldn’t think of anything very good to write. He’s changed a lot, I think, since he hit the big time.”
“It happens to most of them, especially in the rock business. How many old rock music stars do you know? Most of them off themselves or wind up in a nuthouse OD’d, their brains fried from drugs. Stephanie hates it. She really loves her brother.”
“Deep down he’s got something good in him, but it’s like he’s caught in a whirlpool that’s sucking him down, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
They talked for a while about Bobby Stuart, and then Jake said abruptly, “This Vietnam thing gets worse all the time. I see where U.S. jets bombed Hanoi for the first time yesterday.”
“The protests are getting stronger. I don’t see how the president can take much more of it.”
“It looks like he’s determined to win over there. Did you see where Muhammad Ali got indicted for draft evasion? Gonna lose his title.”
“Yeah, I saw it.” Mark shifted uncomfortably, then said, “I may get caught up in the draft, Jake.”
Taylor’s eyes turned careful. “What would you think about that? Would you go, or would you run off to Canada like so many have?”
Indignantly Mark shook his head. “I’d never do that. I don’t want to go, but if I get the call I’ll have to.”
The two men sat there, each of them thinking about the 125,000 young American men who were already putting their lives on the line in Vietnam. They also thought of the college students who had never heard a shot fired in anger, who were burning their draft cards and protesting vociferously at every opportunity.
Finally Jake shook his head. “It’s a bad time for America. It looks to me like a no-win situation.” Then he moved around and slapped Mark on the shoulder. “But I’m glad you feel like you do. I’d go myself if I wasn’t an old man and didn’t have a family.”
14
ARTISTS NEED TO SUFFER
Standing stiffly before the easel, a brush clutched in one hand so tightly that her fingers ached, Prue stiffened her back and blinked back the tears that burned in her eyes. She was intensely aware of Kent Maxwell standing behind her, looking over her shoulder at the painting, and she was even more aware of the harshness of his voice as he continued to speak of the flaws of the painting. Despite herself, tears escaped from her eyes and rolled down her cheeks, then fell on the paint-smudged smock that she wore. Desperately she tried to think of something else, but Kent’s voice penetrated her thoughts, and she could not shut it out.
“And don’t you see that you have the colors all wrong in the hair? Look at it! It looks like a smudge where you’ve cleaned your brush out! The woman’s hair is auburn, for heaven’s sake, and you’ve made it a cross between a carrot red and a dull maroon. Have you learned nothing at all in all these months about mixing color?”
“I’m sorry,” Prue whispered. “I did the best I could.”
“No, you didn’t do your best! You’ve got more in you than this, Prue, and I’m not going to put up with your slipshod ways any longer!” Reaching out over her shoulder, Maxwell snatched the brush, reached down to the palette, smeared it in the dabs of paint there, then with a rough gesture swept the brush across the hair of the woman that Prue had put on the canvas. “There,” he said, “that’s the way it is! Get your highlights just here—and here. She’s not wearing a wig!”
Suddenly Prue could stand it no longer. She turned and walked stiffly away, headed blindly for the door of the studio. It was late, and there were no other students, and she was exhausted not only from this day’s long arduous work, but from the days, and weeks, and even months that she had thrown herself into learning the art of painting. Her eyes were so blurred with tears that she bumped into an easel containing an enormous painting, knocked it down, and as it fell with a crash she turned and attempted to catch it. She struggled to pick up the canvas and free the easel and felt Kent’s hand on her arm pulling her up. She turned her face away, but he held her tightly by her forearms. “What’s this?” he said with surprise. “You’re not crying?”
“No! I’m not!”
But Kent had seen the tears on her cheeks, and he stood there for a moment silently. His mind flashed back over the history of her stay in Chicago. He had not been wrong, he knew, in his estimate of Prudence Deforge’s talent. It was enormous, and he had come to feel that the greatest thing he could do for the world of art was to see that she developed it. This had not been an entirely happy fixation, for he had rushed her through training that would have been difficult for most students to complete in years. Every day he stood beside her, laying out her work, and at night when she wearily left the studio to go to her small apartment, he had loaded her down with books and sketch work to bring back the following morning. To him it had been a delight to see her blossom, for she was not a lazy girl.
Now, however, as she stood before him, her eyes shut, he saw the lines of strain and the dark shadows that fatigue had put under her eyes, and his conscience smote him.
“I’m sorry, Prue,” he said quietly, not releasing her arms. “Come and sit down.”
“No. I want to go home.”
“You can go home in a moment, but I need to talk to you.” He pulled her to the couch, limping heavily, then sat down. It was an old couch, three cushions badly in need of repair, and the black and gold coloring had long since faded into a general leprous gray. The studio itself was large, and all the lights were out except over Prue’s easel, so that the two sat in a half darkness over beside the wall. The sound of traffic came through to them, the honking of taxis and the muffled roar of the engines that was always present in Chicago. From outside the huge windows on the north end of the studio, the lights of Chicago winked on and lit the skyline with a myriad of lights that sent a glow up to the ebony sky.
Kent fumbled in his pocket, came out with a handkerchief, and said, “Here.” She took the handkerchief, wiped the tears away, and then handed it back without a word. She was as miserable as she had ever been in her life, and at last she said, “Nothing I do ever pleases you. I just can’t do it, Kent. I can’t!”
Her words and the pathetic expression in her eyes as she looked at him troubled Kent, and he said quickly, “That’s not true, Prue. You do many things that please me. I don’t always tell you—which I should. You see, I’ve had so many students who don’t have anything in them to give. I have to try to find something nice to say about their work, and sometimes it’s a job. But with you, I see so much in you that has to come out, and I just, well—well, I forget myself. I know I’m a slave driver. I know I’ve asked more of you than any teacher ever ought to ask of any student, but don’t you see it’s because of the great desire I have to see you become all that you can.”
Prue sat there listening quietly, and she tried to think of the hours that he had given to her since she had arrived in Chicago. It was June now, 1967, and she remembered that it was almost exactly a year ago that she had left the farm and come to live in Chicago. She had been frightened by the big city, but Stephanie and Jake had been very kind to her, and she had grown closer, also, to Christie Castellano and her husband, Mario. Both these families—her relatives—had encouraged her and taken her in, and it had been Christie who found her an apartment close to the Institute. She thought, also, of how Kent had been at her side constantly, not just giving lessons, but showing her around the city through the myriad of museums and taking her to some of the shows.
“I know I’m ungrateful,” she said, “but I try so hard, and it never seems to come out right. I just can’t do what you want me to do.”
Looking at her for a moment in silence, Maxwell said, “This is going to sound trite, but I’ll say it anyway. Artists—most of them—have to suffer, Prue. Art, for most of us, doesn’t come easy. It’s like—well, it’s a little bit, I think, like having a baby.” When she looked up at him in surprise, he laughed shortly. “Not that I’ve ever had any babies, of course, but I know the theory.”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
“Well, a baby comes in a miraculous fashion. There’s nothing there, and then suddenly in the body of a woman, there’s life. But that life is so small and tiny no one would even know it’s there.” Kent leaned back, and his face grew intent as he tried to express himself. He had given lectures many times, but now he wanted this young woman before him to understand herself, and so he continued by saying, “That life has to grow, Prudence. The mother has to see that it stays alive, and finally after months it’s born. There it is. She’s holding it in her arms, nursing it, caring for it, bathing it. But it was only after nine months of waiting and after, sometimes, tremendous agony that she has that child.” Waving toward the painting that Prue had been working on, he said, “When did you get the idea for that painting?”
Prudence glanced across the room at the canvas. It was a picture of a young woman she had seen at the canning factory near Cedarville. The woman had just come from work, and her garments were stained with the juices from the berries that she had been working with, as were her hands. Prudence had taken one look at her and seen the fatigue in her face, but when the young girl saw a young man her face lit up with excitemen
t, her eyes glowing. Prue had tried to catch that in the painting, and now she shook her head. “Why, it must have been two or three years ago, I suppose.”
“So, it’s been in you all the time, and now you’re trying to bring it to birth, and it’s not easy. You got the hair wrong. That means you have to go back and do the hair again. It may not work.” Kent made a gesture of despair. “And I know enough about that. I’ve had enough malformed paintings to know that sometimes it just doesn’t work, but you know what, Prudence? You paint a bad painting the same way you paint a good painting. You give it all that you have.”
Prue sat listening to him, from time to time glancing up at his face. As he talked about art he grew excited, she observed, and now she said, “Maybe I don’t have whatever it is that makes a great artist. I just can’t seem to get the fundamentals right, Kent.”
Maxwell considered this for a moment, then without a word rose and limped across the room. He reached the bookshelf that was cluttered with books and pamphlets of all kinds, searched for a moment, then came back with a volume in his hand. He sat down, switched on the light, and said, “Did you ever read any Robert Browning?”
“No.”
“You ought to. He speaks of art better than any man I ever saw. Let me read you this.”
He thumbed through the well-worn volume and said, “This is a poem called ‘Andrea del Sarto.’ It’s a poem about a real artist. One they call the faultless painter. It’s a long poem and I won’t read all of it. It’s what’s known as a dramatic monologue. That means del Sarto himself is doing the talking. He’s talking to his mistress, who is not really in love with him, and he tries to explain his art. He tells her this:
‘Behold Madonna!—I am bold to say.
I can do with my pencil what I know,
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