Cheap Diamonds

by Norris Church Mailer

  The pictures they took with Michel that first afternoon in New York got him in to see Eileen Ford, who, with great delight, signed him on the spot and suggested he change his name to something else. He picked Zack Carpenter, not unhappy to give Lale Hardcastle a little anonymity. He was working practically the next day, landing a job on his first gosee, an underwear shoot for the Sears, Roebuck catalog. In one of the shots, to everyone’s horror, the end of his penis had been peeking out of the leg of the boxers, and somehow it had gone unnoticed by the photo editors and the shot appeared in the catalog, full-color. Sears received a spate of angry letters, but a bigger flood of letters wanted to know who the model was. Some women included pictures of themselves to pass on. The photo editor nearly got fired, until they discovered that plaid cotton boxers, item #A-16, had been the best seller in the history of boxer shorts. Although Eileen Ford seemed upset and told him to watch himself in the future, her mouth twitched when he said that he guessed he was just too big for his britches. And she put him up a notch, to the seventy-five-an-hour board.

  Lale had been busy ever since. Too busy to really think much about finding another place to live. He slept on the couch until he got his first paycheck, and then got himself a futon from a place on Broome Street, and set it up in the corner on the farthest side of the loft from Sal’s, near the Mustang’s parking spot. He hung an Indian-print bedspread to separate it from the rest of the space, added a full-length mirror, shelves, and a big rack for the rapidly increasing wardrobe he was collecting. He had never had so many clothes in his life. It had never crossed his mind to want any. A couple pairs of jeans and a few shirts were all he needed back home. That and his leather jacket; a new pair of boots every few years and sneakers from time to time; some sweats. He hadn’t even owned a tie. But now, clothes were his bread and butter. He got a lot of catalog jobs, which weren’t the glamorous bookings, and the Sears, Roebuck people watched him like a hawk to make sure his “package” was completely covered, but it was steady and paid the bills, and it was giving him experience in front of the camera, which loved him from every angle. Occasionally some smitten stylist would give him clothes that he modeled, some he got as gifts from new designers who wanted their clothes to be seen around town on handsome young men, and a few he bought himself, with help from Sal. He was still a little ashamed of telling people he was a model, but the glamour jobs had started to come, and after a few major ads, like the L&M one in Playboy, and the checks that came with them, it got to be easier. People noticed him on the street, looking twice, thinking they recognized him, like he was a movie star or something. And he decided one day he might try that, too—acting. Several people had said he looked a little like James Dean, who was no sissy, that’s for sure, and the more he looked at himself, the more he thought so, too. Secretly he thought he was even better-looking—Dean’s eyes were a little too close together. He even read a book about Dean that said he got his start at the Actors Studio on West Forty-fourth Street. Not only Dean, but Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe studied there, too, and he passed by it a few times, watching the actors hanging around outside, looking cool and smoking during the scene break, thinking he might stop in one day and see what that method thing was all about.

  On a shoot for an MG sportscar ad, on Coney Island, with a cute blonde in a bikini and ponytails, he met Axel Rodriguez, an assistant to the photographer. Axel was trying to break into filmmaking and asked Lale if he wanted to be in a movie. Flattered, Lale said yes before he even knew what kind of film it was. It turned out to be a student film, since Axel was taking classes at the NYU film school, so there was no money involved, but Lale was invited to the class for the screening and critique—which turned out to be quite favorable—and was shocked when he saw himself up on the big screen, larger than life.

  He couldn’t take his eyes off of himself. It was a moody black-and-white short called Ace in the Hole, only ten minutes long, of four guys playing poker on a long drunken night, a lot of loving close-ups of his eyes and mouth with a cigarette dangling from his full lips. At the end of the night, after fights and accusations and a case of beer, one of the players kills another one. It took all night to shoot in Ron Bonetti’s studio, and since they were drinking real beer, it really got more drunken and wilder as the night ground on. In the big murder scene, Lale playing the unfortunate victim, they used Hershey’s syrup for blood, and the actor playing the murderer went a little over the top and smeared it not only all over Lale’s body but the walls as well. Axel loved it, but was a little put out since Bonetti had told them he wanted them to leave the place just like they’d found it, and it took them forever to get it cleaned. They were so wiped out they showered and just dropped to the floor naked, getting an hour’s sleep, when some model who sounded like she was from Arkansas, or parts close by, wandered in looking like a large, scared white rabbit and woke them all up.

  Lale had thought about her more than a few times since that morning and finally, when he was waiting in some studio on a go-see, he saw her in a magazine. At least he thought it might be her—the photo was a little grainy—with Bonetti’s byline. So she was getting some work. Good for her. He’d ask Bonetti about her if he ever saw him again. He realized he didn’t even know her name.

  Not that he had much time to think about strange women. There were enough women in his life, and frankly part of the reason he hadn’t moved out from the SoHo loft was that he wasn’t crazy about letting people know where he lived. You never knew when somebody might just show up at the wrong time, and he would never bring anybody to the loft. Sal was definite about that. He would much rather go to their places anyhow. Then he could leave when he got good and ready, not having to worry about making breakfast or having them all over him in the morning when he needed to get showered and out to work.

  In fact, he hadn’t given out his address to anybody, not his friends back home or even his parents. He had forced himself, or rather Sal had forced him, to call his mother and father a few days after he hit New York, just so his mother wouldn’t worry any more than she had to, but he hadn’t told them much about what he was doing. Just that he was going to be working as a model, like in the catalogs and magazines, making good money, and was staying with a new friend until he found a place to live. There had been a long silence on the other end of the phone.

  “Mom? Are you there? Mom?”

  “I don’t know what to say, Lale.” There were tears in her voice, but she was trying to keep them back. “You’ve had all of us worried sick, I hope you know that.”

  “I didn’t mean to make y’all worry. I wasn’t thinking about y’all at the time, and I’m sorry. I just had to get out. I couldn’t take it, Mom. I just couldn’t. I would have died. I really would have smothered and died.”

  “I don’t guess there’s anything I can say to make you come home and do what’s right, is there?”

  “I don’t guess.”

  “We didn’t raise you like that, Lale. What am I going to tell your daddy? I don’t think he would understand. I sure don’t understand. What about Cassie? And the baby?”

  “I’m going to send some money for you to give her when I get some. I can’t talk to her yet. She’d probably like to kill me, and there’s nothing I can say to her to fix things. She’ll be all right. She’s a good strong girl. I ain’t coming home, Mom.” There was a long pause.

  “What is this all about, Lale? Really? Is there something you’re not telling me? Is it the baby? Are you sure that baby’s yours? Is that why you left like you did?”

  Now that she said it, it did seem like a good reason for him to have run off. Of course he was sure the baby was his. Cassie would never cheat on him—he’d stake his life on it. But really, didn’t every man have just a little doubt? He didn’t want to lie, but he didn’t mind leaving a doubt in her mind, either. The real reason was just too ugly to admit to his mother.

  “Is any man ever really sure?” he said in a quiet, unsure voice.

  “Your dadd
y was sure.”

  “Well, I ain’t my daddy, and as much as I’d like to be like him, I have to be me, Mom. Don’t worry about me. I’ll write to you. I’m staying with a friend right now, but you can send me mail care of General Delivery, the Canal Street Post Office, Three-fifty Canal Street, New York, New York. And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t give out that address to anybody else.”

  “You mean Cassie?”

  “I mean anybody.”

  Lale had, of course, thought about Cassie a lot since then, mostly feeling guilty, sometimes missing her. The girls he went out with were invariably skinny models, or skinny girls who wanted to be models, and to his surprise he missed the comfort of Cassie’s soft body. At times, though, he would realize that he hadn’t thought about her at all for days, and that bothered him. When he got his first big paycheck, he sent two hundred dollars to his mother to give to her, and one other time, he sent three hundred. That should cover the hospital costs and buy some diapers, he figured. But he never wrote to her, and the more time went by, the less he wanted to write. He just didn’t know what to say, and anything he wrote would be phony. He wasn’t about to go back to Buchanan, and there was nothing else to tell her. She would find somebody else, and the less she heard from him the better off she would be. “Least said, soonest mended,” as his dad used to say.

  Sal finished tidying up the makeup table and sat down to apply makeup to his own face. He was obviously taking Miss Sally out tonight. It had gotten easier for Lale to live with Miss Sally. The modeling world was so populated with gay men that it was almost abnormal to be straight. He had no trouble with them, though, always making it clear up front that he liked women. Not many people knew he lived with Sal. And Sal seemed content to just let him be. He didn’t ask questions when Lale was out all night, and Lale didn’t ask him any. Sometimes they would go to clubs together, but usually they would arrive separately, and act like they’d just happened to bump into each other. Sal knew everybody in town, and he was always part of some big group, so it wasn’t unusual for Lale to join them. Lale had met a lot of famous photographers through Sal, and consequently got more work. In fact, he had just been booked for a new national perfume campaign, Diamonds & Ermine, that was being shot by Milton Greene, one of the biggest in the business, who at one time took a lot of pictures of Marilyn Monroe and even produced a movie with her, The Prince and the Showgirl. That would be a nice chunk of change, and maybe a TV commercial down the road. That’s where the big money was, commercials, and Lale was a natural for them. If he didn’t have to speak. He still hadn’t managed to get rid of his accent, and that held him back. Maybe they would do a voice-over. He really had to find the time to take speech lessons. Or acting classes. It would be less embarrassing to say he was an actor instead of a model.

  As Sal began the tedious process of doing his eye makeup, Lale put aside the guitar and started opening a stack of letters he had picked up at the post office on his way home. The third letter in the stack had a familiar handwriting on pink stationery. He sniffed it, and thought he could smell the perfume his mother always wore, Ma Griffe. It gave him a little pang of homesickness.

  Dear Lale,

  Well, you’ve got a daughter, or at least that’s what everybody in town thinks. I know it couldn’t be yours, and if that girl was honest she would name the daddy, but maybe she doesn’t even know herself. It’s just as well you were not here to see it and be saddled with it—it is deformed, a harelip. A bad one. It is never going to be normal-looking, even if they do surgery on it. They have it in an incubator at the Children’s Hospital in Little Rock, and I don’t think it’s going to get to come home from the hospital anytime soon. She named it Lalea, and I wish she hadn’t, but there was nothing I could do about it. At least she didn’t try to call it Hardcastle. Your daddy is just sick over the whole thing, and believes her that it is yours. We’ve had fights about it. I don’t have to tell you he still won’t think about writing to you. But you’re my baby, and I love you, no matter what. I’ve told everyone the baby is not yours, but you know how this little town is. I would love to see you, but I think you should probably stay in New York for a while, in case you are thinking of coming back. People are mostly on her side.

  I saw you in that magazine Esquire, in an ad for Haggar pants. You looked so handsome. I have started a scrapbook with all your pictures. I even went to Fort Smith to a drugstore where nobody knows me and bought Playboy, blushing the whole time, after somebody told me you were in it. The girl at the counter looked at me like I had two heads, and I had to hide it from your daddy. I never dreamed you would be doing so well, sweetheart. Please write to me, or call me. I wish you would at least give me your phone number, in case of emergency. I miss you so, and Brenda misses you, too. She wanted to move into your room, but I wouldn’t let her. All your stuff is still there, just like it was when you left. I wish you hadn’t given Cassie the car, but I know you felt like you had to. I just hate to see her driving around in it. Your daddy gave her the title, against my will, saying it was the least he could do. I hate it that he feels that way, and it’s tearing us up, but that’s not for you to worry about. We’ll get through it. He just loves you and misses you, like I do.

  Please write me soon.

  I love you so much,

  Mom

  Lale read the letter, and sat staring at the wall for a long time. He couldn’t imagine what a harelipped baby would look like, but it sounded bad. He felt like he was two inches high, swinging his legs off the edge of a deep chasm. But it was too late to do anything. Too late. Was it his fault the baby was deformed? Was it something in his sperm? Was Cassie so hurt by him leaving her that the wound went all the way into the baby? Whatever it was, it was his fault, he knew, but it was too late. Like a fire that had already burned down the house, what was done was done, and if he went back it would just make everything worse. His mother was right. He could never go home again. For a moment, he thought of his daddy, the talk they had in the barn, how his daddy had been in the same boat as him at one time but was more of a man. He took responsibility, and here Lale was pretending to his mother that the baby wasn’t even his. No wonder his daddy wouldn’t write to him. On top of it all, he was the cause of them fighting, and they had never fought before. He had never disliked himself so much in his life.

  He would send his mother some money for herself, he decided, to buy something nice. And some more to give Cassie. It sounded like Cassie would probably have a bigger hospital bill, with the incubator and all. He would send her another five hundred. Maybe a thousand. That would go a long way to salving his conscience. Heck, maybe he would send her more than that. It was only a day or two’s work for him, but to them it was a lot. His daddy didn’t make five hundred dollars a month. He wished his daddy would be proud of him, but he knew he never would be, even if he made a million dollars.

  “You’re awfully quiet,” Sal said, blotting his red lipstick and putting on the blond wig. “Anything wrong?”

  “Are you going out tonight?” Lale asked, putting the letter aside as Sal slipped into his girdle and padded bra, put on a blue sequined miniskirt, chiffon top, and high red heels.

  “No, I’m wearing this outfit to cook pasta in! Of course I’m going out! I’m taking Miss Sally to Max’s Kansas City. Want to come along? You look like you need a little outing to cheer up. Was it something in that letter you just read?”

  “Cassie had the baby.”

  “Congratulations! You’re a daddy!”

  “It was a girl.”

  “Well, how sweet. Are you going to go back, do you think?” Sal tried to be casual, but his voice was a tiny bit tight.

  “No. I won’t be going back.”

  “Well, I’m sure she’ll be fine. You’ve been sending money?”

  “Yes. I’ll send some more.”

  “Good boy. So don’t look so sad! You’re a good daddy, paying child support. Better than a lot of guys, believe me. Come out with me. We’ll celebrate.”<
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  “Maybe I’ll come over later.”

  “Seeing some girl?”

  “No, no girl. If I come, I’ll be by myself. But don’t look for me. If I come, I’ll find you.”

  “Suit yourself. I’ll be at the usual table.” Sal took a shaggy black fur coat from a garment bag and put it on, preening in front of the mirror.

  “What in the world is that mess you’re wearing? It looks like something a truck run over and left on the highway.”

  “It’s monkey fur. I found it at the flea market. Isn’t it divine?”

  “Monkey fur? You’re wearing the skin of your closest cousin? Why don’t you just skin Preston and make a coat out of him! All that paint he has on him would make a pretty-colored coat.”

  “That’s disgusting,” Sal said, putting on a wide-brimmed red felt hat with a huge rhinestone spider on the band.

  “So is monkey fur.”

  “Oh, monkeys, schmonkeys. I look great in it! Try to come to Max’s. Please. You’ll feel better if you do. See you later.” And Miss Sally swept out the door, monkey fur trailing in the dust.