Genius

by Patrick Dennis

  “Oh, go soak your head,” I said, snatching the handkerchief back.

  “What you say is by and large correct. I have been self-indulgent and foolish. I have neglected my child. I have been shamefully indiscreet and careless when it comes to money matters. But I am not forgotten. If you don’t believe me—and I can sense that you don’t—take a look at these.” From his wallet Starr produced a stack of letters from every major motion-picture studio and every television network in America. I took my time reading them, suspicious always of a trick or, at the very least, a grandstand play on the part of Starr. They were authentic. I recognized the names, signatures, and styles of the heads of almost every company. Far from forgotten, Starr had been offered the director’s job on every major property scheduled for production during the next two years. Not only were the salaries staggering, but even better for a man in Starr’s delicate position with the government, there were all sorts of complicated deals involving shares of the profits, percentages of grosses, spread-out payments. “But, Starr,” I said. “Why don’t you say yes to one or two or three of these offers? Not one of them is more than a couple of months old. Something must still be open. Within a year or so you could be right back to where you used to be. You could pay up your honest debts and . . .”

  “Don’t be absurd, child. With the income-tax people hanging over me like a sword of Damocles? With the first Mrs. Starr—I was hardly more than a boy when I married her—and her wretched lawyers waiting for God knows how much back alimony? With Ilonka—that was my fourth ghastly mistake; promise me you’ll always avoid Hungarians—wailing like a Tzigany for her blood money? Go back to America with my hat in my hand, an old has-been trying for a comeback, looking like a beachcomber?”

  “Well, a Fire Island beachcomber, perhaps,” I said, taking in, once again, his bizarre costume.

  “No! Damn it, man, I won’t do it. I can’t do it. When Starr returns, Starr returns in style—in splendor!”

  “Oh Lord, here we go again: the maharaja returning to the imperial suite on a spangled elephant. Starr, these are the sixties, not the twenties. People have forgotten all that red-carpet nonsense. Surely you’ve had enough of life à la Ritz by now to know that it’s phony—nice, but not worth the price.” I handed the letters back to him, satisfied that they were the real McCoy. “In these days of inflation and taxes all these people ask of you is a superior job of work, not a super new standard of living.”

  “No,” he said quietly. “I’ve got to come on strong. . . .”

  “I wouldn’t worry about that if I were you.”

  “But you’re not me. You’ve had all the advantages.”

  “All I could pay for,” I said pointedly.

  “The social graces, the best schools, a rich family . . .”

  “What are you talking about, rich? My father was a broker in Chicago. He still is. Real estate. But he’s not rich, although he yells about the Democratic party as though he’d been . . .”

  “I was raised on a pig farm in Iowa and a mighty poor pig farm at that.”

  “Well, you could fool me—not that you haven’t before.”

  “How do you think I feel when I’m with people like . . . like Emily’s mother? Like Emily herself?”

  “You’ve always seemed to have the situation well in hand.”

  “But it’s been an act.”

  “You could have played the Palace with it, Leander.”

  “But it takes costumes, scenery, props, and I can’t go on without them.”

  “So you plan to stay down here at pig level?”

  “No. When I go back to the States—and I’m going soon—I’m going back with money in the bank.”

  “How, Starr? Just tell me how!”

  “There’s this Mexican picture. I mentioned it to you last night. It’s called Valley of the Vultures. The script is patchy, but that can be fixed. I could do it in a couple of weeks—a month at the longest, knowing what I know. It would cost nothing. Nothing, I tell you. With me at the helm I could turn it into the biggest grossing art film ever made—and for nickles and dimes. All I need are those nickles and dimes. By the by, dear boy, I don’t suppose that you or your charming wife might happen to have a bit of loose capital to . . .”

  “No, Leander,” I said. “Not a dime or a nickel. Unlike you, I’ve put every penny into my children or my sugar bowl, where I can’t get at it, so that fifteen or twenty years from now I will be unlike you.”

  “Well, it was just a shot in the dark.”

  “You missed.”

  “But I do have other opportunities down here. Of course you know the famous Mexican impresario, Aristido González?”

  “I know of him and it isn’t good. He’s about as solid as quicksand and . . .”

  “Ah, here we go again. Whenever we get on these boring matters of mere money, you begin to sound like a threatening letter from Emily’s maternal grandfather. Let us get on to a more aesthetic tack, while I tell you something of the artistic meat of Valley of the Vultures. Oh, and by the way, dear boy, now that I’ve breakfasted—and abominably! I don’t know how you locate these appalling bistros—perhaps you might consent to join me in something stronger. Mozo!” he called, signalling to the torpid barman-waiter.

  Fight it though I would, I found myself once again hypnotized by Starr and his dreams of glory. Two hours later, we jostled our way over the roaches and out of the café, arms clasped as though we had never exchanged a cross word, both of us hellbound for home where we could really tackle the script and the technical problems of Valley of the Vultures. We swayed congenially for a few paces along the street, when our grandiose plans for fame in filmdom were interrupted by the bartender who tapped Starr rudely on the shoulder.

  “Ole, señor, la cuenta!”

  “What is it, my good man?” Starr said.

  “The check,” I said. “He thinks it ought to be paid.”

  “Oh, what a dunderhead I’m becoming,” Starr said, after a pretty pantomime of slapping at his pockets. “I’ve left the apartment without a sou. Dennis, carissimo, could you? Would you?”

  Together we wobbled congenially through the deserted streets, parched in the heat of the day, back home, paying loud and elaborate compliments to one another. It was only at the portal of Casa Ximinez that I developed a certain drunken caution. “What if Mr. Guber should be waiting for you?” I asked.

  “Who, good old Irving? Irv? Why, darling child, we’ll simply cast him as the leading vulture. He’d be superb!” We laughed immoderately, grasping helplessly at one another for support.

  The patio was mercifully empty. We made our uneven way toward Starr’s door. “To work, to work, dear Dennis!” he shouted.

  “Wait, Leander, wait. I’ll bring my typewriter so that any time we arrive at a brrrrrilliant idea, I can get it down in white and black.” I weaved toward the table and glanced at the fifteen or twenty words I had written that day. From the jacaranda branches above, Loro had dropped a large but eloquent literary criticism on Salli, Mr. Right, and the broccoli.

  Notes

  1. They like diminutives of Victorian names such as Candy for Candace, Debby for Deborah, or even Vicky for Victoria. However, spellings of the Italianate School—Patti, Susi, Jeri—are enjoying a tremendous vogue at the moment, and who am I to lag behind the times?

  2. No short-story heroine is ever permitted an aquiline, Roman, Semitic, or pug nose, although rhinoplasty is a favorite subject of the beauty editor: “Do You Like Your Nose?”

  3. A favorite color now because—or in spite—of Elizabeth Taylor. Violet eyes have totally replaced green and turquoise.

  4. Most girls would have said “Balls!” but one bows to reader mail from the Bible Belt invariably ending, “. . . .cancel my subscription to your salacious magazine, which I have consigned to its rightful place—the fire!”

  5. As the median subscriber’s age—if not intelligence—is twenty-two and a half, no heroine is ever older. This is known in the
trade as “creating reader identity.”

  6. Can one wonder?

  7. Need I tell you that in the very next paragraph the doorbell will ring, and there will be snub-nosed, freckled, rangy Jeff or Greg or Tad, with his happy-go-lucky grin, who has inadvertently come to the wrong apartment, leaving brittle, mean-mouthed Claire or Sandra or Sybil tapping her aristocratic foot on the floor above? Well, it’s a living.

  VIII

  I followed Starr into his apartment, where St. Regis was industriously polishing the dozens of silver frames that surrounded Starr’s collection of photographs of the dead Great. “I see you’ve got the rogue’s gallery out again,” I said. St. Regis giggled.

  “Ah, yes, mi amigo, they make this torture chamber a bit homier, and then I thought they might interest my daughter. By the way, St. Regis, where is Miss Emily?”

  “Oh, she’s gone out to lunchin with a young gentilmun, sir.”

  “A young gentleman? How does she know any young gentlemen down here?”

  “Why, he came to call on you, sir. I don’t recall the name, but I seen—saw—him here the other night. Ever so attractive, lovely dark eyes, beautyful manners and great big, ellygunt opin car.”

  “Who in the name of . . .”

  “Just-call-me-Bruce?” I said. “Bruce van Damm?”

  “Why, yes, Mr. Dennis. That’s iggzackly whom it was.”

  “Oh, well,” Starr said, “he seemed nice enough. Mannerly. Do the child good to get out with some young beau.”

  “Young Mr. van Damm isn’t losing any time, is he?”

  “Ah well, Emily’s a sensible girl—too sensible. She’ll come to no harm. St. Regis, be a pearl and bring down all the material I’ve collected on Valley of the Vultures.”

  “Oh, Mr. Starr, you don’t mean—you can’t mean that we’re going to get rolling on a new ixtravaganzia?”

  “I mean just that, St. Regis. Now, do hurry.” St. Regis skittered up the stairs two at a time.

  “Have you discovered what problem brought Emily down here?” I asked.

  “Oh, just some trivial girlish thing. Don’t worry, it isn’t anything ghastly like making a grandfather of me. It’s simply that there’s some young man up in Philadelphia—oh, very proper and old family—who wants to marry her. Naturally her mother’s pushing for it. She’s got the whole thing mapped out like a rocket launching: first the coming-out party; then announcing the engagement; then a proper waiting period; then the gala wedding. It’s just Caroline’s sort of thing.”

  “But is it Emily’s?”

  “Well, she doesn’t know.”

  “You mean she doesn’t love the stallion Caroline’s picked out?”

  “Oh, nothing that melodramatic. She thinks she does, but she isn’t sure. She is smart enough to realize that she’s very young and that she’s seen nothing of life except what Caroline and Mr. Strawbridge wish her to see. And that’s precious little—Philadelphia all winter and some dismally respectable watering place all summer—and always with the same people.”

  “Is she fond of her stepfather?”

  “She seems to be. But her main problem is that she wants to get away by herself for a time and think. See something of life.”

  “Well, she’ll certainly see it with you.”

  “I do hope so. In moderate doses, of course. But this young Bruce van Whatever . . .”

  “Damm.”

  “Now what’s the matter?”

  “Van Damm. That’s his name.”

  “Oh, yes. He doesn’t seem to me much different from any of the proper young Philadelphians she’s gone to dancing school with—pure vanilla. I would have suggested a more radical change.”

  “Don’t be too sure that Just-call-me-Bruce won’t be more of a change than she’s bargaining for.”

  “What do you mean, Dennis?”

  “There’s just something about him that rubs me the wrong way. I’ve got nothing to go on with Bruce van Damm but . . .”

  “Here it is, sir,” St. Regis said, puffing down the stairs with a great rubbish pile of papers. “All I could find, at least.”

  “Splendid, St. Regis. Just set it all out in the patio, and Mr. Dennis and I will get down to work.”

  “Oh, and remember what you promised, Mr. Starr.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A part in it for me. I’ve been rehearsing my Spanish, too. Obblay oo-stead Espaniel.”

  “Oh, yes. Well, we’ll see. And do bring out some drinks.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Starr’s “files” covering Valley of the Vultures were a mare’s nest of extraneous bits of paper that spilled over the edge of the table and fluttered to the ground. Notes had been written on the backs of old envelopes and checks, on hotel stationery and menus from all over Europe, on bills and dunning letters, on timetables and laundry lists. No archivist in the world would ever have been able to sort them out. Not so our Starr. Drunk as he was, disorganized as his material was, Leander was all grim purpose and pure efficiency. He knew exactly where to lay hand on every fact and figure, and he knew just what he was talking about. And he talked fast.

  For a man who in his day had been known to insist on using vintage champagne instead of ginger ale “for authenticity”; who had blown up a fleet of full-sized Spanish ships instead of miniature models “for scope”; who, instead of using catsup, demanded real blood corresponding to the actors’ types (at fifty bucks a pint) “for realism”; who would cheerfully order his cameraman to shoot a thousand feet of film and scrap all but a yard of it, Starr could be amazingly down-to-earth when it came to filming a picture.

  My knowledge of the intricacies—even the terminology—of film making isn’t good enough to this day to allow me to record more than isolated snatches of Starr’s machine-gun delivery. But it certainly was impressive and, I know now, to the point. “Do it on a shoestring, dear Dennis, have to. . . . Cut plenty of corners. I know which ones. . . . Get around the unions as best we can. Dispense with a make-up crew. This is a picture of life, not Elizabeth Arden’s. Any slap that needs applying I can do myself. . . . Do my own cutting, do my own mixing. I’ve forgotten more about it than the most expensive men in Hollywood ever knew. . . . Forget the studio rentals, the light rentals. We’ll work on location, by daylight. Hot, harsh, grueling sunshine. It won’t be pretty, but it’ll be real. . . . I’ll be my own script girl—or you can. . . . Know the best camerman in the business, ex-party member, can’t work in the States, can’t get papers to work down here, poor bastard. He’ll do it for peanuts. . . . Shooting schedule all laid out on this idiotic, whining letter from my tailor. Cut to the bone. Three weeks flat—maybe two. . . . A shoestring, man, I tell you, a shoestring. Hundred thousand dollars maximum!” On and on he went.

  About the only subjects I felt capable of commenting on were the strong Mexican unions, the impossibility of shooting anything (except perhaps one’s self) in the genuine Valley of the Vultures—an arid wasteland that lies parched and gasping for a breath of air in Guerrero between the Sierra Madre and Taxco—and money.

  “Starr, Starr,” I said, “this is all fine. I’m with you. I’ll go over the script, do anything I can to help you. But stop referring to a hundred thousand dollars as ‘a shoestring.’ If that’s a shoestring, Starr, you haven’t got an inch of dental floss.”

  “Maybe not, dear boy,” he said, slopping rum and soda into our glasses. “But I’ll get it, by God, I’ll get it!”

  “Where?”

  “Catalina Ximinez, that’s one place.”

  “Madame X? After what you said to her this morning? After you kicked her out of bed yesterday?”

  “Yes, damn her, yes. She’s got it—plenty more—and she’ll give it, too.”

  “She’d be a horse’s ass if she did.”

  “Of course she’s a horse’s ass. She wouldn’t be an actress if she weren’t. And like all the rest of them, she’s perishing to get back in front of the camera.”

  “You mean you’d hav
e that bulbous old squaw in the picture? As what, a squashed totem pole?”

  “As anything. She can think she’s the star for all of me. She’s too stupid to read the script and too vain to know the difference. I’ll cut her out later—or at least trim her part down to size.”

  I was about to ask prudishly if that was quite honorable, but I knew that such a naïve objection would fall on deaf ears. “But she’s lost her looks, her voice would shatter bottles, she can’t act, and she’s retired.”

  “Don’t worry your young gray head about that, dear boy. I don’t want looks. Hollywood is full of pretty, stupid marshmallow faces. I can have a voice along the line of Elvira Rios’ dubbed in. I can pull a performance out of a stone—and don’t you forget it. As for being retired, there is no such thing as a retired actress. Rich or poor, good or bad, they’ll all go on and on and on until they . . . And speaking of rich, retired actresses, just turn and look at what Fate has dropped into our laps.”

  I turned and saw my wife entering the patio with Lady Joyce.

  “Monica James?” I said. “You’re insane. She’d never . . .”

  “Be quiet and leave this to me. Well, hel-lo! Two lovely ladies come to bring a little beauty and cheer into the lives of two lonely men. Mrs. Dennis, darling Monica!”

  “Oh, come off it, Leander. What are you after now?” Lady Joyce said.

  “Look what I found under the next dryer,” my wife said. “We had our hair done together, we lunched with Katy Walch, we shopped and we shopped and we shopped, and now we’re dying for a drink.” She glanced at me. “From the look of you, you suffer from no such problem.”

  Ignoring her loftily, I said, “Lady Joyce, how nice to see you again. Do sit down.”

  Her Ladyship, who was looking smashing in yellow linen with one go-to-hell emerald pin, sat down and crossed her ankles elegantly. Observing the mess of rubbish on the table, she said, “Why, Leander, from all those grubby little bits and pieces of paper spread out before you, I’d almost wager you were planning another film. What fun!”