The Alexandrite

by Rick Lenz

  “I think that’s enough for now, dear.”

  “But I like dancing. I like dancing with you, Richard.”

  As I lead Lily back to the table, I see Daryl across the room at the far end of the bar, talking to a tall brunette.

  We finish our drinks and I suggest we leave, but Margaret hears the opening strains of “Moonglow” and insists we dance to it.

  Toward the end of the song, Margaret puts both arms around me with her hands on the back of my neck. I lean my cheek against her forehead and am unclear if Richard has any desire to pick up with her where he left off when they were first together and in love and if he could, and did, and lived past 3:07 mountain time in Kingman, Arizona, (and Pacific time as well) the morning after next, would Jack’s particular collection of memories within Richard Blake cease to exist?

  Would he vanish?

  “Moonglow” is still playing when I open my eyes and look over toward our table.

  Daryl is seated next to Lily, leaning over, his face almost touching hers.

  I move off the dance floor, followed by Margaret.

  When I get to the table, I say, “Excuse me.”

  Daryl looks dully up at me. “Yeah?”

  “These are our seats.”

  “Is that right?” He rises slowly from the chair and, without any earnestness, says, “I beg your pardon.” He turns back to Lily. “Would you like to dance, sweet cheeks?”

  “I’m sorry. She can’t.”

  “You her father?”

  “That’s right.”

  As quickly and decisively as I can, I pull Lily up by the arm and escort both women out of the Rat Hole.

  Daryl stands in front of us once more, along with his friends, the two rednecks, blocking the path back to the Oldsmobile. He’s making the same sucking sound with his mouth and slowly drawing up one side of his upper lip like a junkyard dog.

  Margaret and Lily look at the man in their lives. I’ve come back to this place on purpose. I wish I hadn’t but it doesn’t matter now, it’s too late. I have to face this—I can’t suppress a smile as it occurs to me what it is—pattern of harassment.

  “Whatcha grinning at?” says Daryl.

  “Nothing. Please get out of our way.”

  “You didn’t pay me any courtesy in there.”

  “Can’t we try to avoid this?”

  “Avoid what, studly?”

  I take Margaret’s arm, then Lily’s, and try to move around them again.

  Daryl pokes his finger into my chest. “I was feeling like a gentleman when I came here tonight.” He leers at Lily, “Then I saw this fine little dish of custard. Guess I’m just a gentleman who prefers blondes.”

  Lily makes a whimpering sound, and Margaret puts an arm around her.

  “Listen, why don’t you let us pass?” I say, blinking.

  “Why don’t I let you pass? How about because I don’t fuckin’ well feel like it?” The rednecks chortle appreciatively.

  “We just want to go home. We don’t need to have any trouble.”

  Daryl looks at the two rednecks and grins. “This guy says, ‘We don’t need to have any trouble.’” They share another laugh. Daryl turns back to me. “There’s something about you just pisses the shit out of me. And to be real honest, I like trouble.”

  “Please, just step aside.” I put a hand on Daryl’s shoulder and start to push him back.

  Daryl knocks my hand away. “You don’t ever fucking touch me, ass-face. I’ll rip your nuts off and feed ’em to you.”

  Without warning, his knee comes up hard into my groin.

  I pitch toward the gravel sidewalk and have barely hit the ground when I sense a foot kicking out toward my head.

  Richard and Jack misjudged their mutual muscle memory the last time. This time, we don’t stop to deliberate at all because by now we are extremely upset with this guy’s lousy personality, not to mention his lethal-looking boot that’s coming toward us on a trajectory calculated to remove several of our teeth.

  I twist my head to the left and bring up my right hand, catching Daryl under the back of the calf and throwing him off his aim and his balance at the same time.

  Daryl is suddenly seated next to me, a startled look on his face.

  I get to my feet, still reeling from the crushing, sick pain in my groin.

  When Daryl realizes he isn’t hurt, he gets up again, his lip curling back in its Evil Elvis way.

  He unleashes a fist at my face.

  I take a quick step back, twist my hips, and grab Daryl’s right wrist with my right hand while thrusting up with my left forearm into his locked elbow.

  I can’t see his face as I hear his arm break, but I see it immediately after he’s landed. The leverage I’ve used to propel him flat onto his back has snapped it like a twig. Daryl kicks his legs and flails his remaining workable arm, trying to get his lungs to fill up with air again. He looks like a man who’s undergone a sudden shift in priorities. The most important thing to him now is to breathe again. He doesn’t look angry or chastised—only as if he has other things on his mind.

  I turn my attention from the injured man to the rednecks, who, seeing what’s happened to Daryl, fall all over each other clearing a path to the Oldsmobile.

  Margaret and Lily stand dead still, neither of them saying a word, just staring at me with the look of mingled adoration and awe that I associate with Lois Lane right after Superman has pulled her ass out of the fire again.

  The first part of the drive home passes in silence.

  “If you could be that vigorous about your career,” Margaret says finally, “then perhaps we could make some plans and improve our lives.”

  I remember the other reason Richard turned to Lily.

  That night I have one of those sexy dreams that feels so real you can smell it. I’m dreaming of Lily, or Marilyn … I’m not sure. It’s every teenage boy’s fantasy come true. It’s that thing that owns him, conscious and unconscious, day and night. It’s all his animal longings—fulfilled, and nothing else in the world matters.

  It’s gratification so perfect he could never experience it outside of a dream, but so real, it couldn’t have been a dream.

  Unless it was someone else’s.

  14

  WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 1956

  I arrived at Schwab’s Pharmacy at eleven in the morning the last time. Today, in my nervousness about missing my moment, I get there shortly after ten. I notice now that a table has been drawn up to one of the booths at the side of the store and a group of eleven or twelve actors, all men except for one girl, about twenty years old, are sitting around drinking coffee and talking. I didn’t notice this party the last time, but decide I just didn’t look in their direction or that they had already moved on.

  I recognize three of the men. One of them is an actor named Frank Stafford, around thirty years old. We did a Bionic Woman episode together in the late seventies, when I was still a young leading man. The story was about people who turn into ghouls on an Arctic island and only Jaime Sommers (Lindsay Wagner) can do anything about it because she hears a certain bacterially-induced tone with her bionic hearing, a tone nobody else can hear and that triggers all the trouble. Frank played a navy flier who turned into a monster just before I did and just before Jamie found a way to reverse all of the zombifying effects and save everybody.

  I saw Frank on an old kinescope of a Schlitz Playhouse recently. In it, he was just a little younger than the age I look to be now. He will be into his sixties when I work with him years from now. Today, he is a young man again.

  I go over to the soda fountain, get a chocolate Coke, then go back and sit in a recently vacated chair next to Frank.

  After a while, Frank’s attention seems to wander from the conversation around him.

  “Nice work on the Schlitz.”

  He looks at me oddly. “How did you know?”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “How did you know I was up for that?”

  Shit. They hav
en’t shot the damned thing yet.

  As I try to think of a way to wiggle out of it, Frank frowns. “My agent says they may go younger.”

  “Don’t worry. You’ll get it.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “I’m sure you’re exactly what they’re looking for.”

  “You think?” He looks away, scratching some itch behind his ear.

  I nod and turn my attention back to the actors’ conversation.

  I find all the stories, the inside Hollywood scoop, fascinating. Richard—the title-holder to the body I’m living in—feels as if gypsies have kidnapped him. But he’s intrigued—bewildered. If he were from the future, he might be thinking “WTF?”

  At five after eleven, Jesse Littman walks into Schwab’s. I excuse myself, give Frank a wink, and tell him, “Good luck with the show,” leaving him looking perplexed.

  I hurry to the soda fountain, past Charlie Lane talking to Phil Leeds about Phil’s (nonexistent) golf game. I arrive at my place at the counter just ahead of Jesse Littman. As I’m about to sit down, I involuntarily work my right shoulder, sore from its run-in with the gravel sidewalk the night before.

  A passing waitress takes a step out of the way so as not to bump into me, and Jesse Littman, on his way to the same stool as before, pauses so he won’t run into the waitress.

  I hear a female voice call out, “Hey, Jesse.”

  Jesse turns so that he’s facing the table where Charlie and Phil are talking. He walks past them and most of the way across the restaurant to a young couple sitting at another table. After a moment, Jesse sits down with them.

  I’ve missed my connection.

  I order another chocolate Coke.

  A half an hour later, Jesse Littman is still talking with the young couple.

  I walk across the restaurant to them. “Excuse me,” I say to Jesse, “Didn’t we do a Dragnet together?”

  The young couple watch as Jesse looks up at me. “I don’t think so. Your face sorta rings a bell but …” He shakes his head and turns up his hands in polite regret.

  “It just seemed that maybe we’d worked together.”

  Jesse doesn’t want to encourage me. “Unh-hunh. Well, maybe.”

  “I’m sure we’ve worked together.”

  His smile evaporates.

  I shrug and grin. “I guess I’m a little upset. My agent was supposed to send me in for Bus Stop today. But he … got … got sick and I can’t reach him.” There’s a dreadful pause. “He died. My agent died. Got clunked on the head and drowned in his swimming pool.” I suck in a mixture of saliva and air. “Shit.”

  The three of them stare at me somber-eyed.

  Coughing, Richard produces a pathetic smile, turns, and rushes out of Schwab’s.

  I drive to Jerry Kennents’ office. The secretary, Virginia, is pleasant to me again, but I don’t have an appointment, and she can’t help me. I ask her if she’ll tell her boss that I’m an actor Joshua Logan has previously thought about for the role of Lawrence in Bus Stop and could I please go in and see Kennents now, but she tells me she’d lose her job if she did that, and after some fruitless wheedling, I leave.

  I drive directly to Twentieth Century Fox, park down the street on Motor Avenue, and walk toward the gate. Up against a storm fence are several sacks of cement. I heft one onto my good shoulder and walk undetected past the gate guard as a laborer.

  I drop the cement around the corner of the first side street, take a second to catch my breath, then make my way past the gilt and teak exterior of the Royal Palace for The King and I.

  When I ask for Joyce Faberman, it’s later than it was the first time. The production secretary tells me she isn’t there.

  “Do you know where I can find her?”

  “The role is cast.”

  “I’m not an actor, and Mr. Logan’s expecting me.” It comes out in a burst, with windfall confidence, born of desperation.

  “Really? May I ask what it’s about?”

  “It’s about … geology!” I keep myself from stammering. “I mean gems. It’s about gems.”

  “Are you a … jewelry salesman?”

  “No, I’m a gemologist.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Richard Blake.”

  Looking very unsure, she dials two numbers on her phone, and a moment later says, “Sorry to bother you, Mr. Logan, but there’s a Richard Blake here to see you … He says he’s a gemologist.” After a moment, she repeats herself: “A gemologist.” She listens, nods, and puts the receiver back in its cradle. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, but I have to be very careful.” She smiles conspiratorially. “Actors. They’ll do anything, absolutely anything. If I were to tell you some of the tricks that have been pulled on this lot by actors looking for work, you’d be amazed.” She shrugs apologetically. “You can go right in. He’s through that door.” She points toward Joshua Logan’s temporary office.

  I thank her and, nibbling on the inside of my lip, move to Mr. Logan’s office, wipe my palms off on my shirt, and open the door.

  Logan sits in the same chair. He’s already finished his lunch. He has his elbows on his desk with his chin resting on his hands so that when he looks at Richard, it’s like a little boy peering up at an adult. His look changes from dour to bemused.

  “A gemologist?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’re actually a gemologist?”

  “That’s right. Um … I’m sorry to bother you at lunch time.”

  “Never mind that.” He sits up straight and smoothes his mustache with the index fingers of both hands. It’s about a half hour later than it was the last time. Logan looks pale. The blood seems to have been drained from his face. “I’ve just gotten off the phone with Miss Monroe … Did you know that I’ve been doing Bus Stop with Marilyn Monroe?”

  I nod.

  Logan looks out the window, distracted, ruminating out loud. “She’s been the soul of professionalism and cooperation on this film—until five minutes ago.”

  “Really?”

  Logan looks back, scowling. “She just put a condition on doing the additional shooting I think we simply must do to make this film work. We have to come up with a ‘more exotic’ profession for the character we have showing up now toward the end, at the bus station, and I was just wondering …” Blinking, Logan studies me, as if he’s trying to read nearly illegible hieroglyphics on my face. “Miss Monroe doesn’t want this character, Lawrence, to work for the Department of the Interior. She feels, or rather no doubt Arthur Miller feels … I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have said that. He feels that this character doesn’t serve his purpose if he’s a bureaucrat. The problem is that we really need to shoot the scene tomorrow. It’s the only day we can possibly do it.”

  “I see.” I’m fascinated, baffled.

  Logan presses the tips of two fingers against his forehead and drums the fingers of his other hand on the desk. “I was just wondering—”

  The phone rings and he picks it up. “Yes?” An anxious frown forms on his face. He gets up and walks to the window, holding the rotary base in one hand and the receiver in the other. “No, love,” he says. “No, love, I don’t think so. No, love.” He listens again, his frown deepening.

  “Mr. Blake?” It’s the production secretary, standing behind me, whispering. “Mr. Blake?”

  Logan looks over his shoulder at us as he continues listening to the difficulty on the other end of the line. Shaking his head, he points at me and makes a flicking-away motion.

  The secretary gestures for me to get up and follow her.

  We go out into the reception area. The secretary says, “I’m sorry, Mr. Blake. This is an emergency. Why don’t you telephone us next week? Mr. Logan may have some time for you then.”

  There isn’t a thing I can do. I try to comfort myself that it wouldn’t have worked out anyway, that I wouldn’t have been cast, that you don’t hire a gemologist to play a speaking role in your major Hollywood motio
n picture. At least I’d been able to meet Joshua Logan again. I think of friends I might tell about it—but most of them haven’t been born yet or are out in their backyards or in school yards, playing on swing sets. Anyway, it would be small recompense.

  I walk toward the commissary, wondering how I might find out where Marilyn’s dressing room is and what unbalanced words might come out of my mouth if I should happen to run into her. Would I show her the alexandrite and explain to her that what it means is that we may both be—her and me, whom she doesn’t know—teetering on the brink of a vast abyss?

  “Excuse me?” A man on a stone bench beneath a Chinese elm tree, evidently reading a script, is pointing. It’s Wendell Corey, the tall, stern-faced character actor. He is indicating something over my shoulder, behind me.

  “That man wants you,” he says.

  I turn around and see Joshua Logan still standing at the window in his office on the third floor, beckoning for me to come back.

  I thank Wendell Corey and rush back toward the Bus Stop offices.

  Rita’s voice echoes in the back of my brain as I run: “So tell me, Wendell, did you have any idea what a classic Rear Window would turn out to be? And what was it like, working with Hitchcock and Grace Kelly and Jimmy Stewart? You know who I love? I just love Thelma Ritter. I’ll bet she was a trouper, right? You could always count on Thelma Ritter for a solid piece of work. What a great picture. I’ll bet I’ve seen it ten times.”

  But Rita is anxious to hear what Josh Logan will say too, and manages to contain herself.

  Logan cocks his head and speaks to me from his window on the third floor. “I just wanted you to wait outside while I tried to talk to …” He frowns and strokes his mustache with a thumb and forefinger. “This character I’m dealing with … This character could be a … gemologist, couldn’t he?”

  “Sure. Why not?”