Don't Speak to Strange Girls

by Whittington, Harry

  “Have you been happy, Sharon? Not lonely … I mean, not needing anything?”

  “Oh no.” She came to him, sat on the lounge chair beside him. “I’ve had a wonderful life. You’ll never know the thrill to sit in a theatre at the college and see you on the screen, and hear the girls sigh and whisper that Big Daddy Sex is my father. Sharon Stuart’s father … I’m not the prettiest girl at school, not nearly the most brilliant — but what I am is the most envied girl on campus. Because of you.”

  “I’d — like to keep you around here if I could,” he said. “What if you did miss the rest of the year? You could make it up.”

  She averted her face, spoke quickly. “I’m too much my mother’s daughter to believe that … I’m about to get — my degree … I can’t stop now.”

  His voice was self-deprecating. “Maybe it’s just that I don’t hold much with degrees for women.”

  “Your cowboy background,” she teased. “Now I sound like mother.”

  “There are worse things.” He got up, walked to the windows. “I hoped maybe we could get away … You and I. We could go — I don’t care … Mexico, Europe … I wouldn’t drag you fishing or anything like that. We’d go where you wanted to go, Sharon. Wouldn’t you like that?”

  “I’d love it. But — ”

  He heeled around. “Then let’s do it. Just you and I.”

  “Daddy, you don’t have to disrupt your life to drag me around on a trip you’d hate in a week.”

  “But — I wouldn’t — ”

  “You’re a much better actor on the screen. I’m not depressed. Mother was ill so long — I’ve been learning to accept it all this time. I’ll be all right. Don’t worry about me.” She could not bring herself to tell him yet about Amory. This wasn’t the right time, yet she had to do it before she returned East to school. She thought emptily maybe she’d talk to Kay Ringling about it. Wasn’t this what everybody did who wanted to reach Clay Stuart? Didn’t they talk to Kay Ringling first?

  Clay felt his shoulders sag and he stared at Sharon. He could not tell her he was worried about himself, he needed her. He needed the smooth flow of life he’d had with Ruth. He was lost and lonely and he needed her, but he saw he could not say this to Sharon.

  And she wouldn’t have believed him even if he’d said it.

  chapter two

  CLAY STUART lay back in a lounge chair beside his swimming pool. He watched a eucalyptus leaf float on the wind-rifled water. He made a bet with himself as to how long the leaf would float, and when it continued to ride the surface after the time limit he’d set, he removed a fifty-cent piece from his right pocket and put it in his left. Otherwise he did not move.

  An empty highball tumbler sweated on the glass table-top at his elbow. His feet hung over the end of the chair. He wore unlaced sneakers and had kicked loose his headache.

  He was not really thinking anything; there was nothing he wanted to think about, and when any thought intruded in on his conscious mind, he shoved it aside with the memories of his father which had been roused to life again at Ruth’s graveside in Forest Lawn. He’d run away in his thoughts that day to a less complicated time, and he found himself doing it again in the days since Ruth’s funeral. The present offered nothing but accumulated griefs, and his thoughts returned to Colonel Ben because, after forty years, they were less urgent, less painful.

  At thirteen he’d thought the land stark, the life arid, but now he let his mind dwell on Colonel Ben, the quarter-horse the colonel had given him, the .410 gauge shotgun on his tenth birthday, and the time the colonel had caught him with the little girl from the neighboring farm on the outhouse floor, doing it the only way they knew — the way they’d seen the horses and cattle and hunting dogs doing it. He still remembered hunching over her, putting all the strength and sick sweet urgency of his hands on her shoulders, trying to draw her head back to him so he could inhale the fragrance of her hair. They hadn’t even known Colonel Ben was in the world until they heard the colonel’s burst of prideful laughter just before he brought his belt down across Clav’s back.

  For many years every decision Clay Stuart made, every direction he turned was motivated by the compelling need to escape that raw land. Out there a man kissed infrequently — his bride only while she was still his bride, and then they lived together until they died, or killed one another, and seldom kissed again. A man might buss his mother’s cheek in a shamed way if she were absent from the house for more than a year, and kiss his grandchildren if they were small and no one was looking. A quick handshake was about as emotional as those people ever got.

  Clay watched the leaf bobble across the water. It seemed to him he’d always been a wad of emotion, crying when his pet chicken was killed for Sunday dinner, holding on to things he loved.

  He had the sudden memory of the day Colonel Ben assaulted the drummer on Main Street. The salesman rented a Stuart horse, rode it to death and then called young Clay a liar when he accused him.

  Maybe a twelve-year-old kid should have kept his mouth shut, but a blind man could see what the drummer had done, and Clay felt ill watching that suffering animal die.

  The Stuart women talked long and urgently to Colonel Ben and he finally agreed he would not speak of the matter with the drummer; the horse was dead, nothing could restore it, the colonel’s temper was violent and impossible to curb once roused.

  And the colonel kept his word, would have kept it forever if only the drummer had been smart enough to keep his mouth shut. Clay walked at his father’s side on Main Street, heard the colonel suddenly sniffing, blowing hard through his left nostril the way he always did when agitated.

  Clay hadn’t known what was the matter until he saw the drummer approaching them on the same side of the street. Colonel Ben kept his face straight, sniffing and blowing, but determined to keep his pledge and pass the drummer without speaking.

  But the drummer called Colonel Ben’s name, an arrogant man, an arrogant voice alien to the plains. Colonel Ben sniffed, swung as he turned, clouting the drummer on the side of the head. The drummer staggered, stumbling ten feet before he fell. Colonel Ben pounced on him, saying nobody called his son a liar. He never mentioned the dead horse, seemed not to care. And even then Clay saw how violent his father’s emotions were, and how hard the colonel worked to keep anyone from seeing how different he was inside from his hewn-faced neighbors.

  Clay smiled, remembering the way his father had fought the drummer in the dust of Main Street. It took five men to pull the colonel off. All this happened in 1921. There were less than a dozen automobiles in the whole county.

  • • •

  Now Clay heard a door close behind him and he stiffened rigidly in his chair, as though setting himself for some mortal combat instead of a casual encounter fixed and secured by old habit and long association. He listened to the precise steps on the flagstones and spoke without moving.

  “Hello, Kay.”

  “You always know when I’m near, don’t you?”

  “Don’t forget, you’ve been walking up on me for over thirty years.”

  She stood beside his lounge chair and he glanced up at her. “Don’t say that so loudly,” she said. “I don’t mind getting old, but I hate for you to.”

  She was a tall woman, almost as tall as he, almost as lean. She could have played Cassius without make-up. He seldom looked at her now, though thirty years ago he’d been violent in bed with her, and he seemed to have forgotten, but Kay never had. He’d employed Kay Ringling as his personal manager, and she’d tossed aside everything else and had yet to regret it, except infrequently over a fourth martini — and everybody regretted something with more than three martinis in them. That early violence had simmered into something unusual, even in Hollywood. She stood between Clay Stuart and anything that might harm, annoy or deplete him.

  “Old? I’m not old, Kay, you are,” his low voice teased. “You were an elderly lady the first time I set eyes on you.”

  She stared down
at him, remembering his ferocity in that faraway bed. He’d been so wildly needing, you’d have thought it would last forever, but it hadn’t. Something had happened to end all this between them, and she supposed he’d forgotten all about it. Now she put an edge into her voice.

  “I hate to say this, but I was several years younger than you — even then. I still am.” She tightened her arms across the blue-covered script. “Don’t get up,” she added in irony.

  Clay laughed, gesturing toward a lounge chair, catching it and drawing it nearer his.

  “Sit down, Kay. Sit down. We’ve been enemies too long to be polite to each other.” He watched her in a detached way as she sat beside him. “Age is a matter of the mind, my dear Kay. You were an elderly lady when I met you. I hate to insist. But it was true. Elderly. An old maid.”

  “You’re full of lies,” she told him, voice heated. “I was engaged to be married when you came along — ”

  “Now don’t start that again,” he said in a lazy tone. He lay back in his chair, watching the eucalyptus leaf. “Don’t start that romance talk again … You were engaged. An engaged old maid. It would never have worked. You’ve been far happier with me, Kay, than you’d ever have been with that character — whatever his name was.”

  “That isn’t the point,” she said. “That isn’t the point at all.”

  “Admit it, you can’t remember his name, either.”

  Her lined mouth twitched slightly. People said Clay Stuart owed her much, but she knew better. She owed him a terrible debt, one she felt obliged to repay. She was on guard for fear he’d see the way she felt on her face, and this was foolishness, because he never looked at her that closely any more. Just the same, now when Clay glanced at her, teasing her, Kay averted her face. Clay didn’t suspect what was on her mind, but she knew.

  Her voice remained vinegary. “I remember his name quite well, but I’m not going to bandy it about in this atmosphere.”

  “Because you’re a lady,” he mocked her.

  “The point is that every woman needs a man — ”

  “My God, Kay, you’ve had a man. Better than that, you’ve had me. Thirty-odd years — ”

  “Very odd. Yes. For thirty years I’ve been Clay Stuart’s doormat, secretary, armor, weapon — ”

  “And you’re complaining? Who are you kidding? It’s made you one of the most formidable women in Hollywood, and you know it. People who hate your guts send you Christmas gifts, open doors for you, fawn over you at parties. Could what’s-his-name have given you all that?”

  She changed the subject abruptly. “Have you read it?”

  “What?”

  She gestured with the blue-covered script. “You know what. Man of the Desert. Warners wants an answer. You have a commitment. There’s Grant, you know. Jimmy Stewart. There’s Wayne — ”

  “Yeah. And there’s Tab Hunter, too. Tell them to get Tab Hunter.”

  “Have you read it? I told them as far as I was concerned, you would do it. They’ve got Dick Creek to direct. They’re lining up a supporting cast that will strain marquees. Ed Wynn for the old prospector. They want to borrow Joanne Woodward for the femme. There’s a doctor role they’re after Claude Rains for. It may not make as much money as all Ten Commandments — but it ought to top the first seven.”

  He exhaled. “Such enthusiasm. You must have come straight here from Warners.”

  “I’ve been talking to Hoff. And Shatner. And Warners. I’ve been talking to everybody but you. Have you read it?”

  He shook his head.

  “Why not?”

  “Give me time, Ringling.”

  “Time. It’s been over a week since Ruth’s funeral, Clay. You haven’t stirred out of this house. You won’t even read a script. What are you planning to do?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t. It’s just that I don’t seem to give a damn, Kay. I’m sorry.”

  “Clay, don’t do this to me.”

  “I’m not doing anything to you. Not intentionally. If I have no interest in anything, I can’t help it. If I read the book I’d hate it. If I tried to do the movie, I’d show I couldn’t do it.”

  “Once you get back to work, you’ll be all right.”

  “All right.”

  “You said that a week ago.”

  “It’s all I can say.” He stared at the pool. The eucalyptus leaf still floated.

  “We’re trying to help you. You must know that.”

  “Then let me alone.”

  She caught her breath. “Will you tell me something?”

  “If I can. I’ll try.”

  “What do you want? Is there anything we can get you?”

  “No. Because I don’t know. Since the baby has been here — Sharon — for the funeral, I got interested — I thought she and I might go somewhere, travel, while I got back whatever it is that’s gone … She was too busy.”

  The tall woman leaned forward. “Of course she is. Sharon’s a lovely, twenty-year-old girl with a life of her own to live. Life goes on, Clay, you can’t just stop.”

  He sighed. “It isn’t something I want, Kay. It’s as if I were driving along at sixty, and suddenly shifted into reverse for no reason and chewed the gears all to hell, you know?”

  “No.”

  He shrugged. “Then I can’t explain it to you.”

  “I can’t understand you. It’s not like you to turn in on yourself like this. Even Sharon can’t talk to you. She’s filled with things she needs to say to you, but you turn her away.”

  His jutting chin tilted. “That’s not true.”

  “It’s true all right. She had to talk to me. Because she couldn’t talk to you. She’s in love. It’s the most wonderful thing in her life — and like you, she goes overboard on everything she cares about. Neither of you ever learned to do things moderately.”

  “In love?” Clay smiled, almost coming to life in his gray face. “Why couldn’t she tell me?”

  “Because she loves you so much she’s afraid of alienating you, or incurring disfavor … She’s like Ruth in that she doesn’t like Hollywood — she doesn’t even like Southern California. She knows this place is your idea of heaven — and it isn’t easy for her to tell you she’d rather live — back east in New England.”

  “My God. Nobody would rather do that — ”

  “You see?” Kay said. “She knows you won’t understand any part of what she wants. She dislikes the movies, and the people involved in them — present company excepted, she insists … The man she loves didn’t even know you.”

  Clay smiled in irony. “Where’s he been these past thirty years?”

  “He remembered, Sharon told me, he had seen some of your movies when he was in Harvard. Kind of slumming … Now, before you start yelling, there are such people. They don’t go to the movies, they hold others things — art, opera, sailing, conversation — more rewarding. They can smell a wine and tell the valley it came from in France, and what year. They can hear an accent and know what schools you attended, and what your grandparents did for a living — ”

  “Oh, hell. John O’Hara writes about such people all the time. I didn’t believe in them when I read about them in his books, or when I played one of them in one of his movies.”

  Kay smiled in a taut way. “Well, now you know they actually do exist, and that Sharon loves one of them, and they love her.”

  “And she’s afraid to tell me this?”

  “She was afraid she couldn’t make you believe it — without hurting you.”

  “She doesn’t know me very well, does she?”

  “She knows you very well … You see, the man she is in love with has been divorced — ”

  “I’ve heard the word without becoming violent.”

  “The marriage has been over a long time. The girl was from a good family, but she was a nympho, and he signed church papers accusing her of adultery, though he knew her family’s lawyers might filet him. He belongs to the Episcopal Church and it was important to his fami
ly that he remain a communicant… . Sharon says they are truly in love, and I believe her. She wants to marry him when she finishes school this spring and live in Massachusetts.”

  Clay moved his shoulders. “I haven’t heard anything yet that’s made me violent. Sharon’s going back to Ruth’s kind of people doesn’t surprise me very much. Sharon spent a lot of time with her grandparents. Ruth influenced her… . Am I violent?”

  “You haven’t heard it all. I saved the spicy part for last. The man she loves is Amory Darrow.”

  “So?”

  “So he’s thirty-six years old.”

  For a long time, Clay didn’t even move. He remained staring at the pool and not even seeing it. He was remembering the way the colonel always snorted through his left nostril when the rages fired up in him.

  He remained perfectly still. This he had learned, he kept his emotions tightly packaged. They showed in his sun-washed gray eyes, in the set of his jaw, but in thirty years no movie-goer had ever seen Clay Stuart lose control of his emotions, and neither had his nearest friends. Kay was one of the few who knew how he boiled and seethed and wept inside.

  She saw it all happening to him now. She remembered that first time they’d gone to bed together, he’d been a blister of hurts and rages, ready to burst, and even then she’d known he needed something. He needed something now, only she couldn’t help him any more, she couldn’t even reach him except in a distant, detached way.

  “Well, I’ll just keep her here at home,” he said at last, voice flat and measured. “She’ll get over him.”

  “No, Clay. Don’t do that.”

  He turned, gray eyes dark with shadows, but voice flat: “You want me to let her go back there?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  “Why?”

  “Give her time to think, Clay. You want to drive her into that man’s arms? Oppose her. That’ll do it… . Let her go back. It’ll give you time to think, too.”

  His voice was low. “What’s to think about? I’ll break his neck. I’ll twist loose his testes.”