Don't Speak to Strange Girls

by Whittington, Harry

  “But that’s what I mean. When people see what you have, they forget what you went through to get it … They forget — or they never knew — the things you had to take, the things they did to you. By the time I got a big salary, I was already sick in my guts, with myself, with everything I had … I didn’t even want it any more … I was so sick of it, I ran away to Europe for awhile, and hunted in Africa. I married Ruth because she was everything that this business wasn’t … But then, by that time, they wanted me — and they quit wiping it on me — and I didn’t know anything else, really, so I came back … People didn’t get tired of me … for some reason … and here I am … I still don’t know what I want — or if I know I don’t want it any more by the time I get it.”

  Joanne exhaled. “I know what I want, all right.”

  “What do you want?”

  “All this.” She waved her arm suddenly. Her jaw was a taut line, and her head tilted, her hair bobbling loosely against her shoulders. “I want to be a great star. I want everybody to know who I am … I want them to treat me the way they treat great stars.”

  He smiled, trying to think what to say. You couldn’t offer much — it was different for everybody, in every case. All he could think to say was, “You’ve got to be tough.”

  “I can be tough.”

  “You’ve never been tough with me.”

  “I’ve never had to be … I’ve never wanted to be … but I could be tough — if someone tried to stop me… . I’m going to be somebody. Everybody will know about Joanne Stark. Everybody … they’ll read about me — and know my name.”

  “About the estate and the fire,” he teased.

  She nodded, and there was vehemence in the way she nodded, even though she smiled.

  “About the estate and the fire,” she said.

  • • •

  Hoff pressed the doorbell, and then he and Shatner stood on the veranda and waited impatiently. Finally McEsters opened the front door.

  “Service is becoming wretched around here, McEsters,” Hoff said. He carried a battered script of Man of the Desert.

  “Yes, sir.” McEsters voice was bland.

  “Is she — here with him?” Shatner asked. He glanced at his wrist watch, small mouth compressed. It was five o’clock in the afternoon.

  “They are in the library, sir.”

  Hoff paused. “I don’t want to ask him, but is she still here, or is she here again? She’s been here every time I’ve come up here in the past five days.”

  “She even answers the telephone when I call,” Shatner said.

  McEsters shrugged. “She is here when I go to bed at night, sir. She is usually here when I waken in the morning. That is all I can say, sir.”

  Shatner swore. “She said something about a job. She said she had a job. What happened to that?”

  “She did mention her work,” McEsters said flatly. “At first. Lately, she has not mentioned it.”

  Hoff glared at Shatner. “Probably he had her quit her job.”

  Shatner shrugged. “If she ever had one.”

  Clay and Joanne were dancing to a slow and dreamy Ray Anthony record in the gameroom.

  Hoff cleared his throat. After a moment Clay released Joanne and turned to face them. She held on to his arm as if she were afraid he would fly out of the room.

  Clay smiled at them, and waved. “Hello there,” he said. “Come on in.”

  “Could we talk to you?” Hoff said.

  Clay continued to smile at them. “If you don’t keep me very long. Joanne says I don’t dance very well. She’s giving me a lot of practice.”

  “He dances beautifully,” Joanne said.

  “Like a hobbled steer,” Stuart said. There was exultance in his voice.

  “Alone?” Hoff persisted. “Just a few minutes.”

  “I’ll go out on the terrace,” Joanne said.

  “Now wait a minute,” Clay said. “What is there you’ve got to say that Joanne can’t hear?”

  “It’s all right,” Joanne said. “I want to count the eucalyptus leaves anyhow. I think the milkman is stealing them, mornings.”

  She went across the room, closed the French doors behind her. Clay watched her, mouth pulled into a smile. Then he turned and faced Shatner.

  “What’s eating you two? There was never anything you guys had to say that Ruth could not sit in on.”

  “Ruth was different,” Hoff said.

  “Ruth?” Shatner said. “My God.”

  Clay winced. He stood silent a moment looking down at them with the oddly upsetting sense that they were regarding him downward along their noses. Let them be careful how they pushed him.

  “All right,” he said. “What is it? What do you want?”

  “The usual thing,” Hoff said. “Warners is pressuring us. Have you read this thing yet — this Man of the Desert?”

  Clay smiled. “Not yet.” Before they could speak, he said, disarmingly, “But I will. You tell them I’ll get to it — soon.”

  Hoff said, “You mean that? You going back to work?”

  “Yeah … maybe not right away … I thought Joanne and I might run down to Palm Springs for a couple of weeks — ”

  “God damn it!” The words exploded from Shatner. “What you trying to do? Make all the wrong kind of headlines?”

  “What’s wrong with you? Can’t I enjoy myself?”

  “Sure you can. But for God’s sake, you can be a little smart, too. You can use your head.”

  “Yes,” Hoff said. “Stop thinking with your hips.”

  Clay stared at them. Where did they get off talking to him like this? Why did they think he would tolerate it? And — why did he tolerate it? Did he feel some of that skepticism that had plagued him the first night Joanne was here? Or was there a sense of fear tingeing his fondness for this girl? Nobody liked to be made a fool of, and it was getting deeper than that every rose-colored moment. Were they right about him and Joanne, had he completely lost his reason? Were they right — or even partly right? Had one of them paid Joanne to call him, to come to him, go to bed with him — and now would not admit any part of it because Joanne had taken the ball and was running with it alone?

  He stared at their faces and tried to find which of them had bought Joanne for him, and he couldn’t see it. She wasn’t the kind of merchandise either of them dealt in. This left Kay Ringling … or it left that slimmest possible chance that Joanne Stark had come accidentally upon his unlisted number, and honestly stayed with him from emotions honestly aroused and honestly experienced. This was the way he wanted it — but things were never the way he wanted them — and he couldn’t buy it that way.

  He glanced toward the French doors, the terrace, the pool, his eyes suddenly dry and painful.

  Clay said coldly, “What’s the matter? Both of you tried to get me some dates — on the quiet.”

  “That says it,” Hoff told him. “On the quiet.”

  Clay laughed at him, but it was a hollow sound. “You want me to have fun. But you want me to have it your way?”

  Shatner’s voice was as cold as his own. “It’s this broad, Clay. She’s no good. You can look at her and see it.”

  Clay knew his face ached with the way it was pulled into a sick mask. He hated Shatner. He stared at him trying to remember the years they’d been together, all that was between them. He wanted to hit Shatner, but there was his own feeling of doubt. Was he blind? Was he the only one who saw the clear loveliness in Joanne’s face?

  He turned his head, trying to see into Hoff.

  “She’s no good for you,” Hoff said. “She’s no tough whore like you’d pick up in a bar. I go along with this. But she’s another kind of tough, Clay. She’s a girl all wrapped up in one person … herself… . You look at her. What does she want from you?”

  Clay’s voice was deadly. “Why don’t we call her in and ask her?”

  Shatner said, “Oh, use your head, Clay. We don’t want trouble. We want to avoid it. We thought you’d have her
for a day or two and get rid of her. She answers your phone. She stays here all the time. Somebody’s going to be hurt — and it’s not going to be that broad.”

  Clay’s voice sounded ill to his own ears, full of doubt and self-hatred. “Why does she have to be a broad — just because she has shown a little interest in me?”

  “She doesn’t have to be, kid,” Shatner said. “She just is. A guy with hot pants is no judge, Clay. Hoff and I can see. You’re blind right now. You’ve got to take our word.”

  “No.” Clay prowled the rug before them. He glanced at Shatner, eyes glittering. “And no matter what else you say, don’t use that word broad again.”

  “My God,” Hoff said. “And when I thought maybe he was going back to work, going to take up his responsibilities.”

  Clay swung around to Hoff, and then didn’t speak. Hoff was right. He had that damnable way of being always right with an accountant’s fussy accuracy. He had been drifting along with Joanne, not wanting to think at all, because thinking meant looking ahead, or backward, or around you, or taking a good look at yourself. He had even shoved Sharon out of his mind. The last time he called her, her voice had sounded odd, strained, and he could tell she was deeply troubled and wanted to talk to him. He had thrown up a barrage of words like a wall between them, because he didn’t want to hear it. She was back East, and that character was after her — and what could he say to either of them? God help him, what could he say? It was better to close his ears and not hear it, close his mind and not think about it.

  Hoff said, “How about it, Clay? What are you going to do?”

  Clay shook his head. He exhaled heavily, and his voice had all the stubborn chill in it that walked him over any kind of opposition. “I’m going to enjoy my life. In spite of all you two clowns can say or do.”

  “Are you?” Hoff said. “What is your idea of fun?”

  Clay glanced toward the terrace, grinned. “She’s fun. Sometimes I think she’s the first fun I’ve ever had in my life.”

  Hoff spoke to Shatner as though Clay Stuart were not in the room. “This I tell you. It makes me sick. Looks like whether he realizes it or not, he’s trying to roll in the dirt he’s been kept out of all these years.”

  Clay pushed his hands deep into his slack pockets. “Why don’t you two bastards get out of here?”

  “Look, baby,” Hoff said. “Don’t take my word. Ask her. She has any honesty, maybe she’ll tell you. She wants something. All right. So we’ll know, you ask her.”

  Stuart stared at them. Their gazes did not waver. If they had looked away, glanced down, or flushed, he would have slugged them, thrown them out. But they were worrying about him, deeply concerned about him.

  His own doubts plagued him, yet against this was his own healthy exuberance, his belief in the good he had. His contempt for their whining doubts pushed him into gambling. His laugh was cold.

  He turned, crossed the room. He opened the door, called: “Joanne.”

  She came across the flagstones. He felt pleasure watching her walk toward him. “Are they gone?” she said.

  He shook his head. “They say you want something, Joanne. And they want you to tell them what it is.”

  She flushed, her neck growing red and the color moving up to the roots of her hair.

  He looked at her face, winced. “I’m sorry. I’ve no right to subject you to this.”

  Her face was rigid. “That’s all right.” She looked at Hoff and Shatner levelly. “What do you want to know?”

  “The price,” Hoff said. “We just want to know. We are willing to meet it. We just want to know.”

  “Do you want a career in pictures?” Shatner said. “Is this what you want?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  “You want money?” Hoff said. “If so, how much?”

  “Why not? How much am I offered?”

  Shatner’s mouth twisted. “All right. You tell us what you want.”

  She stared at both of them as if they’d crawled out of wormwood. Then she moved past them, gathered up her purse.

  “I just want to get out of here,” she said.

  Clay ran after her. “Joanne.”

  She looked at him coldly. He was a stranger. She had never seen him before. She shrugged his hand down. He didn’t blame her for what she did, not if she spat in his face. She’d given him nothing but pleasure. This was the way he repaid her.

  She walked out of the room, closed the door behind her.

  Clay swung around, his gaze locked on them. His voice was so low they could barely hear him. “For God’s sake,” he said. “What did we want to do that for?”

  “We were thinking of you, Clay.” Hoff’s voice was barely above a whisper.

  “Get out,” Clay said to them. “Go on. Get out.”

  • • •

  He waited an hour, pacing the library, walking out on the terrace, trying to find some memory of her that would put warmth in the day, trying to find some sign that she had ever been here. But the wind was chill, and the leaves skittered on the grass dryly, a lonely winter sound.

  He walked to the edge of the pool, trying to picture in his mind how long it would take her to get home. She had walked out. She would have had to walk a mile before she could even get a cab.

  He dialed her number. His hand sweated on the instrument. A girl answered.

  “Joanne?” he said.

  “My name is Flo,” the girl said. “Who is this?”

  “Clay Stuart. Is Joanne there?”

  “No. I’m sorry. She isn’t.”

  “Will you have her call me? The minute she comes in?”

  “I’ll tell her,” Flo said. She hung up.

  He sat there a long time with the receiver in his hand. He called information, tried to find the address by supplying her telephone number.

  “I’m sorry,” the operator said. “We don’t give out that information.”

  He threatened the operator, the manager, the president of the company, and finally got a promise that they would call him back with the information.

  Her name was not listed in the Los Angeles telephone directory. He hadn’t thought it would be. He could see her telephone, hanging in the hallway of some dump. No wonder she wanted something. What was the matter with him? With Hoff? Shatner? Everybody wanted something. Everybody on earth. Few people ever gave anyone else what she had given him in these last few days.

  Sweating, he dialed her number again. Flo answered.

  “Has Joanne come in yet?” he said.

  “She isn’t here.”

  “Do you know when she will be in?”

  “No. She’s not here, Mr. Stuart. That’s what she said to tell you — she isn’t here.”

  chapter eleven

  CLAY WAS standing out in the circular drive when Shatner’s car turned into it. Shatner lifted his arm in greeting but Stuart was pacing, prowling, and he did not respond.

  Shatner brought the Olds to a stop. He sat there a moment looking at Clay. A long time he’d known Clay Stuart, he’d never seen him like this. They talked about it when a man got the hots for some broad, but nobody knew what it was like, the agony he could not even conceal, until they saw it like this.

  Shatner winced, feeling sorry for Clay. He had never wanted any woman this fiercely, not for more than a day or so at the most, but he could imagine what Stuart was going through. He thought Clay was a fool but realized a thing like this was a sickness and even he himself was susceptible.

  God forbid.

  “Hello, baby,” he said, getting out of his car.

  Clay looked at him, but did not speak. Shatner smiled. He had lived in Hollywood a long time. He had learned how to smile with knives in his gizzard.

  “Three days,” he said, keeping it light. “About time you called.”

  “I had a reason.”

  “You needed a reason to call Marc Shatner? What am I, kid? A friend of yours you can treat like this? This is Shatner.”

  “Yes.”
<
br />   Shatner reached up, put his arm about Clay’s shoulder. “Come on, kid, who are we? The Cohens and the Kellys?”

  “I don’t feel like the funny words, Marc. You mind?” Clay shrugged away from Shatner’s arm.

  “Sure I mind. We been together too long for this sort of deal. You — I hate to say this, kid, you’re acting like a child. Like a real child. Sharon acted this way, what would you do? This I’ll tell you. You’d warm her bottom. You’re too big for me. I can’t do that. I’m asking you. Come out of it.”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay. Three days now you’ve sulked. When you plan to talk to Hoff and me again? Me? I don’t mind. But Hoff is an old man. Hasn’t many friends.”

  “That breaks me up.”

  Shatner pretended to misunderstand. “So when you going to start loving us again?”

  “When Joanne comes back — if Joanne comes back.”

  Shatner cursed. He kicked at a loose pebble in the drive. “Oh, for God’s sake. Aren’t we going in the house? Aren’t you going to offer me a drink? It’s a long way from here to the Derby.”

  “This is all right.”

  “So be it.” Shatner sat down on the top step of the veranda. “Clay, you can’t go on hating us for what a dame like that does.”

  “Can’t I?”

  “She’ll come back.”

  “You said that three days ago. It bends before it hits me.”

  “All right. A filly like that. A doll on the make. Who can tell what she’ll do?”

  Stuart stared down at him. “You gave her my phone number in the first place, didn’t you?”

  Shatner scowled up at Clay. He searched his face to see if he were joking. He shook his head slowly, slashed at the air with the side of his hand.

  “You crazy? I would do a thing like this to you? A man closer than my own brother. The only goy I ever loved. I fixed you up with pigs — a quick snort and that was all … Oh, no. Don’t blame this thing on me.”

  Stuart shrugged. “All right,” he said. “Get out.”

  • • •

  He dialed the number Joanne had given him so long ago. It seemed an eternity; it seemed the time he could reflect upon as the good old days. Joanne was with him, and things were simple and uncomplicated.