Don't Speak to Strange Girls

by Whittington, Harry

  He prowled the house, unable to sit still. He denied he was still waiting for that phone to ring. Damn her, she wasn’t going to call. She had never intended calling. They had both known that when she said it. Probably she was out right now with one of them.

  If he wanted to see her there was one thing he could do. This was clear. He could get over there, knock on her door until she answered, drag her out before she could leave the place with some date. It was a damned fool thing to do, but it was the only thing left to do. He couldn’t sit around here, bitter and futile and empty with rage.

  Anyhow, he would be moving. He could stand it as long as he was moving. He dressed hurriedly, hands shaking. He went down the steps, face set, and fists clenched.

  He met Marc Shatner coming in the front door.

  “No,” Clay said. “I’m going out.”

  “Clay. I want to talk to you. For just a few minutes.”

  “All right. A very few.”

  He strode into the sunroom. The shadows had lengthened in here, there was a haze over everything. He did not snap on the light. He did not think he could stand the glare of light against his eyes. He waited for Shatner to protest, but Shatner did not mention the lights. For this he was thankful.

  Clay sat on the piano bench. He glared at Marc. He said, “Keep it brief.”

  “Afraid it’s nothing we can keep brief, Clay. I was talking to Hoff. We’re worried about you. You got a problem. All right. We’re both willing to admit that. But, I think you got to see it this way, Clay. With you, it’s like a sickness. Like alcoholism is sickness. You got to go through the withdrawal. It’s not going to be easy. But for yourself. For your own good. You got to make the effort. You got to get her out of your mind.”

  Stuart nodded. “What do you want me to say?”

  “Hell, that you’ll try.”

  “I’ll try.”

  Shatner paced the room. “Not for me. Not for any of us, Clay. Hell, for you.”

  Stuart tried to smile. “I know you’re right, Marc. You understand? I know I’ve got to get rid of her and I know I’ve got to get her out of my mind … And somehow, I’m going to do it. It’ll take time.”

  “Why, Clay? Tell yourself the cold truth. She’s a tramp. You’ve got to face this sooner or later.”

  “You don’t know much, Marc, if you think that matters.”

  “All right. Make an effort then. I sound like Hoff. But I say this. Get back to work.”

  “Making a picture?”

  “You do some other kind of work?”

  “I couldn’t keep my mind on making a picture.”

  “You don’t have to. Believe me. If you’ll just let us handle it. I’ll stay up here with you. I’ll be around if you want to talk. I’ll keep you busy. You okay the script on Man of the Desert. We’ll let Creek get started on it. We can run down to Palm Springs until time to set your wardrobe.”

  Stuart shook his head. “I can’t.”

  “Why can’t you? Maybe I’m dense. But the way to get well from this kind of sickness is to put it out of your mind, get around people who’ll talk to you whether you want to talk or not. Keep her off your mind. That’s what you’ve got to do. Start to work.”

  “No.”

  For a moment Shatner paced. “You going to sit around here and stare at your navel for the next six months?”

  “I might. I don’t know.”

  “For God’s sake, Clay. You’ve got to make an effort.”

  “But that’s what I’m trying to explain to you. I can’t help myself. I know better than to do the things I do, but I do them. If you’ve never felt like this, I can’t explain it to you. I can envy you but I can’t make you see how it is.”

  Marc Shatner’s nostrils flared. “Try.”

  Clay got up and walked to the window, watching it grow dark in the valley. “All right,” he said after a long time. “I don’t know how good this will be. But here goes. Right now, Marc, as of this moment, today, I’m existing, that’s all — sort of living in a vacuum.”

  “I know that. I’m trying to get you out of it.”

  “But I don’t want to get out of it like that. Can’t I make you see that? It would hurt too bad. It would take too much effort and hurt too goddamn much.”

  “You enjoy moping around like this?”

  Clay shrugged. “It’s all I can do. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I can live one day at a time, that’s all. I can get up in the morning and shave and eat breakfast and tell myself I’m not going to see her today, then resign myself to that, to getting through this one day. I can eat lunch and maybe sleep all afternoon — anything to pass the time, get through this one day. I like to sleep. If I can get to sleep, I’ve got it made. Almost another whole day shot to hell. Well, this I can do. Oh, I never have to see her again. I can get along fine. I can get through one day. But that’s it, Marc. One day at a time. That’s all. That’s the best I can do.”

  Shatner exhaled. He stared at Clay. “All right. Then that will have to do. That’s fine. Put Man of the Desert into some of the hours of these days. It will help.”

  “No. That’s where you’re wrong.” Clay’s face was gray and lined with the agony. “That would ruin everything. Can’t you understand? I cannot plan ahead. Not a day or a week. I’m sorry, but that would tear it all down. I can’t start on anything that stretches out ahead of me into the future because that would mean I would have to look ahead further than one day. One day. That would mean I’ve got to admit to myself there are days and weeks and months ahead of me when I’m not going to see her again. And I can’t do that, Marc. I can’t do it. As long as I don’t have to look ahead more than one day, I’m all right. But if I started something that meant I had to look ahead into the weeks ahead without her, I couldn’t stand it. I swear. I think I’d cut my throat.”

  “You’re talking wild.”

  “Sure I am. I haven’t got the guts to cut my throat. But if I had, I’d do it. But that also means I haven’t got the guts to face the rest of my life without her, too. No. The only way I can exist at all is to cut it sharp, keep it down to one day at a time … I’m sorry.”

  “It don’t make sense.”

  “I told you I couldn’t make you see how it was.”

  “I don’t believe anybody in God’s world would understand it.”

  “All right. I’m not trying to explain it to anybody. I’m just telling you how it is with me. How it is whether I want it to be or not. One day at a time. One hour at a time. That’s all I can do. That’s all I will do.”

  chapter nineteen

  SHATNER WALKED along the third-floor corridor, nostrils distended. He glanced around, mouth pulled with the contempt he felt and then pressed on the buzzer. After a moment Flo opened the door.

  They looked each other over. Shatner said, “Is Stark here?”

  “Joanne?”

  “Yeah. Tell her Marc Shatner would like to talk to her.”

  “I think she’s getting dressed. She’s going out on a date.”

  “Sure she is. You tell her anyhow.” Shatner pushed the door out of Flo’s hand and entered the apartment. He went through the small kitchenette to the front room where a record-player blared. He snapped off the music, tossed his hat on a table.

  He sat down in an easy chair and looked the place over.

  After a moment, Joanne came from the bedroom. She wore a wilted bathrobe. She looked as if she’d just stepped from a shower. She did not smile. “Imagine meeting you here,” she said.

  He gave the room a glance. “Yeah.”

  “Did — Clay send you?”

  “Why would he do a thing like that?”

  “Well … you never liked me. I can’t imagine you coming here because you wanted to.”

  “That’s where you could be wrong. I never liked you. I still don’t like you. I still don’t see what it is you’ve got. But you’re wrong. I came because I wanted to.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me. I’m d
ressing for a date.”

  “Anyone you know?”

  Her head tilted. “Smart cracks won’t get you anything, either.”

  “I don’t want anything.”

  “Then excuse me. I’ve got to get dressed.”

  But she did not turn away. He held his gaze on hers. “I want to know what you want,” he said.

  “I want this job I’ve got. I want others like it.”

  He shrugged. “All right. I’ll buy that. But why couldn’t you stay with Clay — and still keep this job? Looks to me like a big star could help you in a lot of ways.”

  She did not speak. A muscle pulled in her cheek near her nostrils.

  Shatner laughed. “Or has he already helped you? You think what he did was all he could do?”

  Still she did not say anything.

  He exhaled. “Or do you think you got all you could from him — and now he’d be in your way?”

  The muscle twitched again. Her voice was flat. “There’s no sense getting things all snarled up,” she said.

  “Oh? You’re on your way, is that it? You’re moving fast. Onward and upward. Can’t be bothered with anything that might slow you down?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It doesn’t mean anything. It just means that you might be short-sighted, walking out on him. He could smooth a lot of rough spots.”

  “You didn’t talk this way a few weeks ago,” she said. He shrugged and she laughed, pleased. “Now you want me to go back to him?”

  “I think you could do yourself some good.”

  “And I don’t. He’s not really interested in a career for me. Sure, he got it for me, just like he’d have bought me a mink coat if I asked him to. What he wants is for me to stay around there — as long as he wants me. And when he doesn’t want me any more — what?”

  “You’ve got it all figured, haven’t you?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “That’s right. I’m looking out for me. Nobody else will. Nobody else gives a damn. I trust myself and that’s all I trust. I know what I want. I know plenty of people now who can help me get it. This is what I want. This is what I’m going to keep. This is the only thing I’ve ever wanted in all my life.”

  • • •

  Shatner parked his car and went along the street to a bar. He entered it hoping he would not see anyone just now that he knew. He was not a man who liked to be alone, but at the moment he felt as if he were suffering shock, as if he had learned something that was too big for him to assimilate in a hurry. He had a lot of thinking to do.

  He sat alone in a booth near the rear of the dimly-lit room. The place smelled of wet beer rags. The bartender had to ask him twice what he wanted to drink. He ordered a double scotch and told the bartender to keep his eye on the table, and keep the scotch coming every time he noticed an empty glass.

  He sat there a long time with his thoughts. He thought about Joanne Stark as she was the first time he saw her, as she had looked a few minutes ago, dressing for a date.

  He stared into the empty glass. If a man lived long enough, he could learn many things; there is no end to the things a man can learn, if he just walks around and listens long enough. The odd part was that he’d felt he was a pretty blasé fellow, pretty wise to everything that had ever happened, or that ever would happen. It just went to show you.

  A woman stood beside his booth. She smiled. He realized she had been standing there for some time smiling. It was a weary grimace in her face now. She said again, “Hello, honey.”

  He looked at her for a long time. He said, “Are you a woman?”

  “I sure am, honey.”

  “Then get away from here. For God’s sake, get away from here.”

  • • •

  It was dark when Clay drove down the hill past the apartment house where Joanne lived. He wasn’t going up there. Thank God, that was past. What was he doing here?

  He nodded solemnly, wanting to answer this to his own satisfaction. This was a test. That was all it was. He was going to drive by here and prove to himself this was just another street, just any street. It had never meant anything in his life before; it never would again.

  His eyes burned as if full of wood smoke.

  He drove slowly, going five or six blocks past her apartment house. The night was busy, cars hastening somewhere on all the cross streets. He’d been drinking all day. He was in no condition to drive. The thing to do was to cut this out and get on home.

  Car headlamps blinded him, causing his vision to blur. He turned the car around in the middle of a block and started back up the hill, not moving more than fifteen miles an hour. The race is not to the swift. Slow and easy does it. Haste makes waste.

  A half-block below her apartment house, he pulled the car to the curb, feeling its body vibrate as the wheel struck the cement. He swore, cutting the engine.

  He stared up through the darkness toward that third-floor apartment in that lighted building up there. Odd, there were other houses, other buildings along here; in fact, there were no vacant lots. But all the lots might as well be vacant. He was unaware of the other houses and other buildings. He could see that lighted building where she lived as though it sat illumined on a bare plane done by Dali.

  Who the hell is Dali?

  He shook his head trying to clear it. He had started drinking in the morning, and could not remember all the bars and taverns he had visited. Several in Culver City, though, he remembered. He had driven there, lying to himself that he’d visit a director he knew at M-G-M.

  He was proud of one thing. Joanne had been out of his mind the whole damn day. Most of the whole damn day. Sometimes for an hour at a time he would not think about her at all.

  He smiled faintly. He told himself he was smiling but there was only this bitter twist to his face. It was funny. That was what it was, all right. Funny. He had told everybody he was going back to work, he’d said he was starting to work on Man of the Desert. He hadn’t meant it at the time, but when he called Sharon at school, he had ended up telling her the same lie. It was just a string of words that would reassure her, but he was trapped. He had to go back to work now. He could not start lying to Sharon. He had lied to her mother all his life.

  Well, he hadn’t lied to Sharon. He would get in touch with Dick Creek. Hell, he had meant to call Creek all day, but somehow he hadn’t done it. It was like cutting his throat. He just didn’t have the guts. But he would call. As soon as he sobered up, he’d call Dick and ask for the part of Pinto in Man of the Desert. Ask? He’d beg for it.

  He laughed aloud, an ugly agonized sound. Wouldn’t it be ironic as hell if they’d gotten in touch with Wayne on this thing? There was a smart cookie who’d grab that role and that producer before Warners could hang up.

  He sweated, knowing he ought to get to a telephone. He had to have that role, that one and only that one. He had promised Sharon. He could not let her learn that he had lied to her.

  His mind was clear on that. Clear. Just let him have that role and he would stay away from Joanne Stark. He would be the sort of parent a girl like Sharon could respect, the sort of father a daughter of Ruth’s should have.

  He stared upward at that lighted window. His throat tightened. His eyes burned. He shook his head, despising himself.

  It couldn’t hurt to see her one more time, could it?

  • • •

  Clay staggered slightly going along the third-floor corridor toward the opened doorway of Joanne’s apartment. Open door. That door was always open. Rock-and-roll blared out at him, hitting him sharply in the face. He was not sure if he staggered because of what he’d been drinking or from the impact of that music and laughter.

  “Clay! Here’s Clay!” somebody shouted. They were drunk. They did not really care that he was here. In his lucid, drink-riven condition he could see that. They had grown accustomed to having him around the past few weeks. They tolerated him. In this place when a person was barely tolerated, they were effusive over him.

  He pus
hed his way through them. The hell with them. The hell with all of them. Their dirty clothes and their body odor. The hell with them. He was glad he had come up here. He was seeing another reason why he could not endure this kind of life. He never wanted to see this bunch of juvenile snits again as long as he lived. He pushed through them trying to find a place where he could breathe.

  A man stepped in front of Clay, barring his way. He was a big man, as tall as Clay, much broader — much younger. He was in his early thirties anyway, dark and oily, a very handsome man with sport shirt opened half-way down his chest, the hairs showing, the gold locket showing, winking in the black hairs of his chest. Clay frowned, knowing he’d seen this character somewhere, unable to place him.

  He tried to step around him.

  “Well. What you know? The big movie star.”

  He glided into Clay’s path. Clay said, “Get out of my way.”

  The handsome man laughed. And with the laughter, Clay remembered where he’d seen Handsome — that night on restaurant row, he’d made a scene over a bar check. Trouble. He made it up and took it around with him like the locket around his neck, like the oil in his curls. “You own this place, Movie Star? You like a fat eye? Talking to me this way? Where are your studio guards, Movie Star? Where’s your director?”

  “Hey, cut that out,” somebody said, grabbing the dark man’s arm.

  Clay glanced at Bunny Harper. Bunny tried to smile. “Hell, Nicky, this is Clay Stuart. Clay’s a nice guy. You don’t want to make any trouble, Nicky.”

  Nicky stared into Clay Stuart’s face. Bunny was wrong. Nicky wanted to make some trouble, all right. But there was an odd, unreal silence in this raucous room. The three of them stood silently in the wild caterwauling of sound, and Nicky decided against hitting Clay Stuart.

  Nicky laughed and threw his arm around Bunny’s shoulder, hugging the slender boy close against him in an embarrassing display of sexual affection.

  “Sure,” Nicky said. “Stuart, you know Bunny Harper? Meet my wife, Stuart. This is my wife — Bunny Harper.” Nicky roared with laughter, head back, sweating.

  Bunny’s face turned chalky white. His body trembled. He looked as if he were going to be ill.