Don't Speak to Strange Girls (18 page)

“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 pushed 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.

Flo caught Clay’s arm, pulled him away to the window.

“I’m looking for Joanne,” Clay said.

“She’s not here, lover,” Flo said. Her eyes did not focus at all.

“Don’t lie to me.”

Flo giggled. “Don’t call me a liar. Call me anything else, but don’t call me a liar.” She made a sing-song verse of it.

Clay ignored her, searching over the heads of the other people for Joanne. He could not find her. His eyes struck against those of Nicky again. He looked away. Nicky was pretty obvious, and crude. Nicky hated Clay Stuart because Stuart was in moving pictures and Nicky couldn’t make it. He despised Bunny Harper for the same reason. Bunny was small, even effeminate, and Bunny was making pictures and TV shows all the time. There was only one way Nicky could strike at Bunny. He could use him, debase and degrade him. Great guy, Nicky. Joanne knew some wonderful people.

Where in hell was she?

“She’s not here, honey,” Flo said again. “Come on, let’s dance. This is a big night. Big party. Joanne’s party. Celebration. You know what we’re celebrating? End of shooting on Joanne’s picture. You know that? That’s right. They wrapped it up today.
Lone Star Kid.
”

“Where is she?”

Flo caught his arm, turned him toward her, working her hungry angular body against his, quivering as if in heat.

“Who cares? She went out for liquor. Come on. Let’s dance.”

“No.”

“You can’t keep pushing me off, Clay. I’m nuts about you. All hacked inside. Look at these nothings around here. You walk in here and I’m hacked. Please, Clay — look at me — forget her.”

“Go get a drink.”

“Drink? I don’t need a drink. I need you. You know what you are. You’re Disneyland. You’re the lights out front of Moulin Rouge. You — you’re every guy any woman ever wanted. Why you want Joanne? She doesn’t want a man. She wants a career. Me. I ain’t crazy. Except crazy for you. It’s like I got bugs crawling in me. Only I can’t itch. Why not me, Stuart? Look at me, damn it.” Flo was writhing against him. She was clinging to him, her body working as if in some exotic dance. “I know things … things she never even will learn.”

Clay caught both her hands, pushed them down and shoved her away, still looking for Joanne.

Flo screamed, going backwards, falling. She toppled crazily toward the opened window.

A girl screamed. A man lunged at Flo, grabbing at her as she struck the sill. He deflected her body enough so she struck against the wall, screaming. She slid down the wall.

A man leaped at Clay, catching his shirt-front and turning him around. Others stopped dancing and crowded in close.

“Why don’t you get out of here?” the man said. Clay saw it was the one called Johnny. Joanne’s Johnny.
I’ll never see him again if you don’t want to.

Johnny shoved Clay. Clay struck against Nicky who had pushed his way through the crowd behind him.

“Let’s throw him out,” Nicky said. “The son of a bitch.”

“Get out,” Johnny said again.

“Hell, don’t tell the son of a bitch,” Nicky said, sweating. “Throw him. Big movie star. Let’s see what kind of fighter he is. Hell, he used to win wars all by himself. Let’s see how he can dish it out.”

Clay saw Nicky’s fist coming toward his face. He threw up his arm to protect himself. Nicky’s fist scraped across his wrists, struck against the side of his face. He toppled backward, slowly, like a giant sequoia.

Nicky was raging with laughter. “Movie star!” Nicky yelled. “Hell, he can’t fight at all. Look at him, for God’s sake. He can’t even fight. He don’t know how to throw a punch.”

Clay straightened and Nicky struck him in the face twice, short hard jabs into his eyes and mouth. He reeled out backwards, the room skidding crazily away from him.

Women screamed. Some of the men grabbed at Nicky. He shook them off, cursing. He stood above Stuart, the gold locket bouncing on his heaving chest.

“Get out of here, Movie Star,” Nicky raged. Clay raised his head from the floor, trying to clear it.

Nicky kicked him in the face.

• • •

Stuart opened his eyes. He was seeing everything through an occluding film of blood. The music was still blaring loudly.

Joanne was kneeling over him. She whispered his name. Her voice was frantic. “Clay. Get up. Get up. I’ve got to get you out of here. Somebody has called the police.”

Clay shook his head, feeling blood flicking from his nostrils when he moved. He pushed himself upward slowly, feeling Joanne’s arms around him. A couple of men tried to help but Joanne told them to get away, get back to dancing. “Pretend nothing has happened. A brawl. My God. This could ruin me.”

Clay got to his feet. He wanted to laugh, but there was too much agony in his bruised face for even a short bitter laugh. For one whole minute there he had felt supreme. Somebody had called the police, Joanne wanted to get him out of there; it had been wonderful to believe she was thinking about him, worried for him. This hadn’t lasted very long. She was thinking only about herself, her own reputation. “This could ruin me.” The words chattered around in his brain in monkey voices.

She led him to a stairway beyond the service door and they went down the service steps in the wan darkness. They stood at the rear door on the ground floor for a few moments, listening for sounds of the police.

“Where is your car?” she said.

He considered a moment, then nodded downhill. She moved with him through the alley.

He heard her crying softly. “Oh, Clay. You’ve got to let me alone.”

“I — I’ve loved you.”

“I can’t help it. I can’t see you any more. Can’t you understand? It will spoil everything. You’ll spoil everything.” Her voice quavered with the tears choking her throat. “Why don’t you let me alone? I’m where I want to be.”