Jack and Susan in 1913 (28 page)

But there were no signs against Jews, actors, and dogs. The rent was, as Mr. Fane had predicted, less than they would have paid in New York. Fane himself took the last bungalow at the eastern end of the muddy street, and Susan shared the one next door with Ida Conquest. The third bungalow from the end had been taken by Hosmer Collamore and into this tiny house Jack was also billeted.

Hosmer welcomed Jack with a surprisingly cordial little speech: “I hope we're going to be friends again. I've got nothing against you—never had, never did, and never will—and if you're a man you'll say the same to me, Jack Beaumont.”

Jack's first instinct was to pummel Hosmer Collamore into the middle of next week, but then it occurred to him that Hosmer and Susan were not married yet, and that perhaps he would be wise to bide his time in this matter. So, blushing at his duplicity, Jack shook Hosmer's hand, and said, “When's the wedding?”

“We're going to get settled first,” said Hosmer, and then added with a wink, “but it doesn't matter so much to me anyway, for just look out that window there. There's no fence between the houses, and the nights are dark out here—if you get my meaning.”

Jack got Hosmer's meaning, all right, and it made him want to hammer Hosmer straight through the calendar, not pausing even for holidays. But he judiciously did and said nothing.

Jack took the bedroom at the back of the house. For him, the job of unpacking was quickly accomplished; having abandoned his luggage at the hotel in Los Angeles, he had only to empty his pockets. The room's furnishings consisted of a bed, a dresser, a mirror on the wall above the dresser, and an ugly carpet on the floor. A window with a rickety sash looked out on to the oil fields, and another window with an equally rickety sash looked out at Susan and Ida's bungalow. Jack moved his bed—too short for him by at least six inches—so that he would be able to spy on the house next door.

He lay down to see what he could see from the bed's new position. It would be easier to see into Susan's windows at night when the lights were on. Tripod was in the yard, accustoming himself to the new difficulties of running about in dirt. This was proving to be much more difficult than moving on sidewalks; wooden legs sink in dirt.

Jack's luck was improving, he thought, if Tripod had been slowed down. As if sensing Jack's thought, the dog trotted across the yard, and growled beneath the window, where Jack sprawled on the mattress.

Jack lay back and thought about Susan. It was wounding that she had gone to bed with Hosmer Collamore. Perhaps she would have gone to bed with Jack if he had asked. Jack hadn't asked because he hadn't wanted to seem forward—and he hadn't wanted her to do something that might have been against her principles or inclination. Now he wished he had at least broached the subject.

Jack knew that other men, in his position, would have lost all respect for the woman, upon learning that she had gone to bed with another man—or even if she had gone to bed with themselves, for that matter. Most men wanted to marry virgins. Just as an experiment, Jack tried to lessen his regard for Susan. It didn't work. He still felt the same about her, even knowing that she had invited Hosmer to her room in the hotel. He knew that he would love her even if every night Hosmer walked across the yard, scraped his shoes on the doormat, and knocked discreetly at her back door, and she let him in. Jack wasn't sure why this didn't matter to him, but it didn't. All he wanted was Susan.

He wanted her here with him on this naked mattress. He wanted her head and her thick black hair pressing against his chest. He wanted to see her legs, and make sure that her injury was healed. He wanted to kiss her legs and apologize once more for having caused her so much pain and suffering. He tried to imagine her body and what it looked like beneath her clothes; he found he had no difficulty in doing so. He recalled the shape and the taste of her mouth. He—

He got up and pulled down the shades, and then he thought about Susan a while longer.

A few hours later, after Jack had brushed off his suit and washed out his shirt and underwear, Susan Bright herself—in the flesh, and not just in Jack's febrile imagination—knocked at the door.

“Hosmer's not here,” said Jack.

“I came to see you,” said Susan.

“Please wipe your feet before you come inside. I wish there were some grass growing around here.”

“Me too. I brought you something to read.” She handed him a dozen typewritten pages.

“What is this?”

“It's the script for the picture you're to start shooting tomorrow. I just finished it. It's called
Plunder
, and the holdup is, of course, the climax. But I thought you might like to see what else happens to you.”

In the sparsely furnished living room there was a low uncomfortable settee and two low uncomfortable chairs. Susan sat on the settee and Jack sat across from her and read through the scenario.

A few minutes later, he looked up. “This seems quite…thrilling,” he said uncertainly.

“Mr. Fane is very pleased with it,” said Susan complacently.

“In the first scene,” said Jack, flipping the manuscript to the front, “I'm run down in the street by a motorcyclist.”

“Mr. Westermeade, minus two teeth,” said Susan. “I don't think he'll have much objection to that. Mr. Fane says that it can be filmed on Sunset Boulevard.”

Jack turned a few pages of the script. “Here I'm nearly hit by a speedboat, and then I'm bound and gagged and thrown into a trunk, and the trunk is buried on the beach at low tide.”

“Mr. Fane wanted a scene at the shore,” said Susan with a hypocritical smile.

“Then here, at the end, after I've rescued Ida, the bandits capture me again, tie me up in cornstalks and leave me to be pecked to death by ostriches.”

“Did you see the ostrich ranch the train from Los Angeles passed by?”

“Yes I did,” said Jack, with annoyance. “I'm not so certain that I'm going to relish making this picture.”

“Well, it does end happily with you married to Ida—if you consider that a happy ending. Of course, that part will be shot first, just in case something goes wrong in any of the thrilling scenes.”

“I'm very much relieved to hear it. Did you enjoy yourself, thinking up this torture for me?”

“Immensely,” said Susan. “And I have an idea for another script that I'm going to begin on tonight.”

“Perhaps you should wait to see if I survive this one.”

“In the next,” said Susan, “I'm going to have you thrown off a cliff. You know, Junius pays extra for falls—ten cents a foot. I want you to earn as much money as possible, so that you can begin to pay me back the money you owe me.”

“You realize, of course, that I don't actually owe you that money,” said Jack stiffly. Susan was being unpleasant. He liked it better when she was running from him, and he was chasing after her. He didn't like it when she stopped, turned around, looked him in the eye, and began hurling darts. In the next day or so he was to stand in the middle of Sunset Boulevard and be run down by a motorcycle in order to appease Susan Bright's bloodthirsty temper. “For that five hundred dollars you got a full interest in my patent.”

“What?” said Susan, with surprise.

Jack repeated himself. “I said, you got a full interest in my patent. You see, when Hosmer came to me with an offer to buy the rights to my invention for five hundred dollars, I knew that the offer was really coming from you.”

“How? How did you know?”

“Because Hosmer wasn't the type to do me favors of any sort—and you were. I also knew that you had five hundred dollars in the bank. So I accepted the money and signed over the rights to Hosmer, knowing that he would, in turn, sign them over to you. And if I can ever find who stole the plans, I'll patent the thing, and in a few years you will probably find yourself very, very rich.”

Susan blinked hard. “Someone stole those plans?”

“I've told you that several times, but you never believed me.”

“Why didn't you tell me?” she exclaimed. “Let me understand this—for those five hundred dollars I gave to Hosmer to give to you, you turned over the entire income from that invention to Hosmer.”

“Yes. And Hosmer turned it over to you.”

Susan hesitated a moment, then went on, “And now someone has stolen the plans—have I got it right?”

“Yes.”

She thought for a moment, then said decisively, “Then we have to get them back.”

“
I
don't,” said Jack. “Because even if I got them back, and went through the trouble and expense of having them patented, and then went to the expense of marketing the device—
you'd
get all the money. Which was a fine idea as long as you and I were getting married, but I have no inclination to go to such lengths in order to improve the financial condition of Mr. and Mrs. Hosmer T. Collamore.”

Susan was still for a moment. Then she said suddenly, “Do you have any brandy in the house?”

“No,” replied Jack. “Hollywood is a dry town. And I don't have any money to buy brandy with anyway.”

Susan sat back and thought for a few minutes.

She's sharpening her darts
, Jack thought.

“You signed over all of the proceeds of that camera invention to Hosmer, on my behalf…” said Susan.

“For the third or fourth time—yes.”

“Hosmer signed over only half of them to me,” said Susan. “He kept the other half for himself.”

Jack's eyes went wide. “I'm not surprised to hear it. I also wouldn't be surprised to discover that he had stolen the plans himself. After all, he knew they existed, he knew where they were,
and
he knew that they could bring in a great deal of money.”

“Could he just patent it in his own name like that?” asked Susan.

“Yes,” said Jack. “All he'd have to do is erase my name from the drawings. And if he did patent it under his own name, then he would have stolen
all
of the profits, instead of just half of them. I intended for you to have all that money—however much it turned out to be.”

“Thank you,” said Susan simply. “That was very kind.”

“I had money then. I could afford to be generous. Now I have nothing. If I were doing it now, I'd keep half of it for myself.”

Susan got up and went to the window and looked out at the dusty vista. “I really do wish we had some brandy.”

“This comes as a surprise to you?” asked Jack. Susan nodded. “You didn't suspect Hosmer of perfidy, as they say in the magazine serials?” Susan shook her head. “Are you still going to marry him?”

“Marry him?” repeated Susan, turning. “What on earth gave you the idea that I was going to marry Hosmer?”

“Well,” said Jack, “for one thing, you told me you were. For another, Hosmer told me you were. And for a third thing, despite the fact that I was arrested for Peeping Tomism for my efforts, I did see you two in bed together.”

Susan stared. “You think you saw me in bed with Hosmer Collamore?”

“Yes,” said Jack, “and I don't mind telling you that I was pretty distressed by it, too. Even if you had called off our engagement. If you'd go to bed with Hosmer Collamore, why wouldn't you go to bed with
me
?”

“Well, for one thing, you never asked,” said Susan. “But I would
never
go to bed with Hosmer Collamore.”

“I
saw
you,” Jack said, “with Hosmer Collamore, in bed, in room 506 of a hotel in downtown Los Angeles, California.”

“You didn't see
me
,” said Susan. “It must have been Ida. That was her room. I was across the hall in 505. Room 506 was mine originally, but Ida wanted to be able to see the sunset. Now that I think of it, what she really wanted was the connecting door to Junius's room. It wasn't Hosmer and me you saw, it must have been Junius and Ida.”

“I just assumed—” Jack sat back in the uncomfortable chair. “But why did you tell me that you were going to marry Hosmer?” he asked after a moment. “If it wasn't true.”

“You'd lied to me enough. I thought I'd give you a taste of your own medicine. Actually, I was surprised you believed it. I had every intention of forgiving you for your deception—once I'd gotten over my anger.”

“Is that why you decided to come to California, to get over your anger?” he asked dryly.

Susan hesitated. “Yes, and also because Junius offered me a job. Remember, I didn't have any other way to support myself in New York. Also, I was using it for a test—if you came after me, then I'd know that your love was real.”

“What if my injuries had prevented me?”

“Well…they didn't.”

“Then why didn't you forgive me on the train?”

“Because you started making up more lies. First, that ridiculous disguise in St. Louis—I knew that was you the moment I walked in the door of the station.” Jack blushed, and Susan confirmed, “It was
very
obvious. Then, when Tripod fell asleep in my arms, I realized that you had put some sort of sleeping potion in that biscuit you gave him. And then, when I finally sat down with you on the train, you began making up stories about all your money being gone.”