'Mr Guyland. He said there were to be several explicit love scenes.'
'With you?'
She lifted her chin and nodded.
'That's all nonsense, Caduta. There aren't any love scenes in the outline.'
'Lorne Guyland said that Mr Goodney promised him three long love scenes, with full nudity.'
'Good God, how old is Guyland? What's he want to be in the nude for?'
'He is a disgusting person. Listen, Mr Self — John. I need your reassurance that this will not happen.'
'You got it.' I glanced round the room. The bagladies smiled encouragingly. 'Look, Caduta. There are no sex scenes between you and Lorne. There'll probably be a scene or two with you in bed together, in the morning sort of thing — but with sheets, okay?'
Til be frank with you, John,' said Caduta Massi. She shooed the children from her lap. 'I am forty-three, as I say. My tits are not so good any more. My belly is good, my ass is good, but the tits?' She waved a hand in the air. 'I have second-degree cellulite on my outside thigh. What have you got to say to that?'
I had nothing to say to it. Caduta was wearing a two-piece suit of grey suede. With a little bounce she drew the skirt up to her hips. I could see the stocking tops, the tender skin, the billion-lira panties. She took a fistful of her outside thigh and squeezed, making the flesh frown.
'See?' she said, and started to unbutton her shirt.
I glanced round the room again. One of the dads popped his head through the doorway. The head smiled, then withdrew. The bag-ladies stared on, stonily now. One of the children pawed at my lap, as if returning my attention to the lady on the velvet throne.
Holding my eye, Caduta parted the flounces of her shirt. She freed the clip that marked the centrepoint of her cleavage in the hefty brassiere. 'Come, John,' she said.
I stood up, I moved forward, I knelt. She gathered my face to her heart. I sensed all the voluminous stirrings in there, deep among the mortal heaviness.
'You never had a mother, did you, John.'
My voice was muted, but what I said was, 'No. I never did.'
——————
There are, at the latest count, four distinct voices in my head. First, of course, is the jabber of money, which might be represented as the blur on the top rung of a typewriter — £% ¼@=&$! — sums, subtractions, compound terrors and greeds. Second is the voice of pornography. This often sounds like the rap of a demented DJ: the way she moves has got to be good news, can't get loose till I feel the juice—suck and spread, bitch, yeah bounce for me baby... And so on. (One of the subvoices of pornography in my head is the voice of an obsessed black tramp or retard who roams the Times Square beat here in New York. Incomprehensible yet unmistakably lecherous, his gurgled monologue goes like this: Uh guh geh yuh tin ah fuh yuh uh yuh fuh ah ah yuh guh suh muh fuh cuh. I do a lot of that kind of talking in my head too.) Third, the voice of ageing and weather, of time travel through days and days, the ever-weakening voice of stung shame, sad boredom and futile protest...
Number four is the real intruder. I don't want any of these voices but I especially don't want this one. It is the most recent. It has to do with quitting work and needing to think about things I never used to think about. It has the unwelcome lilt of paranoia, of rage and weepiness made articulate in spasms of vividness; drunk talk played back sober. And on the TV they keep showing hysterical ads or the fucking news ... All the voices come from somewhere else. I wish I could flush them out of my head. As with vampires, you have to ask them in. But once they're there, once you've given them headroom, they seem pretty determined to stick around. Don't Jet them in, these crashers. Don't Jet them in, whatever you do.
——————
How about that Caduta, though, eh?
Mind you, if you think she behaved strangely, you shouJd have seen me. I had an incredible crying jag. So did Caduta. So did two kids and one baglady. After a while, the dads trooped in. Everyone was beaming and weeping at this display, this proof of human richness. It was all crap too — I knew that. It was all bad art. But what can you expect from me? There are times these days when I feel so starved of warmth that the instructions on a painkiller packet or vitamin tub ('At the first sign of a cold developing be sure to...') can make me go all husky and brave. And I certainly appreciated the faceful that Caduta laid on me. I sniffed and rootled around down there for at least ten minutes, and got in several good licks and kisses. But it wasn't a sexual thing. I would never make a pass at Caduta — no, not Caduta — and if you made a pass at her, I'd beat you up. I was still brimming with plangency, chockful of feeling, when I arrived back at thehotel. Caduta's parting words to me—she delivered them like a war bride or mother, keeping pace with my cab as it pulled away—were as follows: 'Protect me, John! Protect me.' I knew what that meant. I seized the telephone and called Lorne Guyland, in high indignation.
'Now Lorne,' I began, after a female flunky had put the great man on, 'I've just had a meeting with Caduta Massi. Those scenes you suggested to her — she doesn't want to take her clothes off, and I have to say I —'
'WHAT DO YOU MEAN SHE WON'T TAKE HER CLOTHES OFF.' SHE'S ONLY A FUCKING TV ACTRESS/ I'LL RIP HER FUCKING CLOTHES OFF!'
I held the telephone at arm's length, and stared at it. What impressed me most, I think, was the sheer instantaneousness with which Lorne lost his temper. Suddenly, immediately: no temper — gone, long gone. I'm a short-fuse artist myself, but even I need a little longer than that. It takes at least a couple of seconds before I recognize the last straw. But to some people, clearly, every straw is the last straw. To some people, the first straw is the last straw.
'Lorne, Lorne,' I said, 'bear with me here. Look, there aren't any nude scenes in the script, not with Caduta. With Butch Beausoleil, yes, fine, go ahead, as many as you like. But with Caduta. She's —'
'What script? Nobody showed me no fucking script!'
'Doris Arthur is still working on it, Lorne. But I think I can say that there aren't going to be any nude scenes between you and Caduta. Semi-nude, maybe. But not nude. And that's final.'
While he talked I sank back gratefully with my duty-free. Lorne's superfury had run its course. He had a grip on himself. He was now merely incredibly angry. He said, 'Final? Final? Boy, you're really new at this. Now you listen to me, you piece of shit. This is Lorne Guyland man. Yeah. Me! Me! I got to have some beef in that role. You don't need me. Why don't you get some old fart like Cash Jones?' Lorne laughed. 'I don't know why I say that. I love Cash. Cash and I go way, he's one of my oldest, one of my closest friends. A dear friend, John. Very dear.' Lorne paused. 'Yeah, but when you got Lorne Guyland in a picture, you got to give him some beef, you got to give him some size, you got to give him some — it's got to be like big, you know? You saw my work in Pookie, John. I'm glad you called,' Lorne went on weirdly, 'because I want to tell you about another new idea I've gotten. Now I'm not a writer. I've written scenes, of course, in fact I, in fact the idea is this. The young guy, right? I don't know who the fuck you cast and I don't care, but him and I have this fight, right?'
'You and your son. That's right.'
'And in the outline, John, it says that he wins.'
That's right.'
'Now I don't think that's convincing dramatically, John.'
'Why not?'
'Well, it suggests to the audience that he's stronger than I am.'
'That's right. I mean, he's only twenty and you're — you're a mature man.'
'But I know that kid you've been testing. He's a punk! I could rip him to fucking pieces with my bare hands!'
'But people won't know you could do that, Lorne. They'll think he won because he's forty years younger than you are.'
'Ah! I get it. You think just because I'm not as young as he is, he's stronger than I am. Crap!'
7 don't think that, Lorne. But everyone else will.'
'Okay, okay. I'm a reasonable man. We'll do it this way. And, yeah, I want this whole scene in the nude, we're all nude, that's definite. I won't sacrifice that, that idea. Now. I'm fucking Caduta, right? And I mean really fucking her. The woman's in — Wait. No. This is Butch. I just fucked Caduta, now I'm fucking Butch, right? And I mean really fucking her. The woman's in tears, right out of control. She's hysterical, John. Then this young actor walks in—he's nude too — for the showdown. And I spring out of bed, naked as I am, and I just start to tear him to fucking pieces. I'm damn near killing the guy when Butch, in the nude, starts shouting, "Lorne! Lorne, baby! Honey, what are you doing! Stop, sweetheart, please stop!" And I realize I been — that the animal in me, because, John, it's a terrible world we're living in, John, it's a really crazy, awful... world. So Butch and Caduta lead me away. I'm damn near in tears on account of what I've done to the guy. Then this youngpunk comes up behind me and hits me on the head with a car-tool. John? What do you say.'
'Lorne? We'll see.'
'No. No! You'll see. Yes you will!'
Crack.
I replaced the receiver and stared at my lap. On it lay a cellophaned wallet of Guyland press handouts — this was where I'd scribbled his number. Running my eye down the page I saw that Lorne had, in his time, on stage or screen, interpreted the roles of Genghis Kan, Al Capone, Marco Polo, Huckleberry Finn, Charlemagne, Paul Revere, Erasmus, Wyatt Earp, Voltaire, Sky Masterson, Einstein, Jack Kennedy, Rembrandt, Babe Ruth, Oliver Cromwell, Amerigo Vespucci, Zorro, Darwin, Sitting Bull, Freud, Napoleon, Spiderman, Macbeth, Melville, Machiavelli, Michelangelo, Methuselah, Mozart, Merlin, Marx, Mars, Moses and Jesus Christ. I didn't have the lowdown on every last one of these guys but presumably they were all bigshots. Perhaps, then, it wasn't so surprising that Lorne had one or two funny ideas about himself.
Oh, what a long day. Dah! what a day. You know what the time is, my time? Four o'clock in the afternoon. Hey, if you were here now, sister mother daughter lover (niece, auntie, granny), maybe we could talk a bit and cuddle down together—nothing dirty. Only spoons. Maybe you'd let me rest my great face in the gentle bracket between the wings of your shoulderblades. That's all I have in mind, believe me. I know you for a pure creature. You don't drink or smoke or screw around that much, I'll bet. Am I wrong? That is what I love in you ... Now the way I figured it I had six realistic options. I could sack out right away, with some scotch and a few Serafim. I could go back to the Happy Isles and see what little Moby was up to. I could call Doris Arthur. I could catch a live sex show around the corner, in bleeding Seventh Avenue. I could go out and get drunk. I could stay in and get drunk.
In the end I stayed in and got drunk. The trouble was, I did all the other things first. Sometimes I feel that life is passing me by, not slowly either, but with ropes of steam and spark-spattered wheels and a hoarse roar of power or terror. It's passing, yet I'm the one who is doing all the moving. I'm not the station, I'm not the stop: I'm the train. I'm the train.
——————
'Fill me in on the tits, Slick. Tell me about them in incredible detail.' 'No way. Back off, pal. This was a very personal thing between Caduta and me. I'm saying nothing. My lips are sealed.'
'You know, she has a similar set-up in Rome and also in Paris, a little creche where she can go and queen it once a year. It's a sweet deal for the families. All they have to do is keep the mothers out of the way whenever she shows up and to psych the kids into thinking Caduta's some kind of superwomb. Tell me a little about the tits, Slick. I take it they're bigger than, say, Doris Arthur's?'
Whose aren't? I thought tenderly. We strode on. This was Amsterdam Avenue, with the cross streets moving slowly by. There goes Eighty-Seventh. Here comes Eighty-Eighth. Maintaining a low profile, the Autocrat lurked a steady block behind as we walked north. I had never been on the Upper West Side before, but it still reminded me of something. It reminded me how quiet my rocky tooth had been for at least a week or two now... Over a fanatically carnivorous lunch in an Argentinian joint on Eighty-Second Street my friend Fielding had been very reassuring on the whole Lorne— Caduta question. All the conflicts, he explained, would melt away the minute we had a screenplay in our hands. Moviestars invariably fucked you around like this until there was a script to defer to. Then they forgot about characterization and obsessed themselves exclusively with tilings like line-count, screen-time and close-up allocation. Doris Arthur was back in the States, typing away at her rented cottage in Long Island. I fondly imagined little Doris among her busy lizzies and lazy susans, in racoon hat and frontier dungarees, working the pump, fixing the roof, with half-a-dozen nails and a couple of briar pipes in her syrupy mouth. The first draft, Fielding promised, was only three weeks away.
'Where are we going? What's with all this walking?'
'It's a sunny Sunday, John. We're sightseeing. Tell me. How did Doris strike you? Physically, I mean,' he added, with such soft, sweet-tooth hooding of the eyes that my stride faltered and I said, 'You've been there, huh? Oh boy. What's she like?'
'Listen. You tell me about Caduta's tits and I'll tell you everything there is to know about Doris in the sack. Is it a deal?'
'Well they're big all right and low too but what they mainly are is very deep and heavy. They rest on the ribcage of course and span out a bit lower down but they're still very solid and they —'
'I get the picture, Slick. We can't use them. I thought she might have had them fixed. She likes them motherly. No use to us. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, We don't want some cant,i-levered old bimbo. We want someone real. But filmstars aren't real, John. It isn't in them. You'll see.'
'Right. Doris. Do it.'
'I'm afraid I misled you. I know all there is to know, which is nothing. Doris is gay, Slick.'
I stumbled to a halt and snapped my fingers through the air. 'So that was it. Jesus, I knew it was something like that. That bitch...'
'You made a play?'