Authors: Howard Fast
"Then try again."
This time Barbara offered no objection, but on the contrary was pleased with the idea. She had finished more than half of the new version of her book, and she was satisfied with what she had written. She had come to a point where she was choking on her own presence, and the thought of a glamorous party on a yacht, film stars, and her father as her escort was suddenly exciting. It would be an evening dress affair, and on that score she was totally unprepared. She needed a dress, shoes, and a wrap.
Barbara took three hundred dollars out of her savings account with the delight of a child robbing her piggy bank to buy a new doll, and then she spent an entire day shopping. In Beverly Hills, she found a navy blue pleated chiffon evening gown that could be had for a hundred and eighty dollars. It was sleeveless and backless with rhine-stone clips on the shoulders, and she agonized for half an hour before she gritted her teeth and decided to buy it. The saleslady, after telling her, "My dear, if I were as young and beautiful as you, and could look the way you do in that gown, I'd go hungry for a month to have it," then proceeded to talk her into a navy blue satin wrap for ninety dollars more. With the purchase of a pair of high-heeled satin pumps to match, Barbara returned home, penniless, flushed, triumphant, and ashamed.
But when she dressed herself on the evening of the party and came out to be appraised and approved by her father and May Ling, Dan stared at her for a long moment before he whispered, "Baby, you are one hell of a dish."
Her hair was gathered in a bun at the back of her neck, and she wore lipstick but no other make-up. "Let me," May Ling said, pressing a tissue to Barbara's lips until only a shadow of the lipstick remained. "You don't need it. It only takes away." May Ling looked at both of them, Dan gray now, but still without fat on his big frame, the dinner jacket fitted close and well to the heavy muscles on his sloping shoulders, and Barbara like a time-defying recreation of Jean.
After they left, May Ling walked slowly upstairs to her bedroom and stared into her mirror. She touched the wrinkles that had gathered around her eyes and mouth. The once-jet black hair was streaked with gray. She stared at herself as tears welled up in the corners of her eyes, and then she shook her head with annoyance, wiped away the tears, and went into the room where her mother was. So-toy was asleep, breathing heavily. May Ling drew the covers up around her and put out the light and left.
She went downstairs and tried to read, but her thoughts wandered. She concentrated on the page she was reading, and again her thoughts swam away and she dozed off. Then the sound of a door opening awakened her, and
there was Dan. She looked at her wristwatch. It was half
past eleven.
"What happened?" she asked forlornly.
"Nothing happened. Parties like that bore me. You don't. So I came home."
"Where's Barbara?"
"I left her there. She'll be all right. She was having a great time."
May Ling rose, walked over to Dan, and put her palms against his cheeks. "Oh, Danny, I'm so glad you're here."
"Make some of that classy Chinese tea, and I'll play you jack-o'-diamonds at ten cents a point."
"No, Danny, I want to go to bed, I want you to hold me."
"All right, if that's what you want. I still can't understand why you skinny Chinese broads are so insatiably sexy."
"We're an old culture, Danny. We know what good is."
Later, lying in his arms, she said, "Danny, do you know what I want?"
"Tell me."
"I want to go away with you, just the two of us. I want to go back to Hawaii, in a freighter, the way we did years ago. I want you to get a skiff and we'll sail in the islands, and we'll lie naked on the lonely beaches, and we'll pretend we're young again."
"Pretend hell! We are young."
"Will you do it, Danny? Will you?"
"Absolutely."
"You're not kidding, Danny? You will do it?"
"It's a promise. I never broke my word to you, did I?"
Barbara was enchanted. For months, she had worked like a slave and lived like a nun; suddenly, she was like someone awakened from sleep, rested, alert, totally conscious of herself, of the simple beauty of her gown, of her firm, strong young body, and of her own beauty. When she first saw the yacht lying alongside the dock, lit up from stem to stern, strung with Japanese lanterns, spun in a nest of music and voices, she said, "Oh, daddy, what a beautiful thing you built!" There was a note in her voice that Dan had not heard before, and she was smiling with delight when he glanced at her. When he led her into the wide well of the yacht, every eye turned toward her, and Dan told himself that even here, where beauty was the commodity bought and sold, no one could hold a candle to her.
Now it was an hour since Dan had left her there, assured that any one of half a dozen men would vie for the privilege of taking her home. Alex Hargasey, the director, hovering over her like a butterfly over a flower, had taken on the function of introducing her to what he called "the exotic nobility of Hollywood." The names fell from his lips like titles: Bette Davis, Marlene Dietrich, Spencer Tracy, Gary Cooper, Lana Turner. The women dismissed her; she was a beautiful woman whose name was meaningless, but too disturbingly attractive. The men stared at her, sought her out, projected themselves into rather witless conversation. "Do you like yacht parties?" "But you must be in the theater, not the screen. I would have seen you on the screen." "Top deck over there, but dump Hargasey. He's a rotten old lecher. Five minutes." "But I'm sure we've met. You couldn't be here on the Coast without us having met."
"An actor," Hargasey said to her, "is a little less than a man. An actress, my dear, is a little more than a woman."
"That's very clever," Barbara admitted, wondering whether he would acknowledge its origin.
He merely nodded and shrugged. "You see, I have pleaded with your father to bring you for a screen test."
"He mentioned it. But I'm not an actress. I never could be. I have no talent whatsoever. And no ambition in that direction."
A voice behind her said, "As for talent, I suspect the statement is subterfuge. As for ambition, why not, lovely lady?"
Barbara turned and faced a tall, broad-shouldered man who was disconcertingly handsome, his face tanned, his strong, fine features just rugged enough to save them from perfection, his blue eyes unreal in their brightness. "And you, my dear, where the devil have you been hiding?" he demanded of her.
She was high enough on half a dozen glasses of champagne to giggle with pleasure at this apparition out of her adolescent dreams and to stare at him comfortably.
"Our host," Hargasey said. "Barbara, my dear, this is Richard Dyler."
"Barbara who?" Dyler demanded.
"The daughter of the man who built this toy of yours —Barbara Lavette."
"Damnit, was Danny here? Where is he?"
"He left. If you had come to your own party on time, you would have seen him."
"The hell with that," Dyler said. "He left the best part of him here. My dear lady," he said to Barbara, "what the devil are you staring at?"
"You. You're much more beautiful off the screen than on it."
"Beautiful, Barbara, is a term I reserve ,for women. You, my love, are beautiful."
"Am I your love?" Barbara asked him.
"The possibility exists. Hargasey," he said to the director, "will you get lost and leave us alone. I have much to discuss with this young woman." He took two glasses of champagne from a passing waiter, handed one to Barbara, and said, "To knowledge of each other!"
"So long as it is not in the Biblical sense," Barbara agreed, thinking to herself, What a silly thing to say! Am I drunk? I haven't been even a little drunk since Marcel died. But everything I say sounds clever when I say it and very foolish after it has been said. I think I am drunk, and I don't want to think of Marcel, not tonight.
"We shall see." Dyler took Barbara's arm and said to the director, "Hargasey, will you please get lost."
Hargasey sighed, spread his arms, and turned away. Dyler steered Barbara through the crowd of guests in the well.
"And where are you taking me?"
"High up," Dyler said. "Top deck, where we can look down at this scum."
"I can't drink when I'm walking, and that's an awful thing to say."
He stopped and clicked glasses with her. "Drink up." She stared at the amazing blue eyes and began to giggle again. "Drink up, Barbara, shipbuilder's daughter."
She drained the rest of her champagne. "Better. I like that. Shipbuilder's daughter."
They climbed up to the bridge. "Put to sea," Barbara said. "All the way to China."
"Can't do it. We're tied up. Are you drunk, shipbui'J&'s daughter?"
"I suppose so. That was clever the first time you said it." "The first time I said it was in
The Viking's Revenge.
Did you see me? My name was Ruric."
"Do you remember all your lines?" Barbara asked in amazement.
"Only the best. What do you do when you're not going to parties?"
"I don't go to many parties. I'm a writer."
"What do you write?"
"Do you read
Manhattan Magazine?"
"Only the cartoons. God damn it, woman, we're in Los Angeles." Then he took her in his arms and kissed her.
She pulled away and stared at him. "You don't waste any time, do you?"
"No, I don't."
"You just decide to make love to someone?"
"Not anyone, kid, not anyone."
"Well, doesn't anyone ever say, hold on? Wait a minute? Let's talk about the weather?"
"Who the hell wants to talk about the weather?" Dyler said. "I kissed you. You liked it, didn't you?"
"I guess so." Barbara giggled at him. "I never kissed anyone who looked like you."
"What kind of a crack is that?"
"You're so pretty. I mean beautiful," Barbara added hastily.
"I told you before, beautiful is for dames." He put an arm around her, cupped her breast in his hand and kissed the curve of her neck. She began to giggle uncontrollably. "What gives with you?" he demanded.
"Champagne?"
"You know, you're beautiful. You're a beautiful dame. You do something to me."
"What?"
"What do you mean, what?"
"I mean what do I do to you?"
"You're not for real. You're absolutely not for real."
Barbara leaned over the rail and watched the men and women dancing in the well of the yacht. "Let's dance, Dyler," she said. "This is the most romantie sight I've ever seen, all those real movie stars dancing down there in the moonlight."
"Screw the movie stars," he said. "There's only one star, and that's me. I don't want to dance. I want to make love. Come on down to my cabin." "And then we go to bed?"
"That's up to you, cookie." He pulled her to him and kissed her again.
"Doesn't anyone ever say no?"
"Well, two years ago—aw, shit, honey, you only remember my last name. I'm Richard Dyler."
Barbara burst out laughing.
"What in hell is wrong with you?"
"I want to dance. I want to dance with Richard Dyler. Come on."
"O.K., one dance."
They could hardly move in the crowded well of the yacht. He whispered into her ear, "Did you see
The Last Gun?
That was the first picture I did for Metro. Do you remember the way I died?" A blonde whose face was vaguely familiar to Barbara cut in between them, throwing her arms around Dyler. "Dicky," she said, "where have you been? But where?" Barbara slipped away, leaving Dyler in the clutches of the blonde. Hargasey found her.
"Dyler is an animal," he said to her, drawing her out of the crowd.
"Oh, no, he's delightful. He's very stupid but delightful. And he's so beautiful."
"Beautiful, he's not. So you listen to me. You're an innocent kid."
"All he wanted was to go to bed with me. He's very direct and honest. That's flattering, with all these beautiful stars around."
"To bed he wants to go with everybody, and he does."
"How did he die in
The Last Gun?
I didn't see it."
"The woman he went to bed with stuck a knife into his belly. It should only happen. I want you to meet Bogart. He keeps asking me who you are."
Bogart was charming and interested. He had actually read Barbara's pieces in
Manhattan,
and they got into a discussion about Germany and the war in Europe. He led her out of the well into the lounge. Men joined him. A half a dozen of them gathered around Barbara. One of them said to Hargasey, "Who is she?"