Westlake, Donald E - Novel 50 (7 page)

 
          
How
it all comes back to me now, those wonderful days of first success, when I was
still young and naive and hopeful and
caring.
I had such genius in those days! I could do anything. And with Buddy again at
my side . . . Buddy would always save me, protect me, keep me from harm. He'd
been doing it from the beginning. (We don’t—we
never
—talk about that.)

 
          
I
sit smiling at the patio, under God's sun (the high clouds have cleared away,
but I'm not even afraid of
that
anymore),
and I bask in my memories of those glorious days, until I notice the
interviewer frowning at me again.
Now
what’s his problem?
“Something wrong?"
I ask.

 
          
He
says, “Wait a minute. That last part. Where George Castleberry looked at
himself in the mirror and said, ‘You fool, you,' and put his head down on his
folded arms and wept."

 
          
I
nod, agreeing. “A lovely scene, isn't it?
Touching, dramatic,
full of pathos and understanding and deep revelation."

 
          
“But,”
he says, “
you
didn't see that part. That happened
after you left the room."

           
“One knows these things,” I say, and
Hoskins rolls into view like a giant passenger ship, possibly the
QEII,
bearing a tall, shimmering glass on
a silver tray. “Ah, Hoskins,” I say.

 
          
“Your fuzzy drink, sir.’’

 
          
“Thank you, Hoskins.’’

 
          
Hoskins
recedes, like one of those literary ghosts— Scrooge's father, Hamlet's
Christmas—and I raise the shimmering glass. “To Marcia Callahan,’’ I say.

 
          
“Your
first wife, I believe,’’ the interviewer says. They love to show how they’ve
researched
you, how they've
studied up
on you, how they’ve
done their homework.
There are times
when I hate being other people's homework.

 
          
I
taste the shimmer in the glass, and it is like all the finest things of our
planet gathered together into one foamy tube.
The clean chill
of
Antarctica
, the breezy pure sweetness of the
Caribbean
, the tang of giant cities
everywhere.
Oh, my
goodness me!

 
          
“Marcia
Callahan,’’ I say, and pause to lick ambrosia from my upper lip. “I guess you
could call it love-hate at first sight. We never had any illusions about each
other, Marcia and me, but maybe that was why we were so drawn together. We were
naked for each other.
I
was certainly
naked for
her”

 
          
I
smile, thinking back, reliving again our most famous scene from the play:
Marcia, in various shawls and laces, sits on a park bench. I, in T-shirt and
jeans and heavy workboots, roam the stage, circling her, ranting and raging.
She replies in soft but compelling counterpoint, fighting back with tattered
dignity. And night after night, alone in the forwardmost box to stage left, his
marine uniform replaced by a gleaming new tux I'd bought him, Buddy Pal sat and
watched. In my pacing of the stage, flinging my arms about, roaring, letting it
all out, I would sometimes look up and see him there, a faint smile on his face
as he watched Marcia. And from time to time, in her self-defense, Marcia would
look bravely up past me at that box high on the theater's side wall, where
Buddy sat concealed from the rest of the audience by plush drapes. I sigh and
smile, and the shimmery glass trembles in my trembling hand.

 
          
"After
Buddy got out of the marines," I say, "the three of us were
inseparable. It was like old times, but even better. We were going to be
together forever.'"

 
          
"But
you weren’t," the interviewer says.

 
          
"The
show closed. They made a movie out of it, and they hired Marcia to what they
call re-create the role. But they didn't want me."

 
          
"I'm
surprised," the interviewer says.

 
          
"Are
you? Well, you don't know shit about showbiz, do you? No," I say quickly,
"forget that, sorry, that was just this drink talking, nice fuzzy
drink."

 
          
"I
imagine," he says, gently, forgiving me, "I imagine the memory of
that can still hurt."

 
          
"Most
memories still hurt," I say, and laugh, and catch myself before I spill
this
wonderful
fuzzy drink. "The
thing is," I say, "they had some guy under contract, some guy they
were
grooming.
Marcia was already a
star, and I was just some guy that was in her last play. So they put in this
fucking twerp they were
grooming.
Eventually, the critics told them they were crazy, but by then it was too
late."

 
          
The
interviewer nods. I have his sympathy back, all right; there's nothing they
hate more than success, and nothing they love more than failure. Feed them
great fat shovelfuls of humility and abasement and defeat, and they'll feed
you
more and more success. Love it!

 
          
He
says, with his new sympathetic voice, "What did you do then?"

 
          
"Nothing,"
I say. "Marcia moved out to the Coast, of course, to make the movie.
George and I broke up as soon as the play closed—funny thing, it was as much
his doing as mine—and Buddy and I went on living together in a little place I
had on East 18th Street."

 
          
Wide-eyed,
about to call back his sympathy vote, my interviewer said, "You were
having an affair with
Buddy
Pair

 
          
I
stare at him, truly shocked and outraged. "Are you
crazy?
I’m not that way! Buddy isn't—for God's sake, man, we're
both straight!”

 
          
Confused,
abashed, the interviewer leans back in his chair, nodding agreement with me,
saying, "Sorry, sorry, I just got a little confused there, you know, after
George Castleberry and all that kind of—”

 
          
"That,
fella,” I say, "is what we in the biz call a career move. It has nothing
to do with the inner man, you see what I mean?”

 
          
"It's
cynical, you mean,” he says.

 
          
I
beam at him. Dear fuzzy drink, fuzzing around through all my suburbs, turning
me on like neons at nighttime. "My friend,” I say, "you just used a
word that has no meaning.”

 
          
His
face is blank. "I did?”

 
          
“Cynical.
You see, my friend, it's a
spectrum,” I say, and spread my hands like a fisherman lying, and very nearly,
very nearly, very damn
nearly
spill
the remains of my fuzzy drink, but recover in time and continue: "It's a
spectrum,” I say. "Here at this end is the romantic, and over here at this
end is the cynic. So wherever you are on this here spectrum here, you're the
realist, and everybody on that side is too much of a romantic, and everybody on
that side is too much of a cynic.”

 
          
"Is
that right?”

 
          
"That's
right,” I say, seeing no need to disagree with myself.
"More
examples.
You take a normal interest in your job. Everybody on
this
side of you is lazy, and everybody
on
that
side of you is a workaholic.
Or everybody on one side is frigid, and everybody on the other side's a
nymphomaniac. Or everybody over here's—”

 
          
"I
get the idea,” he assures me loudly, interrupting a fine flow, a fine
fuzzy-drink-induced flow, and then he hurries on to keep that fine flow from
starting up again, asking me, "Did you get another part in a play after
Last Seen in Tupelo
closed?”

 
          
"No,”
I tell him, clouding over slightly, the fuzzy drink beginning to curdle within
me at the memory of that empty time in my life, Buddy pressing me to bring in
some money, the great lethargy creeping over me, all my troubles and woes, the
memories I hadn't learned how to jam. . . . "Jack Schullmann's blackball
against me was still alive then," I explain to this button-eyed interviewer,
"and during that time I was with George I did more drinking than maybe I
should have at such a tender age—not like now! Hah!" And I finish the
fuzzy drink!

 
          
"So
what did you do?" this dull fellow asks me.

           
I radiate pleasure in his direction.
"I got married,” I say simply.

 
          
On
her way home from the studio, Marcia picked up her dry cleaning, then continued
on up and over
Beverly Glen Boulevard
out of the Valley and into Westwood to the
furnished rental she’d taken while shooting
Tupelo
.
The house was modified mission- style, one
story high, with red tiled roof and beige stucco walls, the structure sprawling
over most of the available property, with neat lawn and shrubbery in front and
a large swimming pool filling the space in back.

 
          
Hooked
to the visor of the rented Porsche was the box that controlled the door of the
attached garage; Marcia thumbed the button on that box as she made the turn
into her driveway, and the broad blank door folded up and back, receding into
the open mouth of the garage like a piece of stage magician’s equipment. Marcia
drove from the sunny exterior to the dark oily-smelling interior of the garage,
unnaturally bare and neat inside (this being a short-term rental), and behind
her the door slid out and swept down, as though the house had just ingested
another victim.

 
          
Marcia
collected the plastic dry-cleaner bag, which had been draped over the back of
the passenger seat, then climbed from the car and went through the connecting
door into the kitchen. She passed through the kitchen and out the other side,
then moved diagonally across one corner of the long, low living room with its
low beige furniture and broad, chrome-faced fireplace. A long hall led from
there, with more rooms to the right and a wall of glass on the left overlooking
the swimming pool and its redwood surround. Walking down this hall, the dry-
cleaner bag held over her shoulder like Frank Sinatra's jacket, Marcia glanced
leftward and saw, in profile, Jack Pine.

 
          
It
was him, all right. In cowboy hat and fringed jacket and high decorated boots,
he sat in a very low canvas chair at the deep end of the pool, seated well down
and back so his head and knees were at the same height, cowboy hat pulled low
over his eyes to shade them from the afternoon sun, booted legs stretched far
out in front of him over the redwood deck with ankles crossed, hands folded
casually in lap. From a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, a slender pale
tendril of smoke wavered upward past his ear and the brim of his hat.

 
          
Marcia
did not break stride. Her eyes narrowed slightly, she gazed steadily at that
self-absorbed profile out there, and she kept walking, on down to the end of
the hall, where she faced front again at last, moving through the doorway into
the master bedroom.

 
          
A
battered round, soft traveling bag and an equally well-worn soft suit-carrier
lay on the bed. Nodding as though to say her expectations had been fulfilled,
she walked around the bed to the wall of closets and hung the dry-cleaning bag
on the rod. Then she turned, looked again at the luggage on the bed, took a
long, slow breath, and glanced across the room at her reflection in the
dressing mirror there. No expression showed in the face looking back at her.

 
          
A
sliding glass door led from the bedroom to the pool, near its shallow end.
Marcia stepped through, slid the door shut behind her, and looked down across
the water at Jack, who hadn't moved. An almost inaudible sigh parted her lips,
which then pressed shut again. Deliberately she strode around the pool. He
finally—as she was halfway to him—lifted his head and lifted his hand to lift
his cowboy hat away from his eyes to watch her. Nothing else on him moved.

 
          
Marcia
stopped in front of him. They looked at each other for a long silent moment, and
Marcia did not ask him anything about Buddy Pal. Then, with a kind of grim
fatalism, she said, “I knew this all along, of course."

 
          
"Your
heart told you," he said.

 
          
"Or
some organ," she said. She turned and walked back to the bedroom, and a
little later he
arced
his cigarette butt into the pool
and followed.