Beggarman, Thief (45 page)

ONCE MORE I HAVE TO DOUBT MY FATHER’S WARNING THAT I COME FROM AN UNLUCKY FAMILY.

MY MOTHER HAS WRITTEN ME SEVERAL LETTERS. AS USUAL, SHE GOT MY ADDRESS FROM MY FATHER, WHOM I WRITE ON THE VAIN PRESUMPTION THAT MY LETTERS ARE THE ONLY THING THAT KEEPS HIM FROM JUMPING INTO LAKE MICHIGAN. MY MOTHER’S LETTERS HAVE MELLOWED IN TONE. SHE TAKES IT THAT MY DECISION NOT TO RE-ENLIST HAS SOMETHING TO DO WITH HER PROTESTS AND REPRESENTS A NEW AND WELCOME MATURITY IN ME. SHE NOW FINISHES HER LETTERS WITH “LOVE, MOTHER.” FOR YEARS IT WAS JUST “MOTHER,” A TRICK OF SIGNING OFF THAT I UNDERSTOOD, I THINK CORRECTLY, AS A SIGN OF HER COMPLETE DISGUST WITH ME. I HAVE RETURNED THE COMPLIMENT AND SIGNED MY ONE LETTER TO HER, “LOVE, BILLY.”

SHE TELLS ME THAT SHE IS ENJOYING HER NEW CAREER AS A DIRECTOR, WHICH COMES AS NO SURPRISE TO ME, CONSIDERING HER PENCHANT FOR BOSSING PEOPLE AROUND. SHE WRITES WITH GREAT ENTHUSIASM OF THE ABILITY OF MY COUSIN WESLEY AS AN ACTOR. IT’S A TRADE I SHOULD HAVE CONSIDERED, SINCE I CAN BE AS FALSE OR SINCERE AS ANY MAN, BUT IT’S TOO LATE NOW. WESLEY WANTS TO VISIT ME, MY MOTHER WRITES. HOW SHOULD I GREET HIM? WELCOME, BROTHER SUFFERER.

HOLY GOD! TWO DAYS AFTER I WROTE THE ABOVE, MONIKA APPEARED, ACCOMPANIED BY A MIDDLE-AGED GERMAN TYCOON WHO SELLS FROZEN FOODS. SHE IS IN A PROSPEROUS PERIOD, ALL DECKED OUT IN SLEEK, EXPENSIVE-LOOKING CLOTHES, WITH HER HAIR COMBED. SO FAR SHE HAS PRETENDED NOT TO KNOW ME, BUT IT MAY BE THE LULL BEFORE THE STORM. THOUGHTS OF FLIGHT HAUNT ME.

I LOST IN STRAIGHT SETS TO A MAN I HAVE BEATEN ON SIX CONSECUTIVE DAYS.

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Freddie Kahn, the cameraman, led the singing of “For she’s a jolly good fellow,” holding Gretchen’s hand aloft like a winning prizefighter’s, at the traditional party on the set in the studio in New York at the finish of the last day’s shooting. The singing of the cast, the technical men, and the grips and the friends invited was loud and hearty. Gretchen was somewhere between tears and laughter as the singing rang out on the set strewn with cables, the cameras hooded, the liquor and sandwiches on improvised, flower-decorated tables set on trestles. Ida Cohen was frankly crying and had had her hair done for the occasion. Kahn presented a wristwatch to Gretchen as a gift from the cast, to which Wesley had contributed fifty dollars, and called on Gretchen to make a speech.

“Thank you, thank you everybody,” Gretchen said, her voice trembling a little. “You’ve all been wonderful and I want to congratulate one and all for making my first stab at being a director such a happy one. Although, as the saying goes in Hollywood, Show me a happy company and I’ll show you a stinker of a movie.”

There was a wave of laughter and a few shouts of, “No, not this time.”

Gretchen raised her hand for silence. “For all of you, the job is over and I hope you go on to bigger and better things and that your flops will be forgotten and your hits remembered forever—or at least until the next Academy Award night. But for some of us, the cutters, the people who do the dubbing, the composer and musicians, and for Mr. Cohen, who will have the unenviable job of selling the picture for distribution without all of us being stolen blind, the job is just really beginning. Wish us well, because there’re months of work ahead of us, and what we do from now on can mean the difference between success and failure.”

She spoke modestly, but Wesley, who was standing near her, could see the light of triumph in her eyes. “Ida,” she said, “do stop crying. This isn’t a funeral—yet.”

Ida sobbed.

Somebody put a glass of whiskey into Gretchen’s hand and she raised it in a toast. “To us all—from the oldest here—” She turned to Wesley. “And to the youngest.”

Wesley, who had a glass of whiskey in his hand, which he had not yet touched, raised his glass with the others. He was not smiling or looking exuberant, like most of the company, because he had just seen Frances Miller, who was standing to one side with her husband, clink glasses with him and exchange a kiss. Wesley and Frances had made up after the night in the bar in Port Philip and she had again come to his room in the hotel and had let him stay with her for the night several times in her apartment in New York when they resumed shooting interiors there. That was until three days ago, when her husband had arrived from California. Wesley had not yet met her husband, a handsome blond man built like a football player, who, Wesley had to admit to himself, looked nice enough, in a standard Hollywood way. But the familiar manner in which Frances and her husband looked at each other as they raised their glasses, and the tenderness of their kiss, made him wish there had been some way of avoiding the party.

Alice was there, too, although for the moment he could not see her in the shadows of the set. As always, she made herself as unobtrusive as possible. She had behaved peculiarly after the nights he had not come to the apartment to sleep on the sofa, aloof and efficiently nurselike. When he had told her about the party, she had said she’d love to come, she had never been to a party on a movie set before. He had tried to seem gracious about inviting her, but it had been an effort. When you get older, he thought, trying not to look in the direction of Frances and her husband, maybe you learn how to handle things like this.

He took a big gulp of his whiskey and soda, remembering that the last time he had drunk hard liquor was the night in the Porte Rose in Cannes. The whiskey tasted fine and he took another gulp.

Gretchen walked around the set, shaking hands or kissing people on the cheek and some of the other women were teary-eyed, too. Everybody seemed reluctant to leave, as though they wished to prolong as much as possible the ties they had formed with each other in their common labor over the months. Wesley overheard a middle-aged character woman say to Gretchen, “Bless you, dear; from here on, it’s got to get worse.”

Wesley wondered how the simple act of just making a movie, which must have become a routine experience to all these professional people, could arouse so much emotion. He himself had enjoyed making the movie, but aside from Frances and Gretchen, he wouldn’t care if he never saw any one of them again. Maybe, no matter what Gretchen told him, deep down he was not really cut out to be an actor.

When Gretchen came up to him and kissed him on the cheek and said, “Wesley Jordan, I’m going to miss you,” he could see that she meant it.

“That was a nice little speech,” he said. “You sure know how to decorate an occasion.”

“Thank you, honey,” she said. But she kept looking over her shoulder as though she was searching for someone. “Wesley,” she said, “did Rudolph say anything to you about not coming here or being late?”

“No.” All his Uncle Rudolph had said to him in the last few days of shooting was that the lawyer in Antibes had written that it was okay to come back to France. He had not yet bought his ticket. Without admitting it to himself, he had the feeling that he was not ready to leave America just yet, that there were too many things left unsettled.

“He had to go up to Connecticut again today with Mr. Donnelly,” Gretchen said, still searching over the heads of the people who surrounded them, “but he promised to be back by five o’clock. It’s past seven now. It’s not like Rudolph to be late. I can’t leave the party just yet, so will you be a dear and telephone his hotel to see if he left a message?”

“Of course,” Wesley said and searched for coins as he went off the stage to the telephone outside to call the Hotel Algonquin, where his uncle kept a room for the nights he had to stay over in the city.

He had to wait to make the call because Frances was there, talking and giggling. He moved away because he didn’t want to overhear what she was saying. She took a long time over her conversation and kept feeding dimes into the machine. He had carried his glass with him and by the time she had finished, he had drained it. He could feel his muscles tense as he waited, listening to the tone of the voice without hearing the words, and he was uncomfortably conscious of a spasmodic tingle in the nerves around his groin and in his balls. Never again, never again, he told himself, although he knew he was lying.

With a last soft giggle, Frances hung up and came toward the door to the stage, outside which he was standing. Her hair was hanging long over her shoulders and she swung it back with a womanly gesture of her hand. “Ah,” she said, and she giggled again, “the boy wonder, lying in wait.”

“I have a call to make,” he said, “but first I want to do something.” Suddenly, he grabbed her and kissed her on the mouth.

“Well, now,” she said, giggling, “you’ve finally taken acting lessons. How to be passionate in the presence of husbands.” Her voice was a little thick from drink.

“When am I going to see you again?” Wesley gripped her arms, as though by the strength in his hands he could keep her from slipping away.

“Who knows?” Frances said. She giggled. “Maybe never. Maybe when you grow up.”

“You don’t mean that,” he said, his voice tortured.

“Who knows what I mean,” she said. “Least of all me. I have some good advice for you. We had our fun and it’s over. Now forget it.”

The door from the stage swung open and Frances’ husband bulked against the light from the set.

“Let go of her,” the man said.

Wesley dropped his hands and stepped back a little.

“I know what you two have been up to all this time,” the man said, “don’t think I don’t. Slut.”

“Oh, cool it, Jack, please,” Frances said carefully.

The man slapped her face. The sound was flat and ugly. “As for you, you little bastard,” he said to Wesley, “if I ever catch you hanging around my wife again I’ll break you in half.”

“Oh, the great big he-man,” Frances said mockingly. She hadn’t put her hand to her face, it was as though her husband hadn’t touched her. “Everywhere but in bed.”

The man took a deep breath that was more of a gasp, like a rush of air from a suddenly opened door. Then he slapped Frances again, much harder this time.

Still, Frances didn’t put her hand to her face. “Pig,” she said to her husband. “You and your spies.”

The man grabbed her arm. “Now you’re marching back in there,” he said, “and you’re smiling because your husband, who was detained on business on the Coast, has managed to come to New York to spend the weekend with you.”

“Whatever you say, pig,” Frances said. She took his arm and without looking at Wesley went through the door with her husband onto the set, where there was the sound of music now, a piano and a trumpet and a set of drums, and couples dancing.

Wesley stood immobile in the dimly lit hall, only the muscles in his face working. Then he crushed the empty plastic cup in his hand and threw it against the wall. He took two minutes, until he was sure he wouldn’t rush through the door, past the dancing couples, and throw himself at the man’s throat.

When he felt he could trust his voice, he called the hotel, where the operator told him that Mr. Jordache had left no messages. He stood beside the phone on the wall for another moment, then went onto the set and found his aunt and repeated what the operator had said. After that he went to the bar and ordered a whiskey, which he drank straight off, then ordered another.

While he was finishing the drink, he felt a tap on his arm. He turned to see Alice standing there, that aloof, nurselike look on her face that he had begun to fear. “I think maybe it would be a good idea,” Alice said calmly, “if you repaired your face. You’ve got lipstick all over it.”

“Thank you,” he said woodenly, taking out his handkerchief and dabbing at his lips and cheeks. “That better?”

“Much better,” she said. “Now I think I’ll be going. I’ve found out movie parties aren’t as dazzling as people would lead a girl to believe.”

“Good night,” Wesley said. He wanted to ask her forgiveness, change that distant, cold expression in her eyes, but he didn’t know how to say it or just what she could forgive him for. “I’ll see you later.”

“Perhaps,” she said.

Christ, he thought, as he watched the small girl with the straight, honest walk disappear among the dancers, Christ, am I a mess, I’ve got to get out of this town. Then he turned back to the bar and asked for another drink. He was taking it from the bartender when Rudolph came up to him. “Having a good time, Mr. Jordan?” Rudolph said.

“Marvelous,” Wesley said. “Gretchen is looking for you. She’s worried. I called your hotel for her.”

“I was delayed,” Rudolph said. “I’ll go find her. I’d like to talk to you later. Where’ll you be?”

“Right here,” Wesley said.

Rudolph frowned. “Take it easy, lad,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll be able to find another bottle of whiskey somewhere in New York tomorrow if you look hard enough.” He gave Wesley’s arm a friendly small pat, then went looking for Gretchen.

Gretchen was talking to Richard Sanford, the author of
Restoration Comedy,
when Rudolph saw her on the other side of the space where people were dancing. Sanford had made no concessions in his dress, Rudolph saw, for the celebration of the finishing day of shooting for his firs opus. He was wearing his usual uniform of open-necked wool shirt and windbreaker.

“What I’m worried about,” Sanford was saying earnestly, “is that there aren’t enough close-ups of the girl in what I’ve seen so far. Somehow, I don’t get enough emotion in the medium shots and in the …”

“Dear Richard,” Gretchen said, “I’m afraid that like so many other authors, you are smitten with an actress’s charms to the detriment of her talent …”

“Oh, come on now,” Sanford said, flushing, “I’ve barely spoken to the girl.”

“She’s spoken to you,” Gretchen said. “That’s more than enough with a young lady like that. I regret for your sake that she was otherwise occupied.”

“You underestimate me,” Sanford said angrily.

“That’s been the problem of artists for five thousand years,” Gretchen said. “You’ll learn to live with it, sonny.”

“We’re not friends, you and I,” Sanford said. “You resent my—my maleness. I’ve known that from the beginning.”

“That’s beside the point,” Gretchen said. “Aside from being pure bullshit. And if you haven’t known it before, let me tell it to you now, young man—art is not created out of friendship.”