Don't Speak to Strange Girls (16 page)

“I think so.”

“Why don’t we all go in the library and bounce it around between us,” Creek suggested. “There must be some things you don’t like. If I could find out what they are, we could get them ironed out in the next few days.”

Clay opened his mouth to protest but Kay spoke quickly. “Yes. Why don’t we go inside?”

They sat around in the library, watching him covertly. Clay sweated. He felt as though he were a hospitalized patient with an incurable malady and these sad faces hovered over him, watching for his last breath.

Creek began to talk and it was as if Clay heard his voice only from a distance. Creek understood the character of
Pinto
better than the original author of
Man of the Desert
ever could. The author had created him, but Creek had bisected him.

Stuart closed his eyes, hearing Creek’s talking, wishing he could put his mind to what the brilliant producer was saying. But Creek spoke too softly. It seemed to Clay he could hear Joanne’s voice imposed over Dick’s: I’m really grateful, Clay. Really grateful, darling. Why, you know I want to see you … Clay, I can’t see anybody … not right now … This is too important … It may be just a role in a quick picture … it’s the most important thing ever happened to me … I can’t fail, Clay. I couldn’t stand to fail. I couldn’t go on living if I failed this chance. I’ve almost got what I want. You can’t be selfish, Clay. You’ve got to give me this chance … Darling, you’ve so much to do. You have the new picture. You could work on it. Why don’t you work on it, Clay? Why don’t you think about your picture? … I’m grateful. You’ll never know how grateful I am.

“Ahhhh.” The word broke across Clay’s mouth.

Dick Creek stopped talking. Kay leaned forward in her chair. Shatner frowned. Hoff pushed back deeper, sensing trouble and wishing himself blocks away from it.

“What’s the matter, Clay?” Creek said.

Clay got up, shaking his head. He strode across the library and went out on the flagstones of the terrace. He felt the bile and the ugliness boiling up through his throat. He clapped his hand over his mouth and barely made it to a secluded place behind a bush.

When he returned to the terrace, walking slowly, they were standing there waiting for him.

He wiped at his face with his handkerchief. He felt dizzy. He wanted to sit down.

Kay ran to him. “Darling. What is it? Is there anything we can do?”

“Yes.” His voice was agonized. “Get out, will you? Kay, get ‘em out of here. If you ever gave a damn about me, get ‘em out of here.”

• • •

Clay was sprawled across his bed, unable to sleep, unable to get up and do anything. It was late afternoon and he had been lying across the bed since morning.

He heard a scratching at the hall door; someone cleared his throat.

He did not turn. He said, “Come in, Hoff. What you want?”

Hoff padded across the room, sat down on the bed beside him. “I should want something? I don’t want something, Clay. You are on my mind … The others — they are smart enough to stay away when you tell them. I’m not that smart, Clay. I’m sorry. I worry. I’m afraid maybe you need me.”

“I’m all right.”

“If I ever encounter a man that is not all right, Clay, you are this man. You have done what I cannot believe you would ever do. This girl, this Stark, she must have something I do not see to do this to you. I try to tell myself. He is in grief and loss. He is — there’s a word — vulnerable. He is vulnerable. He would fall for Zasu Pitts the way he feels. But this does not cover it.”

“No.”

“For a while there, you looked happy, and I felt good because I could see you putting your grief out of your mind and getting back to work. For this I am grateful to the Stark girl. But now — she walks out — and you are back where you were after Ruth’s funeral. Worse.”

“You’re right. I should have better sense than act this way.”

“Better sense? So what’s better sense got to do with it? That is Ringling and Shatner talking. They try to think how they might offer her enough money to take herself to New York, or Paris. I don’t agree with this … She has become a part of you — ”

Clay sat up. He looked at Hoff’s troubled face and nodded. “Yes.
You said the truth. Have you been confabbing with your psychiatrist again?”

Hoff said simply, “I examined my own heart and found this.”

“You’ve a big heart under all those layers of fat,” Clay said. He touched Hoff on the shoulder. “She has become a part of me. I think I could live better without an arm. I’m sure I could. I don’t know … This morning it got worse. I sat down there, and I saw you four people, all talking about things that had nothing to do with her — as though she didn’t exist — all of you pretending she didn’t exist, and trying to force me to pretend with you that she didn’t exist. And all the time she was part of me.”

“There’s got to be something you can do.”

“No. There’s nothing I can do. I tried to give her everything she wanted. I gave her that screen test. It was what she wanted, all right. She hasn’t had time for me since. And she’s right, of course. She’s young. She’s got her whole life. There’s no answer, Marty, for me — except time. They’ve got to give me time to get over it.”

Hoff nodded. “You want I should tell them, Clay? I’ll tell Creek. Something he said today. After we left here. They can get Wayne.”

“Oh God. Please. Tell them.”

“You should get away, Clay. This I believe. Perhaps New York. Maybe South America for a while. You’ll come back feeling better than ever.”

For a moment Clay considered this. He tried to imagine how it would be, confined four or five days to the deck of a ship surrounded by water, unable to get off of it, caught there whether he wanted to be or not, removed from Joanne by time and space.

Maybe if he got Sharon to go with him he could endure it. He had asked her once, before he had known about the man she loved back East. He would beg her this time. She had to see how much he needed her. It might save both of them … and then he thought, what if Sharon feels about this Darrow the way I do about Joanne? But she couldn’t. Could she? She was just a child. If she did, God help them both.

He shivered. He shook his head. “I don’t want to go away, Hoff.”

Marty Hoff nodded. “It’s what you want to do, Clay … I am a man humbled by the things he learns every day … I felt I could force my family to live my way, in the place I wished. And I found I could, but I found it did something to them that was not worth it to me. I am a humbled man. And because of the new things I have learned about you — and my family — I am a humbled man who believes less and less in imposing his will on others for their own good.”

Clay said, “I guess the trouble with me is that where I came from, a man found a woman he loved, and she cared for him, that was it. Life was so goddamn simple out in that farm country. Or it seems that way to me now. Homes and family ties were strong things. They meant something. They were a big part of a man’s life. Changes were gradual, slow. Sometimes you’d even get to thinking things never changed at all. I reckon that’s in my blood. I’ve tried to change, tried to become what you have to be to exist out here. But it hasn’t worked. I’ve never learned to accept quick changes gracefully.”

“You think you would have been a happier man on the farm, Clay?”

Stuart shook his head. “Who am I kidding? I wanted to get away. I couldn’t get away fast enough. I’ve had everything handed to me all these years. No. I reckon I’ve done what I wanted to do. But that doesn’t make it any easier to let her go.”

“No. It’s not easy. It is never easy.”

Clay clenched his fists. “It’s not possible! Damn it, it isn’t possible. There’s no damn sense to it. Why should she walk out on me?”

Hoff lifted his hand. “You shouldn’t hate me, Clay. But she’s been walking out on people — in some one way or another — all her life. She’s a girl running, Clay. This you got to see. You got to see. She can no more help being what she is than you can.”

Clay got up, paced the room. “But damn it. Goddamn it, we are happy. She’s happy when she’s here. In this room, in this house, she’s happy. I know she is. It’s something you feel. It’s not a thing you can pretend.”

“She was happy here. Accept that, Clay. She was as happy here — as she could be anywhere. She is afraid — not of being happy, Clay, but of standing still. She’s afraid of going back — this you can see in her eyes. She’s got to run. Run fast or she’s afraid she will go back — where she truly believes that she belongs.”

“But my God, that’s crazy. I’ve told her. She’s nothing to be afraid of. I’m not going to let anything happen to hurt her.”

Hoff nodded. “I think maybe she has heard this from other men, Clay. Many times. You should forgive me. Perhaps she believes you. She knows you mean what you say. Right now … But tomorrow? She’s believed too many men, Clay — and waked up tomorrow to find out what they meant yesterday — was meant for yesterday.”

“She knows me better than that!”

“Does she? None of us know anything. We know only just what has happened to us, each of us, to make us what we are. We trust each other only as far as we have learned to trust other people in our past. This is a simple truth, Clay. You burn a puppy’s paw often enough, soon he won’t mistrust just you, but he’ll mistrust every man and every fire.”

Clay strode back and forth in the room. “But not me. I haven’t hurt her. Not intentionally. We are happy when we’re together. God knows she makes me feel young — ten years, fifteen years younger. I feel alive with how young I am every minute I’m with her. And — yes, damn it, I’m good with her, too. In bed. As good as I ever was with any other woman — at any time in my life. Age has nothing to do with it. I never wanted anybody the way I want her.”

Hoff smiled and nodded. “I believe you, Clay. I believe you, even when the chemistry of my own body says you’re lying. I must accept that the chemistry of my body is my own — and while you might lie to me about your prowess, you wouldn’t lie to yourself, there would be no point in it.”

“I’m not lying,” Clay said levelly.

Hoff said, “No. You’re not lying. This makes it very sad. Perhaps you are better than anyone she has ever known — but it does not matter … not to her … Perhaps it is in herself where the lack is, Clay. She — you should forgive me — she has traded on her emotions — she mistrusts their value, maybe they don’t even have any value to her any more. This happens. It is a very sad thing.”

chapter eighteen

C
LAY PROWLED
through the house. He glanced at a library clock. It was nine o’clock. Darkness glazed the windows. These days and nights without Joanne had been hell and there had to be an end to them. He told himself he was proud because he had left her alone, he had held off, but pride is a sweated lonely thing.

He went to the telephone, dialed her number. He stood with the receiver pressed against his ear, listening to the ringing across the city from him. He heard Flo say, “Hello.”

He replaced the receiver. He could not parade his agony and need before Flo, not any more. He sat there for a long time, then he got up and walked out to the drive, got into his car. He would drive over there to her apartment. Hell, she wouldn’t mind
talking
to him, would she, just for a few minutes?

He drove two blocks past the Spanish-type apartment building. He did not look toward it. He was afraid of what he might see.

He drove two blocks down the hill and parked in the darkness. He got out of the car and walked slowly up the incline. He stood for a long time in the shadows across the street staring up at the third floor. God, can this be me? Is this really Clay Stuart, standing out here in the dark, staring up at a lighted window?

Determinedly, he crossed the shadowed street, entered the building. He went up the elevator. He got out and walked slowly along the corridor. He heard music blaring from the apartment where she lived.

He stood some minutes before he pressed the buzzer. If she were in there, he would see her. It had gotten so bad just seeing her would help.

He pressed the buzzer and then took an involuntary step backwards. The music continued to wail at him, blasting through the closed door as though it were paper-thin. He wanted to press the buzzer again, but did not. He turned and walked away.

The door opened.

Clay spun around, looking for her, wanting to see her face. It was Flo.

“Well, hello there. Hello, doll. We haven’t seen you in a long time.” Flo batted at her butchered hair with her fingertips and missed. She smiled wanly. She was drunk. Perhaps she was always drunk.

“Come on in,” she cried, leaning against the doorjamb.

“I reckon not,” he said. He looked over her head into the apartment. “Joanne. Is Joanne home?”

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry. She’s not. She’s going to hate missing you. It’s just going to make her sick.”

Sure, he thought, she’ll cry herself to sleep. She’ll dampen some guy’s pajama sleeve, crying herself to sleep.

He nodded at Flo and walked away toward the elevator. He hadn’t thought Joanne would be home. It was better this way. The longer he did not see her, the sooner he would get over her. Get well, that was the way Shatner said it. He could not imagine anything more desirable than being free of this hellish need for her.

Flo leaned against the doorjamb, smile fixed on her face. She did not move until he stepped into the elevator. Perhaps she could not move. Maybe she was paralyzed there.

He walked back into the street and strode down the hill. He would get out of here. He would find a bar somewhere and get drunk enough so he didn’t even remember her name, so he didn’t even remember his own name.

His steps slowed. Where was she? Where in God’s name was she? Why did she have to lie to him? Why did she say she was too tired to see him and then go out with some other guy? What was the point? Was she simply afraid to tell the truth any time, about anything?

He felt rage gorge up through the empty longing in his stomach. He was tied in knots. He doubled his hands into sweated fists.

He slumped behind the wheel of his car and sat there a long time. Why do I care? Why in the name of God do I give a damn what she does?