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light was in my eyes."
She was offended-he had reproached her for not looking like someone
else.
"It was just that!" she said. "That's funny."
They rode in silence for a minute.
"You were married to Minna Davis, weren't you?" she said with a flash
of intuition. "Excuse me for referring to it."
He was driving as fast as he could without making it conspicuous.
"I'm quite a different type from Minna Davis," she said, "-if that's
who you meant. You might have referred to the girl who was with me. She
looks more like Minna Davis than I do."
That was of no interest now. The thing was to get this over quick and
forget it.
"Could it have been her?" she asked. "She lives next door."
"Not possibly," he said. "I remember the silver belt you wore."
"That was me all right."
They were northwest of Sunset, climbing one of the canyons through the
hills. Lighted bungalows rose along the winding road and the electric
current that animated them sweated into the evening air as radio sound.
"You see that last highest light-Kathleen lives there. I live just over
the top of the hill."
A moment later she said, "Stop here."
"I thought you said over the top."
"I want to stop at Kathleen's."
"I'm afraid I'm-"
"I want to get out here myself," she said impatiently.
Stahr slid out after her. She started toward a new little house almost
roofed over by a single willow tree, and automatically he followed her to
the steps. She rang a bell and turned to say good night.
"I'm sorry you were disappointed," she said.
He was sorry for her now-sorry for them both.
"It was my fault. Good night."
A wedge of light came out the opening door and as a girl's voice
inquired "Who is it?" Stahr looked up.
There she was-face and form and smile against the light from inside. It
was Minna's face-the skin with its peculiar radiance as if phosphorus had
touched it, the mouth with its warm line that never counted costs-and over
all the haunting jollity that had fascinated a generation.
With a leap his heart went out of him as it had the night before, only
this time it stayed out there with a vast beneficence.
"Oh Edna you can't come in," the girl said. "I've been cleaning and the
house is full of ammonia smell."
Edna began to laugh, bold and loud. "I believe it was you he wanted to
see, Kathleen," she said.
Stahr's eyes and Kathleen's met and tangled. For an instant they made
love as no one ever dares to do after. Their glance was closer than an
embrace, more urgent than a call.
"He telephoned me," said Edna. "It seems he thought-" Stahr
interrupted, stepping forward into the light.
"I was afraid we were rude at the studio, yesterday evening."
But there were no words for what he really said. She listened
closely without shame. Life flared high in them both-Edna seemed at a
distance and in darkness.
"You weren't rude," said Kathleen. A cool wind blew the brown curls
around her forehead. "We had no business there."
"I hope you'll both-," Stahr said, "-come and make a tour of the
studio."
"Who are you? Somebody important?"
"He was Minna Davis' husband, he's a producer," said Edna as if it were
a rare joke, "-and this isn't at all what he just told me. I think he has a
crush on you."
"Shut up, Edna," said Kathleen sharply.
As if suddenly realizing her offensiveness Edna said "Phone me, will
you?" and stalked away toward the road. But she earned their secret with
her-she had seen a spark pass between them in the darkness.
"I remember you," Kathleen said to Stahr. "You got us out of the
flood."
-Now what? The other woman was more missed in her absence. They were
alone and on too slim a basis for what had passed already. They existed
nowhere. His world seemed far away-she had no world at all except the idol's
head, the half open door.
"You're Irish," he said, trying to build one for her.
She nodded.
"I've lived in London a long time-I didn't think you could tell."
The wild green eyes of a bus sped up the road in the darkness. They
were silent until it went by.
"Your friend Edna didn't like me," he said. "I think it was the word
Producer."
"She's just come out here too. She's a silly creature who means no
harm. I shouldn't be afraid of you."
She searched his face. She thought, like everyone, that he seemed
tired-then she forgot it at the impression he gave of a brazier out of doors
on a cool night.
"I suppose the girls are all after you to put them on the screen."
"They've given up," he said.
This was an understatement-they were all there, he knew, just over his
threshold, but they had been there so long that their clamoring voices were
no more than the sound of the traffic in the street. But his position
remained more than royal-a king could make only one queen-Stahr, at least so
they supposed, could make many.
"I'm thinking that it would turn you into a cynic," she said. "You
didn't want to put me in the pictures."
"No."
"That's good. I'm no actress. Once in London a man came up to me in the
Carlton and asked me to make a test but I thought awhile and finally I
didn't go."
They had been standing nearly motionless, as if in a moment he would
leave and she would go in. Stahr laughed suddenly.
"I feel as if I had my foot in the door-like a collector."
She laughed too.
"I'm sorry I can't ask you in. Shall I get my reefer and sit outside?"
"No." He scarcely knew why he felt it was time to go. He might see her
again-he might not. It was just as well this way.
"You'll come to the studio?" he said. "I can't promise to go around
with you, but if you come you must be sure to send word to my office."
A frown, the shadow of a hair in breadth, appeared between her eyes.
"I'm not sure," she said. "But I'm very much obliged."
He knew that, for some reason, she would not come-in an instant she had
slipped away from him. They both sensed that the moment was played out. He
must go, even though he went nowhere and left with nothing. Practically,
vulgarly, he did not have her telephone number-or even her name, but it
seemed impossible to ask for them now.
She walked with him to the car, her glowing beauty and her unexplored
novelty pressing up against him, but there was a foot of moonlight between
them when they came out of the shadow.
"Is this all?" he said spontaneously.
He saw regret in her face-but there was a flick of the lip also, a
bending of the smile toward some indirection, a momentary dropping and
lifting of a curtain over a forbidden passage.
"I do hope we'll meet again," she said almost formally.
"I'd be sorry if we didn't."
They were distant for a moment. But as he turned his car in the next
drive and came back with her still waiting, and waved and drove on he felt
exalted and happy. He was glad that there was beauty in the world that would
not be weighed in the scales of the casting department.
But at home he felt a curious loneliness as his butler made him tea in
the samovar. It was the old hurt come back, heavy and delightful. When he
took up the first of two scripts that were his evening stint, that presently
he would visualize line by line on the screen, he waited a moment, thinking
of Minna. He explained to her that it was really nothing, that no one could
ever be like she was, that he was sorry.
That was substantially a day of Stahr's. I don't know about the
illness, when it started, etc., because he was secretive but I know he
fainted a couple of times that month because Father told me. Prince Agge is
my authority for the luncheon in the commissary where he told them he was
going to make a picture that would lose money- which was something
considering the men he had to deal with and that he held a big block of
stock and had a profit sharing contract.
And Wylie White told me a lot which I believed because he felt Stahr
intensely with a mixture of jealousy and admiration. As for me I was head
over heels in love with him then and you can take what I say for what it's
worth.
Episode 13
Fresh as the morning I went up to see him a week later. Or so I
thought; when Wylie called for me I had gotten into riding clothes to give
the impression I'd been out in the dew since early morning.
"I'm going to throw myself under the wheel of Stahr's car, this
morning," I said.
"How about this car," he suggested. "It's one of the best cars Mort
Flieshacker ever sold second hand."
"Not on your flowing veil," I answered like a book. "You have a wife in
the East."
"She's the past," he said. "You've got one great card, Celia-your
valuation of yourself. Do you think anybody would look at you if you weren't
Pat Brady's daughter?"
We don't take abuse like our mothers would have. Nothing-no remark from
a contemporary means much. They tell you to be smart they're marrying you
for your money or you tell them. Everything's simpler. Or is it? as we used
to say.
But as I turned on the radio and the car raced up Laurel Canyon to "The
Thundering Beat of My Heart," I didn't believe he was right. I had good
features except my face was too round and a skin they seemed to love to
touch and good legs and I didn't have to wear a brassiere. I haven't a sweet
nature but who was Wylie to reproach me for that.
"Don't you think I'm smart to go in the morning?" I asked.
"Yeah. To the busiest man in California. He'll appreciate it. Why
didn't you wake him up at four?"
"That's just it. At night he's tired. He's been looking at people all
day and some of them not bad. I come in in the morning and start a tram of
thought."
"I don't like it. It's brazen."
"What have you got to offer? And don't be rough."
"I love you," he said without much conviction. "I love you more than I
love your money and that's plenty. Maybe your father would make me a
supervisor."
"I could marry the last man tapped for Bones this year and live in
Southampton."
I turned the dial and got either "Gone" or "Lost"-there were good songs
that year. The music was getting better again. When I was young during the
Depression it wasn't so hot and the best numbers were from the twenties like
Benny Goodman playing "Blue Heaven" or Paul Whiteman with "When Day Is
Done." There were only the bands to listen to. But now I liked almost
everything except Father singing "Little Girl, You've Had a Busy Day" to try
to create a sentimental father-and-daughter feeling.
"Lost" and "Gone" were the wrong mood so I turned again and
got "Lovely To Look At" which was my kind of poetry. I looked back as
we crossed the crest of the foothills-with the air so clear you could see
the leaves on Sunset Mountain two miles away. It's startling to you
sometimes-just air, unobstructed, uncomplicated air.
"Lovely to look at-de-lightful to know-w-w," I sang.
"Are you going to sing for Stahr?" Wylie said. "If you do, get in a
line about my being a good supervisor."
"Oh, this'll be only Stahr and me," I said. "He's going to look at me
and think 'I've never really seen her before.' "
"We don't use that line this year," he said.
"-Then he'll say 'Little Celia' like he did the night of the
earthquake. He'll say he never noticed I have become a woman."
"You won't have to do a thing."
"I'll stand there and bloom. After he kisses me as you would a child-"
"That's all in my script," complained Wylie. "And I've got to show it
to him tomorrow."
"-he'll sit down and put his face in his hands and say he never thought
of me like that."
"You mean you get in a little fast work during the kiss."
"I bloom, I told you. How often do I have to tell you I bloom."
"It's beginning to sound pretty randy to me," said Wylie. "How about
laying off-I've got to work this morning."
"Then he says it seems as if he was always meant to be this way."
"Right in the industry. Producer's blood." He pretended to shiver. "I'd
hate to have a transfusion of that."
"Then he says-"
"I know all his lines," said Wylie. "What I want to know is what you
say."
"Somebody comes in," I went on.
"And you jump up quickly off the casting couch smoothing your skirts."
"Do you want me to walk out and get home?"
We were in Beverly Hills, getting very beautiful now with the tall
Hawaiian pines. Hollywood is a perfectly zoned city so you know exactly what
kind of people economically live in each section from executives and
directors, through technicians in their bungalows right down to extras. This
was the executive section and a very fancy lot of pastry. It wasn't as
romantic as the dingiest village of Virginia or New Hampshire but it looked
nice this morning.
"They asked me how I knew," sang the radio, "-my true love was true."
My heart was fire and smoke was in my eyes and everything but I figured
my chance at about fifty-fifty. I would walk right up to him as if I was
either going to walk through him or kiss him in the mouth-and stop a bare
foot away and say Hello with disarming understatement.
And I did-though of course it wasn't like I expected. Stahr's beautiful
dark eyes looking back into mine, knowing I am dead sure everything I was
thinking-and not a bit embarrassed. I stood there an hour, I think, without
moving and all he did was twitch the side of his mouth and put his hands in
his pockets.
"Will you go with me to the ball tonight?" I asked.
"What ball?"
"The screen-writers' ball down at the Ambassador."
"Oh yes." He considered. "I can't go with you. I might just come in
late. We've got a sneak preview in Glendale."
How different it all was than what you've planned. When he sat down I
went over and put my head among his telephones like a sort of desk appendage
and looked at him and his dark eyes looked back so kind and nothing. Men
don't often know those times when a girl could be had for nothing. All I
succeeded in putting into his head was:
"Why don't you get married, Celia?"
Maybe he'd bring up Robby again, try to make a match there.
"What could I do to interest an interesting man?" I asked him.
"Tell him you're in love with him."
"Should I chase him?"
"Yes," he said smiling.
"I don't know. If it isn't there it isn't there."
"I'd marry you," he said unexpectedly. "I'm lonesome as hell. But I'm
too old and tired to undertake anything."
I went around the desk and stood beside him.
"Undertake me."
He looked up in surprise, understanding for the first time that I was
in deadly earnest.
"Oh no," he said. He looked almost miserable for a minute. "Pictures
are my girl. I haven't got much time-" He corrected himself quickly, "I mean
any time. It'd be like marrying a doctor."
"You couldn't love me."
"It's not that," he said and-right out of my dream but with a
difference, "I never thought of you that way, Celia. I've known you so long.
Somebody told me you were going to marry Wylie White."
"And you had-no reaction."
"Yes, I did. I was going to speak to you about it. Wait till he's been
sober for two years."
"I'm not even considering it, Monroe."
We were way off the track, and just as in my day-dream somebody came
in-only I was quite sure Stahr had pressed a concealed button.
I'll always think of that moment, when I felt Miss Doolan behind me
with her pad, as the end of childhood, the end of the time when you cut out
pictures. What I was looking at wasn't Stahr but a picture of him I cut out
over and over: the eyes that flashed a sophisticated understanding at you
and then darted up too soon into his wide brow with its ten thousand plots
and plans; the face that was ageing from within, so that there were no
casual furrows of worry and vexation but a drawn asceticism as if from a
silent self-set struggle-or a long illness. It was handsomer to me than all
the rosy tan from Coronado to Del Monte. He was my picture, as sure as if he
was pasted on the inside of my old locker in school. That's what I told
Wylie White and when a girl tells the man she likes second best about the
other one-then she's in love.
13 (continued)
I noticed the girl long before Stahr arrived at the dance. Not a pretty
girl, for there are none of those in Los Angeles-one girl can be pretty but
a dozen are only a chorus. Nor yet a professional beauty-they do all the
breathing for everyone and finally even the men have to go outside for air.
Just a girl, with the skin of one of Raphael's corner angels and a style
that made you look back twice to see if it were something she had on.
I noticed her and forgot her. She was sitting back behind the pillars
at a table whose ornament was a faded semi-star who, in hopes of being
noticed and getting a bit, rose and danced regularly with some scarecrow
males. It reminded me shamefully of my first party where Mother made me
dance over and over with the same boy to keep in the spotlight. The
semi-star spoke to several people at our table but we were busy being Cafe
Society and she got nowhere at all.
From our angle it appeared that they all wanted something.
"You're expected to fling it around," said Wylie, "-like in the old
days. When they find out you're hanging on to it they get discouraged.
That's what all this brave gloom is about-the only way to keep their self
respect is to be Hemingway characters. But underneath they hate you in a
mournful way and you know it."
He was right-I knew that since 1933 the rich could only be happy alone
together.
I saw Stahr come into the half-light at the top of the wide steps and
stand there with his hands in his pockets looking around. It was late and
the lights seemed to have burned a little lower, though they were the same.
The floor show was finished except for a man who still wore a placard which
said that at midnight in the Hollywood Bowl Sonja Henie was going to skate
on hot soup. You could see the sign as he danced becoming less and less
funny on his back. A few years before there would have been drunks around.
The faded actress seemed to be looking for them hopefully over her partner's
shoulder. I followed her with my eyes when she went back to her table -and
there, to my surprise, was Stahr talking to the other girl. They were
smiling at each other as if this was the beginning of the world.
Stahr had expected nothing like this when he stood at the head of the
steps a few minutes earlier. The sneak preview had disappointe him and
afterwards he had had a scene with Jaques La Borwits right in front of the
theatre for which he was now sorry. He had started toward the Brady party
when he saw Kathleen sitting in the middle of a long white table alone.
Immediately things changed. As he walked toward her the people shrank
back against the walls till they were only murals; the white table
lengthened and became an altar where the priestess sat alone. Vitality
welled up in him and he could have stood a long time across the table from
her, looking and smiling.
The incumbents of the table were crawling back-Stahr and Kathleen
danced.
When she came close his several visions of her blurred; she was
momentarily unreal. Usually a girl's skull made her real but not this
time-Stahr continued to be dazzled as they danced out along the floor-to the
last edge, where they stepped through a mirror into another dance with new
dancers whose faces were familiar but nothing more. In this new region he
talked, fast and urgently.
"What's your name?"
"Kathleen Moore."
"Kathleen Moore," he repeated.
"I have no telephone, if that's what you're thinking."
"When will you come to the studio?"
"It's not possible. Truly."
"Why isn't it? Are you married?"
"No."
"You're not married?"
"No, nor never have been. But then I may be."
"Someone there at the table."
"No." She laughed. "What curiosity!"
But she was deep in it with him, no matter what the words were. Her
eyes invited him to a romantic communion of unbelievable intensity. As if
she realized this she said, frightened:
"I must go back now. I promised this dance."
"I don't want to lose you. Couldn't we have lunch or dinner?"
"It's impossible." But her expression helplessly amended the words to
"It's just possible. The door is still open by a chink if you could squeeze
past. But quickly-so little time."
"I must go back," she repeated aloud. Then she dropped her arms,
stopped dancing and looked at him, a laughing wanton.
"When I'm with you I don't breathe quite right," she said.
She turned, picked up her long dress, and stepped back through the
mirror. Stahr followed until she stopped near her table.
"Thank you for the dance," she said. "And now really, good night."
Then she nearly ran.
Stahr went to the table where he was expected and sat down with the
Cafe Society group-from Wall Street, Grand Street, Loudoun County Virginia,
and Odessa Russia. They were all talking with enthusiasm about a horse that
had run very fast and Mr. Marcus was the most enthusiastic of all. Stahr
guessed that Jews had taken over the worship of horses as a super-symbol-for
years it had been the Cossacks mounted and the Jews on foot. Now the Jews
had horses and it gave them a sense of extraordinary well-being and power.
Stahr sat pretending to listen and even nodding when something was referred
to him, but all the time watching the table behind the pillars. If
everything had not happened as it had, even to his connecting the silver
belt with the wrong girl, he might have thought it was some elaborate
frame-up. But the elusiveness was beyond suspicion. For there in a moment he
saw that she was escaping again-the pantomime at the table indicated good
bye. She was leaving, she was gone.
"There-" said Wylie White with malice, "-goes Cinderella. Simply bring
the slipper to the Regal Shoe Co., 812 South Broadway. "
Stahr overtook her in the long upper lobby where middle-aged women sat
behind a roped-off space, watching the ballroom entrance.
"Am I responsible for this?" he asked.
"I was going anyhow." But she added almost resentfully, "They talked as
if I'd been dancing with the Prince of Wales. They all stared at me. One of
the men wanted to draw my picture and another one wanted to see me tomorrow.
"
"That's just what I want," said Stahr gently. "But I want to see you
much more than he does."
"You insist so," she said wearily. "One reason I left England was that
men always wanted their own way. I thought it was different here. Isn't it
enough that I don't want to see you?"
"Ordinarily," agreed Stahr. "Please believe me, I'm way out of my depth
already. I feel like a fool. But I must see you again and talk to you."
She hesitated.
"There's no reason for feeling like a fool," she said. "You're too good
a man to feel like a fool. But you should see this for what it is."
"What is it?"
"You've fallen for me-completely. You've got me in your dreams."
"I'd forgotten you," he declared, "-till the moment I walked in that
door."
"Forgotten me with your head perhaps. But I knew the first time I saw
you that you were the kind that likes me-"
She stopped herself. Near them a man and woman from the party were
saying good bye: "Tell her hello-tell her I love her dearly," said the
woman, "you both-all of you-the children." Stahr could not talk like that,
the way everyone talked now. He could think of nothing further to say as
they walked toward the elevator except:
"I suppose you're perfectly right."
"Oh, you admit it?"
"No, I don't," he retracted. "It's just the whole way you're made. What
you say-how you walk-the way you look right this minute-" He saw she had
melted a little and his hopes rose. "Tomorrow is Sunday and usually I work
on Sunday but if there's anything you're curious about in Hollywood, any
person you want to meet or see, please let me arrange it."
They were standing by the elevator. It opened but she let it go.
"You're very modest," she said. "You always talk about showing me the
studio and taking me around. Don't you ever stay alone?"
"Tomorrow I'll feel very much alone."
"Oh, the poor man-I could weep for him. He could have all the stars
jumping around him and he chooses me."
He smiled-he had laid himself open to that one.
The elevator came again. She signalled for it to wait.
"I'm a weak woman," she said. "If I meet you tomorrow will you leave me
in peace? No, you won't. You'll make it worse. It wouldn't do any good but
harm so I'll say no and thank you."
She got into the elevator. Stahr got in too and they smiled as they
dropped two floors to the hall cross-sectioned with small shops. Down at the
end, held back by police was the crowd, their heads and shoulders leaning
forward to look down the alley. Kathleen shivered.
"They looked so strange when I came in," she said, "-as if they were
furious at me for not being someone famous."
"I know another way out," said Stahr.
They went through a drug store, down an alley and came out into the
clear cool California night beside the car park. He felt detached from the
dance now and she did too.
"A lot of picture people used to live down here," he said. "John
Barrymore and Pola Negri in those bungalows. And Connie Talmadge lived in
that tall thin apartment house over the way."
"Doesn't anybody live here now?"
"The studios moved out into the country," he said. "What used to be the
country. I had some good times around here though."
He did not mention that ten years ago Minna and her mother had lived in
another apartment over the way.
"How old are you?" she asked suddenly.
"I've lost track-almost thirty-five I think."
"They said at the table you were the boy wonder."
"I'll be that when I'm sixty," he said grimly. "You will meet me
tomorrow, won't you?"
"I'll meet you," she said. "Where?"
Suddenly there was no place to meet. She would not go to a party at
anyone's house, nor to the country, nor swimming though she hesitated, nor
to a well-known restaurant. She seemed hard to please but he knew there was
some reason. He would find out in time. It occurred to him that she might be
the sister or daughter of someone well-known, who was pledged to keep in the
background. He suggested that he come for her and they could decide.
"That wouldn't do," she said. "What about right here-the same
spot."
He nodded-pointing up at the arch under which they stood. He put her
into her car which would have brought eighty dollars
from any kindly dealer, and watched it rasp away. Down by the
entrance a cheer went up as a favorite emerged, and Stahr wondered
whether to show himself and say good night.
This is Cecelia taking up the narrative in person. Stahr came back
finally-it was about half past three-and asked me to dance.
"How are you?" he asked me, just as if he hadn't seen me that morning.
"I got involved in a long conversation with a man."
It was secret too-he cared that much about it.
"I took him to ride," he went on innocently. "I didn't realize how much
this part of Hollywood had changed."
"Has it changed?"
"Oh yes," he said. "Changed completely. Unrecognizable. I couldn't tell
you exactly but it's all changed-everything. It's like a new city." After a
moment he amplified, "I had no idea how much it had changed."
"Who was the man?" I ventured.
"An old friend," he said vaguely. "Someone I knew a long time ago."
I had made Wylie try to find out quietly who she was. He had gone over
and the ex-star had asked him excitedly to sit down. No-she didn't know who
the girl was-a friend of a friend of someone-even the man who had brought
her didn't know.
So Stahr and I danced to the beautiful music of Glenn Miller playing
"I'm on a See-saw." It was good dancing now with plenty of room. But it was
lonely-lonelier than before the girl had gone. For me, as well as for Stahr,
she took the evening with her, took along the stabbing pain I had felt-left
the great ball-room empty and without emotion. Now it was nothing and I was
dancing with an absent minded man who told me how much Los Angeles had
changed.
Section 14
They met, next afternoon, as strangers in an unfamiliar country. Last
night was gone, the girl he had danced with was gone. A misty rose-and-blue
hat with a trifling veil came along the terrace to him and paused, searching
his face. Stahr was strange too in a brown suit and black tie that blocked
him out more tangibly than a formal dinner coat, or when he was simply a
face and voice in the darkness when they first met.
He was the first to be sure it was the same person as before-the upper
half of the face that was Minna's, luminous, with creamy temples and
opalescent brow-the coco-colored curly hair. He could have put his arm
around her and pulled her close with an almost family familiarity-already he
knew the down on her neck, the very set of her backbone, the corners of her
eyes and how she breathed-the very texture of the clothes that she would
wear.
"Did you wait here all night?" she said, in a voice that was like a
whisper.
"I didn't move-didn't stir."
Still a problem remained, the same one-there was no special place to
go.
"I'd like tea," she suggested, "-if it's some place you're not known."
"That sounds as if one of us had a bad reputation."
"Doesn't it?" she laughed.
"We'll go to the shore," Stahr suggested. "There's a place there where
I got out once and was chased by a trained seal."
"Do you think the seal could make tea?"
"Well-he's trained. And I don't think he'll talk-I don't think his
training got that far. What in hell are you trying to hide?"
After a moment she said lightly, "Perhaps the future," in a way that
might mean anything or nothing at all.
As they drove away she pointed at her jalopy in the parking lot.
"Do you think it's safe?"
"I doubt it. I noticed some black-bearded foreigners snooping around."
Kathleen looked at him alarmed.
"Really?" She saw he was smiling. "I believe everything you say," she
said. "You've got such a gentle way about you that I don't see why they're
all so afraid of you." She examined him with approval-fretting a little
about his pallor, which was accentuated by the bright afternoon. "Do you
work very hard? Do you really always work on Sundays?"
He responded to her interest-impersonal yet not perfunctory.
"Not always. Once we had-we had a house with a pool and all-and people
came on Sunday. I played tennis and swam. I don't swim any more."
"Why not? It's good for you. I thought all Americans swam."
"My legs got very thin-a few years ago and it embarrassed me. There
were other things I used to do-lots of things. I used to play handball when
I was a kid, and sometimes out here-I had a court that was washed away in a
storm."
"You have a good build," she said in formal compliment, meaning only
that he was made with thin grace.
He rejected this with a shake of his head.
"I enjoy working most," he said. "My work is very congenial."
"Did you always want to be in movies?"
"No. When I was young I wanted to be a chief clerk-the one who knew
where everything was."
She smiled.
"That's odd. And now you're much more than that."
"No, I'm still a chief clerk," Stahr said. "That's my gift, if I have
one. Only when I got to be it I found out that no one knew where anything
was. And I found out that you had to know why it was where it was, and
whether it should be left there. They began throwing it all at me and it was
a very complex office. Pretty soon I had all the keys. And they wouldn't
have remembered what locks they fitted if I gave them back."
They stopped for a red light and a newsboy bleated at them: " Mickey
Mouse Murdered! Randolph Hearst declares war on China!"
"We'll have to buy his paper," she said.
As they drove on she straightened her hat and preened herself. Seeing
him looking at her she smiled.
She was alert and calm-qualities that were currently at a premium.
There was lassitude in plenty-California was filling up with weary
desperadoes. And there were tense young men and women who lived back East in
spirit while they carried on a losing battle against the climate. But it was
everyone's secret that sustained effort was difficult here-a secret that
Stahr scarcely admitted to himself. But he knew that people from other
places spurted a pure rill of new energy for a while.
They were very friendly now. She had not made a move or a gesture that
was out of keeping with her beauty, that pressed it out of its contour one
way or another. It was all proper to itself. He judged her as he would a
shot in a picture. She was not trash, she was not confused but clear-in his
special meaning of the word which implied balance, delicacy and proportion,
she was "nice."
They reached Santa Monica where there were the stately houses of a
dozen picture stars, penned in the middle of a crawling Coney Island. They
turned down hill into the wide blue sky and sea and went on along the sea
till the beach slid out again from under the bathers in a widening and
narrowing yellow strand.
"I'm building a house out here," Stahr said. "Much further on. I don't
know why I'm building it. "
"Perhaps it's for me," she said.
"Maybe it is."
"I think it's splendid for you to build a big house for me without even
knowing what I looked like."
"It isn't so big. And it hasn't any roof. I didn't know what kind of
roof you wanted."
"We don't want a roof. They told me it never rained here. It-"
She stopped so suddenly that he knew she was reminded of something.
"Just something that's past," she said.
"What was it?" he demanded. "Another house without a roof?"
"Yes. Another house without a roof."
"Were you happy there?"
"I lived with a man," she said. "A long, long time-too long. It was one
of those awful mistakes people make. I lived with him a long time after I
wanted to get out but he couldn't let me go. He'd try but he couldn't. So
finally I ran away."
He was listening, weighing but not judging. Nothing changed under the
rose-and-blue hat. She was twenty-five or so. It would have been a waste if
she had not loved and been loved.
"We were too close," she said. "We should probably have had children-to
stand between us. But you can't have children when there's no roof to the
house."
All right, he knew something of her. It would not be like last night
when something kept saying, as in a story conference: "We know nothing about
the girl. We don't have to know much-but we have to know something." A vague
background spread behind her, something more tangible than the head of Siva
in the moonlight.
They came to the restaurant, forbidding with many Sunday automobiles.
When they got out the trained seal growled reminiscently at Stahr. The man
who owned it said that the seal would never ride in the back seat of his car
but always climbed over the back and up in front. It was plain that the man
was in bondage to the seal, though he had not yet acknowledged it to
himself.
"I'd like to see the house you're building," said Kathleen. "I don't
want tea-tea is the past."
Kathleen drank a Coke instead and they drove on ten miles into a sun so
bright that he took out two pairs of cheaters from a compartment. Five miles
further on they turned down a small promontory and came to the fuselage of
Stahr's house.
A headwind blowing out of the sun threw spray up the rocks and over the
car. Concrete mixers, raw yellow wood and builders' rubble waited, an open
wound in the sea-scape, for Sunday to be over. They walked around front
where great boulders rose to what would be the terrace.
She looked at the feeble hills behind and winced faintly at the barren
glitter, and Stahr saw "No use looking for what's not here," he said
cheerfully. "Think of it as if you were standing on one of those globes with
a map on it-I always wanted one when I was a boy."
"I understand," she said after a minute. "When you do that you can feel
the earth turn, can't you."
He nodded.
"Yes. Otherwise it's all just manana-waiting for the morning or the
moon. "
They went in under the scaffolding. One room, which was to be the chief
salon, was completed even to the built-in book shelves and the curtain rods
and the trap in the floor for the motion picture projection machine. And, to
her surprise, this opened out to a porch with cushioned chairs in place and
a ping-pong table. There was another ping-pong table on the newly laid turf
beyond.
"Last week I gave a premature luncheon," he admitted. "I had some props
brought out-some grass and things. I wanted to see how the place felt."
She laughed suddenly.
"Isn't that real grass?"
"Oh yes-it's grass."
Beyond the strip of anticipatory lawn was the excavation for a swimming
pool, patronized now by a crowd of seagulls who saw them and took flight.
"Are you going to live here all alone?" she asked him. "Not even
dancing girls?"
"Probably. I used to make plans but not any more. I thought this would
be a nice place to read scripts. The studio is really home."
"That's what I've heard about American business men."
He caught a lilt of criticism in her voice.
"You do what you're born to do," he said gently. "About once a month
somebody tries to reform me, tells me what a barren old age I'll have when I
can't work any more. But it's not so simple."
The wind was rising. It was time to go and he had his car keys out of
his pocket, absent mindedly jingling them in his hand. There was the silvery
"Hey!" of a telephone, coming from somewhere across the sunshine.
It was not from the house and they hurried here and there around the
garden like children playing warmer and colder-closing in finally on a tool
shack by the tennis court. The phone, irked with delay, barked at them
suspiciously from the wall. Stahr hesitated.
"Shall I let the damn thing ring?"
"I couldn't. Unless I was sure who it was."
"Either it's for somebody else or they've made a wild guess."
He picked up the receiver.
"Hello.... Long distance from where? Yes, this is Mr. Stahr."
His manner changed perceptibly. She saw what few people had seen for a
decade-Stahr impressed. It was not discordant because he often pretended to
be impressed but it made him momentarily a little younger.
"It's the President," he said to her, almost stiffly.
"Of your company?"
"No, of the United States."
He was trying to be casual for her benefit but his voice was eager.
"All right, I'll wait," he said into the phone, and then to Kathleen,
"I've talked to him before."
She watched. He smiled at her and winked as an evidence that while he
must give this his best attention he had not forgotten her.
"Hello," he said presently. He listened. Then he said "Hello" again. He
frowned.
"Can you talk a little louder," he said politely, and then "Who?...
What's that?"
She saw a disgusted look come into his face.
"I don't want to talk to him," he said. "No!"
He turned to Kathleen.
"Believe it or not, it's an orang-outang."
He waited while something was explained to him at length; then he
repeated:
"I don't want to talk to it, Lew. I haven't got anything to say that
would interest an orang-outang."
He beckoned to Kathleen and when she came close to the phone he held
She was offended-he had reproached her for not looking like someone
else.
"It was just that!" she said. "That's funny."
They rode in silence for a minute.
"You were married to Minna Davis, weren't you?" she said with a flash
of intuition. "Excuse me for referring to it."
He was driving as fast as he could without making it conspicuous.
"I'm quite a different type from Minna Davis," she said, "-if that's
who you meant. You might have referred to the girl who was with me. She
looks more like Minna Davis than I do."
That was of no interest now. The thing was to get this over quick and
forget it.
"Could it have been her?" she asked. "She lives next door."
"Not possibly," he said. "I remember the silver belt you wore."
"That was me all right."
They were northwest of Sunset, climbing one of the canyons through the
hills. Lighted bungalows rose along the winding road and the electric
current that animated them sweated into the evening air as radio sound.
"You see that last highest light-Kathleen lives there. I live just over
the top of the hill."
A moment later she said, "Stop here."
"I thought you said over the top."
"I want to stop at Kathleen's."
"I'm afraid I'm-"
"I want to get out here myself," she said impatiently.
Stahr slid out after her. She started toward a new little house almost
roofed over by a single willow tree, and automatically he followed her to
the steps. She rang a bell and turned to say good night.
"I'm sorry you were disappointed," she said.
He was sorry for her now-sorry for them both.
"It was my fault. Good night."
A wedge of light came out the opening door and as a girl's voice
inquired "Who is it?" Stahr looked up.
There she was-face and form and smile against the light from inside. It
was Minna's face-the skin with its peculiar radiance as if phosphorus had
touched it, the mouth with its warm line that never counted costs-and over
all the haunting jollity that had fascinated a generation.
With a leap his heart went out of him as it had the night before, only
this time it stayed out there with a vast beneficence.
"Oh Edna you can't come in," the girl said. "I've been cleaning and the
house is full of ammonia smell."
Edna began to laugh, bold and loud. "I believe it was you he wanted to
see, Kathleen," she said.
Stahr's eyes and Kathleen's met and tangled. For an instant they made
love as no one ever dares to do after. Their glance was closer than an
embrace, more urgent than a call.
"He telephoned me," said Edna. "It seems he thought-" Stahr
interrupted, stepping forward into the light.
"I was afraid we were rude at the studio, yesterday evening."
But there were no words for what he really said. She listened
closely without shame. Life flared high in them both-Edna seemed at a
distance and in darkness.
"You weren't rude," said Kathleen. A cool wind blew the brown curls
around her forehead. "We had no business there."
"I hope you'll both-," Stahr said, "-come and make a tour of the
studio."
"Who are you? Somebody important?"
"He was Minna Davis' husband, he's a producer," said Edna as if it were
a rare joke, "-and this isn't at all what he just told me. I think he has a
crush on you."
"Shut up, Edna," said Kathleen sharply.
As if suddenly realizing her offensiveness Edna said "Phone me, will
you?" and stalked away toward the road. But she earned their secret with
her-she had seen a spark pass between them in the darkness.
"I remember you," Kathleen said to Stahr. "You got us out of the
flood."
-Now what? The other woman was more missed in her absence. They were
alone and on too slim a basis for what had passed already. They existed
nowhere. His world seemed far away-she had no world at all except the idol's
head, the half open door.
"You're Irish," he said, trying to build one for her.
She nodded.
"I've lived in London a long time-I didn't think you could tell."
The wild green eyes of a bus sped up the road in the darkness. They
were silent until it went by.
"Your friend Edna didn't like me," he said. "I think it was the word
Producer."
"She's just come out here too. She's a silly creature who means no
harm. I shouldn't be afraid of you."
She searched his face. She thought, like everyone, that he seemed
tired-then she forgot it at the impression he gave of a brazier out of doors
on a cool night.
"I suppose the girls are all after you to put them on the screen."
"They've given up," he said.
This was an understatement-they were all there, he knew, just over his
threshold, but they had been there so long that their clamoring voices were
no more than the sound of the traffic in the street. But his position
remained more than royal-a king could make only one queen-Stahr, at least so
they supposed, could make many.
"I'm thinking that it would turn you into a cynic," she said. "You
didn't want to put me in the pictures."
"No."
"That's good. I'm no actress. Once in London a man came up to me in the
Carlton and asked me to make a test but I thought awhile and finally I
didn't go."
They had been standing nearly motionless, as if in a moment he would
leave and she would go in. Stahr laughed suddenly.
"I feel as if I had my foot in the door-like a collector."
She laughed too.
"I'm sorry I can't ask you in. Shall I get my reefer and sit outside?"
"No." He scarcely knew why he felt it was time to go. He might see her
again-he might not. It was just as well this way.
"You'll come to the studio?" he said. "I can't promise to go around
with you, but if you come you must be sure to send word to my office."
A frown, the shadow of a hair in breadth, appeared between her eyes.
"I'm not sure," she said. "But I'm very much obliged."
He knew that, for some reason, she would not come-in an instant she had
slipped away from him. They both sensed that the moment was played out. He
must go, even though he went nowhere and left with nothing. Practically,
vulgarly, he did not have her telephone number-or even her name, but it
seemed impossible to ask for them now.
She walked with him to the car, her glowing beauty and her unexplored
novelty pressing up against him, but there was a foot of moonlight between
them when they came out of the shadow.
"Is this all?" he said spontaneously.
He saw regret in her face-but there was a flick of the lip also, a
bending of the smile toward some indirection, a momentary dropping and
lifting of a curtain over a forbidden passage.
"I do hope we'll meet again," she said almost formally.
"I'd be sorry if we didn't."
They were distant for a moment. But as he turned his car in the next
drive and came back with her still waiting, and waved and drove on he felt
exalted and happy. He was glad that there was beauty in the world that would
not be weighed in the scales of the casting department.
But at home he felt a curious loneliness as his butler made him tea in
the samovar. It was the old hurt come back, heavy and delightful. When he
took up the first of two scripts that were his evening stint, that presently
he would visualize line by line on the screen, he waited a moment, thinking
of Minna. He explained to her that it was really nothing, that no one could
ever be like she was, that he was sorry.
That was substantially a day of Stahr's. I don't know about the
illness, when it started, etc., because he was secretive but I know he
fainted a couple of times that month because Father told me. Prince Agge is
my authority for the luncheon in the commissary where he told them he was
going to make a picture that would lose money- which was something
considering the men he had to deal with and that he held a big block of
stock and had a profit sharing contract.
And Wylie White told me a lot which I believed because he felt Stahr
intensely with a mixture of jealousy and admiration. As for me I was head
over heels in love with him then and you can take what I say for what it's
worth.
Episode 13
Fresh as the morning I went up to see him a week later. Or so I
thought; when Wylie called for me I had gotten into riding clothes to give
the impression I'd been out in the dew since early morning.
"I'm going to throw myself under the wheel of Stahr's car, this
morning," I said.
"How about this car," he suggested. "It's one of the best cars Mort
Flieshacker ever sold second hand."
"Not on your flowing veil," I answered like a book. "You have a wife in
the East."
"She's the past," he said. "You've got one great card, Celia-your
valuation of yourself. Do you think anybody would look at you if you weren't
Pat Brady's daughter?"
We don't take abuse like our mothers would have. Nothing-no remark from
a contemporary means much. They tell you to be smart they're marrying you
for your money or you tell them. Everything's simpler. Or is it? as we used
to say.
But as I turned on the radio and the car raced up Laurel Canyon to "The
Thundering Beat of My Heart," I didn't believe he was right. I had good
features except my face was too round and a skin they seemed to love to
touch and good legs and I didn't have to wear a brassiere. I haven't a sweet
nature but who was Wylie to reproach me for that.
"Don't you think I'm smart to go in the morning?" I asked.
"Yeah. To the busiest man in California. He'll appreciate it. Why
didn't you wake him up at four?"
"That's just it. At night he's tired. He's been looking at people all
day and some of them not bad. I come in in the morning and start a tram of
thought."
"I don't like it. It's brazen."
"What have you got to offer? And don't be rough."
"I love you," he said without much conviction. "I love you more than I
love your money and that's plenty. Maybe your father would make me a
supervisor."
"I could marry the last man tapped for Bones this year and live in
Southampton."
I turned the dial and got either "Gone" or "Lost"-there were good songs
that year. The music was getting better again. When I was young during the
Depression it wasn't so hot and the best numbers were from the twenties like
Benny Goodman playing "Blue Heaven" or Paul Whiteman with "When Day Is
Done." There were only the bands to listen to. But now I liked almost
everything except Father singing "Little Girl, You've Had a Busy Day" to try
to create a sentimental father-and-daughter feeling.
"Lost" and "Gone" were the wrong mood so I turned again and
got "Lovely To Look At" which was my kind of poetry. I looked back as
we crossed the crest of the foothills-with the air so clear you could see
the leaves on Sunset Mountain two miles away. It's startling to you
sometimes-just air, unobstructed, uncomplicated air.
"Lovely to look at-de-lightful to know-w-w," I sang.
"Are you going to sing for Stahr?" Wylie said. "If you do, get in a
line about my being a good supervisor."
"Oh, this'll be only Stahr and me," I said. "He's going to look at me
and think 'I've never really seen her before.' "
"We don't use that line this year," he said.
"-Then he'll say 'Little Celia' like he did the night of the
earthquake. He'll say he never noticed I have become a woman."
"You won't have to do a thing."
"I'll stand there and bloom. After he kisses me as you would a child-"
"That's all in my script," complained Wylie. "And I've got to show it
to him tomorrow."
"-he'll sit down and put his face in his hands and say he never thought
of me like that."
"You mean you get in a little fast work during the kiss."
"I bloom, I told you. How often do I have to tell you I bloom."
"It's beginning to sound pretty randy to me," said Wylie. "How about
laying off-I've got to work this morning."
"Then he says it seems as if he was always meant to be this way."
"Right in the industry. Producer's blood." He pretended to shiver. "I'd
hate to have a transfusion of that."
"Then he says-"
"I know all his lines," said Wylie. "What I want to know is what you
say."
"Somebody comes in," I went on.
"And you jump up quickly off the casting couch smoothing your skirts."
"Do you want me to walk out and get home?"
We were in Beverly Hills, getting very beautiful now with the tall
Hawaiian pines. Hollywood is a perfectly zoned city so you know exactly what
kind of people economically live in each section from executives and
directors, through technicians in their bungalows right down to extras. This
was the executive section and a very fancy lot of pastry. It wasn't as
romantic as the dingiest village of Virginia or New Hampshire but it looked
nice this morning.
"They asked me how I knew," sang the radio, "-my true love was true."
My heart was fire and smoke was in my eyes and everything but I figured
my chance at about fifty-fifty. I would walk right up to him as if I was
either going to walk through him or kiss him in the mouth-and stop a bare
foot away and say Hello with disarming understatement.
And I did-though of course it wasn't like I expected. Stahr's beautiful
dark eyes looking back into mine, knowing I am dead sure everything I was
thinking-and not a bit embarrassed. I stood there an hour, I think, without
moving and all he did was twitch the side of his mouth and put his hands in
his pockets.
"Will you go with me to the ball tonight?" I asked.
"What ball?"
"The screen-writers' ball down at the Ambassador."
"Oh yes." He considered. "I can't go with you. I might just come in
late. We've got a sneak preview in Glendale."
How different it all was than what you've planned. When he sat down I
went over and put my head among his telephones like a sort of desk appendage
and looked at him and his dark eyes looked back so kind and nothing. Men
don't often know those times when a girl could be had for nothing. All I
succeeded in putting into his head was:
"Why don't you get married, Celia?"
Maybe he'd bring up Robby again, try to make a match there.
"What could I do to interest an interesting man?" I asked him.
"Tell him you're in love with him."
"Should I chase him?"
"Yes," he said smiling.
"I don't know. If it isn't there it isn't there."
"I'd marry you," he said unexpectedly. "I'm lonesome as hell. But I'm
too old and tired to undertake anything."
I went around the desk and stood beside him.
"Undertake me."
He looked up in surprise, understanding for the first time that I was
in deadly earnest.
"Oh no," he said. He looked almost miserable for a minute. "Pictures
are my girl. I haven't got much time-" He corrected himself quickly, "I mean
any time. It'd be like marrying a doctor."
"You couldn't love me."
"It's not that," he said and-right out of my dream but with a
difference, "I never thought of you that way, Celia. I've known you so long.
Somebody told me you were going to marry Wylie White."
"And you had-no reaction."
"Yes, I did. I was going to speak to you about it. Wait till he's been
sober for two years."
"I'm not even considering it, Monroe."
We were way off the track, and just as in my day-dream somebody came
in-only I was quite sure Stahr had pressed a concealed button.
I'll always think of that moment, when I felt Miss Doolan behind me
with her pad, as the end of childhood, the end of the time when you cut out
pictures. What I was looking at wasn't Stahr but a picture of him I cut out
over and over: the eyes that flashed a sophisticated understanding at you
and then darted up too soon into his wide brow with its ten thousand plots
and plans; the face that was ageing from within, so that there were no
casual furrows of worry and vexation but a drawn asceticism as if from a
silent self-set struggle-or a long illness. It was handsomer to me than all
the rosy tan from Coronado to Del Monte. He was my picture, as sure as if he
was pasted on the inside of my old locker in school. That's what I told
Wylie White and when a girl tells the man she likes second best about the
other one-then she's in love.
13 (continued)
I noticed the girl long before Stahr arrived at the dance. Not a pretty
girl, for there are none of those in Los Angeles-one girl can be pretty but
a dozen are only a chorus. Nor yet a professional beauty-they do all the
breathing for everyone and finally even the men have to go outside for air.
Just a girl, with the skin of one of Raphael's corner angels and a style
that made you look back twice to see if it were something she had on.
I noticed her and forgot her. She was sitting back behind the pillars
at a table whose ornament was a faded semi-star who, in hopes of being
noticed and getting a bit, rose and danced regularly with some scarecrow
males. It reminded me shamefully of my first party where Mother made me
dance over and over with the same boy to keep in the spotlight. The
semi-star spoke to several people at our table but we were busy being Cafe
Society and she got nowhere at all.
From our angle it appeared that they all wanted something.
"You're expected to fling it around," said Wylie, "-like in the old
days. When they find out you're hanging on to it they get discouraged.
That's what all this brave gloom is about-the only way to keep their self
respect is to be Hemingway characters. But underneath they hate you in a
mournful way and you know it."
He was right-I knew that since 1933 the rich could only be happy alone
together.
I saw Stahr come into the half-light at the top of the wide steps and
stand there with his hands in his pockets looking around. It was late and
the lights seemed to have burned a little lower, though they were the same.
The floor show was finished except for a man who still wore a placard which
said that at midnight in the Hollywood Bowl Sonja Henie was going to skate
on hot soup. You could see the sign as he danced becoming less and less
funny on his back. A few years before there would have been drunks around.
The faded actress seemed to be looking for them hopefully over her partner's
shoulder. I followed her with my eyes when she went back to her table -and
there, to my surprise, was Stahr talking to the other girl. They were
smiling at each other as if this was the beginning of the world.
Stahr had expected nothing like this when he stood at the head of the
steps a few minutes earlier. The sneak preview had disappointe him and
afterwards he had had a scene with Jaques La Borwits right in front of the
theatre for which he was now sorry. He had started toward the Brady party
when he saw Kathleen sitting in the middle of a long white table alone.
Immediately things changed. As he walked toward her the people shrank
back against the walls till they were only murals; the white table
lengthened and became an altar where the priestess sat alone. Vitality
welled up in him and he could have stood a long time across the table from
her, looking and smiling.
The incumbents of the table were crawling back-Stahr and Kathleen
danced.
When she came close his several visions of her blurred; she was
momentarily unreal. Usually a girl's skull made her real but not this
time-Stahr continued to be dazzled as they danced out along the floor-to the
last edge, where they stepped through a mirror into another dance with new
dancers whose faces were familiar but nothing more. In this new region he
talked, fast and urgently.
"What's your name?"
"Kathleen Moore."
"Kathleen Moore," he repeated.
"I have no telephone, if that's what you're thinking."
"When will you come to the studio?"
"It's not possible. Truly."
"Why isn't it? Are you married?"
"No."
"You're not married?"
"No, nor never have been. But then I may be."
"Someone there at the table."
"No." She laughed. "What curiosity!"
But she was deep in it with him, no matter what the words were. Her
eyes invited him to a romantic communion of unbelievable intensity. As if
she realized this she said, frightened:
"I must go back now. I promised this dance."
"I don't want to lose you. Couldn't we have lunch or dinner?"
"It's impossible." But her expression helplessly amended the words to
"It's just possible. The door is still open by a chink if you could squeeze
past. But quickly-so little time."
"I must go back," she repeated aloud. Then she dropped her arms,
stopped dancing and looked at him, a laughing wanton.
"When I'm with you I don't breathe quite right," she said.
She turned, picked up her long dress, and stepped back through the
mirror. Stahr followed until she stopped near her table.
"Thank you for the dance," she said. "And now really, good night."
Then she nearly ran.
Stahr went to the table where he was expected and sat down with the
Cafe Society group-from Wall Street, Grand Street, Loudoun County Virginia,
and Odessa Russia. They were all talking with enthusiasm about a horse that
had run very fast and Mr. Marcus was the most enthusiastic of all. Stahr
guessed that Jews had taken over the worship of horses as a super-symbol-for
years it had been the Cossacks mounted and the Jews on foot. Now the Jews
had horses and it gave them a sense of extraordinary well-being and power.
Stahr sat pretending to listen and even nodding when something was referred
to him, but all the time watching the table behind the pillars. If
everything had not happened as it had, even to his connecting the silver
belt with the wrong girl, he might have thought it was some elaborate
frame-up. But the elusiveness was beyond suspicion. For there in a moment he
saw that she was escaping again-the pantomime at the table indicated good
bye. She was leaving, she was gone.
"There-" said Wylie White with malice, "-goes Cinderella. Simply bring
the slipper to the Regal Shoe Co., 812 South Broadway. "
Stahr overtook her in the long upper lobby where middle-aged women sat
behind a roped-off space, watching the ballroom entrance.
"Am I responsible for this?" he asked.
"I was going anyhow." But she added almost resentfully, "They talked as
if I'd been dancing with the Prince of Wales. They all stared at me. One of
the men wanted to draw my picture and another one wanted to see me tomorrow.
"
"That's just what I want," said Stahr gently. "But I want to see you
much more than he does."
"You insist so," she said wearily. "One reason I left England was that
men always wanted their own way. I thought it was different here. Isn't it
enough that I don't want to see you?"
"Ordinarily," agreed Stahr. "Please believe me, I'm way out of my depth
already. I feel like a fool. But I must see you again and talk to you."
She hesitated.
"There's no reason for feeling like a fool," she said. "You're too good
a man to feel like a fool. But you should see this for what it is."
"What is it?"
"You've fallen for me-completely. You've got me in your dreams."
"I'd forgotten you," he declared, "-till the moment I walked in that
door."
"Forgotten me with your head perhaps. But I knew the first time I saw
you that you were the kind that likes me-"
She stopped herself. Near them a man and woman from the party were
saying good bye: "Tell her hello-tell her I love her dearly," said the
woman, "you both-all of you-the children." Stahr could not talk like that,
the way everyone talked now. He could think of nothing further to say as
they walked toward the elevator except:
"I suppose you're perfectly right."
"Oh, you admit it?"
"No, I don't," he retracted. "It's just the whole way you're made. What
you say-how you walk-the way you look right this minute-" He saw she had
melted a little and his hopes rose. "Tomorrow is Sunday and usually I work
on Sunday but if there's anything you're curious about in Hollywood, any
person you want to meet or see, please let me arrange it."
They were standing by the elevator. It opened but she let it go.
"You're very modest," she said. "You always talk about showing me the
studio and taking me around. Don't you ever stay alone?"
"Tomorrow I'll feel very much alone."
"Oh, the poor man-I could weep for him. He could have all the stars
jumping around him and he chooses me."
He smiled-he had laid himself open to that one.
The elevator came again. She signalled for it to wait.
"I'm a weak woman," she said. "If I meet you tomorrow will you leave me
in peace? No, you won't. You'll make it worse. It wouldn't do any good but
harm so I'll say no and thank you."
She got into the elevator. Stahr got in too and they smiled as they
dropped two floors to the hall cross-sectioned with small shops. Down at the
end, held back by police was the crowd, their heads and shoulders leaning
forward to look down the alley. Kathleen shivered.
"They looked so strange when I came in," she said, "-as if they were
furious at me for not being someone famous."
"I know another way out," said Stahr.
They went through a drug store, down an alley and came out into the
clear cool California night beside the car park. He felt detached from the
dance now and she did too.
"A lot of picture people used to live down here," he said. "John
Barrymore and Pola Negri in those bungalows. And Connie Talmadge lived in
that tall thin apartment house over the way."
"Doesn't anybody live here now?"
"The studios moved out into the country," he said. "What used to be the
country. I had some good times around here though."
He did not mention that ten years ago Minna and her mother had lived in
another apartment over the way.
"How old are you?" she asked suddenly.
"I've lost track-almost thirty-five I think."
"They said at the table you were the boy wonder."
"I'll be that when I'm sixty," he said grimly. "You will meet me
tomorrow, won't you?"
"I'll meet you," she said. "Where?"
Suddenly there was no place to meet. She would not go to a party at
anyone's house, nor to the country, nor swimming though she hesitated, nor
to a well-known restaurant. She seemed hard to please but he knew there was
some reason. He would find out in time. It occurred to him that she might be
the sister or daughter of someone well-known, who was pledged to keep in the
background. He suggested that he come for her and they could decide.
"That wouldn't do," she said. "What about right here-the same
spot."
He nodded-pointing up at the arch under which they stood. He put her
into her car which would have brought eighty dollars
from any kindly dealer, and watched it rasp away. Down by the
entrance a cheer went up as a favorite emerged, and Stahr wondered
whether to show himself and say good night.
This is Cecelia taking up the narrative in person. Stahr came back
finally-it was about half past three-and asked me to dance.
"How are you?" he asked me, just as if he hadn't seen me that morning.
"I got involved in a long conversation with a man."
It was secret too-he cared that much about it.
"I took him to ride," he went on innocently. "I didn't realize how much
this part of Hollywood had changed."
"Has it changed?"
"Oh yes," he said. "Changed completely. Unrecognizable. I couldn't tell
you exactly but it's all changed-everything. It's like a new city." After a
moment he amplified, "I had no idea how much it had changed."
"Who was the man?" I ventured.
"An old friend," he said vaguely. "Someone I knew a long time ago."
I had made Wylie try to find out quietly who she was. He had gone over
and the ex-star had asked him excitedly to sit down. No-she didn't know who
the girl was-a friend of a friend of someone-even the man who had brought
her didn't know.
So Stahr and I danced to the beautiful music of Glenn Miller playing
"I'm on a See-saw." It was good dancing now with plenty of room. But it was
lonely-lonelier than before the girl had gone. For me, as well as for Stahr,
she took the evening with her, took along the stabbing pain I had felt-left
the great ball-room empty and without emotion. Now it was nothing and I was
dancing with an absent minded man who told me how much Los Angeles had
changed.
Section 14
They met, next afternoon, as strangers in an unfamiliar country. Last
night was gone, the girl he had danced with was gone. A misty rose-and-blue
hat with a trifling veil came along the terrace to him and paused, searching
his face. Stahr was strange too in a brown suit and black tie that blocked
him out more tangibly than a formal dinner coat, or when he was simply a
face and voice in the darkness when they first met.
He was the first to be sure it was the same person as before-the upper
half of the face that was Minna's, luminous, with creamy temples and
opalescent brow-the coco-colored curly hair. He could have put his arm
around her and pulled her close with an almost family familiarity-already he
knew the down on her neck, the very set of her backbone, the corners of her
eyes and how she breathed-the very texture of the clothes that she would
wear.
"Did you wait here all night?" she said, in a voice that was like a
whisper.
"I didn't move-didn't stir."
Still a problem remained, the same one-there was no special place to
go.
"I'd like tea," she suggested, "-if it's some place you're not known."
"That sounds as if one of us had a bad reputation."
"Doesn't it?" she laughed.
"We'll go to the shore," Stahr suggested. "There's a place there where
I got out once and was chased by a trained seal."
"Do you think the seal could make tea?"
"Well-he's trained. And I don't think he'll talk-I don't think his
training got that far. What in hell are you trying to hide?"
After a moment she said lightly, "Perhaps the future," in a way that
might mean anything or nothing at all.
As they drove away she pointed at her jalopy in the parking lot.
"Do you think it's safe?"
"I doubt it. I noticed some black-bearded foreigners snooping around."
Kathleen looked at him alarmed.
"Really?" She saw he was smiling. "I believe everything you say," she
said. "You've got such a gentle way about you that I don't see why they're
all so afraid of you." She examined him with approval-fretting a little
about his pallor, which was accentuated by the bright afternoon. "Do you
work very hard? Do you really always work on Sundays?"
He responded to her interest-impersonal yet not perfunctory.
"Not always. Once we had-we had a house with a pool and all-and people
came on Sunday. I played tennis and swam. I don't swim any more."
"Why not? It's good for you. I thought all Americans swam."
"My legs got very thin-a few years ago and it embarrassed me. There
were other things I used to do-lots of things. I used to play handball when
I was a kid, and sometimes out here-I had a court that was washed away in a
storm."
"You have a good build," she said in formal compliment, meaning only
that he was made with thin grace.
He rejected this with a shake of his head.
"I enjoy working most," he said. "My work is very congenial."
"Did you always want to be in movies?"
"No. When I was young I wanted to be a chief clerk-the one who knew
where everything was."
She smiled.
"That's odd. And now you're much more than that."
"No, I'm still a chief clerk," Stahr said. "That's my gift, if I have
one. Only when I got to be it I found out that no one knew where anything
was. And I found out that you had to know why it was where it was, and
whether it should be left there. They began throwing it all at me and it was
a very complex office. Pretty soon I had all the keys. And they wouldn't
have remembered what locks they fitted if I gave them back."
They stopped for a red light and a newsboy bleated at them: " Mickey
Mouse Murdered! Randolph Hearst declares war on China!"
"We'll have to buy his paper," she said.
As they drove on she straightened her hat and preened herself. Seeing
him looking at her she smiled.
She was alert and calm-qualities that were currently at a premium.
There was lassitude in plenty-California was filling up with weary
desperadoes. And there were tense young men and women who lived back East in
spirit while they carried on a losing battle against the climate. But it was
everyone's secret that sustained effort was difficult here-a secret that
Stahr scarcely admitted to himself. But he knew that people from other
places spurted a pure rill of new energy for a while.
They were very friendly now. She had not made a move or a gesture that
was out of keeping with her beauty, that pressed it out of its contour one
way or another. It was all proper to itself. He judged her as he would a
shot in a picture. She was not trash, she was not confused but clear-in his
special meaning of the word which implied balance, delicacy and proportion,
she was "nice."
They reached Santa Monica where there were the stately houses of a
dozen picture stars, penned in the middle of a crawling Coney Island. They
turned down hill into the wide blue sky and sea and went on along the sea
till the beach slid out again from under the bathers in a widening and
narrowing yellow strand.
"I'm building a house out here," Stahr said. "Much further on. I don't
know why I'm building it. "
"Perhaps it's for me," she said.
"Maybe it is."
"I think it's splendid for you to build a big house for me without even
knowing what I looked like."
"It isn't so big. And it hasn't any roof. I didn't know what kind of
roof you wanted."
"We don't want a roof. They told me it never rained here. It-"
She stopped so suddenly that he knew she was reminded of something.
"Just something that's past," she said.
"What was it?" he demanded. "Another house without a roof?"
"Yes. Another house without a roof."
"Were you happy there?"
"I lived with a man," she said. "A long, long time-too long. It was one
of those awful mistakes people make. I lived with him a long time after I
wanted to get out but he couldn't let me go. He'd try but he couldn't. So
finally I ran away."
He was listening, weighing but not judging. Nothing changed under the
rose-and-blue hat. She was twenty-five or so. It would have been a waste if
she had not loved and been loved.
"We were too close," she said. "We should probably have had children-to
stand between us. But you can't have children when there's no roof to the
house."
All right, he knew something of her. It would not be like last night
when something kept saying, as in a story conference: "We know nothing about
the girl. We don't have to know much-but we have to know something." A vague
background spread behind her, something more tangible than the head of Siva
in the moonlight.
They came to the restaurant, forbidding with many Sunday automobiles.
When they got out the trained seal growled reminiscently at Stahr. The man
who owned it said that the seal would never ride in the back seat of his car
but always climbed over the back and up in front. It was plain that the man
was in bondage to the seal, though he had not yet acknowledged it to
himself.
"I'd like to see the house you're building," said Kathleen. "I don't
want tea-tea is the past."
Kathleen drank a Coke instead and they drove on ten miles into a sun so
bright that he took out two pairs of cheaters from a compartment. Five miles
further on they turned down a small promontory and came to the fuselage of
Stahr's house.
A headwind blowing out of the sun threw spray up the rocks and over the
car. Concrete mixers, raw yellow wood and builders' rubble waited, an open
wound in the sea-scape, for Sunday to be over. They walked around front
where great boulders rose to what would be the terrace.
She looked at the feeble hills behind and winced faintly at the barren
glitter, and Stahr saw "No use looking for what's not here," he said
cheerfully. "Think of it as if you were standing on one of those globes with
a map on it-I always wanted one when I was a boy."
"I understand," she said after a minute. "When you do that you can feel
the earth turn, can't you."
He nodded.
"Yes. Otherwise it's all just manana-waiting for the morning or the
moon. "
They went in under the scaffolding. One room, which was to be the chief
salon, was completed even to the built-in book shelves and the curtain rods
and the trap in the floor for the motion picture projection machine. And, to
her surprise, this opened out to a porch with cushioned chairs in place and
a ping-pong table. There was another ping-pong table on the newly laid turf
beyond.
"Last week I gave a premature luncheon," he admitted. "I had some props
brought out-some grass and things. I wanted to see how the place felt."
She laughed suddenly.
"Isn't that real grass?"
"Oh yes-it's grass."
Beyond the strip of anticipatory lawn was the excavation for a swimming
pool, patronized now by a crowd of seagulls who saw them and took flight.
"Are you going to live here all alone?" she asked him. "Not even
dancing girls?"
"Probably. I used to make plans but not any more. I thought this would
be a nice place to read scripts. The studio is really home."
"That's what I've heard about American business men."
He caught a lilt of criticism in her voice.
"You do what you're born to do," he said gently. "About once a month
somebody tries to reform me, tells me what a barren old age I'll have when I
can't work any more. But it's not so simple."
The wind was rising. It was time to go and he had his car keys out of
his pocket, absent mindedly jingling them in his hand. There was the silvery
"Hey!" of a telephone, coming from somewhere across the sunshine.
It was not from the house and they hurried here and there around the
garden like children playing warmer and colder-closing in finally on a tool
shack by the tennis court. The phone, irked with delay, barked at them
suspiciously from the wall. Stahr hesitated.
"Shall I let the damn thing ring?"
"I couldn't. Unless I was sure who it was."
"Either it's for somebody else or they've made a wild guess."
He picked up the receiver.
"Hello.... Long distance from where? Yes, this is Mr. Stahr."
His manner changed perceptibly. She saw what few people had seen for a
decade-Stahr impressed. It was not discordant because he often pretended to
be impressed but it made him momentarily a little younger.
"It's the President," he said to her, almost stiffly.
"Of your company?"
"No, of the United States."
He was trying to be casual for her benefit but his voice was eager.
"All right, I'll wait," he said into the phone, and then to Kathleen,
"I've talked to him before."
She watched. He smiled at her and winked as an evidence that while he
must give this his best attention he had not forgotten her.
"Hello," he said presently. He listened. Then he said "Hello" again. He
frowned.
"Can you talk a little louder," he said politely, and then "Who?...
What's that?"
She saw a disgusted look come into his face.
"I don't want to talk to him," he said. "No!"
He turned to Kathleen.
"Believe it or not, it's an orang-outang."
He waited while something was explained to him at length; then he
repeated:
"I don't want to talk to it, Lew. I haven't got anything to say that
would interest an orang-outang."
He beckoned to Kathleen and when she came close to the phone he held