Lying there waiting for someone to steal it, find Clarence’s address and—
My God, I thought, no!
“Child,” said Constance, “let’s get you a drink!”
The maître d’ was presenting a bill to his last customers. The eye in the back of his head read us and he turned. His face exploded with delight when he saw Constance. But almost instantly, when he saw me, the light went out. After all, I was bad news. I had been there outside on the night when the Beast had been accosted by Clarence.
The maître d’ smiled again and charged across the room to dislocate me, and kissed each one of Constance’s fingers, hungrily. Constance threw her head back and laughed.
“It’s no use, Ricardo. I sold my rings, years ago!”
“You remember me?” he asked, astonished.
“Ricardo Lopez, also known as Sam Kahn?”
“But then, who was Constance Rattigan?”
“I burned my birth certificate with my underpants.” Constance pointed at me. “This is—”
“I know, I know.” Lopez ignored me.
Constance laughed again, for he was still holding her hand. “Ricardo here was an MGM swim-pool lifeguard. Ten dozen girls a day drowned so he could pump them back to life. Ricardo, lead on.”
We were seated. I could not take my eyes off the rear wall of the restaurant. Lopez caught this and gave the corkscrew on the wine bottle a vicious twist.
“I was only an audience,” I said, quietly.
“Yes, yes,” he muttered, as he poured for Constance to taste. “It was that stupid other one.”
“The wine is beautiful,” Constance sipped, “like you.” Ricardo Lopez collapsed. A wild laugh almost escaped him.
“And who was that other stupid one?” Constance put in, seeing her advantage.
“It was nothing.” Lopez sought to regain his old dyspepsia. “Shouts and almost blows. My best customer and some street beggar.”
Ah, God, I thought. Poor Clarence, begging for limelight and fame all his life.
“Your best customer, my dear Ricardo?” said Constance, blinking.
Ricardo gazed off at the rear wall where the Oriental screen stood, folded.
“I am destroyed. Tears do not come easily. We were so careful. For years. Always he came late. He waited in the kitchen until I checked to see if there was anyone here he knew. Hard to do, yes? After all, I do not know everyone he knows, eh? But now because of a stupid blunder, the merest passing idiot, my Great One will probably never return. He will find another restaurant, later, emptier.”
“This Great One …”Constance shoved an extra wine glass at Ricardo and indicated he fill it for himself, “has a name?”
“None.” Ricardo poured, still leaving my glass empty. “And I never asked. Many years he came, at least one night a month, paying cash for the finest food, the best wines. But, in all those years, we exchanged no more than three dozen words a night.
“He read the menu in silence, pointed to what he wanted, behind the screen. Then he and his lady talked and drank and laughed. That is, if a lady was with him. Strange ladies. Lonely ladies …”
“Blind,” I said.
Lopez shot me a glance.
“Perhaps. Or worse.”
“What could be worse?”
Lopez looked at his wine and at the empty chair nearby.
“Sit,” said Constance.
Lopez glanced nervously around at the empty restaurant. At last, he sat, took a slow tasting of the wine, and nodded.
“Afflicted, would be more like it,” he said. “His women. Strange. Sad. Wounded? Yes, wounded people who could not laugh. He made them. It was as if to cure his silent, terrible life he must cheer others into some kind of peculiar joy. He proved that life was a joke! Imagine! To prove such a thing. And then the laughter and him going out into the night with his woman with no eyes or no mouth or no mind—still imagined they knew joy— to get in taxis one night, limousines, always a different limousine company, everything paid for in cash, no credits, no identification, and off they would drive to silence. I never heard anything that they said. If he looked out and saw me within fifteen feet of the screen: disaster! My tip? A single silver dime! The next time, I would stand thirty feet away. Tip? Two hundred dollars. Ah, well, here’s to the sad one.”
A sudden gust of wind shook the outer doors of the restaurant. We froze. The doors gaped wide, fluttered back, settled.
Ricardo’s spine stiffened. He glanced from the door to me, as if I were responsible for the emptiness and only the night wind.
“Oh, damn, damn, damn it to hell,” he said, softly. “He has gone to ground.”
“The Beast?”
Ricardo stared at me. “Is that what you call him? Well …” Constance nodded at my glass. Ricardo shrugged and poured me about an inch. “Why is that one so important that you drag in here to ruin my life? Until this week, I was rich.”
Constance instantly probed the purse in her lap. Her hand, mouselike, crept across the seat on her right side and left something there. Ricardo sensed it and shook his head.
“Ah, no, not from you, dear Constance. Yes, he made me rich. But once, years ago, you made me the happiest man in the world.”
Constance’s hand patted his and her eyes glistened. Lopez got up and walked back to the kitchen for about two minutes. We drank our wine and waited, watching the front door gape with wind and whisper shut on the night. When Lopez came back he looked around at the empty tables and chairs, as if they might criticize his bad manners as he sat. Carefully, he placed a small photograph in front of us. While we looked at it, he finished his wine.
“That was taken with a Land camera last year. One of our stupid kitchen help wanted to amuse his friends, eh? Two pictures taken in three seconds. They fell on the floor. The Beast, as you call him, destroyed the camera, tore one picture, thinking there was only one, and struck our waiter, whom I fired instantly. We offered no bill and the last bottle of our greatest wine. All was rebalanced. Later I found the second picture under a table, where it had been kicked when the man roared and struck. Is it not a great pity?”
Constance was in tears.
“Is that what he looks like?”
“Oh, God,” I said. “Yes.”
Ricardo nodded: “I often wanted to say: Sir, why do you live? Do you have nightmares of being beautiful? Who is your woman? What do you do for a living, and is it living? I never said. I stared only at his hands, gave him bread, poured wine. But some nights he forced me to look at his face. When he tipped he waited for me to lift my eyes. Then he would smile that smile like a razor cut. Have you seen fights when one man slashes another and the flesh opens like a red mouth? His mouth, poor monster, thanking me for the wine and lifting my tip high so I had to see his eyes trapped in that abattoir of a face, aching to be free, drowning in despair.”
Ricardo blinked rapidly and jammed the photo into his pocket.
Constance stared at the place on the tablecloth where the picture had been. “I came to see if I knew the man. Thank God, I did not. But his voice? Perhaps some other night … ?”
Ricardo snorted. “No, no. It is ruined. That stupid fan out front the other night. The only time, in years, such an encounter. Usually, that late, the street, empty. Now, I am sure he will not return. And I will go back to living in a smaller apartment. Forgive this selfishness. It’s hard to give up two-hundred-dollar tips.”
Constance blew her nose, got up, grabbed Lopez’s hand, and thrust something into it. “Don’t fight!” she said. “That was a great year, ’28. Time I paid my lovely gigolo. Stay!” For he was trying to shove the money back. “Heel!”
Ricardo shook his head, and hugged her hand to his cheek.
“Was it La Jolla, the sea, and good weather?”
“Body surfing every day!”
“Ah, yes, the bodies, the warm surf.”
Ricardo kissed each and every one of her fingers.
Constance said, “The flavor starts at
the elbow!”
Ricardo barked a laugh. Constance punched him lightly in the jaw and ran. I let her go out the door.
Then I turned and looked over at that alcove with the small lamp, the desk, and the filing cabinet.
Lopez saw where I was looking, and did the same.
But Clarence’s picture portfolio was gone, out in that night, with the wrong people.
Who will protect Clarence now, I wondered. Who will save him from the dark and keep him, living, until dawn?
Myself? The poor simp whose girl cousin beat him at hand wrestling?
Crumley? Dare I ask him to wait all night in front of Clarence’s bungalow court? Go shout at Clarence’s door? You’re lost. Run!
I did not call Crumley. I did not go yell at Clarence Sopwith’s bungalow porch. I nodded to Ricardo Lopez and went out into the night. Constance, outside, was crying. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” she said.
She swabbed her eyes with an inadequate silk handkerchief. “That damn Ricardo. Made me feel old. And that damn photograph of that poor hopeless man.”
“Yes, that face,” I said, and added, “. . . Sopwith.”
For Constance was standing right where Clarence Sopwith had stood a few nights ago.
“Sopwith?” she said.
39
Driving, Constance cut the wind with her voice:
“Life is like underwear, should be changed twice a day. Tonight is over, I choose to forget it.”
She shook tears from her eyes and glanced aside to see them rain away.
“I forget, just like that. There goes my memory. See how easy?”
“No.”
“You saw the mamacitas in the top floor of that tenement you lived in a couple years back? How after the big Saturday night blowout they’d toss their new dresses down off the roof to prove how rich they were, and didn’t care, and could buy another tomorrow? What a great lie; off and down with the dresses and them standing fat- or skinny-assed on the three-o’clock-in-the-morning roof watching the garden of dresses, like silk petals going downwind to the empty lots and alleys. Yes?”
“Yes!”
“That’s me. Tonight, the Brown Derby, that poor son of a bitch, along with my tears, I throw it all away.”
“Tonight isn’t over. You can’t forget that face. Did you or did you not recognize the Beast?”
“Jesus. We’re on the verge of our first really big heavyweight fight. Back off.”
“Did you recognize him?”
“He was unrecognizable.”
“He had eyes. Eyes don’t change.”
“Back off!” she yelled.
“Okay,” I groused. “I’m off.”
“There.” More tears fled away in small comets. “I love you again.” She smiled a windblown smile, her hair raveling and unraveling in the flood of air that sluiced us in a cold flow over the windshield.
All the bones in my body collapsed at that smile. God, I thought, has she always won, every day, all her life, with that mouth and those teeth and those great pretend-innocent eyes?
“Yep!” laughed Constance, reading my mind.
“And look,” she said.
She stopped dead in front of the studio gates. She stared up for a long moment.
“Ah, God,” she said at last. “That’s no hospital. It’s where great elephant ideas go to die. A graveyard for lunatics.”
“That’s over the wall, Constance.”
“No. You die here first, you die over there last. In between—” She held to the sides of her skull as if it might fly apart. “Madness. Don’t go in there, kid.”
“Why?”
Constance rose slowly to stand over the steering wheel and cry havoc at the gate that was not yet open and the night windows that were blind shut and the blank walls that didn’t care.
“First, they drive you crazy. Then when they have driven you nuts they persecute you for being the babbler at noon, the hysteric at sunset. The toothless werewolf at the rising of the moon.
“When you’ve reached the precise moment of lunacy, they fire you and spread the word that you are unreasonable, uncooperative, and unimaginative. Toilet paper, imprinted with your name, is dispatched to every studio, so the great ones can chant your initials as they ascend the papal throne.
“When you are dead they shake you awake to kill you again. Then they hang your carcass at Bad Rock, OK Corral, or Versailles on backlot 10, pickle you in a jar like a fake embryo in a bad carny film, buy you a cheap crypt next door, chisel your name, misspelled, on the tomb, cry like crocodiles. Then the final inglory: Nobody remembers your name on all the pictures you made in the good years. Who recalls the screenwriters for Rebecca? Who remembers who wrote Gone With the Wind? Who helped Welles become Kane? Ask anyone on the street. Hell, they don’t even know who was president during Hoover’s administration.
“So there you have it. Forgotten the day after the preview. Afraid to leave home between pictures. Who ever heard of a film writer who ever visited Paris, Rome, or London? All piss-fearful if they travel, the big moguls will forget them. Forget them, hell, they never knew them. Hire whatchamacalit. Get me whatsisname. The name above the title? The producer? Sure. The director? Maybe. Remember it’s deMille’s Ten Commandments, not Moses’. But F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby? Smoke it in the Men’s. Snuff it up your ulcerated nose. Want your name in big type? Kill your wife’s lover, fall downstairs with his body. Like I say, that’s the flickers, silver screen. Remember, you’re the blank spaces between each slot-click of the projector. Notice all those pole-vault poles by the back wall of the studio? That’s to help the high jumpers up across into the stone quarry. Mad fools hire and fire ’em, dime a dozen. They can be had, because they love films, we don’t. That gives us the power. Drive them to drink, then grab the bottle, hire the hearse, borrow a spade. Maximus Films, like I said. A graveyard. And, oh yeah, for lunatics.”
Her speech over, Constance remained standing as if the studio walls were a tidal wave about to fall.
“Don’t go in there,” she finished.
There was quiet applause.
The night policeman, behind the ornate Spanish ironwork was smiling and clapping his hands.
“I’ll only be in there a while, Constance,” I said. “Another month or so, and I’ll head South to finish my novel.”
“Can I come with you? One more trip to Mexicali, Calexico, South of San Diego, almost to Hermosillo, bathing naked by moonlight, ha, no, you in raggedy shorts.”
“I only wish. But it’s me and Peg, Constance, Peg and me.”
“Ah, well, what the hell. Kiss me.”
I hesitated so she gave me a smack that could flush a whole tenement tank system and make the cold run hot.
The gate was opening.
Two lunatics at midnight, we drove in.
As we pulled up near the wide square full of milling soldiers and merchants, Fritz Wong came leaping over in great strides. “God damn! We’re all set for your scene. That drunken Baptist Unitarian has disappeared. You know where the son of a bitch hides?”
“You called Aimee Semple McPherson’s?”
“She’s dead!”
“Or the Holy Rollers. Or the Manly P. Hall Universalists. Or—”
“My God,” roared Fritz. “It’s midnight! Those places are shut.”
“Have you checked Calvary,” I said. “He goes there.”
“Calvary!” Fritz stormed away. “Check Calvary! Gethsemane!” Fritz pleaded with the stars. “God, why this poisoned Manischewitz? Someone! Go rent two million locusts for tomorrow’s plague!”
The various assistants ran in all directions. I started off, too, when Constance grabbed my elbow.
My eyes wandered over the facade of Notre Dame.
Constance saw where I was looking.
“Don’t go up there,” she whispered.
“Perfect place for J. C.”
“Up there it’s all face and no backside. Trip on something and you fall like t
hose rocks the hunchback dropped on the mob.”
“That was a film, Constance!”
“And you think this is real?”
Constance shuddered. I longed for the old Rattigan who laughed all the time. “I saw something just now, up on the belltower.”
“Maybe it’s J. C.” I said. “While the others are ransacking Calvary, why don’t I take a look?”
“I thought you were afraid of heights?”
I watched the shadows run up along the facade of Notre Dame.
“Damn fool. Go ahead. Get Jesus down,” murmured Constance, “before he stays like a gargoyle. Save Jesus.”
“He’s saved!”
A hundred feet off, I looked back. Constance was already warming her hands at a hearth of Roman legionnaires.
40
I lingered outside Notre Dame, afraid of two things: going in and going up. Then I turned, shocked, to sniff the air. I took a deeper breath and let it out. “Good Grief. Incense! And candle smoke! Someone’s been—J. C.?”
I moved through the entryway and stopped.
Somewhere high in the strutworks, a great bulk moved.
I squinted up through the canvas slats, the plywood fronts, the shadows of gargoyles, trying to see if anything at all stirred up there in the cathedral dark.
I thought, Who lit the incense? How long ago did the wind blow the candles out?
Dust filtered in a fine powder down the upper air.
J. C.? I thought, If you fall, who will save the Saviour?
A silence answered my silence.
So …
God’s number one coward had to hoist himself, ladder step by ladder step, up through the darkness, fearful that any moment the great bells might thunder and knock me loose to fall. I squeezed my eyes shut and climbed.
At the top of Notre Dame I stood for a long moment, clutching my hands to my heartbeat, damned sorry to be up and wanting to be down there where the great spread of Romans, well-lit and full of beer, stormed through the alleys to smile at Rattigan, the visiting queen.
If I die now, I thought, none of them will hear.
“J. C.,” I called quietly into the shadows.