“Care to order now?”
He looked up.
Fred Handy stopped breathing for a second. He looked at her, and the years peeled away. He was a teenage kid in the Utopia Theater in St. Louis, Missouri, staring up at a screen with gray shadows moving on it. A face from the past, a series of features, very familiar, were superimposing themselves.
She saw he was staring. “Order?”
He had to say it just right. “Excuse me, is, uh, is your name Lone?”
Until much later, he was not able to identify the expression that swam up in her eyes. But when he thought back on it, he knew it had been terror. Not fear, not trepidation, not uneasiness, not wariness. Terror. Complete, total, gagging terror. She said later it had been like calling the death knell for her…again.
She went stiff, and her hand slid off the counter edge. “Valerie Lone?” he said, softly, frightened by the look on her face. She swallowed so that the hollows in her cheeks moved liquidly. And she nodded. The briefest movement of the head.
Then he knew he had to say it just right. He was holding all that fragile crystal, and a wrong phrase would shatter it. Not: I used to see your movies when I was a kid or: Whatever happened to you or: What are you doing here. It had to be just right.
Handy smiled like a little boy. It somehow fit his craggy features. “You know,” he said gently, “many’s the afternoon I’ve sat in the movies and been in love with you.”
There was gratitude in her smile. Relief, an ease of tensions, and the sudden rush of her own memories; the bittersweet taste of remembrance as the glories of her other life swept back to her. Then it was gone, and she was a frowzy blonde waitress on Route 14 again. “Order?”
She wasn’t kidding. She turned it off like a mercury switch. One moment there was life in the faded blue eyes, the next moment it was ashes. He ordered a cheeseburger and french fries. She went back to the steam table.
Arthur Crewes came out of the men’s room first. He was rubbing his hands. “Damned powdered soap, almost as bad as those stiff paper towels.” He slipped onto the stool beside Handy.
And in that instant, Fred Handy saw a great white light come up. Like the buzz an acid-head gets from a fully drenched sugar cube, his mind burst free and went trembling outward in waves of color. The shtick, the bit, the handle, ohmigod there it is, as perfect as a bluewhite diamond.
Arthur Crewes was reading the menu as Handy grabbed his wrist.
“Arthur, do you know who that is?”
“Who who is?”
“The waitress.”
“Madame Nehru.”
“I’m serious, Arthur.”
“All right, who?”
“Valerie Lone.”
Arthur Crewes started as though he had been struck. He shot a look at the waitress, her back to them now, as she ladled up navy bean soup from the stainless steel tureen in the steam table. He stared at her, silently.
“I don’t believe it,” he murmured.
“It is, Arthur, I’m telling you that’s just who it is.”
He shook his head. “What the hell is she doing out here in the middle of nowhere. My God, it must be, what? Fifteen, twenty years?”
Handy considered a moment. “About eighteen years, if you count that thing she did for Ross at UA in forty-eight. Eighteen years and here she is, slinging hash in a diner.”
Crewes mumbled something.
“What did you say?” Handy asked him.
Crewes repeated it, with an edge Handy could not place. “Lord, how the mighty have fallen.”
Before Handy could tell the producer his idea, she turned, and saw Crewes staring at her. There was no recognition in her expression. But it was obvious she knew Handy had told him who she was. She turned away and carried the plates of soup to the booth.
As she came back past them, Crewes said, softly, “Hello, Miss Lone.” She paused and stared at him. She was almost somnambulistic, moving by rote. He added, “Arthur Crewes…remember?”
She did not answer for a long moment, then nodded as she had to Handy. “Hello. It’s been a long time.”
Crewes smiled a peculiar smile. Somehow victorious. “Yes, a long time. How’ve you been?”
She shrugged, as if to indicate the diner. “Fine, thank you.”
They fell silent.
“Would you care to order now?”
When she had taken the order and moved to the grill, Handy leaned in close to the producer and began speaking intensely. “Arthur, I’ve got a fantastic idea.”
His mind was elsewhere. “What’s that, Fred?”
“Her. Valerie Lone. What a sensational idea. Put her in the picture. The comeback of…what was it they used to call her, that publicity thing, oh yeah…the comeback of ‘Miss Ankle-Strap Wedgie.’ It’s good for space in any newspaper in the country.”
Silence.
“Arthur? What do you think?”
Arthur Crewes smiled down at his hands. He was playing with the ring again. “You think I should bring her back to the industry after eighteen years.”
“I think it’s the most natural winning promotion idea I’ve ever had. And I can tell you like it.”
Crewes nodded, almost absently. “Yes, I like it, Fred. You’re a very bright fellow. I like it just fine.”
Kencannon came back and sat down. Crewes turned to him. “Jim, can you do cover shots on the basement scenes with Bob and the stunt men for a day or two?”
Kencannon bit his lip, considering. “I suppose so. It’ll mean replotting the schedule, but the board’s Bernie’s problem, not mine. What’s up?”
Crewes twisted the ring and smiled distantly. “I’m going to call Johnny Black in and have him do a rewrite on the part of Angela. Beef it up.”
“For what? We haven’t even cast it yet.”
“We have now.” Handy grinned hugely. “Valerie Lone.”
“Valerie—you’re kidding. She hasn’t even made a film in God knows how long. What makes you think you can get her?”
Crewes turned back to stare at the sloped shoulders of the woman at the sizzling grill. “I can get her.”
HANDY
We talked to Valerie Lone, Crewes and myself. First I talked, then he talked; then when she refused to listen to him, I talked again.
She grabbed up a huge pan with the remains of macaroni and cheese burned to the bottom, and she dashed out through a screen door at the rear of the diner.
We looked at each other, and when each of us saw the look of confusion on the other’s face, the looks vanished. We got up and followed her. She was leaning against the wall of the diner, scraping the crap from the pan as she cried. The night was quiet.
But she didn’t melt as we came through the screen door. She got uptight. Furious. “I’ve been out of all that for over fifteen years, can’t you leave me alone? You’ve got a lousy sense of humor if you think this is funny!”
Arthur Crewes stopped dead on the stairs. He didn’t know what to say to her. There was something happening to Crewes; I didn’t know what it was, but it was more than whatever it takes to get a gimmick for a picture.
I took over.
Handy, the salesman. Handy, the schmacheler, equipped with the very best butter. “It isn’t fifteen years, Miss Lone. It’s eighteen plus.”
Something broke inside her. She turned back to the pan. Crewes didn’t know whether to tell me to back off or not, so I went ahead. I pushed past Crewes, standing there with his hand on the peeling yellow paint banister, his mouth open. (The color of the paint was the color of a stray dog I had run down in Nevada one time. I hadn’t seen the animal. It had dashed out of a gully by the side of the road and I’d gone right over it before I knew what had happened. But I stopped and went back. It was the same color as that banister. A faded lonely yellow, like cheap foolscap, a dollar a ream. I couldn’t get the thought of that dog out of my mind.)
“You like it out here, right?”
She didn’t turn around.
I walked ar
ound her. She was looking into that pan of crap. “Miss Lone?”
It was going to take more than soft-spoken words. It might even take sincerity. I wasn’t sure I knew how to do that any more. “If I didn’t know better…having seen all the feisty broads you played…I’d think you enjoyed feeling sorry for your—”
She looked up, whip-fast, I could hear the cartilage cracking in her neck muscles. There was a core of electrical sparks in her eyes. She was pissed off. “Mister, I just met your face. What makes you think you can talk that way…” It petered out. The steam leaked off, and the sparks died, and she was back where she’d been a minute before.
I turned her around to face us. She shrugged my hand off. She wasn’t a sulky child, she was a woman who didn’t know how to get away from a giant fear that was getting more gigantic with every passing second. And even in fear she wasn’t about to let me manhandle her.
“Miss Lone, we’ve got a picture working. It isn’t Gone With the Wind and it isn’t The Birth of a Nation, it’s just a better-than-average coupla-million-dollar spectacular with Mitchum and Lollobrigida, and it’ll make a potful for everybody concerned…”
Crewes was staring at me. I didn’t like his expression. He was the bright young wunderkind who had made Lonely in the Dark and Ruby Bernadette and The Fastest Man, and he didn’t like to hear me pinning his latest opus as just a nice, money-making color puffball. But Crewes wasn’t a wunderkind any longer, and he wasn’t making Kafka, he was making box-office bait, and he needed this woman, and so dammit did I! So screw his expression.
“Nobody’s under the impression you’re one of the great ladies of the theater; you never were Katharine Cornell, or Bette Davis, or even Pat Neal.” She gave me that core of sparks look again. If I’d been a younger man it might have woofed me; I’m sure it had stopped legions of assistant gophers in the halcyon days. But—it suddenly scared me to realize it—I was running hungry, and mere looks didn’t do it. I pushed her a little harder, my best Raymond Chandler delivery. “But you were a star, you were someone that people paid money to see, because whatever you had it was yours. And whatever that was, we want to rent it for a while, we want to bring it back.”
She gave one of those little snorts that says very distinctly You stink, Jack. It was disdainful. She had my number. But that was cool; I’d given it to her; I wasn’t about to shuck her.
“Don’t think we’re humanitarians. We need something like you on this picture. We need a handle, something that’ll get us that extra two inches in the Wichita Eagle. That means bucks in the ticket wicket. Oh, shit, lady!”
Her teeth skinned back.
I was getting to her.
“We can help each other.” She sneered and started to turn away. I reached out and slammed the pan as hard as I could. It spun out of her hands and hit the steps. She was rocked quiet for an instant, and I rapped on her as hard as I could. “Don’t tell me you’re in love with scraping crap out of a macaroni dish. You lived too high, too long. This is a free ride back. Take it!”
There was blood coursing through her veins now. Her cheeks had bright, flushed spots on them, high up under the eyes. “I can’t do it; stop pushing at me.”
Crewes moved in, then. We worked like a pair of good homicide badges. I beat her on the head, and he came running with Seidlitz powders. “Let her alone a minute, Fred. This is all at once, come on, let her think.”
“What the hell’s to think?”
She was being rammed from both sides, and knew it, but for the first time in years something was happening, and her motor was starting to run again, despite herself.
“Miss Lone,” Crewes said gently, “a contract for this film, and options for three more. Guaranteed, from first day of shooting, straight through, even if you sit around after your part is shot, till last day of production.”
“I haven’t been anywhere near a camera—”
“That’s what we have cameramen for. They turn it on you. That’s what we have a director for. He’ll tell you where to stand. It’s like swimming or riding a bike: once you learn, you never forget…”
Crewes again. “Stop it, Fred. Miss Lone…I remember you from before. You were always good to work with. You weren’t one of the cranky ones, you were a doer. You knew your lines, always.”
She smiled. A wee timorous slippery smile. She remembered. And she chuckled. “Good memory, that’s all.”
Then Crewes and I smiled, too. She was on our side. Everything she said from here on out would be to win us the argument. She was ours.
“You know, I had the world’s all-time great crush on you, Miss Lone,” Arthur Crewes, a very large man in town, said. She smiled a little-girl smile of graciousness.
“I’ll think about it.” She stooped for the pan.
He reached it before she did. “I won’t give you time to think. There’ll be a car here for you tomorrow at noon.”
He handed her the pan.
She took it reluctantly.
We had dug Valerie Lone up from under uncounted strata of self-pity and anonymity, from a kind of grave she had chosen for herself for reasons I was beginning to understand. As we went back inside the diner, I had The Thought for the first time:
The Thought: What if we ain’t doing her no favors?
And the voice of Donald Duck came back at me from the Clown Town of my thoughts: With friends like you, Handy, she may not need any enemies.
Screw you, Duck.
2
The screen flickered, and Valerie Lone, twenty years younger, wearing the pageboy and padded shoulders of the Forties, swept into the room. Cary Grant looked up from the microscope with his special genteel exasperation, and asked her precisely where she had been. Valerie Lone, the coiffed blonde hair carefully smoothed, removed her gloves and sat on the laboratory counter. She crossed her legs. She was wearing ankle-strap wedgies.
“I think the legs are still damned good, Arthur,” Fred Handy said. Cigar smoke rose up in the projection room. Arthur Crewes did not answer. He was busy watching the past.
Full hips, small breasts, blonde; a loveliness that was never wispy like a Jean Arthur, never chill like a Joan Crawford, never cultured like a Greer Garson. If Valerie Lone had been identifiable with anyone else working in her era, it would have been with Ann Sheridan. And the comparison was by no means invidious. There was the same forceful womanliness in her manner; a wise kid who knew the score. Dynamic. Yet there was a quality of availability in the way she arched her eyebrows, the way she held her hands and neck. Sensuality mixed with reality. What had broken that spine of self-control, turned it into the fragile wariness Handy had sensed? He studied the film as the story unreeled, but there was none of that showing in the Valerie Lone of twenty years before.
As the deep, silken voice faded from the screen, Arthur Crewes reached to the console beside his contour chair, and punched a series of buttons. The projection light cut off from the booth behind them, the room lights went up, and the chair tilted forward. The producer got up and left the room, with Handy behind him, waiting for comments. They had spent close to eight hours running old prints of Valerie Lone’s biggest hits.
Arthur Crewes’s home centered around the projection room. As his life centered around the film industry. Through the door, and into the living room, opulent beneath fumed and waxed, shadowed oak beams far above them; the two men did not speak. The living room was immense, only slightly smaller than a basketball court in one corner where Crewes now settled into a deep armchair, before a roaring walk-in fireplace. The rest of the living room was empty and quiet; one could hear the fall of dust. It had been a merry house many times in the past, and would be again, but at the moment, far down below the vaulting ceiling, their voices rising like echoes in a mountain pass, Arthur Crewes spoke to his publicist.
“Fred, I want the full treatment. I want her seen everywhere by everyone. I want her name as big as it ever was.”
Handy pursed his lips, even as he nodded. “That takes money,
Arthur. We’re pushing the publicity budget now.”
Crewes lit a cigar. “This is above-the-line expense. Keep it a separate record, and I’ll take care of it out of my pocket. I want it all itemized for the IRS, but don’t spare the cost.”
“Do you know how much you’re getting into here?”
“It doesn’t matter. Whatever it is, however much you need, come and ask, and you’ll get it. But I want a real job done for that money, Fred.”
Handy stared at him for a long moment.
“You’ll get mileage out of Valerie Lone’s comeback, Arthur. No doubt about it. But I have to tell you right now it isn’t going to be anything near commensurate with what you’ll be spending. It isn’t that kind of appeal.”
Crewes drew deeply on the cigar, sent a thin streamer of blue smoke toward the darkness above them. “I’m not concerned about the value to the picture. It’s going to be a good property, it can take care of itself. This is something else.”
Handy looked puzzled. “Why?”
Crewes did not answer. Finally, he asked, “Is she settled in at the Beverly Hills?”
Handy rose to leave. “Best bungalow in the joint. You should have seen the reception they gave her.”
“That’s the kind of reception I want everywhere for her, Fred. A lot of bowing and scraping for the old queen.”