“I don’t expect anything. I admit that I’m jealous. I try not to be. I worked on that with Dr. Bridgebane, but it didn’t do any good. I was jealous of Joel this afternoon when you sat on the arm of his chair.”
“You were?” She started up. “You were! Wasn’t there somebody on the arm of your chair? And did you speak to me for two hours?”
“You were telling your troubles to Joel in the bedroom.”
“When I think that that woman”—she seemed to believe that to omit Eva Goebel’s name would be to lessen her reality—“used to come here——”
“All right—all right,“ said Miles wearily. “I’ve admitted everything and I feel as bad about it as you do.” Turning to Joel he began talking about pictures, while Stella moved restlessly along the far walls, her hands in her breeches pockets.
“They’ve treated Miles terribly,” she said, coming suddenly back into the conversation as if they’d never discussed her personal affairs. “Dear, tell him about old Beltzer trying to change your picture.”
As she stood hovering protectively over Miles, her eyes flashing with indignation in his behalf, Joel realized that he was in love with her. Stifled with excitement he got up to say good night.
With Monday the week resumed its workaday rhythm, in sharp contrast to the theoretical discussions, the gossip and scandal of Sunday; there was the endless detail of script revision—“Instead of a lousy dissolve, we can leave her voice on the sound track and cut to a medium shot of the taxi from Bell’s angle or we can simply pull the camera back to include the station, hold it a minute and then pan to the row of taxis”—by Monday afternoon Joel had again forgotten that people whose business was to provide entertainment were ever privileged to be entertained. In the evening he phoned Miles’s house. He asked for Miles but Stella came to the phone.
“Do things seem better?”
“Not particularly. What are you doing next Saturday evening?”
“Nothing.”
“The Perrys are giving a dinner and theatre party and Miles won’t be here—he’s flying to South Bead to see the Notre Dame—California game. I thought you might go with me in his place.”
After a long moment Joel said, “Why—surely. If there’s a conference I can’t make dinner but I can get to the theatre.”
“Then I’ll say we can come.”
Joel walked to his office. In view of the strained relations of the Calmans, would Miles be pleased, or did she intend that Miles shouldn’t know of it? That would be out of the question—if Miles didn’t mention it Joel would. But it was an hour or more before he could get down to work again.
Wednesday there was a four-hour wrangle in a conference room crowded with planets and nebulae of cigarette smoke. Three men and a woman paced the carpet in turn, suggesting or condemning, speaking sharply or persuasively, confidently or despairingly. At the end Joel lingered to talk to Miles.
The man was tired—not with the exaltation of fatigue but life-tired, with his lids sagging and his beard prominent over the blue shadows near his mouth.
“I hear you’re flying to the Notre Dame game.”
Miles looked beyond him and shook his head.
“I’ve given up the idea.”
“Why?”
“On account of you.” Still he did not look at Joel.
“What the hell, Miles?”
“That’s why I’ve given it up.” He broke into a perfunctory laugh at himself. “I can’t tell what Stella might do just out of spite—she’s invited you to take her to the Perrys’, hasn’t she? I wouldn’t enjoy the game.”
The fine instinct that moved swiftly and confidently on the set muddled so weakly and helplessly through his personal life.
“Look, Miles,” Joel said frowning. “I’ve never made any passes whatsoever at Stella. If you’re really seriously cancelling your trip on account of me, I won’t go to the Perrys’ with her. I won’t see her. You can trust me absolutely.”
Miles looked at him, carefully now.
“Maybe.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Anyhow there’d just be somebody else. I wouldn’t have any fun.”
“You don’t seem to have much confidence in Stella. She told me she’d always been true to you.”
“Maybe she has.” In the last few minutes several more muscles had sagged around Miles’s mouth. “But how can I ask anything of her after what’s happened? How can I expect her——” He broke off and his face grew harder as he said, “I’ll tell you one thing, right or wrong and no matter what I’ve done, if I ever had anything on her I’d divorce her. I can’t have my pride hurt—that would be the last straw.”
His tone annoyed Joel, but he said:
“Hasn’t she calmed down about the Eva Goebel thing?”
“No.” Miles snuffled pessimistically. “I can’t get over it either.”
“I thought it was finished.”
“I’m trying not to see Eva again, but you know it isn’t easy just to drop something like that—it isn’t some girl I kissed last night in a taxi. The psychoanalyst says——”
“I know,” Joel interrupted. “Stella told me.” This was depressing. “Well, as far as I’m concerned if you go to the game I won’t see Stella. And I’m sure Stella has nothing on her conscience about anybody.”
“Maybe not,” Miles repeated listlessly. “Anyhow I’ll stay and take her to the party. Say,” he said suddenly, “I wish you’d come too. I’ve got to have somebody sympathetic to talk to. That’s the trouble—I’ve influenced Stella in everything. Especially I’ve influenced her so that she likes all the men I like—it’s very difficult.”
“It must be,” Joel agreed.
IV
Joel could not get to the dinner. Self-conscious in his silk hat against the unemployment, he waited for the others in front of the Hollywood Theatre and watched the evening parade: obscure replicas of bright, particular picture stars, spavined men in polo coats, a stomping dervish with the beard and staff of an apostle, a pair of chic Filipinos in collegiate clothes, reminder that this corner of the Republic opened to the seven seas, a long fantastic carnival of young shouts which proved to be a fraternity initiation. The line split to pass two smart limousines that stopped at the curb.
There she was, in a dress like ice-water, made in a thousand pale-blue pieces, with icicles trickling at the throat. He started forward.
“So you like my dress?”
“Where’s Miles?”
“He flew to the game after all. He left yesterday morning—at least I think——” She broke off. “I just got a telegram from South Bend saying that he’s starting back. I forgot—you know all these people?”
The party of eight moved into the theatre.
Miles had gone after all and Joel wondered if he should have come. But during the performance, with Stella a profile under the pure grain of light hair, he thought no more about Miles. Once he turned and looked at her and she looked back at him, smiling and meeting his eyes for as long as he wanted. Between the acts they smoked in the lobby and she whispered:
“They’re all going to the opening of Jack Johnson’s night club—I don’t want to go, do you?”
“Do we have to?”
“I suppose not.” She hesitated. “I’d like to talk to you. I suppose we could go to our house—if I were only sure——”
Again she hesitated and Joel asked:
“Sure of what?”
“Sure that—oh, I’m haywire I know, but how can I be sure Miles went to the game?”
“You mean you think he’s with Eva Goebel?”
“No, not so much that—but supposing he was here watching everything I do. You know Miles does odd things sometimes. Once he wanted a man with a long beard to drink tea with him and he sent down to the casting agency for one, and drank tea with him all afternoon.”
“That’s different. He sent you a wire from South Bend—that proves he’s at the game.”
After the play they said good night to the others at the curb and were answered by looks of amusement. They slid off along the golden garish thoroughfare through the crowd that had gathered around Stella.
“You see he could arrange the telegrams,” Stella said, “very easily.”
That was true. And with the idea that perhaps her uneasiness was justified, Joel grew angry: if Miles had trained a camera on them he felt no obligations towards Miles. Aloud he said:
“That’s nonsense.”
There were Christmas trees already in the shop windows and the full moon over the boulevard was only a prop, as scenic as the giant boudoir lamps of the corners. On into the dark foliage of Beverly Hills that flamed as eucalyptus by day, Joel saw only the flash of a white face under his own, the arc of her shoulder. She pulled away suddenly and looked up at him.
“Your eyes are like your mother’s,” she said. “I used to have a scrap book full of pictures of her.”
“Your eyes are like your own and not a bit like any other eyes,” he answered.
Something made Joel look out into the grounds as they went into the house, as if Miles were lurking in the shrubbery. A telegram waited on the hall table. She read aloud:
‘CHICAGO.
Home tomorrow night. Thinking of you. Love.
MILES.’
“You see,” she said, throwing the slip back on the table, “he could easily have faked that.” She asked the butler for drinks and sandwiches and ran upstairs, while Joel walked into the empty receptions rooms. Strolling about he wandered to the piano where he had stood in disgrace two Sundays before.
“Then we could put over,” he said aloud, “a story of divorce, the younger generation and the Foreign Legion.”
His thoughts jumped to another telegram.
“You were one of the most agreeable people at our party——”
An idea occurred to him. If Stella’s telegram had been
