Discard, F. Scott Fitzgerald

The man and the boy talked intermittently as they drove down Ventura Boulevard in the cool of the morning. The boy, George Baker, was dressed in the austere gray of a military school.

“This is very nice of you, Mr. Jerome.”

“Not at all. Glad I happened by. I have to pass your school going to the studio every morning.”

“What a school!” George volunteered emphatically. “All I do is teach peewees the drill I learned last year. Anyhow I wouldn’t go to any war—unless it was in the Sahara or Morocco or the Afghan post.”

James Jerome, who was casting a difficult part in his mind, answered with “Hm!” Then, feeling inadequate, he added:

“But you told me you’re learning math—and French.”

“What good is French?”

“What good—say, I wouldn’t take anything for the French I learned in the war and just after.”

That was a long speech for Jerome; he did not guess that presently he would make a longer one.

“That’s just it,” George said eagerly. “When you were young it was the war, but now it’s pictures. I could be getting a start in pictures, but Dolly is narrow-minded.” Hastily he added, “I know you like her; I know everybody does, and I’m lucky to be her nephew, but—” he resumed his brooding, “but I’m sixteen and if I was in pictures I could go around more like Mickey Rooney and the Dead-Ends—or even Freddie Bartholomew.”

“You mean act in pictures?”

George laughed modestly.

“Not with these ears; but there’s a lot of other angles. You’re a director; you know. And Dolly could get me a start.”

The mountains were clear as bells when they twisted west into the traffic of Studio City.

“Dolly’s been wonderful,” conceded George, “but gee whizz, she’s arrived. She’s got everything—the best house in the valley, and the Academy Award, and being a countess if she wanted to call herself by it. I can’t imagine why she wants to go on the stage, but if she does I’d like to get started while she’s still here. She needn’t be small about that.”

“There’s nothing small about your aunt—except her person,” said Jim Jerome grimly. “She’s a ‘grande cliente.’ ”

“A what?”

“Thought you studied French.”

“We didn’t have that.”

“Look it up,” said Jerome briefly. He was used to an hour of quiet before getting to the studio—even with a nephew of Dolly Bordon. They turned into Hollywood, crossed Sunset Boulevard.

“How do you say that?” George asked.

“ ‘Une grande cliente,’ ” Jerome repeated. “It’s hard to translate exactly but I’m sure your aunt was just that even before she became famous.”

George repeated the French words aloud.

“There aren’t very many of them,” Jerome said. “The term’s misused even in France; on the other hand it is something to be.”

Following Cahuenga, they approached George’s school. As Jerome heard the boy murmur the words to himself once more he looked at his watch and stopped the car.

“Both of us are a few minutes early,” he said. “Just so the words won’t haunt you, I’ll give you an example. Suppose you run up a big bill at a store, and pay it; you become a ‘grand client.’ But it’s more than just a commercial phrase. Once, years ago, I was at a table with some people in the Summer Casino at Cannes, in France. I happened to look at the crowd trying to get tables, and there was Irving Berlin with his wife. You’ve seen him—”

“Oh, sure, I’ve met him,” said George.

“Well, you know he’s not the conspicuous type. And he was getting no attention whatever and even being told to stand aside.”

“Why didn’t he tell who he was?” demanded George.

“Not Irving Berlin. Well, I got a waiter, and he didn’t recognize the name; nothing was done and other people who came later were getting tables. And suddenly a Russian in our party grabbed the head waiter as he went by and said ‘Listen!’—and pointed: ‘Listen! Seat that man immediately. Il est un grand client—vous comprenez?—un grand client!’”

“Did he get a seat?” asked George.

The car started moving again; Jerome stretched out his legs as he drove, and nodded.

“I’d just have busted right in,” said George. “Just grabbed a table.”

“That’s one way. But it may be better to be like Irving Berlin—and your Aunt Dolly. Here’s the school.”

“This certainly was nice of you, Mr. Jerome—and I’ll look up those words.”

That night George tried them on the young leading woman he sat next to at his aunt’s table. Most of the time she talked to the actor on the other side, but George managed it finally.

“My aunt,” he remarked, “is a typical ‘grande cliente.’”

“I can’t speak French,” Phyllis said. “I took Spanish.”

“I take French.”

“I took Spanish.”

The conversation anchored there a moment. Phyllis Burns was twenty-one, four years younger than Dolly—and to his nervous system the oomphiest personality on the screen.

“What does it mean?” she inquired.

“It isn’t because she has everything,” he said, “the Academy Award and this house and being Countess de Lanclerc and all that…”

“I think that’s quite a bit,” laughed Phyllis. “Goodness, I wish I had it. I know and admire your aunt more than anybody I know.”

Two hours later, down by the great pool that changed colors with the fickle lights, George had his great break. His Aunt Dolly took him aside.

“You did get your driver’s license, George?”

“Of course.”

“Well, I’m glad, because you can be the greatest help. When things break up will you drive Phyllis Burns home?”

“Sure I will, Dolly.”

“Slowly, I mean. I mean she wouldn’t be a bit impressed if you stepped on it. Besides I happen to be fond of her.”

There were men around her suddenly—her husband, Count Hennen de Lanclerc, and several others who loved her tenderly, hopelessly—and as George backed away, glowing, one of the lights playing delicately on her made him stand still, almost shocked. For almost the first time he saw her not as Aunt Dolly, whom he had always known as generous and kind, but as a tongue of fire, so vivid in the night, so fearless and stabbing sharp—so apt at spreading an infection of whatever she laughed at or grieved over, loved or despised—that he understood why the world forgave her for not being a really great beauty.

“I haven’t signed anything,” she said explaining, “—East or West. But out here I’m in a mist at present. If I were only sure they were going to make Sense and Sensibility, and meant it for me. In New York I know at least what play I’ll do—and I know it will be fun.”

Later, in the car with Phyllis, George started to tell her about Dolly—but Phyllis anticipated him, surprisingly going back to what they had talked of at dinner.

“What was that about a cliente?”

A miracle—her hand touched his shoulder, or was it the dew falling early?

“When we get to my house I’ll make you a special drink for taking me home.”

“I don’t exactly drink as yet,” he said.

“You’ve never answered my question.” Phyllis’ hand was still on his shoulder. “Is Dolly dissatisfied with who she’s—with what she’s got?”

Then it happened—one of those four-second earthquakes, afterward reported to have occurred “within a twenty-mile radius of this station.” The instruments on the dashboard trembled; another car coming in their direction wavered and shimmied, side-swiped the rear fender of George’s car, passed on nameless into the night, leaving them unharmed but shaken.

When George stopped the car they both looked to see if Phyllis was damaged; only then George gasped: “It was the earthquake!”

“I suppose it was the earthquake,” said Phyllis evenly. “Will the car still run?”

“Oh, yes.” And he repeated hoarsely, “It was the earthquake—I held the road all right.”

“Let’s not discuss it,” Phyllis interrupted. “I’ve got to be on the lot at eight and I want to sleep. What were we talking about?”

“That earth—” He controlled himself as they drove off, and tried to remember what he had said about Dolly. “She’s just worried about whether they are going to do Sense and Sensibility. If they’re not she’ll close the house and sign up for some play—”

“I could have told her about that,” said Phyllis. “They’re probably not doing it—and if they do, Bette Davis has a signed contract.”

Recovering his self-respect about the earthquake, George returned to his obsession of the day.

“She’d be a ‘grande cliente,’ ” he said, “even if she went on the stage.”

“Well, I don’t know the role,” said Phyllis, “but she’d be unwise to go on the stage, and you can tell her that for me.”

George was tired of discussing Dolly; things had been so amazingly pleasant just ten minutes before. Already they were on Phyllis’ street.

“I would like that drink,” he remarked with a deprecatory little laugh. “I’ve had a glass of beer a couple of times and after that earthquake—well, I’ve got to be at school at half past eight in the morning.”

When they stopped in front of her house there was a smile with all heaven in it—but she shook her head.

“Afraid the earthquake came between us,” she said gently. “I want to hide my head right under a big pillow.”

George drove several blocks and parked at a corner where two mysterious men swung a huge drum light in pointless arcs over paradise. It was not Dolly who “had everything”—it was Phyllis. Dolly was made, her private life arranged. Phyllis, on the contrary, had everything to look forward to—the whole world that in some obscure way was represented more by the drum light and the red and white gleams of neon signs on cocktail bars than by the changing colors of Dolly’s pool. He knew how the latter worked—why, he had seen it installed in broad daylight.