“I did,” Joe winked at waiting customers over a hot towel. “He asked for a singe so I took it all off. Now his face is as bald as yours. In fact you look a bit alike.”
This was the morning the kidding was so ubiquitous that, to avoid it, Pat lingered in Mario’s bar across the street. He was not drinking—at the bar, that is, for he was down to his last thirty cents, but he refreshed himself frequently from a half-pint in his back pocket. He needed the stimulus for he had to make a touch presently and he knew that money was easier to borrow when one didn’t have an air of urgent need.
His quarry, Jeff Boldini, was in an unsympathetic state of mind. He too was an artist, albeit a successful one, and a certain great lady of the screen had just burned him up by criticizing a wig he had made for her. He told the story to Pat at length and the latter waited until it was all out before broaching his request.
“No soap,” said Jeff. “Hell, you never paid me back what you borrowed last month.”
“But I got a job now,” lied Pat. “This is just to tide me over. I start tomorrow.”
“If they don’t give the job to Orson Welles,” said Jeff humorously.
Pat’s eyes narrowed, but he managed to utter a polite, borrower’s laugh.
“Hold it,” said Jeff, “You know, I think you look like him?”
“Yeah.”
“Honest. Anyhow I could make you look like him. I could make you a beard that would be his double.”
“I wouldn’t be his double for fifty grand.”
With his head on one side Jeff regarded Pat.
“I could,” he said, “Come on in to my chair and let me see.”
“Like hell.”
“Come on. I’d like to try it. You haven’t got anything to do. You don’t work till tomorrow.”
“I don’t want a beard.”
“It’ll come off.”
“I don’t want it.”
“It won’t cost you anything. In fact I’ll be paying you—I’ll loan you the ten smackers if you’ll let me make you a beard.”
Half an hour later Jeff looked at his completed work.
“It’s perfect,” he said. “Not only the beard but the eyes and everything.”
“All right. Now take it off,” said Pat moodily.
“What’s the hurry? That’s a fine muff. That’s a work of art. We ought to put a camera on it. Too bad you’re working tomorrow—they’re using a dozen beards out on Sam Jones’ set and one of them went to jail in a homo raid. I bet with that muff you could get the job.”
It was weeks since Pat had heard the word job and he could not himself say how he managed to exist and eat. Jeff saw the light in his eye.
“What say? Let me drive you out there just for fun,” pleaded Jeff. “I’d like to see if Sam could tell it was a phony muff.”
“I’m a writer, not a ham.”
“Come on! Nobody would never know you back of that. And you’d draw another ten bucks.”
As they left the make-up department Jeff lingered behind a minute. On a strip of cardboard he crayoned the name Orson Welles in large block letters. And outside without Pat’s notice, he stuck it in the windshield of his car
He did not go directly to the back lot. Instead he drove not too swiftly up the main studio street. In front of the administration building he stopped on the pretext that engine was missing, and almost in no time a small but definitely interested crowd began to gather. But Jeff’s plans did not include stopping anywhere long, so he hopped in and they started on a tour around the commissary.
“Where are we going?” demanded Pat.
He had already made one nervous attempt to tear the beard from him, but to his surprise it did not come away.
He complained of this to Jeff.
“Sure,” Jeff explained. “That’s made to last. You’ll have to soak it off.”
The car paused momentarily at the door of the commissary. Pat saw blank eyes staring at him and he stared back at them blankly from the rear seat.
“You’d think I was the only beard on the lot,” he said gloomily.
“You can sympathize with Orson Welles.”
“To hell with him.”
This colloquy would have puzzled those without, to whom he was nothing less than the real McCoy.
Jeff drove on slowly up the street. Ahead of them a little group of men were walking—one of them, turning, saw the car and drew the attention of the others to it. Whereupon the most elderly member of the party, threw up his arms in what appeared to be a defensive gesture, and plunged to the sidewalk as the car went past.
“My God, did you see that?” exclaimed Jeff. “That was Mr. Marcus.”
He came to a stop. An excited man ran up and put his head in the car window.
“Mr. Welles, our Mr. Marcus has had a heart attack. Can we use your car to get him to the infirmary?”
Pat stared. Then very quickly he opened the door on the other side and dashed from the car. Not even the beard could impede his streamlined flight. The policeman at the gate, not recognizing the incarnation, tried to have words with him but Pat shook him off with the ease of a triple-threat back and never paused till he reached Mario’s bar.
Three extras with beards stood at the rail, and with relief Pat merged himself into their corporate whickers. With a trembling hand he took the hard-earned ten dollar bill from his pocket.
“Set ’em up,” he cried hoarsely. “Every muff has a drink on me.”
