When they had gone Miss Doolan came in triumphant.
“Mr. Stahr, the lady with the belt is on the phone.”
Stahr walked in to his office alone and sat down behind his desk and picked up the phone with a great sinking of his stomach. He did not know what he wanted. He had not thought about the matter as he had thought of the matter of Pete Zavras. At first he had only wanted to know if they were “professional” people, if the woman was an actress who had got herself up to look like Minna as he had once had a young actress made up like Claudette Colbert and photographed her from the same angles.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hello.”
As he searched the short, rather surprised word for a vibration of
last night, the feeling of terror began to steal over him and he choked it off with an effort of will.
“Well—you were hard to find,” he said. “Smith—and you moved here recently. That was all we had. And a silver belt.”
“Oh yes,” the voice said, still uneasy, unpoised, “I had on a silver belt last night.”
Now, where from here?
“Who are you?” the voice said, with a touch of flurried bourgeois dignity.
“My name is Monroe Stahr,” he said.
A pause. It was a name that never appeared on the screen and she seemed to have trouble placing it.
“Oh yes—yes. You were the husband of Minna Davis.”
“Yes.”
Was it a trick? As the whole vision of last night came back to him—the very skin with that peculiar radiance as if phosphorus had touched it, he thought if it were a trick to reach him from somewhere. Not Minna and yet Minna. The curtains blew suddenly into the room, the papers whispered on his desk and his heart cringed faintly at the intense reality of the day outside his window. If he could go out now this way what would happen if he saw her again—the starry veiled expression, the mouth strongly formed for poor brave human laughter.
“I’d like to see you. Would you like to come to the studio?”
Again the hesitancy—then a blank refusal.
“Oh, I don’t think I ought to. I’m awfully sorry.”
This last was purely formal, a brush off, a final axe. Ordinary skin-deep vanity came to Stahr’s aid, adding persuasion to his urgency.
“I’d like to see you,” he said. “There’s a reason.”
“Well—I’m afraid that—”
“Could I come and see you?”
A pause again not from hesitation, he felt, but to assemble her answer.
“There’s something you don’t know,” she said finally.
“Oh, you’re probably married.” He was impatient. “It has nothing to do with that. I asked you to come here openly, bring your husband if you have one.”
“It’s—it’s quite impossible.”
“Why?”
“I feel silly even talking to you but your secretary insisted—I thought I’d dropped something in the flood last night and you’d found it.”
“I want very much to see you for five minutes.”
“To put me in the movies.”
“That wasn’t my idea.”
There was such a long pause that he thought he had offended her.
“Where could I meet you?” she asked unexpectedly.
“Here? At your house?”
“No—somewhere outside.”
Suddenly Stahr could think of no place. His own house—a restaurant. Where did people meet—a house of assignation, a cocktail bar?
“I’ll meet you somewhere at nine o’clock,” she said.
“That’s impossible, I’m afraid.”
“Then never mind.”
“All right then nine o’clock, but can we make it near here? There’s a drug store on Wilshire—”
It was quarter to six. There were two men outside who had come every day at this time only to be postponed. This was an hour of fatigue—the men’s business was not so important that it must be seen to, nor so insignificant that it could be ignored. So he postponed it again and sat motionless at his desk for a moment thinking about Russia. Not so much about Russia as about the picture about Russia which would consume a hopeless half hour presently. He knew there were many stories about Russia, not to mention The Story, and he had employed a squad of writers and research men for over a year but all the stories involved had the wrong feel. He felt it could be told in terms of the American thirteen states but it kept coming out different, in new terms that opened unpleasant possibilities and problems. He considered he was very fair to Russia—he had no desire to make anything but a sympathetic picture but it kept turning into a headache.
“Mr. Stahr—Mr. Drummon’s outside and Mr. Kirstoff and Mrs. Cornhill about the Russian picture.”
“All right—send them in.”
Afterwards from six-thirty to seven-thirty he watched the afternoon rushes. Except for his engagement with the girl he would ordinarily have spent the early evening in the projection room or the dubbing room but it had been a late night with the earthquake and he decided to go to dinner. Coming in through his front office he found Pete Zavras waiting, his arm in a sling.
“You are the Aeschylus and the Diogenes of the moving picture,” said Zavras simply. “Also the Asclepius and the Menander.”
He bowed.
“Who are they?” asked Stahr smiling.
“They are my countrymen.”
“I didn’t know you made pictures in Greece.”
“You’re joking with me, Monroe,” said Zavras. “I want to say you are as dandy a fellow as they come. You have saved me one hundred percent.”
“You feel all right now?”
“My arm is nothing. It feels like someone kisses me there. It was worth doing what I did if this is the outcome.”
“How did you happen to do it here?” Stahr asked curiously.
“Before the oracle,” said Zavras. “The solver of Eleusinian mysteries. I wish I had my hands on the son-of-a-bitch who started the story.”
“You make me sorry I didn’t get an education,” said Stahr.
“It isn’t worth a damn,” said Pete. “I took my baccalaureate in Salonika and look how I ended up.”
“Not quite,” said Stahr.
“If you want anybody’s throat cut anytime day or night,” said Zavras, “my number is in the book.”
Stahr closed his eyes and opened them again. Zavras’ silhouette had blurred a little against the sun. He hung on to the table behind him and said in an ordinary voice:
“Good luck, Pete.”
The room was almost black but he made his feet move following a pattern into his office and waited till the door clicked shut before he felt for the pills. The water decanter clattered against the table; the glass clacked. He sat down in a big chair waiting for the benzedrine to take effect before he went to dinner.
Episode 12
As Stahr walked back from the commissary a hand waved at him from an open roadster. From the heads showing over the back he recognized a young actor and his girl, and watched them disappear through the gate already part of the summer twilight. Little by little he was losing the feel of such things, until it seemed that Minna had taken their poignancy with her; his apprehension of splendor was fading so that presently the luxury of eternal mourning would depart. A childish association of Minna with the material heavens made him, when he reached his office, order out his roadster for the first time this year. The big limousine seemed heavy with remembered conferences or exhausted sleep.
Leaving the studio he was still tense but the open car pulled the summer evening up close and he looked at it. There was a moon down at the end of the boulevard and it was a good illusion that it was a different moon every evening, every year. Other lights shone in Hollywood since Minna’s death: in the open markets lemons and grapefruit and green apples slanted a misty glare into the street. Ahead of him the stop-signal of a car winked violet and at another crossing he watched it wink again. Everywhere floodlights raked the sky. On an empty corner two mysterious men moved a gleaming drum in pointless arcs over the heavens.
In the drug store a woman stood by the candy counter. She was tall, almost as tall as Stahr, and embarrassed. Obviously it was a situation for her and if Stahr had not looked as he did—most considerate and polite—she would not have gone through with it. They said hello and walked out without another word, scarcely a glance—yet before they reached the curb Stahr knew: this was just exactly a pretty American woman and nothing more—no beauty like Minna.
“Where are we going?” she asked. “I thought there’d be a chauffeur. Never mind—I’m a good boxer.”
“Boxer?”
“That didn’t sound very polite.” She forced a smile. “But you people are supposed to be such horrors.”
The conception of himself as sinister amused Stahr-then suddenly it failed to amuse him.
“Why did you want to see me?” she asked as she got in.
He stood motionless, wanting to tell her get out immediately. But she had relaxed in the car and he knew the unfortunate situation was of his own making—he shut his teeth and walked around to get in. The street lamp fell full upon her face and it was difficult to believe that this was the girl of last night. He saw no resemblance to Minna at all.
“I’ll run you home,” he said. “Where do you live?”
“Run me home?” She was startled. “There’s no hurry—I’m sorry if I offended you.”
“No. It was nice of you to come. I’ve been stupid. Last night I had an idea that you were an exact double for someone I knew. It was dark and the light was in my eyes.”
She was offended—he had reproached her for not looking like
