But “falling for dames” had never been an obsession—his brother had gone to pieces over a dame, or rather over dame after dame after dame. But Stahr, in his younger days, had them once and never more than once—like one drink. He had quite another sort of adventure reserved for his mind—something better than a series of emotional sprees. Like many brilliant men he had grown up dead cold. Beginning at about twelve probably with the total rejection common to those of extraordinary mental powers, the “see here—this is all wrong—a mess—all a lie—and a sham—” he swept it all away, everything, as men of his type do and then instead of being a son-of-a-bitch as most of them are he looked around at the barrenness that was left and said to himself “This will never do.” And so he had learned tolerance, kindness, forbearance, and even affection like lessons.
The Filipino boy brought in a carafe of water and bowls of nuts and fruit and said good night. Stahr opened the first script and began to read.
He read for three hours—stopping from time to time, editing without a pencil. Sometimes he looked up, warm from some vague happy thought that was not in the script, and it took him a minute each time to remember what it was. Then he knew it was Kathleen and looked at the letter—it was nice to have a letter.
It was three o’clock when a vein began to bump in the back of his hand signalling that it was time to quit. Kathleen was really far away now with the waning night—the different aspects of her telescoped into the memory of a single thrilling stranger bound to him only by a few slender hours. It seemed perfectly all right to open the letter.
Dear Mr. Stahr:
In half an hour I will be keeping my date with you. When we say good bye I will hand you this letter. It is to tell you that I am to be married soon and that I won’t be able to see you after today.
I should have told you last night but it didn’t seem to concern you. And it would seem silly to spend this beautiful afternoon telling you about it and watching your interest fade. Let it fade all at once—now. I will have told you enough to convince you that I am Nobody’s Prize Potato. (I have] just learned that expression—from my hostess of last night who called and stayed an hour. She seems to believe that everyone is Nobody’s Prize Potato—except you. I think I am supposed to tell you she thinks this, so give her a job if you can.)
I am very flattered that anyone who sees so many lovely women I can’t finish this sentence but you know what I mean. And I will be late if I don’t go to meet you right now.
With All Good Wishes
Kathleen Moore.
Stahr’s first feeling was like fear; his first thought was that the letter was invalidated—she had even tried to retrieve it. But then he remembered “Mister Stahr” just at the end, and that she had asked him his address—she had probably already written him another letter, which would also say good bye. Illogically he was shocked by the letter’s indifference to what had happened later. He read it again realizing that it foresaw nothing. Yet in front of the house she had decided to let it stand, belittling everything that had happened, curving her mind away from the fact that there had been no other man in her consciousness that afternoon. But he could not even believe this now and the whole adventure began to peel away even as he recapitulated it searchingly to himself. The car, the hill, the hat, the music, the letter itself blew off like the scraps of tar paper from the rubble of his house. And Kathleen departed, packing up her remembered gestures, her softly moving head, her sturdy eager body, her bare feet in the wet swirling sand. The skies paled and faded—the wind and rain turned dreary, washing the silver fish back to sea. It was only one more day, and nothing was left except the pile of scripts upon the table.
He went upstairs. Minna died again on the first landing and he forgot her lingeringly and miserably again, step by step to the top. The empty floor stretched around him—the doors with no one sleeping behind. In his room Stahr took off his tie, untied his shoes and sat on the side of his bed. It was all closed out except for something that he could not remember; then he remembered, her car was still down in the parking lot of the hotel. He set his clock to give him six hours’ sleep.
Section 15 (first part)
This is Cecelia taking up the story. I think it would be most interesting to follow my own movements at this point, as this is a time in my life that I am ashamed of. What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story.
When I sent Wylie White over to Martha Dodd’s table he had no success in finding out who the girl was, but it had suddenly become my chief interest in life. Also I guessed—correctly—that it would be Martha Dodd’s: to have had at your table a girl who is admired by royalty, who may be tagged for a coronet in our little feudal system—and not even know her name.
I had only a speaking acquaintance with Martha and it would be too obvious to approach her directly, but I went out to the studio Monday and dropped in on Rose Meloney.
Rose Meloney was quite a friend of mine. I thought of her rather as a child thinks of a family dependent. I knew she was a writer but I grew up thinking that writer and secretary were the same except that a writer usually smelled of cocktails and came more often to meals. They were spoken of the same way when they were not around—except for a species called playwrights who came from the East. These were treated with respect if they did not stay long—if they did they sank with the others into the white collar class.
Rose’s office was in the “old writers’ building.” There was one on every lot, a row of iron maidens left over from silent days and still resounding the dull moans of cloistered hacks and bums. There was the story of the new producer who had gone down the line one day and then reported excitedly to the head office.
“Who are those men?”
“They’re supposed to be writers.”
“I thought so. Well, I watched them for ten minutes and there were two of them that didn’t write a line.”
Rose was at her typewriter about to break off for lunch. I told her frankly that I had a rival.
“It’s a dark horse,” I said. “I can’t even find out her name.”
“Oh,” said Rose. “Well, maybe I know something about that. I heard something from somebody.”
The somebody, of course, was her nephew Ned Sollinger, Stahr’s office boy. He had been her pride and hope. She had sent him through New York University where he played on the football team. Then in his first year at medical school after a girl turned him down he dissected out the least publicized section of a lady corpse and sent it to the girl. Don’t ask me why. In disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes he had begun life at the bottom again, and was still there.
“What do you know?” I asked.
“It was the night of the earthquake. She fell into the lake on the back lot and he dove in and saved her life. Someone else told me it was his balcony she jumped off of and broke her arm.”
“Who was she?”
“Well, that’s funny too—”
Her phone rang and I waited restlessly during a long conversation she had with Joe Rienmund. He seemed to be trying to find out over the phone how good she was or whether she had ever written any pictures at all. And she was reputed to have been on the set the day Griffith invented the close-up! While he talked she groaned silently, writhed, made faces into the receiver, held it all in her lap so that the voice reached her faintly—and kept up a side chatter to me.
“What is he doing—killing time between appointments?… He’s asked me every one of these questions ten times… that’s all on a memorandum I sent him….”
And into the phone: “If this goes up to Monroe it won’t be my doing. I want to go right through to the end.”
She shut her eyes in agony again.
“Now he’s casting it… he’s casting the minor characters… he’s going to have Buddy Ebsen…. My God he just hasn’t anything to do… now he’s on Harry Davenport—he means Donald Crisp… he’s got a big casting directory open in his lap and I can hear him turn the pages… he’s a big important man this morning, a second Stahr, and for Christ sake I’ve got two scenes to do before lunch.”
Rienmund quit finally or was interrupted at his end. A waiter came in from the commissary with Rose’s luncheon and a Coca-Cola for me—I wasn’t lunching that summer. Rose wrote down one sentence on her typewriter before she ate. It interested me the way she wrote. One day I was there when she and a young man had just lifted a story out of “The Saturday Evening Post”—changing the
