she don’t go for it, Benny spent maybe thousands sending her to head-shrinkers.
Even the famous one, the one can only speak German, boy, did he throw in the
towel. You can’t talk her out of these» — he made a fist, as though to crush an
intangible — «ideas. Try it sometime. Get her to tell you some of the stuff she
believes. Mind you,» he said, «I like the kid. Everybody does, but there’s lots that
don’t. I do. I sincerely like the kid. I’m sensitive, that’s why. You’ve got to be
sensitive to appreciate her: a streak of the poet. But I’ll tell you the truth. You can
beat your brains out for her, and she’ll hand you horseshit on a platter. To give an
example — who is she like you see her today? She’s strictly a girl you’ll read where
she ends up at the bottom of a bottle of Seconals. I’ve seen it happen more times
than you’ve got toes: and those kids, they weren’t even nuts. She’s nuts.»
«But young. And with a great deal of youth ahead of her.»
«If you mean future, you’re wrong again. Now a couple of years back, out on the
Coast, there was a time it could’ve been different. She had something working for
her, she had them interested, she could’ve really rolled. But when you walk out on a
thing like that, you don’t walk back. Ask Luise Rainer. And Rainer was a star. Sure,
Holly was no star; she never got out of the still department. But that was before The
Story of Dr. Wassell. Then she could’ve really rolled. I know, see, cause I’m the guy
was giving her the push.» He pointed his cigar at himself. «O.J. Berman.»
He expected recognition, and I didn’t mind obliging him, it was all right by me,
except I’d never heard of O.J. Berman. It developed that he was a Hollywood actor’s
agent.
«I’m the first one saw her. Out at Santa Anita. She’s hanging around the track
every day. I’m interested: professionally. I find out she’s some jock’s regular, she’s
living with the shrimp. I get the jock told Drop It if he don’t want conversation with
the vice boys: see, the kid’s fifteen. But stylish: she’s okay, she comes across. Even
when she’s wearing glasses this thick; even when she opens her mouth and you
don’t know if she’s a hillbilly or an Okie or what. I still don’t. My guess, nobody’ll
ever know where she came from. She’s such a goddamn liar, maybe she don’t know
herself any more. But it took us a year to smooth out that accent. How we did it
finally, we gave her French lessons: after she could imitate French, it wasn’t so long
she could imitate English. We modeled her along the Margaret Sullavan type, but she
could pitch some curves of her own, people were interested, big ones, and to top it
all, Benny Polan, a respected guy, Benny wants to marry her. An agent could ask for
more? Then wham! The Story of Dr. Wassell. You see that picture? Cecil B. DeMille.
Gary Cooper. Jesus. I kill myself, it’s all set: they’re going to test her for the part of
Dr. Wassell’s nurse. One of his nurses, anyway. Then wham! The phone rings.» He
picked a telephone out of the air and held it to his ear. «She says, this is Holly, I say
honey, you sound far away, she says I’m in New York, I say what the hell are you
doing in New York when it’s Sunday and you got the test tomorrow? She says I’m in
New York cause I’ve never been to New York. I say get your ass on a plane and get
back here, she says I don’t want it. I say what’s your angle, doll? She says you got
to want it to be good and I don’t want it, I say well, what the hell do you want, and
she says when I find out you’ll be the first to know. See what I mean: horseshit on a
platter.»
The red cat jumped off its crate and rubbed against his leg. He lifted the cat on
the toe of his shoe and gave him a toss, which was hateful of him except he seemed
not aware of the cat but merely his own irritableness.
«This is what she wants?» he said, flinging out his arms. «A lot of characters they
aren’t expected? Living off tips. Running around with bums. So maybe she could
marry Rusty Trawler? You should pin a medal on her for that?»
He waited, glaring.
«Sorry, I don’t know him.»
«You don’t know Rusty Trawler, you can’t know much about the kid. Bad deal,» he
said, his tongue clucking in his huge head. «I was hoping you maybe had influence.
Could level with the kid before it’s too late.»
«But according to you, it already is.»
He blew a smoke ring, let it fade before he smiled; the smile altered his face,
made something gentle happen. «I could get it rolling again. Like I told you,» he said,
and now it sounded true, «I sincerely like the kid.»
«What scandals are you spreading, O.J.?» Holly splashed into the room, a towel
more or less wrapped round her and her wet feet dripping footmarks on the floor.
«Just the usual. That you’re nuts.
«Fred knows that already.»
«But you don’t.»
«Light me a cigarette, darling,» she said, snatching off a bathing cap and shaking
her hair. «I don’t mean you, O.J. You’re such a slob. You always nigger-lip.»
She scooped up the cat and swung him onto her shoulder. He perched there with
the balance of a bird, his paws tangled in her hair as if it were knitting yarn; and yet,
despite these amiable antics, it was a grim cat with a pirate’s cutthroat face; one eye
was gluey-blind, the other sparkled with dark deeds.
«O.J. is a slob,» she told me, taking the cigarette I’d lighted. «But he does know a
terrific lot of phone numbers. What’s David O. Selznick’s number, O.J.?»
«Lay off.»
»It’s not a joke, darling. I want you to call him up and tell him what a genius Fred
is. He’s written barrels of the most marvelous stories. Well, don’t blush, Fred: you
didn’t say you were a genius, I did. Come on, O.J. What are you going to do to make
Fred rich?»
«Suppose you let me settle that with Fred.»
«Remember,» she said, leaving us, «I’m his agent. Another thing: if I holler, come
zipper me up. And if anybody knocks, let them in.»
A multitude did. Within the next quarter-hour a stag party had taken over the
apartment, several of them in uniform. I counted two Naval officers and an Air Force
colonel; but they were outnumbered by graying arrivals beyond draft status. Except
for a lack of youth, the guests had no common theme, they seemed strangers
among strangers; indeed, each face, on entering, had struggled to conceal dismay at
seeing others there. It was as if the hostess had distributed her invitations while
zigzagging through various bars; which was probably the case. After the initial
frowns, however, they mixed without grumbling, especially O.J. Berman, who avidly
exploited the new company to avoid discussing my Hollywood future. I was left
abandoned by the bookshelves; of the books there, more than half were about
horses, the rest baseball. Pretending an interest in Horseflesh and How to Tell It
gave me sufficiently private opportunity for sizing Holly’s friends.
Presently one of these became prominent. He was a middle-aged child that had
never shed its baby fat, though some gifted tailor had almost succeeded in
camouflaging his plump and spankable bottom. There wasn’t a suspicion of bone in
his body; his face, a zero filled in with pretty miniature features, had an unused, a
virginal quality: it was as if he’d been born, then expanded, his skin remaining
unlined as a blown-up balloon, and his mouth, though ready for squalls and
tantrums, a spoiled sweet puckering. But it was not appearance that singled him out;
preserved infants aren’t all that rare. It was, rather, his conduct; for he was
behaving as though the party were his: like an energetic octopus, he was shaking
martinis, making introductions, manipulating the phonograph. In fairness, most of
his activities were dictated by the hostess herself: Rusty, would you mind; Rusty,
would you please. If he was in love with her, then clearly he had his jealousy in
check. A jealous man might have lost control, watching her as she skimmed around
the room, carrying her cat in one hand but leaving the other free to straighten a tie
or remove lapel lint; the Air Force colonel wore a medal that came in for quite a
polish.
The man’s name was Rutherfurd («Rusty») Trawler. In 1908 he’d lost both his
parents, his father the victim of an anarchist and his mother of shock, which double
misfortune had made Rusty an orphan, a millionaire, and a celebrity, all at the age of
five. He’d been a stand-by of the Sunday supplements ever since, a consequence
that had gathered hurricane momentum when, still a schoolboy, he had caused his
godfather-custodian to be arrested on charges of sodomy. After that, marriage and
divorce sustained his place in the tabloid-sun. His first wife had taken herself, and
her alimony, to a rival of Father Divine’s. The second wife seems unaccounted for,
but the third had sued him in New York State with a full satchel of the kind of
testimony that entails. He himself divorced the last Mrs. Trawler, his principal
complaint stating that she’d started a mutiny aboard his yacht, said mutiny resulting
in his being deposited on the Dry Tortugas. Though he’d been a bachelor since,
apparently before the war he’d proposed to Unity Mitford, at least he was supposed
to have sent her a cable offering to marry her if Hitler didn’t. This was said to be the
reason Winchell always referred to him as a Nazi; that, and the fact that he attended
rallies in Yorkville.
I was not told these things. I read them in The Baseball Guide, another selection
off Holly’s
