I waited until ten past six, then made myself delay five minutes more.
A creature answered the door. He smelled of cigars and Knize cologne. His shoes sported elevated heels; without these added inches, one might have taken him for a Little Person. His bald freckled head was dwarf-big: attached to it were a pair of pointed, truly elfin ears. He had Pekingese eyes, unpitying and slightly bulged. Tufts of hair sprouted from his ears, from his nose; his jowls were gray with afternoon beard, and his handshake almost furry.
“Kid’s in the shower,” he said, motioning a cigar toward a sound of water hissing in another room. The room in which we stood (we were standing because there was nothing to sit on) seemed as though it were being just moved into; you expected to smell wet paint. Suitcases and unpacked crates were the only furniture. The crates served as tables. One supported the mixings of a martini; another a lamp, a Libertyphone, Holly’s red cat and a bowl of yellow roses. Bookcases, covering one wall, boasted a half-shelf of literature. I warmed to the room at once, I liked its fly-by-night look.
The man cleared his throat. “You expected?”
He found my nod uncertain. His cold eyes operated on me, made neat, exploratory incisions. “A lot of characters come here, they’re not expected. You know the kid long?”
“Not very.”
“So you don’t know the kid long?”
“I live upstairs.”
The answer seemed to explain enough to relax him. “You got the same layout?”
“Much smaller.”
He tapped ash on the floor. “This is a dump. This is unbelievable. But the kid don’t know how to live even when she’s got the dough.” His speech had a jerky metallic rhythm, like a teletype. “So,” he said, “what do you think: is she or ain’t she?”
“Ain’t she what?”
“A phony.”
“I wouldn’t have thought so.”
“You’re wrong. She is a phony. But on the other hand you’re right. She isn’t a phony because she’s a real phony. She believes all this crap she believes. You can’t talk her out of it. I’ve tried with tears running down my cheeks. Benny Polan, respected everywhere, Benny Polan tried. Benny had it on his mind to marry her, 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
