The Fame Game (33 page)

Lizzie felt her body relaxing. It was crazy to feel old just because Elaine was younger than she was. If there were any men here except creeps and gangsters and husbands and tourists she wouldn’t feel so old. She took out a cigarette and Jared was right there with his cigarette lighter aflame for her.

“Hey, I got something to show you,” he said. He reached behind him and took out a manila envelope. “Photos. I just had them made. Friend of mine is a photographer.”

He spread the photos out on the bar in front of her. He certainly was photogenic, especially with his shirt off. There were the standard arty shots, silhouetted against a desert sunset, on a motorcycle, with a standard-brands pretty girl.

“Your girl?” she asked.

“No, the photographer’s wife.” He smiled. “I don’t have a girl, or a wife.”

“Have you ever been married?”

“No, but I have a kid, back home. A boy.”

They always said they had an illegitimate kid, and it was always a boy. Lizzie guessed they thought it made them sound more masculine. She figured he was probably a bisexual hustler, but then again, he might not be.

“How old is your son?” she asked.

“Six.”

“You don’t look old enough.”

“I’m twenty-three.”

Why were they always twenty-three? They could be nineteen, they could be thirty, but they always said they were twenty-three. She was no fool.

“I haven’t seen him in years,” he went on. “See, I had these pictures taken because I thought I might be able to do some modeling. I’ve been doing a little, and they told me to get some good photos. I’m planning to go to L.A. in a couple of weeks.”

“You should try New York,” Lizzie said, for something to say.

His bright blue eyes lit up. “New York? You’re from New York, aren’t you? Do you think there’s something for me there?”

Lizzie shrugged. “It’s the city of broken dreams, baby. That’s where it’s all happening.”

“Do you like my pictures?”

“They’re very good. It’s too bad you look just like Paul Newman, or you could make it in the movies one-two-three.”

“Yeah,” he said disgusted. “If someone tells me that one more time …” He put the photos back into the envelope. “You know, a day doesn’t go by that somebody doesn’t ask me for my autograph. Maybe I’ll go get my nose broken or something and dye my hair.”

“You don’t want to be in the movies. That’s no life.”

“Is your husband in the movie business?”

“He’s a publicist and personal manager. Sam Leo Libra.”

“Wow,” he said. “You’re really right in the middle of all that, aren’t you? And I thought you were just a little girl.”

“I suggest you get tinted contact lenses,” Lizzie said. “Prescription.”

“Oh, come on. What’s the matter with you today? Feeling rotten about something, aren’t you?”

“I am feeling rotten about life,” Lizzie said. She sipped her drink. It probably had two hundred and fifty calories and she shouldn’t have had the first two, either. Well, she wouldn’t eat dinner again.

“Hey,” he said, “if you ever get really bored around here, I know this groovy bar where they have a live group that’s out of sight. They’re friends of mine. If you ever wanted to go slumming with a member of the working class, I’d be more than glad to take you there after I get off here.”

“You’re sweet,” Lizzie said.

He lowered his voice. “You like grass?”

She shrugged and smiled.

“I’ve got something fantastic from Mexico.”

“I’m not buying.”

“Who said anything about buying?” He sounded hurt. “This is just a present from me to you, as a friend. I’m sorry. It’s just that you don’t look like those other ladies here.”

“How do I look?”

“Alive. Living. You’ve got this smile that lights up your whole body. I think you’re probably a very wild lady when you get going—am I right?”

Lizzie didn’t know whether to be flattered or insulted. There it was again, that thing in her that attracted the unlikeliest men. That hunger they smelled out right away, while she was busy trying to look like an asexual teen-ager. She wondered if this boy only wanted her because of what he thought Sam could do for him. He was smiling at her. She tried to read his eyes—nothing. Friendship, sweetness, her face mirrored in their gleam.

“I’m lonely,” he said.

“You?”

“Why not? I have no one to talk to here. When I’m not working I just sit in the sun and stay around my room and read and play my guitar. I write songs … oh, they’re not very good, but they amuse me. It can be very lonely here.”

“I guess it can,” Lizzie said.

“I hate nineteen-year-old girls,” he said. “They have nothing to say and they’re lousy in bed. They only think about themselves, how they look, do you admire them enough. Nineteen-year-old girls are all alike; nowhere.”

“That’s a shame.”

“What do you want to stay around here for, gambling every night? You never win here, in the end. They take everything away from you.”

“I win,” Lizzie said.

“Not in the end. Stop when you’re ahead. I’ve been around here a long time; I know.”

“There’s nothing else to do here,” Lizzie said.

“I could take you out on the desert under the stars on my motorcycle.”

“You really are a mass of stereotypes, aren’t you?”

She expected him to be furious, but he wasn’t. “Isn’t everybody, till you get to know them?”

“Am I?”

“No …” he said thoughtfully. “There has always been something a little different, a little mysterious, about you. Like a lost little girl, but secretly wild.”

“I bet your songs aren’t so bad,” Lizzie said.

“I’ll sing them for you if we get to know each other better.”

I bet you will
, she thought. Always auditioning. “I need a double vodka on the rocks for my friend,” she said. “Hundred proof.”

Later that evening when she was dressing in her room to go downstairs for a late dinner, Lizzie heard a rap on the door. She opened it and was not surprised to see the bartender standing there. He knew her room number from all the bills she had signed. She did not pretend to be surprised and he looked as if he knew she had been expecting him. The night outside was purple velvet and the room was cool. He had not brought his photographs, or his guitar, or the pot he had promised her. He had, however, brought his incredible face, a perfect body to go with it, and a beautiful cock, hard and smooth as marble. She let him do it to her because he was there and it would have seemed hysterical to throw him out, and because she ached with loneliness. She felt nothing. He was nobody. It was strange to feel nothing with a boy that beautiful. She was glad when it was over.

He told her she was wild and wonderful, that he wanted to get a lot more of her, and several other lies, and then he dressed and went away, after making her promise to see him in the bar the next day. Lizzie took another shower, and discovered with surprise when she went to make up her face again that she had seldom looked more radiant. She felt empty and a failure, and she looked beautiful. Sex was a very strange deception. She would have to discuss it at length with Dr. Picker when she got back. She inwardly cringed at the thought of admitting her failure to the old letch.

When she met Elaine in the bar Elaine said, “Well, you certainly look rested. What did you do, catch a nap?”

“Yes,” Lizzie lied. For dinner she had a lettuce salad with lemon juice instead of dressing, and black coffee. She began to feel better. He was twenty-three! If she’d made him sick he wouldn’t have been able to do it, no matter what he wanted to get out of the wife of Sam Leo Libra.

“Daddy never helps me around the house when the maid isn’t there,” Elaine was droning over her seventh martini. “He wouldn’t lift a finger to help me if I was dying of cancer. Not once does he ever offer to help in the kitchen. He wouldn’t make himself a sandwich if he was starving to death. Other husbands bring their wives breakfast in bed. Lizzie, what do you think I ought to do? Should I stay here and divorce him? What do you think, Lizzie?
Now
, while I’m still young?”

“I think we should go home tomorrow,” Lizzie said.

“Home?”

“Yes. New York. I’ll get the reservations now.”

“Oh. Well, all right …”

Lizzie went to the desk and booked two seats on the two-o’clock jet. That would give them time to sleep late and pack. Anything as long as they got out of here before that damned King Cactus Bar beckoned to her again with its message of temptation and defeat. Never, never had she ever done it before with a bartender, beach boy, or gigolo.

What’s going to become of me?
Lizzie Libra wondered, feeling panic for the first time in her life.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Late that Summer, Silky Morgan began rehearsals for
Mavis!
, which was now called (temporarily)
The Love Ticket
. The first time she saw Dick was on the first morning of the first line reading, in a hot, bare room where they all sat around a long table. He gave her a warm smile and shook her hand. She almost choked to death.

“You’ve lost weight,” Dick said.

She nodded.

“It’s becoming. Don’t lose any more, though.” Then he introduced her to the cast, which was mixed, and to the author, a middle-aged white cat who looked as if the only black person he’d ever known was his maid. She figured he was just trying to get on the bandwagon with this musical because black was in, but after a while she discovered he wasn’t so bad; he had an impish sense of humor, humility, and he owned every record she’d ever made. Two really old white guys had written the songs, and they weren’t even there. Silky had always thought that Broadway was very exciting, but now she began to think it was like the stock market, full of old guys selling blue-chip stocks, with gambling reserved for the wild and the crazy. The only decent thing the show had, it seemed to her, was Dick Devere.

She tried to do everything she had learned from Simon Budapest, and felt very dissatisfied with the first day of readings, but Dick said nothing to criticize her. Afterwards she hung around hoping he would talk to her, but he patted her on the shoulder and told her to run along home as he had to talk to the author about changes. She went into the hot street, feeling lonely and sad, trying to pretend she was in a hurry so no one in the cast would try to be friendly to her and ask her to go for coffee or anything.

Dick had given her the script in a beautiful dark-red leather folder, from one of those fancy leather stores, with her name embossed in gold on the front. That was evidently what a star got. She was a star. It seemed unreal. She stroked the smooth leather and tried to think of herself as a star, but all she felt like was a scared kid who was going to make a disgrace of herself in front of a lot of strangers.

That night she had a cup of tea and studied her lines in her room. She’d been working with the choreographer for a couple of weeks now, and the play made more sense than the first time she’d seen it. She thought the songs were square, but she’d only heard them played on a piano and croaked out by the two ancients who wrote them, so that was no way to judge. She wished she had someone to discuss things with. She couldn’t go to Mr. Libra; she was afraid of him. She couldn’t go to Mr. Budapest; she was afraid of him, too. She was more afraid of Dick than of anybody. It was ridiculous—here she was, a star, and she had nobody to ask about anything. On impulse she dialed Gerry at home.

Gerry was out, and her roommate Bonnie, who sounded like a scared mouse who’d just been awakened, said she’d give her the message if she saw her. The world seemed deserted.

Silky took a bath and went to bed at nine o’clock. Her muscles hurt from the dance routines—it seemed as if they had always hurt now and would hurt for the rest of her life. Was this what dancers did for a living? They must be insane. Who wanted to be in pain all the time?

The phone rang at midnight and woke her up. It was Hatcher Wilson, in town for a few days. Silky was unaccountably glad to hear from him. He seemed like an old friend. See, just when you thought you had nobody in the world, someone always turned up …

“I’ve got so much to tell you,” Silky said.

“Me, too.”

“You first.”

“I’m getting
married
, baby! How do you like that?”

Married?
Him?
She couldn’t believe it. She tried to keep the surprise and disappointment out of her voice. “Hey, that’s groovy. Who is she?”

“A chick I met on the road. We’re getting married this weekend in Connecticut. She’s a dancer and a singer. We’re going to do a single together. I wrote it myself for us. You want to come to the recording session on Friday?”

“I have to rehearse. I’m going to star in a Broadway musical.”

“I read about it. How’s it going?”

“Fine,” she lied. “It’s exciting and fun. A lot of work, but you know …”

“Everything’s work, baby. You don’t get anything for nothing in this business.”

“I know. Well, I’m sorry I won’t be able to go to your recording session … and I’d like to have met your fiancée.”

“You’ll meet her. How about you? You still going with that director or whatever he is?”

“He’s directing my show.”

“Mmm
hmm
.” He gave a dirty grunt.

“We’re just friends. I haven’t time for any of that now.”

“When did you ever?” Hatcher said, and laughed.

“Well,” Silky said. “It was nice talking to you. I have to go to sleep now; I get up very early.”

“Okay. Catch you later.” He hung up. She realized she hadn’t asked him where he was staying, and he hadn’t volunteered the information. The girl probably wouldn’t understand that they’d always been just friends.

Friends … had they even been friends? Now she realized they had been, and that all these months when she was eating her heart out for Dick she should have taken time to look at Hatcher and see that he wasn’t just a bum, that even he could fall in love and get married. Maybe she could have married him, if things had been different. But would she have wanted to? Now she would never know. He was the only guy she really knew, except for Dick, and now he was in love and getting married and lost forever. Well, lost for the first year, anyway. She’d never paid one bit of attention to Hatcher Wilson, but now she felt rejected. Time went by so fast and she did nothing. She’d be an old maid for sure, and being a famous old maid wouldn’t help at night when she was all alone in a hotel like somebody who didn’t belong anywhere … like somebody’s old suitcase … transient … ready to go at a moment’s notice … where?