The Englishman's Boy (20 page)

Heidt, muttering, zigzags back to his table of cronies. When he arrives, his failure is applauded with shouts of derision.

“So tell me, what is the nature of your conversations, Harry?”

I know any mention of Shorty McAdoo is definitely out of bounds, but I don’t see any harm in gossip of a general kind. “They’re not very different from what you and I talk about at the office. He likes to talk about ideas. It’s not easy to explain … he’s a kind of amateur historian and philosopher.”

“So what’s he doing in Hollywood? In my experience, millionaire amateurs like Joe Kennedy, William Randolph Hearst, and Damon Ira Chance get into the picture business for only two reasons. Prestige pussy and to make money.”

I let it out before thinking. “He wants to make the great American movie.”

“Such a small ambition?”

“You don’t repeat what I just said. You understand? Not a word.”

“Tell me more. My lips are sealed.” She refills our glasses with gin, a subtle inducement.

“Okay, laugh if you want. The guy uses words like
art
when he talks about movies. He’s idealistic. He wants to make films like Griffith.”

“Now there’s a noble ambition,” says Rachel. “To make movies portraying the Negro as stupid, shiftless, and single-mindedly determined to slake his lust with white women. What a great public-relations job he did for the Klan and the lynching industry.”

“An admiration for Griffith as artist doesn’t necessarily make someone a Klansman, does it?”

“I find the two hard to separate, Harry. But then I’m a little touchy on the subject of the Klan. As a Jew I’ve got reason to be.”

“Don’t start tarring me with that brush, Rachel. I’m not defending the Klan. I’m not defending Griffith’s film. I am making a point. The point is that a bad man might be a good artist. Example. Byron. Good poet – bad man. See?”

“And what about Chance? What’s he? Good man or bad man?”

“From your tone of voice it sounds to me you may have already formed an opinion on the subject. All I’ve got to say is that he’s treated me very decently.”

“Maybe I have doubts because of the company he keeps.”

“Are you referring to me?”

“No. That bastard Fitzsimmons.”

With Fitz, I feel I’m on thinner ice. I light a cigarette. “I’ll grant you that Fitz is not an attractive personality. I’ve had my run-ins with him. He’s hard and he’s ignorant. In that respect he’s not much
different from all the rest of the men in charge of studios. How’s he any different from Louis B. Mayer?”

“He isn’t a Jew.”

“I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean.”

“No, I suppose you wouldn’t.”

“Then maybe you ought to explain.”

Rachel holds out her glass for replenishing. “All I’ve got to say,” she begins as the martini splashes into it, “is that when I first came out to Hollywood there were signs up in all the rooming houses. They read: ‘No Dogs, No Actors, No Jews.’ ” She leaves it there.

“And? The signs didn’t have much effect, did they? Because there’s no shortage of all three in Hollywood now.”

“That’s right. Hollywood grew to love dogs and actors. You can’t beat that Rin Tin Tin. He’s swell. But Jews … well, Jews aren’t as naturally lovable as dogs and actors. Everybody knows about kikes. As Mary Pickford says to Douglas Fairbanks when he’s being difficult, ‘Careful, Doug. The Jew’s coming out in you.’ ” And poor Doug, he’s only half a Hebe.”

“So shame on her. But what’s that got to do with Fitz?”

“He’s an anti-Semite.”

I take a drink. “So’s Henry Ford. But he’s on the record. He bought a newspaper to promulgate his views. Where’s the proof when it comes to Fitz?”

“The way he looks at me.”

“That clinches it. The way he looks at you.”

Suddenly she’s very angry, her eyes flash green fire. “I grew up in New York. I know the look, Harry. Don’t make light of it. My brothers got called Christ-killers and beaten up by Irish Catholic toughs often enough for me to be able to recognize it when I see it.”

“I stand rebuked. All Irish Catholics are anti-Semites?”

“Why are you defending him?” she bursts out. “Why are you cross-examining me? Who do you think you are? Chief legal counsel for the Klan?”

“Point of order,” I say. “Fitz would not be welcome in the Klan –
he’s a Catholic. Maybe you two have more in common than you think.”

The steaks arrive. The waiter manoeuvres them into position in a bristling silence. The band has taken a break and the Grove is as quiet as it ever gets. Rachel and I eat without speaking. When I can’t stand it any more I say, “Listen.” She doesn’t look up. I rap the table hard with the butt of my knife. “Listen!” Her eyes lift, reluctantly. “You’ve got to believe me, Rachel. They haven’t asked me a single thing about anybody I work with. Nothing. I swear to you.” I actually raise my hand. All that’s needed to complete the picture is a Bible. “I’m not selling anybody out.”

Rachel gives me a despairing look, reaches out and catches my jacket sleeve in a white-knuckled grip. Like she’s teetering on a precipice. “Don’t you get it, Harry?” she whispers fiercely. “I’m warning what
might
happen. To me as much as to you. In a single year I make more money than my father did in ten. And the more money I make, the more I’m afraid of losing it. Chains of gold are the hardest chains to break.” She makes a sweeping gesture that takes in the Grove, the diners. “Do you think anyone in this room has even considered they might have to give this up? Even entertained the notion? I started in movies because they were fun. They’re not fun any more and I’m still here. Why? Because I got used to good clothes, money, fame of a sort. But I liked it better when we wrote a scenario Tuesday, filmed it on Wednesday.
Finis.
Everybody an outlaw. Patent-breakers, fly-by-night independents, here today, gone tomorrow. Making it up as we went along. You know what, Harry? It wasn’t respectable to be in pictures then. A reputable stage actor wouldn’t appear on screen; they considered photoplays the kiss of death. Hollywood was the end of the earth, the place that in the Middle Ages used to be marked on maps: “Here Be Monsters.” And we were monsters – misfits and crackpots, dreamers and schemers. But slowly, step by step, bit by bit, money transformed us until one day we woke up and found ourselves lords of the earth. Making more money than the President of the United States. Maybe exerting more influence. Our childhood was
over, Harry. We were no longer kids dressing up in mother’s clothes, telling each other nutty stories and falling all over ourselves laughing. Fifteen years ago you could make a picture for a thousand dollars. Now they put up von Stroheim’s production costs on a billboard in New York. He’s gone over a million! they scream.” She pours herself another drink; the alcohol is showing its effect. “We made stupid movies then. They were fun. Even more fun to make than to watch. We still make stupid movies, but they’re not fun to make any more. Too much at stake. Every stupid movie we launch we cross our fingers and pray it isn’t the
Titanic
, because if it is, we’re all on the deck chairs. The question is, What’ll we do to get into the lifeboats?”

Another interloper. Sammy Burns from the Fox table.

“Speaking of stupid movies – here is the king of the stupid movie,” says Rachel. “Nobody can write them stupider than Sammy.”

Sammy is too far gone to absorb this. “C’mon, Goldie,” he coaxes, “cut the rug with old Sammy. Be a peach.” He executes a couple of haphazard steps with one hand pressed to his stomach and the other held at eleven o’clock. His face is shining with sweat and his white tie has come undone.

“You be a peach,” says Rachel. “Climb in a bowl on your dining-room table and be a peach there, Sammy. I’m not in the mood for dancing.”

Burns abruptly halts his solo. “If I were you, I’d be nice to people. You might need a friend when Mr. Eastern Seaboard finishes running his studio into bankruptcy. I know people,” he says.

“A word of advice, Sammy,” says Rachel. “Modesty becomes you as much as anything can. Aspire to modesty. And the day I need help from you getting a job in this town is the day that Gog and Magog stalk the earth.”

Sammy rocks back and forth on his heels. “What?”

“Exactly,” says Rachel. “And please tell the other dreamboats at the Fox table not to bother putting themselves on offer here. I breathe my quota of cigar breath at the office. Now run along. This is the adults’ table.”

Sammy departs in high dudgeon.

Rachel says, “So what are you doing for Chance now?”

“Research.”

“Which you can’t talk about.”

“That’s right.”

“And after that?”

“I think he’s going to let me write the picture.”

“That’s a big step.”

“I know it.”

Rachel purses her lips, lifts her glass, “Congratulations. To Harry Vincent, scenarist of photoplays.” She notices her glass is empty. “Any more gin?”

I shake the flask. It’s empty. “Nothing but the brandy.”

“Pour, My Little Truth Seeker, pour.”

I do. Neither of us seems to want to take up where we left off. I can feel between us the sour disquiet of stubborn people. I put her behaviour down to jealousy. It irks her that Chance has spirited away her disciple. Although she always thinks herself in the right, she is never so certain that she doesn’t value a loyal seconder. For a year and a half I have seconded all her motions in the writing department, and when she laid down the law about Mencken, Dreiser, and Norris, I seconded that too. I seconded her when she expounded her theory of photoplays. I knew no others. It is Rachel Gold who taught me my job.

I don’t really know why I defended Fitz. My motives are complicated. I certainly don’t like him, or even respect him, while I have loved and admired Rachel from the moment she swept down on me at that lunch counter in L.A. like a wolf on the fold, seizing my heart in her jaws.

I love her in the only way I can, silently, humbly, discreetly, from a distance. I know that she will never be interested in a rail-thin, gangly, bespectacled man so ordinary-looking that to be truly ugly would lend him some badly needed distinction. I do not lie awake at night imagining the impossible, tormenting myself. Not any more anyway. Friendship is the best I can hope for. I love her with resignation.

Perhaps these are the reasons I see her more clearly than is usual
in a case of unrequited love. I know she drinks too much, throws herself at pretty, stupid men. I know that her progressive politics (sometimes she calls herself a socialist) collide with her taste for the high life, and that her brittle gaiety and white-powdered face are both attempts to mask Jewish melancholy and ethical rage.

Thirty years later I still do not know why I loved her with a husband’s love rather than the blind passion women like her seem to require – only that I did. But I do know what I admired in her. She had no calculation in her. Which is not to say she was ever blind to what she was doing. She understood the consequences of her adventures, was ready to live with them, was ready not to make excuses. Her mistakes were on a grand scale. She made enemies and friends with abandon, embracing both as badges of honour. She carried her head high. Hers was the beauty of courage and intelligence, to be read in her face, in her eyes, in her passionate, grasping, darting hands. She was a passionate, grasping, darting woman. Rachel Gold sometimes confused rudeness with honesty, but never honesty with anything else.

I am thinking these things when I spot William DeShane crossing the floor, headed in our general direction. The look on my face alerts Rachel. “What?” she says sharply. I don’t answer; I’m watching him. William DeShane has caught more than my attention; a lot of people are suspending their conversations, neglecting their shrimp and soup and meringues to follow him with a hungrier interest.

William DeShane is a graceful man, capable of sailing across a room without faltering under close inspection because he is confident inspection will find him faultless. At the moment he is attracting more stares than even a great star might expect to attract because the diners in the Grove are industry insiders, and for insiders a star in the making is more fascinating than a star made. Nobody knows just how big William DeShane might get, but the guess is very, very big indeed. They watch to see which table he is headed for, who among them swings enough weight to receive a courtesy call from William DeShane. This is not Tuesday. This is small-fry night.

He stops at our table, addresses Rachel. “Miss Gold?” I can sense
him basking in the knowledge that all the eyes in the room are upon him.

“That’s right,” she says.

“Allow me to introduce myself. My name is –”

She finishes for him. “William DeShane.”

He bows. “I am flattered that one of the ornaments of our industry should know my name. It goes without saying that I am a very great admirer of your work.”

“Say it anyway. Tell him to say it, Harry.”

“Say it.” I try to sound as bored as humanly possible. DeShane offers his hand for me to shake. “William DeShane.” The palm is cool and dry, a confident temperature. Mine isn’t.

“Harry Vincent.”

He’s no longer looking at me. His eyes are doing a slow pan of the room. I’ll give him this. The man is an actor. He imagines cameras everywhere, all on him. It gives me a moment’s satisfaction to note that his eyes are a smidgen too close together, that he’s one hundredth of an inch short of perfection.

“Would you care to dance, Miss Gold?”

“Excuse us, Harry,” says Rachel rising.

There’s a way that a woman folds herself into a man when they waltz that is like handwriting on the wall. I can read it in very big letters. Everybody watches them simply because they are a beautiful couple. The
mensch
pays the bill. The gigolo’s evening is just beginning.

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