Do you know the term idée fixe?
Don’t be facetious, John. Your tie is crooked.
I straightened John’s knot and John straightened mine and we stared at each other, separated by age, desire, and background. In the end the separations mattered not a little and yet genres remained fluid. I did not desire John but I loved him in a way and so, feeling almost weightless with affection, I took him in my arms and held him, trying, though I was so much younger, to convey a sense of avuncular reassurance. I trust you, John. And you can always trust me. So I want you to know that I’ve decided to leave the country.
There you see, Myles, that I did not just deceive you, but I told others before telling you who deserved to be the first to know. Often it has proved easier to tell the hardest truths to those about whom I care less – not the least, but less than those who occupy all the rooms of my heart, as you did, as you continue even now to do.
I did not count on the effect my news would have. For me it seemed almost self-evident that this was a choice I might make, but John rocked back on his heels in shock. When, Desmond?
Probably tomorrow, depending on what happens at lunch today. I can’t get out of bed another morning wondering if I’m going to have to dodge a summons or worry what will happen if I don’t duck it and end up in front of the House Committee. I want to believe I’d have the courage to tell them to go fuck themselves but the idea of prison nearly undoes me. And then I could not help neutralizing the tension of the situation by talking to fill the space of emotion I had opened between us for fear that John might try to argue me out of it, or begin to cry, or hug me as I had just hugged him.
Have you seen Brute Force?
John nodded.
Okay, so let’s assume they were playing fast and loose with the facts and it’s not quite so bad, it’s not stoolies getting smashed in mechanical presses and it’s not crypto-fascist queer heads of security, but what if it’s even a little bit true? And by the way, shame on Hume and Jules. They come to my house, they act like friends, and then they make Captain Munsey a sadist because he’s a repressed homosexual, although I can see how Burt Lancaster would drive any man nuts. And you know Jules, cute as he is, he must have swum to the near side of the river a few times himself. Anyway, my point is, I love men but apart from you and a few others, I don’t much like men. I prefer the company of women and a world without women to temper the collective brutality of men, whoever they want to fuck when the lights go out, would be death for me. I would die in prison, if not by another man’s hand then probably by my own. Look at what just happened to us! Even a group of men pretending to be a mob of prisoners turns itself into the functional equivalent! They were a mob! They saw us as the enemy! They weren’t pretending to attack! In the frenzy, they truly were attacking! And if that happens in a movie studio in the richest country in the world, imagine what happens inside an honest-to-god bars-and-beefcake prison! I’d never survive it! I know this about myself, which means that if I turned up in Washington and had no choice but to appear before that kangaroo court I might sing out a list of names. I can’t face that possibility, so I have to leave. My own country is forcing me to flee it.
John gaped at me.
Do you want to come with me? We could make pictures in France, ones where we do whatever we want. Not the disembodied cocks but serious stuff, and fun stuff.
Are you saying you’re a Communist, Desmond?
No, not anymore. I can’t stomach Stalin. Any idiot can see he’s a bully and a thug. I hate the show trials and frankly I’ve never been able to befriend a Russian – not even the émigrés. Am I a Marxist? Absolutely. A Socialist? Yes, although I don’t mind riding in limousines or drinking champagne. But the fact is, why should it matter if I was ever a Communist or a Socialist or a Marxist or a Buddhist for that matter, or even if I still might be? It shouldn’t make one bit of difference in a country founded on the idea of freedom of expression and association and religion. This whole witch hunt is as un-American as Stalinism itself and if we’re not careful the country will end up just as oppressive as Russia! If a man can’t believe what he wants in America and hold unpopular ideas then I despair for the whole future of the human race. So do you want to come with me or not?
John hesitated, giving me a look that told me I had just made a terrible mistake. I’ll have to think about it, Desmond. We should get back to the set.
When we stepped inside Stage 3 Mary was leaning against a resting plank reading du Maurier’s The Parasites. At the sight of her John looked ready to kill but she didn’t even glance up from the book.
Where have you been, Marsh?
Searching for you.
We’ve shot two scenes while you were away. Nick’s been doing your job.
Nick bounced up from the chair that had John’s name printed on it and shuffled to the corner of the stage where I was lurking.
Miss Dawn told me to do it, Mr. Frank. Said she’d get me fired if I didn’t and she’d direct it herself. I know more about making pictures than all the men in this room put together, that’s what she said. Can you believe it?
I don’t like her but she’s right. You want to learn something about directing, watch Mary and forget everyone else, John included.
On the other side of the stage John and Mary’s argument had turned into a public performance the entire crew was watching.
I’ve been searching the whole lot for you, Mary.
Well that was silly. I had to go to wardrobe, and then I picked up the trades, and when I came back here… She dropped her book to the floor and Mozelle was there to pick it up, catching my eye with a wry look. …You’d disappeared. I’m tired of all this fuss. No wonder we’re behind schedule.
Without looking down Mary walked through a jumble of cables and hit her mark. Under the lights she expanded, grew taller, her blonde hair becoming more voluminous. It was beautiful and terrifying. As the set whirred into focus around her you stepped from your dressing room, took your place, and gazed into the lights. Either you failed to see me or were pretending not to. However we might have argued about it the night before I never wanted to do anything to put you at risk, but that did not stop me from wishing I could step out of the shadows, walk across the set, take you in my arms and tell you to play the scene as if you were acting with me instead of Mary. People would see us and that would be the end of our secret and perhaps it would be worth it for an hour. In my heart I believed there must be a place in the world where such an act was possible, but I knew it was not America. In my heart – People are always talking about what is in their hearts. I could never confine my desires to such a small organ. My heart was my whole body and you burned like wildfire through all of me, Myles.
Do you remember how you invented reasons to speak with me in public? I wanted to ask you about that line you changed, Mr. Frank, you might say. The one where Orph tells Faye… And then we would discuss a speech you understood perfectly well because you had been sitting in the room when I wrote it, trying it out on your tongue to judge whether it was speakable. Deceit of this kind was a way to talk between takes, approximating a closeness whose truth we could only enjoy in private. That day, however, the tone was different. You did not come over to ask me anything but stood unmoving in the spotlight, waiting for your cue with a coldness that made me wonder what had happened in my absence, if someone had said something to you or if you were just preoccupied – or if, as I could not help myself imagining, you had been meeting some other man, a twenty-dollar date arranged by a pimp in tight pants. There were enough of them around, plenty of younger and better-looking men than me who would not miss a chance to go to bed with Myles Haywood. Several times in previous months I had noticed a similar flash-freeze remoteness which you always dismissed as preoccupation with a part. I’m just thinking, you would huff, you want me to talk all the time but sometimes I need to think. To that I had no rejoinder. I could be aloof myself, lost in one of the stories or characters I imagined you might one day incarnat
e. When we fought, which was rare, ice was always your weapon of choice.
It would be another two hours before I knew what had happened, who had spoken to you, the ultimatum you had been given. Forgive me for thinking you could have been unfaithful. Forgive me for thinking you were being willfully cold. I could not have imagined what I came to discover. Had it already happened by then, or would it only occur later? This is another detail that troubles me. I do not know the sequence of events, and can still only guess. Perhaps when you seemed cold and aloof it had nothing to do with me or what I came so soon to discover. If you feel moved to reply to this, then I wish you might tell me, because if in that moment you already knew what had happened, then a decision I made shortly thereafter has no significance at all. But if you did not know, if your expression was just a look of preoccupation, of trying to focus on your character’s motivation or thinking about how to deliver a line or walk across the set from one mark to another, then the decision I made shifts everything, in some way, if only by a fraction: it makes me responsible, even though I might want to place ultimate blame on the studio or the government or all the spectral powers united against men like you and me.
You began shooting the dream sequence in the nightclub after Orph has been drugged. I was still unhappy with the scene. It needed genuine danger, a hint of betrayal from inside the family, but it was already too late to make changes on that scale.
Mary was wearing a sequined black evening gown, and because both her characters, Faye and Ursula, appeared in the shot, there was a double in the same costume, but John had also put the three Arran Sisters in blonde wigs and copies of the gown so that with mirrors and double exposures he could create the illusion of dozens of the same woman. Victor Grace, so like Plutone it was hardly a performance, lurked in the shadows behind the camera rig. John told me, maybe you know, that Grace started off as a personal enforcer for one of L.A.’s biggest mobsters, then escaped the underworld when a casting agent noticed him outside of Earl Carroll’s on Sunset and decided he had an appealing malevolence.
Grace once locked me in a wardrobe, Nick whispered to me. I was there half a day before anyone found me.
Why’d he do that?
He said I was a Red. Me, a Red!
Well aren’t you?
Nick blushed and I guessed that somewhere in his past the accusation might find purchase. It made me feel for him in a way that left a sour taste because he was otherwise so repulsive. I don’t mind if you’re a Red, Nick. All the same to me.
And that’s the problem, isn’t it, Mr. Frank?
Someone called silence and speed and the slate cracked and John shouted action. As you performed a swooning confusion, spinning left and right, the Arran Sisters closed tighter around you, laughing in voices so chilling they made me queasy. There was no pleasure in being afraid for the person I loved. John called for a second take and then they checked the gate and everyone was happy so they reset for a close-up. He was shooting with speed and concentration, as if he really did believe this might be the last day he was allowed to work on the lot.
The next set-up was the nightmare landscape of sand dunes and trees dripping black leaves and thorn-covered vines flanking a stagnant river. The Arran Sisters were hustled into new wardrobe and makeup, transformed into monstrous versions of the parts they played in the film’s waking reality while you changed into your corporal’s uniform. The wind machines were switched on and I watched as you ran through the trees, chased by the women in their black-feathered gowns. I added the scene after discovering the Arran Sisters had written to Senator McCarthy offering to organize anti-Red rallies all over the country. You flailed around the set, breaking off twigs and limbs, exposing the faces of actors hidden in the manufactured trunks, their features contorted with pain as they cried out to you. John pushed you through three takes before moving on to the scene with the dogs, a dozen black greyhounds who chased your stunt double across the set and down to the artificial river where his body was replaced with a liver-smeared dummy the dogs tore to shreds.
When it was time for lunch you came over to speak with me and Nick. Maybe I was imagining it but the two of you seemed nervous together. There was a similarity when Nick stood next to you that disconcerted me. Both of you were lean and hungry looking. Actors are insecure narcissists, you once confessed, and what does a queer narcissist want more than another boy who looks like him?
Great scene, Myles, Nick gushed.
Thanks, Nick. Think I did okay, Mr. Frank?
Sure, Myles. I was petrified for you.
Hope I got that line right.
You knew you had the line just fine. We had rehearsed it at home and you were always word-perfect. Like Mary, you knew not only your own lines but those of every other character in the film. I tried to measure the angle of orientation between you and Nick. There was nothing there. How could there be? You hated him as much as I did. I told myself to turn off the skeptic in my head and go on trusting you for the few remaining hours I would be able to call you mine. No longer caring what he might think, I turned to Nick and said, Can you give us a moment alone? I have something to discuss with Myles.
Nick bowed, as if making a great indulgence. When he was on the other side of the stage I leaned over to you, so close that you took a step away from me.
Come find me when you’re finished. I need to talk with you about something.
You’re scaring me, Desmond.
No, nothing like that, I lied, knowing it would have been easier if I did not love you so desperately. If I’m not in my office there’ll be a reason and you’re to phone me at home. And then I whispered, I love you.
You twitched. I remember it clearly. No one was close enough to hear or see the shapes my lips made as I formed the words. Everyone was packing for lunch.
Don’t be so reckless, you said.
I love you, I whispered again. Now you say it.
You know I do.
Three men from the accounting department arrived and huddled together with Nick in a corner. In a year on the lot he had gained a reputation as the assistant director most likely to keep a production on schedule, on budget, and bled of any word or image that could possibly offend. No one liked a moralizing wunderkind and no one liked Nick. Then another man appeared at the stage door, and this time I was sure: it was the stout fellow in a cheap suit and panama hat I had seen earlier. Nick looked at him like he didn’t want to get too close. The man tapped his watch and Nick shook his head. Funny business, I thought, only not so funny.
Say it, Myles. Say it right here.
Your jaw seized up and the muscles were pulsing in your cheeks. I love you, you whispered, barely moving your lips. Your eyes were watering. It was cruel of me to make you say it but I wanted to know how far I could push. If I could push you farther than I had before then there might still be hope that I could persuade you to come with me. Perhaps you could be convinced to turn your back on America and the family in Montana and all the glitter of Hollywood to live a shabbier life where freedom might come cheaper. There was no reason to doubt your loyalty to me. You were all-American innocence and the fear in your eyes was enough to make me want to wrap you in cotton and lock you up for safe keeping.
You’re a demon, I said, putting a hand on your shoulder. It was all I could do in the moment, all you would let me do. I felt the pace of your pulse through my fingertips and hated myself for testing you.
Do you remember when we first met, on the set of Fanshawe, and you genuinely needed help understanding the lines I had written? You were the one who suggested a glass of something to loosen up, and then you came and sat next to me on the davenport in my office. Did you touch my hand accidently, or was it only meant to seem that way? Whatever the impulse, accident or intention masked as accident, in the dry air, our wool trousers connecting with wool upholstery and wool carpet, there was a literal spark, bright and silver and visible to us both. We laughed and then touched the tips of our fingers together, no accident this time
, no pretense, and another spark exploded. In your eyes I saw an expression I knew, longing and understanding, recognition that I was like you and you like me. Perhaps that is why there was no hesitation when we leaned towards each other and kissed.
You’ll have to coach me, you said. I’m shy.
But your shyness was pretense. You had strong physical instincts even though they were hurried and brutal. What I had to teach you were the pleasures of breathing and slowness. The only time I ever rebuked you, I think, was after we had committed to sleeping with no one else and you said it was like we were married.
No it isn’t, I said. Don’t pretend it’s the same.
You looked so crestfallen I regretted my words as soon as I spoke them and took your head in my hands. What I mean is it’s precisely that to me, but never let yourself believe anyone else will see it that way.
Perhaps I made the point badly, perhaps I did not make clear to you that I saw what we had as a marriage and that was why you felt free to marry Helen. At the wedding I sat on the bride’s side, because everyone knew Helen was my friend, and Barbara sat next to me, both of us trying not to weep. We were just lucky that Helen was as romantically uninterested in you as you were in her. Other such marriages were not so compatible.
Night for Day Page 18
