Crewes cut him off.
“No long lists, Fred. I had one of those from you already today. Remember?”
“It’s been a long day, Arthur.”
“Relax, please. Adela called me this afternoon, and asked for Valerie. She promised to be good. Very good. She’s been a fan of Valerie’s for years. We talked for almost an hour. She wants to do a nice interview.”
Handy grimaced. Pain. “I don’t believe it. The woman would do a Bergen-Belsen on her own Granny if she thought it would jump her rating.”
Crewes spoke softly, carefully, as if telling a child. “Fred, I would not for a moment jeopardize Valerie if I thought there was any danger here. Adela Seddon is not my idea of a lady, either, but her show is watched. It’s syndicated, and it’s popular. If she says she’ll behave, it behooves us to take the chance.”
Valerie touched Handy’s sleeve. “It’s all right, Fred. I trust Arthur. I’ll go on.”
Crewes smiled at her. “Look, it’s even live, not taped earlier in the evening, the way she usually does the show. This way we know she’ll behave; they tape it in case someone guests who makes her look bad, they can dump the tape. But live like this, she has to be a nanny, or she could get killed. It stands to reason.”
Handy looked dubious. “There’s a flaw in that somewhere, Arthur, but I haven’t the strength to find it. Besides,” he indicated a flashing red light on the wall above them, “Valerie is about to enter the Valley of the Shadow…”
The stage manager came and got Valerie, and took her out onto the set, where she was greeted with applause from the studio audience. She sat in one of the two comfortable chairs behind the low desk, and waited patiently for Adela Seddon to arrive from her offstage office.
When she made her appearance, striding purposefully to the desk and seating herself, and instantly shuffling through a sheaf of research papers (presumably on Valerie Lone), the audience once again transported itself with wild applause. Which Adela Seddon did not deign to acknowledge. The signals were given, the control booth marked, and in a moment the offstage announcer was bibble-bibbling the intro. The audience did its number, and Camera No. 2 glowed red as a ghastly closeup of Adela Seddon appeared on the studio monitors. It was like a microscopic view of a rotted watermelon rind.
“This evening,” Adela Seddon began, a smile that was a rictus stretching her mouth, “we are coming to you live, not on tape. The reason for this is my very special guest, a great lady of the American cinema, who agreed to come on only if we were aired live, thus ensuring a fair and unedited interview…”
“I told you she was a shit!” Handy hissed to Crewes. Crewes shushed him with a wave of his hand.
“…not been seen for eighteen years on the wide-screens of motion picture theaters, but she is back in a forthcoming Arthur Crewes production, Subterfuge. I’d like a big hand for Miss Valerie Lone!”
The audience did tribal rituals, rain dances, ju-ju incantations and a smattering of plain and fancy warwhooping. Valerie was a lady. She smiled demurely and nodded her thankyous. Adela Seddon seemed uneasy at the depth of response, and shifted in her chair.
“She’s getting out the blowdarts,” Handy moaned.
“Shut up!” Crewes snarled. He was not happy.
“Miss Lone,” Adela Seddon said, turning slightly more toward the nervous actress, “precisely why have you chosen this time to come back out of retirement? Do you think there’s still an audience for your kind of acting?”
Ohmigod, thought Handy, here it comes.
EDITED TRANSCRIPT OF SEDDON “LOOKING IN” / 11-23-67 (…indicates deletion)
VALERIE LONE: I don’t know what you mean, “my kind of acting”?
ADELA SEDDON: Oh, come on now, Miss Lone.
VL: No, really. I don’t.
AS: Well, I’ll be specific then. The 1930s style: overblown and gushy.
VL: I didn’t know that was my style, Miss Seddon.
AS: Well, according to your latest review, which is, incidentally, eighteen years old, in something called Pearl of the Antilles with Jon Hall, you are, quote, “a fading lollipop of minuscule talent given to instant tears and grandiose arm-waving.” Should I go on?
VL: If it gives you some sort of pleasure.
AS: Pleasure isn’t why I’m up here twice a week, Miss Lone. The truth is. I sit up here with kooks and twistos and people who denigrate our great country, and I let them have their say, without interrupting, because I firmly believe in the First Amendment of the Constitution of these United States of America, that everyone has the right to speak his mind. If that also happens to mean they have the right to make asses of themselves before seventy million viewers, it isn’t my fault.
VL: What has all that to do with me?
AS: I don’t mind your thinking I’m stupid, Miss Lone; just kindly don’t talk to me as if I were stupid. The truth, Miss Lone, that’s what all this has to do with you.
VL: Are you sure you’d recognize it? (Audience applause)
AS: I recognize that there are many old-time actresses who are so venal, so egocentric, that they refuse to acknowledge their age, who continue to embarrass audiences by trying to cling to the illusion of sexuality.
VL: You shouldn’t air your problems so openly, Miss Seddon. (Audience applause)
AS: I see retirement hasn’t dampened your wit.
VL: Nor made me immune to snakebites.
AS: You’re getting awfully defensive, awfully early in the game.
VL: I wasn’t aware this was a game. I thought it was an interview.
AS: This is my living room, Miss Lone. We call it a game, here, and we play it my way.
VL: I understand. It’s not how you play, it’s who wins.
AS: Why don’t we just talk about your new picture for a while?
VL: That would be a refreshing change.…
AS: Is it true Crewes found you hustling drinks in a roadhouse?
VL: Not quite. I was a waitress in a diner.
AS: I suppose you think slinging hash for the last eighteen years puts you in tip-top trim to tackle a major part in an important motion picture?
VL: No, but I think the fifteen years I spent in films prior to that does. A good actress is like a good doctor, Miss Seddon. She has the right to demand high pay not so much for the short amount of time she puts in on a picture, but for all the years before that, years in which she learned her craft properly, so she could perform in a professional manner. You don’t pay a doctor merely for what he does for you now, but for all the years he spent learning how to do it.
AS: That’s very philosophical.
VL: It’s very accurate.
AS: I think it begs the question.
VL: I think you’d like to think it does.…
AS: Wouldn’t you say actresses are merely self-centered little children playing at make-believe?
VL: I would find it very difficult to say anything even remotely like that. I’m surprised you aren’t embarrassed saying it.
AS: I’m hard to embarrass, Miss Lone. Why don’t you answer the question?
VL: I thought I had answered it.
AS: Not to my satisfaction.
VL: I can see that not being satisfied has made you an unhappy woman, so I—(Audience applause)—so, so I don’t want to dissatisfy you any further; I’ll answer the question a little more completely. No, I think acting at its best can be something of a holy chore. If it emerges from a desire to portray life as it is, rather than just to put in a certain amount of time in front of the cameras for a certain amount of money, then it becomes as important as teaching or writing, because it crystallizes the world for an audience; it preserves the past; it lets others living more confined lives, examine a world they may never come into contact with…
AS: We have to take a break now, for a commercial—…
VL: I’d rather not discuss my personal life, if you don’t mind.
AS: A “star” has no personal life.
VL: That may be your
opinion, Miss Seddon, it isn’t mine.
AS: Is there some special reason you won’t talk about Mr. Romito?
VL: We have always been good friends—
AS: Oh, come on, Valerie dear, you’re starting to sound like a prepared press release: “We’re just friends.”
VL: You find it difficult to take yes for an answer.
AS: Well, I’ll tell you, Miss Lone, I had a phone call today from a gentleman who volunteered to come into our dock tonight, to ask you a few questions. Let’s go to the dock…what is your name, sir?
HASKELL BARKIN: My name is Barkin. Haskell Barkin.
AS: I understand you know Miss Lone.
HB: In a manner of speaking.
VL: I don’t understand. I don’t think I’ve ever met this gentleman.
HB: You almost did.
VL: What?
AS: Why don’t you just let Mr. Barkin tell his story, Miss Lone.
She came offstage shaking violently. Romito had seen the first half of the interview, at his hotel in Santa Monica. He had hurried to the studio. When she stumbled away from the still-glaring lights of the set, he was there, and she almost fell into his arms. “Oh God, Emery, I’m so frightened…”
Crewes was furious. He moved into the darkness offstage, heading for Adela Seddon’s dressing room/office. Handy had another mission.
The audience was filing out of the studio. Handy dashed for the side exit, came out in the alley next to the studio, and circled the building till he found the parking lot. Barkin was striding toward a big yellow Continental.
“Barkin! You motherfucker!” Handy screamed at him.
The tall man turned and stopped in mid-step. His long hair had been neatly combed for the evening television appearance, and in a suit he looked anachronistic, like King Kong in knickers. But the brace of his chest and shoulders was no less formidable.
He was waiting for Handy.
The little publicist came fast, across the parking lot. “How much did they pay you, you sonofabitch? How much? How much, motherfucker!”
Barkin began to crouch, waiting for Handy, fists balled, knees bent, the handsome face cold and impassive, anticipating the crunch of knuckles against face. Handy was howling now, like a Confederate trooper charging a Union gun emplacement. At a dead run he came down on Barkin, standing between a Corvette and a station wagon parked in the lot.
At the last moment, instead of breaking around the Corvette, Handy miraculously leaped up and came across the bonnet of the Corvette, still running, like a decathlon hurdler. Barkin had half-turned, expecting Handy’s rush from the front of the sports car. But the publicist was suddenly above him, bearing down on him like a hunting falcon, before he could correct position.
Handy plunged across the Corvette, denting the red louvered bonnet, and dove full-out at Barkin. Blind with fury, he was totally unaware that he had bounded up onto the car, that he was across it in two steps, that he was flying through the air and crashing into Barkin with all the impact of a human cannonball.
He took Barkin high on the chest, one hand and wrist against the beach-bum’s throat. Barkin whooshed air and sailed backward, into the station wagon. Up against the half-lowered radio antenna, which bent under his spine, then cracked and broke off in his back. Barkin screamed, a delirious, half-crazed spiral of sound as the sharp edge of the antenna cut through his suit jacket and shirt, and ripped his flesh. The pain bent him sidewise, and Handy slipped off him, catching his heel on the Corvette and tumbling into the narrow space between the cars. Barkin kicked out, his foot sinking into Handy’s stomach as the publicist fell past him. Handy landed on his shoulders, the pain surging up into his chest and down into his groin. His rib cage seemed filled with nettles, and he felt for a moment he might lose control of his bladder.
Barkin tried to go for him, but the antenna was hooked through his jacket. He tried wrenching forward and there was a ripping sound, but it held. He struggled forward toward Handy awkwardly, bending from the waist, but could not get a hold on the publicist. Handy tried to rise, and Barkin stomped him, first on the hand, cracking bones and breaking skin, then on the chest, sending Handy scuttling backward on his buttocks and elbows.
Handy managed to get to his feet and pulled himself around the station wagon. Barkin was trying frantically to get himself undone, but the antenna had hooked in and out of the jacket material, and he was awkwardly twisted.
Handy climbed up onto the hood of the station wagon and on hands and knees, like a child, came across toward Barkin. The big man tried to reach him, but Handy fell across his neck and with senseless fury sank his teeth into Barkin’s ear. The beach-bum shrieked again, a woman’s sound, and shook his head like an animal trying to lose a flea. Handy hung on, bringing the taste of blood to his mouth. His hand came across and dug into the corner of Barkin’s mouth, pulling the lip up and away. The fingers spread, he poked at Barkin’s eye, and the beach-bum rattled against the car like a bird in a cage. Then all the pains merged and Barkin sagged in a semiconscious boneless mass. He hung against the weight of Handy and the hooking antenna. The strain was too great, the jacket ripped through, and Barkin fell face-forward hitting the side of the Corvette, pulling Handy over the top of the station wagon. Barkin’s face hit the sports car; the nose broke. Barkin fainted with the pain, and slipped down into a Buddha-like position, Handy tumbling over him and landing on his knees between the cars.
Handy pulled himself up against the station wagon, and without realizing Barkin was unconscious, kicked out with a loose-jointed vigor, catching the beach-bum in the ribs with the toe of his shoe. Barkin fell over on his side, and lay there.
Handy, gasping, breathing raggedly, caromed off the cars, struggling to find his way to his own car. He finally made it to the Impala, got behind the wheel and through a fog of gray and red managed to get the key into the ignition. He spun out of the parking lot, scraping a Cadillac and a Mercury, his headlights once sweeping across a row of cars in which a station wagon and a Corvette were parked side by side, seeing a bleeding bag of flesh and fabric inching its way along the concrete, trying to get to its feet, touching softly at the shattered expanse of what had been a face, what had once been a good living.
Handy drove without knowing where he was going.
When he appeared at Randi’s door twenty minutes later—having dropped her off from their date only a few hours before—she was wearing a shortie nightgown that ended at her thighs. “Jesus, Fred, what happened?” she asked, and helped him inside. He collapsed on her bed, leaving dark streaks of brown blood on the candy-striped sheets. She pulled his clothes off him, managing to touch his genitals as often as possible, and tended to his needs, all sorts of needs.
He paid no attention. He had fallen asleep.
It had been a full day for Handy.
8
The columns had picked it up. They said Valerie Lone had carried it off beautifully, coming through the barrage of viciousness and sniping with Adela Seddon like a champ. Army Archerd called Seddon a “shrike”’ and suggested she try her dictionary for the difference between “argument” and “controversy,” not to mention the difference between “intimidation” and “interview.” Valerie was a minor folk heroine. She had gone into the lair of the dragon and had emerged dragging its fallopians behind her. Crewes and Handy were elated. There had been mutterings from Haskell Barkin’s attorney, a slim and good-looking man named Taback who had seemed ashamed even to be handling Barkin’s complaint. When Handy and Crewes and the Studio battery of lawyers got done explaining precisely what had happened, and Taback had met Handy, the attorney returned to Barkin and advised him to use Blue Cross to take care of the damage it would cover, get his current paramour to lay out for the facial rebuilding, and drop charges: no one would believe that a hulk the size of Haskell Barkin could get so thoroughly dribbled by a pigeonweight like Handy.
But that was only part of the Crewes-Handy elation. Valerie had begun to be seen everywhere with Emery Romito. Th
e fan magazines were having a field day with it. To a generation used to reviling their elders, with no respect for age, there was a kind of sentimental Gene Stratton Porter loveliness to the reuniting of old lovers. No matter where Valerie and Emery went, people beamed on them. Talk became common that after all those years of melancholy and deprivation, at long last the lovers might be together permanently.
For Emery Romito it was the first time he had been truly alive since they had killed his career during the draft-dodging scandal. But that was all forgotten now; he seemed to swell with the newfound dignity he had acquired squiring the columns’ hottest news item. That, combined with his rediscovery of what Valerie had always meant to him, made him something greater than the faded character actor the years had forced him to become. The fear was still there, but it could be forgotten for short times now.
Valerie had begun rehearsals with her fellow cast-members, and she was growing more confident day by day. The Seddon show had served to fill her once again with fear, but its repercussions—demonstrated in print—had effectively drained it away. These rises and fallings in temperament had an unconscious effect on her, but it was not discernible to those around her.
On the night of the second day of rehearsals, Emery came to pick her up at the Studio, in a car the Studio had rented for him. He took her to dinner at a small French restaurant near the Hollywood Ranch Market, and after the final Drambuie they drove up to Sunset, turned left, and cruised toward Beverly Hills.
It was a Friday night.
The hippies were out.
The teenie-boppers. The flower children. The new ones. The long hair, the tight boots, the paisley shirts, the mini-skirts, the loose sexuality, the hair vests, the shirts with the sleeves cut off, the noise, the jeering. The razored crevasse that existed between their time, when they had been golden and fans had pressed up against sawhorses at the premieres, to get their autographs, and today, a strange and almost dreamlike time of Surrealistic youth who spoke another tongue, moved with liquid fire and laughed at things that were painful. At a stoplight near Laurel Canyon, they stopped and were suddenly surrounded by hippies hustling copies of an underground newspaper, the L.A. Free Press. They were repelled by the disordered, savage look of the kids, like barbarians. And though the news vendors spoke politely, though they merely pressed up against the car and shoved their papers into the windows, the terror their very presence evoked in the two older people panicked Romito and he floored the gas pedal, spurting forward down Sunset, sending one beaded and flowered news-hippie sprawling, journals flying.
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