by John Rechy
He took a step away from the haughty silver gray limousine. “Hey, Amber,” the chauffeur drawled, “you really come that good all the time? Or you just fake it, huh?”
No, that wasn't how Rhett had looked at Scarlett in that scene she loved, Amber realized. Rhett's look had contained desire, sexual desire, not hatred disguised. How many times had she seen this man's look, even—yes, she faced it—courted it without knowing it, because she expected it, that look that had nothing to do with sex, like the scene in the tub?
Words of rage formed inside her. She sought exact ones to hurl out. But what were the words, how exactly was that look of contempt formed? She didn't know the vocabulary or what went with it.
She could learn! She closed her eyes for a moment, as if to contain everything in an ordering bright darkness. The cherished sensual lightness of the silk asserted itself on her breasts. She felt a delicate flush there. She opened her eyes onto the shimmering day, and she thought, Do I want to? Do I want to learn that ugly, cruel vocabulary?
No.
Like an anxious private, the chauffeur came to attention. He moved back to the limousine. Margaret Manfred and her entourage were emerging. This time the frozen woman did not turn in the direction of Amber—but the others did, quietly. The chauffeur opened and closed doors. Margaret Manfred and her court entered the limousine. The chauffeur moved briskly into the driver's seat. Behind the tinted windows of the brutal car, Margaret Manfred's face looked dead.
Amber shook her red hair against the rising whirls of wind. The heat hugged her. Then the wind swirled the silk about her body, pushing the material to outline the V at her thighs. She welcomed that, the pleasurable, sensual warmth there.
Even in the ugly wavering plastic that forms the enclosure of Chez Toi, even in that distorted reflection, her magnificent hair glowed—gloriously—in the light of the fascinated sun.
Lost Angels: 2
“I wonder why he did that? Why would anybody do anything like that?” Jesse James pondered the matter deeply.
The Cadillac purred into the tawdry streets of Hollywood, past an abandoned movie lot, gray and aging; long stretches of oleanders reigning before clusters of stucco or wooden bungalow courts; a discarded jail, still emanating gray anger; a TV studio with lines of undaunted tourists awaiting possible entry; purple-leafed trees, silver when they face a sunless light; shabby and neat shops of every variety, featuring everything from tents to statues of David. And everywhere are sprinkles—showers—of blue-starred flowers. Colors, natural and artificial, are bright on these streets, like smashed crayons.
Heat was charging sweeps of wind.
“Who?” Lisa asked Jesse. “Oh, have you ever seen leaves that big?” She was looking at a spilling tree whose leaves were like green blossoms.
“That guy who hanged himself in that schoolyard. Weird. Why there? And that black hood!” Jesse clarified.
“I wish you'd stop bringing that up,” Lisa protested; she wanted to forget about it. The memory made her both sad and frightened.
“Wonder why,” Jesse continued musing. “The news'll tell.”
“Depends,” Orin pronounced. “Maybe they will tell, maybe they won't. They might. Depends. But sometimes you never know why—get no answers. Sometimes you do. Sometimes you just feel why, and that's the time you know best.” He never struggled with words. Though vague to others, they always managed to convey his certainty of their clarity.
Jesse James looked at Lisa, to see whether she was confused.
“You can make ugly things sound pretty sometimes, Orin,” Lisa said.
That's the truth, Jesse thought. He had slept a lot on their way to Los Angeles. One time when he woke—in Arizona—craggy rocks looked like a herd of huge animals advancing toward them. He'd yelled. Orin didn't swerve; he said, “I bet you had a hallucination. Lots of people do with rocks like those—see tigers, dinosaurs.” That's what Jesse had seen. Other times, he awakened to hear Orin talking to Lisa, once about how the bugs on the windshield wanted to crash against the glass—and Lisa said, “But it's invisible.” “No, they know it's there.” Orin had sounded sure. “Yeah,” Jesse said now, “you can make things sound pretty, Orin. Sometimes,” he qualified. He didn't know exactly when he had begun feeling important, being with Orin. Of course that was partly because of the car; he beamed when he saw people cluster around it. Sometimes he'd walk to the driver's side of the parked car, hoping to create the momentary illusion that it was his.
“ ‘The Mortuary with a Heart,’ “ Lisa read the wording on a bus bench as they drove by. Many of those benches throughout the city advertised interment. “A mortuary with lots of hearts.” The slogan had struck her as very funny. “Look—a Baskin-Robbins ice-cream parlor!” she blurted, as if she had witnessed a miracle. “Can we stop, Orin?” She couldn't predict what his answer would be. Sometimes when he was about to say no, he would smile as if he was about to say yes, or make her believe he was going to say yes. Other times he would frown and then say yes.
“If you want another one,” he said.
“Awright, kid,” Jesse used Cagney's phrase in White Heat and pretended that Lisa had asked his opinion, too.
Orin stopped, and Lisa skipped out into the candy-painted parlor. Jesse started to ponder further about the strangled man, but Orin was looking straight ahead in that way that announced his silence. All Jesse could see ahead were the fringes of palm trees, and they bobbed all over the city. Pushed away by the wind, smog crouched on the horizon in a dark gray layer.
Lisa burst out of the ice-cream store. “Peach!” she announced her new flavor. She licked the cone, waiting for its taste to settle on her palate. With enormous disappointment she realized that this flavor did not begin to compare with the earlier one. She offered Jesse a lick. He took a tongue-scooping one. To her amazement, Orin accepted a taste. He even said, “Ummm, it's good!” and he turned into the cute red-haired boy!
Emboldened, Lisa said, “Okay—I've definitely decided; I'm going to change my name whenever I want to, and today I'm not Lisa any more. I'm— …” The first name that occurred to her was Scarlett, but she decided against it. “Maria,” she chose, giving the name its “ee” sound in the middle. “From For Whom the Bell Tolls,” she reminded them—again. She remembered, as always: Maria pulled away by horses from her dying lover. “He tricked her,” she told Jesse and Orin insistently, as if she needed to convince them. “That Gary Cooper—Ro-ber-tow—he had to to blow up a bridge so die enemy soldiers wouldn't win the war in Spain. And the only way he could make Maria run away with the gypsies, on that horse, was to trick her—he was so mean— …”
Jesse was ready to say, You told us, you told us! so she'd embellish, but— …
“How did he trick her?” Orin surprised them with his question. Usually he was just silent.
“Yeah—how?” Jesse revised his prepared words.
Lisa said evenly, “They were going to go to America, together, after the war—Roberto and Maria; but he got wounded at the bridge he had to blow up and he lied to her that he'd meet her afterwards, now she had to go with the gypsies—but he knew, and she knew, he was going to die and she wanted to stay with him, die with him, but he kept lying that she would live for both of them, his soul would go with her, always be with her. He tricked her,” she asserted with what she hoped was finality.
It wasn't. “Makes good sense to me, that she didn't stay,” Jesse said, “if he was going to die anyhow.” He was proud that his opinion sounded so intelligent; he turned to Orin for affirmation that it was.
Lisa felt a strong anger—a disturbing questioning, unexpressed. “You think Roberto was right?” She was aghast at Jesse. “Orin?” She, too, turned to him for support.
Orin seemed to ponder the question deeply. Moments passed.
“Depends on if you can live for other people, or if you have to,” he said finally.
Jesse didn't know whom he'd agreed with.
Lisa breathed annoyance. Maria was loya
l—like Pearl Chavez—to the very end. Loyal! And betrayed!
Look at her. Prettier every moment, even when she was mad. Like now, Jesse thought. Her breasts seemed actually to have grown in two days—but it was more probable that she was just exposing more of them, the blouse moved lower and lower as the day got hotter. Each time the car bumped, Jesse peered over to see whether maybe at least the deeper-hued part around the nipples might show, but it didn't—or hadn't, so far.
“There aren't any real movie stars anymore,” Lisa said as they drove past a billboard announcing a silly new comedy; there were cartoons of the actors and actresses in it, dressed in caveman costumes! “The real stars all died when Marilyn Monroe did.” Her voice faded. She gave Orin the rest of the cone and he ate it. “Would you really like to be a stunt man, Jesse?” she asked him.
Jesse had just made that up, when those kids outside that green mansion were pestering him. Now he said, “Uh, yeah, I guess. Maybe, yeah! I used to be real good at gymnastics and stuff; that's how I got my body.”
“Oh, you!” Lisa giggled.
“In Westerns and pictures like that, they use stunt men. Even in gangster movies. It's never the star. Except sometimes. Cagney did all his own, I bet. In White Heat— …”
“You and Lisa with those old movies.” Orin shook his head.
Jesse felt accused. “I saw only the Cagney ones—and some Bogart and Robinson—the tough ones. They had this all-gangster-movie week on TV … Just wasting time, Jesse,” he echoed from somewhere in his past, “just wasting time … And then I saw White Heat again, without all those commercials. They had one of those old-movies-only places in Evansville, too, in Indiana, Lisa, and that's where I— …”He stopped too late. All along he'd known he would slip.
“Oh, oh,” Lisa caught it immediately. “You're not from Texas, Jesse!”
It was a relief, actually, to confess—not worry about it anymore. “I'm from Morganfield, Kentucky,” Jesse revised soberly. “Near Evansville, Indiana. Ugly damn towns!”
“Doesn't matter, Jesse,” Orin reminded him. “We all left things back there, things we don't want with us anymore—even if they keep wanting more of us.”
Lisa sighed. Yes, that was true. “Sorry, Jesse,” she apologized.
Jesse still wondered what Orin really thought about his lying. He didn't like Orin having anything on him. “Anyhow, this White Heat I'm telling you about,” Jesse rushed on. “Cagney—Cody—Cody Jarrett—he learns in prison his father just died— …”
Lisa had not seen all of that one, an odd second feature with Dark Victory, with one of her top favorites—Bette Davis. A woman is beautiful only when she's loved, she remembered that line, but that was from another movie. Don't ask for the moon when we have— … “It wasn't his father, Jesse; it was his mother, and she was mean— …”
Jesse was puzzled. But he defended anyhow: “She wasn't mean, she saw how good he really was—and then Cody went up on this water tank or something and before they shot him he yelled— … yelled— …” The last line garbled. He shifted: “I bet that wasn't a stunt man! But if it was, he was lucky—to be Cody, or near him, just for a while.” Misunderstood Cody, so misunderstood.
“Farmers’ Market!” Lisa read the giant sign.
They parked on the street and got out. Jesse and Lisa admitted they had never seen anything like it. The Farmers’ Market in Hollywood is a huge beehive of a building—across the street from the sterile whiteness of CBS Television Studios. Parts of the market are in the open, parts of it enclosed. It contains dozens and dozens of other smaller enclosures, some shops are more like booths—all different colors. Immediately, just standing at one of the many entry ways, you saw: clothes! crystal! fruit! donuts! .souvenirs! candy! toys!
“Go in and buy it, Lisa,” Orin said.
Lisa was staring longingly into the window of a toy store; the bakery shop next to it looked like an extension of it. She was looking at a doll, less than a foot tall, dressed in blue ruffles, perhaps a bridesmaid's dress, long. Over blondish curled hair, she wore a lacy hat. Her eyes were blue speckled marbles outlined with thick black eyelashes. “Almost violet,” Lisa said. “She's staring at me!”
“They're meant to look like they're staring at everyone,” Jesse derided.
“No,” Orin said. “She's looking at Lisa.”
“You see it, too, Orin.” Lisa didn't remove her eyes from the doll. Now the doll's eyes were violet.
Jesse didn't like this moment between Orin and Lisa. He admonished Lisa, “You're going to run out of money. Then what?” He looked at Orin. He liked the pretty motel with the big television Orin had chosen, but it would eat up a lot of his money. They had paid last night's and today's rent. “Then what?” he repeated.
“Depends,” Orin said, and laughed.
Jesse James was relieved by the laughter. Money wasn't worrying Orin, he'd made that clear. “Makes sense,” Jesse was glad to say.
“I'll buy you the doll, Lisa,” Orin said. He took out money from his wallet.
Jesse was puzzled. Orin really wanted Lisa to have that doll—a grown woman, well, almost— …
Lisa emerged out of the store hugging the doll to her. She tilted her, so that the heavy eyelashes draped the gleaming blue—violet—eyes. She kissed the doll. “I love her, Orin! Thank you.” She wanted to kiss him—but she didn't dare. Lowering her head, she said, “Orin, you gave me a baby.”
Jesse laughed. “When you have a baby, you got to grow up—that's just a doll.”
Orin was studying a display in another window—cubes, spheres, cones; inside the tinted plastic were other perfect shapes.
Abruptly Lisa turned to the doll and said, “Don't turn ugly!” It didn't sound like her voice. Even she reacted to its harsh, strange tone; she smothered the doll with kisses.
Jesse peeked at her cleavage. Still, the nipples didn't show. It was weeks since he'd fucked a girl—and she hadn't been that pretty, the last one, in Evansville. Pangs of recurrent rivalry pricked at him, because Lisa seemed to take Orin much more seriously than him. “Lisa, you're dumb, you know, talking to that doll like that,” he shot his anger at Lisa.
Orin turned and frowned.
The aroused rivalry pushed Jesse to remove his shirt again; he'd seen other shirtless youngmen here.
“I'm not so sure I'm dumb, Jesse,” Lisa said. “I don't think so. I've never had a chance to find out.”
“I never had a chance,” Jesse did Cagney. Then another line pushed forward: “I could've been a contender.” Where was that from?
Orin leaned away slightly from the window with the plastic geometric models. He tilted his head as if to perceive their shapes from another angle.
Suddenly dreamy, “I'll call you— …” Lisa said to the doll. “I'll call you— … Pearl! Pearl Chavez!” She often thought Duel in the Sun might be her favorite movie, but then that would change when she remembered another favorite; it was certainly one of her favorite “all-times.” “The real Pearl was a half-breed,” she explained the doll's name from the movie. “Her father killed her Indian mother—he was the good one, but they hanged him … Pearl. She really loved that mean Lewt,” she said with enormous emotion. “But he wouldn't marry her, took her away from his good brother. So mean, that Lewt!” She remembered the gory last scene in the movie: Pearl Chavez drenched in blood and perspiration claws her way up the barren desert rocks to confront her wounded lover, Lewt. “She had to shoot him because he was so mean to her and she couldn't live without him—and he shot back at her, so mean. She loved him so much she climbed that mountain, bleeding, just to die with him. And then,” she sighed, “years later, a beautiful flower would grow there, from their blood.”
Jesse said, “She should've let him die and she could have lived for both of them.”
“Oh, you! You got that from what I told you about Maria and Roberto in For Whom the Bell Tolls! I don't agree! … Pearl Chavez,” she repeated as they explored one of the many walks within the giant market
. She moved before the window of a flower shop. Behind glass, red roses burst out of green leaves. There, she baptized the doll with a disguised stroke of her hand: Pearl.
“You must've seen those same movies over and over,” Jesse grumbled, “the way you remember everything about them.”
“Some I saw just once, but I still remember,” Lisa said.
Jesse felt even more chagrined.
They wandered among the mixture of odors—candy and meat—and sounds—recorded music and the excited comments of swarming tourists; past “international shops carrying imported objects from all over the globe,” Lisa read. Jesse James bought a Guide to Places of Interest in Los Angeles and Environs.” They stopped at one of the food shops, featuring “Swedish delicacies.” Leaning against the ribbon-colored counter, they ate hot dogs with melted Swiss cheese. They were having a great time, both Jesse and Lisa basking in Orin's surprising, silly mood—he took off his gray jacket in front of the Spanish Delicacy Shop and pretended to be a bullfighter, the coat a cape!
As they walked back to the Cadillac, Lisa announced she was through being Maria. “They were too mean to her.”
“Maybe some people do have to die so others can live,” Orin said. “Grant you—it's hard to know when, sometimes.” He stared away, pensive.
Was he actually thinking about Maria! Lisa broke the sad silence as they approached the car. “My name now is Ton-delayo,” she said in a husky voice. She slinked about a traffic light, lowered one side of her blouse just slightly more. “Hedy Lamarr, in White Cargo.’‘
Jesse approved: “You just keep right on being that Tandy-whatever. Sure looks good on you—doesn't it look good on her?” he ventured at Orin, noticing him staring, too.
“Yes,” Orin said, but he looked away from her.
The smog had retreated but thickened as the afternoon declined. Against the horizon it assumed an orange glow, like exhausted fire. Inside the car, heat had coagulated. Orin lowered the roof, and two waves of hot air collided.
