Gay Place

by Billy Lee Brammer

  “McGown, hah? That’s quite a coincidence. Too bad you’re not the Governor.”

  Jay said yes, it was too damn bad. The press agent led the way to the trailer house and showed them inside. The trailer was enormous. They stood on the thick carpet of a large reception room while the agent explained that the doors on either side led to the dressing quarters of the actress and the director. The agent knocked lightly on the director’s room and Edmund Shavers appeared almost immediately. He was a tall, thick-shouldered man with a youngish sun-burned face that betrayed middle years only when his smile dissolved into pink folds. He was smiling now, showing remarkable white teeth. He wore cowboy boots and starched khakis; he pulled a red bandanna round his neck and moved about the room, clasping hands.

  “Wonderful … Wonderful …” Shavers was saying, and Fenstemaker was saying it right back: “Goddam happy to be here …”

  “How long can you stay?” Shavers said.

  “I’m afraid —” the Governor began.

  “I understand,” Shavers said. “We’ll try to get the picture-taking over with as quickly as possible. These publicity people … you’ve got to stay right on them.”

  The press agent asked if he should see about Miss McGown, and Shavers nodded. He turned back to the Governor and said: “Maybe you’ll stay long enough to see us shoot a scene after we’ve finished with the publicity pictures. We’ve got a scene with Vicki scheduled in just about … Ah! Vicki, dear. Come meet the Governor …”

  Vicki McGown stood in the doorway for an instant, spectacular in the soft light, vibrantly colored. Her blond hair and painted eyelids and the glow of her young skin combined to produce such an effect of voluptuous good health and vitality that the press agent, standing alongside and gawking at her bare legs, appeared in contrast to have risen just recently from a sickbed. Vicki wore white shorts and a faded blue cotton workshirt. She smiled and walked directly over to Jay and kissed him lightly on the mouth. Then she turned to the others, holding on to Jay’s arm and nodding to each of the guests as Shavers introduced them. The press agent began to describe the photographs of Vicki and the Governor that were planned for the morning. He produced a folder, a “press kit” on the Governor’s official visit, and commented briefly on the news releases and feature stories already prepared.

  Arthur Fenstemaker glanced at the material without interest and passed them to Jay. Jay stared at the stories, aware of nothing but the pressure of Vicki’s hand on his arm. Vicki said, “I’ll have to change for the pictures. Only be a minute. You come with me, Jay-Jay?”

  Jay looked at Sarah and then at the Governor and then at Shavers, who was flashing his incredible smile. Fenstemaker nodded soberly; Sarah stared out a window. Jay followed the actress into her dressing room.

  Vicki pushed the door shut, and then, leaning with her back against it, opened her arms to her husband.

  “We bein’ social?” Jay said. He stepped close and Vicki kissed him again, a kiss that began as the one before but soon became something else entirely, stirring another season’s love, an ancient distress signal. Her hips shifted slightly and Jay pulled his head back a few inches, looking at her.

  “Godalmighty,” he said.

  “You like being social?” she said.

  “I guess I do,” he said.

  “Long time, Jay-Jay.”

  “Long time, all right.”

  She let loose of him and moved to her dressing table and looked at herself for a moment. “I liked your Governor,” she said. “He’s better looking than I thought he would be.”

  “He’s thinking of having his nose bobbed,” Jay said. “He’s a great, vain king.”

  Vicki unbuttoned her denim shirt and threw it across a chair. She reached for a Western costume on the clothes rack, held it up for him to see, and then began pulling off her shorts and underwear. Jay thought at first he would not look, but then, realizing it now was all the world’s prerogative, he came close and circled round, examining her as he would a prize beefstock.

  “You got your figure back,” he said.

  “It has been a long time. Haven’t you seen the pictures?”

  “How could anyone avoid ’em?” he said. “Was all that stuff necessary?”

  “It was at first,” she said. “It helped a lot in the beginning. It made all the difference in the world.”

  Jay pulled a string on the window blinds and looked out on the bare land, at the carpenters and camera crews and technicians milling about shirtless in the morning sun. There now seemed to be a veil of lilac suspended in the distance, between the motion picture set and the purple roll of mountains miles away. He said: “When is Annie coming out? I’d hoped she would be here today, hoped I could get a look at her before leaving.”

  “Victoria Anne,” Vicki said. “Call her Victoria Anne. She’ll be here in a day or two. Can’t you get the Governor to stay awhile?”

  Jay shook his head. “I think he wants to leave right now. He gets uneasy. He gets restless when he’s suddenly dropped into a social order that doesn’t make sense to him. He’s used to running things.”

  “He could probably run things here,” Vicki said. “God knows no one else is. He doesn’t like this particular social order?”

  “He thinks it’s no order at all. He’s ready to go home. When could I see her?”

  “What?”

  “Annie. When could I see her?”

  “I’ll bring her to the party if you like,” Vicki said. She had the cowgirl costume pulled over her head and now began to brush her hair. “Tell me something about this crazy party.”

  “It’s the whole point of his being here,” Jay said. “Give a little, take a little. He wanted you to come to his party, and Shavers made him come out here first to endorse the picture. He didn’t like it, but at least he could understand it. The party’s a very big deal. Press, radio, television — and now the movies. About a thousand people coming from all over. Impressing the rich and powerful. For his re-election campaign.”

  “Was it your idea?”

  Jay shook his head. “He has a big party every couple years.”

  “I mean my being there,” Vicki said.

  “No. It was the Governor’s idea. He was obsessed with the notion.”

  “Really?” Vicki seemed delighted. “Is he a picture fan?”

  “I doubt if he’s seen a movie in fifteen years,” Jay said. “He’s just interested in his employees — and he’s always been fascinated that I had a movie queen — a love goddess he’s been calling you — for a wife.”

  “And how about you?” Vicki said. “You fascinated?”

  Jay managed to smile. “I’m pleased you’re such a success,” he said.

  “Who’s the girl?” Vicki said suddenly.

  “Who?”

  “The girl you’re with.”

  “One of Fenstemaker’s secretaries. Sarah Lehman. I’ve been dating her some.”

  “Doesn’t bother her that you’re married?”

  Jay sat down on an ottoman, wondering if he would be able to avoid an argument. He thought a moment and said: “No more, I suppose, than it’s bothered you that you’re married.” The actress was applying fresh lipstick and did not reply.

  Jay went on, “How about it, now that we’re on the subject? When do I get loose? When are you going to be sensible about a divorce?”

  “Any time you’re ready, Jay.”

  “I’m not ready on your terms, Vic. Goddam. I want to see Annie a few months out of the year.”

  “Then you ought to reconsider,” Vicki said. “If you love your daughter so much, come live with us. It’s not such a bad life these days, you know.”

  “I … don’t think … I could do it,” Jay said very carefully. “I’m not sure I could survive any more of those evenings. Waiting up to shake hands with your boy friends.”

  “You exaggerate,” Vicki said. She brushed closeby and took his arm, smiling. “I’m not going with anyone special. I’m just a lonely, misunder
stood career girl.”

  They moved into the reception room. A few minutes later, out in the open, in the murderous heat of the midmorning sun, the sweet faint smell of her still clung to his face.

  Two

  THEY ALLOWED SOME OF the tourists and ranch hands through the front gate to witness the picture-taking; they let through as many as were needed to provide an audience for the ceremonies. The crowd followed Vicki and the Governor, watching their movements as if the two of them were high priests, gathering round one of the balsa wood oil derricks in the beginning and then moving on to the preposterously bright green lawn of the gingerbread house. The mansion was authentic and convincing in every detail, like a wondrously well-engineered replica, an outsized child’s toy put together between desert sandfaults.

  Jay followed the crowds, keeping at a distance, standing just close enough to watch Vicki and the Governor move through their routine with the easy and stoic assurance of those long impaled by the public gaze, striking their poses, shifting to good sides, smiles coming on and vanishing again as the photographers requested. Jay asked himself if he exaggerated and got his answer: Yes, ’deed I do exaggerate; I am exaggerated, overblown; all my life, front and back, magnified and foreshortened, my papier mâché visions sullied by balsa wood and vegetable dye. He stood a short distance away from Vicki and the Governor and stared in wonder. They were not quite people, those two. They were a little hard to believe; each of them heightened by special technicolor effects.

  Fenstemaker was a handsome contemporary figure, but his appearance evoked for Jay the memories of a tinted matinee idol found in the picture frame department of a dime store. His face was unlined and beautifully tanned, and his expensive white teeth, whiter even than the movie director’s, were emphatically, unimaginably regular. And Vicki no longer seemed quite real. She had not been so altogether perfect when he had married her. Now she seemed the product of an expensive engineering process. Basic research. American ingenuity. Both of them — Vicki and the Governor — had undergone refurbishments to make them as close as possible to physical perfection. But the technicians who labored over their willing remnants — the surgeons and dentists and hair stylists and masseurs and manicurists — had demonstrated something less than consummate skill; had never quite got them put together again. They were hardly people, these two, but synthetic equivalents, albeit a pair of comely and brightly packaged ones.

  The picture-taking was nearly ended, and Hoot Gibson stood beside Jay, sucking on a piece of ice. Sarah and Mrs. Fenstemaker had returned to the cool interior of the trailer house.

  “Look here!” Hoot Gibson said. “Look over here!”

  Hoot Gibson pointed to the flatbed of a truck parked nearby, stacked with desert brush. “You know what that is?” Hoot Gibson said. “It’s tumbleweed.”

  Jay nodded thoughtfully. Yes, it certainly was tumbleweed, he said. No denying it.

  “Tumbleweed,” Hoot Gibson repeated. “Imported. Brought all the way here from Burbank, California. Ain’t no tumbleweed out here — ain’t nothin’ left out here after the drought — so they brought their own goddam tumbleweed … An’ you know what else?”

  “What else?” Jay said.

  “It don’t tumble,” Hoot Gibson said, overjoyed. “Even when there’s a good wind. It just don’t tumble. So they brought out some big blowers — big ’lectric fans — to make the tumbleweed tumble when they shoot the moom pitcher.”

  Jay felt a little better. He smiled at Hoot Gibson and Hoot Gibson smiled back, vastly pleased. The photographers were putting away their equipment and the crowds were being led back behind the wire fence. The Governor, Vicki and Edmund Shavers approached. Hoot Gibson left immediately to get the limousine started and the air-conditioning primed. Arthur Fenstemaker, perspiring, mumbling a vague exhortation from the Old Testament, shook hands gravely with the actress and the director. He turned to Jay.

  “Everything ready?” he said.

  Jay nodded. The four of them began walking toward the trailer house. Fenstemaker paused midway, his eyes fastened on an ancient, finely polished touring car parked under a dusty, flapping tent.

  “It’s the Dusenberg,” Vicki explained. “It’s the one I drive in the picture. I love it. In fact, I’m going for a ride right now — before we begin shooting. You join me?” She looked at the Governor and then at Jay and Edmund Shavers. “Anyone?”

  Fenstemaker hesitated; he mopped his face and smiled. He appeared to have been visited by a new surge of vitality.

  “Come on, Governor,” Vicki coaxed. “I’ll show you around in the car.”

  Fenstemaker followed Vicki toward the Dusenberg. He stopped midway and called back: “Jay, you and Hoot Gibson get the drinkin’ equipment and come with us.”

  Vicki had the motor running when Jay and Hoot Gibson arrived with the whiskey and ice. The Governor sat in front alongside Vicki, looking as if he were on the verge of discovery. Shavers called to them: “Be careful with that car, Vic! We can’t afford to let anything happen to it. Or to you. Or to the Governor, especially.”

  “Don’t worry ’bout thing,” Vicki yelled. The Dusenberg shuddered as she raced the engine.

  “We’re shooting in forty minutes!”

  “Plenty time!” Vicki called out. “Here we go … Flappers and sad birds!” The big car started off, lurching across the open fields.

  Jay and Hoot Gibson sat in back and tried to hold the whiskey bottles steady. They poured drinks for the four of them and passed the tumblers around. The Governor raised his in a toast, and Vicki laughed and looked wonderful, her white hair streaming out behind in the wind. Jay could not imagine her motives, but every delay, every weakening of Fenstemaker’s determination to leave, brought Jay closer to the moment he might see his daughter. He did not know when she would arrive; he could not begin to hope for so much time; he could only live from one interruption to the next, hoping they would somehow manage to stay on till Annie appeared. Vicki pulled a scarf round her head and raised her voice above the drone of the engine: “We’ll drive down to the Mexican village. Not the one we built, but the real one — over this way on the back road.”

  Fenstemaker nodded and smiled and finished his drink. He passed his glass back for another. Jay sat on the hot cushions, gazing at the fold of mountains miles away. Hoot Gibson took over the mixing. They banged along the dirt road, turned down a stretch of macadam and off again to the right, leaving the pavement for a second time and heading toward the rising foothills. Hoot Gibson was kept busy with the drinks. They all had another round.

  “You got to stay after this stuff, honey,” the Governor said to Vicki. “Otherwise, the ice melts. You got to toss it down fast.”

  “I wish we had gin,” Vicki said. “You like gin?”

  “Ah, yes,” the Governor said, rolling his eyes. He could not abide gin.

  “Gin and rose petals,” Vicki said. “You ever had gin and rose petals?”

  “Never the pleasure,” Fenstemaker said, tossing down his whiskey, cold.

  “Gin and rose petals,” Vicki repeated. “And champagne splits at breakfast!” She turned and looked back. “You remember, Jay-Jay?”

  Jay nodded and looked off toward the mountains. The reminder was like an old debt caught up with him.

  “Where was all this?” Fenstemaker said.

  “College,” Vicki said. “Freshman year. Never known anything so glamorous as gin and rose petals and champagne splits for breakfast. Jay was president of the student body, and I was seventeen years old. Seventeen! First-class seduction — ranked with the best … my lost sweet innocence …”

  Jay sat in the back seat, smiling to himself, Scotch whiskey splashing down his shirtfront, wondering if he had ever succeeded in violating anyone. Sweet innocence. It was what he missed most in life and wanted more than anything to recapture — and he wondered if it really ever had existed for the two of them, even in the beginning. He could not remember Vicki as she had been then, but he was certain it was no
t so much innocence that defined her as a dumb-struck happy acceptance of life’s infinite possibilities.

  Fenstemaker turned and looked at him, his big face gleaming in the sun. “What you do to Miss Vicki, Jay?” he said. “How come you ruined this little lady?”

  Jay spread his palms, balancing the drink in his lap. “We were both helpless,” he said. “Trapped in the cruel vise of the System.”

  “Whut’s all that ’bout vice?” Hoot Gibson said.

  “Vise … Vise,” Jay said.

  “Hoot Gibson and I had some good times together at college,” the Governor said. “But we never had any champagne for breakfast. Only a little jug of sour mash whiskey now and then.” An expression of vague melancholy came on his face. He raised his glass. “Gimmie a little of the Scripture, Hoot Gibson,” he said.

  Hoot Gibson smiled blandly. “Mah virgins an’ mah young men,” he said, “are fallen by the sword.”

  “We are all stricken in years,” the Governor said.

  They passed round the whiskey again.

  Jay tried to think about Vicki as she had been several years before. He could remember the college clearly, but he was unable to put together a convincing picture of Vicki. There had been too many conflicting images risen in the interval. It had not looked much like a college. In the moonlight, in the cold of an open car, approaching it from a distance, moving across the wild countryside, you could have mistaken it for a great, shapeless circus that had somehow broken down on the edge of the city. Once, years before, it might have looked like a college — there was still a thin, defeated frieze of ivy on some of the older buildings. Huge stone amalgams of what was identified as Spanish-Grecian had risen from the cotton fields, alongside the Gothic imitations of the past, and later still there were the hutments and the frame and tarpaper lecture halls. It had become a sprawling, gerrymandered maze of dull brick, stucco and yellow pine, suggesting the decline of a painted harlot in her middle years. Though in the cold of an open car with Vicki at his side, approaching the campus on a winter morning at mid-century, riding through the quiet, tree-lined streets, past the feeble expanse of grass along the Mall and the stone gargoyles out front of the Main Building, it had seemed an altogether lovely place.