Nowhere City

by Alison Lurie

  “Okay,” Glory said listlessly.

  “Swell. Also I thought I’d call up Camilla at Screen Scoops, offer we could give her an exclusive. Maybe she can send somebody over this week-end and get some pictures. Like an example, I see you sitting at your antique writing-desk, nice outfit, serious expression, big piles of mail, dictating to your secretary. I like that.”

  “Okay,” Glory repeated. “My secretary? You think I should have a secretary? Don’t you think that looks kind of too snooty?”

  “Oh, nah. Everybody has a secretary. Liz Taylor has a secretary. Look at it this way: it shows how you’re real serious about your responsibilities; it’s like your business, these fan letters. I want to build up a nice picture. Anyhow, you got to get a secretary to answer the mail.”

  Glory put the Thermos down and, turning her head slowly, looked at her agent through her fog of depression. “Aw, Maxie,” she said. “Do we really have to play this scene? I don’t think I can make it.”

  “Don’t aggravate yourself. It’ll be no trouble.” Maxie registered Glory’s expression, and sought its probable cause. “Hey, you had a conversation with Iz this morning?” he asked. “Maybe he called you.”

  Glory shook her head. “Why should he call me? He’s got nothing to talk to me about,” she said in a strained voice. “He doesn’t give a shit what happens to me.”

  “Aw, Glory, baby. He’s calling you all the time already. This last month he’s phoned you eight, ten times.”

  “Theven times,” she corrected him. “Exactly theven times.”

  “That’s what I mean. He’s obviously carrying the torch. And look at you: six months, and you’re still very involved emotionally. I don’t understand. Next time he phones, why don’t you be a little nice to him?”

  “That’s how you thee it,” Glory said. She opened her mouth to relate Iz’s latest betrayal, but could not bring herself to do so, and remained silent, staring into the dark spaces of the sound stage.

  “Incidentally,” Maxie said, following his own train of thought. “I spoke to Bo Habenicht this A.M.” Bo was Rory Gunn’s agent. Maxie waited for Glory to ask “Yeah?” As she did not, he continued. “Rory’s happy as a kid about the statement you gave. You know it’s all gravy for him, that scene. Also he really appreciates your compliments. He wants to take you out some time this week, maybe tonight if you can make it.”

  “You mean you and Bo want Gunn to take me out,” Glory said as flatly as was possible for her. This “commercial socializing,” as he called it, was one of the things Iz picked on most about her profession. “What’s the matter with him, doesn’t he know I’m married yet?”

  “Aw, come on now.” Maxie laid his sandwich down on its waxed paper. What with the trouble last night and his nervous stomach (he had something inside there that was probably planning to be an ulcer) he had got practically no sleep. But this was his job; he gathered his forces. “What’s the difference to you? All I’m asking is you should sit at a table with Rory an hour or so in a couple of night spots. I’m not suggesting to spend a weekend with him.”

  “With that fag? You better not. That guy’s so minty he gives me the creeps.”

  “Baby, you got to think of the publicity angle. If you show around town with Rory a couple times, all this trouble could blow over; it even could be to your advantage. Also, the studio would like it. How do you think it’s going to look to them, you turn down a date with Rory Gunn? You should be flattered.”

  Glory paid no attention to this hard sell, but continued with her own thoughts. “I’ll bet that’s the first time in that fruit’s life he ever had two women really fighting over him. No wonder he was stunned.” She gave a short laugh.

  With a grating noise, the sliding door to the building slid open behind them. The strip of smog and sunlight widened across the floor, and a party of five or six new starlets entered the sound stage, accompanied by a minor studio executive named Baby Petersen, who was showing them over the lot.

  “Glory, baby!” he called out. “Hey, c’mon over here, girls! I want you to meet a kid who’s really making it.”

  Squeaking and tripping over the electric cables, the starlets crossed the floor towards Glory. They were all very young, more or less beautiful, and immensely got up, with lacquered hair, nylon eyelashes, and layers of petticoats—exquisite dolls, dressed for a party by some little girl too old to play with dolls. One by one they held out their pink, sharp, manicured hands to Glory while Baby told her their brand-new studio names.

  Glory responded politely. Four years ago she had been a kid like these; she had been through all it had taken to get them here and all they were about to be put through. They were the usual assortment—a couple of brunettes, one sultry and the other the ladylike type; a redhead who moved like a dancer; and some blondes of varying shades, at whom Glory looked hardest because there was a remote chance that one of them might be competition some day.

  “And this is Maxie Weiss, one of the best agents in the business, or should I say the best, baby?” Petersen gave Glory a quite meaningless wink. It was unknown whether he was called “Baby” because of his predilection for this epithet, or whether it was a nickname retained from his childhood, an era now some distance away. Detractors claimed that Baby was really over sixty; he admitted variously to fifty and forty-five, but dressed and deported himself like an extremely young man or boy. He had a deep tan and very white teeth, and wore a seersucker suit, perforated shoes, and some well-made artificial hair.

  “And how’re you, Glory; how’re you doing today?” he asked noisily, meanwhile putting his arm round one of the blondes and pinching her haunch in a friendly way “Is the sun smiling on you?” It had sometimes been suggested that Baby had his dialogue written for him cheap by hack writers who had been dropped by the studio.

  “Just fine, Baby.” Of course it was impossible that Baby had not seen the papers this morning. He would not speak about the brawl in front of these kids, but the look he gave her was greedily searching under the smile and the tan. Glory certainly pulled a boo-boo last night, it said. Is she cracking up, maybe? Is she already on the way out? “How’re you feeling yourself?” she counter-attacked, turning a sexy smile on and then fading it off, like an electronic door opening and closing in a supermarket.

  “Ah, I’m in great condition. I was working out in the gym two hours this morning.” To demonstrate his vigor, Baby grabbed another one of the starlets, this time the redhead, with his spare arm, and squeezed her with some difficulty to his chest. “I’m ready for anything!” This time he winked at Maxie.

  “Isn’t he a great guy, huh!” the blonde said, rubbing against Baby. He pinched her again, in gratitude.

  “Well, got to get back to work,” he added in a heavily kidding voice. “It was really fine to see you, baby. All right, girls.”

  Squeaking, they trooped out.

  “That guy makes me sick,” Glory said as they disappeared. “He’s a creep, that’s what he is.”

  “Aw, he’s not so bad.” Maxie had returned to his sandwich. “He’s got good intentions.”

  “He has my ass. Do you know he was blowing off to Petey Thorsley last week how he’s screwed with two hundred and thirteen girls, or some number like that.”

  “Yeah? Whew.” Maxie sighed, as when one hears of an exhausting athletic feat.

  “The little blonde in pink wasn’t bad-looking,” Glory went on, testing for reassurance.

  “I liked the redhead better. She had a good walk.”

  It was not exactly the right answer; what Maxie should have said was that none of the bunch would ever rate a look if she was around, or something to that effect.

  “Yeah, but did you get a look at her expression when Baby grabbed her like that. She really didn’t like it.”

  “Oh, she’ll learn to play along.”

  “Maybe,” Glory said, drinking from the Thermos.

  “If she can’t, there’s plenty others where she came from.” Maxie’s tone
was quite neutral; still, it implied that the clients of a successful press agent, too, were not irreplaceable. He had the tact not to point his moral, but allowed a minute of silence for it.

  “How about half a pastrami sandwich?” he asked then. “I eat any more on a day like this, I’ll get acid indigestion.”

  “Uh-uh. ... You want some Tiger’s Milk? It’s good for your stomach.”

  “Uh, no thanks.” Maxie could not control a tone of distaste for this drink, which he knew to be made of orange juice, powdered skim milk, brewer’s yeast, vitamins, minerals, and raw egg. He shifted around and sat sideways on his chair again, facing Glory directly, but not looking at her.

  “What I don’t like to picture,” he said, beginning to fold the waxed paper around what was left of his sandwich. “It’s how Rory is going to feel when he hears you turned him down. Naturally, he’s going to be hurt.” He finished wrapping the sandwich and put it into the paper bag. “Aw yeah, he’s going to think, all these nice statements she put out, she won’t even have supper with me. She can’t stand to talk to me for a couple hours with food. Actually she must hate me, probably.”

  “Ah, Maxie, you know it’s not like that,” Glory protested throatily. “I mean, considering he’s a complete lunk-head and a real screaming queer, Gunn’s a pretty straight guy. And he’s a real dancer. He’s got a style that won’t quit.”

  With the shrewdness born of hard experience, Maxie did not speak; he only looked at his client with a sad expression, waiting.

  “You really figure he’ll be all broken up if I don’t go out with him?” Glory asked, in a tone half ironic, half serious.

  Maxie shrugged. “A guy like that, naturally he’s sensitive. Already he’s got the idea he can’t make it with girls, not even as a friend. ... An incident like this comes along and proves it, there’s still less chance he’s ever going to be able to relate normally.”

  “Gee, you sound like my husband,” Glory said. She frowned, gazing up into the darkness above them. Maxie said nothing.

  18

  THE SUN SHONE DOWN hard on Wilshire Boulevard, and everything under it glittered. Spots of light rebounded off chrome and glass and painted metal, and a thousand blinding sparks leaped up from the grains of sand in the sidewalks. Katherine squeezed her eyes almost shut, painfully.

  It was Friday afternoon, and she had come to Beverly Hills for the first time, looking for something to wear to a beach party the Skinners were planning. Susy Skinner had gone through Katherine’s closets and said that nothing there would really do; and Iz had suggested that she try the stores in Beverly Hills. He had given her part of the afternoon off. By three o’clock she was supposed to have finished shopping, and report to his office on Bedford Drive.

  How could everyone else on the street endure the glare? Because, she suddenly realized, they all had on dark glasses. That was what she needed, right away. Squinting, she plunged across the street towards a drugstore.

  There was a tall rack of sunglasses inside the door, octagonal, and spinning round on its pole at the least touch, so that a hundred pairs of green and black eyes quickly looked at her; at wicked, impossible Katherine, the sex criminal, the adulteress. But, of course, there was nothing behind all those eyes but cardboard. Nobody was watching her; she was in Los Angeles, she reminded herself again, where nobody saw or cared what she did. And at this thought, as always recently, came a little burst of giddy euphoria, like a gas balloon exploding far up in the sky on a bright day: It didn’t matter, nothing mattered here!

  Rapidly, like a movie run through a projector at high speed, scenes passed through Katherine’s mind. That first day, trembling or shivering as Iz pulled her into his bedroom. The green plants, the smooth sheets, the shades drawn down against the sun. Her hands were wet, cold. “What’s the matter?”

  “I’m afraid of you”; a nervous, hysterical whisper. The hair on his body was black, curly, dense and fine, as if a design had been drawn all over him in India ink. And when she was feeling most cold, clumsy, and despairing (but she hadn’t said anything, only made an ambiguous noise that might even have been a sigh of passion), “Ah, Katherine. Don’t try so hard. There’s nothing at stake.” And later, lying back with the pillow folded under his head, “I’m sorry. Next time we’ll take it much more slowly.”

  “Can I help you with something?” A salesclerk had appeared.

  “No thank you; I’m just trying some sunglasses.” To prove it Katherine took a pair off the rack at random and put them on. Immediately the whole store, and the retreating clerk, turned dark green.

  And the next time, taking it slowly. The long silence in Iz’s apartment, deepened by the murmur of cars below, an occasional horn. The murmur of his voice: “It’s a long time since I just lay in someone’s arms. I needed that.” Her feet growing warmer against his feet. “Look! We’re on television.” Katherine opened her eyes; dimly reflected on the pale tube beside the bed, gray bodies and limbs glistened on a gray sheet, intertwined. Like scenes from the faded print of a French art film, anonymous shadowed faces: L’Homme Barbu et La Femme. “Mmm,” she murmured, shutting her eyes again. “That was so good.”

  “But you didn’t come.”

  “Yes I did,” she whispered defensively. “I mean, that’s how it always is for me. I don’t come very hard.”

  “Don’t worry,” Iz said aloud. “You will. It’s in you.”

  Katherine took off the sunglasses and tried on another pair. These had white rims, and the lenses were paler, purplish blue. Instantly the racks of shampoos and vitamins and paperback books were tinged mauve and azure; the neon tubes above glowed with a blue light. It was pretty; better than the reality.

  Two days ago. The television set had been turned away, the covers thrown onto the floor; it was very hot outside. “Trust me,” Iz was whispering. “Do you hear what I’m saying? You don’t have to prove anything. Just trust me.” Hands slowly joined by sweat, and then bodies. And then an amazing thing happened: a well of desire opened inside her, as if a huge washing machine had been turned on, with steaming water and suds foaming, splashing, thrashing, faster and faster. “What will he think of me?” she wondered, but could not hold on to that or any thought. She shut her eyes and flung herself into it.

  The salesclerk was hovering again. Katherine changed the blue sunglasses for some brown harlequin ones. The store flashed out in a coarse confusion of real colors for a moment, and then became deeply suntanned. In the slice of mirror at the top of the rack her face was reflected, brown with great dark slanted eyes. Very aware now that the clerk was watching officiously, she tried on several pairs of glasses in rapid succession. Different strange faces appeared in the mirror: green, blue, and ochre faces with eyes round, square, and oblong, some edged with glittering stones. Why didn’t the man go away? Did he think she was going to break something, or steal from the store? She glared at him coldly.

  “Yes?” The tone was pushingly familiar.

  “I’ll take these.” She held out the brown sunglasses.

  “Yeah; they look fine on you. But you have to pay at the checkout stand, over there.” Katherine began to walk away. “Say,” he added. “I haven’t seen you in here before. You just moved out here?”

  Embarrassed by this inquisitiveness, Katherine shook her head, smiled very slightly at the clerk, and made a polite negative noise as she continued towards the front of the store.

  “Aw, don’t run off like that,” he said. “Stay and talk to me.”

  Katherine turned her head and focused on the sales clerk for the first time. She saw him to be a well-constructed young man with rather long shiny hair and a knowing expression. Then the conventional response clicked into place—she gave him a routine cold stare, and walked away.

  “Well!” he called after her. “Don’t trip, Lady Jane.”

  What a strange city this was, Katherine thought as she walked along the suntanned sidewalk, and how oddly people here behaved. Men had tried to pick her up back East, b
ut not very often, and never so boldly—certainly no one working in a store would have ventured to do so. But everything was strange here. Look at the women on the street: instead of the summer suits people wore when they went shopping in Boston or New York, most of them had on costumes out of a chorus line or a comic book. They wore high-heeled sandals, tight pants in metallic colors or fluorescent pastels, and brief tops which often left a strip of skin bare around the waist. Their hair was teased and puffed like heaps of cotton candy, or slicked up into varnished cones.

  At the corner of Wilshire and Beverly Boulevards, a billboard stood on top of a row of shops. It portrayed a glowing and steaming cup of coffee twenty feet across. A cardboard figure of a woman, about life size, was climbing up to the brim of the cup on a cardboard ladder, smiling. A brand name was written below; above, in huge red letters, appeared the simple message, “Indulge Yourself.”

  The shop Iz had recommended was odd-looking, even for Los Angeles: situated on a wedge-shaped corner, it was also wedge-shaped and painted dead black. The interior was even odder: an immensely high irregular room, centered about a huge rectangular white pillar, indirectly lit and hung with long mirror and gray plush curtains two stories high, it resembled a stage-set by Gordon Craig. This was where Glory bought most of her clothes.

  According to Susy Skinner, what Katherine needed for the Nutting barbecue was a “Capri set”—fancy slacks and a matching top. She went through a rack of clothes of strange materials and cut, taking out a few things. Then she looked round for a saleswoman and a place to try on. But nobody came forward—the room was empty except for two girls in black stretch pants and sandals sitting talking in the far corner. They wore an extreme version of beat make-up and looked like actresses or dancers. In that drugstore there was too much service, Katherine thought, and here there isn’t any.