“Yes,” Jeffrey said, “I know my way around.”
“Marianna’s been asking for you,” Hal Bliss said. “Elise is having her for dinner and the night. You’ll come, won’t you? Just us four.”
“It’s a pretty long way out,” Jeffrey said.
“We’ll stop at the hotel,” Bliss said, “and get your bag. You can spend the night. There’s lots of room.”
Everything was easy. Everything was always easy there. They had a friendship which seemed to Jeffrey very agreeable, for there was no common ground except the story, no other relationship to bother them.
“Yes,” he said, “I’d like to, but let’s wait here a minute, first. Let’s talk about the story.”
“Let’s talk about it in the car,” Hal said, “it’s getting late.”
The chauffeur drove them across Wilshire Boulevard on the way to the Bronxville to pick up Jeffrey’s bag, past the new real estate developments which seemed to Jeffrey to possess the impermanence of the sets on the indoor stages. There was no need for deep digging, since there was no frost to heave the foundations, and so the framing of those new communities rose up overnight. You did not need much heat in those houses, except to remove the fog and the damp in the rainy months. Trees and shrubs would grow like weeds in the benign climate, so that in a few months the bougainvillaeas and the oleander and the casuarina and the palm trees, if you wanted them, and everything else that you planted, looked as though they had been around your house for a long while. Beginning now, you could be sure of months of sunny, rainless days, but there was plenty of water for the gardens. He could see the date palms, and palmetto and royal palms and Italian cypress and traveler’s palms, and avocado and monkey-puzzle trees, all mixed together in a confusion that made him curious about the point of view of the people who had planted them.
They passed the places where you could drive in for a light luncheon from a tray hooked to the door of your car, served by little girls called “car hops” dressed in the uniforms of sailors or cowgirls. They drove up the Avenue to the hotel and Jeffrey walked through the lobby past the gift shop and the oriental shop and the flower shop and the automobile livery. The manager, in a doeskin suit, was standing near the desk. The Topaz Cocktail Room was open, and he heard dance music.
An old man, also in a doeskin suit, and suffering from arthritis, like so many of the other guests, was complaining about the noise that the birds made in the early morning.
“Well, well, well, Mr. Wilson,” the manager said. “So you’re back again with us, are you? Hasn’t it been a glorious afternoon?”
Everybody always said it. It was always a glorious afternoon. Anything that Mr. Wilson wanted, just come to see him—that was what he was there for, just anything at all.
“There are a number of telephone messages for you, sir,” the clerk said when he handed Jeffrey his key, but Jeffrey said never mind them, now. He was spending the night with Mr. Bliss at Palos Verdes, but if any call came from New York, would they put it through to Mr. Bliss’s house?
“Mr. Newcombe has been asking for you, sir. Mr. Newcombe, the author.”
“Mr. Newcombe?” Jeffrey repeated. He had never thought of Walter Newcombe’s turning up there. “Where’s he staying?”
“He didn’t say, sir,” the clerk said, “but he said he would call again tomorrow; and a man who said he was your brother called.”
“Well,” Jeffrey said, “never mind it, now.”
Then he was back in the car again, sitting beside Hal Bliss.
“You ought to live out here,” Hal said.
“If I lived out here,” Jeffrey answered, “I’d want to get back home.”
“I know,” Hal said. “But you get over it. After a while it gets you.”
“I don’t want it to get me,” Jeffrey said.
“This place has got everything,” Hal said. “Tell me something it hasn’t got.”
“That’s it,” Jeffrey said, “it’s got everything.”
It occurred to Jeffrey that the script, as he had heard it outlined, was very much like the boulevard along which they were driving. It had everything. Just tell him something it hadn’t got. All it needed was a single idea and they discussed it during the entire drive to Palos Verdes.
“You mean, no one knows his country,” Hal said. “Americans don’t appreciate democracy.”
“Never mind democracy,” Jeffrey answered.
That was the tangent they were always going off on in those days. You could not make a picture about an academic concept. He wanted Hal to think of it in human terms. All you needed was to throw two characters together. You did not need misdirected letters or Nazi spies or a shooting gallery in Norway, or long speeches. All you needed were two characters and butter on the table, the town meeting, eggs for breakfast, the school bus, the church supper.
“You mean,” he heard Hal say, “butter and not guns?”
He could see that Hal was trying to fit it into a formula, and it was not what he meant at all. The idea was all in the script, but you had to make it simple.
They were both sitting there pursuing a half-formed plot. He could see the sun setting in the ocean. He could see a cloud bank on the horizon, but he was not conscious of time or distance. He was doing what he liked best. The road was winding over the headland of Palos Verdes and he could see the Japanese in broad-brimmed straw hats working in their truck gardens.
“We’re getting somewhere,” Hal said. “We’ve got an idea, but we haven’t got a story.”
Jeffrey was not worried about the story, because it seemed to him to develop naturally and he was already thinking of it in scenes, and Bragg was mixed up in it, and his father and his life there as a boy.
“We’ll talk about it with Marianna,” Hal said. “I want to see if I see Marianna in it.”
They were driving close to the edge of the cliffs, approaching Hal’s house on a bluff overlooking the sea.
When the car stopped, Jeffrey realized that he had been seeing Marianna Miller in all those half-formed scenes. She came to the door with Hal’s wife Elise. She was in a gingham dress with her hair brushed back and tied down hard with a ribbon.
“Jeff,” she called, and she ran to the car, and he kissed her, as he always did, and then he kissed Elise, because it was the friendly thing to do.
“Hal’s asked me out for the night,” he said. Elise smiled at him. He did not know her very well. She was Hal’s fourth wife, and all his wives were pretty.
“That’s all right,” Elise said, “I can stand it if you can.”
“Marianna,” Hal said. “Stand just that way, will you, again? Now move your head a little. Jeff’s got quite a story.”
“Story!” Elise said. “That’s all it is out here—and when we’re finished with one of them, there’s always another God-damn’ story.”
“Well,” Hal said, “it’s better than having none at all.”
The nice thing about Hal Bliss’s house was its complete impersonality. There was no sense of obligation in it. Jeffrey felt that it could all be folded up and trucked away at any time and that neither Hal nor Elise would mind. Hal had said that it was just a whim and that maybe it would not work. Just after he had finished a picture, and, like Mr. Mintz, had been very tired, Hal and Elise had gone off in the roadster to motor just anywhere and they had parked on that bluff at Palos Verdes, looking out to sea. Hal was still feeling very tired, but as he sat there in the car, something made him feel at peace, something in the clear sweep of the breeze and the sound of the waves on the cliffs, and then he knew that he wanted to be away from it all where he could think, where he could feel the wind on his face and look at space and hear the murmur of the sea—and right where he and Elise were parked was just the place to do it.
Later he admitted that perhaps he had made a mistake in not asking Elise whether she wanted to get away from it all, too; because it seemed when they moved there that Elise hadn’t. Elise said that it drove her nuts there, listening t
o the waves, and it drove her friends nuts. Admitted she had her own Cadillac and her own chauffeur, there wasn’t anyone for her to see unless she drove about twenty-five miles. Hal realized that all this might be a little hard on a girl like Elise, but in the end, if it didn’t work, if Elise didn’t like La Cabaña Blanca, as the house and the servants’ quarters and the garage and the gardener’s house were called, why they could write it off and pull up stakes and try something else. In the meanwhile, it gave Hal a chance to turn around and think.
As Hal had said, when he had decided to get away from it all, he was very tired, much too tired to oversee building the house himself or furnishing it, and Elise could not help him because she did not know what he wanted, anyway. So, Hal got an architect whom he had met at the Desert Inn at Palm Springs who had built a good many ranchos for friends of Hal’s who had also wanted to get away from it all; and then there were some boys in the Technical Department in the studio who could furnish anything. They had not told him a word about it until it was finished. The only thing the architect had asked him was whether he had wanted it “windswept” and Hal had said that windswept was exactly his idea, and that there had to be a tennis court and a swimming pool. He had not realized until later that it was usually too windy to play tennis, and they had been obliged to build a brick wall around the swimming pool later so he would not shake his teeth out shivering when he got out of the water. But there it was.
The living room was restful. Space was the theme of it, the architect had told Hal—wind and space; and if you did not close the windows at the right time, the wind would blow all the books and cigarette boxes right off the table in the living room, and all the flowers out of the vases; but still the living room was very large and restful. The man from the Technical Department had furnished it with modern woods and the chairs were so large that it was difficult to get out of them. There was a room with a draftsman’s table and photographs of personalities where Hal could think. The dining room was a bit of old Spain, and there were three Japanese houseboys whose names Hal could not remember and neither could Elise, but they came when you called “Boy.” They had not finished with it yet—perhaps they would never finish it, but upstairs there were bedrooms and any amount of plumbing and a balcony in front of each room where the occupant could sit and look out to sea, if there was not too much wind. Everything was there and if it wasn’t, you could call “Boy.” Jeffrey felt very happy because he had nothing to do with any of it. There was nothing there to bother—just Hal and Marianna and Elise.
Hal took off his coat and he told Jeffrey to take off his, and Elise said they had better put weights on them so they would not blow away.
“Well,” Hal said, “let’s go into the bar.” Of course the house had a bar, like every proper house out there. You could either sit on little red stools and drink at the bar itself, or else, if the spirit moved you, you could slide up the whole back wall and there the bar would be, right in Hal’s workroom. They all sat down and looked at the refrigerator and the shelves and glasses.
Hal pressed a button and they all waited.
“It doesn’t work,” Hal said. “Let’s all yell together. One-two-three, Boy!”
A door at the side of the bar opened and there was a Japanese, but the gray in his hair showed that he was not a boy.
“I come,” he said. “What to drink, please?” And then everybody told him what to drink.
“You makee chopchop,” Hal said, “wikki, wikki, Boy.” Hal unbuttoned his shirt collar and sighed.
“I learned that in China,” he said. “Elise and I took an oriental cruise in ’36. It’s a great place, the Orient.”
“It isn’t a great place, the Orient,” Elise said. “You had trouble with your intestines and an itch in your scalp and you were in the hospital in Peking.”
“Peiping,” Hal said. “A great place, Peiping.”
“Don’t try to say it the way they say it, dear,” Elise said. “It was a dirty place with a lot of poor ginks pulling carts and eating curds in the street.”
“Just the same,” Hal said, “it was a great place, Peiping. It didn’t drive me nuts like Tokyo.”
“Shush, dear,” Elise said. “Not in front of the boy. Maybe he likes Tokyo.”
“Oh,” Hal said, “he doesn’t mind. He’s an American boy. You’re American, aren’t you, Boy?”
“Oh, yes,” the boy said. “Yes, sir.”
“There,” Hal said. “You see? I’ll tell you something. They’re wistful in Tokyo.”
“What?” Jeffrey asked. “How do you mean, wistful?”
“Wistful,” Hal said again. “They want to be like Americans. By God, you ought to see them try.”
“Shush, dear,” Elise said. “You don’t want the boys to walk out on us, do you?”
“Oh, hell, Elise,” Hal said. “These are all nice boys.”
“Are you going to talk story?” Elise said.
“Yes,” Hal said, “we’re going to talk story. Nobody understands America.”
“That’s a big thought, isn’t it?” Elise said. “So what? Suppose nobody understands America, so what?”
“When we get through with this,” Hal said, “you, even you, will understand America.”
“All right,” Elise said, “so what?”
“She’s a big help to me,” Hal said. “She talks like Mintz. Do you know what Elise did before she came to Paramount? She was in the Miss America contest at Atlantic City. She ought to understand America.”
“Listen, fat boy,” Elise said, “I know more about it than you do, and more about it than—what’s your first name, dear?”
“It’s Jeffrey,” Hal said. “You always call him Jeffrey.”
“I always forget,” Elise said.
Then Marianna touched his arm. She was smiling at him.
“Darling,” she said, “are you glad you’re here?”
“Yes,” he said, “it’s quite a change.”
“I can always tell,” Marianna said. “Elise, is there time for me to show Jeffrey the garden?”
“There isn’t time for anything,” Hal said, “and besides, we’re going to talk story.”
“Okay with me,” Elise said. “If you’re going to talk story, I’m going to bed with Amytal.”
“I’ll tell you one thing that you never went to bed with, honey,” Hal said.
“What?” Elise asked. “Don’t keep me waiting. What is it, fat boy?”
“With a good book,” Hal said.
“There aren’t any good books here,” Elise said. “You never went to bed with a good book, either, unless it was a sleeping dictionary.”
“Now honey bunch,” Hal said. “Just be quiet. We’re talking story.”
There was nothing there to bother him. He did not have to worry about what Madge might think of Elise. She was just Hal’s fourth wife, a very pretty girl, and when Hal told her to be quiet, she kept quiet. He was only there to talk story. It made the basis for a pleasant sort of friendship, temporary, but very genial, and they all were speaking a language that he knew. After dinner Marianna sat on the floor by the fireplace with her arms wrapped around her knees. Jeffrey sat near her and he kept looking at her while he was talking. She had interpreted so many characters that she could turn moods on and off, according to her wish, as any actress could. Now and then he could watch her with an amused sort of detachment, thinking of her stage career and of her as a motion picture property, as though he did not know her. Her nose, her forehead and her cheekbones were made for the camera. He remembered that the molding of her face had struck him the first time he had seen her. That had been at one of those theatrical parties somewhere in New York when she was studying at some school for dramatics, and that was quite a while ago. Her face was more mobile now, more sensitive because, like any actress, she was conscious of her beauty. He knew that she had studied the way she sat, clasping her knees with her thin hands, and once she turned to look at him, tilting her head back and giving her hair a quic
k toss. He knew her about as well as anyone, and yet there was no way of knowing what was attitude and what was not, because she did not know herself.
“Wait a minute,” Hal said, “what about a highball?”
“Don’t get yourself soused,” Elise said.
Hal was sitting with a block of note paper across his knee. Elise was lying on the sofa smoking cigarettes and the wind was rattling the windows.
“Windswept,” Elise said; “hear it? My God, it’s getting late. You talk and talk and you don’t get anywhere at all.”
Jeffrey had no idea of the time, and time did not matter.
“You always get soused when you’re on a story,” Elise said. “It’s going to be colossal. It’s going to get the Oscar—and then you go to bed and come down with a head in the morning.”
“It’s all illusion, anyway,” Hal said.
“It’s all illusion, and so what?” Elise said.
“So you can get your bath salts,” Hal said, “and have a mud pack on your puss, dearie, that’s what it’s for.”
Jeffrey knew that in the morning when he tried to write the script its luster would be gone. He would begin to see the faults in it and the bareness of the mechanism. It would be like any other script when he began to write it. There would be that eternal tragedy, the difference between performance and creative conception. But now he was awake and alive with the stimulation of ideas.
“You feel what I mean,” Jeffrey said, “in just a small way when you come back home from abroad. You’ve left things one way and when you’re back, they’re another. When I came back from the war—”
He saw Marianna tilt back her head to watch him. He saw Elise on the sofa throw away her cigarette, and he realized that they had all forgotten about the war.
“I had quite a time in the war,” Jeffrey said, “but never mind it now. I was only talking about coming back. We were all jammed in the steerage, a lot of lieutenants in the steerage, coming back. Colonels and majors and generals and captains were in the First Class—a whole ship full of casual officers coming back, and those of us down in the hold were pretty sore. We were officers, and we’d seen a lot, maybe more than the generals in the First Class.”
So Little Time Page 46
