Screenplay

by MacDonald Harris

  I quickly found that driving the car was not as easy as I had expected. The thing was that shifting was done with the feet instead of the hands as in ordinary cars. Pushing in succession on the four controls—the throttle lever, the brake, the low pedal, and the reverse pedal—I felt like an incompetent organist trying to deal with Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. First I had to make a U-turn on the main street of the lot. This was accomplished with several backings and fillings. Then I had to negotiate my way around the parked truck, which seemed to have been left there to test the mettle of anybody who drove a car down the street. The steering wheel was set at a high angle, like that of a bus, and it felt queer. I managed to get around the truck with my right fender clearing it an inch or two. After that it was a simple matter to drive it on up the street and around the corner at the end of the block, where I had imagined the Ford turning and going off by itself to be pursued, perhaps, by some comic cops in baggy pants.

  I drove up and down the streets of the lot for some time, looking for Moira. I had no idea where she was and it was only a chance that I would find her out in the street instead of inside some studio shooting a picture, or in the commissary. But it was too risky getting out of the Ford to look for her now that I had possession of it. At one point I caught sight of Nesselrode’s overcoat going down the right-hand side of the street ahead of me. As I passed him I glanced to the side. He turned his face and his eyes fixed on me, glittering like two buttons. But he did nothing and made no attempt to stop me; he only twitched his nose.

  The streets were cluttered with all kinds of obstacles—they were really broad sidewalks, intended for people walking and for trundling things along on dollies rather than for cars—and I threaded my way through them, somewhat handicapped by the fact that the Ford had no clutch and was always in gear, so that you could slow it down only by pushing the low pedal. By some miracle I saw Moira just coming out of the door of a shooting stage at the far end of the lot. She was only fifty yards or so ahead. I pushed the low pedal and then, as the car slowed down, the foot brake. This was perhaps not the right way to stop it; the engine began lurching and shaking the whole car, and it almost died. Somehow I managed to bring it to a stop.

  Moira had caught sight of me almost at the same instant and stopped in the street a few feet from the car. She was wearing riding breeches, a simple blouse like a man’s shirt, and a kind of English hunting jacket with pockets on the front. She had slipped her fingers into these pockets, leaving the thumbs outside. She was bareheaded and her hair was loose and free. Without saying anything she looked at me and smiled.

  I motioned hurriedly for her to get in, and opened the small door on the passenger’s side. She took her place on the leather seat without a word. I pushed on the low pedal and swung around in another U-turn, this one without backing and filling. I was getting the hang of the Ford now and felt more confident.

  “You’ve been working?”

  “Yes. A stupid thing about Arabs.”

  She was very attractive in the riding breeches and jacket. She had a trim figure and the costume was well-fitting and snug. She turned her face to the breeze streaming around the windshield, which lifted her hair and fluttered it against her cheek. Then, as though she had made preparations in advance for riding in an open car, she pulled out of her pocket a flowered silk scarf, folded it into a band, and tied it around her hair.

  I was still a little nervous about having been seen by Nesselrode, even though he had done nothing to stop me when I had driven by him in the car. Perhaps, instead of pursuing me—which would have been ludicrous and impossible anyhow for a man his age—he had simply sent word to the front gate to stop me if I tried to drive the car out through it. Moira seemed to guess my thoughts, or perhaps she only noticed that I was glancing around in a furtive way as I drove through the streets of the lot. Looking straight out through the windshield rather than at me, she said, “After all, what’s the difference? What can he do to you?”

  “I don’t want to be separated from you.”

  She smiled a little, and after a moment took my hand and held it in hers on the leather seat between us. Steering with my left hand, I turned the corner onto the main street of the lot. A hundred yards ahead of us the same truck was still parked at the curb. I steered over to one side to drive around it, but as we approached it the two men dragged another large lath-and-canvas flat out of it, blocking the way. I came to a stop, using the double-pedal technique which I had now mastered to perfection. At that same moment another pair of men came out of the door of the studio across the street, also carrying a flat. The two sets of workmen stopped, looked at one another, and realized that they were carrying identical flats. Each one consisted of a section of wall with a brick fireplace painted on it, including a set of andirons, a mantel, and a flower-pot and a clock on the mantel. They shrugged, turned around, and carried their flats back the way they had come. The two who had come out of the studio disappeared back into it, and the other two began lifting their unwieldy load back into the truck again. I was not sure whether this was an incident in real life, whatever that meant, or a scene in a comedy that somebody was shooting. I looked around for a camera but I couldn’t see one. Moira sighed.

  Without any particular thought in mind I drove east on Washington Boulevard toward the center of the city. For several miles we drove through an expanse of half-built suburbs with many empty streets. Moira asked no questions about where I was taking her. She seemed to be in a pensive mood, as if she were reflecting about something, although on the surface she was cheerful as usual. I was in excellent spirits, in spite of the fact that I had no clear idea about what I was going to do or where we were going. It was enough to be out of the lot and on the open boulevard, at the wheel of the small car that would take us anywhere we wanted to go. And no one seemed to be pursuing us. It was a warm clear day and a fresh breeze streamed around the windshield and over our faces. Moira lifted her chin and smiled as the breeze played in the curls that protruded from under the scarf. Ahead of us I could see the line of skyscrapers along Broadway.

  “Have you ever been downtown?”

  “Oh yes. Many times.”

  “We could stop and have lunch at Clifton’s.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  For some reason I had imagined myself holding hands with her beside the waterfall, while we ate Salisbury steak with mashed potatoes, or perhaps a Waldorf salad.

  “Besides,” she said, “we don’t have time. We’d be late.”

  I didn’t know what she meant by this. A little twinge of apprehension passed through me. I glanced at her but she was exactly the same, looking out through the windshield with her placid expression. I didn’t say anything more and turned my attention back to my driving. At Broadway I turned left into a busy stream of traffic, including taxis, streetcars, and a large number of shiny black cars like our own. It was a curious sensation. The downtown district was exactly as I had always known it, except that now it was new and it was the center of the city. There were no bums or street evangelists; the sidewalks were thronged with well-dressed shoppers and businessmen in black suits and hats. There was Clifton’s, there was Bullock’s, there was the Security Bank building where a well-known goggled comedian had clung by his fingertips to a clock hand seven stories above the street. The yellowish haze of the city was gone. The air was clear and sparkling, with only a slight smell of ozone from the streetcars.

  “Do you want to stop for anything?”

  “No. Or wait, yes.”

  I stopped the car at the curb, and she went into Woolworth’s and came out wearing a ring with a cut-glass diamond on it as big as a pigeon’s egg. She held it out to show me with a flamboyant gesture. Our eyes met— mine puzzled, hers mirthful.

  “Is that our engagement ring?”

  “If you like. Of course,” she added after a moment, “you have to win me.”

  She got in and I reached over across her to shut the door. As I did this my hand inadv
ertently brushed across her riding breeches, and this made me desire her so strongly that I almost stopped the car again and looked around to see if there wasn’t a hotel in sight. I mastered myself, drove on down Broadway, and turned right on Sixth Street.

  “Now where?”

  “To the seaside!” she said in a theatrical tone, still with an air as though she knew something I didn’t. She held the ring up before her and turned it so that the glass glittered in the sunshine.

  Sixth Street crossed the riverbed, a dry arroyo at this time of the year, on a rickety wooden bridge. On the other side of the river it turned into Whittier Boulevard, which led off into the fashionable east-side suburb of Boyle Heights. After winding its way through the hills for a while it left the houses behind and came out into the open countryside. There were dairy farms, alfalfa fields, and an occasional grove of eucalyptus or sycamores along a streambed. There was almost no traffic; now and then we passed a wagon with a load of hay, or another Model T coming in the other direction. After a quarter of an hour or so of driving down the country road we came to Whittier, a pleasant middle-sized town with bungalows and white clapboard houses set in neatly clipped lawns.

  “We could live here,” I said, “after we’re married.”

  “I have my career as an actress. Can you see me washing dishes?”

  “Well, just for fun.”

  “You could dry them.”

  “Then we could quarrel and have a fight.”

  “Snapping each other with the dish towel. Then we could kiss and make up.”

  “And it would end in the bedroom.”

  But here she stopped and didn’t go on with the game. She went back to looking out through the windshield with her childish air of knowing a secret she wasn’t going to tell. I drove on down the narrow country road lined with eucalyptus trees. Beyond Whittier the dairy farms began to give way to orange and walnut groves, with occasional fields of sugar beets. Norwalk and Buena Park were just crossroads, small farm towns with a single cross street, a few white houses, and a general store.

  On the outskirts of Buena Park the Ford faltered once or twice, then began coughing and after a block or two died entirely. I pulled over to the side of the road as it rolled to a stop and sat there with my hands still on the steering wheel, looking out at the radiator cap with its two shiny handles. In the silence the dead engine clicked faintly.

  “Do we have a flat tire?”

  I shook my head.

  “Perhaps we’re out of gas.”

  I sat there for some time, feeling oddly content. It was a pleasant sylvan scene. There was an orange grove over on the right with some bees buzzing around the blossoms. Occasionally a car came down the road toward us, went by with a swish, and disappeared off in the other direction. In the intervals between it was very quiet. Then I became aware that for some time now, ever since the car had stopped, there had been a low and almost inaudible humming in the air, seeming to come from overhead and behind us, that could not be accounted for by the bees in the orchard or anything mechanical like the passing cars.

  I glanced at Moira. I knew that she heard it too.

  “I wish that thing would stop.”

  “You’d better hope that it doesn’t.”

  “I thought we were alone.”

  “We’re alone. Don’t worry. It’s Nobody.”

  I wished Nobody would go away. I looked furtively around behind me up into the air, knowing that there was nothing there to see.

  I turned back to her, and it was a moment or two before I spoke.

  “We’re still behind the Screen,” I said. “Even here. Out in the countryside. With nobody around. Nobody to see us.”

  “Of course. What did you think?”

  “I thought we could get away from them and be happy together. Alone.”

  “They own us,” she told me as she had told me once before. “Once we’re in pictures we belong to them.”

  I felt a little twinge of anxiety again, as I had when she had told me, We don’t have time. We’d be late. I began to suspect now what she meant. Yet the feeling wasn’t really unpleasant. It was just a small shadow, of the kind that makes the sunshine seem brighter by contrast. After all I was alone with her, even if Nobody was following us. I came out of my trance and turned my attention back to the immediate problem, the fact that the car had stopped for some reason. Moira was no mechanic, but perhaps she was right and it had run out of gas. I began searching around on the instrument panel for a gasoline gauge. There was nothing, only the speedometer and the switch for the magneto. I got out of the car and walked around it, inspecting it more carefully than I had on the lot when I was nervous about being observed. The gas tank was a cylindrical affair mounted behind the seats. Sticking up from it was a narrow filler pipe, and next to it was a gauge. It was a very simple contrivance, worked by a floating cork down inside the tank which turned a ring behind a small glass lens. Right now “E” was showing in the glass.

  I got back in the car and sat down. “We’re out of gas,” I told her.

  Without a word she pointed to a filling station a hundred yards or so down the road. Once again I began to feel a sense of metaphysical anxiety. How had this all happened anyhow? The whole business—my stealing the Model T Ford, our setting out in this direction, the car running out of gas. It was a situation out of a classic picture, slightly comic, and the joke was on me. I looked around to see if there was a small boy who was about to shout, “Get a horse!” but the road was deserted except for the filling station ahead, where the attendant was leaning against the pump with his ankles crossed, looking with mild interest in my direction. I got out, went around to the back, and started pushing on the spare tire.

  I soon began to perspire. But the light car moved easily and I was able to get it going at a good pace—enough, I hoped, to mount up the slight slope into the filling station. Moira, in the passenger seat, deigned to stretch over her left hand and turn the steering wheel back and forth as needed. The filling station man, still leaning against the pump with his arms crossed, observed this scene with interest. Finally I got the car up to the pump, panting, and took out my handkerchief to wipe my forehead.

  “Brand-new one, eh?”

  “Yep.”

  “Fill ‘er up?”

  I nodded.

  He stuck the hose into the tank, pressed the handle, and watched while the liquid gurgled down through the glass cylinder on top of the pump. It too was a very simple contrivance, with lines painted on it to mark the gallons. When the level got down to ten the gasoline splashed out of the filler-pipe and there was a heavy etherlike odor.

  “Dollar twenty,” he said.

  As it happened I had picked up my pay envelope at the front office the day before and I had plenty of money. I counted it out dime by dime. While he waited he glanced back at the car. The two of us were standing in the unpaved dirt yard of the station, in front of the small office.

  He looked at Moira again and then back at me.

  “Nice lookin’ lady-friend you got there.”

  I said nothing to this.

  He went on. “I’ll bet she’s one o’ them Hollywood stars.” He mused some more, scratching his chin, while he alternated his glances between Moira and the money I was counting out. “Seems to me I’ve seen her before.” Another thoughtful look and more chin-scratching. “That’s Moira Silver, ain’t it?”

  At this I only smiled. I felt secretly pleased though. I gave him the dollar twenty along with a ten-cent tip, which seemed to cheer him up, although he didn’t offer to crank the car for me or in any other way help to start it. All he said was, “Retard the spark on that thing or you’ll break your arm.” It finally struck me what the second lever on the steering column was. I retarded the spark, went back to the front, and cranked. It started with a confident clatter, and the radiator immediately began pushing against my shoulder. “You forgot to set the hand brake!” he shouted at me. Ignoring him, I stepped briskly away from the front of the
car, waited for it to accelerate past me, and then vaulted into the driver’s seat over the top of the door without opening it. I soon had the thing under control and headed down the country road again under the eucalyptus trees. For this athletic feat, Moira kissed me.

  Santa Ana was a sleepy little county seat. Everything was covered with dust and only one street was paved, a few black cars parked on it with their noses in toward the curb. There were awnings stretched out over the shops and the few loafers in sight were trying to stay in the shade of them as best they could. A dog lay in the middle of Main Street and we drove around him. There was a single movie house, a block or so from the business district and next to a Chinese laundry; it was called the Electric Theater. We were out of town and in the open country again in five minutes.

  From here it was only ten miles or so to the beach. Over to the left were some brown hills, and ahead, as we went on, the sea gradually came into view with the sunlight sparkling on it like a thousand tiny diamonds. We went through Costa Mesa, the last town before the beach, and wound down a hill past a rather disreputable-looking roadhouse. Here we came out on a bay, and beyond it were the Newport dunes stretching along the coast as far as the eye could see. We crossed an arm of the bay on a narrow bridge and set off across the dunes, an endless expanse of sand carved by the wind into elaborate mounds and hillocks, with clusters of weeds growing here and there in crevices where the rainwater collected.

  After we crossed the bridge the road turned into a pair of wheel tracks and then dwindled away entirely. The expanse of sand was unbroken except for the tops of some trees showing over the dunes in the distance. As we came closer I could see they were palms. I drove toward them over the dunes, the loose sand scrunching and shifting under the narrow tires of the Ford. I imagined stopping the car and getting out and resting with Moira in the shade of the palms. If there were trees there must be water too, and there would be grass and it would be cool. As though I were recalling a distant and almost forgotten happiness from another life I remembered sitting with Moira on the grass by the Old Mill Stream. I pulled down on the hand throttle to make the Ford go a little faster.