“No baloney! Here’s Silone!” he shouted, suddenly bursting out the patio door, all six-feet three of him, wearing only a pair of shorts made from lopped-off jeans. Bare-footed, barelegged, bare-chested, his long red beard and longer, redder hair exploding from his leonine head, he looked me up and down and sarcastically remarked, “So you’re the lucky dude who gets to interview Silone.”
Then turning in Marty’s direction and scowling at the photo equipment, he snarled, “What’s all this junk?” With a wide sweep of his hand, he knocked over the umbrella-reflector and the camera tripod, “ending them clattering to the red bricks of the patio floor. Fortunately, Marty had not yet affixed his camera to the tripod, so there was no serious damage. “I deal in Truth!” growled Silone. “The naked Truth! Warts and all! I’m no Botticelli, sonny boy—none of this pretty-pretty stuff for me. You just point the damn camera at me and fire away.”
Saying not a word, Marty patiently picked up the apparatus and put it to one side. He removed his camera from its case. “Anything you say, Mr. Silone. But don’t you want to put something on?”
“No,” retorted Silone in a mocking singsong, “I do not want to ‘put something on.’ This is met This is Silone!” He slapped the rust-colored thicket of hair on his stark-ribbed chest “I have nothing to hide!”
Marty looked at me, quizzically. I nodded him an OK, and he began shooting. The tape recorder dangling from my shoulder had already been turned on, so I began my questions, but before I could finish even the first one, Silone roared in the direction of the house: “Nell! Where are those drinks? Get your gorgeous butt out here on the double!”
Her answering voice caroled, “Coming!” from inside, and soon appeared with a tray of vodka-tonics. The frosted glasses looked temptingly cool, but for me it was a bit early in the day for strong drink, so I declined. “I don’t trust a man who won’t drink with me,” Silone said darkly. As he took a glass from Nell’s hand, she made no attempt to hide the way she affectionately tousled his beard. Silone winked at us, saying, “You’ve met my sex-retary? Can’t keep her hands off me, can you, doll?” Nell giggled and disappeared again into the house.
About an hour into the interview, the mercury rising and my tolerance of Silone dropping, he suddenly frowned and barked, “What the hell time is it?” I glanced at my watch and told him.
“Time to go,” he said.
“Go where?”
“The Challenge Gallery. That little art joint off La Cienega. The old broad who owns it twisted my arm and got a promise out of me to sign some pictures for my fans today at ten. You and the shutterbug can come along. You’ll pick up plenty of good material for the interview.”
“Ten?” I said. “It’s a quarter past ten already, and it’ll take us at least half an hour to get there.”
“Close enough. They’ll wait”
“Shouldn’t you phone the gallery, at least and let them know we’re on the way?”
“What for? I said they’ll wait.” He pointed to my weathered Volkswagen in the driveway. “Is that your bucket of bolts?” I admitted that it was. “Well,” he sighed, “ordinarily I wouldn’t be caught dead in a pile of junk like that but my Alfa Romeo’s in the shop for a tune-up, so I’ll make the supreme sacrifice.” (Alfa Romeo? Silone made a modest living from his meager fan club, but not enough to afford an Alfa Romeo. Could it be that the champion of Truth was—I hated to think it—lying?)
“Nell!” he boomed. “My traveling gear, and don’t be all day about it!” In a moment Nell trotted out with a blue cotton jump suit a pair of sandals, and an Aussie outback hat with the brim pinned up on the left side. “They love me down under,” he explained, jamming the hat on his head. I refrained from asking “Down under what?” as he climbed into the jump suit and zipped it up. Nell buckled the sandals on his feet.
“Got a notepad on you?” he gruffly asked me. “And a pencil?” I handed him my pad and a felt-tip pen. He snatched them out of my hand and began to sketch something. Meanwhile, out in the driveway, Marty was packing his equipment in the trunk of my car and exchanging a few words with Nell. In less than a minute, Silone had finished his sketch. He ripped out the page, returned the pad to me, but pocketed my pen. The sketch was a hasty doodle that looked vaguely like a battered trash can with the tail of a dead cat hanging out of it “Wait a minute,” said Silone. “It needs some flies.” Taking my pen from his pocket he added a few hovering squiggles over the trash can. “There. That’s better.” Surprisingly, he didn’t sign it.
“What’s it for?” I asked.
“You’ll see. If you can ever get that rattletrap of yours to start, that is.”
We walked out to my car, where Marty was waiting for us. The beauteous Nell beat a quick retreat toward the house, as Silone bawled after her, “Hold down the fort birdbrain!”
Marty climbed into the back seat, while Orlando and I squeezed into the front My car’s engine turned over in-stantly, much to Silone’s vociferous surprise, and we were off.
Even with all the windows wide open, the car was like an oven. As we rolled down out of the Hollywood Hills, my eyes were dazzled by the sun and my ears were pummeled by astream of non-stop talk from Silone. He had a voice like abusy signal—the difference being that you couldn’t stop it by hanging up. His photo had to appear on the cover of Today’s Artist, he demanded, as well as his name (“in big letters, and ahead of any other name”). He insisted on rewrite privileges of the interview manuscript. Inasmuch as the bulk of the words in the piece would be his, he expected to be paid for them, and he modestly suggested six thousand dollars, causing Marty to gasp from the back seat; although he may have been yawning. The “six gee’s,” he airily informed me, would not include payment for reproductions of his paintings, at least half a dozen of which must accompany the published interview; that would be negotiated later. I didn’t bother to apprise Silone of the fact that interview subjects are never paid, or that the entire budget for an issue of Today’s Artist wasn’t much more than the sum he had named, and I didn’t voice my educated guess that his total income for half a year, despite his big talk, probably didn’t amount to that figure.
But I tried not to judge him too harshly. His distrust of journalists may have been justified by a cleverly executed hatchet job a local columnist had done on him in the recent past. Poor Silone had been thoroughly excoriated both as artist and man in that piece, without his name being specified even once. The columnist had foxily disclosed his identity in adozen or so ways. For example, the Midwestern state of Silone’s birth—well-known to his fans—”Wisconsin, or Land of Lakes, as the Chamber of Commerce calls it” had been mentioned; also the curious physiological fact (often discussed by the logorrheic Silone) that as a result of botched surgery in his boyhood, he had been “left with but one tonsil, one adenoid.” That sort of thing, occurring again and again throughout the blind article, had as much as said “Orlando Silone.” No wonder he was a bit paranoid. I could hardly blame him. Still, those interview conditions he had imposed were absurd and unacceptable, so I pulled into the next convenient driveway, to make a turnaround. Silone asked me what the hell I was doing.
“Taking you home,” I told him. “The magazine will never go along with those demands, so I guess the interview is off.”
“Off?”
“Sorry.”
“Hold it!” he said quickly. I hit the brakes. “Now let’s not be hasty,” he added. “I can straighten all this out with your editor later on. One quick phone call will do it.” Lots of luck, I said to myself.
Without a word, I turned the car around again and resumed the journey to the art gallery. Three blocks away from it, Silone suddenly snapped, “Pull over here.” He pointed to an empty parking space in front of a photocopy shop. “I need some copies of this.” He waved the trash can sketch. “Let’s see … a hundred ought to do it At a nickel apiece …” Snapping his fingers impatiently at me, he said, “Gimme a five-spot. I came away without any cash.” I knew I’d ne
ver see it again, but I dug into my wallet and handed him five dollars. “Be back in a jiff,” he said, hopping out of the car and into the shop.
“Sweet guy,” I said to Marty, who hadn’t uttered a single word from the back seat during the entire trip.
“A prince,” Marty replied. “A real prince. Want to hear something interesting? I was talking to Nell while the great man was drawing that sketch. I suddenly remembered where I’d seen her before. She’s a model. I did some shots of her for a fashion catalogue last year. I asked her what on earth she was doing, working as a secretary to No Baloney. She said, ‘I’m no more a secretary than you are, Marty, and I’m certainly not a sex-retary, to quote the master. I never set eyes on him before. The model agency got a call from him last week, setting up a gig for this morning. He’d seen my composite in the mug book, and he wanted me. Just two or three hours, no nudes or anything like that, and he’d pay the going hourly rate. The agency ran a quick check on him, found out he’s a professional artist of some kind, and figured it was legit. I show up here eight-thirty this morning, and I see there’s no camera, no lights, no nothing, so I begin to smell a rat, and right away little Nell is on her toes. I don’t make any weirdo scenes, know what I mean? Well, turns out he’s a weirdo, all right, but not in the way I was afraid of. He doesn’t want to take any pictures of me, or sketch me, and he doesn’t want to get palsy, either. He says he just wants me to play a part Pretend to be his secretary, just for a couple of hours. Kind of like a joke on some friends of his. And I’m supposed to behave like I’m crazy about him—just hold his hand now and then, that sort of thing, nothing more. Well, the whole shtick was a little too oddball for me, and not really in my line, so I advised him to hire an actress—I’m a model, strictly. But he talked me into it. “What the hell,” he said, “you’re already here. Why lose a morning’s work?” It would all be just in fun, he said, and he’d pay up just the same as if it were a kosher photo session. To tell you the truth, Marty, I didn’t dig the deception part of it but then I asked myself: Who am I to get on my high horse, deceptionwise? Isn’t deception my stock-in-trade? When I pose as a mother in a disposable diaper ad, isn’t that let’s-pretend time? I’ve never changed a diaper in my life. And, look, a buck is a buck. So I did it I’m not proud of it but I did it.’”
Marty paused for a breath and went on: “Then she told me something else. ‘What a fake he is!’ she said. ‘Have you seen those Modiglianis and Mondrians on his walls? No? Well, you will, before this interview gig of yours is finished. Hell make plenty sure of that. Probably want you to snap him standing in front of them. And they’re originals, all right not reproductions. But they’re just like me—hired for the occasion to impress you and your friend. Or borrowed, rather, from a rich buddy. Hon, I’ve never seen a bigger phony. I overheard him on the phone, assuring the guy that he’d have his paintings buck tonight Marty, the minute you fellows drive off to the art gallery with him, my job is over, and I split. Will I ever be glad to see the last of that creep!’”
I couldn’t respond to Marty’s fascinating story because Silone was now bounding out of the store with a thick stack of photocopies under his arm. Climbing into the car, he attempted a mimicry of the late John Wayne: “Let’s move out!” I pulled away from the curb.
As we approached the Challenge Gallery, we saw a line of young people standing outside, stretching halfway up the block. They were waiting in the blistering sun for Orlando, their Orlando, and no doubt had been waiting since ten o’clock, if not earlier. It was now a quarter to eleven. They were misguided, immature, without taste, but how could one despise those earnest young faces? My heart went out to them. These are his children, I said to myself. Orlando, now in his mid-forties, had never married and was childless. These youngsters, so patiently lined up to see him, were offering him the love a child gives a father. And maybe, I told myself, here is where Orlando will be redeemed. If not in any religious sense of that word, then at least redeemed in my eyes. Here, he may show a side of his nature adults had never seen. By returning the warmth and fervent love of these adoring kids, he may earn himself a lifetime membership in the human race. Suffer the little children to come unto me, and all that. Silone was no Jesus, not by a long shot, but to his fans he was some kind of cut-rate messiah.
I parked the car. As he got out, his young votaries, seeing him, sent up a delighted cheer and broke ranks, swarming around him, calling his name. “Back, back!” he shrieked, flailing his arms. “Get back in line, pinheads!”
They fell back, forming a line again, as Orlando strode toward the gallery door. Marty and I followed him; he with his camera, I with my tape recorder. A couple of the kids, awed and transfixed by the Presence, were rooted to the spot at the entrance, unwittingly blocking our way. “Break it up, you turkeys!” Orlando snarled at them. They skittered away like bee-ties, and we entered. Thanks for small mercies: the gallery was air-conditioned.
The gallery owner was a large, fiftyish spinster with the fanfare name of Dr. Challenge. I knew something about her background. She’d taught a course in modern art at a local university some years before, and had become a bit of a joke because she’d had the gall to list herself in the campus phone directory as Challenge, Dr. Vera, thus enjoying the dubious distinction of being the only Ph. D. at the school to insist upon the “Dr.” tide. She was later discharged from the faculty when it came to light that she had plagiarized her doctorate dissertation on Mir6. “Oh, dear Mr. Silone, at last!” she gushed. “We had almost given you up. Now the signing can—”
“I’m not signing anything,” he announced, “until I get a pizza.”
Dr. Challenge blinked. “A … a pizza?”
He jerked a thumb toward the horde of fans pressing into the gallery. “One of these clowns is gonna hafta go get me a sausage-and-anchovy pizza, before I even lift a pen.”
“I’ll do it, Orlando!” piped a young male voice from the throng.
“Don’t forget the wine,” Silone warned him. “A bottle of good Chianti, well chilled. And I said good. Not some cheap red vinegar.”
The lad dashed away, thrilled to be of service.
Silone stood up on a chair. “All right, you freaks, gather round and hear the words of The Great One!” The youngsters crowded into the gallery, filling it with wall-to-wall adulation. He held up a fistful of the Xerox copies. “See these? Know what they are? Copies of an original Orlando, created by the master just this morning, expressly for this occasion. The dude with the tape recorder can attest to that—he saw me sketch it, less than an hour ago. Right?” I nodded.
He slipped into a sideshow barker spiel, “Tell ya what I’m gonna dew. I’m gonna permit you walking acne-farms to buy ‘em for a mere and only ten bucks per copy.” A wail of delight rose from the mob. “But wait, it gets better. For twenty-five bucks, I’ll sign ‘em!” They cheered this news. “You can’t believe it, can you?” he went on. “You just cannot believe your good fortune. Well, don’t go ‘way, ‘cause you ain’t heard nothin yet. Are—you—ready?” A shout of affirmation rocked the gallery. “Then hear this. For fifty bucks, I will not only sign your copy, I will inscribe it with your name and dedicate it to you, ‘who inspired me to create it,’ unquote. How do ya like them apples?”
They liked them apples just fine, and an even louder cheer resonated from their throats. But I thought: Yes, the champion of Truth is lying—and is offering to sell his lies, for fifty dollars each, to children. Stendhal was right: Bad taste leads to crime.
But wait, as Orlando would say, it gets better.
In due course, his lunch arrived. Silone accepted it without thanking his fan, and didn’t offer to reimburse the boy. As he munched the pizza and slugged wine straight from the bottle, another fan inched forward through the crowd. She was perhaps fifteen or sixteen, shy, overweight, not particularly pretty, but she had a cascade of radiant long corn-silk hair, and she exuded an essence, a nimbus of purity that magnetized my attention. Under her left arm she held a
large rectangle wrapped in brown paper. She had to hold it under her left arm because her right arm was missing. There was an angelic quality about her, despite her clipped wing. In a tiny voice, she bashfully whispered, “Mr. Silone?”
“Don’t mumble, I can’t hear you,” he said, mouth full.
“I’ve brought something for you, Mr. Silone. A present. I painted it myself. It took a long time, because …”
Silone chuckled nastily. “I’ve heard of one-armed paper hangers, but never one-armed painters I You want to buy one of these original photocopies, kid?”
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