Inheritance

by Judith Michael

  "'Scuse me," Farley said abraptly, and made for the bathroom.

  Louie put out a hand to stop him, then pulled it back with a small shrug. "Stomach problems; something he ate," he said to Paul.

  They were silent until Farley returned. "Sony, don't like to leave guests, but when you gotta you gotta." The underside of his nose was pink. "You were saying—?"

  "I was talking about interviews with people who—^"

  "Right. Interviews." He nodded, smiling broadly. "No problem. Long as you interview people who like me. No way are you going to talk to anybody who's got it in for me."

  Paul bowed his head and Farley took it for agreement. They began to talk about the tour that would resume in a few days, with Paul and Louie trying to keep Farley to the subject when he wanted to wander into a reminiscence or anecdote. It was like being a sheepdog, Paul thought: nudging Farley to prevent him from getting lost in the thickets of miscellany cluttering his mind. It took another two hours, but at last Farley, Louie, and Paul were initialing an informal letter of agreement, and then standing and shaking hands. "I'll see you first thing in the morning," Paul said.

  "It'll take—how long?" Farley asked. His voice was raspy and his eyes bright. Paul tried to remember if he had returned to the bathroom twice or three times as they had talked, but he wasn't sure.

  "As long as you want to talk," he replied. "I'm a good listener, and we have forty years of your life to cover."

  "Thirty-seven," Farley said automatically. There was a pause. "Well, one thing," he declared cheerfully, "I don't have

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  any trouble talking about me. Never did; Fm a subject close to my heart. A'course I've had a life bigger than life, so there's plenty to talk about: a real trip. And this tour we're doing! Biggest thing to hit hunger in a couple thousand years. You wait, you got enough in me for a twenty-hour miniseries; big stuff. And I tell it all. Total honesty, that's my creed." He grinned his world-famous lopsided grin. "Everybody else has mottoes; I have creeds. And I live up to them a thousand: percent. Long as I have a little help along the way," he added! with a wink.

  In the taxi, Paul scribbled notes to help him remember the '. conversation until he could write it all down. Can't trust him,, he thought, remembering Farley saying they couldn't talk to; anyone who had it in for him. He wants a public relations: film, not a documentary.

  But he was amused, not annoyed; Farley wasn't the first, or the last, to try to hide his warts from the public. They'd find I plenty of people to interview, on their own, without relying on i the names he and Louie gave them.

  Thinking about it, making notes, he felt the excitement of beginning a project, of working toward a goal. It was still new to him, this pleasure in getting involved and putting ideas and images together to create a whole picture, good and bad, fantasy and reality, the ordinary and the exotic; it was as stimulating and satisfying as anything he had ever done. This is what I want, he thought. To bring people to life on the screen, to show the faces and scenes behind the ones they show the world, and make their stories real for everyone.

  In the next days, the film grew more engrossing, more solid in his mind as he interviewed Farley. They would sit in his living room, with a cameraman fihning quietly in a comer, and tiiie interviews would go on all day, every day. By the time he returned to California, he had a much more complete outline of the film, with wide spaces left for the unexpected. It was held in a loose-leaf notebook with his notes and the list of names of people to interview that his secretary had prepared. When filming began two weeks later, in Nashville, he had the beginnings of a fat notebook that would grow and change and become dog-eared and be joined by others as the months passed. When the film was finished, the notebooks would be,

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  too: a complete record of the film, including mustard, relish, and coffee stains from lunches eaten on the run.

  Larry took time off to go to Nashville with Paul. "We had to delay the detergent conmiercial," he said as they drove to the hotel from the airport. "The five-year-old who's supposed to watch his squabbling parents coo like doves when they discover how they can get his collars clean got some dread disease. Chicken pox, I think. So we'll wait, or they'll find a healthier kid. Whatever; I get a few days off. Emily didn't mind your leaving again so soon?"

  "She's very busy," Paul said vaguely. Then, remembering that he lived in Los Angeles where everyone talked, even close friends and business partners, he added, "We're going away for a few weeks when the fihn is finished. We've missed being together."

  "Nice," Larry murmured. "I keep thinking I ought to get married, but there isn't anybody I miss."

  "You're living with Bonnie," Paul pointed out.

  "And I like her. But I don't miss her. So why would I marry her?"

  Paul was silent. The only woman he missed, even now, was Laura.

  "We can celebrate tonight," Larry said. "I haven't had a chance to hoist one with you since tfie word came from PBS that they'd fund us. Big news for you; I hope you know it. They oiiy do this once in a blue moon."

  "It means they'll schedule it as soon as they can," Paul replied. "That's the most important thing to me." He picked up his notebook as they reached the hotel. "Time to get to work. I hope the star behaves; it's going to be a hell of a chore if he doesn't."

  But, as they learned that morning, it wasn't only Farley they had to worry about, it was the carnival that followed him wherever he went.

  It had begun during the first four concerts, before Paul arrived; by the time the tour went to Nashville, and then to Dallas, Denver, and Salt Lake City, it had taken on a life of its own. Always, now, Farley was surrounded by a crush of people: fans holding out scraps of paper for autographs, calling **Britt! Way to go, Britt!"; hangers-on trailing after him; cur-

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  ious crowds milling in the street outside his hotel and surrounding him when he emerged; anonymous hands reaching out to rip a piece off his shirt, a bandanna, a bola (Farley stopped wearing them after he was nearly strangled by someone trying to yank one off); shouts and screams and, always, someone singing, perhaps thinking it was a good time for an audition. BRTTT'S BACK T-shirts were everywhere; a fast-thinking businessman made a yo-yo emblazoned on one side with "Down with hunger" and on the other with "Up with love"; someone threw a rose at Farley when he was bowing low in a curtain call in Dallas and it drew a tiny fleck of blood on his forehead, which in turn drew a headline proclaiming BRTTT BLEEDS FOR THE POOR; a young girl was knocked down in the jostling crowd in Denver and an alert press agent brought her to the stage, where Farley held her hands and sang a love song directly to her and it made the front page of a hundred papers the next morning.

  Everything Farley did made the news, either locally or on one of the television networks. The tour was becoming the biggest event in the cities where he appeared, and Farley, the sun at the center, smiled and waved and sang, he threw kisses at the crowds, and gave parties where he was stroked, nuzzled, and kissed. 'They love me," he said to Paul. "They never stopped, you know; they always did and they still do. Love Britt." He took strangers to restaurants and picked up the tab for two dozen, three dozen dinners at a tinK. He had a companion every night in bed and the next morning gave her perfume and chocolates. "They love me," he said, with a wink at Paul. "A flick a minute. A'course you didn't hear me say that. How about 'greatest lover of the Western world'?"

  "Where's the money coming from?" Paul asked.

  "Around," Farley said vaguely.

  "What's paying for the parties and the perfume and the f dinners?" Paul asked Louie Glass.

  "Britt's a wealthy man," Louie replied instantly. "Saved a lot when he was on top."

  "I'm on top now," Farley said, coming into the hotel room . where they were talking. "Never higher. Never better." He looked at Paul. "This is how a king feels. I'm a king again.** And he turned to his stash of cocaine and his cache of gin.

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  "Hey, fella, you got a show tonight," Louie said gently. How about skipping this one?"

  "I skipped the last one."

  "When was that?"

  "Five minutes ago."

  "Very cute." He put his hand on Farley's arm. "Lay off till after the show."

  "Get your fucking hand off me." Louie dropped his hand. **I don't like being told what to do, Louie, you know that. Vm a big boy, just had a birthday—thirty-seven," he said to Paul. **01d enough to do my own thing."

  Paul picked up his jacket. "I'm going to dinner. Come on, Britt, I'll buy you a steak." ' "I'm not hungry; I'll just stay here."

  "You don't eat when you're on that stuff," Louie said bitterly.

  Paul shot him a glance. "Come anyway," he said to Farley. **I don't like to eat alone."

  "You're just trying to get me to eat. You'll get me in the restaurant and throw a steak at me."

  "I might. If you catch it, it's yours."

  Farley chuckled. "I like you, Janssen. You don't lie to me."

  *'Come on; I'm hungry, even if you're not. You can tell me about high school, when you were the star of the senior class play."

  "I was the star. How did you know that?"

  "Your high school advisor told me. But I want to hear it from you."

  "Right. I don't mind talking about that. Those were good times." He turned and walked out of the room into the corridor.

  "Can you get some food in him?" Louie asked Paul in a low voice.

  *That's what this is all about," Paul said and followed Farley.

  Each day it was a game: getting Farley to eat, getting him to sleep when he said he was wide awake and full of energy, keeping him in shape for the conceit. They all worked at it, Louie, Paul, the staff. They dressed him and undressed him, tried to keep him from spouting too many personal opinions in

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  public, got him on and off airplanes and onto the stage for his performances. And much of it Paul had on film. No matter how blurred Farley's thinking was on some things, he never forgot Paul was making a fihn on him. For eight or ten or fifteen hours a day, he and Paul and the cameraman were together, and whenever Paul gave an unobtrusive signal, the cameraman would begin fikning: Farley at rehearsal, Farley. talking to the other musicians about an upcoming concert, Farley reminiscing with Louie, Farley alone, sitting at the piano, humming, singing, making sure his voice was all right. Now and then he would order the cameraman out, saying he needed privacy, but mostly he wanted him around. He was beginning to live each day for the camera.

  Finally, when all of them thought they couldn't get through one more day, they had a week's test, and Paul went back to Los Angeles.

  "Emily?" he called as he opened the front door. The cool silence of the house wrapped itself around him. He took the stairs two at a time to the long, glass-walled living room, then passed through it to the deck cantilevered over the scraggly grass cliffs that separated each layer of houses from neighbors above and below. For a long time he stood there, gazing at the sprawl of Los Angeles in the distance, pale and hazy beneath a slanting July sun struggling to cut through the afternoon smog. Little by little he began to relax as the silence soaked into him and the tension that Farley seemed to generate faded away.

  He paced the length of the deck, admiring the maintenance man's upkeep of the lush beds of vivid flowers whose names! Paul had never learned. But Emily doesn't know them either, he thought, and it occurred to hun that they used the stunningly decorated and immaculately maintained house as if it were a hotel. We don't behave like homeowners, he reflected. Or homebodies.

  "You're back!" Emily said, her voice high with surprise. She stood in the doorway in a light shift and sandals, her blond hair wildly teased for the day's shoot, her light blue eyes glad to see him. "You didn't call."

  Paul went to her and took her in his arms. "I called last night. You look lovely but I'm not crazy about the hair."

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  She laughed. "I was in full-length Russian sable, walking barefoot on the beach, with my hair looking like I'd just gotten out of bed. Somebody's idea; they didn't inform us. Don't you think I can sell furs, looking like this?"

  "I think you can sell anything."

  He kissed her but in a moment she pulled back. "I was out with Barry Marken last night. He was only in town for a short time, so when he invited me I said yes. I was home by ten."

  "I wasn't asking for an explanation," Paul said gently.

  "You have a right to know where I am when you're gone. You have a right to ask me not to have dinner with Barry again."

  "I don't have the right and I wouldn't do it. I'm not your jailer, and it's not flattering knowing you think I am."

  "You're angry. I'm sorry. It's been an awful day, really; I shouldn't be held responsible for what I say."

  "How about a drink? Then you can tell me about it."

  "Oh, good. Vodka, please, with ice." She stood aimlessly until he returned with their drinks. 'There's not much to tell. Modeling is dull, you know; or maybe you don't. Nobody knows, until you do it. It has nothing to do with talent, or intelligence, or even being interesting; it's just being in the right place when a new fad comes along."

  Paul heard the faint tremor in her voice. "Is there a new fad?"

  She gave a brittle laugh. "They don't tell us. But this morning the art director told me my hips were too big."

  "You told me they always make comments like that."

  *This time it sounded different." She perched on a low stone wall between two flower boxes. The setting sun was behind her and her face was shadowed. "It's not orderly. There isn't any correct way to do things or plan things. You never know what they're going to want next."

  "You mean which model they'll want next?"

  "Which kind of model. Of course I'm not worried that it will affect me, but it's very dull to be part of something so disorderly and uncreative."

  Paul knew how she hated not knowing the rules, because that meant she didn't know how to tailor her behavior to fit. "Has it really changed?" he asked. "A couple of years ago you

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  didnU think there was anything wrong with it. You wanted it more than anything else."

  She shrugged. "I know more about it now than I did then.'*

  It suddenly occurred to him that she wouldn't stay in modeling long, and he thought how strange it was that their lives had become reversed. When they met, Emily had known exactly what she wanted—to be a model, to be married—and he had been wandering around Europe, restless and dissatisfied. Now he knew what he wanted, at least in work, and she was the one who seemed to be drifting.

  Nearby, a bird sang out and was echoed by another. In the late afternoon stillness they heard the clink of glasses from the house below. "You haven't asked about my trip," Paul said.

  "Oh. How was it?"

  "Fine."

  She ignored the shortness in his voice. "Good. Did you finish?"

  "The tour? I thought I told you there are four more weeks."

  "I remember you said something about it, but I can't imagine why you have to go to every concert. They're probably si i the same; he's probably the same wherever he is. And I hate having you away."

  "I don't like being away. But I have to do this."

  "You like doing it. You love doing it. You love making movies."

  He gazed at her angry eyes. "I thought you understood that. I've told you how I feel."

  "You never used to feel like that about anything. Except me.

  "I still feel that way about you," he said, almost reflexively.

  "But work. You never felt that way about work."

  "I wanted to." He wondered how much to tell her. They almost never talked about his work; it was her own career that most interested her. "I was always waiting for something to come along that I could care about. It didn't occur to me that I ought to be looking for it, that things might not always fall in my lap." He smiled ruefully. "Amazing, how lon
g it took me to learn that; it comes from being brought up with too much money."

  "That's just plain nonsense. Things do come, if you're pa-

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  tient. Larry offered you this work; you didn't go hunting for it."

  It gave him a moment's pause. "You're right," he said. "But it would have died, like a lot of other things, if I hadn't worked at it, studying and following Larry around like a baby learning to walk. Maybe it was just timing: I needed something to care about."

  "Well that's all right as long as it wasn't someone you needed," she said brightly. But then she added wistfully, "I wish I felt the way you did. About anything." She was looking over the parapet at the view of Los Angeles and did not see Paul's startled look. "I guess I will someday. Everybody does, don't they?" There was a silence. "How long will your movie take?"

  "Four to six months. And I promise we'll get away then; we'll take a long trip and—^"

  "And then what will you make?"

  "What film?"

  She nodded.

  "I don't know. We'll find a subject that interests us."

  "How about me? You're interested in me, and Larry thinks I have a fascinating face; he told me so. You could make a movie about me."

  He frowned, then quickly erased it. "I could. Someday I might. I'm going to get another drink; would you like one?"

  "Yes." She followed him into the house. "It could be very helpful to me, Paul."

  "A film? How?" He smiled at her. "You're one of the top models in the country. A documentary on the bright and dark sides of the modeling business doesn't sound helpful to me."

  "You don't have to do the dark side."

  "We have to do both; that's one of the things that makes a documentary different from fiction." He put his arm around her. "Helpful how?"

  "Any exposure is helpful."

  Her voice was evasive, and Paul tilted her face to look at her. ^That's not it. What is itT'