Genius

by Patrick Dennis

  “I’m for the sack,” I said to my wife. “How about you?”

  “As soon as I finish writing the children to remind them not to bring skates and skis and things like that when they come for Easter. I’d also like to get the grit of Desierto de los Leones out of my scalp. After that I’d be delighted.” She turned on the tub at its mightiest trickle and went back to banging the typewriter.

  I climbed up to our bedroom and observed the patio in its Sunday quietude. It was all but deserted. Earlier in the day Starr, Lopez, and, of course, Mr. Guber had gone into the hinterlands to get a few of the atmospheric shots Starr was so famous for—wheeling vultures, dozing lizards, scaly plaster walls, interesting clouds, and so on to add to Lopez’s hoard of film clips. Dr. and Miz Priddy had driven some miles to attend some banal native jam session. St. Regis and his new friend, the wardrobe assistant, had set off on some sort of sentimental journey. The Texas honeymooners had finally got themselves unpried long enough to motor into town for lunch. Two overworked girls from the Vog Salón de Belleza had come to prepare Our Star and Mamacita for the Pomeroy shindig. Bruce’s car was parked out in front, glistening in the sunlight, and I supposed that he and Emily, looking like clean-cut American youth, would be off on some athletic mission. Well, let them all do whatever they wanted. I needed a nap.

  I took off my clothes, glanced at myself fore, aft, and sideways in the mirror, and shuddered. Although life with Leander Starr could never ever be described as “soft living,” the weeks spent almost exclusively in his society had left their mark—a slight bulge in front, two in back. I picked up a copy of Look Better, Feel Better and read the inscription, “This ought to put even you back in shape—Stuart.” Looking through the sketches of some tragically incomplete men drawing themselves up from knee to groin, navel to neck, coccyx to nape, I thought how nice it would be to look that trim once again, contemplated running through a series of Mensendieck exercises, then said, “To hell with it,” and flopped down on the top of the bed.

  I have no idea how long or how deeply I slept, but I dimly remember dreaming of Miz Priddy multiplied by a dozen, all saying, “Isn’t it quaint . . . Isn’t it sweet . . . Absolutely authentic, my dear . . . Just think, four hundred years old . . . Not just ordinary Catholics but the daughters of the finest . . .” There was a sharp scream. I opened my eyes and saw a gaggle of middle-aged women of the sort once caricatured by the late Helen E. Hokinson standing in the bedroom doorway, staring aghast at my nakedness.

  “Well, I never!” one of them, presumably the leader, gasped.

  “Well, neither have I,” I said. “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing in my bedroom?” As my robe was across the room, I felt that the better part of savoir faire would be to pull in my stomach and play it straight.

  “We are Las Damas de San Angel.”

  “You’re what?”

  “Las Damas de San Angel and we arranged this house tour with Señorita Ximinez months ago.”

  “Oh. In that case, don’t let me get in your way. But would you mind tossing me that dressing gown? I don’t feel that I’m properly dressed for the occasion.”

  “Come, ladies,” the leader sniffed. Flower hats bobbing indignantly, they marched down the stairs in their sensible shoes and stormed out of our apartment, slamming the door so hard that a picture fell off the wall.

  In a moment my wife was upstairs, wrapped in a towel, hair hanging in long, wet strands. “What in the name of the Lord was that? They came barging right into the bathroom and I got soap in my eye and . . .”

  “Those were Las Damas de San Angel—whatever that may be.”

  “Oh, yes. They’re those frightful old American clubwomen who tour historic houses. Mother corresponds with one.”

  “Well, I think your mother may well be writing her in care of some historic house of correction if they just pop into people’s bedrooms uninvited, unannounced, unwanted.”

  “Well, Madame X certainly didn’t say anything about their coming to me. If she had, I’d have tidied up a bit and certainly not have been in . . .” She was interrupted by an ear-splitting scream and a babble of high-pitched American voices. I raced to the window just in time to see a perfect stampede of pastel suits and flower hats pouring out of Starr’s apartment. “Well,” the leader said, “this is the last time we ever visit Casa Ximinez! The two of them there blatant as you please. Come, ladies!” Twitching with indignation, they stomped out of the patio.

  Too undone, as well as too curious, to go back to bed, I stood there watching through the blinds. In a couple of minutes Bruce stamped out of Starr’s place looking angry, frustrated, thoroughly shaken, and none too well kempt. He stormed out to his big car, slammed the door shut behind him, and drove off in a cloud of dust, scattering children, dogs, cats, and chickens in his wake.

  “What are you looking at?” my wife asked, busily toweling her hair.

  “Nothing. Just local color.”

  Clarice’s party for the cast and crew of Valley of the Vultures was a full-scale affair. She had democratically desisted from inviting any of the Mexican stagehands or extras—“They’d feel so self-conscious and out of place here, sweetie, that I thought it kinder not to ask them at all”—but had augmented the small array of stars and principals with her own list of flamboyant nobodies. She had now had plenty of time to wreck the elegant Casa Ortiz-Robledo with plenty of highly personalized touches, such as a full-length portrait of herself in brocade and diamonds, lots of photographs of herself in the company of Grade C notables, and a tall stack of enormous morocco-bound scrapbooks containing full coverage of her brilliant social career—her name, underlined in red, listed as having taken tables at charity balls and public banquets, scanned press releases announcing that Mrs. Worthington Pomeroy had arrived at dozens of publicity-minded hotels for a short visit, commercial photographs of herself and other overdressed people leering at the camera from night-club tables. The archives of her meteoric rise all formed a fairly depressing picture of just how far one can go on money and money alone.

  The garden was a blaze of light and gave the immediate impression that Clarice had read, clipped, and heeded every article ever printed on “Clever Things to Do with Your Terrace.” There were fairy lamps strung in the trees, votive lamps surrounding the pool, hurricane lamps on every table, Hanukkah lamps on each step, lily-pad candles floating in the illuminated swimming pool, kerosene torches stabbed into the earth, luminarias, a spotlight with changing colors playing on a statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe, and, for good measure, some Japanese lanterns. A mariachi band played incessantly, and there were two bars and the long buffet piled high with food.

  Clarice herself outdid all the party decorations in a tight lace sheath designed by someone who truly must have hated her. She was very much Miss Show Biz that night and stunned her chums with lots of inside movie-making terms whether used correctly or not. One could see that it wouldn’t be long before Mrs. Goldwyn, Mrs. Warner, and Mrs. Zanuck would be asked—or told—to move over.

  Starr arrived with Lopez, looking flushed and triumphant. “Well, dear boy,” he said, “we did it. We did it all today. Lopez motored me out to a dried-out lake bottom on the way to Teaco or Texcoco or some such appalling spot, filled with garbage and squatters and vultures—swarms of them. We also got a few feet of a beautiful sandstorm. . . .”

  “That sounds terribly pretty,” I said. “You didn’t, perhaps, shoot a cholera epidemic or a few people dying of bubonic plague?”

  “No, but we did get some divine rats. Fastest picture I’ve ever done. All I have to do now is edit, add some suitable background music, and the whole thing’s done. Not a holiday treat for the Radio City Music Hall, perhaps, but a relentlessly depressing little gem that will have the art-house syndicates on their ears. Ah, good evening, Clarice, my dear.”

  “Yer late,” she said. “I thought I told you to . . .”

  “My dear girl, I was out with Lopez finishing the picture.”

&nbs
p; “Then it’s done?” she asked. I didn’t like the look in her eye as she said it. I could almost hear the wheels turning under her platinum-blond gamine wig.

  “Uh, well, uh, yes, in a manner of speaking—all except for the final cutting and editing. By the way, has anyone seen Mr. González, our producer?”

  No one had. Heff was on hand, and he seemed a trifle vague about the whereabouts of his father. “My father took the motorcar and drove to the laboratories”—he pronounced it la-bore-a-trees in his best British fashion—“early this afternoon. He said he might be late for the party but . . .”

  “What da hell?” Lopez said. “On a Sunday? The lab ain’t open.”

  “I believe that my father made a special arrangement. I don’t know the details. He simply told me to take the omnibus to Mrs. Pomeroy’s party and that he would arrive later.”

  “Beats me,” Lopez said.

  “He may simply be getting them to speed up the work,” Starr said.

  “It’s done—except what we shot today.”

  “Well, I’m sure he’ll arrive. I do hope so. He’s got the checks for the actors.”

  The Maitland-Grim household swept in looking as though they were about to attend the Queen’s birthday gala. Naturally, Clarice lost no time in lionizing them with her pals. “May I present my dear old friends, Lady Joyce and Major and Mrs. Maitland-Grim.” Twenty minutes of the most desultory conversation seemed to comprise a lifelong bond as far as Mrs. Pomeroy was concerned. She called Lady Joyce Lady Monica quite incorrectly, pointed out Henry Maitland-Grim’s connections to two or three earldoms and a marquisate, which embarrassed him into complete speechlessness, and spoke of Bunty’s mad, mad parties—to none of which she had ever been invited—as though she had personally stamped the invitations and helped to set the table. One could see plainly that Mrs. Pomeroy wasted no time in taking full possession of anything or anyone that caught her fancy.

  With Emily she was insufferable and almost the stage mother, referring to her as “my little girl” and “my little deb.” Emily was looking fairly grim, and I noticed that Bruce never left her side.

  Catalina Ximinez and Mamacita had spared no efforts in preparing for Clarice’s party. Lacquered, enameled, and corseted, Madame X had crammed herself into a siren’s dress of chartreuse that made her rather sallow skin look as though she had been left underwater for several months. Even Mamacita had been treated to a pair of old golden slippers, a jet capelet, and a cluster of artificial corkscrew bangs insecurely pinned to her sparse hair. About the only person who could keep a poker face in their company was Henry Maitland-Grim, but then his many years in some regiment or other had given him better training than most of us had.

  Dr. and Miz Priddy arrived, he in a greenish old black-alpaca suit with a tinkling festoon of Phi Beta Kappa keys and other honorary baubles of higher education hanging from his watch chain like shrunken heads. Miz Priddy had fashioned herself a most original evening costume from the spoils of her travels. Reading from north to south, she sported a tortoise-shell comb (Seville), coral earrings (Venice), seed pearls (Yokohama), a yellowing lace blouse (Brussels), a smallish sari (Bombay) worn hooked over her elbows as a stole, some gold filigree bracelets (Istanbul), a length of multicolored brocade (Damascus) wound around her as a skirt, a scarab pin (Cairo) to keep the skirt together, and some Enna Jettick sandals (Chattanooga) dyed almost to match the skirt. She was perfectly willing, whether admired or not, to tell you exactly when, where, and how she had acquired each object. “The Doctor and Ah were in Turkey in 1946? While he had a fellahship at the Amerikin University? Well, Ah wint inta the Bizarre with all those twistin’ corridahs and Ah saw this old Moslem womin sellin’ filigree?” Dr. Priddy contented himself with quotes from Byron (“On with the dance; let joy be unconfined; No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet”), Wordsworth (“Is it a party in a parlour?”), and Ecclesiastes (“A man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry”). To an already leaden party they added precious little leavening.

  St. Regis, the hair a tangle of reddened ringlets, the lashes curled until they nearly scraped his brows, the lips just suspiciously pinker, was dancing attendance on the wardrobe assistant, while the latter’s employer looked on with ill-concealed dislike.

  The actor who had played Don Fernando turned up with a sensational-looking wife many years his junior. A lot of the guests recognized him from old pictures he had made in Hollywood, and, being as celebrity-conscious as their hostess, all wanted to tell him how wonderful he’d been. He was gracious, but when it came to showtalk he would have none of it. Real estate was, apparently, his only love. “Remember this house very well turned it over in forty-two to some German fellow sitting out the war and then again in forty-seven at a mark-up of very nearly a million pesos but of course that was nothing compared to the coup I pulled on the house King Carol took during . . .” Miss Herrera seemed well, managed to stroll at the pool’s edge without falling in and to eat and drink without mishap. She did, however, keep her eye on the entrance, and once I heard her ask another of the actors where Aristido González was and when the actors would be paid. Still there was no sign of González, and Heff looked unhappier and more put-upon than usual, answering dozens of questions in Spanish and English concerning his father. The actors, I gathered, weren’t the only ones waiting to be paid. The sound man, the wardrobe man, the head electrician, and a number of other minor executives—those of a level exalted enough to be numbered among Mrs. Pomeroy’s social circle—were all grimly hanging on for the appearance of our producer.

  In a bumbling attempt to be cheering, I brought Heff a drink and said, “Cheer up, Heff. I’m sure that your old man has found a beautiful blonde who can’t resist him, and he’ll be along as soon as he’s eased her tensions and fulfilled her insatiable demands.”

  “Mr. Dennis,” Heff said with a look of horror, “my father has been totally impotent for nearly twenty years. I thought surely everyone knew that.” Then he walked away.

  The party went on for hours, but you could hardly call it gay. Plenty of music and talk and noise and food and drink to be sure, but it lacked cohesion. People drank more deeply than usual and got drunk, but they didn’t appear to be having a very good time in the process. The press arrived, summoned by Clarice, and dutifully took pictures of everyone, misspelling names from left to right; the notices of the affair, duly printed a couple of days later, made it sound like a real bash, but I don’t think anyone, with the possible exception of Clarice, was having fun. Still, nobody had the sense to call it quits and go home, and those who had been connected with Valley of the Vultures were still waiting for González and their money.

  It was after two o’clock and the party had been dead on its feet for some time. It simply wouldn’t lie down. That was when Clarice decided to drop her bombshell. I suspect that she was a little drunk, like most of the guests, and it didn’t make her any more attractive. Ordering the mariachi band to play a fanfarade, she climbed gracelessly up on a chair and shouted, “Quiet everybody. I have an important announcement to make.” There was a lot of murmuring and shushing, and in due course the room was still. “I want everybody here to congratulate Mr. Leander Starr, the famous director, because very soon he’s gonna be directing me. Yep, we’re engaged to be married, and you’re the first to know it.” Applause and then lots of buzzing, while the females of Clarice’s “set” rushed up to rub cheeks with her and caw unfelt effusions. Starr looked stunned, and he was just able to accept the congratulations of the merrymakers.

  And then Emily tossed a little pineapple of her own. Jumping up on the same chair and in almost the same shrill, vulgar style of Clarice, she said, “And everybody can congratulate Bruce and me, because I’m going to become Mrs. Bruce van Damm of Fairfield County and Gracie Square.” Starr looked positively ashen, and I must say that for a girl who was supposed to be madly in love and just freshly engaged, Emily didn’t seem much better. There was lots of a
pplause and whooping and screaming, and Clarice ordered champagne all around.

  “Let’s go,” my wife said after a couple of dispirited toasts had been drunk, “my feet are killing me.”

  “All right, and don’t take forever thanking our hostess.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  We fought our way through the crowds and out into the hallway. In a little reception room I could hear Starr talking to Emily.

  “Yes, darling child, he seems a very nice young man, but couldn’t you have talked it over with me first?”

  “We were never alone or you were never home,” Emily said defiantly. “Besides, why should I? Did you ask my permission to marry Mrs. Pomeroy?”

  “That’s entirely different. I’m a great deal older.”

  “And so is Mrs. Pomeroy.”

  “Even if you don’t consider me,” Starr said, “you might at least think of your mother—and Mr. Strawbridge. Mind you, my dear, I’m not saying that I disapprove, but . . .”

  “I telephoned Mummy this afternoon. Don’t worry. I reversed the charges. She and Bunny are flying down tomorrow.”

  We were just about to go when Bruce arrived, all dark eyes and white smiles. “Going so soon, Pat?” Having resented being called “sir” by Bruce when first we met, I now resented his calling me by my first name. Simply impossible, my wife calls me.