by Robert Stone
“Your father-in-law was not a spy,” Fran told Converse sternly. “And anyway they were on our side.” She gave Elmer a sympathetic look and went out.
Elmer sighed.
“Who says I was a spy?”
“Marge. She says your whole family were spies.”
“Marge is an idiot.”
“They sat in silence for a while. Converse stared at the worn rug.
“I ought to know what I do next,” he said. “But I don’t.”
Elmer took his empty coffeecup to the windowsill. His window commanded a view of the fire doors in the adjoining building.
“Stay away from your house. Sleep in the office tonight. Whiteson gets back about three o’clock, go to him immediately.” He looked at Converse for a moment and took out his checkbook. “You want your salary?”
Converse nodded.
Elmer wrote him a check for two hundred dollars.
In the outer office Frances was reading Douglas Dalton’s latest Nightbeat story; the story was entitled “Mad Hermit Rapes Coed Campers.” As Frances read, her lips moved.
“C’mon,” she said, thrusting the piece back at Dalton, “put some pizzazz in it.”
Dalton returned to his typewriter; Elmer watched his slow steps with resignation.
“He stinks,” Elmer whispered. “He can size pictures—that’s about it.”
Frances was looking at the check which Converse still held in his hand.
“Hey, I’ve got an idea,” she said pointedly. “How about Johnny-boy does some nice stories for us now he’s back? Some spicy specials.”
“He has too much on his mind,” Elmer said.
“Does he? He couldn’t even do a few headlines?”
Elmer smiled.
“It’s a thought. Is it out of the question? In the worst of times we have to eat.”
“In the worst of times especially,” Frances said.
“You’ve been missed,” Elmer told Converse. “We’ve lacked imagination since you left us for the active life. We rely on gross obscenity now. We’re so dirty we’ve been closed out in five states.”
Converse put the check in his pocket.
“C’mon, Johnny,” Frances said. “Gimme a headline.”
Elmer clapped his hands softly. “A freak animal story—for five hundred words.”
Converse shook his head.
“For Christ’s sake!” He walked to the window and back. “Birds . . .”
“Watch this!” Elmer told Frances. He leaned a hand on Converse’s shoulder like a track coach. “Birds what?”
Douglas Dalton came grimly forward with his revised version of “Mad Hermit Rapes Coed Campers.” Frances read it with impatience. Elmer kept his hand on Converse’s shoulder.
“C’mon, Douglas,” Frances sighed. “Pizzazz.”
“Yes,” Douglas Dalton said. He took the story back to his typewriter.
“Birds what?” Elmer asked softly.
“Birds nothing!”
Elmer removed his hand. “Birds Starve to Death!”
Converse sat down on a desktop.
“Starving birds,” he said. “All right!” He turned to Elmer in weary anger. “Skydiver Devoured By Starving Birds!”
Frances stared at him in astonishment.
“I’m going nuts,” Converse said.
Elmer was already sketching it on a layout sheet.
“Excellent. I love it. Only you can write it. Now gimme another beauty. Gimme a rapist.”
“Let’s pack it in, Elmer.”
“A rapist,” Elmer said. “Please.”
“Rapist,” Converse said dully.
“Rapist Starves to Death.”
“Pussy-Eating Rapist Starves To Death!”
Frances frowned. “That’s not what I call pizzazz.”
“Scuba-Diving Rapist?”
Elmer shook his head. “We already got a skydiver.” He paused thoughtfully. “Skydiving Rapist?”
“Housewife Impaled By Skydiving Rapist,” Converse said.
Frances shrugged. “Jesus! That almost makes it.”
“Enough,” Elmer declared. “He’s gone cold. He has too much on his mind.”
When Douglas Dalton came forward with the last rewrite of “Mad Hermit Rapes Coed Campers,” Frances hardly troubled to read it.
“This is just filth,” she told him.
When Elmer and Frances went home to Atherton, Converse and Douglas Dalton sat at Douglas’ desk and drank bourbon from the bottle Douglas kept in the bottom compartment. It was his night to carry the completed layouts to the Greyhound Bus station, whence they would be conveyed to a non-union printer in San Rafael. He had finished with the mad hermit’s excesses and was bracing himself for the walk along Mission and the longer one to his hotel on Sutter Street.
Douglas kept plastic cups to drink from. Converse had assembled a bunk from four chairs and across them had draped an ancient sleeping bag which Elmer Bender kept in a closet with his illegal telephone.
“All I need to know,” Douglas kept telling Converse, “is that you’re in trouble. That’s enough for me.”
Converse thanked him repeatedly.
“It’s a long time since I’ve been able to help a pal. God’s Blood, you look out of it. Am I keeping you awake?”
“I’ll drink another one,” Converse said.
Douglas nodded happily.
“Helping a pal was always very important to us. When I say us, I mean my crowd. That old gang of mine.” He poured and consumed his third full cup of bourbon. Drinking seemed to make him grow paler.
“Who are they?”
“They’re gone. Dead. Scattered. Reformed. All but yours truly—the last of a dirty old breed. I can’t count Elmer. Elmer’s a prince but he can’t drink.”
Converse allowed Douglas to pour him a measure.
“‘When like her O Saki,’” Douglas said, “‘you shall pass among the guests star-scattered on the grass, and in your joyous errand reach the spot where I made one—turn down an empty glass!’ Do you know who wrote that?”
“Yes,” Converse said.
“It wasn’t Lawrence Ferlinghetti.” He drained the cup and unsteadily poured another. Converse lay back on his row of chairs.
“Tell me what it was like,” Douglas said suddenly. “What was it like?”
“Vietnam?”
Douglas nodded solemnly.
Converse sat up.
“You should really ask a grunt. For me it was expeditions. A lot of time I was in hotels. Sometimes I went out to the line. Not a lot. I was too scared. Once I was so scared I cried.”
“Is that unusual?”
“I have the impression,” Converse said, “that it’s fairly unusual. I think it’s usual to cry when you’re hurt. But to cry before is uncool.”
“But you went,” Douglas said. “That’s the important thing.”
Converse did not see how it was the important thing, but nodded anyway. Douglas poured himself another drink. It was not pleasant to watch him drink.
“I too went,” Douglas declared. “I was like you. But I was younger—you’re twenty-five?”
“Thirty-five.”
“Yes,” Douglas said. “Well, I was twenty. My father tried to stop me, but I wouldn’t hear of it. Do you know the Biltmore Hotel in New York?”
“I think so.”
“You must know it. It’s a block from the Roosevelt. Didn’t you ever meet your date under the clock at the Biltmore?”
“No,” Converse said.
“Well, my father met me in the Men’s Bar of the Biltmore. It was the first time he and I drank together. As I recall, it was also the last time. He said to me—You’re going to die in a ditch for Communism, and it’ll serve you right. Do you know what I told him? I said—Father, if that should be my small place in the world’s history, I am the proudest man in this place.”
Converse watched Douglas’ features compose themselves into a dyspeptic expression which he deduced was silent laug
hter.
“And the place, mind you—the place was the Men’s Bar at the Biltmore Hotel!” He slapped Converse on the knee.
“The same night—the very same night—I went on board the Carinthia for Havre. Three days later I was in Spain.” He seemed to hesitate for a moment and then poured himself another shot. “So I was just like you. I went.”
“Douglas,” Converse said, “the two things aren’t the same. Fucking around Saigon is not like volunteering for Spain. I mean, essentially we were on different sides.”
“Who?” Douglas asked. “Different sides? You and me?” He laughed and waved a hand. “I suppose you’re a Fascist.”
“Objectively, I suppose so.”
Douglas was delighted.
“Objectively! Objectively this and objectively that. Elmer used to talk like that. Did you know he was our political officer? He used to tell us that there was no difference between Mrs. Roosevelt and Hitler. Objectively! And that wasn’t the line then—that was Elmer talking.”
Converse pulled the sleeping bag over himself and leaned on an elbow.
“I had a friend at Amherst named Andy Stritch. I’ve always thought about Andy. He was killed at the Jarama. And there was a boy from the University of Indiana, his name was Peter Schultz. And there was a boy named Gelb who was only eighteen. He was straight from high school, can you imagine? They were all killed at the Jarama.”
To Converse’s astonishment he began to sing.
“There’s a valley in Spain called Jarama.” It went to the tune of “Red River Valley.” He stopped after the first line.
“Oh, don’t sing it,” he said to someone or other.
“The Moors! They were Moors. I thought—being very young—this is like the Chanson de Roland. Moors. They would come up to the wire and pretend to surrender. Some of them spoke English. And we poor little clots, we always wanted to believe them. Some of the fellas would let them come over and get a dagger in the gut for it.”
“The gooks are like that,” Converse said. “Objectively.”
“You shouldn’t call them gooks,” Douglas said. “We didn’t.”
“They call us Thong Miao. It means gooks in Vietnamese.”
“I had another Amherst friend—his name was Pollard. They shot him for cowardice. They wanted to shoot me. For cowardice. Not that I’d been all that cowardly, mind you. Elmer saved my life. But it hurt my feelings, do you see? It hurt my feelings very very badly. I wasn’t in combat in the Second War.”
Converse’s elbow collapsed.
“If I’d been there, they’d have shot me. Somebody may shoot me yet.”
“You can’t be shot for cowardice in San Francisco, John.”
“Yes, you can.”
On the edge of sleep, something occurred to Converse that made him sit up again.
“It was Charmian,” he told Douglas. “All this shit. It was because of Charmian.”
“Lovely,” Douglas said. “A lovely old Southern name.”
“She’s this girl. I’m in trouble because of her.”
“So,” Douglas said, “you’re in love.”
“No. Not at all. I was over there and there was this girl and I wanted to please her.”
Douglas put the bottle away and stood up. He walked surprisingly well.
“That’s all over for me,” he said merrily. “Since the Jarama.”
ON A FAULTLESS MORNING, MARGE AND HICKS DROVE down to the strip for breakfast. It was clear and warm; a wind had insinuated itself from the outside world to disperse the smog and the sun shone agreeably on the polished automobiles and on the flesh of the young people in front of Ben Franklin’s.
It was a nice day for bodies. There was a sensual anticipation about, an assurance of marvels shortly to be, manifest. Marge, deluded, sniffed at it with everyone else.
“It must have been a paradise here once,” she told Hicks as they finished their coffee.” If only they’d left it.”
Hicks said he had the L.A. blues.
They were going to see Eddie Peace. If anyone could move weight, Hicks said, Eddie Peace could.
His house was in a cul-de-sac up Laurel Canyon. There were three cars parked in the cobbled driveway in front of it—a Bentley limousine with fresh soldering on the chassis, a dusty Maserati, and a Volkswagen sedan. Hicks parked his car uphill from the Volkswagen and they walked to the Spanish double doors.
Hicks paused before ringing the bell; there was some disturbance of women inside. A lady was shouting in Spanish and a second in English. The Spanish-speaking lady was the more audible.
“Puta!” she shouted. “Puta! Puta!” And they heard a door slam inside. Hicks sounded the musical bells.
A small woman in large round sunglasses observed them from behind a length of chain.
“Hello?” she asked, as though she were answering the phone.
“My name’s Ray,” Hicks said. “I’m an old friend of Eddie’s. This is Marge.” Marge had been smiling all the way up the canyon.
She looked at them both by turns.
“Puta!” someone cried from inside.
“Where do you know Eddie from?”
“From Malibu,” Hicks said.
The lady removed her sunglasses; her eyes were dull with fear.
“C’mon, Lois,” Hicks said, “for Christ’s sake.”
“I don’t remember you,” Lois said. But she opened the door.
They entered a large white room with a glass partition at one end which was open to a sundeck. From an unseen room came another explosion of shrill Hispanic rage.
“Shut up,” Lois shouted—quite coarsely, Marge thought. “Shut up already!”
A baby began to cry. Marge turned quickly toward the sound.
“It’s one of those days,” Lois said. “I’m firing the cleaning woman.”
Hicks nodded sympathetically.
“She speak English?”
Lois shrugged. “Sure.”
A young Mexican girl came into the room, bared her teeth and gave them all the finger. She was wearing a pink imitation leather jacket with zippered pockets.
“Wow,” she told them, “you some boss clique.” She went out laughing unpleasantly. The baby, wherever it was, cried louder.
“Nuts,” Lois said, “you know! A juvenile delinquent.” She was looking about the room as though for solace. “She’ll come back with her boyfriend and rip the place off.”
They inspected an enormous painting above the fireplace. It was a portrait of a clown with a tragic expression. Half-inch acrylic tears ran down the clown’s rouged cheeks.
“Do you like it?” Lois asked faintly. “Some people don’t like it.” She began to seem alarmed. “But I like it. I think it’s Eddie.”
“Eddie all the way,” Hicks said. He walked to the partition and looked out over the sundeck. “Is he around?”
“He’s working.” She watched Hicks without hope. “What did you say your name was? Like I don’t remember you.”
“Ray. From Malibu. Where’s he working?”
“He’s never in Malibu anymore,” Lois said. “His Malibu period is over.”
“Where can I get in touch with him?” From the sundeck one could see a hillside with growths of ponderosa and scores of sparkling amorphous swimming pools. No one was swimming.
“At Famous.” Lois said. “He’s working all day.”
Hicks went to the phone and picked it up.
“May I?”
Lois made a small feathering gesture with her hand and stamped her heel silently. He replaced the phone.
“He won’t want to hear from you. He’s had it with Malibu.”
“This is not harassment,” Hicks explained. “This is something of interest to him.”
“No, it isn’t,” Lois said.
Hicks smiled and picked up the phone again.
“What’s the matter with her?” Marge asked. She meant the baby. “Or him. Can I help you?”
Lois ignored her, watching Hicks dial Informa
tion.
“He’s not there.”
Hicks stared at her.
“It’s none of my business,” he said, “but if I know Eddie he’ll be really pissed off if we miss each other. We’re passing through in sort of a rush.”
Lois stood silent for a moment and then hurried out.
Marge sat down and leaned her head on her palm, hoping that the baby would stop crying soon.
“Jesus, what an ugly room,” she said. “What an ugly picture.”
Hicks shrugged.
“We’re making all the rooms,” he said, sitting beside Marge. “Checking them out.”
“Right,” Marge said, closing her eyes and leaning on his shoulder. “We’re passing through in sort of a rush.”
When Lois came back the baby had stopped crying.
“Where is she?” Marge asked. “Didn’t you pick her up?”
Lois looked at her in loathing.
“I’m sorry,” Marge said. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”
“I do,” Lois said.
Hicks cleared his throat.
“About Eddie . . .”
“He’s in Gardena.” She sounded bitter and weary. “They’re shooting at the Gardena Auditorium and that’s where he is. You can wait down there till he’s finished.”
“One thing,” Hicks said. “We’d like to use the shower, if that’s all right.”
“Oh, sure,” Lois said disgustedly. “Anything you want.”
Hicks brought some fresh clothes in from the car and they showered in turns. They were very careful to keep the turquoise-colored bathroom dry; they rinsed the shower stall when they were through and put their used towels in a hamper.
Lois was not to be seen as they left, and the baby was quiet.
Before they got into the car again, Hicks took out his knife and pried a Dizzy Gillespie for President sticker off their rear bumper. It had been there for years.
They rode the freeways to Gardena and cruised about to find the auditorium. The streets were dead straight, and the houses were not very large but most of them had little searchlights on their lawns for nightly illumination. There were a lot of poker joints on the business blocks.
Gardena Auditorium was a stucco building adjoining a park, built to resemble Union Station in miniature. Two huge generator trucks were parked in front of the ticket-holders’ gate.
