Love and War in California

by Oakley Hall

  Carrying rackets, Bonny and I moved along the walk to the court, where I could hear the plock of a ball and glimpse through foliage people sitting at white tables under striped beach umbrellas. If Bonny hadn’t been with me, my courage would have gone down the drain.

  A foursome was playing, two girls in white shorts, an older woman in an ankle-length skirt, and a blond young guy missing a shot right to him. Hackers.

  Flynn came to greet us, wearing pleated shorts and a T-shirt, a visor accentuating his sharp features. I had practiced what I would say:

  “Hi, Mr. Flynn. I’m Richie Daltrey’s brother, and this is Barbara Bonington.”

  “Of course!” he said, breaking into a grin. “The fair one and young Martin Eden.” He herded us toward the others, two older men at a table with a silver shaker. At another were a too-handsome guy and a starlet type.

  The older men, rising big-bellied to be introduced, were Mr. Warner and Mr. Wald. Mr. Warner was deeply tanned, with sleek oiled hair, a pencil-line mustache like Flynn’s, and a flash of a red stone in his cuff link. Wald was younger, with a dark frog face.

  “Let’s have some respectable tennis here!” Flynn said, clapping his hands together. He beckoned the hackers off the court. “Come on, Billie.”

  Bonny and I faced Flynn and Billie, whose last name I hadn’t heard. She was pretty in such a blond, sunny way that Bonny seemed almost sultry by contrast. New sparkling-white Pennsylvania balls! We rallied in practice, Flynn with a big forehand, Billie not so good, but fun, squealing when she had to run for wide ones, Bonny with her good lefty ground strokes.

  In play Flynn covered three-quarters of the court, poaching and jamming, so that he and Billie won the first four games. Then Bonny began banging her beautiful down-the-line backhand, catching Flynn poaching. When I saw that he made a joke out of getting passed, I started keeping him honest also. We broke Billie’s serve, won Bonny’s, lost Flynn’s, but won mine after about a dozen ads for the set. It was fun! Bonny’s Helen Wills deadpan broke into her luminous smile when Flynn complimented her, and I was proud of her in a host of ways.

  Flynn dismissed Billie and called to the older woman, Esther Carnes, to be his partner. She must’ve been forty, but she had good strokes and a way of disapproving when aced, as though it was unmannerly, that caused me to drop two service games. Bonny and I lost the set 6–2.

  Afterward we sat at the table with Mr. Warner, Mr. Wald, and Mrs. Carnes and drank Cokes from the courtside refrigerator.

  “That is a very competent backhand of yours, Miss Bonington,” Mr. Warner said, leaning toward Bonny. That letch, Liz had said of him. Richie had implied that he could have any girl he wanted to give a contract to. Jack Warner was smoking a tan cigar. All these people must have known David Lubin.

  “It cost my father a lot of money!” Bonny said, and blushed at her temerity.

  Flynn had disappeared, but Billie joined us at what I had figured was the A table. She and Bonny had a conversation going, Bonny listening, nodding, joining in. A Filipino in a white uniform appeared to see if anyone wanted drinks and took the cocktail shaker away with him.

  I felt paralyzed with old, dogfaced ineptitudes. It grated on me that Bonny would be at ease in social situations that seemed to me fraught with possibilities for jerkery.

  “I know your brother,” Mrs. Carnes said, smiling at me. “There is quite a family resemblance. I am very fond of Richard.”

  Her face was as neat as her strokes, narrow and rather haughty, with a nose she kept raised as though to look down it at you. I thought she must be someone important, and Mr. Wald, too: someone rather than no one, as Ben Takahashi had put it.

  Wald asked if I was interested in movies.

  “Well, in fiction!”

  “And so are we!” Wald said, laughing. Mrs. Carnes held up her glass for the houseboy to replenish from the shaker.

  Bonny announced that I wrote stories, and I felt my face catch fire.

  “Any published?” Wald wanted to know.

  “Not yet.”

  “Where are you sending them?”

  “Black Mask mostly.”

  “I know Percy Ratner,” Wald said. “I’ll tell him to watch out for your stuff. Daltrey? Pat Daltrey?”

  “Payton.” PR! This was the way the system worked, that Richie knew, had learned at SC and from The Pisan Manual! Who you knew, not what you knew.

  “He’s good!” Bonny said. I gave her a warning glance. Mrs. Carnes looked amused.

  “I’m going to be good,” I said. “I don’t know if I am yet.”

  “Never admit that in this town,” Jack Warner said in his gravelly voice, and blew smoke.

  “Esther wrote the screenplay for Wild Fire,” Wald said.

  I looked at Mrs. Carnes with interest; Wild Fire was supposed to be terrific.

  “Anyone for a swim?” Flynn said, reappearing. He pointed to the pool, freckled with gold in the sun. No one seemed to be inclined to join him, so he set off by himself, broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped in his T-shirt and shorts, a towel over his shoulder.

  I hurried to catch up with him. I said, “I have to talk to you about that guy Hagen.”

  He halted, frowning at me as I hurried on. “You remember that night on your boat when he went after Richie.”

  A redwood table and two chairs stood in a patch of shade, and Flynn pushed a chair aside for me and sprawled in the other in his long-legged abrupt way.

  “I saw him at the Yacht Club the other day,” I said. “He is kind of on Richie’s case.”

  Flynn bared his teeth and blew his breath through them.

  “Panch was drunk that night. He does seem to have a gripe against Richie for some nasty mess that I think should be charged against David Lubin.”

  “That actress who killed herself, Val Ferris.”

  He blinked in a way that reminded me of a camera shutter. “Panch had known her from some previous existence. It is a curious fact that one unbalanced human can so often find another in this world of ours. Val Ferris was very intense, very dramatic. Once at an occasion here there was a scene, and she bolted, shouting imprecations. A search party was instituted! She was found lying on the diving board mother naked, having flung all her clothing into the pool. A considerable amount of trouble for everyone!

  “One might have imagined her as a prospective suicide. The usual reasons. Career failure, love failure, awareness of exploitation and lack of regard, and the vileness of human nature as it is regularly manifested in this place.”

  “Hagen blames Richie,” I said. “He kind of threatened Richie. I’m worried about Liz.”

  Flynn gazed at me, hard-faced. “I will tell him,” he said, “that if he causes that handsome young lady any disturbance I will detach his testicles and hang them in the doorway like mistletoe. For daws to pick at! Will that suffice you?”

  “Well, thanks,” I said. “I was just kind of worried. Maybe—” But he seemed no longer interested, his eyes slanting away from me, and I felt like a pushy jerk for bothering him. He scraped his chair back and went away, leaving me there.

  The vileness of human nature as it is regularly manifested here, he had said.

  * * *

  When Bonny and I left, Jack Warner told her in an offhand way to let him know if she wanted a screen test, and Jerry Wald said he would mention Payton Daltrey the next time he talked to Perce Ratner. Mrs. Carnes gave me her card.

  6

  The streetlights were coming on as we drove along Sunset Boulevard looking for the bar where Art Tatum was playing. It was a dark little place that stank of beer. On top of the upright piano was a brandy snifter filled with green bills. We ordered Tom Collinses and sat at a tiny table waiting for Tatum to appear. Bonny leaned against me.

  “I don’t understand about this afternoon,” she said. “We didn’t go there just to play tennis, did we?”

  “I had to ask Flynn something about Richie and that guy from the Sirocco. We saw him that day at the Yacht Club.” />
  Her lips rounded into an O.

  Tatum appeared, to seat himself at the piano in a scatter of applause. He looked like a fireplug on the bench, with his dark glasses and snap-brim hat. He struck a chord, full of promise, and bent to playing “Honeysuckle Rose.”

  As we joined in the clapping when he had finished, Bonny said in a casual voice, “My parents are talking about me transferring to Stanford next year.”

  There was no way in the world I could afford the tuition to transfer to Stanford with her—$225 a quarter! I felt nauseated by the sweet drink in my hand.

  “Is this because of me?” I whispered.

  “They can afford it with Charley out of school.”

  “I’m sorry I’m unsuitable.”

  “It’s because of Charley,” she said, tight-lipped. Then she said, “They’re afraid I’ll start going steady like I did with Johnny.”

  “And you have to marry a doctor.”

  “I told you, that’s just the way Mother is! She and my aunts are like that because they worshipped Grandfather.”

  I watched Tatum’s fingers spiking down from fat black hands. Bonny rested her cheek against my shoulder. I was trying to understand what I felt: like being left out choosing up for a team because you weren’t good enough. Like not being counted among the people to be invited to the party. I knew that Bonny loved me, but her parents regarded me as a threat like Johnny Pierce. To her virginity, or anyway her reputation? To her marrying a proper doctor? So the Stanford prospect was why Mrs. B. had permitted this trip. Bonny hadn’t told me earlier so as not to spoil our days together. Greeks were dying and tankers were burning and sinking and all those Americans were Jap POWs in a war that just went on and on. But this crazy weekend was ending. Four hours driving back to San Diego, taking it easy through the beach towns down the Coast in the night. Stanford University!

  The fat black piano player turned corny songs into sparkling music, but it was time to go.

  Bonny drove the first leg, southward bound down Firestone Boulevard, then down Lakewood into Long Beach. She had her glasses on, and she wore a solemn expression, which whitened in the glare of oncoming headlights. I thought of a series of bitter comments, but did not punish Bonny with them. In Corona del Mar we stopped for gas and coffee, and I took over the driving.

  The highway in Leucadia was divided by a row of huge-boled eucalyptus, peeling tongues of bark hanging off trunks as pale as flesh. My eyelids were heavy.

  Someone was sprawled on the asphalt. Bonny cried out. I tramped on the brakes and wrenched the wheel. A sailor, bareheaded in a black jumper, a white face turned toward us as the tires screamed. Too fast! Ol Paint tilted up with a sensation of lightness, then crunched to four wheels again as I fought the steering.

  We skidded toward the barrier of trees. The peeling trunks hung before us like a solid wall, but Ol Paint slipped between two of them. Rubber squalled again as the car surged out into the empty northbound lane beyond the trees, headed back toward LA. The wheel finally responded, Ol Paint slowing, jerking in high gear. The engine died. Stopped, I slumped against the wheel while Bonny clung to me in an echoing stillness. The headlights splashed the pavement headed north.

  When I started the engine, my left leg was so weak I could hardly depress the clutch. Ol Paint drifted along the trees until I found an opening through which I could turn back into the southbound lane. Then I drove slowly on the shoulder of the road looking for the sailor we had almost run over.

  “Where’d he go?” Bonny cried, and, when I stopped again, “Don’t get out!”

  There was something spooky in the night, all right. The sailor must have crawled into the shadows beyond the shoulder. Fallen out of some carload of drunken swabbies? I could see Ol Paint’s skid marks, black streaks of Uncle Red’s Mexican tires left on the pavement. The space between the trees, where brush had been flattened by the car’s passage, could not have been eight feet wide. I couldn’t pretend that I had aimed Ol Paint through that space.

  Bonny leaned on my leg to peer out my window. When I put an arm around her, she jammed her face into my neck. I drifted on along the highway in the black shadow of the eucalyptus row, and off the pavement with a jar. Close against the vine-covered fence I switched off the lights and ignition, turning and clasping Bonny, hard breathing, hand to her crotch and her crotch thrust back against my hand. I fumbled under her skirt, unlatching stockings and panty girdle, her hot sweet breath in my face. Our mouths sealed together. Her hips lifted off the seat as I wrenched the rubbery garment down. My fingers encountered damp and heat. I fumbled for my own zipper; my hard-on came out of my pants as though spring-actuated. I rolled on top of her in the grip of some kind of absolute hard-thrusting reprisal for being found wanting, for having been ejected from Mission Hills, for not having $225 a quarter tuition to attend Stanford.

  Her body seemed to be fizzing like a shaken 7-Up, and something huge and brutal commanded mine.

  “Oh!” she whispered. Then, “No!”

  I jackknifed.

  A car swept by, headlights dazzling in the mirror.

  “You didn’t get any in me?”

  “No.”

  She mopped at her thigh with a Kleenex, muttering, “Oh! Oh! Oh!—” She leaned back against her door, pulling her panty girdle on with convulsive movements.

  “I’ve got to find that goddam swabbie. Maybe he’s hurt.”

  She continued to pull her clothing together as I backed up and swung the wheel to turn on the headlights toward the fence line. The sailor was sitting against the fence. He had a scraped place on his chin. He looked about sixteen. He’d fallen out the back of a pickup truck that had given him and three buddies a lift back from Oceanside.

  Bonny did not speak on the last stretch of our trip back to San Diego. Sometimes she sat with the flat of her hands held to her cheeks. The sailor stank of puke. His name was Tim Rafferty. He was from western Pennsylvania. Making conversation with him was like pulling weeds. Sometimes Bonny laughed inappropriately.

  We let him off across from the bright lights of the main gate of the Naval Recruit Depot.

  “What a lovely trip!” Bonny murmured.

  “Close call,” I said. Two close calls.

  “Dear God!” Bonny whispered, and made a breathy laughing sound.

  Something had changed like an enormous gear groaning as it mightily turned to settle into a new notch. We drove on up off the flatlands the rest of the way to Mission Hills in silence.

  Chapter 9

  1

  On Tuesday morning I sat with Liz Fletcher on a concrete bench in the shadow of the Ad Building, watching the students crossing the Quad heading for classes or the parking lot.

  She had a cloth bag in her lap, hoops of wood for handles. Out of the bag she brought a doll with a china head and hands, in a long white dress. The doll’s eyes rolled shut when it was turned on its back, open when held upright. The face was old-fashioned, with a rosebud mouth and blooming cheeks.

  “Isn’t she beautiful?” Liz said. “She’s Emma. She was my mother’s. She’s going to be the Bombing Raid Baby.” They were doing civil defense in her psych class. “She’s going to be a famous actress when she grows up, aren’t you, Em?” Liz went on. She contrived for the doll to nod like a puppet.

  “Smart, too,” I said.

  Liz spoke in irritating baby talk, bending over the doll. “But her loverboy’s gone off to be a sailor!”

  She said in her normal, lisping voice, “My father says I’m too old to play with dolls.” She sat with her leg brushing mine, ankles in silk stockings crossed. She smelled of flowers, like Dessy. Her dark hair was gathered up to show the pink lobes of her ears. I was glad that Bonny didn’t have a nine o’clock on Tuesdays.

  “What did Errol say about me?” she said.

  “He called you ‘that lovely young woman.’”

  She rocked the doll back and forth, so the doll’s eyes opened and closed.

  “What did Jack Warner say?” />
  “He offered Bonny a screen test.”

  “That letch,” she said. “Do you think Richie has a girlfriend in Pensacola?”

  It was as though her mind circled like a fly around the idea of Val Ferris but didn’t quite want to land on it.

  “It’s airplanes he loves in Pensacola. You’re his girl.”

  “He’d better marry me in June if he wants me to be his girl,” Liz said. She held up her doll to touch my forehead with its china lips. She looked at her watch and said she had to hurry. I watched her striding across the Quad, carrying her doll in its bag.

  2

  Heading for Mr. Chapman’s class, I passed my fraternity brothers Ernie Baker and Bill Holmes in the hall. When I said hi, both of them glanced away as though some sergeant had commanded “Right face!” then went on along away. I almost stumbled with a sudden weakening of my knees. I was being silenced! They must’ve decided it last night.

  After class I met Bonny in the Caff. She looked tired, the flesh beneath her eyes transparent, her face thinner. It was as though she was suddenly older.

  “Charley’s marrying that girl in the photograph,” she said. “Eunice Coster. He wrote my parents a really awful letter. He’s never coming home. He loves Australia. He loves Eunice’s whole family. Mr. Coster sells cars. After the war he’s going to set Charley up selling boats. Of course Charley would be so happy if he never had to look at a med school textbook again, and he won’t have to go into practice as junior Dr. Bonington. It was a really cruel letter. He sounded as though he’s always hated them!”

  I had no reason to like Charley, and I disliked Mrs. B. for what seemed sufficient reason.

  “Daddy tried to phone, but you can’t get through.”

  It occurred to me that I was treating my own father as Charley was treating his parents. As Alpha Beta was treating me, who probably deserved it, which I didn’t need to mention to Bonny.

  Her blue eyes flashed at me. “It’s funny about the war, isn’t it? People can do what they want, like it’s a new kind of freedom.”