He felt rage gorge up through the empty longing in his stomach. He was tied in knots. Where in hell was Joanne and why did she always have to lie to him? Why did she say she was too tired to see him and then go out with some other guy?

Determinedly, he crossed the shadowed street and went into Joanne’s building. He heard music blaring from her apartment, and the sounds of a raucous party going on.

He stood for a minute before pressing the bell, and then the girl he knew as Flo opened the door. She was drunk again.

“Well, hello there, doll,” Flo said. “We haven’t seen you in a long time.” Perhaps, he thought, she was always drunk.

“Come on in,” she cried, sagging against the door jamb.

“No,” he said. He looked over her head into the crowded apartment. “Joanne. Is Joanne home?”

“Aw, honey, I’m sorry. She’s not. She’s going to hate missing you, though. It’s just going to make her sick.”

Sure, he thought, she’ll cry herself to sleep. She’ll even soak some guy’s pajama sleeve, crying herself to sleep… .

Don’t

Speak to

Strange Girls

Harry Whittington

a division of F+W Media, Inc.

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

Also Available

Copyright Page

chapter one

CLAY STUART glanced at Sharon close beside him, head lowered, concealed beneath dark hat and veil, handkerchief pressed against her mouth. The genuine quality of her grief was his only comfort in this phony display at Ruth’s graveside in Forest Lawn.

Surrounded by photographers and the curious — strangers drawn for every reason except to mourn Ruth — Clay stared at the minister but did not listen any more. Besides Sharon and himself, the knot of relatives and close friends under the canopy, only three people in this whole mob had known his wife well enough to mourn her death — Kay Ringling, Marty Hoff, Marc Shatner. The others had come hoping to glimpse Clay Stuart’s grief.

He stood rail thin, tall, body sagging in black suit, sun glistening in the sweat on his forehead, brown hair thinning without the hairpiece.

He found his mind shutting out this lush, sick-sweet scene and in his memory, like a movie dissolve, he was thirteen, watching the stark burial of his father on a bleak Nebraska plain.

Clay had stood at his father’s graveside, not crying because males didn’t cry even in the presence of death in that barren country. The scalded land lay flat, starkly brown, hostile and without tears even at a burial. The funeral oratory was austere and without comfort. Death was fearful but ever-present on those plains; it was everywhere; habitation, vegetation slowly decaying in the broken red earth beneath an avenging sun.

Suddenly Clay heard Sharon’s soft cry and she moved nearer against him, clasping his hand low at their sides where the strangers could not see.

Clay felt his heart lurch, thinking Ruth’s death might accomplish what he’d always wanted if it brought their daughter closer to him. “I always wanted this,” he thought, “but like everything else, I never got what I wanted until I didn’t want it any more.” Maybe it wasn’t too late with Sharon. He hoped not.

• • •

The black Rolls Royce turned left on Barham Boulevard and Clay glanced at the red-gleaming roofs of Warners across the Los Angeles River, thinking about the commitment he had down there.

He sat stiffly between stout Marty Hoff, his business manager, and Marc Shatner, his agent, on the back seat. Hoff was saying, “It was a fine funeral, Clay. You did everything for Ruth you could.”

“No.”

Hoff made a sad, clucking sound. “Now, don’t start that, Clay. Don’t blame yourself.”

“Who started it?” Shatner said. “You started it, Marty.”

“Shut up, Marc,” Hoff said. Faint moisture formed in his eyes and he scowled. He had loved Ruth because he came to know her well in these years; he and Ruth got along because they both loved Clay Stuart and wanted the best for him. He thought about Kay Ringling who would assume many of Ruth’s responsibilities and he shivered slightly. He pitied anyone who had to deal with Kay Ringling where Clay Stuart was concerned, and now he was pitying himself in advance. “I only mentioned it was a fine funeral. Nice. I mean — you got to go — it’s fine to know they give you so much.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Stuart said. He leaned forward and spoke to the chauffeur. “Fred, if there are reporters at the house, drive on — we’ll go down to the ranch.”

“Clay. Now, Clay.” Hoff was sweating. “You can’t do that to those boys.”

“I can’t look at them any more. I don’t want any more pictures.”

Hoff’s voice was consoling. “Now, Clay, look at it this way. These photo-boys are communicating your grief to the public. The public wants to share. They got a right to share.”

“No.” Stuart’s mouth was taut.

Marc Shatner glared across him at Hoff. He didn’t care how many pictures they took. As Clay’s agent he accepted that Clay Stuart’s grief was no more a personal thing than any other facet of his life had been in the past — Good God, was it really thirty-two years? It really was, though nobody cared to face this truth, including Clay Stuart. Stuart had reached his highest triumph at thirty-five, and he clung to that peak, and when he died, he’d still be clinging to it.

Shatner felt a rush of grief. Not for Ruth, but for himself and Stuart. Ruth was dead; it was cancer; she’d been dying for a long time. Some Hollywood columnists were already speculating in print who’d be the next Mrs. Clay Stuart — second wife of one of the dozen super-stars left in the business, so colossal TV couldn’t touch him or affect the grosses of his pictures. Line up girls, this boy is a catch. Hell, not a day over fifty-three. On the screen he photographs a youthful, suntanned thirty-five. Lines in his face? Dignity. Character.

But Shatner had been watching Clay closely, at the cemetery, and now here at the car. Thirty years he’d known Clay Stuart — nothing he wouldn’t do for him, nothing he hadn’t done for him, knew all about him. And he had not suspected the truth. When Clay Stuart walked away from that grave he left part of himself there. And this was not as upsetting to Marc Shatner as was the fact that nobody, least of all Marc Shatner, had suspected Clay gave more than a casual damn about Ruth.

“Talk to him, Marc,” Hoff pleaded. Behind his dark glasses, Hoff’s eyes were frantic. “He’ll listen to you.”

“I’ll listen to nobody,” Stuart said. He spoke in that flat, measured way on screen and off. “I want to be by myself. Just for a while. Is that too much to ask?”

“I think it is,” Hoff said. “Of course you grieve, Clay. But if you get back to work, this is the answer. Am I some nobody telling you these things, Clay? I been through these bad times. I’ve lost — loved ones. You tell me who loved your Ruth more than I did. But if you give in to your grief it is worse — on you, Clay. No. Work is the answer.”

• • •

The Rolls turned into the drive of Clay’s Beverly Hills home; one of his possessions; one that had always seemed to him to belong more to Ruth, expressive of her in every way and never truly his. The split-level ranch-type showed the Spanish influence Southern California architects could not escape in the thirties. Its fourteen rooms were carefully planned so their grouping did not appear imposing beyond the low wall and banked shrubbery; the house didn’t betray its sprawling massive space except to a bird looking down on it from a eucalyptus tree, or to the tax assessor gazing upward at it. Before its white stone facade the drive was a pebbled semicircle through a half-acre completely carpeted with lovely tasteless odorless flowers Los Angeleans grew instead of lawn grass. Behind the house, the yard sloped gently across four acres to the abrupt brink overlooking a canyon of pine, rocks and bull-dozed homesites.

The camera corps had preceded them. Clay walked through them without hurrying, with that measured pace the screen captured so profitably. He didn’t protest their flashing cameras but didn’t lift his head either, though they called to him and some were acquaintances of many years. He didn’t tell them to go to hell and he figured this was the friendliest side he could show them.

• • •

Shatner went into the library and poured himself a drink of I. W. Harper. After a moment Hoff came in with two blue-covered scripts in his arms. He put one of them on the polished desk.

He looked around a moment and then placed the other as though it had been tossed by chance on the drum table under a reading lamp.

Shatner carried his drink, examined the covers of the scripts without touching them.

“It won’t hurt him any to see them when he comes in here,” Hoff said. His voice was on the defensive.

Shatner read the title on the script under the reading lamp. “They’re both scripts on Man of the Desert,“ he said.

Hoff nodded. “If only Clay will read it. The story is right for him. Like it was written for him.”

“Wasn’t it?”

“My advice to you,” Hoff said, “is that you encourage Clay to get back to work. It is what he needs. Instead of scoffing, let me see you tell him to get back to work.”

“On Man of the Desert?”

“It’s a good property,” Hoff said. “It will draw above everything he has ever done. We’re getting him a percentage of gross. We got a top director. If you are his friend, you will make him see all this.”

Shatner shrugged. “Who’s his friend right now? Am I his friend? Me? I’m his agent.”

• • •

Clay Stuart walked slowly up the wide staircase. It had never seemed so damned far before. He must be getting old. Hell, he was getting old. But even as he thought it, he denied it, the rush of warmth eating through the grief in him.

He couldn’t get old. There was no place out here for a leading man who got old. It had not been age that killed Ruth. He had to remember that. She was only forty-eight. No, he supposed she was fifty. She was three years younger than he was, though she’d looked ten years older there at the last.

The funeral directors had done a masterful job on her. She looked wasted, nothing anyone could do about that, but at least she had looked less than a hundred years old lying in that casket. God. What difference did it make how she had looked? But a man didn’t live most of his life as a public commodity without concerning himself with public reaction, even at a time like this.

Clay heard McEsters open the front door, heard it close. He knew without looking over his shoulder that Kay Ringling had come in. He sensed it when Kay was near.

He paused, hand on the Newell post, feeling the erratic pound of his heart. The damned thing never had been any good — when Gable and Taylor and the rest had been going into the services, they turned him down. Now it lathered him to climb the stairs.

He heard the subdued voices from below. Kay Ringling. Shatner. Hoff. They loved him, each was responsible for a piece of him, but he felt he never wanted to see them again. They reminded him, but no sense hating them for that. Everything in this house reminded him.

Clay entered his bedroom and closed the door behind him. He pulled loose his tie, unbuttoned his shirt and shrugged out of his coat. Thank God Ruth had left this room alone except to furnish it simply and ruggedly.

He tossed his coat over a chair, stepped out of his trousers. In jockey shorts and knitted undershirt, he stared at himself in the full-length wall mirrors.

He was three inches over six-feet tall, though publicity releases made it more, still slender and hard, corded with muscles. The hair on his chest was graying and his temples were streaked with gray, too. He moved closer, staring at his tear-reddened eyes.

He opened a closet door, found a ribbon-nylon shirt and slacks. He zipped the trousers, buttoned them but did not put on a belt. He left his shirt open half-way down his chest.

He went through the connecting bath to Ruth’s room, not knowing why he went in there, what he was looking for — in here was the quiet elegance dear to Ruth’s heart. She had expended a lot of passion on this part of her existence.

He paused beside the Angel Bed Ruth had had crated and carted home from France when they’d been on their honeymoon. He hadn’t spent much time in here. Sex hadn’t been the most urgent force of Ruth’s life.

The sliding doors of the wide closets loomed vacantly. The place had been cleared of Ruth’s dresses, shoes, under-things. Hoff had ordered this done — not realizing every bit of furniture in this house screamed her name. Hoff believed if you ordered your mind to discard grief, it would do it. All a matter of discipline. God how he envied a man like Hoff.

He saw a stocking that looked like something spun over the lower rung of a chair from eighteenth century France. He picked up the stocking, closing his fist on it. Funny, the way it had been left there, carelessly. That was the way it was with Ruth. The time they’d toured Europe, she’d left bits of her wardrobe in every hotel from London to Antwerp. And now she was dead and still she left part of herself in this room. Money and social position and someone to wait on her, the story of her life.

It had angered Ruth when he’d been tidy on their honeymoon, putting away his own clothes. What would the servants think? “The surest way to let them know you’re nobody,” Ruth said, “is to be neat and put away your clothes … and I don’t like you to do it anyway, Stu … It’s so common.”

A long time, Ruth, he thought. The girl who had everything all her life and the guy from a Nebraska farm — publicity releases called it a ranch. They’d had a good life, he saw now when it was lost and over, even if he’d always felt it lacking in spice and excitement. In those first years his friends made bets how long he and Ruth would last. Sometimes he made bets with himself. Ruth had disliked much in his life, hated hunting and fishing, and she had gone to his Nebraska home only once. Damned if she would tolerate the inconveniences.

He turned slowly, as if looking at this room for the last time. He thought, I’m sorry, Ruth, if I hurt you, and I know I did, if I failed you, and God only knows how many times I did that.

The knob on the hall door turned and he spun around guiltily.

Sharon opened the door and stood on the threshold. “I was looking for you,” she said.

Sharon had come into her twenties as if it were a fine and unexpected legacy, and there were all the pleasant touches of his lost little girl about her, face untarnished by shadow and arrestingly clear. There was an ingrained reticence in her that came from her mother, a faint questioning of everything, an innate appreciation of quality and mistrust of the phony.

Clay shoved the stocking into his pocket, tried to smile.

Sharon came forward slowly. “Don’t be ashamed, darling,” she said. “Of course you loved her. Don’t worry about it. Mother knew.”

Clay drew the back of his hand across his mouth, wondering how Ruth could have known.

He hadn’t even known himself.

• • •

Clay walked with Sharon along the hallway to the enclosed veranda across the north wing of the house.

He kept his arm about her, feeling the solid warmth of her body against him. Suddenly he never wanted to let her out of his sight again.

Sharon took a deep breath, thinking the best way to approach her father was with a burst of words. She didn’t want to hurt him but she had to be honest with him. It would have been so easy to tell her mother. It was everything her mother would approve and understand.

She moved away from Clay and walked across the bright parquet floors to the tall windows, forming the words on her mouth. But as she turned, he spoke: “I did love her, Sharon.”

“Oh, I know you did.”

“Sometimes I didn’t show it.”

She gave a soft laugh. “Well, you were never half the lover around here that you were on Grauman’s screen.”

“No.”

There was a brief empty silence. She was thinking that Amory Darrow was almost as tall as her father, slender and athletic. There would never be the strength and character in Amory’s face that was in her father’s, but she had seen only a few men who had that, so it was no discredit to Amory that he was a lesser human being, even in her eyes. She wanted to tell her father about Amory, but there was Amory’s age — he was thirty-six — and his divorce. She shivered involuntarily.

Clay saw something was troubling Sharon, something imposed over the grief about her mother. “Are you all right? I mean at school? Is everything all right?”

“Of course it is. I love it.”

“Oh? Do you? Wouldn’t you like a vacation? Stay around here. Take the rest of the year off. Look after me.”

She swallowed back the ache in her throat. “Daddy, I never knew a man who needed less concern than you. You’re the most self-sufficient man I know. The only one.”

He shook his head. “You know, that was the idea I had about myself? Until — you see, until your mother died. I’ve done a lot of thinking. Ruth was everything I needed, Sharon… . I began to realize it when she was in the hospital … I know it now.”

“She wanted to take care of you. She treated you just about the way she treated me — wanted you always washed behind your ears, shaved, looking your best, most successful, with everything you wanted. That’s the way she’s treated me all these years.”

“Have you been happy, Sharon? Not lonely … I mean, not needing anything?”

“Oh no.” She came to him, sat on the lounge chair beside him. “I’ve had a wonderful life. You’ll never know the thrill to sit in a theatre at the college and see you on the screen, and hear the girls sigh and whisper that Big Daddy Sex is my father. Sharon Stuart’s father … I’m not the prettiest girl at school, not nearly the most brilliant — but what I am is the most envied girl on campus. Because of you.”

“I’d — like to keep you around here if I could,” he said. “What if you did miss the rest of the year? You could make it up.”

She averted her face, spoke quickly. “I’m too much my mother’s daughter to believe that … I’m about to get — my degree … I can’t stop now.”

His voice was self-deprecating. “Maybe it’s just that I don’t hold much with degrees for women.”

“Your cowboy background,” she teased. “Now I sound like mother.”

“There are worse things.” He got up, walked to the windows. “I hoped maybe we could get away … You and I. We could go — I don’t care … Mexico, Europe … I wouldn’t drag you fishing or anything like that. We’d go where you wanted to go, Sharon. Wouldn’t you like that?”

“I’d love it. But — ”

He heeled around. “Then let’s do it. Just you and I.”

“Daddy, you don’t have to disrupt your life to drag me around on a trip you’d hate in a week.”

“But — I wouldn’t — ”

“You’re a much better actor on the screen. I’m not depressed. Mother was ill so long — I’ve been learning to accept it all this time. I’ll be all right. Don’t worry about me.” She could not bring herself to tell him yet about Amory. This wasn’t the right time, yet she had to do it before she returned East to school. She thought emptily maybe she’d talk to Kay Ringling about it. Wasn’t this what everybody did who wanted to reach Clay Stuart? Didn’t they talk to Kay Ringling first?

Clay felt his shoulders sag and he stared at Sharon. He could not tell her he was worried about himself, he needed her. He needed the smooth flow of life he’d had with Ruth. He was lost and lonely and he needed her, but he saw he could not say this to Sharon.

And she wouldn’t have believed him even if he’d said it.

chapter two

CLAY STUART lay back in a lounge chair beside his swimming pool. He watched a eucalyptus leaf float on the wind-rifled water. He made a bet with himself as to how long the leaf would float, and when it continued to ride the surface after the time limit he’d set, he removed a fifty-cent piece from his right pocket and put it in his left. Otherwise he did not move.

An empty highball tumbler sweated on the glass table-top at his elbow. His feet hung over the end of the chair. He wore unlaced sneakers and had kicked loose his headache.

He was not really thinking anything; there was nothing he wanted to think about, and when any thought intruded in on his conscious mind, he shoved it aside with the memories of his father which had been roused to life again at Ruth’s graveside in Forest Lawn. He’d run away in his thoughts that day to a less complicated time, and he found himself doing it again in the days since Ruth’s funeral. The present offered nothing but accumulated griefs, and his thoughts returned to Colonel Ben because, after forty years, they were less urgent, less painful.

At thirteen he’d thought the land stark, the life arid, but now he let his mind dwell on Colonel Ben, the quarter-horse the colonel had given him, the .410 gauge shotgun on his tenth birthday, and the time the colonel had caught him with the little girl from the neighboring farm on the outhouse floor, doing it the only way they knew — the way they’d seen the horses and cattle and hunting dogs doing it. He still remembered hunching over her, putting all the strength and sick sweet urgency of his hands on her shoulders, trying to draw her head back to him so he could inhale the fragrance of her hair. They hadn’t even known Colonel Ben was in the world until they heard the colonel’s burst of prideful laughter just before he brought his belt down across Clav’s back.

For many years every decision Clay Stuart made, every direction he turned was motivated by the compelling need to escape that raw land. Out there a man kissed infrequently — his bride only while she was still his bride, and then they lived together until they died, or killed one another, and seldom kissed again. A man might buss his mother’s cheek in a shamed way if she were absent from the house for more than a year, and kiss his grandchildren if they were small and no one was looking. A quick handshake was about as emotional as those people ever got.

Clay watched the leaf bobble across the water. It seemed to him he’d always been a wad of emotion, crying when his pet chicken was killed for Sunday dinner, holding on to things he loved.

He had the sudden memory of the day Colonel Ben assaulted the drummer on Main Street. The salesman rented a Stuart horse, rode it to death and then called young Clay a liar when he accused him.

Maybe a twelve-year-old kid should have kept his mouth shut, but a blind man could see what the drummer had done, and Clay felt ill watching that suffering animal die.

The Stuart women talked long and urgently to Colonel Ben and he finally agreed he would not speak of the matter with the drummer; the horse was dead, nothing could restore it, the colonel’s temper was violent and impossible to curb once roused.

And the colonel kept his word, would have kept it forever if only the drummer had been smart enough to keep his mouth shut. Clay walked at his father’s side on Main Street, heard the colonel suddenly sniffing, blowing hard through his left nostril the way he always did when agitated.

Clay hadn’t known what was the matter until he saw the drummer approaching them on the same side of the street. Colonel Ben kept his face straight, sniffing and blowing, but determined to keep his pledge and pass the drummer without speaking.

But the drummer called Colonel Ben’s name, an arrogant man, an arrogant voice alien to the plains. Colonel Ben sniffed, swung as he turned, clouting the drummer on the side of the head. The drummer staggered, stumbling ten feet before he fell. Colonel Ben pounced on him, saying nobody called his son a liar. He never mentioned the dead horse, seemed not to care. And even then Clay saw how violent his father’s emotions were, and how hard the colonel worked to keep anyone from seeing how different he was inside from his hewn-faced neighbors.

Clay smiled, remembering the way his father had fought the drummer in the dust of Main Street. It took five men to pull the colonel off. All this happened in 1921. There were less than a dozen automobiles in the whole county.

• • •

Now Clay heard a door close behind him and he stiffened rigidly in his chair, as though setting himself for some mortal combat instead of a casual encounter fixed and secured by old habit and long association. He listened to the precise steps on the flagstones and spoke without moving.

“Hello, Kay.”

“You always know when I’m near, don’t you?”

“Don’t forget, you’ve been walking up on me for over thirty years.”

She stood beside his lounge chair and he glanced up at her. “Don’t say that so loudly,” she said. “I don’t mind getting old, but I hate for you to.”

She was a tall woman, almost as tall as he, almost as lean. She could have played Cassius without make-up. He seldom looked at her now, though thirty years ago he’d been violent in bed with her, and he seemed to have forgotten, but Kay never had. He’d employed Kay Ringling as his personal manager, and she’d tossed aside everything else and had yet to regret it, except infrequently over a fourth martini — and everybody regretted something with more than three martinis in them. That early violence had simmered into something unusual, even in Hollywood. She stood between Clay Stuart and anything that might harm, annoy or deplete him.

“Old? I’m not old, Kay, you are,” his low voice teased. “You were an elderly lady the first time I set eyes on you.”

She stared down at him, remembering his ferocity in that faraway bed. He’d been so wildly needing, you’d have thought it would last forever, but it hadn’t. Something had happened to end all this between them, and she supposed he’d forgotten all about it. Now she put an edge into her voice.

“I hate to say this, but I was several years younger than you — even then. I still am.” She tightened her arms across the blue-covered script. “Don’t get up,” she added in irony.

Clay laughed, gesturing toward a lounge chair, catching it and drawing it nearer his.

“Sit down, Kay. Sit down. We’ve been enemies too long to be polite to each other.” He watched her in a detached way as she sat beside him. “Age is a matter of the mind, my dear Kay. You were an elderly lady when I met you. I hate to insist. But it was true. Elderly. An old maid.”

“You’re full of lies,” she told him, voice heated. “I was engaged to be married when you came along — ”

“Now don’t start that again,” he said in a lazy tone. He lay back in his chair, watching the eucalyptus leaf. “Don’t start that romance talk again … You were engaged. An engaged old maid. It would never have worked. You’ve been far happier with me, Kay, than you’d ever have been with that character — whatever his name was.”

“That isn’t the point,” she said. “That isn’t the point at all.”

“Admit it, you can’t remember his name, either.”

Her lined mouth twitched slightly. People said Clay Stuart owed her much, but she knew better. She owed him a terrible debt, one she felt obliged to repay. She was on guard for fear he’d see the way she felt on her face, and this was foolishness, because he never looked at her that closely any more. Just the same, now when Clay glanced at her, teasing her, Kay averted her face. Clay didn’t suspect what was on her mind, but she knew.

Her voice remained vinegary. “I remember his name quite well, but I’m not going to bandy it about in this atmosphere.”

“Because you’re a lady,” he mocked her.

“The point is that every woman needs a man — ”

“My God, Kay, you’ve had a man. Better than that, you’ve had me. Thirty-odd years — ”

“Very odd. Yes. For thirty years I’ve been Clay Stuart’s doormat, secretary, armor, weapon — ”

“And you’re complaining? Who are you kidding? It’s made you one of the most formidable women in Hollywood, and you know it. People who hate your guts send you Christmas gifts, open doors for you, fawn over you at parties. Could what’s-his-name have given you all that?”

She changed the subject abruptly. “Have you read it?”

“What?”

She gestured with the blue-covered script. “You know what. Man of the Desert. Warners wants an answer. You have a commitment. There’s Grant, you know. Jimmy Stewart. There’s Wayne — ”

“Yeah. And there’s Tab Hunter, too. Tell them to get Tab Hunter.”

“Have you read it? I told them as far as I was concerned, you would do it. They’ve got Dick Creek to direct. They’re lining up a supporting cast that will strain marquees. Ed Wynn for the old prospector. They want to borrow Joanne Woodward for the femme. There’s a doctor role they’re after Claude Rains for. It may not make as much money as all Ten Commandments — but it ought to top the first seven.”

He exhaled. “Such enthusiasm. You must have come straight here from Warners.”

“I’ve been talking to Hoff. And Shatner. And Warners. I’ve been talking to everybody but you. Have you read it?”

He shook his head.

“Why not?”

“Give me time, Ringling.”

“Time. It’s been over a week since Ruth’s funeral, Clay. You haven’t stirred out of this house. You won’t even read a script. What are you planning to do?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t. It’s just that I don’t seem to give a damn, Kay. I’m sorry.”

“Clay, don’t do this to me.”

“I’m not doing anything to you. Not intentionally. If I have no interest in anything, I can’t help it. If I read the book I’d hate it. If I tried to do the movie, I’d show I couldn’t do it.”

“Once you get back to work, you’ll be all right.”

“All right.”

“You said that a week ago.”

“It’s all I can say.” He stared at the pool. The eucalyptus leaf still floated.

“We’re trying to help you. You must know that.”

“Then let me alone.”

She caught her breath. “Will you tell me something?”

“If I can. I’ll try.”

“What do you want? Is there anything we can get you?”

“No. Because I don’t know. Since the baby has been here — Sharon — for the funeral, I got interested — I thought she and I might go somewhere, travel, while I got back whatever it is that’s gone … She was too busy.”

The tall woman leaned forward. “Of course she is. Sharon’s a lovely, twenty-year-old girl with a life of her own to live. Life goes on, Clay, you can’t just stop.”

He sighed. “It isn’t something I want, Kay. It’s as if I were driving along at sixty, and suddenly shifted into reverse for no reason and chewed the gears all to hell, you know?”

“No.”

He shrugged. “Then I can’t explain it to you.”

“I can’t understand you. It’s not like you to turn in on yourself like this. Even Sharon can’t talk to you. She’s filled with things she needs to say to you, but you turn her away.”

His jutting chin tilted. “That’s not true.”

“It’s true all right. She had to talk to me. Because she couldn’t talk to you. She’s in love. It’s the most wonderful thing in her life — and like you, she goes overboard on everything she cares about. Neither of you ever learned to do things moderately.”

“In love?” Clay smiled, almost coming to life in his gray face. “Why couldn’t she tell me?”

“Because she loves you so much she’s afraid of alienating you, or incurring disfavor … She’s like Ruth in that she doesn’t like Hollywood — she doesn’t even like Southern California. She knows this place is your idea of heaven — and it isn’t easy for her to tell you she’d rather live — back east in New England.”

“My God. Nobody would rather do that — ”

“You see?” Kay said. “She knows you won’t understand any part of what she wants. She dislikes the movies, and the people involved in them — present company excepted, she insists … The man she loves didn’t even know you.”

Clay smiled in irony. “Where’s he been these past thirty years?”

“He remembered, Sharon told me, he had seen some of your movies when he was in Harvard. Kind of slumming … Now, before you start yelling, there are such people. They don’t go to the movies, they hold others things — art, opera, sailing, conversation — more rewarding. They can smell a wine and tell the valley it came from in France, and what year. They can hear an accent and know what schools you attended, and what your grandparents did for a living — ”

“Oh, hell. John O’Hara writes about such people all the time. I didn’t believe in them when I read about them in his books, or when I played one of them in one of his movies.”

Kay smiled in a taut way. “Well, now you know they actually do exist, and that Sharon loves one of them, and they love her.”

“And she’s afraid to tell me this?”

“She was afraid she couldn’t make you believe it — without hurting you.”

“She doesn’t know me very well, does she?”

“She knows you very well … You see, the man she is in love with has been divorced — ”

“I’ve heard the word without becoming violent.”

“The marriage has been over a long time. The girl was from a good family, but she was a nympho, and he signed church papers accusing her of adultery, though he knew her family’s lawyers might filet him. He belongs to the Episcopal Church and it was important to his family that he remain a communicant… . Sharon says they are truly in love, and I believe her. She wants to marry him when she finishes school this spring and live in Massachusetts.”

Clay moved his shoulders. “I haven’t heard anything yet that’s made me violent. Sharon’s going back to Ruth’s kind of people doesn’t surprise me very much. Sharon spent a lot of time with her grandparents. Ruth influenced her… . Am I violent?”

“You haven’t heard it all. I saved the spicy part for last. The man she loves is Amory Darrow.”

“So?”

“So he’s thirty-six years old.”

For a long time, Clay didn’t even move. He remained staring at the pool and not even seeing it. He was remembering the way the colonel always snorted through his left nostril when the rages fired up in him.

He remained perfectly still. This he had learned, he kept his emotions tightly packaged. They showed in his sun-washed gray eyes, in the set of his jaw, but in thirty years no movie-goer had ever seen Clay Stuart lose control of his emotions, and neither had his nearest friends. Kay was one of the few who knew how he boiled and seethed and wept inside.

She saw it all happening to him now. She remembered that first time they’d gone to bed together, he’d been a blister of hurts and rages, ready to burst, and even then she’d known he needed something. He needed something now, only she couldn’t help him any more, she couldn’t even reach him except in a distant, detached way.

“Well, I’ll just keep her here at home,” he said at last, voice flat and measured. “She’ll get over him.”

“No, Clay. Don’t do that.”

He turned, gray eyes dark with shadows, but voice flat: “You want me to let her go back there?”

“Yes. I do.”

“Why?”

“Give her time to think, Clay. You want to drive her into that man’s arms? Oppose her. That’ll do it… . Let her go back. It’ll give you time to think, too.”

His voice was low. “What’s to think about? I’ll break his neck. I’ll twist loose his testes.”

“That’s right. That’s my boy said that. Off we go — scratching and gouging.”

He drew the backs of his fingers across his mouth. “What do you think I should do?”

“I think you ought to let her go back to school. Wish her well. She’s promised to stay in school until spring. Wish her well. Give her time. Give yourself time.”

“Give that old lecher time … Jesus, Kay. The guy is thirty-six years old. Divorced.”

“Yes,” she said mildly. “That’s what Sharon told me about him, too.”

He stared at her. “He’s sixteen years older than she is.”

“Listen to me, Clay. Sharon will always be attracted to older men. I’m no head-doctor, I admit, but it seems only common sense that it has to do with the way she tries to find you in any man she could care for deeply.”

“But sixteen years difference in their ages … He’d be almost fifty when she was only thirty.”

“You’re almost fifty,” she reminded him in an ironic tone.

“I don’t lech after young girls.”

“But you don’t feel older than God, either, do you?”

He shrugged, glanced away. “I don’t want to waste time talking to you about it.”

“I’d rather you talked to me about it than Sharon right now. You can wait until she comes home for the holidays — ”

“Oh, is she coming home for the holidays?”

“Don’t claw at me, Clay.”

“She’s my daughter.”

Kay smiled. “She’s Ruth’s daughter, too. Trust her a little.”

He shrugged.

Kay stood up and paused, looking down at him, angular arms clinging to the blue-covered script as if it were the flotsam that would save them both.

“Read the script. Get back to work,” she said.

Clay wriggled his feet inside his sneakers, sat watching them and didn’t speak.

Kay stared down at him. “I don’t understand you,” she said.

“I don’t understand myself.”

“Yes. But I should be able to understand you. I’ve loved you for so many years — I never loved any other man.” She gave a short laugh. “Not even what’s-his-name … I should be able to understand.”

He did not say anything. After a moment he heard her precise, knee-rubbing walk going away from him across the flagstones. He didn’t move except to turn his head, searching for the eucalyptus leaf on the pool surface.

It was gone.

chapter three

WHEN KAY RINGLING stood up from the lounge chair beside the pool, Marc Shatner moved guiltily away from the gameroom window.

He took a long pull at the highball. Through the panes he saw Kay approaching the French doors, and he became elaborately interested in a hangnail. She would resent it if she saw he had been watching her and Clay out on the terrace. He had long ago learned never to tangle with Kay Ringling. Whatever softness was in her she reserved for Clay Stuart exclusively.

He leaned with studied casualness against the hunt table.

“Here she comes,” he said to Hoff.

Hoff glanced up, nodded without saying anything.

Kay entered the gameroom, closed the door behind her. Her face was gray. She set the script she carried on the desk.

“He hasn’t read it,” she said. “He’s not going to read it.”

“What’s the matter with him?” Hoff said. He picked up an hors-d’oeuvre and plopped it into his mouth, chewing. “I’m not hungry. I’m on a diet. I eat. All the time lately, I eat. Why? Because I’m worried. I don’t have enough trouble at home with my wife and my girls. I have to come here to worry, too.”

“I can tell you what’s the matter with you,” Shatner said. “But I can’t tell you what’s the matter with him.” He jerked his head toward the swimming pool.

“Apathy,” Kay Ringling said, half to herself. “Even when I told him about Sharon — and her ivy-league divorcee — a male divorcee? — he got mad, but he didn’t really get mad. It hit at him, but it didn’t really reach him.”

“He’s got to get working,” Hoff said.

Shatner mixed himself another drink. “I don’t truly care if Clay takes this picture at Warners or not. Money? The government gets most of it. A hit picture? Who needs it?

He’s never made a picture yet that wasn’t a top grosser, even that one about Texas that they saved money on by shooting out here with California mountains in the background. Even that turkey gobbled big dough.”

“You,” Hoff said. “You’re a big help.”

“It’s Clay himself I’m thinking about,” Shatner said. He was a small man, with compact, compressed mouth, delicate features, blue eyes and tight brown curls like a skull cap.

“It’s Clay we’re all thinking about,” Hoff said. His feelings were injured. “He needs to work. As I told him from the first. He needs to get his thoughts away from himself.”

Kay sat down on the divan. “Well, there’s no way we can force him to work. And he’s just not interested.”

“Not interested?” Hoff plopped another round cracker into his mouth, chewed frantically. He thought, these people should have lived with me in Milwaukee on what my old man could bring home from his peddler’s cart. His father, God rest him, had dreamed only of his freedom in the United States, and he dreamed only of never being hungry again, and to insure this, a man had to work, no matter what he had.

Kay shook her head, still speaking half to herself, “He’s not interested in anything. It’s as though he were cold inside … I’ve never seen him like this before.”

“A man’s wife dies. His daughter is grown up. Gone. He sees himself alone. No young man any more.” Hoff shivered after he’d said this, glanced guiltily toward the French doors.

Hoff stared at Shatner who was walking slowly about the room, prowling it, looking at the games and equipment without interest.

“Some way we got to bring him out of it. You, Shatner. You been like his brother.” Hoff laughed. “God forgive you, you should have a goy for a brother.”

Shatner shrugged, smiling. “What the hell? Some of my best friends are goyim.”

Hoff watched him narrowly. “You’re the angle man, Marc. Can’t you think of something?”

Shatner continued prowling, did not answer.

“It breaks my heart,” Kay said, “to see him like this. No interest in anything. No warmth.”

Hoff exhaled and reached toward the plate again. He stopped halfway, then reached out, took two small ham sandwiches.

Shatner was turning the pages of a book. “Here’s something,” he said. “It’s in the Bible.”

“What do you know about the Bible?” Kay said.

“The Old Testament,” Shatner said. “My father sits all day reading it. He says. I don’t know what he does. He throws hot pennies to kids out the window. He reads the Bible. He finds faults with me … I was dragged through the old testament before I was thirteen. Shocking book. I remember how shocked I was at some of it. Later, I used to sneak it up to my room and read parts of it again — this was when I was older, of course.”

“What has this talk got to do with him out there?” Hoff said.

Shatner shrugged. “Maybe nothing. But we’ve got to do something. Now me, I never saw a man yet who wouldn’t respond to a woman — to a new woman.”

“My God,” Kay said. “His wife is barely in the grave.”

“The ground over her is not yet cold,” Hoff said. He stared at a ham sandwich, face pinched.

“All right,” Shatner said. “Forget it.” He glanced at Kay Ringling. “You ever skip a chance getting in bed with him when Ruth was alive?”

Her face flushed. “He never wanted me,” she said.

“I didn’t say that. I suggested you wanted him, and your need used to get so urgent back there — in the early thirties — that it roused him enough — ”

“You sneaking little spy,” she said.

“I never spied. I never cared. I figured you were giving him your whole life, you deserved something — besides all the money you made. Bread is not everything, even pumpernickel — that’s my credo. I’m not finding fault. I’m merely suggesting you crossed Ruth when she was alive — why the sudden flush of conscience because she’s dead?”

“I don’t know. She just died — ”

“And it kills you to think of another woman with him, doesn’t it?”

Kay did not answer. Shatner turned and looked at Hoff. “Do you deny, you fat Judas, that you never arranged to take along a blonde starlet or two for Clay on those hunting and fishing trips? Ruth was alive then. That never stopped you.”

“God should forgive Himself listening to such talk from you.” Hoff sat forward. “Clay was working hard. I thought he needed relaxation. I knew — we all knew — there was no fire in Ruth’s feelings for him. She — always — she should forgive me — always seemed to be a kind of cold herring. I — thought he needed something.”

“And it’s different now?”

“Yes. If you put me on the defensive like this. It is. I tell you in all truth I never thought Clay Stuart gave a gentle damn for Ruth. He was always very polite toward her. They were most respectable. But now, when I see how hard he was hit by her death, it changes everything. It makes me think. All this time I’ve been wrong. Yes, it is different now.”

Shatner shrugged. “All right. But it seems to me that he has to go on living, whether he wants to or not. And it would be up to the three of us to get him out of this … apathy. We care most about him.”

“I would do anything for him,” Hoff said. He licked a speck of cheddar from his thumb.

“Just going to let him sit out there and get old and cold?” Shatner asked.

“Of course not,” Hoff said.

“But what can we do?” Kay said. “He just sits there.”

“This verse,” Shatner said, returning to the Bible. “You might be interested. From the First Book of Kings: ‘Now King David was old and stricken in years; and they covered him with clothes, but he gat no heat. Wherefore his servants said unto him, Let there be sought for my lord the king a young virgin; and let her stand before the king a young virgin; and let her cherish him, and let her lie in thy bosom, that my lord the king may get heat.’ ”

He looked up, his wry mouth twisted into a grin. He waited for them to laugh, but they did not even smile. They didn’t move, they just sat there staring at him.

• • •

Clay rode beside Sharon to the International Airport in the rear seat of the Rolls Royce. As they drove across town, he stared at the back of the chauffeur’s neck. He had decided to use the chauffeured car because it would leave him and Sharon free to talk. They had so much they needed to say to each other in these hurried moments before flight time.

Now he saw it was a mistake. Another mistake. They’d have been more at ease without the rigid presence of an outsider a few feet from them and ever in view, no matter how well-trained his ears were to hear nothing.

“You’ll eat your vegetables, won’t you?” he said, trying to recapture the old warmth between them, but even his poor little joke had a sense of desperation in it. Clearly Sharon was no longer a child. He hated the idea of that damned old man making love to her and he could not say it. The story of his life. Bursting with the need to erupt with the tumult of emotions tamped down in him, but in constant conflict with the dread of showing his torments — males from his land didn’t cry, even in the presence of death.

“Of course I will,” Sharon said, clinging to his hand. “Even the broccoli.”

They smiled and then waited again in tension and silence.

He waited for Sharon to mention Amory Darrow, but she did not. She’s absorbed Ruth’s training and taken Ringling’s counsel. Unless he could melt her reserve he would feel he had failed them both, by default. What was a promise to Ringling in such circumstances? Yet he’d always profited by accepting Ringling’s advice, and he dreaded alienating Sharon. Besides he couldn’t make himself believe a sensible girl like Sharon would fall in love with a man almost old enough to be her father, or even that she’d seriously consider forsaking California for that blue-bellied land where even the friendliest people were stiff-necked, quick-frozen.

The moments and the miles raced past. They left the wondrous lighting of the city, climbed through a grove of oil derricks and sped past a rash of motels. He was losing his last opportunity to warn Sharon. A divorced man. Twice her age. He felt anger and concern reaching a boiling point inside him, and he envied Colonel Ben his safety valve — what a wonderful thing it must have been to snort your rage through your left nostril like that. He had no safety valves. He could only look at Sharon — a casting director’s ideal of a lovely and chaste girl, and feel the rages boiling in his stomach.

He wanted to forbid her to get on that plane. Instead, he heard himself saying, “Your allowance? Is it all right? Should it be larger?”

“I’m fine, Daddy. Stop worrying.”

“I can’t help worrying.” There, he’d edged to the brink of the subject. He would plunge over, tell her it was all off, he was keeping her at home.

Fred opened the door for them at the air terminal and they got out, and people whispered, staring. For a brief moment the blasé airport pulse hesitated and travelers forgot tickets, reservations and destinations.

“Big Daddy Sex,” Sharon teased him, walking through the stunned mob, holding his arm.

Somehow he walked the long tubular ramp to the loading gate and said nothing except the inconsequential vagaries people exchange at points of departure where there’s no continuity to anything except leave-taking.

People stared.

At the gate, he took a long look at her, and both spoke at the same instant: “Take care.”

They laughed.

Sharon clung to him and cried and he got the terrible feeling that he was never going to see her again and the guilt was his for letting her go at all.

He exhaled, watching her hurrying across the runway to the jet, thinking in a ghoulish way that this blurring sense of loss was going to restrain him from doing anything about Sharon’s divorced lover. She was gone. Like Ruth, she was lost to him. Everything he cared about was lost to him, borne away on night flights, and walking down the ramp and in the weeks following, when he thought about Sharon, he found himself thinking she was lost to him.

chapter four

CLAY WAS pitching pennies alone on the flagstone terrace near the pool. The mid-morning sun was warm against his shoulders and he felt this was a good omen. It was the first time in the month since Ruth had died that he’d been conscious of the sun, of its warmth, of the fact that it was there at all.

He heard the telephone ringing in the library, a sharp abrasive sound against his nerve ends. Except that it annoyed him, he paid no attention to it, and after a moment, it stopped ringing. Either McEsters or one of the maids had answered it, or whoever it was had given up.

They hadn’t given up.

McEsters crossed the flagstones, coming all the way to where Clay stood, back rigid, pace precise, voice modulated. Stuart had wondered if McEsters would go slack after Ruth was dead. He would not. Ruth had chosen her servants well.

He smiled tautly, watching McEsters cross the flagstones to him now, hoping the call was long distance from Sharon; it was the only call he cared to accept. These past weeks when loneliness overwhelmed him, or worry nagged, he called Sharon and talked to her. He called her frequently, but the conversations were unsatisfactory, constrained and guarded on both sides, despite his best efforts.

“Mr. Stuart,” McEsters said. “Telephone.”

“Who is it?”

“A young lady. From one of the studios. She did not give her name.”

“You’re getting careless, McEsters.”

“I’m very sorry. She sounded urgent. When she mentioned the studio — will you take the call out here, sir?”

“It’s all right.” Stuart spilled the pennies into his slacks pocket, crossed the flagstones, chilled when he walked into the shadowed house.

Clay sat on the arm of a couch, lifted the receiver. He said, “Hello.”

“Is this — ” She gave Stuart’s unlisted number.

“Yes. Who is this?”

“Well, maybe you don’t remember me.”

“Not your voice, I don’t. Let’s try your name?”

“Stark. Joanne Stark. Now do you remember?”

He scowled, thinking back. “No. I’m afraid not.”

“What an uncomplimentary memory. We met — at the Purple Onion — on Sunset.”

“Afraid not.” He had not been in any of the places along the Strip in years. Ruth disliked them.

“Why, you gave me your unlisted number.”

“Even the idea sounds fantastic.”

She laughed. “That’s because you don’t remember what I look like.”

“No matter what you look like, honey, I’m sure I didn’t give you this number.”

“Oh? Why not? Don’t you give out your number?”

“It would be easier to list it in the directory.”

“You’re just being obtuse, love — ”

“I’m being what?”

Her laugh was warm and throaty. “Isn’t that the right word?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, wait just a sec. I’ve got a dictionary right here beside me. I’ll look it up … How about — abstruse?”

“What’s that?”

She laughed. “Some kind of sea food?”

He sighed. “I’m sure this is all very pleasant. But I’m afraid you’re confused.”

“Oh, it’s hardly noticeable. I walk so you can’t tell it — ”

“I’ll bet you do.”

“Well, now, honey. That’s much better. You sound real friendly.”

“I’m hanging up now, Miss. It’s been fine. Bye.”

“Why?”

“So you can try again and get the right number.”

“Aren’t you Andrew Clay Stuart?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then. What number could be righter than that?”

“Goodbye.”

“Wait just a minute. Aren’t you even going to ask me anything about myself?”

“No.”

“You look better on the telephone even than on wide screen, Mr. S.”

“Goodbye, Miss Stark.”

“What you’ve got is a one-track mind.”

“It’s been educational.”

“I’ve got this big dictionary. We could go over a lot of words — and their meanings.”

“Goodbye.”

He heard her sigh. “Well. All right, honey. I’ll tell you what … Are you still there?”

“For the moment.”

“I’ll call you again later — sometime when you feel better.”

She was gone, suddenly as she had materialized, a voice somewhere across that line. He saw it was a mild triumph of sorts for her, she had hung up on him, leaving something hanging, unfinished, something left unsettled between them.

He sat there for a moment, then replaced the receiver.

He glanced up, caught an unexpected glimpse of himself in a mirror. He was smiling. Using muscles, he thought, that he’d even forgotten he ever had.

• • •

Hoff and Shatner arrived about four that afternoon. Hoff was talking to Shatner about some way a man might divorce his own daughters, but when he saw Clay, he put his family out of his mind. Shatner had not been listening to Hoff except that part about divorce — it was impossible he knew to divorce an aged father, and yet, he told himself wryly, that relationship had just about had it. But Shatner, like Hoff, tensed slightly when he saw Clay sprawled in that damned lounge chair — looking as if he hadn’t moved since the last time they were here.

Clay had not shaved, had not changed his slacks. He resented the way they were watching him, staring at him covertly every time he looked up.

Kay Ringling came in at five. She was carrying the battered blue script of Man of the Desert. But she did not refer to it. She looked him over as if he were her only chick — and God help him, he was — looked at him as if he might have grown since the last time she saw him.

Each of them was disappointed after inspecting him. This was evident in their faces.

Hoff said, “We got a firm offer for forty acres of your valley property, Clay.”

“I don’t believe he should sell,” Kay Ringling said before Clay could speak. He saw this was an old dialogue between them, and Hoff hoped to do two things by bringing it up here: go over Kay’s head, and bring Clay Stuart back to the world of the realistic.

Hoff’s voice rode over Kay’s. “Taxes are eating at us. Taxes out there are not what they were when we invested in that property. And what was it when we bought it? An investment? Right. To sell when the time was good. We are paying for something that is a thousand times more valuable than when we bought it. Should we hold it forever?”

“He’s held it this long,” Kay said. “Nothing is going to depress valley properties.”

Hoff snorted. “I’ll bet you’re constipated, Ringling. You want to hold on to everything. Never want to let anything go.”

“The state of my health is no concern of yours. Clay Stuart has never suffered yet taking my advice.”

“This buyer. A big operator,” Hoff said. “He’s made us a firm offer. A price that makes me sick to think I’m passing up. He’s a man who is sincere. Well, he’s not sincere, but I’ve been dealing with him a long time. We play poker. I can tell when he is bluffing. He is not bluffing. He wants the property. He makes no pretense on this.”

Shatner poured himself his third drink of I. W. Harper on the rocks, sloshing the whiskey around on the ice cubes. “Any calls, Clay?”

Stuart glanced up, scowling mildly. “Why? What kind of calls? What do you mean?”

“Hell. Anything. I was wondering if you were showing any interest in anything — the studio — anything like that.”

“No,” Clay said. “Nothing like that.”

• • •

They had to leave Clay’s station wagon locked at the lower parking area. The road upward to the guide’s camp was a mule trail. “We might make it driving,” Shatner said, “but the engine would boil, might burn a bearing. What’s the sense? Who needs a car up there?”

They packed their gear on their backs and carried the broken guns and fishing gear. Shatner had three long pulls at the fifth of bourbon while Clay locked the car.

“Against the cold,” Shatner said. “Against a hex from my old man. He doesn’t like me to go off and stay overnight. And me, I’m afraid he’ll burn the place down while I’m gone.”

“Heating pennies to toss to the kids.” Stuart said it for him.

“You think I’m joking about that, don’t you? My old man throwing heated pennies out on the sidewalk for the neighborhood kids?”

“You’ve been telling that same joke a long time.”

“It’s no joke,” Shatner said. “Anything I tell you about my old man is no joke. Maybe I laugh. I hate to cry at my age. My age. You got any idea how old I am, Clay? No chicken. How old does that make my father? I was a child of his old age. I swear to you. How long is that old man going to live? With his little black cap he looks like a monkey now. I tell you. It’s punishment for my sins.”

“You wouldn’t know what to do without him,” Clay said. “What would you have to talk about?”

“God is my witness, you’re right.” Shatner nodded. “I yell at him. He yells at me. I talk scandalously about him to anybody who’ll listen … I tell you, Clay, I’d be all dead if anything happened to him.”

He winced and cursed aloud, realizing what he had said. He plodded after Clay, wondering what he should say. He never wanted to hurt Clay because they were like brothers and he owed Clay one hell of a lot.

Not a showman or head of any studio, that didn’t light Marc Shatner’s cigars for him if he hesitated, and nobody kidded Shatner. The town belonged to the agents, but he was the boy who had represented Clay Stuart, and Clay Stuart was the boy who had never made a turkey — damned few could say that, Jerry Lewis, Abbott & Costello — hell, even Garbo hadn’t always knocked them dead at the box offices.

Shatner peddled flesh exclusively. He never represented writers any more because he’d painfully learned that nobody in Hollywood knew a writer’s name unless he’d won the Nobel prize last week — late last week. Nobody in Hollywood ever read anything except the analyses prepared by studio readers.

Shatner got along well in all the studios, peddling his actors. The producers all liked him, and the ones who disliked him were quickest to invite him past their secretary. He sat on their desks, smoked their cigars, criticized their newest tailored suits, visited their homes, toyed with any of their wives who weren’t shaggy dogs, buffaloed them, bribed and blackmailed them — and was recognized by them as a successful agent, a top-flight man — and only he in the darkness of his own bedroom admitted it was because he represented one of the last of the super-stars, Clay Stuart, the boy who asked and got a quarter of a million per picture, plus a cut of the gross.

Shatner plodded after Clay on the trail — a small man of boundless energy and self-esteem, and if he was not handsome, someone had neglected to inform him. What he had to sell in this racket was first himself, and he did this as a favor, giving you his smile and his personality at wholesale.

He shrugged the pack up on his back. It was Ruth he’d never been able to sell. He had hated her and she’d disliked him — when she thought of him at all. It seemed somehow sacrilegious or something to hate her still. But this was the way he felt. She belonged in another world and though she never consciously demonstrated it, Shatner was always made strongly aware of it when he was in her presence.

And the strange part of it was, he went to her, wagging his tail like a small wet dog, wanting to be friendly because Clay was marrying her. She’d gone to the best women’s college in the East — New England, he thought, without inquiring because it pleased him not to know for sure, and she had absorbed all the predigested, prejudged, preweighed education that they heaped upon her like creamed-chicken on toast.

To Shatner it seemed the most closed minds were those exposed to that advertised ultimate in culture, because they were told what to despise and they despised it, what to worship and they worshipped it. They learned everything, except to think independently. It amused him that it was forever products of these schools who set out to prove voluminously that Shakespeare never wrote the Shakespearean dramas and comedies: he couldn’t have because he hadn’t the education such work required; as living proof, they had the education, and they couldn’t do it. Shatner had long ago learned that some of the smartest cookies in show business — even today — were the men who knew all there was about show business, and couldn’t cross a street alone.

Ruth’s attitude toward him always put him on the defensive, and this was foreign to him, and he despised her for it the first time; and he hadn’t forgotten and he hadn’t forgiven her. But the sickening part was, she hadn’t even realized he hated her and would not have cared if she had known.

• • •

The roadway was steep and rough with stones. Firs grew close along the road, but when they looked back they could see the pasture lands below them and the valley marked with orderly farms. They crossed a wooden bridge. The water beneath was the color of clay and turbulent on the smooth stones.

“Good fishing up here,” Shatner said. “Funny you’ve never been up here before — all the fishing, hunting you’ve done. You sure you’ve never been up to Madden’s before?”

“I told you.”

“Well, come on, boy. Get in the mood. I told you this was going to be a fine trip. Different from anything you ever knew. You can fish if you want to. You can hunt if you want to. They got a guide for that. Or you can lay around the cabin. They got the guide’s wife for that.”

“What are you talking about? I came up here to fish and hunt.”

Shatner laughed, stumbling slightly on projecting stones. “Sure you did. But wait till you see her. I mean, she’s no Ava Gardner, but after you’ve been up here in this healthful mountain air, she’ll begin to look mighty attractive. And there is nothing — underline nothing — she will deny you.”

“I thought you said she was the guide’s wife. What do you do with him?”

Shatner laughed. “Oh, hell. Him? Listen, we send him out to check his traps, or something. One year I was up here with four guys from Universal. We got to drinking, and we got to looking at her and she got to squirming. You know what she did? She sent Madden all the way down the mountain for supplies. In the middle of the night, for God’s sake.”

“And he went?”

“I’m telling you. This is paradise up here. Nobody up here says no. Madden’s wife loves to drink. I brought along a few fifths for her. Give her a couple of drinks and she’s wild. Hell, she had a few drinks that night — and the only thing she was sorry about was there were just the five of us.”

“Lord. I can’t see the guide taking that. He must suspect.”

Shatner’s laugh rolled out through the forest. “Listen. Madden’s wife is a whore for the same reason her husband’s a guide. They like what they do. And if Madden objects? Hell. That’s his worry.”

The sun was thrusting brokenly through the pines, entangled in shadows of distant peaks. The far hills were bare and bleak with the late sun on them. Through the trees they could see the black-shingled roof of the guide’s cabin. Shatner hurried, striding ahead.

Madden’s wife was standing in the door, waiting for them. She remembered Shatner and greeted him warmly. She was an overblown woman in her middle thirties. Her complexion was very good, creamy and smooth. She had blue eyes that lay naked when she met a man’s gaze. There was something in the looks of her, the full hips, the full breasts, the naked eyes, a man got an emptiness in his loins looking at her, a quick hot yearning.

They were inside the big main room of the cabin when Madden came in. The room was snug with a huge fieldstone fireplace along the north wall. Bear skins and deer hides were tacked on the rough walls, and gape-mouthed fish stared wide-eyed.

Madden was carrying a load of firewood. He dropped it in a box and turned to greet them. Clay watched Madden’s face. Madden’s wife and Shatner were at the rough table testing one of the bottles of bourbon. Stuart saw the look of agony that flicked across Madden’s face. Madden was a slender man, less than medium height with sandy hair and a pale thin face that never tanned, no matter how many traps he checked.

Shatner introduced Stuart to Madden and then forgot the guide. Madden told Clay he’d seen most of his pictures, and liked them because they didn’t look faked. “Some things you can’t fake,” Madden said. “The things in your pictures, Mr. Stuart, you make people believe. I try to see them all.”

After her second drink, Madden’s wife wanted to dance. She and Shatner pushed the unpainted table against the wall, kicked a bear rug aside, turned up the radio.

Madden’s wife giggled, her blue eyes grew bright. Her body jostled loosely under the cotton dress. Clay watched them a moment, then turned his back, stretching his legs before him. He stared into the roaring fire.

He was aware of Madden in a rocker near him. Madden was staring at the fire, too. Clay could hear him sucking at his pipe, even above the crackling fire, even above the radio.

“Come on, Clay!” Shatner yelled. “Mamie wants to dance with you. She wants to dance with a real live movie star.”

Clay turned, grinning. He shook his head.

“Come on. Let loose,” Shatner said. “Have fun.”

Mamie laughed, leaning toward Clay’s chair. “What’s the matter with you, honey? Don’t you like girls?”

“Don’t you like girls?” Shatner laughed.

“You ain’t one of them fairy movie stars, are you?” Mamie said.

“Yeah,” Shatner said. “Is that what’s the matter, Stuart? You one of them fairy movie actors?”

• • •

When Clay awoke the next morning he lay in bed feeling better than he had in years. There was a smell of fir in the chilled breeze, a smell of the snow that was above them.

When he dressed and entered the big front door, Shatner and Mamie were having bourbon in their coffee. Mamie looked disheveled. She had not combed her hair, but there was an earthy beauty about her, and he remembered some lines, wasted in a shooting script he had read once: “There was this kind of latent danger in her that can be concealed in beauty — like lightning seen distantly beyond deep banks of thunderheads.” He felt he knew now what that writer had had in mind.

Shatner looked haggard. He turned and yelled with laughter over his shoulder at Clay. “Did you waste your time sleeping last night, boy?”

“You look like you could use some sleep.”

“I look this way because I say the hell with sleep. I also look this way because the last time I was up here, there were five of us.” He went into a spasm of laughter, putting his arm about Mamie and pulling her down hard against him. “Hell, I’m outnumbered.”

Mamie tried to pull her head up from Shatner’s lap but he held her there a moment longer. He jerked his head at Stuart signaling him to come on over and join the fun.

“Where’s Madden?” Clay said, pretending to misunderstand.

“Hell. Who knows? He was going out to check on a deer he spotted yesterday afternoon.”

Clay shrugged into a mackinaw, hefted his rifle. “Reckon I’ll go along with him,” he said.

Mamie pulled away from Shatner, stared at Stuart, frowning.

“What’s the matter with him?” she said to Shatner.

Shatner laughed. “Beats me. But then that’s always the trouble with hunting trips. Some damned fool always wants to hunt.”

Clay met Madden as he was leaving the clearing. When Clay said he was going along, Madden scowled. Then he smiled and nodded. They didn’t talk much. They trailed a deer for more than three hours, going upward into the hills. The air remained chilled, fresh with the scent of fir even as the sun rose and dried the dew on the aspens and spruce.

They crossed a creek, climbing through the outcroppings of boulders. The pinon up here was stunted. They found signs of wild goats, once glimpsed a mountain lion prowling in the rocks above them. Madden told Clay to take a shot, but in that moment the lion leaped upward, like a shadow withdrawn, like a shadow that was never there.

“Why don’t we start back?” Clay said. “I’ve done a lot of hunting in the Sierras. We’re not going to cross that buck now.”

“No,” Madden said. “I reckon not.” He checked his wrist watch, glared into the sun a moment. “I reckon we can go back down there now, if you want to.”

chapter five

CLAY HEARD Kay Ringling walk into his library, coming quietly across the carpeting, and when he glanced up at her, impatience flared into his eyes.

Kay saw the look in his face, but ignored it. She sat down beside him, her arms loaded with the accumulation of his untended business affairs.

“Mother’s been getting some bad reports on her boy,” Kay said.

“So? … What else is new?”

“Don’t you like friends?”

He shrugged. “What does that mean?”

“Well? Do you?”

“I suppose so.”

“Yet — you’re throwing them away — with both hands … I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised though — that’s how you do everything.”

Clay shrugged and after a moment she said, “You’ve either refused or ignored invitations from dozens of close friends — old friends.”

“I don’t want to see them right now.”

“Must you insult them?”

“I guess so. I never learned to say no gracefully.”

“I never knew you said no.” She smiled. “Until now. The Ballards — a dinner party. Planned with you in mind. Princess Otiz-Zerenski, she was nice to you in Vienna — when you didn’t know a soul. You haven’t gone near her since she’s been here. You won’t talk to her on the phone. She’s distressed. I told her you’d been out of town. I don’t think it helped much.” She waited, when he displayed no interest, she went on, “The Seyetts want you to a dinner party. They’ve invited a young woman from Philadelphia especially — ”

“Tell them no. All of them. I’m sorry about Zerenski, but it takes an effort to talk to her, and I don’t have the energy.”

“What will they think?”

“They’ll leave me alone.”

“Why should they leave you alone? They’re your friends.”

“They’re Ruth’s friends … Anyhow, why should they care about me? What do I have to offer? To them — you — anybody?”

She regarded him with a faint smile, seeing he was in an evil state of self-doubt, inner guilt and uncertainty. Yet she knew better than anyone else he was by nature anything but a melancholy man, less self-centered than most actors. Fate had endowed him abundantly with charm, talent, a lean-and-hewn ugliness that had arresting beauty in it, and a resiliency that had never failed him before. Yet in the days since his wife’s death, he found himself troubled, numb, with inner lesions that not only didn’t heal but grew no scar tissue, and what had appeared to be a benign hurt was instead a deep and open wound. He needed patience and kindness and this was what she delivered now, smiling.

“You’re in a low pit, doll, but you do matter. To me. To all of us. We love you — sixty million popcorn consumers look up at you on wide-screen and feel roused and uplifted because’s there’s good ole Clay Stuart — ”

“Big Daddy Sex — ” he said.

“ — brave, exciting, bigger and stronger than the man beside them, or those around them — ”

“They feel that way about Rex the Wonder Horse… . What have I ever done for anybody?”

“Honey, you made Ruth happy for twenty-five years, Sharon worships you. I — but I slop over — believe me, you’re a good kid or old Kay Ringling would never have hung around all these years to wipe your nose for you.”

After a long time, he touched her arm a moment, attempted a smile. “I can’t go anywhere, Ringling. Not for a while. Please. Handle it for me. Beg off … I can’t do it.”

“You leave it to mother.”

• • •

The Sunset Strip — and Restaurant Row on La Cienega — looked no better than Clay remembered from other days, just more crowded. He and Shatner had to wait for a table in a steak house; they entered the cocktail lounge for a drink while they waited.

The horseshoe bar was dimly lighted. A few people were at the small tables, but in the early evening the lounge was almost deserted.

Shatner led Clay to the bar and they perched on stools, ordering Martinis. Clay heard a sharp laugh that was like something thrown at him from around the curve of the bar. He glanced up, aware Shatner had grown tense beside him.

A curly-haired man in his early thirties sat with a woman in a black evening dress. The man’s sport shirt was opened halfway down his hairy, muscular chest. He was darkly handsome, somehow looking lanolin dipped.

He stared across the curve of bar at Stuart. His wide mouth pulled into a contemptuous smile. He did not speak to Stuart, but addressed the woman beside him, his voice loud.

“There he is, baby.”

The girl looked at Stuart. She was very drunk. Clay saw her recognize him — his face anyway. Then her eyes clouded over and she played along with Handsome, refusing to recognize him.

“Who, sweetheart?”

“The big movie star. Stuart. You’re looking at him. You know what? He don’t look like so much to me? You tell me, sweetie, what’s he got I haven’t got? I’m a hell of a lot better looking. God knows, I’m young enough to be his grandson.”

“You’re loud,” Shatner said. “That’s what you are. Why don’t you shut your mouth? Bartender, tell this creep to cool it and keep it zipped.”

The bartender gave Shatner a bland smile. “Nicky’s all right,” he said. “He don’t mean any harm.”

“He’s drunk,” Shatner said. “You ought to throw him out.”

“You hear that?” Nicky said in loud wounded tones to the woman. “They want me thrown out. He’s a big movie star. He’s in. And me — hell, I can’t pay for these drinks. Is that fair? Look at me. Goddamn it, look at him, what’s he got I haven’t got? Except a lot of crapping money.” Suddenly he pushed his drink-tab toward the bartender. “Here, Mac, let the great big rich movie star pay for our drinks. He can afford it. I can’t. Tell him I’ll pay him back when I’m a big star.”

Shatner’s voice was shaking. He spoke to the bartender. “You going to throw your pal out, or am I going to call the manager?”

“Come on,” Stuart said. “Let’s get out of here.”

He got off the stool, walked out. Shatner followed after a moment. When they reached the check-booth, Shatner said, “Hell, what about our steaks? Why let a punk spoil our evening?”

“I don’t want a steak.”

Shatner followed him to the car in the parking area. “Hell, Clay, we’re just doing all this to help you snap out of it. We’re just trying to help.”

“All right. Why don’t you try just letting me alone?”

chapter six

“I’VE BEEN talking to my psychiatrist about you, Clay,” Hoff said. These were the first words he spoke when he strode into the dimly lighted library a week later.

“Isn’t there enough in your own life to shock him?” Clay was sprawled on a deep divan in the semi-darkness of the room.

Hoff disliked darkness; his psychiatrist told him it had to do with his fear of the secret, dark festering places in his mind. Hoff didn’t know exactly what he meant, and feared there was only a symbolic meaning in it, but what he did like was the sound, and he remembered it — and it was true he disliked the dark.

He snapped on lights, exhaling.

Clay swung around, sitting up on the divan. He pushed his fingers through the bushed hair at his temples. He nodded toward a plate of sandwiches but Hoff shook his head.

“Don’t you want to hear what he said?” Hoff asked.

“No.”

Hoff paced before him on the carpet. “It was a wonderful thing. Sometimes I lose faith in Royal. Sometimes it’s hard to believe with great faith in a man who opens his offices in Beverly Hills, you know? You wonder about them, whether you want to, or not. Something about Royal makes me say he is just another headshrinker, you know? And then he comes up with something really brilliant … and I realize he is a great man. It gives me my faith back. And that’s good, right there. I’ve got to tell you what he said about you, Clay.”

“Why don’t you have a sandwich?”

“Oh, no. My diet. Besides, gas. I suffer something fierce from sour stomach. When you’re my age — ”

“Cut it out. I’m three years older than you.”

Hoff paused, his face going gray. He glanced about to be certain they were alone. “It isn’t that, Clay. You’ve taken care. You’ve stayed young — your body. I’m shot to hell. My psychiatrist says it’s only my indomitable will to live that keeps me going at all … But about you, Clay. Let me tell you.”

“I know what’s the matter with me.”

“No. Nobody knows what’s the matter with himself, Clay. That’s an impossible thing. Our subconscious mind plays tricks on us. It would be impossible for anyone to really know or understand his own motives. As Royal said, he would have to study you — it would be involved and take a long time… . Oh, now, Clay, I told him you’d never stand still for any-think like that. But he said, from what I had told him, analysis would help you. Of course, you’d have to be careful who your analyst was. You remember that doctor who got in trouble on morals charges — sodomy? He was a psychiatrist, one of the biggest. I felt a terrible thing about that man. You know, I was the business manager of that young star — you remember, handsome boy that turned out to be a homosexual. We talked him — the people at the studio, but mostly me, because I felt what a terrible waste him throwing away his career — I talked him into going into analysis. And what doctor did I send him to? That fellow. Of course none of us knew then he was as queer as blue money. What must he have told that boy?”

Clay smiled. “Probably they laid on the couch together.”

Hoff wrung his hands. “That poor boy. He said he didn’t really want to be helped — if some of the people he knew were normal, the hell with it. What that doctor must have filled his mind with. Oh my God … well, it’s you that I’m thinking about now. And Royal is a fine man. Nothing queer about him. He said from what I told him about you — about, you will forgive me, the way you have acted since Ruth died — that you were suffering from a guilt complex. Now what do you think of that?”

“I think it’s nuts.”

“Now, Clay. Listen to me. He’s right. I can see it all. Just listen. He’s made it so clear in my head about you. He says that you appear to be punishing yourself because Ruth is dead. Inside your own mind you admit that you never loved her enough — maybe you never loved her at all — I mean, the way you think now that she’s dead that you should have loved her. You feel you neglected her, you got everything from your life — and you shortchanged her. Now you are suffering because of it. Suffering terribly, refusing to let yourself be interested in anyone or anything, refusing to go ahead with your career and be more successful.”

Clay got up and walked to the window. He stared out across the empty lonely yard.

Hoff followed him, trotting across the deep carpeting. Hoff was worried, fearing he had said too much. His trouble was he loved people too much — his psychiatrist told him — he worried about them, about their welfare, and it gave him sour stomach.

Secretly, no matter what Royal told him, Hoff attributed part of his sour stomach to what happened from the minute he walked in that house he owned in Sherman Oaks.

They pounced on him in that instant, a fat wife and three daughters. He envied no man in Hollywood his pretty slender second — or third wife. He was not a man who chased, or coveted. He would be happy to go home, a fat man himself, to a fat wife. But she was after him eternally, one note, one key, one mood. They had to move from that lovely place in Sherman Oaks — and it had cost him fifty-five grand, and it was finally paid off — for a house in Bel Air that his Sherman Oaks place would just cover the down payment. Oh God, no wonder his stomach was sour.

He walked in and that was then they started on him: all the social advantages, the improvements for the girls — the youngest was now thirteen — time to give them all the opportunities he and Sylvia had never had.

“What kind of parlay is this?” he would moan, holding his head in his pudgy hands, a fat little man wanting five minutes of peace somewhere. “Toluca Lake, Brentwood to Bel Air. What does such foolishness matter? Well, I like Sherman Oaks. I like it here. We have friends here. It suits me fine.”

“Out of the high-rent district,” Sylvia said, laying on the accent in a thick, taunting way.

Hoff would listen to her arguments but he kept going back in his mind to that evil time when he had owned nothing — not very little or something — but nothing at all. His father, God rest him, had the terror of flight and struggle to reach Milwaukee and bring home a little money with a push-cart so his own sons could have a better set of dreams.

But it seemed to Hoff that all he ever had was the fight to exist at all. No matter what he owned, it wasn’t quite good enough, it didn’t conform, it was obsolete, passé, or didn’t fit any more. When he got one set of bills settled, another set had sprouted in their place, an inch higher, like weeds. Yet, to him what he possessed today was so much better — as a fresh pack of cigarettes is better than a butt found on the brink of a gutter — than what he had had all his early years that sometimes now he wakened at night in a cold sweat, afraid, not that he wouldn’t acquire something better, but that he would lose all he had accumulated. A lot of men he knew around him were chazers, but he was no pig. He did not have to gobble up everything he saw because he could feed on his memory, and sometimes diet with it, and sometimes because of it, lose his appetite.

He tried to make his family realize the importance of the wonders they owned. He did not want his sons to rise so far from the realities of struggling to exist that they would lose touch with reality. The girls? Hoff shrugged. It was a different matter with them, here nowadays the goy and the Jewish girl were no longer very different. They’d been spoiled, taught to take, connive, devour, and still demand more. No wonder divorce courts were overcrowded. A girl no longer was taught the simple act of giving — and, God knew, when two people attempted to live together in this world, one could not give and one take, both must give, but no one bothered any more to remind young females of this basic truth. There were plenty of selfish men, but there were no unselfish women.

Hoff felt that whatever he’d accomplished came because he still had an enthusiasm for money and possessions brought with him from the push-cart days in Milwaukee. Everything was worthy of his attention. But this wasn’t true with some of the biggest people out here. “No, it isn’t worth it.” These words summed up the history of ills, the tragedy of the movie business. Edison had said it first when his attorney had wanted him to shell out $150.00 to protect his kinetoscope patents abroad, and the words had been repeated countless times by myonic studio heads ever since: the new, the untried, the offbeat, the unusual — all damned.

He chewed at his mouth, thinking it was like this with Clay and visiting a psychiatrist. He didn’t believe in them, he didn’t like the idea, somehow he believed a man had to be insane to be treated by a neurologist.

Hoff said, “Don’t you believe this, Clay? You might feel guilt. A psychiatrist might help. Don’t you see how what Royal says must be true? It’s so simple. It covers everything.”

“Even if it were true, what could I do about it?”

“You won’t see my doctor — a marvelous person, Clay?”

“You know better.”

“Then get to work, Clay. Get interested in something. You see, the way it is in psychiatry, you learn to face your problem, and when you can face it, you can overcome it.”

“I’m all right. Just let me alone.”

Clay did not turn from the window. Hoff stood there a long time, his heavy shoulders sagged round. He stared at Clay and then padded back to the plate of sandwiches, took one and shoved it into his mouth, chewing loudly.

“Clay, I brought somebody along to speak with you.”

Clay turned from the window. “My God, not the headshrinker?”

Hoff shook his head. “Oh no. The real estate man I told you about. Morrel. He’s interested in your valley acreage. I explained to him that you had accepted Ringling’s advice to hold it. He wants just less than five minutes. He wants to picture you what he has in mind for this property. A glowing picture, Clay. You could not help feeling better, hearing a man with his kind of sincere enthusiasm.”

“I don’t want to talk to him.”

“Clay. Five minutes. Can it hurt?”

“Make the best deal possible. Sell the damn stuff. I don’t care. Do anything you like.”

Hoff was reaching for another sandwich. His pudgy hand stopped in mid-air. He shook his head. He turned and faced Stuart. His mouth sagged and then quivered slightly.

“Now, Clay, I’m not trying to pressure you — ”

“I know. You think Ringling will knife you for this. So do I … That’s your problem.”

Hoff looked as if he would cry. “I didn’t mean to pressure you. I didn’t mean you had to sell. Clay, I just wanted you to see this man — to listen to him.”

The telephone rang loudly on the table beside the divan. Both of them looked at it. but neither moved.

“Just listen to him,” Hoff said. “I told him you will not sell. I am not trying to make you sell.”

The telephone rang again, shrill and insistent.

“I don’t want to talk to him.” Clay lifted the receiver to escape Hoff. “Make the deal you think best. I’d rather sell it to him than listen to you. Now get out.”

Hoff was trembling. He stayed where he was as if rooted to the floor.

“Hello. Clay? Is this you, Clay?”

He did not pretend he didn’t recognize the voice. He felt an odd quickening of his heart. What a fool thing.

“Yes. This is Stuart,” he said. He tried to keep his pleasure out of his voice, the fact that he had wondered when she would call again. “Who is this?”

“Why it’s Joanne, Mr. Stuart. Joanne Stark. My, you do have a terrible memory.”

“Abstruse?” he said.

She laughed. “Why, you are right friendly after all.”

Clay covered the mouthpiece with his hand, jerked his head toward the foyer door. “Goodbye, Marty.”

Joanne said, voice rising across the wires. “Are you there? Clay, you didn’t hang up?”

“Not yet.” He watched Hoff go slowly across the room, close the door behind him.

“Why, I’ve been calling you for perfect weeks, Mr. Stuart. Where’ve you been?”

“I was out of town for a few days. Hunting.”

“Hunting?” She laughed. “Why would you go out of town hunting when the best hunting in the world is right here in town?”

He laughed with her. “They won’t let you shoot it in the city limits.”

Her throaty voice became warmer. “Well, you sound so nice today. The other time you sounded so cold.”

“Well, you were a stranger then.”

“Don’t you speak to strange girls?”

He did not answer and after a moment she said hurriedly, “I had a reason for calling you this time. Honestly.”

“Did you?”

“Yes. You want to hear it?”

“All right.”

“No. You’ve got to be nicer than that. You’ve got to say you want to hear it. After all, you must think I’m terrible the way I chase you like this … I’ll bet girls follow you around and call you all the time … say it, you want to hear why I called you this time.”

His voice was smiling. “Oh, I do.”

“You know, something is wrong here. I think I’ve got the wrong connection this time. This doesn’t sound like the chilled, aloof Andrew Clay Stuart I know.”

“Why did you call this time?”

“Well, I’m in your neighborhood this afternoon. What do you think of that?”

Clay waited, feeling the quickening beat of his heart. What was the matter with him? Nobody in his right mind fell for a gimmick like this. There were hundreds of ways that women wrangled an unlisted number, and none of it ever led to anything good. But there was a quality of warmth and excitement in her voice. It projected itself across the wires. It caught at him, at his mind and his imagination. He had thought about her often since she’d called that first time. The biological reaction — and working across the phone lines like this. He was interested enough to want to see what she looked like. If he couldn’t handle himself at his age, what did it matter? Her voice was the first thing that had aroused his interest in months. He wanted to see what she looked like.

“Aren’t you pleased?” she said.

He waited again. She said, “Aren’t you? If you’re not, why I can hang up. I’m sorry I bothered you.”

“You don’t bother me.”

“I thought I might drop by for a cocktail. Do you like daiquiris …? I mean, if you weren’t doing anything?”

Yes, he thought, my God yes. Why don’t you?

“All right,” he said. “If you’d like to.”

“Be about an hour,” she said, excitement in her voice.

“I’ll bake a cake.” He wanted to laugh with her. He felt young again, no longer so cold. Funny how little it took. Then she said something that chilled him, stopped it all cold.

“What’s your address, Mr. Stuart?”

“What?”

“Where do you live?”

“I thought you were in the neighborhood.”

“What do you care, Mr. S.? I can be. Like I said. In an hour. Less even.”

“You got my phone number, why not my address?”

“Just didn’t work that way. What’s the matter? Why are you suddenly so stuffy again? What have I done wrong? All I asked you for is your address.”

“Hell,” he said, “you can get that from any one of the tour guides.”

He replaced the receiver, stood staring at it. He felt an unaccountable emptiness, a feeling of insufficiency and loss. He felt as if he had lost something valuable and the odd part was that whatever it was he’d lost, he’d never had anyway.

He stood there four or five minutes without moving until he finally admitted consciously that he was waiting for that phone to ring, waiting for her to call back. But she did not call back. The phone sat there, black and lifeless, silent and useless.

He turned then and walked out of the room. He went out on the terrace. There was a wind gusting out of the canyon. Leaves swirled on the grass and skittered across the flagstones about his feet.

chapter seven

THE PHONE rang. Clay cursed himself when he had sprinted halfway into the library, and brought himself to a screeching halt. The phone stopped ringing anyhow, and after a moment McEsters came in walking so stiffly, so precisely, he looked like a comedy butler, and said Mr. Shatner was calling.

Clay wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. What the hell, she wasn’t going to call back. Why should she call back? Besides, he had hung up on her, hadn’t he? It was the smart thing, and it was what he knew he had to do.

Shatner wanted him to double date. He had a table for four at Ben Blue’s in Santa Monica. Should be passionate fun. Ben Blue was a lot of laughs but the girls he’d lined up were nothing to laugh about.

“No,” Clay said. “I’m sorry.”

“You going to spend the rest of your life walled up in that house? You think maybe you’re Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard?”

“No. Her figure. Much better than mine.”

“Look, Clay. These girls. Just imported from New York. Domestic, but good. All new. First run.”

“Not this time, Marc.”

“Stuff like this doesn’t keep.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry? Hell, it’s ruining my health just studding for your rejects.”

Clay replaced the receiver. He was instantly sorry. Marc was right, of course. A man could not bury himself. Given a couple of drinks he would love the girls, enjoy the jokes, be anxious to dance. He glanced toward the phone. And this was ridiculous. He had never seen the Stark doll. She was not going to call back. He had ended that one with a sharp cut. It was better. It was sensible.

Why did he despise himself for being so damn sensible?

When you wait for something you wish would happen, and it does not happen, time crawls. One such hour is longer than some other weeks. Clay prowled the house, took a shower, drank three whiskeys on-the-rocks and decided they were cutting the liquor. He felt nothing.

Finally he flopped down on the couch, lay staring at the ceiling. He decided he would call Shatner back; it wasn’t too late. He sighed, trying to remember the name of a girl who flashed in his mind, something in the association with Joanne’s throaty voice on that telephone. This girl had been a leading woman who had played opposite him at Paramount in an early 1930 movie. She made only a couple of pictures. She was the property of one of the producers. There had been electric charges between her and Clay Stuart from the first time she walked on the set. There was a tension about her that threw him off his feet. She was lovely as an angel with a hellish excitement in her eyes. The look in those eyes promised him hell and happiness, misery and torment. When they kissed for the camera, her mouth parted and her tongue was hot and her body was burning up. He had known then. It was between them. She felt everything that he felt for her — and in spades. Nights he went home to Ruth and concert music and friends in for bridge and once he had to stride out in the garden and vomit. His stomach was tied in knots that badly. During the day when he was near her, the smell of her tantalized him, made him ache across the bridge of his nose, made him remember that little girl in the outhouse and the way he needed to bury his face in her hair. He could remember the scent of that leading lady’s hair all these years later. He could not remember her name.

Not being able to remember her name angered him because it made him seem old, touched with the first quaverings of senility. Maybe it was just that he had been in the movies too long.

Abruptly he was remembering the old character star who’d once been a circus roustabout, the way the old fellow waved stock certificates worth hundreds of thousands of dollars around on the sets, yelling, “Look at these, you college sons of bitches. You own anything like this? Yeah. And I got boxes full of ‘em at home. Safety boxes stacked with them. Just like them.” The old boy loathed young actors and would do anything to louse them up, refuse to read a cue line, twist it, delay it, anything to throw the newcomer off-stride. Ask him why he did it, you always got the same answer: “Aw, I don’t like them, these new guys. Who needs ‘em?”

Clay shook the thought from his mind. And the actresses they put in his pictures, all like children, and he kept comparing them to people he’d known in the past. Seeing a girl like Natalie Wood in the Green Room at Warner’s commissary he would find himself remembering Gloria Swanson because both were so tiny, so dark and so lovely — so damned far apart, in different eras, but in one you could see something of the other, and he belonged in the big moments of the careers of both. It confused the dimensions of time for him; today was yesterday, yesterday was today and today was forever lost — like the name of that lovely young actress he’d wanted above everything on earth, and had never had.

“Mr. Stuart. Sir.”

Clay jumped up guiltily as though his pants were unzipped. The sound of McEster’s voice had startled him, yanked him back to this moment, and it seemed his thoughts trailed after him unwillingly.

Clay pushed his hands through his matted hair, blinking at McEsters in the wanly-lighted library.

“I’m sorry sir. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

“What is it?”

“The young lady, sir. I’m sorry. The one who has called you so persistently — even when you were out of town. I tried to get rid of her. She insists you are expecting her.”

Clay closed his fists, and his heart banged against his rib cage and he wondered expectantly what she looked like. She was here. She was out there beyond that door.

“What was her name?” he said. He kept his voice level.

“Miss Stark. Miss Joanne Stark. Shall I send her away, sir?”

“No. I reckon not. I did say something to her about dropping in sometime. For cocktails. If she was ever up this way. You know? The kind of invitation you give out when you don’t mean it.” Even talking, Clay saw that he was trying to hide behind that flat exterior the way his raw emotions churned inside him. He’d been doing it all his life, since he was a kid on a Nebraska farm where you never cried no matter how badly you hurt. “The way you ask somebody how they are, and then hold your breath for fear they’ll tell you.”

He was pushing his hands through his hair, batting at the wrinkles in his slacks.

“I understand, sir. I can send her away if you like.”

“No … I mean, she’s here. What the hell?” He remembered her asking if he liked daiquiris; he decided to have them made; it would be a touch. Anyhow, it would show he remembered what she’d said to him. “You might fix us a mixer of daiquiris and some light sandwiches. You know the amenities, McEsters, better than I do.”

“Yes, sir. Shall I send the young woman in?”

Clay stood up and shrugged his shirt up on his shoulders. He gave McEsters what he hoped would pass for a casual, bored smile.

“No,” he said. “I’ll go out to her.”

“Yes, sir. She’s in the foyer, sir.”

• • •

No matter what he had expected her to be, she was more than that, different. She was much, much more than he had permitted himself to anticipate. She was a tall girl, he saw that first, slender, the way the New York model agencies liked them. She was young, younger than hell, he thought bitterly, looking across a one-way gulf at her — that one expanse he could never recross to her. Of course she had to be young — when they called a star they were ever young, or they wanted something.

She was standing with toes pointed in, looking at the house as if she’d never been surrounded by precisely Ruth’s brand of quiet elegance before. She tried to be casual, but her eyes were impressed and when she heard him and turned to face him, she looked at him in that same way, as if he were another fabulous appointment in this glamorous house.

“I’ve seen you so often,” she said. “On the screen, I mean. I feel I know you.”

He took her proffered hand and looked down at her. He thought that the look of her warned you, if you were smart enough to sense the warning. She could make you joyous or miserable for the rest of your life, but you were never going to relax completely as long as she was part of your existence. There would be no plateaus in the life of the man who got himself entangled with this one. The slender body bore full breasts like overripe fruit. A man could feel his eyes bleeding.

She tossed her head in a way that shook her shoulder length red-gold hair back from her pale, high-planed face, and her green eyes were intrigued, entranced.

“I’m Joanne Stark,” she said.

“Sure you are. So here you are at last.”

He was still holding her hand. He gave a wry smile and released it.

“I know you must think I’m forward. Subtle as the front wheel of a bus. I wanted to meet you.”

“If I’d known, I’d have given green stamps with my phone number.”

“Do you want to know how I got it?”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll tell you how it is. Sometimes I go up in a plane and drop leaflets. Call — ”

“I found one of them,” she said. “Will that do?”

“Fine.”

“Only I still don’t feel right about it. I feel I ought to tell you — now I’m here.”

These were just words, Clay saw. It did not matter what she said. She was not giving any thought to her words, only to the fact she was talking, the way a kid might whistle in the dark.

“Why don’t you come into the library?” he said. “Take off your shoes, or something.” He had entered the game with her now. The words didn’t matter. The chatter was to cover the awkward bridge between this first moment and that first drink.

He nodded toward the library. She smiled and followed him.

“I’m not intruding?” she said. “Not breaking into anything?”

“I was waiting for you.” He said it flatly, truthfully.

Her green eyes glittered. She smiled over her shoulder at him. “I’ve always wanted to meet you. For such a long time.”

He smiled. She sat at one end of the divan and he flopped on the other, leaning against the arm rest, watching her. Her dress did not cover her knees. She tugged at it once. It was no use. She forgot it, a born philosopher. She turned at the far end of the couch, crossed one leg under the other. He caught his breath.

“I suppose everybody says that to you?”

“What?” he said.

“Always wanted to meet you.” She appeared unconscious of the way she lay back, the way he had to look at her. “But with me, it’s true. I’ve wanted terribly to meet you. All my life.”

“All your life,” he said. “All of it wouldn’t add up to very long.”

She shrugged, tossing her red-gold hair back. “It seems a long time to me.”

McEsters entered with the daiquiris and the sandwiches. He glanced at the girl lying back on the divan, ankle crossed under her knee, leg like a golden pillar polished to a sheen. Faint disapproval showed in his face. He left the room.

“He looks like something somebody made up,” Joanne said.

He poured a daiquiri for her, poured one for himself. “I hope daiquiris are all right. We’ve got a houseful of liquor if you want something else. You mentioned them — when you called.”

She smiled, pleased that he remembered. “I love them.” She sighed. “Why, I love everything about this place. I’ve never been in a house like this. Not that I can remember, anyhow. Oh, I’ve been in some swank places. But there’s something about this one. It is the sort of place my mother would have had if she’d lived.”

“Oh?” He held out the plate of sandwiches. She took two of them and placed them in a napkin, balanced on the swell of her thigh.

“Yes.” Her eyes clouded. “She died when I was a little girl. Two years old. I don’t remember her, really. We had this place. It was lovely. Long Island. From what I’ve heard, it must have been like this — quiet elegance that doesn’t knock your brains out, you know — ”

“What happened?”

She looked as if the pain were still real for her. “It burned. One night. My father — got me, everything out of the house except mother. She wouldn’t leave.”

Clay scowled. “Why not?”

“That place. It was her whole life. Everything in her life was in that house — all her happiness, all her possessions… . You’d have to know how it was with her to understand.”

Her voice was very low. She had her gaze fixed on something in the distance.

Clay wanted to laugh. She was acting. He could not say if she were a good actress or not. It did not matter. She was doing what she wanted to do.

She waited, but when he did not speak, she brought her gaze back to him and met his eyes levelly.

“That isn’t true,” she said. “Not any of it.”

“I know.”

She finished off the daiquiri, held out the glass. She ate greedily for a moment while he refilled her glass.

“Sometimes I think it’s true, though,” she said. “I’ve told it to myself, and so many people — but not to you. I could see you did not believe me. It made me realize I was lying, and there was no sense in it.” She smiled. “It wasn’t going to get me anywhere with you. You were too smart for me.”

He watched her finish off her second drink.

“You could grow strawberries in that, too,” he said.

She looked up. “What?”

“In that stuff you’re spreading on me now. What is the truth about you, honey? Are you a pathological liar?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you lie because you can’t help it?”

She registered as if the baby spot were fixed on her, trimmed and with halo light. Sadness. It was too bad there was no camera moving in for a close-up.

“Sometimes,” she said. “I guess I’ve never had what I really wanted. Never been what I really wanted to be. It’s all right to admit it to myself. But I never could see why I had to tell it to other people.”

“It’s none of their business?”

“Sure. I mean, I make them happier by telling them lies. After all, why not? If you want to know the truth, Joanne Stark’s life is pretty depressing. Depresses me. When I tell them lies — it doesn’t hurt anything. I just tell them what they want to hear.”

“And you thought I wanted to hear about an estate, and a fire?”

“No. Not really. You see, I’ve wanted to get in pictures. All my life. I’ve read so many fan magazines. I know what they want, too. So what I told you is what you’ll read about me someday in the fan magazines. It won’t be the truth, but it’ll be a lot more fun.”

He laughed. My God, he thought, how long since I’ve laughed like this?

She laughed with him. “Why, I’ve had that story ready for two years. Ready for the publicity department of any studio that hired me.”

“You’ve been out here two years?”

“Almost.”

“You don’t look it.”

“What does that mean?”

He lay back against the arm rest. He stared at her. What did it mean? For one thing she looked too new, the gloss wasn’t off the merchandise. Even New York didn’t take off the gloss the same way Hollywood did. Two years in Hollywood, a girl either had to make it in the movies, or get out of town. Two years changed them.

He could not say any of that to her. And he did not went to say it to her anyhow. But more than that, there was a diamond kind of hardness to her. He could not overlook this. A diamond could rub against fake glass for a long time without showing any scars. This girl looked as if she had held conferences with herself. There was an aura of enchantment about her, but she knew what she wanted. This was certainly true. You could not escape this. She knew about prices; she expected to pay them. But then there was the scrubbed look of freshness; she couldn’t lie about that, or fake it.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” he said. “How did the studios miss you for almost two years?”

“It was easy.”

She held out the glass. He refilled it. She got up, gathered in two sandwiches, and walked about the room, munching, and sipping at her rum drink.

She stood in the French doorways, natural daylight rim-lighting her ankles.

“What a lovely pool. Is it heated?”

“You mean they have unheated pools in California?”

“I was in one once. Nearly froze my — well, it was cold.”

He got up, walked across the room. He stood behind her. He looked at the firm young lines of her body. The thought surged through his mind that she was no older than Sharon. He thought about Amory Darrow, about Darrow’s bachelor apartment, and Sharon at a window and that man looking at her like this.

He moved to turn away, but he could smell the faint scent of Joanne’s hair.

He did not move. He kept his voice flat. “I might be able to find you a bathing suit,” he said. “Would you like to swim before dinner?”

She turned, her green eyes warm, warmer than the daiquiris could make them.

“I want to do anything you want to do,” she told him.

Her gaze held his. He waited to see color touch her cheeks. It didn’t happen. So young, he thought with the heated need in him. So young and so wise and so far ahead of me.

He rang for McEsters, thinking he had lived with Ruth too long, had worked too hard. He had forgotten there were girls like Joanne Stark.

Then he caught himself abruptly. He had forgotten because he forced it. All these years. He had tried to forget. But the truth was, he had never forgotten. They were always there, like nudes in men’s magazines. And now suddenly here was one of them in the flesh, almost as if he had created her from his own imagination, from his own incredible longing.

chapter eight

HE WAS waiting beside the pool in swim trunks and goose bumps when Joanne came across the flagstones.

She was wearing a pale-green swim suit that belonged to Sharon. Sharon was a lovely child, but this was a woman in her green suit. Clay inhaled heavily, thinking with pleasure that it was truly as though he’d invented Joanne Stark from the materials of his loneliness, his memories and his needs. She could not have come any more directly from his dreams if he had molded her with his own hands.

He found himself recalling the theme music from the old movies — like the music they played every time Vilma Banky appeared in scenes of The Son of the Sheik. This sort of haunting background melody was all that was lacking as Joanne crossed the flagstones toward him, punching her hair under a green bathing cap.

Her cheeks were faintly touched with color. She watched his face with a look that was almost shy. She was looking for approval, or more than that, approbation and applause.

He could not think what to say. He wanted it to be right, knew it had to be light, casual and yet full of the excitement that throbbed in him at the sight of her and warmed away the wind-raised goosebumps. He admitted what he needed in that moment. He needed a clever director, a clever script writer. Dialogue by …

“What took you so long?” he said. He did not take his eyes off of her. It did matter what he said, after all.

“I stood in that room, afraid to come out here. I was afraid — you might not like me.”

“Well, everything is all right now,” he said. “I like you.”

“Yes,” she said. “It’s easy to see you do. But I was worried.” She shivered slightly. “It’s cold in the wind.”

“It will be warmer in the pool.”

She put out her hand, braced herself with her fingers against his bicep. Her fingers were like pieces of dry ice against his flesh.

She extended the gleaming pillar of her leg, pointing her toes and touching gingerly at the water. She nodded, turning her head and smiling at him.

“Come on in,” he said.

“Just a minute.”

She took a deep breath, tested her cap with both hands against the sides of her head.

Clay dived into the pool. He hit the water sharply, cutting it cleanly, thinking he was like a teenager showing off for her. Why not? He wasn’t brilliant, he was athletic. There were few enough things he could do well. Why shouldn’t he show off for her? It was what he wanted to do. He wanted to see her excited and pleased at his diving, and the effortless crawl-stroke that sliced him through the water, and the way he could stay under water almost two and a half minutes. Accomplishments.

He broke through the surface near the far side of the pool from her. He blew water from his face, watching her. She was still poised on the rim of the pool. The light behind her, the lights from each side of her, the underwater lights illumined her in full detail. No, he thought, I don’t believe it. She’s not real. No one who is real is this perfect. He tried to discover a flaw about her as she dived outward toward him. Perhaps her mouth was a trifle large. My God.

She floated directly to him and came up with her face inches from his, her legs stretched long, reaching for the bottom that was too deep for her. Her breasts caressed his bare chest, her stomach flattened against his so he felt the faint rise of her, the swell of her thighs. He felt the warmth from her body, and the water lapping over them felt chilled.

“I can’t touch,” Joanne said.

“Sure. I’m no fool.”

She laughed and draped her arms across his shoulders. “I like tall men,” she said. “You’re even taller than you look in the movies. Isn’t that funny?”

Her face was so close to his he could feel her breath, the good scent of the daiquiris. What a hellish thing, he thought. I would hate alcohol on anyone else’s breath. Hers was so good he moved his face closer, brushing his mouth against her mouth as she talked.

“Hello,” she said, talking into his parted mouth.

“This is quite an invention,” he said.

“I know an even better one.”

She floated her legs outward for a moment and he was chilled thinking she was moving away from him. She slid her legs around his hips, locked her ankles behind him. “Isn’t this nice?” she said.

“My God.”

His hands moved over her as if it were not his will at all. He thought, someday he would enjoy touching her body, but at the moment it was something he was compelled to do and his arms were leaden, his hands no longer sensitive to touch. It was as if he had to discover all there was to know about her, all at once, but the blood congealed in the pit of his stomach. There was no way to get messages from his leaden arms to his brain.

She moved her slender fingers along the nape of his neck, across his shoulders, in the hair above his ears. She placed her mouth against his, turning her head slowly, barely pressing her lips on his so he felt her breath more strongly than the pressure of her mouth.

“Oooh,” she whispered. “We can’t.”

She loosened her ankles, but in panic he caught her with both hands against the small of her back, pressing her again into place.

His voice sounded odd in his own ears. “Why not?”

“I’m crazy about you. I truly am. I want you to like me.”

“You think I don’t?”

“Anybody can like someone in a hurry — like this. I don’t want to lose you in such a hurry.”

“What are you talking about?”

She came close suddenly and smashed her mouth hard against his. Then she writhed free, swam away from him, going the length of the pool with long easy strokes.

He did not swim after her. He did not move. He felt desolated and cold without her body pressed hard on his.

He stood there, feeling the gusts of canyon air-currents against his head and shoulders, feeling the warm-laced chill of water against his chest, feeling the need for her.

He watched her turn and spiral in the water, rolling and kicking the way a child might, disappearing and then breaking free through the surface. He thought, hell, she is just a child. She is as young as Sharon — younger. Why should I think she would feel the torment and torture and desires that I feel?

He moved to swim toward her but then saw she was returning to him, swimming slowly, her gaze fixed on his face. When she was near him, she rolled over on her back in the water, floating to him.

She was carrying the green swim suit in her hand.

“Good Lord,” he said in a low whisper.

Her face was pulled into an odd, troubled smile. Her green eyes watched him, almost as if she were frightened.

Her voice was as low as his. “Do you like me?”

He pulled her close, trying to keep his voice steady. “I saw Hedy Lamarr do this bit in Ecstasy — only not in close-ups, of course.”

She came closer to him, putting her arms under his, sliding her chilled hands up his back and pulling him against her. Her face came closer and closer, her eyes dreamy. He felt the hotness of her. “I can’t help it,” she whispered. “I’m crazy about you. It’s what I want to do. I want to be close to you, close against you. Closer.”

chapter nine

HE WRAPPED Joanne in a thick towel and carried her across the library and up the stairs. His heart banged like a scored cylinder but he did not slow his strides. He could not think of a better way to die.

He pushed open his bedroom door, carried her inside. For a moment, he paused, admiring the many pictures they made in the full-length wall mirrors. He laid her down across his bed and scrubbed her body slowly with the towel. She did not take her gaze from his face.

She was still carrying the green bathing suit.

He took it from her clenched fingers, laughing. “For hell’s sake. Give me that thing.” He threw it across the room. It struck hard against a wall and fell in a wad on the carpeting.

“You look better like this. You look like something magic. You must be magic. Hell. To come here — to want me — you’re magic.” A troubling thought flashed through his mind, but he brushed it aside. “You’ve got to be.”

“Yes. I’m magic.”

He sank to the bed beside her, moved his hands slowly, caressing her, learning her by heart.

“I’m afraid of you,” Clay said.

“Why should you be afraid of me?”

“Who are you? Where did you come from? But worse than that — much worse — where will you disappear to when you leave me?”

“Back to a rented room. And I’ll dream about this — and I won’t believe it — only I’ll always be glad it happened.”

“Don’t talk like this. You talk as if it were all over.” He felt that touch of chill again; for the first time he saw it was going to end casually, as it had happened casually.

“That’s up to you.”

He laughed. “Are you hungry?”

“I’m always hungry.”

He reached out, lifted the phone, buzzed the kitchen. After a moment, McEsters answered.

Clay glanced at Joanne. “What would you like? Steak or chicken or roast beef?”

“Yes,” she said.

He smiled at her, spoke into the phone. “Steak, McEsters. Medium?” He checked her, questioningly. She nodded. “Two steaks. Medium.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Wait. And chicken. Breasts only — ”

“I like drumsticks, too,” Joanne said.

“And drumsticks,” Clay said into the phone.

“Yes, sir.”

“And two slices of prime rib of beef, McEsters. Medium.”

“Yes, sir. And how many will we be having in for dinner?”

“Just the two of us, McEsters.”

“Oh? Yes, sir … I see.”

“And serve it in the library, McEsters … and we’ll want a big fire.”

“Yes, sir. And may I say, sir, I hope you enjoyed your swim.”

Clay laughed. “We’ll have to get blinders for you, McEsters.”

“Yes, sir. I’m glad you’re feeling better, sir.”

Clay replaced the receiver and sprawled back on the bed beside Joanne. Everybody worried about the state of his health, his condition. He didn’t like to think about this and Joanne at the same time, because Hoff, Kay Ringling and Shatner had all been scheming to bring him out of his lethargy. He didn’t like to believe all this had been staged, prearranged — and paid for — for his benefit. He shook his head and stared at the ceiling, stretching his lean arms upward, fingers splayed.

“I feel good,” he said. “I feel even better than I knew anybody could feel.”

Joanne turned on her side, pressing the heat of her bare body against him. “I’m not magic,” she said. “You’re magic.”

• • •

At midnight, Joanne stirred in his arms, staring at the smouldering fire on the hearth.

“I’ve got to go home,” she said.

“Why?”

“I’ve been here — good Lord, I’ve been here eight hours.”

“Are you sure? Seems eight minutes.”

“If you knew what you’d done to me in those eight hours, you wouldn’t say that.”

“Do you have to go?”

“Golly. I better.”

“I’ll take you home.”

She went tense. She pushed away from him. “No.”

“Why not?”

“No. I’ll just call a cab.”

“Why can’t I take you home?” Suddenly he was sure of it. It was all a commercial arrangement. Shatner, Hoff, Ringling. Worried about him. Bring him out of it. Hire somebody — a living doll. Money no object. But which one of them was responsible for her? Ringling wouldn’t want him to have a woman, would she? Shatner’s taste ran to the Mamie Maddens. There’d be no gloss left on the merchandise Hoff chose; the woman he selected would have to be realistic. He breathed deeply. “I want to take you home. I’ve got to know where you live, don’t I?”

She chewed at her underlip. “Not this time. It’s all been so nice.”

“Why won’t it be nice for me to know where you live?”

“Oh … it will, Clay … later. I mean — if you want to see me again — ”

“I don’t even want you to go now.”

“I’ll come back.”

“When? In the morning?” She laughed. “I have to work.”

“Oh?” He sank against the divan. “When will you come back?”

“As soon as ever you want me,” said the throaty voice.

“But suppose you don’t?”

“You sound like a little boy.”

“Maybe you think I don’t feel like one.”

She touched her palm gently against his cheek. “Don’t worry about me, Clay. I’m just nobody. You’re the — first nice thing ever happened to me — I’m not going to let you get away.”

“Then let me take you home. I’ll know where you are.”

She hesitated. “I — live with some girls. It’s — pretty shabby — after this. I won’t mind so much — after you know me better — and I know you better… . Please?”

He nodded. “All right.” His voice was empty. She kissed him impulsively. He called a taxi for her. She found a piece of paper and a pencil. She printed her telephone number in numerals two inches high.

“This is it,” she said. “See you don’t forget it.”

He pulled out his wallet, extracted two fifty-dollar bills.

Her face was suddenly gray. She stared at the money. “What’s that for?”

“Taxi fare.”

“A hundred dollars?”

“It’s all I have on me — the least I have. Sorry. Take it. Hell.”

Her voice was chilled. “You’re paying me.”

He caught his breath. He wanted to grab her arm and ask which one of them had paid her — Ringling, Shatner, Hoff? He controlled his hurt and rage, but his voice was sharp. “Why should you think that? And a hundred dollars — is that what I’d pay you?”

“It’s not much to you. It might be a lot to me.”

He threw the money and wallet on the divan between them. “Oh, hell. Forget it.”

Joanne stared upward at him, eyes slanted, hellish, the devil himself looked out at him from her eyes. “No.” she said with a strange smile. She took the bills, wadded them in her fist. “I’ll take it. As long as you’re not paying me.”

chapter ten

THEY DINED on the flagstone terrace beside the pool with a low-ceiling roof of smog between them and infinity — almost as though they, and this part of the earth, were intentionally shielded from the jealous presence and watchful eye of God, and had no need for clear skies anyhow, because nature couldn’t really compete with the studio art departments, and if they needed a view of open sky, they could order one created of paint on canvas rolls and charge it against a budget they never saw anyhow.

Joanne sank back in her chair, licking the tips of her fingers. “You’re spoiling me,” she said. “You’ve spoiled me so badly already, I can’t ever go back.”

He yawned, fed and content. “I told you, you’re not going anywhere anyway.”

She smiled. “It’s all right for you to dream… . You’ve got it made. I’ve got to think about when this ends.”

“Is it going to end?”

“Isn’t it?” She met his gaze directly, her eyes clear and green and young, but some of the stubborn toughness showing in the shadowed irises. “Everything ends … everything in my life.”

“That’s funny,” he said. “With me, it’s different … either I never truly knew what I wanted — or I never got it.”

“You’re talking like marbles.”

“No. I drifted into acting because I could ride a horse. I was a stunt man. I didn’t know what I wanted — except a job that paid a lot of money.”

“God knows you got that.”

“But that’s what I mean. When people see what you have, they forget what you went through to get it … They forget — or they never knew — the things you had to take, the things they did to you. By the time I got a big salary, I was already sick in my guts, with myself, with everything I had … I didn’t even want it any more … I was so sick of it, I ran away to Europe for awhile, and hunted in Africa. I married Ruth because she was everything that this business wasn’t … But then, by that time, they wanted me — and they quit wiping it on me — and I didn’t know anything else, really, so I came back … People didn’t get tired of me … for some reason … and here I am … I still don’t know what I want — or if I know I don’t want it any more by the time I get it.”

Joanne exhaled. “I know what I want, all right.”

“What do you want?”

“All this.” She waved her arm suddenly. Her jaw was a taut line, and her head tilted, her hair bobbling loosely against her shoulders. “I want to be a great star. I want everybody to know who I am … I want them to treat me the way they treat great stars.”

He smiled, trying to think what to say. You couldn’t offer much — it was different for everybody, in every case. All he could think to say was, “You’ve got to be tough.”

“I can be tough.”

“You’ve never been tough with me.”

“I’ve never had to be … I’ve never wanted to be … but I could be tough — if someone tried to stop me… . I’m going to be somebody. Everybody will know about Joanne Stark. Everybody … they’ll read about me — and know my name.”

“About the estate and the fire,” he teased.

She nodded, and there was vehemence in the way she nodded, even though she smiled.

“About the estate and the fire,” she said.

• • •

Hoff pressed the doorbell, and then he and Shatner stood on the veranda and waited impatiently. Finally McEsters opened the front door.

“Service is becoming wretched around here, McEsters,” Hoff said. He carried a battered script of Man of the Desert.

“Yes, sir.” McEsters voice was bland.

“Is she — here with him?” Shatner asked. He glanced at his wrist watch, small mouth compressed. It was five o’clock in the afternoon.

“They are in the library, sir.”

Hoff paused. “I don’t want to ask him, but is she still here, or is she here again? She’s been here every time I’ve come up here in the past five days.”

“She even answers the telephone when I call,” Shatner said.

McEsters shrugged. “She is here when I go to bed at night, sir. She is usually here when I waken in the morning. That is all I can say, sir.”

Shatner swore. “She said something about a job. She said she had a job. What happened to that?”

“She did mention her work,” McEsters said flatly. “At first. Lately, she has not mentioned it.”

Hoff glared at Shatner. “Probably he had her quit her job.”

Shatner shrugged. “If she ever had one.”

Clay and Joanne were dancing to a slow and dreamy Ray Anthony record in the gameroom.

Hoff cleared his throat. After a moment Clay released Joanne and turned to face them. She held on to his arm as if she were afraid he would fly out of the room.

Clay smiled at them, and waved. “Hello there,” he said. “Come on in.”

“Could we talk to you?” Hoff said.

Clay continued to smile at them. “If you don’t keep me very long. Joanne says I don’t dance very well. She’s giving me a lot of practice.”

“He dances beautifully,” Joanne said.

“Like a hobbled steer,” Stuart said. There was exultance in his voice.

“Alone?” Hoff persisted. “Just a few minutes.”

“I’ll go out on the terrace,” Joanne said.

“Now wait a minute,” Clay said. “What is there you’ve got to say that Joanne can’t hear?”

“It’s all right,” Joanne said. “I want to count the eucalyptus leaves anyhow. I think the milkman is stealing them, mornings.”

She went across the room, closed the French doors behind her. Clay watched her, mouth pulled into a smile. Then he turned and faced Shatner.

“What’s eating you two? There was never anything you guys had to say that Ruth could not sit in on.”

“Ruth was different,” Hoff said.

“Ruth?” Shatner said. “My God.”

Clay winced. He stood silent a moment looking down at them with the oddly upsetting sense that they were regarding him downward along their noses. Let them be careful how they pushed him.

“All right,” he said. “What is it? What do you want?”

“The usual thing,” Hoff said. “Warners is pressuring us. Have you read this thing yet — this Man of the Desert?”

Clay smiled. “Not yet.” Before they could speak, he said, disarmingly, “But I will. You tell them I’ll get to it — soon.”

Hoff said, “You mean that? You going back to work?”

“Yeah … maybe not right away … I thought Joanne and I might run down to Palm Springs for a couple of weeks — ”

“God damn it!” The words exploded from Shatner. “What you trying to do? Make all the wrong kind of headlines?”

“What’s wrong with you? Can’t I enjoy myself?”

“Sure you can. But for God’s sake, you can be a little smart, too. You can use your head.”

“Yes,” Hoff said. “Stop thinking with your hips.”

Clay stared at them. Where did they get off talking to him like this? Why did they think he would tolerate it? And — why did he tolerate it? Did he feel some of that skepticism that had plagued him the first night Joanne was here? Or was there a sense of fear tingeing his fondness for this girl? Nobody liked to be made a fool of, and it was getting deeper than that every rose-colored moment. Were they right about him and Joanne, had he completely lost his reason? Were they right — or even partly right? Had one of them paid Joanne to call him, to come to him, go to bed with him — and now would not admit any part of it because Joanne had taken the ball and was running with it alone?

He stared at their faces and tried to find which of them had bought Joanne for him, and he couldn’t see it. She wasn’t the kind of merchandise either of them dealt in. This left Kay Ringling … or it left that slimmest possible chance that Joanne Stark had come accidentally upon his unlisted number, and honestly stayed with him from emotions honestly aroused and honestly experienced. This was the way he wanted it — but things were never the way he wanted them — and he couldn’t buy it that way.

He glanced toward the French doors, the terrace, the pool, his eyes suddenly dry and painful.

Clay said coldly, “What’s the matter? Both of you tried to get me some dates — on the quiet.”

“That says it,” Hoff told him. “On the quiet.”

Clay laughed at him, but it was a hollow sound. “You want me to have fun. But you want me to have it your way?”

Shatner’s voice was as cold as his own. “It’s this broad, Clay. She’s no good. You can look at her and see it.”

Clay knew his face ached with the way it was pulled into a sick mask. He hated Shatner. He stared at him trying to remember the years they’d been together, all that was between them. He wanted to hit Shatner, but there was his own feeling of doubt. Was he blind? Was he the only one who saw the clear loveliness in Joanne’s face?

He turned his head, trying to see into Hoff.

“She’s no good for you,” Hoff said. “She’s no tough whore like you’d pick up in a bar. I go along with this. But she’s another kind of tough, Clay. She’s a girl all wrapped up in one person … herself… . You look at her. What does she want from you?”

Clay’s voice was deadly. “Why don’t we call her in and ask her?”

Shatner said, “Oh, use your head, Clay. We don’t want trouble. We want to avoid it. We thought you’d have her for a day or two and get rid of her. She answers your phone. She stays here all the time. Somebody’s going to be hurt — and it’s not going to be that broad.”

Clay’s voice sounded ill to his own ears, full of doubt and self-hatred. “Why does she have to be a broad — just because she has shown a little interest in me?”

“She doesn’t have to be, kid,” Shatner said. “She just is. A guy with hot pants is no judge, Clay. Hoff and I can see. You’re blind right now. You’ve got to take our word.”

“No.” Clay prowled the rug before them. He glanced at Shatner, eyes glittering. “And no matter what else you say, don’t use that word broad again.”

“My God,” Hoff said. “And when I thought maybe he was going back to work, going to take up his responsibilities.”

Clay swung around to Hoff, and then didn’t speak. Hoff was right. He had that damnable way of being always right with an accountant’s fussy accuracy. He had been drifting along with Joanne, not wanting to think at all, because thinking meant looking ahead, or backward, or around you, or taking a good look at yourself. He had even shoved Sharon out of his mind. The last time he called her, her voice had sounded odd, strained, and he could tell she was deeply troubled and wanted to talk to him. He had thrown up a barrage of words like a wall between them, because he didn’t want to hear it. She was back East, and that character was after her — and what could he say to either of them? God help him, what could he say? It was better to close his ears and not hear it, close his mind and not think about it.

Hoff said, “How about it, Clay? What are you going to do?”

Clay shook his head. He exhaled heavily, and his voice had all the stubborn chill in it that walked him over any kind of opposition. “I’m going to enjoy my life. In spite of all you two clowns can say or do.”

“Are you?” Hoff said. “What is your idea of fun?”

Clay glanced toward the terrace, grinned. “She’s fun. Sometimes I think she’s the first fun I’ve ever had in my life.”

Hoff spoke to Shatner as though Clay Stuart were not in the room. “This I tell you. It makes me sick. Looks like whether he realizes it or not, he’s trying to roll in the dirt he’s been kept out of all these years.”

Clay pushed his hands deep into his slack pockets. “Why don’t you two bastards get out of here?”

“Look, baby,” Hoff said. “Don’t take my word. Ask her. She has any honesty, maybe she’ll tell you. She wants something. All right. So we’ll know, you ask her.”

Stuart stared at them. Their gazes did not waver. If they had looked away, glanced down, or flushed, he would have slugged them, thrown them out. But they were worrying about him, deeply concerned about him.

His own doubts plagued him, yet against this was his own healthy exuberance, his belief in the good he had. His contempt for their whining doubts pushed him into gambling. His laugh was cold.

He turned, crossed the room. He opened the door, called: “Joanne.”

She came across the flagstones. He felt pleasure watching her walk toward him. “Are they gone?” she said.

He shook his head. “They say you want something, Joanne. And they want you to tell them what it is.”

She flushed, her neck growing red and the color moving up to the roots of her hair.

He looked at her face, winced. “I’m sorry. I’ve no right to subject you to this.”

Her face was rigid. “That’s all right.” She looked at Hoff and Shatner levelly. “What do you want to know?”

“The price,” Hoff said. “We just want to know. We are willing to meet it. We just want to know.”

“Do you want a career in pictures?” Shatner said. “Is this what you want?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“You want money?” Hoff said. “If so, how much?”

“Why not? How much am I offered?”

Shatner’s mouth twisted. “All right. You tell us what you want.”

She stared at both of them as if they’d crawled out of wormwood. Then she moved past them, gathered up her purse.

“I just want to get out of here,” she said.

Clay ran after her. “Joanne.”

She looked at him coldly. He was a stranger. She had never seen him before. She shrugged his hand down. He didn’t blame her for what she did, not if she spat in his face. She’d given him nothing but pleasure. This was the way he repaid her.

She walked out of the room, closed the door behind her.

Clay swung around, his gaze locked on them. His voice was so low they could barely hear him. “For God’s sake,” he said. “What did we want to do that for?”

“We were thinking of you, Clay.” Hoff’s voice was barely above a whisper.

“Get out,” Clay said to them. “Go on. Get out.”

• • •

He waited an hour, pacing the library, walking out on the terrace, trying to find some memory of her that would put warmth in the day, trying to find some sign that she had ever been here. But the wind was chill, and the leaves skittered on the grass dryly, a lonely winter sound.

He walked to the edge of the pool, trying to picture in his mind how long it would take her to get home. She had walked out. She would have had to walk a mile before she could even get a cab.

He dialed her number. His hand sweated on the instrument. A girl answered.

“Joanne?” he said.

“My name is Flo,” the girl said. “Who is this?”

“Clay Stuart. Is Joanne there?”

“No. I’m sorry. She isn’t.”

“Will you have her call me? The minute she comes in?”

“I’ll tell her,” Flo said. She hung up.

He sat there a long time with the receiver in his hand. He called information, tried to find the address by supplying her telephone number.

“I’m sorry,” the operator said. “We don’t give out that information.”

He threatened the operator, the manager, the president of the company, and finally got a promise that they would call him back with the information.

Her name was not listed in the Los Angeles telephone directory. He hadn’t thought it would be. He could see her telephone, hanging in the hallway of some dump. No wonder she wanted something. What was the matter with him? With Hoff? Shatner? Everybody wanted something. Everybody on earth. Few people ever gave anyone else what she had given him in these last few days.

Sweating, he dialed her number again. Flo answered.

“Has Joanne come in yet?” he said.

“She isn’t here.”

“Do you know when she will be in?”

“No. She’s not here, Mr. Stuart. That’s what she said to tell you — she isn’t here.”

chapter eleven

CLAY WAS standing out in the circular drive when Shatner’s car turned into it. Shatner lifted his arm in greeting but Stuart was pacing, prowling, and he did not respond.

Shatner brought the Olds to a stop. He sat there a moment looking at Clay. A long time he’d known Clay Stuart, he’d never seen him like this. They talked about it when a man got the hots for some broad, but nobody knew what it was like, the agony he could not even conceal, until they saw it like this.

Shatner winced, feeling sorry for Clay. He had never wanted any woman this fiercely, not for more than a day or so at the most, but he could imagine what Stuart was going through. He thought Clay was a fool but realized a thing like this was a sickness and even he himself was susceptible.

God forbid.

“Hello, baby,” he said, getting out of his car.

Clay looked at him, but did not speak. Shatner smiled. He had lived in Hollywood a long time. He had learned how to smile with knives in his gizzard.

“Three days,” he said, keeping it light. “About time you called.”

“I had a reason.”

“You needed a reason to call Marc Shatner? What am I, kid? A friend of yours you can treat like this? This is Shatner.”

“Yes.”

Shatner reached up, put his arm about Clay’s shoulder. “Come on, kid, who are we? The Cohens and the Kellys?”

“I don’t feel like the funny words, Marc. You mind?” Clay shrugged away from Shatner’s arm.

“Sure I mind. We been together too long for this sort of deal. You — I hate to say this, kid, you’re acting like a child. Like a real child. Sharon acted this way, what would you do? This I’ll tell you. You’d warm her bottom. You’re too big for me. I can’t do that. I’m asking you. Come out of it.”

“Sure.”

“Okay. Three days now you’ve sulked. When you plan to talk to Hoff and me again? Me? I don’t mind. But Hoff is an old man. Hasn’t many friends.”

“That breaks me up.”

Shatner pretended to misunderstand. “So when you going to start loving us again?”

“When Joanne comes back — if Joanne comes back.”

Shatner cursed. He kicked at a loose pebble in the drive. “Oh, for God’s sake. Aren’t we going in the house? Aren’t you going to offer me a drink? It’s a long way from here to the Derby.”

“This is all right.”

“So be it.” Shatner sat down on the top step of the veranda. “Clay, you can’t go on hating us for what a dame like that does.”

“Can’t I?”

“She’ll come back.”

“You said that three days ago. It bends before it hits me.”

“All right. A filly like that. A doll on the make. Who can tell what she’ll do?”

Stuart stared down at him. “You gave her my phone number in the first place, didn’t you?”

Shatner scowled up at Clay. He searched his face to see if he were joking. He shook his head slowly, slashed at the air with the side of his hand.

“You crazy? I would do a thing like this to you? A man closer than my own brother. The only goy I ever loved. I fixed you up with pigs — a quick snort and that was all … Oh, no. Don’t blame this thing on me.”

Stuart shrugged. “All right,” he said. “Get out.”

• • •

He dialed the number Joanne had given him so long ago. It seemed an eternity; it seemed the time he could reflect upon as the good old days. Joanne was with him, and things were simple and uncomplicated.

He listened to the phone ringing across the wires, ten, fifteen times. Finally the receiver was lifted. A weary voice said, “Hello?”

“Flo?”

“Oh, I’m sorry …” It was Flo, all right. But she wasn’t even going to talk to him any more.

He felt a sudden rush of anger that made his flesh sting. He couldn’t blame her for not wanting to talk to him, but he was damned if he’d let her hang up on him like this. This number was his only link with Joanne. The phone company had given him the runaround, and he couldn’t control his rage enough to attempt to reason with them. But Flo wasn’t going to do this to him. She’d never live in peace with that phone in the house unless she talked to him.

Coldly, sweating, he dialed the number again. This time it was picked up immediately. “For God’s sake, Mr. Stuart,” Flo said. “What you want? I got a splitting headache. Knock it off, will you?”

“Flo.”

“All right. So I’m listening.”

“I’m asking you. Please tell me where I can get in touch with Joanne.”

“This is new?”

“This time it is. She left something over here, Flo. Honest. It’s urgent I get in touch with her. I won’t tell her you told me. I won’t bother her. And — there’s a hundred dollars in it for you.”

There was a long pause. They could have repaired the lines during the vibrant silence.

At last Flo said, “She’s working.”

“All right.” His heart was pounding. Sweat was bright blisters on his forehead. “Where?”

“A drive-in restaurant — on Wilshire.” She gave him the address.

• • •

He left Sunset, drove down Fairfax to Wilshire. From habit he glanced at the marquee of the Old Time Movie Theatre. They were playing a silent feature he’d made, playing a supporting role to Louise Dressler. Beautiful Louise Dressler — he remembered her dignity, even as the old frump in The Goose Woman. Such a long time ago, he thought. I’m such a fool. I made that picture before Joanne was born, a long time before… .

He cruised past the drive-in restaurant, going slowly. He wanted to turn in, but could not. If he had good sense he would drive out Wilshire to Beverly Hills, return home.

He went around a block, came back to the drive-in. She didn’t want to see him, this was clear enough. He could paste that message on his windshield. If she wanted to see him, she would see him. She knew where he was. She had known all these three days.

He turned the wheel, glided the hardtop convertible to a stop in the most shadowed part of the serving area. He did not touch the horn. He made up his mind. He would apologize to her. He owed her that much. He’d had no right to subject her to Hoff and Shatner and their suspicions — and his own doubts. Hell, even then he’d thought she’d laugh with him at them. She laughed at everything else. This proved the old platitude. You knew nothing about women — you could live to be a hundred, as he had, and still you wouldn’t understand them.

He sat there, feeling his shirt getting damp under his armpits. His stomach muscles cramped, tied in a knot and the emptiness spread inside him. Suppose she walked toward his car, recognized him, and then would not speak to him? Hell, he couldn’t take that. Not right now. This would be worse than not seeing her at all.

He saw her move across a lighted area. His heart seemed to plunge. His throat grew tight. He glanced around at the other cars, at the people in them, the people inside the air-conditioned dining room.

She had never looked so lovely. The shorts she wore were so tight she might as well have been naked. Her legs were long sculptured columns, carefully molded of light and shadow.

She came toward his car, carrying a pad and pencil. She walked directly to him. He studied her face in the faint light, trying to see some of his own longing reflected there. Her face showed nothing. Hell, men died of heartbreak; women never did — not since Elizabeth Barrett Browning. It had gone out of style.

Her eyes were clouded over, and she wore a fixed smile calculated to please the male patrons. It might infuriate the women diners, but none of the carhops gave a damn about women customers. Women never tipped more than a dime anyhow.

She recognized him. The smile seeped away and her eyes narrowed faintly.

Clay spoke quickly, voice very low, but urgent. “I’ve missed you, Joanne. I never knew I could miss anyone so much. That’s all I came to say.”

She met his eyes. He saw the faint glisten of tears. “I’ve missed you,” she said.

He exhaled so heavily they both laughed a little. It was that simple. God, but it was simple.

He smiled. “May I take you home?”

She bit at her lip. “I don’t get off until two.”

“I’ll wait for you,” he said. “I’ll come back. I’ll be here.”

She reached inside the car, gripped his hand. Her fingers were like ice. She pressed his hand hard, holding his gaze. Her voice remained steady, business-like: “Would you like something to eat?”

“My God. No. My God.”

• • •

Two A. M.

She came out of the restaurant. The parking area was silent and lights were dimmed. Out back some men in aprons and T-shirts were pushing garbage pails through the service door.

She was wearing a skirt and blouse. She hurried to him. He slapped open the door and she hit the seat hard, sliding across it into his arms.

Clay’s arms went around her. Her mouth struck against his, parting, pressing.

The rattle of garbage pails, somebody’s whistling, the sudden starting of a car engine in the darkness were not sounds, they were one sound.

He was out of breath when he pulled away from her. His hands trembled. “Where do you want to go?” he said.

“I better go home.”

“What?” The word exploded across his lips. “This time. I better, Clay … I’ll see you again.”

“When? I’m crazy about you, Joanne. You can’t do this to me.”

“Do what? What am I doing?”

“Putting me off like this. Please, darling, don’t do it. I know I’m a fool. I know. But I’ve missed you. I’ve been nuts.”

“It’s so late.”

“Who the hell cares?”

“I’m tired.”

He started the engine, put the car in reverse. “You’re not — just getting even with me, Joanne?”

She lay against him, turned her head, her hair tickling his throat. “Why would I do that?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe for the same reason you didn’t call, didn’t come near me. Maybe you’re — punishing me for what happened … I had it coming and I’m sorry about it, Joanne. Before God, I’m sorry. They won’t say anything to you again. I’ll cut their tongues out.”

“It’s not them.” Her voice was low.

“What is it?”

“Let’s don’t talk about it.”

“Let’s do talk about it. I want to talk about it. Whatever it is, for God’s sake, let’s get it out in the open and get rid of it.”

“Not tonight, Clay. I’m tired.”

He stepped hard on the gas. She gave him her address, and even knowing that he would know where she lived from now on didn’t lift his spirits any. She was pressed against him, lying in his arms, as close as she’d ever been, and yet he felt lonely and unfulfilled. There was a flatness between them, the way it might be if you left the cork out of a champagne bottle. It would still be champagne, you could still drink it, but it would not be the same.

It would never be the same again.

chapter twelve

CLAY LET the car roll to the curb before the apartment house where Joanne lived. There were other cars parked along here on both sides of the narrow street. Most of the houses were dark, but lights burned on each floor of her apartment building.

He sat without moving, staring at the Spanish-type apartment building, its forecourt and its silent fountain. The place didn’t look bad or shabby, simply old. When this structure had been built, everything in town followed the Spanish influence. That was a long time ago — about the time he was playing that supporting role in the silent picture starring Louise Dressler.

Let Joanne out of here, Stuart told himself. She wants to get away from you. Let her go. She’s a child. You’re an old man. That’s reason enough.

He reached over, opened the door for her. His voice was hollow. “Okay,” he said. “Have fun.”

She stayed where she was a moment. The courtesy light glowed yellowly. Her face was pale. She did not look happy. She did not look much happier than he felt.

“Don’t you want to see me again?” she said.

“I don’t want to bother you.”

“Clay. Stop.”

“What do you want me to say? What am I supposed to do?”

“You said you missed me.”

“Good Lord.”

“You do want to see me again. Don’t you?”

“I don’t want to let you go right now. Does that answer your question?”

“It’s just that it’s so late — I’m tired. I’ve a little bit of a headache. The excitement, I guess.”

“What excitement?”

She pressed her palm against his cheek. “What do you think I’ve been thinking about since you said you’d meet me at two?”

“May I walk you upstairs? To your door?”

Joanne glanced toward the apartment house. She bit her lip. After a moment, she shrugged. “All right. Come on.”

He held her hand as they crossed the walk, went past the silent fountain. They could hear laughter from an upstairs floor. Music trailed down to them.

They went up the ancient, self-service elevator to the third floor. Third floor, mark this well, Clay told himself. Mark it well, this is where she lives.

When they stepped out into the third-floor corridor, music and laughter slapped them in the face. Joanne glanced up at him. A doorway stood open. He was scowling. Young people were crowded into the tiny apartment space and spilled through the open door into the hallway.

“Flo,” Joanne said. “Flo’s having a party.”

Clay felt a twist of hurt and anger. If she’d known about the party and the noise, why’d she insisted on coming home home when she was tired? He didn’t say anything.

A dark-haired man who looked to be about twenty-five was leaning against the doorjamb. He turned at the sound of the elevator and grinned.

“Joanne. Baby. You kept me waiting long enough. Where you been? You promised to get here early.”

“Hello, Johnny.”

“Come on. Let’s dance. I been waiting for you. I been faithful. I’ve drunk a fifth all by myself. But I let the dames alone.” He caught Joanne about the waist and half-danced, half-wrestled her through the crowded doorway.

She looked back at Stuart once. Her face was gray. He felt sick. What have I gotten myself into?

He stood there a moment feeling as though he were caught and swirling in a whirlpool of raucous laughter and rock-and-roll music. God, he thought, I’m really lost here. I can’t even waltz.

Some of the women in the doorway had recognized him. They turned, watching him and whispering so the word burned across the room, eating its way through the hard beat of the music, the senseless swells of laughter. Clay Stuart. The star. He was out in the corridor.

He could not see Joanne any more. He turned, moved past the corridor pay-telephone toward the elevator.

“Clay. Mr. Stuart.”

He paused, glancing across his shoulder. It was not Joanne, but someone was calling him. He needed some excuse to delay for a moment longer. He turned and waited.

She had platinum hair — at least, they’d called it platinum in the thirties. It was hacked about her head and ears. She had a pixie face, ceramic-tinted flesh stretched taut over jutting bone structure, a thin and hungry body. She wore bolero pants and nylon blouse knotted just beneath the knobs of her breasts.

“I’m Flo,” she said. “Don’t you recognize me?” She cocked her head. “See the cauliflower ear?”

He smiled. “Oh, hello.”

She laughed. She was very drunk. “Don’t say that word. I don’t care if I never hear that word again.”

He smiled, looking at her. A boy pushed through the knot of people clogging the doorway now. He came toward Flo and Clay with his pelvis pushed forward, walking with a list. His shirt was dirty and his corduroy trousers were streaked with grime and grease. His lifeless brown hair flopped across his forehead.

“Hello, Clay,” he said. “Somebody said you were out here. What’s up, baby? You slumming?”

Clay tried to smile. “Hello, Bunny,” he said. Bunny Harper had played a role in his latest picture eight months ago. Bunny belonged to the Studio Method of acting. He had expressed nothing but contempt for the motion picture people on that set. Stuart remembered the kid never took up a cue, he fingered it, thought it over, lived it, experienced it, suffered through it, and then mumbled something about it a few minutes, or a few reels later.

Bunny caught his arm. “Come on in. I want you to meet some people.” He lifted his voice. “Only man I respected in that last dog we made. Only one who didn’t chew up the scenery.”

Clay said, “Ever get that exhaust pipe repaired on your sports car, Bunny?”

Bunny laughed. “Come on now, Clay. Would you destroy an image?”

Clay could smell him. He remembered he could smell Bunny all during that picture, at least everytime he was near in a scene. He wondered if it were true that these kids could buy a deodorant that smelled like body odor. That’s what some electrician had said on the set. “They can’t smell like men,” the electrician laughed. “They buy that odor — instant body odor — roll on.”

“Reckon not, Bunny. It’s late. I got to get my sleep. You kids can take it. I can’t.”

“How are things going with you, baby? You planning anything new? I got me an MG ordered. Did you hear about that? Got a part coming out over at Allied. That ought to be good for laughs, eh, Clay?”

“They turn out some good product.”

“Sure. Product. That’s why TV is killing the movies. That’s why the movies will never give what the stage gives — ”

“Good night, Bunny,” Clay said. Bunny nodded toward him and turned, still talking to the people who had crowded out into the corridor.

Flo walked with Clay to the elevator. He punched the down button. He took out his wallet, removed a hundred-dollar bill, folded it. He took Flo’s hand, pressed the money into it.

“Thanks for telling me where she was,” he said. “I shouldn’t have come up here. She tried to get me not to.”

Flo tightened her fist on the folded money. She laughed, off-key. “You making jokes? She promised ‘fore she went to work … she was going to bring you around so you could pay off — so I could collect.”

The elevator door opened. Clay walked through it. He pressed the button. The doors closed behind him. He did not move until the doors opened again on the ground floor.

And then he walked out to his car at the curb. He did not look back.

chapter thirteen

CLAY REOPENED the script of Man of the Desert for the third time to Chapter One, page one. He had read this part of the book twice and it made no sense to him. Worse than that, it angered and infuriated him. It was trash; worse, it was the same old trash. Why did they believe people would leave a TV set to see something made from this drivel?

Before he read the first page he was reaching for a cigarette. Remember how good cigarettes used to taste? He lighted it, sat up on the library divan, sucking at it, trying to draw something from it. It was bitter, dry and hot. He crushed it out in the littered ashtray beside him on the floor.

He poured himself a drink, found the whiskey without taste. He stared at the glass, rattled the ice against the sweated sides, added another dash of bourbon. Nothing helped.

His mind returned to the girl at Palm Springs. It had been only yesterday, but already he had difficulty remembering her name. He didn’t want to remember. He sweated, thinking about her. It had not been pleasant. It had started out, two people with nothing to say to each other. They could say what they liked that sex was the beginning, middle and end of an affair. It wasn’t true. There had to be some sort of reaction. It was not something you could pretend. If it were true, the trip to Palm Springs would have been successful. She had tried hard enough.

Her name was Reva.

She was lovely, and even when she undressed slowly — making a production out of it, watching him, and he admitted aloud and in his own mind that she was lovely, that was it. Nothing.

She sank to the floor between his legs, looking up at him.

“Do you like me?”

“Sure.” He had to have another drink. He could not even stay in this air-conditioned cottage with her until he had another drink. He reached out, caught the bottle by the neck and drank from it deeply.

“You drink so much,” she said.

“Hell. What makes you think I drink so much?”

“It’s all right, baby. It’s just that if you pass out, you won’t be much good to me, will you, baby?”

“What makes you think I’ll be any good to you anyhow?”

She laughed. “I’ll make you be good to me.” Her hands, her face, her mouth, moved against him, and he felt the heat of her body and the heat of her mouth, the hotness of her saliva and he felt himself growing warm, and it was the heat of anger and rage mixed with his desire and hatred for her.

He reached down and caught her by the throat.

“Baby. You’re hurting me.”

“Why don’t you get out of here?”

She caught his fingers, twisting them away from her throat.

“You can have anything you want, baby.”

“I don’t want anything.”

“Don’t tell Reva lies.” She came upward slowly, the weight of her body working against him, thrusting him back on the bed. “You drive me crazy,” she cried in his ear, “the feel of you, the bigness, the hardness — you drive me wild before you even touch me.”

“Let me alone.” He put his hand against her chin and shoved backwards. She clung to him, laughing. He had brought her down here to play, and she was going to play. He wanted to play rough, but a lot of movie people were like that. Ordinary passions never stirred them. Laughing, she slipped past his extended arm, buried her face in his neck, laughing and biting him… .

He got up now and paced the library, sweating. God, the things you could let yourself into. Reva had gone home with a bloody mouth, two black eyes and a thousand dollars. What was the matter with him? He’d never behaved like this in his life. There was no sense asking what was the matter with him.

He knew what was the matter with him, all right.

“Clay.”

It was Joanne.

He heeled around, standing in the center of the room staring at her. He felt the sudden hot burning at the rims of his eyes, the constriction in his solar-plexus. He wanted to run to her. He wanted to grab her in his arms and kiss her and never stop kissing her. He wanted to smash his fist in her face, the way he had smashed his fist into Reva’s face for no reason at all. Only he had a reason. He had to see the agony in her face that he felt inside… . He wanted to grab her and hold her and never let her go.

He did not move.

“I called,” Joanne said. Her face was pale, she was watching him uncertainly. “I’ve called ever since you left the other night — you didn’t even say goodbye.”

“Sorry.”

“McEsters said you were in Palm Springs.”

“I was.”

“He said that when I called today.”

“Did he?”

“Stop hating me, Clay.”

“I don’t hate you.”

She smiled. “May I come in?”

“Do you want to?”

“I’m up here. I came all the way … to you, Clay. Please don’t treat me like this.”

“All right. What do you want?”

She straightened. “Don’t talk this way, Clay. If you want me to get out, you don’t have to treat me like this. You can say so. I know what you think of me. I know what you think I am. You and your friends showed me plainly enough the last time I was here … But you did come back to me … Remember?”

“I remember all of it. I remember a headache. I remember an all-night party. I remember a guy named Johnny.”

“Oh. Johnny. For goodness sake. He’s just a boy I know. He means nothing to me.”

“I believe that. I’d like to know. What does mean something to you?”

“You do.”

“You have hellish ways to show it.”

Again her head tilted. She had never looked lovelier, more lost to him. “Maybe I’m not used to being treated the way you — and your friends treated me, Clay. Maybe I don’t get over it so easily — even when I want to.”

He put out his arms. She ran to him, pressed herself against him. He held her head in his hands, turned her face up. He kissed her, tasting the salt of her tears. His need for her was all snarled in anger and confusion. He did not know what to believe.

He drew her with him to the divan, kicked the script half across the room.

She lay in his arms.

He stroked her hair, drew his fingers across the smoothness of her cheeks and throat.

“We can’t do this, Joanne. So help me. This on and off. Hot and cold. Sorry. I’m not made that way. I can’t turn it on and off. I’ve wanted you — wanted to love you since the first time you walked in here. I know I’m a damned fool, but I can’t stand knowing about Johnny.”

“Oh, darling. Forget him. He means nothing to me.”

“Still. He’s your age … I’m not. I think about him holding you in his arms like this. I get sick.”

She did not say anything, pressed closer to him.

“Does he love you like this?” He could not help asking it.

“Not very often.”

“Not very often! Jesus Christ. Jesus H. Christ. Not very often. What’s often? How many times is often? Three times a week? Four? Five? My God.” He felt as though a steel bar was wedged between his belt and his throat.

“Don’t talk about it, darling. Don’t torture yourself. He doesn’t mean anything.”

He wiped the chilled sweat from his forehead. “He doesn’t mean anything and he — loves you half a dozen times a week. What about the ones that mean something? Christ. What about them?”

“You mean something.” Her voice sounded low, far away.

“Sure. A nice old man.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Why not? I’m old enough to be your father. Why don’t we admit it? Why don’t you get out of here?”

She twisted in his arms, pressing her body against him. He felt the excitement in the very way she was made.

She kissed his throat. “I know what’s the matter with you,” she whispered. “You’re jealous.”

“Oh my God. This is news?”

“You’re jealous of the people I know. Did you think I knew nobody? Darling, did you think I came to you from a world where there were no other people?”

“Maybe that isn’t the way I think — but I reckon it’s the way I’d want it.”

“You don’t want me to see Johnny again. I won’t. It’s that simple.” She was moving her hands along his neck, caressing him.

He felt chilled. He did not want to ask her to promise not to see the young guy again, and he would not. He found himself suddenly not bothering to wish she would drop Johnny, but that he himself would not be sucked into believing she meant it when she said she would.

Her voice remained gentle, throaty and warm, half-teasing. “I don’t think you like my friends.”

“You might say that. Understatement is always good.”

She laughed.

“You didn’t like Flo’s party.”

“Not very much. Reckon it’s not my kind of party.”

She was silent. The silence stretched longer. He frowned, looking down at her. “What’s the matter, Joanne?”

“You don’t like my friends. You never take me anywhere with yours … but you get mad with me — I’m not supposed to get mad.” She said it without heat. She was stating a fact. He felt his face grow hot.

“Joanne.” He exhaled heavily. “I’m sorry. It’s just that since I found you, I’ve wanted you all to myself.”

“It’s all right.”

“Look. I’ll take you. Where do you want to go? Whom do you want to meet?” He reclined there, caressing her, holding her, trying to think where he could take her that she would enjoy. His voice was puzzled. “Hell, Joanne. Reckon I have no friends … I’ve tried to think. Looks like Ruth handled that department of my life, too. Anybody I know is too old for you — hell, they’re as old as I am.”

“All right.”

“Stop acting like this. Whatever has happened between us is past. I reckon I can learn to like your friends, if they can stand me. If you want to meet the people I know, I’ll introduce you. From now on, it’s what you want.”

“You know what I want.”

He stood up, swinging her into his arms. He crossed the foyer, carrying her, went up the stairs. From the rear of the house were sounds the servants made, distantly below them were the sounds of the town. He carried her up the stairs, driven by the anxious need to hold her and love her the way he had dreamed of holding her and loving her in his loneliness. She was very light, the weight was nothing. He felt the crazy piston-knock in his heart. The hell with that. He would never let her learn of that. This was just another proof he was too old for her. Too old? Hell, right now he was younger than she was, younger than she had ever been. He went along the hall and in his bedroom he undressed her, and it was as he had dreamed, only more wonderful, and it was much better because for the first time he believed he could keep her with him.

chapter fourteen

ABOUT SEVEN o’clock that evening he woke up and felt Joanne lying close against him across his bed. He opened his eyes and the first thing he saw was her face above his. She was propped on her hand, studying him. He had the uncomfortable feeling she had been like this, looking at his face for a long time. There was still afternoon light in the room; it would not be full dark for almost another hour. Her face moved nearer, her red-gold hair tumbled on each side of his head cutting out the daylight. Her mouth crushed against his.

“I thought you’d never wake up.”

“The first time I’ve slept in God knows when.”

“Funny, I can’t sleep when you’re with me.”

“You know what I mean.”

Joanne trailed her lips across his face, moving her heated body across his body. “You know what?”

“I know I love you.”

“I never knew what loving was like. Not until I knew you. I knew everybody did it. But I didn’t know why.”

He smiled. “All my life. All of it, I’ve wanted someone like you. Maybe I spent years denying it — never even admitted it to myself. But it’s true. I never knew how true until right now.”

She raised her head, stared at the clock on the table at the head of his bed. “I’ve got to go.”

“Are you crazy?”

“No. I work for a living.”

“You can’t leave me. I won’t let you go.”

“I’ll come back.”

“Will you? You’ve said that before.”

“You can’t be a pig.”

“I’m a pig. Didn’t you know that?”

“I’m beginning to suspect it. But I’ve got to work. I’ve got to live.”

“How much do you make at that place on Wilshire?”

She was silent a moment, and then she told him.

“All right. From tonight you’re making twice that.”

“You can’t pay me. I told you. I won’t let you. It makes me feel like a whore. I don’t mind being a whore. But I hate to feel like one.”

“You want me to hit you?”

“No.”

“Then don’t ever say that again. Don’t ever say it around me. You want a job? Okay … you can read to me. There’s a book I can’t stand. You can read it to me.”

She smiled, thinking about this, accepting it. “How do you know I can read?”

“Oh, Lord. Stop thinking up obstacles.”

She laughed and covered his mouth with hers. “I’ll read to you all the time.”

“I’m damned if you will. You’re working for me. You’ll read when I want you to. I’ll tell Hoff in the morning. He’ll put you on the payroll.”

“Hoff. He’ll go through the ceiling.”

His voice was chilled. “He’ll go through the window if he opens his damned mouth.”

• • •

When Hoff and Shatner arrived in the library two days later, Joanne was standing perfectly straight in the center of the room. Clay stood before her, gaze fixed on hers. His voice was pitched so low they could not hear him, but they could feel the tension in it. He waved at them to keep quiet.

“Hypnotism,” Shatner said with a wry glance at Hoff. “His great love. Thirty years an actor, all the time what he wanted was to be a hypnotist.”

“He used to try to get me to let him hypnotize me,” Hoff said. “Hell with that noise.”

“She’s not being hypnotized, either,” Shatner said, voice tinged with anger. “She’s just going along with the gag.”

“She goes along with all the gags,” Hoff said. He made a downward gesture. “Wouldn’t you? If you had found a good think like this? Wouldn’t you?”

“You want to get us thrown out of here?”

“Again?” Hoff lifted his shoulders. “I wouldn’t lift my voice against her if she set the place on fire.”

“I’d hold the torch for her.”

They watched Stuart hold Joanne’s left arm extended out from her body. They moved nearer, listening. He was telling her it was locked tightly at the elbow, that all her strength had flowed into her left arm and it was so strong that nobody could move her arm, that she could not move it no matter how hard she tried.

Suddenly Joanne’s lips moved, her face pulled. She cried out, “I can’t move it!”

Amazed, Hoff and Shatner inched forward. They stared into Joanne’s face. There was no doubt she was in at least a light stage of hypnosis. Her arm remained rigid, out from her body.

Clay laughed, pleased. He spoke to Joanne. “Your arm will relax now, and you will wake up, feeling fine, feeling better than you’ve ever felt in your life.”

After a moment, Joanne’s arm fell to her side and her eyes cleared. She saw Hoff and Shatner for the first time. She threw her arms around Stuart.

“You’re wonderful,” she told him.

“He’s wonderful,” Shatner said to Hoff.

“This makes headlines?” Hoff asked.

She ignored them. There was pleasure and excitement in her voice. “I didn’t really believe you could do it. It was just a game, and I was going along with you, and suddenly — my arm — I couldn’t move my arm.”

Clay laughed, holding her. “That’s where a hypnotist always gets you,” he said. “You think, he’s a nice guy, I’ll go along with him — and by the time you find out he’s not a nice guy — it’s too late.”

“All of a sudden I realized I’d do what you told me.”

“Sure.”

“Now I’m afraid of you.”

“Why?”

“I’ll be in your power — have to do what you tell me.”

“Oh, no. No hypnotist can make you do anything you truly don’t want to do.”

She laughed. “But that’s it, how do I know what I truly don’t want to do?”

“That’s a good question,” Shatner said, clapping a folded newspaper across his hand. “Could we talk to you a moment, Clay?”

“Go ahead.”

Shatner glanced at Stuart. He moved his gaze meaningfully toward Joanne.

“Don’t start that again,” Stuart warned him.

Shatner shrugged. “Louella’s column,” he said. “You made it. I quote: ‘Good to see Clay Stuart out again. At the Pantages première last night, old long and lanky was there, and the fans gave him a huge welcome. First time anyone has seen him in public since his lovely Ruth died. And who in the world is the lovely red-head with him?’ Unquote.”

“So?” Stuart stared at them, daring them to speak. “Joanne wanted to go. So we went.”

The première? For hell’s sake, why not? He had thought it would amuse her. Maybe you’ll be amused, he’d said. Amused? She’d been chilled with enchantment, hands cold and eyes starry. He thought about the way it had been with Joanne, the way he’d hoped to be infected by her entrancement, and the way he had not been. He’d tried to see it with her eyes; her eyes had glowed. There was for her more than the intoxication of being present, there was the elation of suddenly finding herself part of the glamour, part of the elite going along the plush carpeting, photographed and interviewed and stared at. Suddenly she was on the inside of the ropes. But it had been impossible to contract her fever even when she clung to his arm: he’d seen too many of these carneys — if they’d ever held any thrill for him, it was long dead. It seemed to him, and he cursed himself for this sign of senility: looking backward — it seemed to him the old time première had magic no longer possible. Those early spectators had been truly enchanted, wide-eyed and expectant, as if they were on a carnival midway back home in Iowa believing everything the barkers said because they wanted to believe, deceiving themselves because it was such pleasurable self-deception. Nowadays — and last night — it was all phony and contrived, even the bleacherites recognized this phoniness. Producers had advertised each new product as colossal until the word meant no more than darling, and out here everyone was darling, even those you hated, especially those you hated, and everything new was colossal, especially the dog. There was no longer any sense of glory, everybody was hep to the phony atmosphere, everybody had become sophisticated, cynical; they were all in the know, and even if they experienced an honest emotion they’d have concealed it as they would a communicable disease. He supposed for a few minutes last night there had been a sense of actual, electric excitement. This was when the remaining few super-stars arrived, the glamorous, the notorious, the odd. The onlookers forgot themselves enough to press forward, staring at the super-stars, remembering them, cataloguing them. wondering where they’d been before they arrived here, where they’d go afterwards. They had stared at these few faces with peeping-tom intensity, looking for a secret there, secret happiness, hidden despair, signs of deterioration and decay.

Shatner looked ill. He glanced at Hoff, but he shrugged. Shatner tossed the newspaper on the table. “All right, Clay. I — got to get back to the office. I’ll see you. Okay?”

“Sure,” Clay said. “Any time.”

He let them get to the door. “Shatner?”

They paused. Shatner turned, but Hoff remained with his back to the room, poised. “Yeah?”

“Do me a favor?”

“Sure.”

“Call Dick Creek at Warners.”

Hoff spun around. His face was pulled into a hopeful smile. “You’re going to star in Creek’s production of Man of the Desert?”

“That’s not why I want you to call him,” Clay said. “I want him to set up a screen test for Joanne.”

Neither Shatner nor Hoff spoke for a moment. When Shatner spoke, he sounded as if he were going to cry.

“Okay, Clay. I’ll ask him.”

Clay said, “Tell him she’s pretty good. I’ve been teaching her what I know — but tell Dick he can undo that in a few hours.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah. Tell Dick I’d consider it a real earthy favor if he directed the test himself.”

• • •

Kay Ringling drove slowly up the hill. She could hear the party when she was two blocks from the house, but she could not believe it until she found a place to park in the drive and entered the wide-open front door.

Most of the cars parked in Stuart’s drive were foreign models, either shining with care, or studiously neglected.

She walked across the veranda. Several couples were dancing out here and she could hear others swimming and diving in the pool. No one paid any attention to her and she stood a long time in the doorway, looking for Clay. Young people brushed past her with a glance, but none spoke to her. She was afraid she wouldn’t have understood their language if they had. Looking at them made her feel very old, like something that had gone out of style.

She saw that McEsters was nowhere in sight. A Hollywood caterer and his employees were handling the service. Through the open door to the sun parlor she could see a young man playing the piano, quite oblivious to the blaring music of the ensemble in the foyer. A young woman in a wet bathing suit was sitting on the piano, watching him.

A youth in sweat shirt and slacks, backing through the door way carrying a nude statue from the garden, bumped Kay.

“I beg your pardon,” Kay said.

He gave her a brief glance. “Shove off, witch. You hit the wrong landing strip. Nobody here but human beings.” He strode on out of the house to one of the sports cars, giggling at his own humor.

A girl moved by Kay, simpering. “Where’s Bunny?” the girl kept calling. “I want to dance with Bunny.”

Walking slowly, Kay followed the girl into the foyer and beyond into the library. Several couples were dancing in there with the lights lowered. After a moment her gaze grew accustomed to the shadowy lighting. She saw Stuart standing alone at the windows, staring into the darkness.

She felt a terrible sadness and at the same time a rage she felt would have matched Ruth’s if she’d walked in and found creeps making a shambles of her home. She wanted to slap Clay’s face, slap it until reason returned to his head. But at the same time she felt the way an indulgent parent feels toward a spoiled child. She would rather let him ruin everything than alienate him.

Kay sighed. With her it was different from the way it was with anyone else. She knew Clay Stuart better, had known him longer, understood him. He’d denied himself a lot during the past thirty years; he was a mixture of his early environment, his own inner emotions and the later years of self-denial. She hated to see him let them wreck his home, but he deserved a good time, even this late, even if it took such destructive turns.

She owed him too much ever to deny him anything. She had been one sort of person before she met him — a thin girl in glasses and stringy hair and a passion for the theatre. She became a set designer — props, costumes and hot coffee for the principals — as near as she ever came to the stage. She gravitated toward Hollywood for no good reason, became the secretary of an artist’s agent, and one day in that agent’s office she met Clay Stuart.

Clay Stuart walked in, and from that moment she was a different woman. She quit her job in the agent’s office, took Clay Stuart over. He had great potential, but he needed a plan, a direction, someone to keep him moving on it. This she did. In the silent pictures his walk, manner of speaking, way he did whatever they told him, came out on the screen with vigor and excitement. When the talkies came his voice suited the image the silent screen had created and he was greater than ever, a lonely, emotional young man with a flat, handsome Nebraska exterior.

In those years the legend grew that Stuart owed everything to Kay Ringling. Only she knew better; the debt was hers — a terrible debt, one she had to repay, no matter what it cost. From the moment he walked into her life, and later when he took her to bed with him, he made a complete human being out of her — and she would never love anyone else, never need anyone else. She owed the direction, the only good in her whole life to him — she wanted to repay him.

And right now was the time to be gentle with him, understanding and patient, no matter how urgently she longed to jerk him back to reality.

“Clay,” she said.

Clay Stuart turned, smiling, a stranger in an alien land finding a familiar face.

“Hello, there. God, am I glad to see you.”

“Dr. Livingstone, I presume,” Kay said.

“What are you doing here?”

“Several people have already asked me that.”

He took both her hands. She said, “I might even ask what you’re doing here?”

“I live here.”

“This is living?” She moved her head, looking the place over.

His voice remained flat. “We can’t have everything, Kay. One of the first facts of life I learned. We can’t ever have everything … I’m an elderly gent … I’ve learned to compromise … Hell, I’ve been compromising all my life. Now I’m doing it because I want to.”

“How nice for you.” She watched a drunken couple dance for a moment near the divan and then topple on it. They did not move. “Isn’t there some place we might talk?” she asked.

“Sure. There must be one room in this place that isn’t occupied.” He touched her arm, guided her through the dancers. Some glanced at Kay and Stuart, grinning crookedly at Clay. “Swell party, baby. Really a blast.”

“Where’d you round up so many juvenile delinquents?” Kay said as they climbed the stairs. “Looks like the parking lot outside Schwab’s.”

He did not answer. Kay paused before the room that had been Ruth’s, glanced questioningly at Clay. He shrugged. “Meenie’s as good as minie,” he said. “Try it.”

She pushed open the door, snapped on the light. She stood in the doorway, her mouth forming a startled o. Clothes were thrown about, cosmetics littered the vanity, most of them open, some cartons sprouting kleenex like tufts.

“Good heavens!” Kay said.

“Joanne’s using this room.”

“She raising rabbits in here, or hamsters?”

“Ruth was never tidy.”

“Oh, Clay. For hell’s sake. There was breeding in Ruth’s kind of disarray. You could make the place immaculate in three minutes. You’re going to have to call in exterminators and repair contractors.”

“All right.”

She turned and closed the door, studying him. “What are you trying to do, Clay?”

“Let’s talk about you,” he said in irony. “Why’d you want to see me?”

“I need a reason?”

“You’ve become a stranger around here.”

“Yes.” She walked across the room, stepping with exaggerated caution. “Dick Creek called. Just a while ago. Said he had reason to hope you were going to agree to the role in Man of the Desert. They can’t hold it forever.”

“I may take it.”

She nodded. “Why don’t you get back to work, Clay? This all started out as fun. I’m sure it must have. But my God, these animals downstairs are weirdos. They come out of the cracks in Sunset Boulevard. Are you trying to destroy everything you’ve built up in thirty years? You think fooling around with tramps like those can’t tear you down in one dirty headline?”

“I’m doing what I’ve got to do, Kay, believe me.”

“Oh, stop being a fool. Is that girl — that Stark woman — do you think what she can do to you is worth all this?”

“I think so.”

“You’re not thinking at all. She’s nobody, Clay. A real nothing, a nobody, a carhop for God’s sake — I mean inside that’s what she is.”

“How do you know so much about her?”

“I know about everything that concerns you, Stuart. And I have since that unfortunate day thirty years ago when I could have gone on a honeymoon with Brad Walman and never seen you again.”

“You should have gone.”

She smiled. “I know that now. But at the time, I didn’t believe it. I knew where you were at that moment — at the place where you could win or lose in this racket. It was tough. Too tough for you. But I was tougher than it was. I knew you’d be lost without me. I stayed with you — all those years, while you learned to act, while you learned everything that you are.”

“I wanted something — always — something I never had.”

“A wild broad? An angelic-looking hellion to arouse you? To appeal to the part of Stuart that’s in every man, but in you more than most? You think I didn’t know this? A dozen times in all these years you could have wrecked everything, walked out on Ruth and Sharon for some actress that had the hots for you. You think we managed to get them roles in pictures being shot on European locations just for laughs? Well, I thought I knew you. The angel-devils appealed to you, but it was the quiet, gentle ones who really lasted with you. That’s what I thought when I located Stark — ”

“What?”

“Are you surprised? We love you, Stuart. We all agreed you needed something to pull you out of the apathy you were in. I asked around, did some checking, came up with Stark. Who’d you think gave her your unlisted number?”

He shook his head. “It never occurred to me that you — ”

“Oh, yes. Ringling the brilliant. Ringling knew what really appealed to you. A diamond-bright virgin would do fine for you… . A couple weeks with her and you’d be glad to get back to work.” She shook her head and laughed without mirth. “Boy, can I ever be wrong.”

“I love her, Ringling. I may as well tell you the truth.”

She winced. “It won’t work, Clay. It won’t work. Not for you. Not for her.”

“I hope you’re wrong.”

“You know I’m not. Already the newspapers are talking about the redhead in Clay Stuart’s life. Soon the fan magazines will start digging into it. Clay, this sort of thing is bad. It leaves a bad taste.”

“What should I do?”

“You know what you should do. You should get back to work. If you must date, there are plenty of women nearer — ”

“You and I, Kay? We’re of an age … we could live together in dullness and in emotional poverty. Is that what you mean?”

“I might never make you happy — but I wouldn’t ruin you… . Luckily, there are other women besides me. But not this one. I was so sure it would be a quick roll, quickly forgotten. But I was wrong. She’s taken over. Even you must have sense enough left to see that — a girl no older than Sharon.”

“Yes.” He spoke slowly, voice very low. “I know all that. I’ve thought about that.”

“All right. Be a little smart, baby. How long do you think a young girl like this will stay with you?”

He sighed. He stood with his fists taut at his sides. “All right, Kay. All right. There’s your answer. You said it. So stop worrying about it.”

chapter fifteen

KAY GLANCED at Joanne across the white-clothed dining table. The noises of the restaurant seemed distant. She sipped her Martini.

“Hope you didn’t mind having lunch with me like this?” she said.

Joanne looked up, met her gaze. The diamond hardness showed in the eyes; the smile was sweet and soft. “Why, no. Anyway, Clay thought I should come.”

Kay bit at her lip. “Oh? I thought this was going to be between us.”

“I tell Clay everything.”

“Do you?”

Joanne nodded. “Everything he wants to hear.” She picked up a roll, chipped caraway seeds off with her fingernail. “I’m happy with Clay. He’s happy with me. I don’t want anything to happen to it. I won’t let anyone destroy us.”

“I’m sure you won’t need any help,” Kay said.

Joanne drew a deep breath. “Look. We can call this off, right now.”

“I think you better hear what I have to say.”

Joanne’s voice lowered. She leaned forward slightly. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

Kay shrugged. “If you knew Clay Stuart nearly as well as you think you do, Joanne, you wouldn’t have to ask me that.”

“You may have meant something to Clay before. I’m sure you did. But I’m with him now. I’ll be with him — when none of the rest of you are.”

“A lot of people have thought that.” Kay made a placating gesture. “I’m not saying that as a warning of any kind. It’s simply a fact. Clay has desires. He has needs. There is a wide difference between them.”

“Why don’t you let me worry about that?”

“Because I’ve been doing it for thirty years, child. Ten years at least before you were born. It’s a habit with me. Please don’t underestimate me. Believe that I might have learned something about Clay Stuart in those years — that I might have met you — your kind — many times.”

“What do you know about my kind?”

“I knew all about you before I came to see you the first time. But because I sent you to Clay, don’t push it — ”

“Why do you think I agreed to go to him?”

“Because I paid you.”

“Don’t be foolish. I was getting along all right. I agreed because I wanted to meet Clay Stuart — because I’ve known all my life what I wanted… . And I took your money because you wouldn’t have accepted me if I hadn’t — you thought you knew one thing — the kind of girl Clay Stuart wanted. Well, you were right. You found her. Me. Now why don’t you butt out?”

“Because I won’t let you destroy him. It’s that simple.”

“I’m not trying to destroy him.”

“No. You don’t give a damn whether you do or not. You’re all wrapped up in you — your own immortal importance. That’s all you’re thinking about. You don’t give a damn what you do to him.”

Joanne shrugged, making an impatient gesture of it. “Go ahead. Tell him to get rid of me. See what it’ll get you. He’ll throw you out.”

Kay smiled. “I’m still with him, girl. After thirty years. Remember that.”

Joanne was completely confident. “Thirty years is a long time. You remember that.”

• • •

Three days after the luncheon with Kay, Joanne came running into the library where Clay was sprawled on the divan trying to wade through Man of the Desert.

He heard her running across the foyer, calling him. The exultance in her tone made him grin, feeling warm. He hurled the battered script aside, turned to swing to his feet. She landed on top of him, forcing him back on the couch.

She bubbled with laughter and lay on top of him, her hair tumbling down about his face, kissing his cheeks and his eyes and his throat and the top button of his shirt.

It was late afternoon. Joanne still wore the make-up from her screen test. There was the look of unreality about her that he’d lived with so long that he accepted as natural.

“I don’t think I’ll ever take it off,” she said. “The people in make-up wanted to take it off for me. I wouldn’t let them. I wanted you to see how I look as a movie star.”

“Did you enjoy it?”

She kissed his face hungrily, nodding. “It was so wonderful. Everybody was so nice to me. The gateman when I got there. He was expecting me. He smiled at me and said, ‘Hello, Miss Stark. Come right in, they’re waiting for you.’ He’d never seen me before — but he knew me.”

“It was the look on your face. That I’m-going-to-have-a-screen-test look.”

“Do I? Oh, but everybody was so lovely. They took me up to the make-up department. Looks like a hospital, doesn’t it? With a lot of little operating rooms — ”

“If you say so — ”

“Then they took me over to the sound stage where everything was set up, with a whole crew, just waiting for me, all of them trying to do the very best they could for me. I felt like a queen, only I can’t really tell you how wonderful I felt, because no matter how good I felt, the way they treated me made me feel that much better. And — Richard Creek was there himself. Imagine. The producer, Richard Creek. Why, he’s made some of the biggest pictures ever — ”

“Yep. He’s almost as important as I am.”

“Nobody’s as important as you are… . But since you wouldn’t go over there with me — I was glad he was there. So nice and so patient. He directed the scene himself. Richard Creek himself. It was like something I might have dreamed.”

She lay against him, exhausted. “I wish you had been there.”

“You did all right.”

“When will I know? Can I see the test? Will they call me or something?”

“Hell. We’ll call them. We’ll have them send a print of the test over here and we’ll run it every hour on the hour. Would you like that?”

“You think you’re kidding. It’s what I would like. I’m dying to know how I was. I’ve got to know.”

“Look. It doesn’t matter how you are in a test. Who cares? If you photograph well, if some of this excitement of your personality hits out from that screen, that’s all that matters. You can act like Barrymore, but if there’s something missing on that screen — ” he shrugged.

“I won’t be like that — flat, will I?”

“You don’t feel flat.”

She pressed her heated face against his. “You don’t know how important it is to me, Clay. I know you got it for me. I know. But this is the break I’ve needed. I’ve had a kind of inferiority, Clay, ever since I can remember. Never enough education, never enough money. I — why, I was working in a restaurant as a waitress when I was thirteen. I told them I was sixteen and I looked it and they didn’t care anyway.” She shivered and he felt tears splash hot on his cheek. “It was hell. I can’t remember anything good about it. That’s why I can’t ever go back — now — after all this — with you. Because I won’t go back. It was always men and trouble, and I hated it and I ran away and I can’t go back. Nothing that could happen to me now could be so terrible that I could ever want to go back there. Home? Where is it? What is it? I grew up hating it and I won’t go back. Nothing can ever make me go back to the way they treated me. They treated me like — ” She stopped talking, sniffling. “You know what I used to dream about — what I wanted more than anything else? I wanted people to look up to me, to know my name — to know I really am somebody.”

“It’s all right, Joanne.”

“No. Because I know. Inside. I know how much I belong here — in this house, in your arms. Or even that studio. They treated me like — oh God, like I’ve wanted to be treated all my life. But that’s it — it’s not going to last. I’m jinxed. Nothing good in my life has ever lasted. The next time I go there, they won’t let me in the gate. They’ll laugh at me and tell me to go back to the drive-ins and guys who want a date with every two-bit tip.”

“You’re just tired.”

“No, you can say that because you don’t know what it’s like — you’ve had everything all your life. You take all this for granted. You never had people treat you the way they’ve treated me.”

He closed his arms about her, pulling her nearer. “Don’t be abstruse. I grew up on a Nebraska farm. I worked my way through college — ”

“College? What’s that?” Her voice was bitter.

“It’s a place where you wait on tables in frat houses, work during the afternoons when there are football games. No dates because you can’t afford ‘em. You see guys with loot getting all the girls worth having.”

“There are worse things than not dating some guys.”

“Why don’t you forget it? Why don’t you rest?”

“Rest? How can I rest? I’m too scared to rest. I may not be any good — I may be flat — and all this will be gone. I can’t stand it if I lose it now, Clay. I can’t go back to what I was. I can’t. I feel like I’d kill myself before I’d do that.”

“Means that much, huh?”

“It means everything. Everything. There just isn’t anything else.”

She pushed her face into the hollow of his shoulder, holding him tightly, her body wracked with sobs. He moved his hands tenderly along her back, caressing her. He whispered to her.

Her voice rasped, wild and bitter. “Why can’t they let me know right now? Why do I have to wait?”

He kept whispering to her gently. The sky darkened and the darkness rolled through the windows and across the floor, touching at them. He listened to her wild sobbing and didn’t know the words to comfort her.

He didn’t have the right words for her any more, and all the time she was weeping he could not escape the sense that he should be the one in tears.

chapter sixteen

MARC SHATNER stepped off the train in Cragshead, Illinois.

He wanted to hold his nose. A factory town compounded of mud and oil and soot, it was even uglier than he’d imagined it could be. On the plane east to Chicago and then on the train, he had tried to think ahead to what the town would have to be like.

He walked along the depot landing telling himself, this is the place. This is the town where she was born. It has to be. The kind of slime-and-soot jungle they claw their way out of from the day they’re born.

He remembered the way Joanne Stark had looked the last day he saw her in Hollywood. It didn’t matter to him what her face was, or her body; he had stared into her eyes until she jerked her head, turning away from him.

She never intended letting anyone peer too deeply.

His mouth twisted. All the beauty creams on earth can’t hide what’s in them; they bring those memories with them all the days of their life. It is a spur and a whip and it’s never out of their minds any more than it’s out of the backs of their eyes. You just have to look into their eyes and you see the town like this where they were born, and the salesmen who taught them about the quick trick, the laugh and the gasp in the backroom, coming out brushing down the wrinkles from their skirts. The old man who was a boozer or a tramp, or both.

He motioned to a cab, warning himself that he would keep it just. He was going to be fair in this thing as long as he could. He asked the driver the address of the best hotel in town and then ordered himself driven there.

• • •

He started digging that night. She had worked as a waitress in the Fried Egg on Main. The owner-cook was a dark man with hair standing from his temples like bristles in a toothbrush.

“Joanne Stark? You’re asking do I remember her? Listen, mister, you ask her if she remembers about the meat block in the kitchen of this place.” He laughed, leaning across the counter.

“I sure will,” Shatner said.

“You let me tell you. She was a gorgeous trick, nobody can’t take that away from the Stark kid. And a hard worker. Listen, there were five or six kids in her family. She worked hard. It was just that you couldn’t look at that body and keep your cottonpicking hands off her. You know? You’ve seen that kind of doll.”

“All the time.”

“Well, first time I tried to put her up on that meat block, she raised hell. But she came around. First, she tried to stall me off. Talked about how she couldn’t do anything like that.”

“How old was she at the time, you know?”

The café owner laughed. “She was jail bait, I admit that. But she had worked a couple other places before she came here. Just the same, I recall I almost fell for that story how pure she was. Then a salesman dropped in here one night. When he saw Joanne, I thought he was going to turn purple. He told me about it. Seems that on her days-off, when we let her go from this place, she and another waitress a couple years older were driving fifty miles over to Andrewsville and picking up guys in bars — you know — for money. And here in town? Playing it cagey and virgin-pure. Man it hit me hard, right here.”

“Yeah. I know what you mean.”

“Then when I told her what I knew, she and I used that old meat block pretty regular. She made me swear I wouldn’t tell anybody in this town — and I never told nobody, either. She was 93-score, top grade; and I was willing to keep my mouth shut for it.”

“Why did she leave?”

He laughed, a rueful sound. “Listen, mister. You ever hear of setting a trap and gettin’ caught in it yourself?”

“I’ve heard.”

“It happened to me. I had to give her six months pay and let her go. First, I had the upper hand. Or she let me think I did. Oh, I had the facts on her. But the first time I got her on that meat block, it all changed. She had me pushed in a corner. She was underage, she threatened to tell my wife. Man, you don’t know my wife. That Stark had me where she wanted me. I had to double her salary. Give her extra time off. Gifts.”

Clane Trevor worked a five-piece band in a road spot just outside town. He had given Joanne a job.

“She couldn’t sing. Couldn’t carry a tune. She couldn’t dance. I mean specialty stuff. But I got a lot of jobs playing for smokers. Stag stuff. You know. She was good for that. Nobody had to tell her she had a body a man could go nuts over. Hell, it was as if she got a large charge seeing the rubes go bulb-eyed over that body of hers.”

“What happened?”

“We played up the line for a meeting of some movie exhibitors. One of them told Joanne he was going to a convention in L.A. He promised to take her along, see she met the right people. Man, she walked out on me. Man, she didn’t even bother to say goodbye.”

• • •

There didn’t seem much sense in tracing the rest of it But Shatner did. The house where she was born. The fights between her old man and old woman. A house without love, but a new kid every year or so. She quit school in the ninth grade. Her grades were good, but she excelled in nothing. She played hooky a lot. The teachers remembered the boys were crazy about her. The school authorities had caught her in a dozen lies. Shatner walked the streets she had walked, talked to the people who had grown up with her. All of them remembered one thing. There had been only one desire in Joanne Stark’s life. She wanted out of Cragshead and she didn’t care how she made it, or what it cost her.

You couldn’t believe much else she said, but you could believe that.

The third day after his arrival in Cragshead. Shatner knew more about Joanne than he’d ever known about his own mother. He sat in a train compartment typing steadily all the way to Chicago. He spent four hours more in a Loop hotel finishing the draft, typing and smoking and keeping the dossier as impersonal and dispassionate as he could make it.

He caught the six P.M. direct jet flight at O’Hare.

• • •

Shatner walked into the library. Stuart was sprawled on the divan reading the last quarter of Man of the Desert.

Clay looked up at him. “Where you been?”

“Out of town for a few days. You read that thing yet?”

“Can’t seem to keep my mind on it.”

Shatner unzipped his briefcase, removed the stapled papers he had typed. He tossed the flat sheaf into Stuart’s lap.

“Here’s something for you.”

After a moment Stuart picked up the packet of paper. He glanced at it, thumbing back the pages. He shook it closed again.

“Is that where you’ve been?”

“That’s right. Cragshead, Illinois.”

“Why?”

“You know why, Clay. Hoff, Ringling and I. We love you. We’re pretty sure you mean to marry Stark.”

“And this is your wedding gift?”

Shatner winced. “I didn’t enjoy doing it, Clay.”

“Does that take care of your conscience?”

“I’ve no conscience when it means doing something for you. We’ve been friends a long time. I never did you dirty. Not once. There were plenty of opportunities. Many times you wouldn’t even have known. Marry her if you must … but I want you to have that.”

“Am I supposed to thank you?”

“No. I’d like you to read it.”

“Why? Couldn’t I just ask Joanne?”

Shatner shrugged. “She has a long record of lying, Clay. She would lie about most of this stuff anyhow. Any woman would.”

“Then why should I read it?”

Shatner shrugged. “Read it.”

Stuart tossed it on the floor beside the blue script.

Shatner said, “Aren’t you going to read it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe later.”

“Read it now. You need it.”

“Why?”

“Hit me, Clay. Slap my teeth out. But I tell you that when you read about her in this report, you can start getting well, you can start getting her off your mind.”

“Must be pretty potent stuff.”

“You can believe it. It’s gospel.”

“Oh, I know that. You’re always very fair. You deal in facts.”

“When I have to.”

Stuart got up, walked to the French doors. He stood there breathing deeply, as though he could not get enough fresh air.

“It’s not malice, Clay,” Shatner said from behind him.

Stuart did not turn. He lifted his shoulders, let them sag.

“She’s been using you, Clay. The screen test. She would never have gotten one without you.”

Stuart nodded. “She’s made me very happy, Marc. Shouldn’t she get some return for what she’s done for me? Should I better repay her by reading that — dirt.”

“That dirt is the truth.”

“All right. She used me. She made me happy. It checks as far as I’m concerned. It would make us quits — without that.” He gestured toward the typed report.

“Quits?”

“Yes. You’ve been out of town too long, Marc. You’ve lost touch with everything. You could have saved your shoe leather.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Look around. You see Joanne?”

“What happened, Clay? What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. I just got news for you. Warners hired Joanne to play the lead in a fifteen-day western they’re shooting. It’s a low budget picture, but she’s giving it everything she’s got.”

Shatner’s voice was taut. He could hardly speak. “And she walked out on you?”

Still Stuart did not turn. “I told you. She’s busy. Always rushed. Always in a hurry. You know how it is when you’re shooting a picture — a tight schedule.”

“Sure,” Shatner said. His voice sounded hollow in his own ears. He walked to the small bar, poured himself half a glass of straight bourbon, dropped in an ice cube.

“She’s — very grateful,” he heard Stuart say from across the room. “It’s just that she’s too busy.”

Shatner downed the bourbon in one long gulp. His mouth burned and he held it wide open, breathing outward.

“Listen to me, Clay,” he said. “Listen to me. Some rainy afternoon you want to get some idea of just how lucky you are to be rid of her, you get out this paper on her — and you read it. You got no idea how lucky you are.”

“God knows,” Stuart said. “I’m lucky. I stink with luck.”

chapter seventeen

AT BREAKFAST the next morning Stuart read in the Hollywood Reporter that Warners was ready to go into production with a super-western, Man of the Desert. Richard Creek was to produce and direct from a script which had been written and doctored by three top men. There was no mention of actors.

Clay pushed away his plate of unfinished eggs, dropped the paper on the table.

He got up and went out on the terrace, feeling a chill in the morning smog. He wished they would start production on Man of the Desert. He wished he never had to hear of it again. He’d feel as if bonds had been released from him if they went into production without him, if they quit thinking about him, if he could quit thinking about them.

He prowled the terrace, walked down to the hedge that marked the line of his property, hurled a rock out into the canyon.

He stood there with his hands in his pockets and asked himself why he had fallen so hard for this girl. Who was she? What was she? The answers were in the report Shatner had compiled. He had not read it, didn’t intend to read it — self-flagellation never appealed to him; at least it hadn’t until he met Joanne — but he didn’t need to read it. The answers were in Shatner’s face, too. Shatner wasn’t happy about what he had done.

Why had he wanted her in the first place? He could answer that one, all right. He’d come to the place in his life when she was the one woman who could blast him loose from all he had been — trust Kay Ringling to unerringly choose the exact woman he would fall for. He remembered the exciting timbre of Joanne’s voice over the telephone that first time she’d called. She’d laid it on thick, acting on Kay Ringling’s orders to get herself invited up to see him. Joanne was all the exciting women he’d wanted in the past twenty-five years and had never had, had even denied wanting. In his grief at Ruth’s death, and his loss, he’d been vulnerable and — why try to explain it? There was no explanation, any more than there was any explanation why he still wanted her when she no longer wanted him. He’d known all along that besides being lovely, she’d been elusive, so you never wholly possessed her, no matter how closely you held her. She was excitement. She was torment. God have mercy, he had to get her out of his mind.

His laugh was bitter and sharp. God have mercy. The three most useless words in the English language — God have mercy. If there were a God his intentions were incomprehensible, and if there was any mercy in those intentions, it was no more than coincidental. The universe, the sun and even the tides were part of some cosmic plan, but it had nothing to do with personal inconveniences.

He walked slowly back up the incline. Get something to do and get her off your mind. He could hear Hoff say this. He had a career, he had the kind of life millions of people thought they wanted. Face it, he was the loneliest character he knew.

When he reached the terrace he saw them waiting for him.

He felt a quick rush of anger. They stood on the flagstones watching him. He had no idea how long they had been there. He could not remember whether he had talked to himself or not, whether he’d cried out, or cursed or moaned. He felt he might have done all these things.

They had no right to stand and stare at him.

He saw Dick Creek was with the three of them.

Creek came forward, a slender, dark man in his early forties. He was handsome enough to be an actor. He had been a drama instructor in some college. His manner was always gentle and self-effacing. He never raised his voice. Until you knew him better — until you knew he had an ulcer like everybody else — you wondered how a quiet man like Creek existed in this business. The thing about Dick Creek was that once he made up his mind about something, he never stopped, never gave an inch, and never raised his voice; the loud ones didn’t know how to shout him down; they grew tired shouting; they became frustrated; some of them even disappeared, confused and in shock, and Dick Creek remained.

Shatner, Hoff and Kay Ringling nodded at Clay, smiling uncertainly at the anger they recognized in his eyes.

Dick Creek smiled and offered his hand.

“Clay. I’ve been looking forward to talking to you.”

“Thanks, Dick.”

“Well — they tell me you’ve read it.”

“Man of the Desert?”

Creek laughed. “What else? You mean there’s another property? You have read it?”

“Most of it.”

“Most of it? Three months and you haven’t read it all, baby? I hope you never try to read Gone With the Wind.”

“I never will.”

“You truly don’t like reading, do you, Clay?”

“Who told you that?”

Creek flushed. “Lord, I assumed it. Three months and you haven’t waded through three hundred pages … But you know most of what the story is about?”

“I think so.”

“Why don’t we all go in the library and bounce it around between us,” Creek suggested. “There must be some things you don’t like. If I could find out what they are, we could get them ironed out in the next few days.”

Clay opened his mouth to protest but Kay spoke quickly. “Yes. Why don’t we go inside?”

They sat around in the library, watching him covertly. Clay sweated. He felt as though he were a hospitalized patient with an incurable malady and these sad faces hovered over him, watching for his last breath.

Creek began to talk and it was as if Clay heard his voice only from a distance. Creek understood the character of Pinto better than the original author of Man of the Desert ever could. The author had created him, but Creek had bisected him.

Stuart closed his eyes, hearing Creek’s talking, wishing he could put his mind to what the brilliant producer was saying. But Creek spoke too softly. It seemed to Clay he could hear Joanne’s voice imposed over Dick’s: I’m really grateful, Clay. Really grateful, darling. Why, you know I want to see you … Clay, I can’t see anybody … not right now … This is too important … It may be just a role in a quick picture … it’s the most important thing ever happened to me … I can’t fail, Clay. I couldn’t stand to fail. I couldn’t go on living if I failed this chance. I’ve almost got what I want. You can’t be selfish, Clay. You’ve got to give me this chance … Darling, you’ve so much to do. You have the new picture. You could work on it. Why don’t you work on it, Clay? Why don’t you think about your picture? … I’m grateful. You’ll never know how grateful I am.

“Ahhhh.” The word broke across Clay’s mouth.

Dick Creek stopped talking. Kay leaned forward in her chair. Shatner frowned. Hoff pushed back deeper, sensing trouble and wishing himself blocks away from it.

“What’s the matter, Clay?” Creek said.

Clay got up, shaking his head. He strode across the library and went out on the flagstones of the terrace. He felt the bile and the ugliness boiling up through his throat. He clapped his hand over his mouth and barely made it to a secluded place behind a bush.

When he returned to the terrace, walking slowly, they were standing there waiting for him.

He wiped at his face with his handkerchief. He felt dizzy. He wanted to sit down.

Kay ran to him. “Darling. What is it? Is there anything we can do?”

“Yes.” His voice was agonized. “Get out, will you? Kay, get ‘em out of here. If you ever gave a damn about me, get ‘em out of here.”

• • •

Clay was sprawled across his bed, unable to sleep, unable to get up and do anything. It was late afternoon and he had been lying across the bed since morning.

He heard a scratching at the hall door; someone cleared his throat.

He did not turn. He said, “Come in, Hoff. What you want?”

Hoff padded across the room, sat down on the bed beside him. “I should want something? I don’t want something, Clay. You are on my mind … The others — they are smart enough to stay away when you tell them. I’m not that smart, Clay. I’m sorry. I worry. I’m afraid maybe you need me.”

“I’m all right.”

“If I ever encounter a man that is not all right, Clay, you are this man. You have done what I cannot believe you would ever do. This girl, this Stark, she must have something I do not see to do this to you. I try to tell myself. He is in grief and loss. He is — there’s a word — vulnerable. He is vulnerable. He would fall for Zasu Pitts the way he feels. But this does not cover it.”

“No.”

“For a while there, you looked happy, and I felt good because I could see you putting your grief out of your mind and getting back to work. For this I am grateful to the Stark girl. But now — she walks out — and you are back where you were after Ruth’s funeral. Worse.”

“You’re right. I should have better sense than act this way.”

“Better sense? So what’s better sense got to do with it? That is Ringling and Shatner talking. They try to think how they might offer her enough money to take herself to New York, or Paris. I don’t agree with this … She has become a part of you — ”

Clay sat up. He looked at Hoff’s troubled face and nodded. “Yes. You said the truth. Have you been confabbing with your psychiatrist again?”

Hoff said simply, “I examined my own heart and found this.”

“You’ve a big heart under all those layers of fat,” Clay said. He touched Hoff on the shoulder. “She has become a part of me. I think I could live better without an arm. I’m sure I could. I don’t know … This morning it got worse. I sat down there, and I saw you four people, all talking about things that had nothing to do with her — as though she didn’t exist — all of you pretending she didn’t exist, and trying to force me to pretend with you that she didn’t exist. And all the time she was part of me.”

“There’s got to be something you can do.”

“No. There’s nothing I can do. I tried to give her everything she wanted. I gave her that screen test. It was what she wanted, all right. She hasn’t had time for me since. And she’s right, of course. She’s young. She’s got her whole life. There’s no answer, Marty, for me — except time. They’ve got to give me time to get over it.”

Hoff nodded. “You want I should tell them, Clay? I’ll tell Creek. Something he said today. After we left here. They can get Wayne.”

“Oh God. Please. Tell them.”

“You should get away, Clay. This I believe. Perhaps New York. Maybe South America for a while. You’ll come back feeling better than ever.”

For a moment Clay considered this. He tried to imagine how it would be, confined four or five days to the deck of a ship surrounded by water, unable to get off of it, caught there whether he wanted to be or not, removed from Joanne by time and space.

Maybe if he got Sharon to go with him he could endure it. He had asked her once, before he had known about the man she loved back East. He would beg her this time. She had to see how much he needed her. It might save both of them … and then he thought, what if Sharon feels about this Darrow the way I do about Joanne? But she couldn’t. Could she? She was just a child. If she did, God help them both.

He shivered. He shook his head. “I don’t want to go away, Hoff.”

Marty Hoff nodded. “It’s what you want to do, Clay … I am a man humbled by the things he learns every day … I felt I could force my family to live my way, in the place I wished. And I found I could, but I found it did something to them that was not worth it to me. I am a humbled man. And because of the new things I have learned about you — and my family — I am a humbled man who believes less and less in imposing his will on others for their own good.”

Clay said, “I guess the trouble with me is that where I came from, a man found a woman he loved, and she cared for him, that was it. Life was so goddamn simple out in that farm country. Or it seems that way to me now. Homes and family ties were strong things. They meant something. They were a big part of a man’s life. Changes were gradual, slow. Sometimes you’d even get to thinking things never changed at all. I reckon that’s in my blood. I’ve tried to change, tried to become what you have to be to exist out here. But it hasn’t worked. I’ve never learned to accept quick changes gracefully.”

“You think you would have been a happier man on the farm, Clay?”

Stuart shook his head. “Who am I kidding? I wanted to get away. I couldn’t get away fast enough. I’ve had everything handed to me all these years. No. I reckon I’ve done what I wanted to do. But that doesn’t make it any easier to let her go.”

“No. It’s not easy. It is never easy.”

Clay clenched his fists. “It’s not possible! Damn it, it isn’t possible. There’s no damn sense to it. Why should she walk out on me?”

Hoff lifted his hand. “You shouldn’t hate me, Clay. But she’s been walking out on people — in some one way or another — all her life. She’s a girl running, Clay. This you got to see. You got to see. She can no more help being what she is than you can.”

Clay got up, paced the room. “But damn it. Goddamn it, we are happy. She’s happy when she’s here. In this room, in this house, she’s happy. I know she is. It’s something you feel. It’s not a thing you can pretend.”

“She was happy here. Accept that, Clay. She was as happy here — as she could be anywhere. She is afraid — not of being happy, Clay, but of standing still. She’s afraid of going back — this you can see in her eyes. She’s got to run. Run fast or she’s afraid she will go back — where she truly believes that she belongs.”

“But my God, that’s crazy. I’ve told her. She’s nothing to be afraid of. I’m not going to let anything happen to hurt her.”

Hoff nodded. “I think maybe she has heard this from other men, Clay. Many times. You should forgive me. Perhaps she believes you. She knows you mean what you say. Right now … But tomorrow? She’s believed too many men, Clay — and waked up tomorrow to find out what they meant yesterday — was meant for yesterday.”

“She knows me better than that!”

“Does she? None of us know anything. We know only just what has happened to us, each of us, to make us what we are. We trust each other only as far as we have learned to trust other people in our past. This is a simple truth, Clay. You burn a puppy’s paw often enough, soon he won’t mistrust just you, but he’ll mistrust every man and every fire.”

Clay strode back and forth in the room. “But not me. I haven’t hurt her. Not intentionally. We are happy when we’re together. God knows she makes me feel young — ten years, fifteen years younger. I feel alive with how young I am every minute I’m with her. And — yes, damn it, I’m good with her, too. In bed. As good as I ever was with any other woman — at any time in my life. Age has nothing to do with it. I never wanted anybody the way I want her.”

Hoff smiled and nodded. “I believe you, Clay. I believe you, even when the chemistry of my own body says you’re lying. I must accept that the chemistry of my body is my own — and while you might lie to me about your prowess, you wouldn’t lie to yourself, there would be no point in it.”

“I’m not lying,” Clay said levelly.

Hoff said, “No. You’re not lying. This makes it very sad. Perhaps you are better than anyone she has ever known — but it does not matter … not to her … Perhaps it is in herself where the lack is, Clay. She — you should forgive me — she has traded on her emotions — she mistrusts their value, maybe they don’t even have any value to her any more. This happens. It is a very sad thing.”

chapter eighteen

CLAY PROWLED through the house. He glanced at a library clock. It was nine o’clock. Darkness glazed the windows. These days and nights without Joanne had been hell and there had to be an end to them. He told himself he was proud because he had left her alone, he had held off, but pride is a sweated lonely thing.

He went to the telephone, dialed her number. He stood with the receiver pressed against his ear, listening to the ringing across the city from him. He heard Flo say, “Hello.”

He replaced the receiver. He could not parade his agony and need before Flo, not any more. He sat there for a long time, then he got up and walked out to the drive, got into his car. He would drive over there to her apartment. Hell, she wouldn’t mind talking to him, would she, just for a few minutes?

He drove two blocks past the Spanish-type apartment building. He did not look toward it. He was afraid of what he might see.

He drove two blocks down the hill and parked in the darkness. He got out of the car and walked slowly up the incline. He stood for a long time in the shadows across the street staring up at the third floor. God, can this be me? Is this really Clay Stuart, standing out here in the dark, staring up at a lighted window?

Determinedly, he crossed the shadowed street, entered the building. He went up the elevator. He got out and walked slowly along the corridor. He heard music blaring from the apartment where she lived.

He stood some minutes before he pressed the buzzer. If she were in there, he would see her. It had gotten so bad just seeing her would help.

He pressed the buzzer and then took an involuntary step backwards. The music continued to wail at him, blasting through the closed door as though it were paper-thin. He wanted to press the buzzer again, but did not. He turned and walked away.

The door opened.

Clay spun around, looking for her, wanting to see her face. It was Flo.

“Well, hello there. Hello, doll. We haven’t seen you in a long time.” Flo batted at her butchered hair with her fingertips and missed. She smiled wanly. She was drunk. Perhaps she was always drunk.

“Come on in,” she cried, leaning against the doorjamb.

“I reckon not,” he said. He looked over her head into the apartment. “Joanne. Is Joanne home?”

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry. She’s not. She’s going to hate missing you. It’s just going to make her sick.”

Sure, he thought, she’ll cry herself to sleep. She’ll dampen some guy’s pajama sleeve, crying herself to sleep.

He nodded at Flo and walked away toward the elevator. He hadn’t thought Joanne would be home. It was better this way. The longer he did not see her, the sooner he would get over her. Get well, that was the way Shatner said it. He could not imagine anything more desirable than being free of this hellish need for her.

Flo leaned against the doorjamb, smile fixed on her face. She did not move until he stepped into the elevator. Perhaps she could not move. Maybe she was paralyzed there.

He walked back into the street and strode down the hill. He would get out of here. He would find a bar somewhere and get drunk enough so he didn’t even remember her name, so he didn’t even remember his own name.

His steps slowed. Where was she? Where in God’s name was she? Why did she have to lie to him? Why did she say she was too tired to see him and then go out with some other guy? What was the point? Was she simply afraid to tell the truth any time, about anything?

He felt rage gorge up through the empty longing in his stomach. He was tied in knots. He doubled his hands into sweated fists.

He slumped behind the wheel of his car and sat there a long time. Why do I care? Why in the name of God do I give a damn what she does?

It didn’t help to curse himself, or to question himself. There was a simple explanation for all this. He loved her and he could not stand the thought of losing her. It didn’t matter what a liar she was, what she had done to him. He did not see how he could go home until he had seen her again. It would be all right if he could just talk to her.

He started the engine, turned the car and drove up the hill. He parked across the street from her apartment. He sat there gripping the steering wheel. He told himself to go get a couple of drinks and forget it. He couldn’t forget it and he couldn’t keep a drink on his stomach. He was going to stay right there where he was, not because he wanted to, but because he couldn’t help himself.

He had to see her.

He waited. Time moved slowly, painfully slowly. He sank back against the seat rest but could not relax. His eyes burned but he did not close them. He checked his dash clock. Twelve. One. Two.

The street grew quiet and still. A police cruiser rolled slowly past, going downhill. The lights raked across Clay’s windshield. Clay slumped into the shadows, holding his breath.

The cruiser did not stop. Clay exhaled.

He watched car lights rim-light the crest of the hill. His stomach muscles tightened. Instinctively, he knew. She was in this car. It rolled over the hilltop and moved down the narrow street toward him. It pulled into the curb directly in front of her apartment building, its rear fins and bumpers jutting out into the street.

They sat there a long time. Clay felt the tightness in his chest. It was difficult to breathe. At last they got out. Joanne was laughing. She slapped at her skirts, straightening them.

The man walked with her to the foyer door. They kissed under the light. Clay got out of his car, crossed the street, staying in the shadows. The man came out of the forecourt, got into his car, reversed and roared away. Clay hurried, hoping to catch her before she got into the elevator.

She was in the foyer. He called her name.

She turned, frowning. When he walked through the door, she smiled at him.

“Well,” she said. “What in the world are you doing around here?”

“I was waiting for you, Joanne. I wanted to see you.”

“I’m glad you did.”

“I came by. Early. I missed you.”

“I’m so sorry, Clay. That was Jeff. Jeff Gordon. You know him. He’s directing my picture. There were some things he wanted to go over with me. I couldn’t say no — could I?”

“No. It’s all right. Will you — come out and sit in the car with me — a few minutes? It’s been — quite a time since I’ve seen you.”

“Is your car out there, Clay? I didn’t see it.”

“I know.”

“Clay, don’t be angry.”

“Let’s don’t stand here like this, Joanne. Please, let’s go out to the car.”

“Clay. My goodness. It’s so late. I’ve an eight o’clock call in the morning.”

“Have you?”

“It’s all going so well, Clay. Jeff is very pleased. He says this is just the beginning.”

“I’m glad.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy, Clay. I don’t think people have ever treated me so beautifully.”

“I’ve missed you, Joanne.”

“Have you, darling? I’ve missed you. Have you started your new picture yet?”

“No. Not yet.”

“You ought to, darling.”

“I guess I don’t get the same charge working in a picture that you do.”

“Oh, it’s so exciting. Seems we spend most of our time though just sitting around waiting.”

“Joanne. Please. Come with me. Just for a little while.”

“Clay, you know I can’t. Don’t be selfish, darling. I’ve got to get some sleep. I’m dead for sleep.”

“Joanne. I love you. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

“I love you, darling. But I’m tired.”

“Joanne, you can’t treat me like this.”

“Darling, how am I treating you? I’m not doing anything to you. Why, you’re doing it to yourself. You’re only hurting yourself … I’ve got to work. I can’t help being what I am. I can’t help wanting the things I want … You can’t stand in my way.”

He drew the back of his hand across his mouth, staring at her, unable to believe she’d said those words. She laughed nervously. “Oh. darling,” she said. “We’re just both tired. We’re saying things we don’t mean … please. I’ll call you.”

“Will you?”

“Tomorrow, Clay. The minute I leave the set. I swear I will.”

He nodded, backing to the door. He felt as though he had been slugged, kicked in the groin. For the moment he was almost glad to escape her. He couldn’t take any more. Not right now.

“All right, Joanne,” he said. “Sure.”

• • •

By six-thirty the next afternoon, he admitted aloud to himself what he’d known all day. She wasn’t going to call. She’d said she would? Sure. She’d have promised him a left arm to get rid of him last night. What had happened to him that he would want to be near anyone who wanted him so little?

He prowled the house, unable to sit still. He denied he was still waiting for that phone to ring. Damn her, she wasn’t going to call. She had never intended calling. They had both known that when she said it. Probably she was out right now with one of them.

If he wanted to see her there was one thing he could do. This was clear. He could get over there, knock on her door until she answered, drag her out before she could leave the place with some date. It was a damned fool thing to do, but it was the only thing left to do. He couldn’t sit around here, bitter and futile and empty with rage.

Anyhow, he would be moving. He could stand it as long as he was moving. He dressed hurriedly, hands shaking. He went down the steps, face set, and fists clenched.

He met Marc Shatner coming in the front door.

“No,” Clay said. “I’m going out.”

“Clay. I want to talk to you. For just a few minutes.”

“All right. A very few.”

He strode into the sunroom. The shadows had lengthened in here, there was a haze over everything. He did not snap on the light. He did not think he could stand the glare of light against his eyes. He waited for Shatner to protest, but Shatner did not mention the lights. For this he was thankful.

Clay sat on the piano bench. He glared at Marc. He said, “Keep it brief.”

“Afraid it’s nothing we can keep brief, Clay. I was talking to Hoff. We’re worried about you. You got a problem. All right. We’re both willing to admit that. But, I think you got to see it this way, Clay. With you, it’s like a sickness. Like alcoholism is sickness. You got to go through the withdrawal. It’s not going to be easy. But for yourself. For your own good. You got to make the effort. You got to get her out of your mind.”

Stuart nodded. “What do you want me to say?”

“Hell, that you’ll try.”

“I’ll try.”

Shatner paced the room. “Not for me. Not for any of us, Clay. Hell, for you.”

Stuart tried to smile. “I know you’re right, Marc. You understand? I know I’ve got to get rid of her and I know I’ve got to get her out of my mind … And somehow, I’m going to do it. It’ll take time.”

“Why, Clay? Tell yourself the cold truth. She’s a tramp. You’ve got to face this sooner or later.”

“You don’t know much, Marc, if you think that matters.”

“All right. Make an effort then. I sound like Hoff. But I say this. Get back to work.”

“Making a picture?”

“You do some other kind of work?”

“I couldn’t keep my mind on making a picture.”

“You don’t have to. Believe me. If you’ll just let us handle it. I’ll stay up here with you. I’ll be around if you want to talk. I’ll keep you busy. You okay the script on Man of the Desert. We’ll let Creek get started on it. We can run down to Palm Springs until time to set your wardrobe.”

Stuart shook his head. “I can’t.”

“Why can’t you? Maybe I’m dense. But the way to get well from this kind of sickness is to put it out of your mind, get around people who’ll talk to you whether you want to talk or not. Keep her off your mind. That’s what you’ve got to do. Start to work.”

“No.”

For a moment Shatner paced. “You going to sit around here and stare at your navel for the next six months?”

“I might. I don’t know.”

“For God’s sake, Clay. You’ve got to make an effort.”

“But that’s what I’m trying to explain to you. I can’t help myself. I know better than to do the things I do, but I do them. If you’ve never felt like this, I can’t explain it to you. I can envy you but I can’t make you see how it is.”

Marc Shatner’s nostrils flared. “Try.”

Clay got up and walked to the window, watching it grow dark in the valley. “All right,” he said after a long time. “I don’t know how good this will be. But here goes. Right now, Marc, as of this moment, today, I’m existing, that’s all — sort of living in a vacuum.”

“I know that. I’m trying to get you out of it.”

“But I don’t want to get out of it like that. Can’t I make you see that? It would hurt too bad. It would take too much effort and hurt too goddamn much.”

“You enjoy moping around like this?”

Clay shrugged. “It’s all I can do. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I can live one day at a time, that’s all. I can get up in the morning and shave and eat breakfast and tell myself I’m not going to see her today, then resign myself to that, to getting through this one day. I can eat lunch and maybe sleep all afternoon — anything to pass the time, get through this one day. I like to sleep. If I can get to sleep, I’ve got it made. Almost another whole day shot to hell. Well, this I can do. Oh, I never have to see her again. I can get along fine. I can get through one day. But that’s it, Marc. One day at a time. That’s all. That’s the best I can do.”

Shatner exhaled. He stared at Clay. “All right. Then that will have to do. That’s fine. Put Man of the Desert into some of the hours of these days. It will help.”

“No. That’s where you’re wrong.” Clay’s face was gray and lined with the agony. “That would ruin everything. Can’t you understand? I cannot plan ahead. Not a day or a week. I’m sorry, but that would tear it all down. I can’t start on anything that stretches out ahead of me into the future because that would mean I would have to look ahead further than one day. One day. That would mean I’ve got to admit to myself there are days and weeks and months ahead of me when I’m not going to see her again. And I can’t do that, Marc. I can’t do it. As long as I don’t have to look ahead more than one day, I’m all right. But if I started something that meant I had to look ahead into the weeks ahead without her, I couldn’t stand it. I swear. I think I’d cut my throat.”

“You’re talking wild.”

“Sure I am. I haven’t got the guts to cut my throat. But if I had, I’d do it. But that also means I haven’t got the guts to face the rest of my life without her, too. No. The only way I can exist at all is to cut it sharp, keep it down to one day at a time … I’m sorry.”

“It don’t make sense.”

“I told you I couldn’t make you see how it was.”

“I don’t believe anybody in God’s world would understand it.”

“All right. I’m not trying to explain it to anybody. I’m just telling you how it is with me. How it is whether I want it to be or not. One day at a time. One hour at a time. That’s all I can do. That’s all I will do.”

chapter nineteen

SHATNER WALKED along the third-floor corridor, nostrils distended. He glanced around, mouth pulled with the contempt he felt and then pressed on the buzzer. After a moment Flo opened the door.

They looked each other over. Shatner said, “Is Stark here?”

“Joanne?”

“Yeah. Tell her Marc Shatner would like to talk to her.”

“I think she’s getting dressed. She’s going out on a date.”

“Sure she is. You tell her anyhow.” Shatner pushed the door out of Flo’s hand and entered the apartment. He went through the small kitchenette to the front room where a record-player blared. He snapped off the music, tossed his hat on a table.

He sat down in an easy chair and looked the place over.

After a moment, Joanne came from the bedroom. She wore a wilted bathrobe. She looked as if she’d just stepped from a shower. She did not smile. “Imagine meeting you here,” she said.

He gave the room a glance. “Yeah.”

“Did — Clay send you?”

“Why would he do a thing like that?”

“Well … you never liked me. I can’t imagine you coming here because you wanted to.”

“That’s where you could be wrong. I never liked you. I still don’t like you. I still don’t see what it is you’ve got. But you’re wrong. I came because I wanted to.”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me. I’m dressing for a date.”

“Anyone you know?”

Her head tilted. “Smart cracks won’t get you anything, either.”

“I don’t want anything.”

“Then excuse me. I’ve got to get dressed.”

But she did not turn away. He held his gaze on hers. “I want to know what you want,” he said.

“I want this job I’ve got. I want others like it.”

He shrugged. “All right. I’ll buy that. But why couldn’t you stay with Clay — and still keep this job? Looks to me like a big star could help you in a lot of ways.”

She did not speak. A muscle pulled in her cheek near her nostrils.

Shatner laughed. “Or has he already helped you? You think what he did was all he could do?”

Still she did not say anything.

He exhaled. “Or do you think you got all you could from him — and now he’d be in your way?”

The muscle twitched again. Her voice was flat. “There’s no sense getting things all snarled up,” she said.

“Oh? You’re on your way, is that it? You’re moving fast. Onward and upward. Can’t be bothered with anything that might slow you down?”

“What does that mean?”

“It doesn’t mean anything. It just means that you might be short-sighted, walking out on him. He could smooth a lot of rough spots.”

“You didn’t talk this way a few weeks ago,” she said. He shrugged and she laughed, pleased. “Now you want me to go back to him?”

“I think you could do yourself some good.”

“And I don’t. He’s not really interested in a career for me. Sure, he got it for me, just like he’d have bought me a mink coat if I asked him to. What he wants is for me to stay around there — as long as he wants me. And when he doesn’t want me any more — what?”

“You’ve got it all figured, haven’t you?”

Her eyes narrowed. “That’s right. I’m looking out for me. Nobody else will. Nobody else gives a damn. I trust myself and that’s all I trust. I know what I want. I know plenty of people now who can help me get it. This is what I want. This is what I’m going to keep. This is the only thing I’ve ever wanted in all my life.”

• • •

Shatner parked his car and went along the street to a bar. He entered it hoping he would not see anyone just now that he knew. He was not a man who liked to be alone, but at the moment he felt as if he were suffering shock, as if he had learned something that was too big for him to assimilate in a hurry. He had a lot of thinking to do.

He sat alone in a booth near the rear of the dimly-lit room. The place smelled of wet beer rags. The bartender had to ask him twice what he wanted to drink. He ordered a double scotch and told the bartender to keep his eye on the table, and keep the scotch coming every time he noticed an empty glass.

He sat there a long time with his thoughts. He thought about Joanne Stark as she was the first time he saw her, as she had looked a few minutes ago, dressing for a date.

He stared into the empty glass. If a man lived long enough, he could learn many things; there is no end to the things a man can learn, if he just walks around and listens long enough. The odd part was that he’d felt he was a pretty blasé fellow, pretty wise to everything that had ever happened, or that ever would happen. It just went to show you.

A woman stood beside his booth. She smiled. He realized she had been standing there for some time smiling. It was a weary grimace in her face now. She said again, “Hello, honey.”

He looked at her for a long time. He said, “Are you a woman?”

“I sure am, honey.”

“Then get away from here. For God’s sake, get away from here.”

• • •

It was dark when Clay drove down the hill past the apartment house where Joanne lived. He wasn’t going up there. Thank God, that was past. What was he doing here?

He nodded solemnly, wanting to answer this to his own satisfaction. This was a test. That was all it was. He was going to drive by here and prove to himself this was just another street, just any street. It had never meant anything in his life before; it never would again.

His eyes burned as if full of wood smoke.

He drove slowly, going five or six blocks past her apartment house. The night was busy, cars hastening somewhere on all the cross streets. He’d been drinking all day. He was in no condition to drive. The thing to do was to cut this out and get on home.

Car headlamps blinded him, causing his vision to blur. He turned the car around in the middle of a block and started back up the hill, not moving more than fifteen miles an hour. The race is not to the swift. Slow and easy does it. Haste makes waste.

A half-block below her apartment house, he pulled the car to the curb, feeling its body vibrate as the wheel struck the cement. He swore, cutting the engine.

He stared up through the darkness toward that third-floor apartment in that lighted building up there. Odd, there were other houses, other buildings along here; in fact, there were no vacant lots. But all the lots might as well be vacant. He was unaware of the other houses and other buildings. He could see that lighted building where she lived as though it sat illumined on a bare plane done by Dali.

Who the hell is Dali?

He shook his head trying to clear it. He had started drinking in the morning, and could not remember all the bars and taverns he had visited. Several in Culver City, though, he remembered. He had driven there, lying to himself that he’d visit a director he knew at M-G-M.

He was proud of one thing. Joanne had been out of his mind the whole damn day. Most of the whole damn day. Sometimes for an hour at a time he would not think about her at all.

He smiled faintly. He told himself he was smiling but there was only this bitter twist to his face. It was funny. That was what it was, all right. Funny. He had told everybody he was going back to work, he’d said he was starting to work on Man of the Desert. He hadn’t meant it at the time, but when he called Sharon at school, he had ended up telling her the same lie. It was just a string of words that would reassure her, but he was trapped. He had to go back to work now. He could not start lying to Sharon. He had lied to her mother all his life.

Well, he hadn’t lied to Sharon. He would get in touch with Dick Creek. Hell, he had meant to call Creek all day, but somehow he hadn’t done it. It was like cutting his throat. He just didn’t have the guts. But he would call. As soon as he sobered up, he’d call Dick and ask for the part of Pinto in Man of the Desert. Ask? He’d beg for it.

He laughed aloud, an ugly agonized sound. Wouldn’t it be ironic as hell if they’d gotten in touch with Wayne on this thing? There was a smart cookie who’d grab that role and that producer before Warners could hang up.

He sweated, knowing he ought to get to a telephone. He had to have that role, that one and only that one. He had promised Sharon. He could not let her learn that he had lied to her.

His mind was clear on that. Clear. Just let him have that role and he would stay away from Joanne Stark. He would be the sort of parent a girl like Sharon could respect, the sort of father a daughter of Ruth’s should have.

He stared upward at that lighted window. His throat tightened. His eyes burned. He shook his head, despising himself.

It couldn’t hurt to see her one more time, could it?

• • •

Clay staggered slightly going along the third-floor corridor toward the opened doorway of Joanne’s apartment. Open door. That door was always open. Rock-and-roll blared out at him, hitting him sharply in the face. He was not sure if he staggered because of what he’d been drinking or from the impact of that music and laughter.

“Clay! Here’s Clay!” somebody shouted. They were drunk. They did not really care that he was here. In his lucid, drink-riven condition he could see that. They had grown accustomed to having him around the past few weeks. They tolerated him. In this place when a person was barely tolerated, they were effusive over him.

He pushed his way through them. The hell with them. The hell with all of them. Their dirty clothes and their body odor. The hell with them. He was glad he had come up here. He was seeing another reason why he could not endure this kind of life. He never wanted to see this bunch of juvenile snits again as long as he lived. He pushed through them trying to find a place where he could breathe.

A man stepped in front of Clay, barring his way. He was a big man, as tall as Clay, much broader — much younger. He was in his early thirties anyway, dark and oily, a very handsome man with sport shirt opened half-way down his chest, the hairs showing, the gold locket showing, winking in the black hairs of his chest. Clay frowned, knowing he’d seen this character somewhere, unable to place him.

He tried to step around him.

“Well. What you know? The big movie star.”

He glided into Clay’s path. Clay said, “Get out of my way.”

The handsome man laughed. And with the laughter, Clay remembered where he’d seen Handsome — that night on restaurant row, he’d made a scene over a bar check. Trouble. He made it up and took it around with him like the locket around his neck, like the oil in his curls. “You own this place, Movie Star? You like a fat eye? Talking to me this way? Where are your studio guards, Movie Star? Where’s your director?”

“Hey, cut that out,” somebody said, grabbing the dark man’s arm.

Clay glanced at Bunny Harper. Bunny tried to smile. “Hell, Nicky, this is Clay Stuart. Clay’s a nice guy. You don’t want to make any trouble, Nicky.”

Nicky stared into Clay Stuart’s face. Bunny was wrong. Nicky wanted to make some trouble, all right. But there was an odd, unreal silence in this raucous room. The three of them stood silently in the wild caterwauling of sound, and Nicky decided against hitting Clay Stuart.

Nicky laughed and threw his arm around Bunny’s shoulder, hugging the slender boy close against him in an embarrassing display of sexual affection.

“Sure,” Nicky said. “Stuart, you know Bunny Harper? Meet my wife, Stuart. This is my wife — Bunny Harper.” Nicky roared with laughter, head back, sweating.

Bunny’s face turned chalky white. His body trembled. He looked as if he were going to be ill.

Flo caught Clay’s arm, pulled him away to the window.

“I’m looking for Joanne,” Clay said.

“She’s not here, lover,” Flo said. Her eyes did not focus at all.

“Don’t lie to me.”

Flo giggled. “Don’t call me a liar. Call me anything else, but don’t call me a liar.” She made a sing-song verse of it.

Clay ignored her, searching over the heads of the other people for Joanne. He could not find her. His eyes struck against those of Nicky again. He looked away. Nicky was pretty obvious, and crude. Nicky hated Clay Stuart because Stuart was in moving pictures and Nicky couldn’t make it. He despised Bunny Harper for the same reason. Bunny was small, even effeminate, and Bunny was making pictures and TV shows all the time. There was only one way Nicky could strike at Bunny. He could use him, debase and degrade him. Great guy, Nicky. Joanne knew some wonderful people.

Where in hell was she?

“She’s not here, honey,” Flo said again. “Come on, let’s dance. This is a big night. Big party. Joanne’s party. Celebration. You know what we’re celebrating? End of shooting on Joanne’s picture. You know that? That’s right. They wrapped it up today. Lone Star Kid.”

“Where is she?”

Flo caught his arm, turned him toward her, working her hungry angular body against his, quivering as if in heat.

“Who cares? She went out for liquor. Come on. Let’s dance.”

“No.”

“You can’t keep pushing me off, Clay. I’m nuts about you. All hacked inside. Look at these nothings around here. You walk in here and I’m hacked. Please, Clay — look at me — forget her.”

“Go get a drink.”

“Drink? I don’t need a drink. I need you. You know what you are. You’re Disneyland. You’re the lights out front of Moulin Rouge. You — you’re every guy any woman ever wanted. Why you want Joanne? She doesn’t want a man. She wants a career. Me. I ain’t crazy. Except crazy for you. It’s like I got bugs crawling in me. Only I can’t itch. Why not me, Stuart? Look at me, damn it.” Flo was writhing against him. She was clinging to him, her body working as if in some exotic dance. “I know things … things she never even will learn.”

Clay caught both her hands, pushed them down and shoved her away, still looking for Joanne.

Flo screamed, going backwards, falling. She toppled crazily toward the opened window.

A girl screamed. A man lunged at Flo, grabbing at her as she struck the sill. He deflected her body enough so she struck against the wall, screaming. She slid down the wall.

A man leaped at Clay, catching his shirt-front and turning him around. Others stopped dancing and crowded in close.

“Why don’t you get out of here?” the man said. Clay saw it was the one called Johnny. Joanne’s Johnny. I’ll never see him again if you don’t want to.

Johnny shoved Clay. Clay struck against Nicky who had pushed his way through the crowd behind him.

“Let’s throw him out,” Nicky said. “The son of a bitch.”

“Get out,” Johnny said again.

“Hell, don’t tell the son of a bitch,” Nicky said, sweating. “Throw him. Big movie star. Let’s see what kind of fighter he is. Hell, he used to win wars all by himself. Let’s see how he can dish it out.”

Clay saw Nicky’s fist coming toward his face. He threw up his arm to protect himself. Nicky’s fist scraped across his wrists, struck against the side of his face. He toppled backward, slowly, like a giant sequoia.

Nicky was raging with laughter. “Movie star!” Nicky yelled. “Hell, he can’t fight at all. Look at him, for God’s sake. He can’t even fight. He don’t know how to throw a punch.”

Clay straightened and Nicky struck him in the face twice, short hard jabs into his eyes and mouth. He reeled out backwards, the room skidding crazily away from him.

Women screamed. Some of the men grabbed at Nicky. He shook them off, cursing. He stood above Stuart, the gold locket bouncing on his heaving chest.

“Get out of here, Movie Star,” Nicky raged. Clay raised his head from the floor, trying to clear it.

Nicky kicked him in the face.

• • •

Stuart opened his eyes. He was seeing everything through an occluding film of blood. The music was still blaring loudly.

Joanne was kneeling over him. She whispered his name. Her voice was frantic. “Clay. Get up. Get up. I’ve got to get you out of here. Somebody has called the police.”

Clay shook his head, feeling blood flicking from his nostrils when he moved. He pushed himself upward slowly, feeling Joanne’s arms around him. A couple of men tried to help but Joanne told them to get away, get back to dancing. “Pretend nothing has happened. A brawl. My God. This could ruin me.”

Clay got to his feet. He wanted to laugh, but there was too much agony in his bruised face for even a short bitter laugh. For one whole minute there he had felt supreme. Somebody had called the police, Joanne wanted to get him out of there; it had been wonderful to believe she was thinking about him, worried for him. This hadn’t lasted very long. She was thinking only about herself, her own reputation. “This could ruin me.” The words chattered around in his brain in monkey voices.

She led him to a stairway beyond the service door and they went down the service steps in the wan darkness. They stood at the rear door on the ground floor for a few moments, listening for sounds of the police.

“Where is your car?” she said.

He considered a moment, then nodded downhill. She moved with him through the alley.

He heard her crying softly. “Oh, Clay. You’ve got to let me alone.”

“I — I’ve loved you.”

“I can’t help it. I can’t see you any more. Can’t you understand? It will spoil everything. You’ll spoil everything.” Her voice quavered with the tears choking her throat. “Why don’t you let me alone? I’m where I want to be.”

“People like that, Joanne?” His voice was ragged.

“Yes. All right. Yes. They’re my friends. They don’t spoil everything … I was all right. Tonight I was on top of the world. I had everything I wanted.”

He stood in the chill night, shoulders sagged round, looking down at her. Blood leaked from his face. He lifted the back of his hand, wiped at it, smearing it across his cheek.

Joanne was crying abruptly, her body shaking.

“Please. Let me alone,” she begged. “Tonight was so nice — and you had to come around — and spoil it all.”

chapter twenty

CLAY LAY a long time on his rumpled bed that night, unable to sleep. His thoughts crawled in torturous ways no matter how hard he tried to blot them out. The agony of his torn, bruised face no longer hurt him at all, but he felt helpless against the bruising force of his thoughts.

He had reached bottom tonight, drunk and beaten in that loud apartment among those smelly kids, hearing Joanne saying his brawling could ruin her, tonight was so nice and he had come around and spoiled it all.

He could think clearly, despite the pain, and he knew he was not going to see her any more. From now on she could not touch him, and he thought this with a mixture of pain and sadness but also a terrible kind of finality.

He twisted on the bed, thinking that he had always felt she needed him, and might need him more than ever. And thinking this, his mouth twisted into a painful smile. She had lived before he came along, she would live when he had forgotten her name.

He fell asleep thinking about her, and the way it had been between them, the way it would never be any more, but already it was something he could put behind him and his last conscious thought was of the sharp lances of sunlight against his swollen lids.

He awoke at three o’clock that afternoon, thinking about Joanne, but also aware of the hollow physical pain that was more urgent. Every day he awoke wanting to call her and he glanced at the telephone now. But he got up, dressed and ate brunch on the flagstone terrace and did not call her at all. When his thoughts turned back to her, he forced himself to remember the way she’d cried out that he’d spoiled everything. It made staying away from the telephone easier.

McEsters studied his torn and battered face without seeming to look at him at all. The dark glasses were the only concealment Clay wore, and he offered no explanation even when his nose bled abruptly and inexplicably.

He thought about Man of the Desert with almost a sense of longing. He went into the library, locked the door though this was unreasonable; except for the servants, he was alone in the house.

He opened the script and scanned through the sides marked for Pinto. He tried desperately to see all the excitement and power that Dick Creek had found in the desert man, but he could not concentrate yet, and when the telephone rang, he pounced upon it as if it were his last means of escape.

For a moment he felt the unreasoning fear that it might be Joanne and all his vows would go out the window. He felt his stomach nerves tighten up. He held his hand poised above the receiver. Then the phone rang again. He warned himself he couldn’t be afraid of her; if he had to talk to her, it would be for the last time and only when she called.

He picked up the receiver, gripping it tightly.

“Hello.”

“Daddy?”

“Sharon! Good Lord. Where are you?” His face ached when he stretched the muscles, smiling, and he thought what a mess he looked.

“I’m at the airport. Would you come and get me?”

He pressed his fingers against the proud, purpled flesh, on the flat imprint of a shoe sole across his mouth and cheek. “Lord yes. I’d love it. Can you wait for me to comb my hair?”

“You better put on a pair of pants, too.”

He laughed, face hurting. “It’s so good to hear you.”

Ten minutes later he was cruising down Sunset. The boulevard was quiet at this hour. He passed a Beverly Hills police cruiser. He swung right at La Cienega and went downhill.

There was only sparse mid-afternoon traffic. He made good time crossing town. When he reached the airport, however, it was as though the population explosion had converged upon this one area. He decided these people were always in airports, always the same ones, never sleeping, never shaving, always looking rushed and haggard as if they’d just missed the last plane out.

Sharon was sitting in the waiting-room near the American Airlines desk. She got up when she saw him. She carried only an overnight bag and make-up kit. She set them down and threw her arms around him, but stopped at the sight of his discolored face.

He held her a moment, stroking her tenderly.

“You walked into a door in the dark,” she said.

He nodded. “And when I hit it, it hit me back.”

“Poor daddy.”

“What happened to you?” he said. “They didn’t fire you?” He felt a sudden constriction in his solar-plexus, thinking about this man Darrow who had been after Sharon. It would be hell if she’d gotten over her head in trouble while he pushed her aside in his mind, snarled up in his own private agonies.

“No. I took time off. I came home.”

He carried her bags and they walked out to his hardtop convertible in the clotted parking lot. People recognized Stuart, even with his dark glasses and purpled face. They nudged each other and whispered.

Sharon looked Clay over. Her voice was light, but the undercurrent of worry threaded through it. “You been all right — except for fighting back at doors in the dark?”

“Yes. I’ve missed you… .” He put her bags in the car, helped her in, went around and got under the wheel. “But you haven’t told me yet why you dashed home like this.”

She waited until they were out in traffic, headed toward town. “I missed you,” she said. “I worried about you … I was sorry I didn’t stay and take care of you — the way you asked … But I’m here now.”

“But what about — ” He hesitated, still unable to speak Amory Darrow’s name. “What about school?”

“I got to thinking. About what you said about wanting to go somewhere, and I decided we had little enough time together. You were right. School can wait.”

He studied her, trying to find hurt in her eyes, the faint new twist of pain about her mouth. If Darrow had hurt her, he would kill him. This was all he really needed anyhow, to kill somebody, and Amory Darrow — whoever he was — would do nicely. He would get him down in the street the way the colonel had pummeled that drummer in that faraway Nebraska summer.

“You arrived at this conclusion by yourself?” he said.

She blushed. She did not meet his gaze. “Why not?”

He shrugged. “Your exams must be about due.”

“Yes.”

“And this near getting that degree, you just quit and came home?”

“Yes.” She sighed heavily, covered his hand with hers. “We can go down into Mexico. So many places we could go. So many things we could do.”

He felt a sudden rising sensation of anxiety and hope. They could have a fine time together. He and Sharon. They could go anywhere they wanted. He could give the studio the final nix on Man of the Desert. This in itself would be pleasurable. He and Sharon would get out of this town. They would be together and they would move, and keep moving. Whatever she wanted to do. He would keep all his thoughts on Sharon. There was a whole wide damned world that he could show her, that he could see anew through her eyes.

A smile pulled at his torn mouth. This had to be the answer. He didn’t care who had written to her, or called her at the school and told her he needed her, that she might save him by coming home at once. Maybe they had frightened her; well, he would make it up to her.

He glanced at her face. She was so pretty, so fresh and young, even sleepless as she was, even tired from the long flight. And I’m so tired. Tired of this rat race. Beaten — in more ways than one, so beaten that the physical beating didn’t even matter. I’m tired wanting something I can’t have. Tired knowing I must return to work and knowing I can’t face it. Sharon was what he needed, someone to care about, to think about, to run with. She was young and he could be young with her and she could save him.

She yawned and for a moment she looked like a little girl. And abruptly he remembered the way she’d looked that day of Ruth’s funeral. There was a loss in her eyes then, and there was a loss now, only he had been too involved in himself to see it. Even when he had thought about showing the world to Sharon, he had not really been thinking about Sharon at all, or what Sharon really wanted.

He had been thinking about himself.

• • •

They were gathered like a conclave of the clan in the foyer when Clay and Sharon entered the house. Sharon cried out happily and ran to them, kissing Hoff, Shatner and then clinging to Kay.

“How did you people know Sharon was in town?” Clay said.

“I told them,” Kay said, staring past Sharon’s head.

Clay’s jaw tilted. So Kay had called Sharon, urging her to drop everything, studies, romance, daily existence and come running back to daddy. Trust Kay Ringling to know exactly what to do for him. She had known precisely the kind of girl that would topple the defenses he’d set up around himself after Ruth’s death. No one else had known, but Kay had known, to the width of the girl’s smile, the depth of her eyes. And now when things got out of hand, Kay knew the answer to that problem, too. It didn’t matter what the sacrifice cost Sharon. There was no sacrifice Kay Ringling wouldn’t make for Clay Stuart, none she wouldn’t quietly ask of others.

He opened his mouth to ask her what right she had interfering, but something in her face stopped him. They could talk about it later.

He said, “If you’re tired, Sharon, why don’t you freshen up?”

The four of them trooped into the library after Sharon had gone up the stairs, followed by McEsters with her bags and a maid to see that she had everything she needed.

“God, it’s good to see her,” Hoff said.

“She gets prettier every time,” Shatner said.

Clay flopped down on the divan and stared at them. “Stop talking around it. Kay sent for Sharon. Now everything is going to be fine for the old fellow, isn’t it? Senile. He can’t take care of himself. But then he doesn’t have to. He has you two, and Kay Ringling.”

“Your face doesn’t look like you do so well when we’re not around,” Kay Ringling said.

“Never mind my face.”

“I know an elephant did it,” Shatner said. “But why? I never knew you had a hate for elephants.”

“He’s got a hate for everybody,” Kay Ringling said.

“But you’re going to fix that, aren’t you? Daddy will be a good boy with Sharon in the house, won’t he?” Clay said.

“God knows, I hope so,” Kay told him.

“To get back to work,” Hoff said. “That’s the thing. You shouldn’t hate us who love you, Clay. Get to work. Everything will be fine.”

“I’m thinking about taking a cruise,” he said, with malice. “Just Sharon and me.”

Hoff clutched his fat breast above his heart and paced in a tight circle. Shatner exhaled heavily, walked to the window and stared through it. But he did not say anything. Kay sat in a club chair under a reading lamp. They heard a car, distantly, in the drive, but none of them said anything.

After a moment the library door opened. McEsters said, “Miss Joanne Stark is outside, Mr. Stuart. She’d like to talk to you.”

• • •

Joanne came into the library. Through the French windows she could see Shatner, Ringling and Hoff in deck chairs beside the pool. She did not mention them. Her smile was troubled, and she asked first about Clay’s face.

“Do you hate me?” she asked.

He shook his head, watching her, trying to see in advance what she wanted.

“You’ve always loved me, haven’t you?” she said. “From the first.” She fell on the divan in the old way she always had, as if it had been only last night she’d been in this room, pushing off her high-heeled slippers and wriggling her toes. “From the first day you’ve loved me, haven’t you? And I treated you so badly.”

Stuart shrugged. “You did what you had to do.”

“Could I — have a drink?” she said, smiling. “Anything. Just whiskey on rocks. Anything.”

Clay got her a drink, watching her through the dark glasses. But he was aware he could not see into her clearly, even with vision unimpaired. You could not see into her; when you tried to understand Joanne it was like a face seen in the glass of a dusty mirror.

She took a long drink, stared into the glass, at the rug, at the backs of her fingers. She did not lift her head.

“But you couldn’t love me any more — after the way I’ve acted — could you?” she said. There was a faint plaintive note of pleading deep under the surface of her voice.

“God knows.”

She dropped the glass and ran around the couch suddenly. She grabbed his arms. Her fingers tightened, her eyes were wild, her voice was urgent.

“You do love me, don’t you?” She searched his eyes behind those glasses. “No matter what a fool I’ve been. I’ve been a fool. I — didn’t know what a fool until last night. Please, you’ve got to believe that.”

“It doesn’t matter, Joanne.”

“I’ll make it up to you. Will you let me? You won’t send me away? I’ve got my suitcase — out in the taxi … I came back — if you want me — if you’ll let me make up the hurt.”

He stared at her, but he was thinking about Sharon upstairs. There was no chance of letting her stay in this house while Sharon was here, even if he wanted her to. This no longer entered into it. How right Ringling was. She was always right about him. It was indecent for any woman to understand a man so fully. Daddy would behave himself with Sharon in the house.

“I want to stay here, Clay. It’s all I want. All I’ve ever wanted, really.” She pressed herself against him. “You’ve got to love me, Clay. I’ll make it up to you. All of it.”

• • •

Shatner tossed pennies into the pool, watching them sinking, twisting and glinting to the bottom. “What are you doing?” Hoff said.

“Haven’t you ever thrown pennies into a well to wish?” Shamer asked.

Hoff shook his head, shuddering in a mocking way. “Such a was e.”

Kay Ringling sighed, glancing at them. Their faces were troubled, but hers was serene. She sat back in the lounge chair, almost lost in it, watching the shadows grow upward out of the canyon. The shadows of the eucalyptus tree almost reached them, but not quite, the way Stuart’s and Joanne’s voices almost reached them, but not quite.

“She’s giving him the business,” Hoff said, straining toward the French doors.

“She’s making him like it,” Shatner said. “No matter what she’s done to him, she’s making him like it.”

“No,” Hoff said. “He wanted to like it. He was waiting for her to come back here and make him like it.”

“You’ve nothing to worry about any more,” Kay said, watching the shadows writhe nervously on the surface of the pool.

“I been with him too long,” Shatner said, ignoring Kay. “He’s not fool enough to take her back.”

“You should fall in love sometime, Shatner,” Hoff said. “I been in love.”

“I mean with somebody besides yourself. You’d see … Nobody is smart when they love.”

“He isn’t going to take her back,” Kay said. “That’s all over.”

They seemed not to hear her. Shatner said, “But Stuart knows the score on her.”

“You think he read your report?” Hoff shook his head. “No. She’s in there now, telling him about her unhappy life — how the things she did were things she had to do — and the funny part of it is, that much is the truth. Perhaps its is all the truth.”

“That’s the way it’s going to be,” Shatner said in a resigned tone.

But after a moment, the front door opened, Joanne went out, crossed the veranda and got into the waiting taxi. Even when it pulled away, Kay did not move, or even say I told you so to them.

chapter twenty-one

STUART SAT with Shatner in Dick Creek’s outer office at Warners. He wore dark glasses to conceal the discolored puffiness around his eyes. There was a welt across his cheek.

“You all right, Clay?”

Stuart glanced at Shatner through the dark glasses. “Stop fussing over me, mother.”

“I’m not fussing over you. Hell, over and above everything, Clay, I just want you to know I don’t give a damn if you don’t take this picture.”

“I’ll talk to Dick about it.”

“Take six months off. You and Sharon. Take a year. You’re solid in this racket. A year away won’t hurt you.”

“A year? My God, what would I do with myself for a year?”

Would he get involved with another Joanne Stark? He did not believe there was another Joanne; she was compounded out of all the things that had happened to her, driving her, making her what she was. He would never meet one just like her again. But each woman was a sum total of superstitions, drives, beliefs, prejudices, doubts and fears, all seeming so simple, all so complex. Perhaps that wasn’t true. Perhaps they were not complex at all, maybe they were simple, so damned simple that you couldn’t understand them: they knew what they wanted, they’d kill to get it, they’d walk over you if you stood in their way. This wasn’t very complex. You gave it a lot of complex names because it was just too simple to accept at face value.

He’d been alone and vulnerable after Ruth’s death. He had been unable to work. He had wanted something and from the moment he heard Joanne’s voice on the telephone, it had seemed to be her he wanted. One talked of innumerable friends, a glamorous life of a movie actor, but it was hard work and loneliness, that’s what it really was. Why else were the loveliest actresses forever prey to men who used them, took everything from them? Why had he been so pleased when Joanne called him that first time?

“Loneliness,” he said aloud.

“What?” Shatner said. Creek’s secretary glanced up.

“Nothing. I’m all right, Marc. You can believe it. Call it shock therapy.”

He could even think about Joanne dispassionately. She could no longer hurt him. And at last he saw what Joanne would never see about herself — the good in her life that she wept for didn’t last because she wouldn’t let it, she destroyed it. She killed it, reaching and grasping for something else that looked better and brighter and more golden.

He couldn’t even hate her for it now. She’d been walking out on people — in one way or another — all her life. A girl running. Hoff had said it well. Joanne could no more help being what she was than Clay could, or anyone else could help being what their lives had made them.

• • •

Creek’s private door opened and the young producer stood there, smiling. “Come on in, fellows,” he said. “I was on the phone, and it was one of those things — ”

“Bookie or mistress?” Shatner inquired as they entered his office. The room was small with polished desk, a few chairs, a couch, a bookcase topped with some awards Creek had accumulated over the years. The window behind Dick’s desk had a view of the top limbs of a eucalyptus tree.

“My mistress is my bookie,” Creek said to Shatner. “Didn’t you know?”

He nodded toward the most comfortable chair, deep tan leather, and told Clay to sit down. Clay slumped into it. He did not remove his dark glasses. He waited for Creek to remark on his torn cheek. Creek didn’t even appear to notice. This meant only one thing: he’d already heard all the details.

Clay shoved his legs out before him and listened to Creek talk. He was enthused about this character Pinto — a lonely and tormented man who had been six years in the desert, most of it alone, a man driven by inner hurts and conflicts, a compelling need for vengeance. “This we must show, Clay. That’s one reason I wanted you from the first moment. Part of what we want is already in your face, Clay. And I know you, baby, you’ll get the rest of it there when we put you in front of a camera. I’m anxious to get started shooting. I want to see this thing on the screen. If we handle it right — if we keep it bare and stark — we’ve got a classic.”

Creek went on talking. Clay was pleased with himself about one thing. He was able to concentrate now on what the director was saying. He was recovering. There was no doubt about this. He had spun full circle, Ruth’s death, his loneliness, perhaps a sense of guilt, his vulnerability, his driving need for Joanne, culminating in Sharon’s flying back to remind him who he was, what he must be. From the moment he’d been kicked in the face by Joanne’s friends he had begun to get well. That tore it. The rest would be a matter of hard work and time. One of these days he would forget Joanne’s phone number; someday he would forget the excitement of her in bed, and one night he’d lie awake trying to recall her name.

Creek’s soft enthusiastic voice flowed on, filling the small office. Clay listened with part of his mind. There was a breeze riffling the tree leaves beyond the window. Creek was saying something. Clay realized he had missed it entirely.

“This girl whose screen test you were interested in,” Creek said again. “What was her name? Stark. Joanne Stark?”

“Yes,” Clay said.

“Yes,” Shatner said.

“They’re running a rough cut of the picture she made this morning. What was it? Lone Star Kid. We thought you might want to see it, Clay?”

“No,” Shatner said.

“We think you ought to see it, Clay,” Creek said.

“I’d like to,” Clay said, wondering about the odd tone in Creek’s voice.

Creek spoke into the inter-com to his secretary. “Nita. Will you call and find out in which projection room they’re going to run Lone Star Kid?”

After a moment the buzzer sounded. The secretary said, “Projection room nine, Mr. Creek. In five minutes.”

“Come on,” Dick said. “We can just walk over.”

They did not talk much going through the administration building corridors, through the inner gate, past the cutting rooms to the projection room. Jeff Gordon who had directed Lone Star Kid met them outside the entrance. He flushed slightly but did not say anything. The male lead was there, an old friend of Clay’s.

“Well,” Gordon said with the depth of inevitability in his voice. “Shall we go in?”

Creek held open the door. They filed in. Clay was last. Creek touched his arm.

“It’s just a rough cut, of course,” Creek said.

• • •

The picture ended and the lights went up. The projectionist apologized over the inter-com for some technical difficulty during the screening. No one listened to his explanation. Creek thanked him, but none of them moved. They went on staring at the blank, starkly white screen.

“We thought you ought to know,” Creek said at last to Stuart.

“She just hasn’t got it,” Jeff Gordon said. “I had that feeling. You know? From the first.”

“There was nothing we could do,” Creek said. “Except play it out. Sometimes they come over on the screen like dolls — ”

“This one didn’t,” Gordon said.

Creek glanced at the director, faintly annoyed. “You’ve been in this racket a long time, Clay. You know. We find a lead. We think we’ve another Cary Grant — you should pardon the expression. But when he plays on the screen, the audience gets that instinctive dislike — a feeling of distaste, even, you know. I don’t have to tell you. How many young players have you seen come along and flop because no matter how sweet the script says he is — the audience sees him — up close, up too close sometimes? They look at him and they despise him. He’s a louse. They can see it. He’s dead as far as the movies are concerned. He can get by on the stage, even in TV — but the screen is too big, too revealing.”

“And it’s like that with Stark,” Jeff Gordon said. “I even get the feeling — that’s the way it is — as if I’m seeing a predatory babe — a dame on the make — and the script says she’s a sweet girl working in her uncle’s general store. I don’t believe it.”

Creek didn’t like the way it was said. But he nodded. “That’s the consensus here, Clay. To get across on the screen, you’ve got to have something — I don’t know what — maybe it’s indefinable.”

Shatner laughed. “And there’s something definable about this doll.”

“I’m afraid that says it,” Creek agreed. “The company had a one-picture deal with her, Clay. They’re not picking up her option. They told her yesterday. I hope you understand.”

Clay nodded.

Creek said, “Jeff did everything he could, Clay. We all worked with her. Time was the thing on this picture — budget, you know. But within that limit, we did everything for her. We want you to know we can’t say how sorry we all are.”

• • •

When they got into his hardtop convertible, Clay drove. Shatner sat with a smug smile. They did not speak going across Barham to the freeway.

“The bitch,” Shatner said.

“What?”

“Nothing. I was thinking about Stark. She can’t even claim now she isn’t a bitch. It showed — on that screen in Cinemascope.”

“You’re wrong,” Clay said.

“What?” Shatner sat forward. “Are you insane? It showed in her face.”

“No. It wasn’t her bitchiness. If that was there.”

“Are you still blind?”

“No. I could see. What all the rest of you couldn’t see. Everybody was trying to explain why she failed, why she didn’t get across, but all of them were thinking — as you are — with your prejudices. I’ve been in this business too long. Bitchiness, earthiness, that can be an asset. A woman can make herself several million dollars if that earthiness really gets across on the screen. That wasn’t what was wrong with Joanne.”

“I’m listening. What is wrong?”

Clay sighed. “Something nobody can do anything about — cameramen, directors, nobody. She just doesn’t come across. It isn’t bitchiness, it isn’t amateurishness, it’s one fatal thing — flatness.”

Shatner thought that over. Finally he nodded. “That’s true. Sometimes it happens with people you meet — ”

“All the time.”

“They just fail to make an impression. You forget them while they’re talking to you. They might bore you, annoy you, but mostly you just don’t care anything about them one way or another.”

“They don’t sell.” Shatner nodded. “I think you’ve hit it, Clay. But either way, it finishes that babe in this business. And I can’t think of a nicer person to get it, and just like this.” His mouth twisted and his voice had poison and anger in it. He was watching the turn-offs. Clay moved the car into downtown Hollywood. “Where you going?”

“I’ve got to find her,” Clay said.

“Find her? You nuts? Let her go. She got it. She asked for it. I never saw anybody get it the way she asked for it.”

• • •

Clay came back out to the car from the apartment building. Flo was there. She did not know where Joanne was. Threats did not touch her, the offer of a hundred dollars appealed to her, but she had to admit she didn’t know where Joanne had gone. Finally she led him into the bedroom. She showed him Joanne’s closet. It looked messy, but he could see most of her belongings were gone.

“She didn’t say where she was going,” Flo said. Her voice was empty. “When I asked her, she told me to go to hell — and that’s all she would say.”

• • •

They sat for a few moments in Clay’s car in front of the apartment building. The sun blazed down on their shoulders.

Clay told Marc what Flo had said.

Marc was pleased. “She got it in the kisser.” He doubled his fist and cut upward in the air, a short hard jab. “That’s the way I like to see ‘em get it.”

“You reckon she’d go back to that town — the one she came from?” Clay said.

Shatner laughed. “Why not? She’s got a meat block back there, just waiting for her.” After a moment, he shook his head. “No. She wouldn’t go back there. If you’d read my report, you’d know she wouldn’t. No matter how hard she’s hit, she isn’t hit that hard.”

“There are a few bars around here. Let’s check a couple of them.”

“This is an admirable idea,” Shatner said. “Even if we never find her. In fact, especially if we never find her.”

• • •

Shatner had whiskey on the rocks in each bar. Clay ordered draft beer, but did not touch it. He walked deep into all of them, checking the booths, the dark tables.

“You’re not going to find her,” Shatner said. “Even you couldn’t have such miserable luck. Come on, let’s go home.”

“I didn’t know her well enough,” Clay said. “I didn’t know the places she liked to go.”

“Count yourself blessed, kid,” Shatner said. “Half a dozen bars. Half a dozen drinks. I’ve had it, whether you have or not. Come on, Clay, take me home.”

Clay stood in the center of the walk. He looked both ways along the street. “I ought to find her,” he said. “This must have been hell on her. She’s going to need help more than ever.”

“She got just what she asked for. She knew yesterday when she came back to you she was finished. Leave her alone.”

Clay shrugged. “I’ll have to. Whether I want to or not. I know what she’s going through. I hate for her to think I didn’t even try to find her.”

chapter twenty-two

STUART SWUNG the car slowly off the drive into the gateway of his home. He moved the car to the veranda and parked it. Abstractedly, he glanced at Shatner. Marc was reclining across the car seat, head back, mouth parted.

Clay sat there a moment, then he reached out and cut the engine. In the abrupt silence there was a wail from inside the house. Clay went tense. Shatner sat up, blinking.

“What’s that?”

The wailing was repeated. This time there was rage, but there was laughter in it, too. Shatner gazed around, trying to see where they were.

The front door opened and Hoff came padding across the veranda and down the steps. His round stomach heaved. He was out of breath.

“Lord of Isaac,” he said. “Am I glad to see you. Am I glad you are home.”

“What you running here?” Shatner said.

“It’s her,” Hoff was almost in tears. “That shekseh. Such carrying on. Never have I heard a woman carrying on like that. We tried to get her to leave — Kay and I — on account of Sharon being in the house and all. Oh, such a bad thing. I even threatened to call the cops, before the neighbors across the canyon did, I told her. She knew I was bluffing. She wouldn’t even listen to anything Kay tried to say to her.”

Clay slapped the door handle, slid out of the car. He strode up the steps. Inside the foyer he saw her two suitcases. Yesterday she had left them in the taxi. Today she had brought them in the house.

Kay Ringling came out of the library. Beyond, Clay heard Joanne’s anguished sobbing. He hesitated a long time, hearing it, glancing toward the stairs.

“Sharon’s upstairs,” Kay said in a cold voice. “I don’t know how long she can go on pretending she isn’t hearing this vile business down here.”

“I’ll talk to her,” Clay said.

Kay merely stared at him. Then she crossed the foyer and went up the stairs toward Sharon’s room. Trust Kay, he thought, to know the right thing.

He walked slowly into the library and closed the door behind him. He stood some moments, watching her. Her hair was disheveled, her face was distorted with her rage and her crying.

There was a sharp twist of hurt inside him at the lost look in her face. He’d flattered himself he was free of her. Only last night he’d lain in bed telling himself he was free. Now he saw it was not that easy. We are never truly free of the people we’ve loved.

He spoke her name. He kept his voice low.

“Joanne.”

She stood with her back to the doors, staring through the windows. At the sound of his voice she heeled around. Her eyes were distended. Her mouth was pulled taut across her teeth. For a moment she stared at him as if he were the monster from outer space.

For an instant, he wavered, because Joanne looked so completely defeated and alone. Then he knew better. He had to do something for her, even if he could not think at the moment what it could be.

Suddenly she drew back her arm and hurled the cocktail glass at him.

He didn’t move. The glass smashed against the wall behind him. A wide stain appeared on the texture and spread, running in wet lines down it. He didn’t glance at the wall or at the broken glass. He did not take his gaze from her face.

“They fired me,” she screamed at him. “You know all about that now — don’t you?” Her voice clattered against the walls, battering against him. “A movie star? Me? Oh, no. They don’t want me. I was no good. No damned good.”

He did not say anything. She thrust her hand through her hair. Her voice boiled, raging at him.

“Why don’t you say you knew it all the time? You knew it all the time, didn’t you?”

He shook his head.

“They dropped me. They had a one-picture deal. You knew that?” He nodded.

“But, oh, the way they talked. The way they promised me my options would be picked up — you could have told me Jeff Gordon directs quick pictures because that’s all he knows … I was pretty good in my test … Dick Creek made that … You knew that, too, didn’t you? … Dick Creek would make me look so good they’d hire me … Oh God.” Her voice rose. “They treated me so nice. My God, you would have thought I was Doris Day, the way they treated me … and all the time they knew.”

“They couldn’t have known, Joanne. They didn’t know.”

“But you knew, didn’t you? Don’t lie. Don’t lie. Don’t lie. They knew. They knew. They knew. They knew I wasn’t any good, I wasn’t ever going to be any good. They knew. Oh, they knew. They just didn’t give a damn.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about me. About Lone Star Kid. That low-budget dog. Did it matter who played the leading woman? Lassie could have played the leading woman. But it was going to be the big chance for me. That’s what I thought … only, I couldn’t even play that role … and they knew it all the time.”

“No.”

“Don’t say no to me, damn you. They wanted you. That’s why they were so nice to me. They wanted you, so they treated me like I was somebody. They did it so well they fooled me. Oh, they really fooled me. I thought it was me they wanted. And all the time it was you. They wanted you to play in that goddamn Man of the Desert. They were afraid you weren’t going to do it. They would have done anything to please you, to get you to play that role. They’d have hired your grandmother at two-fifty a week to please you.”

“I’m sorry, Joanne.”

She stood with her hands at her sides. Her mouth quivered. “And you knew. Damn you. You knew all along that was why they hired me.”

He came a step toward her in the room. She looked about wildly as if seeking something with which to strike him.

He said, “I didn’t think it mattered why they hired you, Joanne. You wanted a chance. That was all that mattered.”

She opened her mouth wide, screaming and laughing and crying. “You let them. You let them do that to me. You knew. They didn’t want me. Even my screen test was terrible — you could have told me … But you let them hire me — because they wanted to please you — and they hired me just to please you.”

“I want to make it up. Is there anything I can do?”

She crumpled on the divan. “There’s nothing anybody can do. I’m all empty. It was my chance — my only chance. They didn’t bother to tell me until the last day of my contract … They told me they weren’t going to renew me. Just like that — as if I had known all along.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry. You’re going to be sorry. I’m going to make you sorry.”

She looked around, found a glass, poured herself another drink, her hand shaking so badly that she slopped it over the table and the rug. She didn’t even glance at the stain.

She drank deeply, watching him over the rim of the glass. There was defiance in her voice when she spoke. “What can I do now, damn you? Now you’ve fixed me like this. Where can I go now?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know, Joanne. Stay here and rest … We’ll talk about it later.”

“What’s there to talk about?”

“I don’t know. Money — ”

“Money?” Her voice rose, keening. “Money? You don’t want me here with you any more, do you?”

“I’m sorry, Joanne.”

“Sorry?” Her voice shook. She leaned against the armrest of the divan to keep from falling. “You’ve done this to me … You’ve left me nothing — nowhere to go — and you’re sorry… .”

• • •

Clay and Kay Ringling rode with Sharon between them on the backseat of the Rolls, going across town to the airport.

“I’m sure Darrow is a nice guy,” Clay said. “I got that much sense at least … I know you wouldn’t love him if he wasn’t everything good.”

“And you don’t mind?” Sharon said, glancing at Kay Ringling, still unable to believe it.

Clay smiled. “I’m coming to the wedding, aren’t I? If the Darrows will let me in their house — a common actor … Give me a little time. Let me get used to it.”

Sharon pressed her face against his. “You’ll love him, Daddy … because I do.”

“At least,” Kay said, “he’ll make the effort.”

“Yes,” Sharon said, smiling at Kay across Clay. “You’ll see to that, won’t you?”

“I have to earn all this money some way,” Kay said.

Kay stayed in the car when Clay walked Sharon to the loading gate. At the exit, Sharon paused, clinging to his hand. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Yes. I’m going back to work. That’s all that matters.”

“I’ll worry about you,” she said. “Maybe we should have taken that trip after all.”

“Maybe some other time. I won’t drag you away from — from Amory … I know better than that.”

“I’d love to make that trip with you — Amory would have to wait.”

“Don’t ask people to wait, doll. It confuses everything.”

She bit at her lip, kissed him. “If you’re sure you’re going to be all right — I mean if you’re going back to work and all.”

He put his arms around her, drew her close against him. It was for the last time really. It would never be exactly like this moment again for them. He drew Sharon close to him and kissed her tenderly.

Everybody in the covered ramp was staring.

• • •

The driveway at his home was clogged with cars. The chauffeur could not even worm the big Rolls between the lanes of parked vehicles. Police cruiser lights blinked and whirled.

Clay jumped out of the car, aware that Kay was at his heels. They hurried along the drive, went up the steps and across the veranda with news photographers and reporters shouting at them, bulbs flashing.

There were police all through the lower part of the house, but most of them were clotted in the library.

The door to the flagstone terrace stood open. A wind furled through the curtains, blew loose papers across the floor. A sheet of paper blew against Clay’s leg. Hardly aware of what he did, he bent down, picked it up. It was a sheet of the report Shatner had made on Joanne Stark. He remembered now the way he had left it lying on the desk in the library.

He went through the doorway into the disordered room. He felt Kay Ringling close behind him, and he was thankful for her even before they told him what had happened. He saw that Shatner’s report had been ripped and torn and thrown about the room.

Hoff was near the French windows. He came across the room, walking slowly. “No sense you going out there, Clay. You just stay out of it.”

“What is it?” Kay said to Hoff. “What happened?”

“She killed herself,” Hoff said. “She drowned in that pool out there … A girl could swim like that … Why would she do it? Why would she want to do it?”

“I don’t know,” Kay said. She was not thinking about Joanne. She was thinking about Clay Stuart, about what this scandal could do to him — and to Sharon’s marriage to a man named Amory Darrow. She felt she knew why Joanne had done it.

Clay was standing immobile, staring at the French doors, the pool beyond, the people standing around it, the lights fixed on it.

Kay caught his arm, but he shook free. He went across the room and through the doorway. He saw her body on the side of the pool in a wide wet stain on the flagstones. She looked like a doll that had been tossed there, discarded.

He stood at the rim of the crowd, unable to move. He could not believe what he saw. It would be a long time before he could make himself believe it.

Clay felt his eyes burn hotly, and then he felt a rush of rage at Joanne. She was so young, so lovely. What a terrible, wicked thing to do.

He went on standing there, unmoving. The police and ambulance attendants stepped around him, the white dressed attendants running with their litter as if there were any cause to hurry any more.

He had a last glimpse of Joanne’s white face. It was smudged and gray, hair matted across her forehead. Then the attendants were lifting her to the litter and moving with her across the flagstones to the ambulance.

Reporters spoke to Clay, but Kay answered for him, her voice flat. “Mr. Stuart has nothing to say. He knows nothing about this.”

He allowed Kay to lead him back across the library to the foyer and the stairs. People attempted to stop them but Kay moved through them and they went up the stairs together.

“Stay up here,” she said to him. “There’s nothing you can do down there now. We’ll handle it.”

Clay nodded. He turned and walked along the corridor to the enclosed porch across the rear of the house. He sat down near a window. He shook out a cigarette and then crushed it in his fist. She was dead. She had drowned in his pool. She had wanted to die, hadn’t she?

He sat with legs apart, feeling sick. He could hear the distant voices below him. The cars began to move out of the drive, and the house grew quieter.

Clay didn’t know how long he sat there. At last Kay came along the upper hallway and onto the enclosed porch.

“She must have found Shatner’s report,” Kay said. “She thought you had read it … I suppose until she read that she thought she could get you back … She’s made a mess … As though she wanted to hurt everybody she could, drowning herself in your pool.”

“I don’t want to hear about it,” Clay said. “I should have done something for her. But I didn’t know what to do.”

“It wasn’t your fault. There wasn’t anything you could do.”

“When — I needed somebody — she came … but when she needed me, there was nothing I could do.”

“Are you all right, Clay? You want me to get you a doctor?”

“No. I’m all right.”

“I hope this won’t rip you apart,” Kay said, “worse than before — ”

“No.” Clay lifted his head. “You see — I had lost her a long time ago … I was over it — that was all through … before she killed herself … It was like when — her friends kicked me in the face — she’d already hurt me so bad, I didn’t even feel that physical pain …”

“I told the reporters she worked up here,” Kay said. “And I can make that stick. I can show them my canceled checks … Before I’m through with them, they’ll believe it was an accident.”

“She was so young. So alone,” Clay said. “She had so much to live for.”

“Everybody does,” Kay said.

“Oh God,” Clay whispered. “I didn’t want to hurt her.”

“Nobody wanted to hurt her,” Kay said. “None of us. Just as she — didn’t really want to hurt anybody. But she couldn’t help it … Nobody can … Nobody ever can.”

THE END

Serving as inspiration for contemporary literature, Prologue Books, a division of F+W Media, offers readers a vibrant, living record of crime, science fiction, fantasy, western, and romance genres.

If you enjoyed this Crime title from Prologue Books, check out other books by Harry Whittington at:

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Slay Ride for a Lady

The Brass Monkey

Call Me Killer

The Naked Jungle

A Woman On the Place

One Deadly Dawn

Heat of Night

Drawn to Evil

Mourn the Hangman

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This is a work of fiction.

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ISBN 10: 1-4405-4675-4

ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4675-4

eISBN 10: 1-4405-4501-4

eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4501-6