Cocksure (9 page)

“Hey, hey there, that’s no way to talk. Give me the hospital number.”

It wasn’t the usual place, but the clinic in Casablanca.

“Why there?” Tomasso asked.

“You ought to know,
you fool.”

“Look, let’s not play games. Just give me the number.”

A half hour later Tomasso got the Star Maker on the line. Between sobs, he told the Star Maker about England’s postmen. “Listen to me,” he pleaded. “How many postmen can they have all together on this piddly little island? Let’s us give them the two bucks.”

“Impossible.”

“Aw, come on, Star Maker. It wouldn’t even make a dent.”

“It’s not the money. They would resent it. They’d call it dollar imperialism.”

It’s true, Tomasso thought.

“Star Maker, there’s something else that’s worrying me. It’s Griffin.”

“Not the boy with the marvy lymph system?”

“The same. Star Maker, he’s asking a lot of questions. I don’t like it.”

“I’m glad you called, Dino,” the Star Maker said.

“Is it good to hear my voice?”

“Ah ha.”

“You have no heir, Star Maker. I’m your son.”

The Star Maker laughed. “I’m just on my way to London. See you tomorrow, Dino.”

Instantly, Tomasso put on his thick pebble glasses.

13

“O
H, MY GOD,” TOMASSO SAID, SQUINTING BEHIND HIS
thick pebble glasses, “the Star Maker is here already.”

Everybody at the morning conference got up to look. On the street below a motor cavalcade passed. Two men on motorcycles were followed by a Silver Cloud Rolls-Royce, an ambulance, a Brinks-type armored car, two Austin Princesses, a refrigeration truck and two more men on motorcycles.

The Star Maker, Mortimer knew, had come to London ostensibly to start production of a multimillion-dollar film which, as it happened, would feature Mortimer’s longstanding favorite film Star. This is not to say that Mortimer was a tiresome film buff, addicted to camp: it was simply that this Star, the idol of Mortimer’s adolescence, had amused him ever since. Of all the incomparably upright stars of a vintage era, Gable, Tyrone Power, Robert Taylor, John Wayne, Randolph Scott, Alan Ladd (decadence setting in, Mortimer felt, with Bogart and John Garfield), his heart, his boyish heart, had gone out to this Star alone. He was the most satisfyingly two-dimensional. Always, no matter what role he played, indisputably masculine, impossibly virtuous. Of all the Star Maker’s dazzling discoveries, this Star – as far as Mortimer was concerned – was the greatest. And the most endearing.

“Do you think,” Mortimer asked Tomasso, “I might be allowed to visit the studio one day and watch?”

“Absolutely against the rules. You know that.”

Feeling foolish, Mortimer nevertheless asked, “Do you know him personally?”

“So?”

“What’s he really like?”

“What are you, baby, a fan? You want me to get his autograph for you?”

“Well, I’m not
exactly
a fan,” Mortimer said, hard put to conceal his rising anger, “it’s just that this Star certainly has the emptiest face I’ve ever seen on screen.”

“What are you getting at?” Tomasso demanded hotly.

“Take it easy, Dino. Calm down. Look at it this way. I was brought up on this Star. I’ve seen him return to Rome a conquering hero, advise Caesar, help Jesus carry the cross. I remember him sailing the Spanish Main, fighting three swordsmen with one hand behind his back, and winning the American Civil War almost single-handed. Why, he’s won more gun fights than –”

“So
what?”

“He’s given me an inferiority complex. It would reassure me to visit the set and prove to myself that he’s just as real as the rest of us.”

“Are you out of your mind, Griffin?”

“Now look here –”

They were interrupted by a knock at the door. One of the black-suited motorcycle riders handed Tomasso an envelope, turned, and quit the office. Tomasso ripped open the envelope, read the letter inside, and collapsed in his chair.

“Is there anything wrong?” Mortimer asked.

Tomasso rocked his head in his hands. “Get out. Leave me alone.”

The editors had only just dispersed when Tomasso, squinting behind his thick pebble glasses, wearing his coat, carrying his briefcase,
emerged from his office. Two black-suited motorcycle riders waited in the hall, blocking his way. With them were Dr. Laughton and Gail. One of the riders was about to say something when Tomasso sighed, shook his head, and retreated into his office, Laughton and Gail following after. Gail, squealing with laughter, reached out and Tomasso handed her his glasses.

“You’re a card, Dino,” Laughton said, “You really are.”

Agnes Laura Ryerson phoned.

“Do you remember,” she asked, her voice quivering, “the very first birthday gift I ever gave you?”

Boys’ Own Paper
. “ ‘Fear God,’ ” Mortimer said warmly, “ ‘honor the crown, shoot straight and keep clean.’ Does that answer your question?”

“I was just inquiring about the price of a subscription for Doug. It’s stopped, Mortimer. There’s to be no more
Boys’ Own
. After eighty-eight years!”

Mortimer was flipping idly through the
Evening Standard
when he looked up from his desk to see Polly Morgan filling the door to his office, lips parted, tapping her teeth with her thumbnail. “May I come in?” she asked.

“Certainly.”

The
Standard
was opened at a full-page ad for
The Longest Day
, now at popular prices.

“Ken Annakin,” Polly said, indicating the ad, “Andrew Marton, Bernard Wicki. Zanuck. 20th. 1962. Grossed 15,100,000 so far.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ll only take a second of your time,” Polly said, sitting down.

Polly wore a black leather Dutch boy’s cap and a tight sweater, right half white, left half blue: one high and lovely breast circumscribed by a yellow bolt, the other by a green one, and Mortimer aching to do nothing so much as tighten them.

“Just wanted to say that … like we’re having a scene on Saturday night. At Timothy’s pad.”

“Oh,” Mortimer said, heart leaping.

“It should be jolly good fun. Do you want to come?”

Unfortunately Mortimer realized he was only being invited because he was such a good friend of Ziggy Spicehandler’s – a relationship which confounded the hipsters among his acquaintances.

“Well, thanks. Um, I’ll give it some thought.”

Then Mortimer made his gaffe. Error in etiquette. As Polly rose from her chair he shot round without thinking to open the office door for her. Polly, to her credit, did not laugh, but Mortimer was bloody embarrassed and he knew right then he would not go to the party because he was bound to do the wrong thing. Make a fool of himself. Though he’d remember to say “cunt” often, saying it he’d betray self-consciousness.

“You’re shy,” Polly said.

“Am I?”

“I know you like a book, Mortimer Griffin.”

He laughed lamely.

“You’re going to stop fighting me,” Polly said, stepping closer to him, “aren’t you?”

Avoiding The Eight Bells, Mortimer took Polly to a pub on Mount Street for lunch.

“This will be our special place now,” she said, crinkling her nose. “Won’t it?”

Mortimer agreed emphatically.

“I want to understand you. Who you are. What you are.”

But when Mortimer returned from the bar with a second round of drinks it was to discover that Polly was no longer at their table. She hadn’t left the pub, however. Polly sat at another table on which there were at least a dozen empty glasses and an overflowing ashtray. “I’m going to be ill,” she said. “You must hate me.”

“No, no. But I don’t understand –”

“Please take me home.”

Mortimer dashed outside, where he soon found a taxi, but when he returned to fetch Polly it was too late: she had already vanished.

Polly did not return to Oriole House in time to watch the Star Maker being interviewed on
TV
.

Getting the Star Maker to appear on
TV
was no mere matter of fees or flattery or agreeing to questions or an appropriately obsequious interviewer. It was much more complicated than that. Wherever the ageless, undying Star Maker went, an emergency medical unit, unrivaled for excellence, had to be accommodated. The kidney-cleansing technicians had first to check the power plugs and establish themselves with batteries in the event of a power failure. The cardiologists and their awkward pump, complete with artificial valves and mechanical heart, had to be similarly catered to. So did the blood plasma boys and nurses. The Star Maker’s irreplaceable urinologist had to be satisfied, so did the sexologist, a Danish fusspot, newly arrived, and looked down upon as kinky by the rest of the unit. Then one of the guards had to establish a clear run to the refrigeration truck and interconnecting operating ambulance that always waited on the boil within five minutes of the Star Maker, the spare-parts men and their priest ready for any sacrifice in the Austin Princess immediately behind.

It was perhaps a testimony to the much-abused Star Maker’s essential affability that everybody in the unit except the Danish sexologist and, understandably, the spare-parts men who had to be constantly renewed, had been with the Star Maker for years. They were old buddies, equipped to meet any crisis, but relaxed, given to private jokes and high-spirited card games.

The Star Maker was interviewed in his own specially designed suite at the film studios, seated in a wheelchair in the shadows, the patch over the left eye just visible.

The patch, naturally, led to instant speculation among reporters, especially those from financial newspapers, for it added pungency to recent rumors that the ageless, undying Star Maker was afflicted with cataracts. Ageless, but possibly, just possibly, not undying after all. If cataracts were only a rumor, cancer was all but established fact. The Star Maker spoke in wheezing, metallic tones, the voice coming through a tube rumored to be platinum.

All the editors at Oriole Press, including Mortimer, assembled in Dino Tomasso’s office to watch the interview.

“Could you tell us,” the interviewer finally asked, “why you are called the Star Maker?”

As Mortimer watched, an incredible thing happened. The Star Maker actually laughed. The flesh round the mouth creased and the good eye began to water, spilling over with malevolence, before the face retreated into the shadows again. An eerie scratchy noise rose from the mouth.

“No,” Tomasso cried, rushing up to the
TV
screen. “No, Star Maker. No.”

The Star Maker’s smile ebbed slowly. “I should have thought it obvious, son.”

“But aren’t you being somewhat vain? Clearly you don’t make stars, only God –”

Tomasso began to mutter to himself; he seemed to be praying.

“You may have discovered and promoted stars,” the interviewer said, “but –”

“That’s all I’ve ever done,” the Star Maker said, hand held over the heart, “that and no more.”

The television image faded and Oriole’s editors drifted out of Tomasso’s office one by one. Only Mortimer stayed behind, curious to see Tomasso so troubled.

“He’s so rich,” Mortimer said idly, “and yet, well, he hasn’t even got a son.”

“I am his son. I’ve got it on paper. ‘You are my son, Dino.’ ”

“Has he never married, then?”

“The Star Maker? How could he, Griffin? There isn’t a person in the world worthy of his love.”

“Did the Star Maker actually say that?”

“Something like that.” Tears welled in Dino Tomasso’s eyes. “I am his son. That’s the Star Maker’s promise to me. Now, if you don’t mind, there are some things I must clear up before …”

“Before what?”

“The Star Maker expects every man to do his duty. That will be all, Griffin.”

On the tarmac opposite Sound Stage D, where the Star Maker’s emergency medical unit was parked, laughter spurted from within the ambulance-cum-operating theater. Drunken laughter. The doors whacked open and a group of doctors and nurses tottered out, gaily chanting,
“We want a kidney. We want a kidney.”

Led by Laughton and Gail, they descended hand in hand on the Austin Princess, where the spare-parts people sat, cowering. One of the spare-parts men began to sob. As he was armless himself, his companion, a thoughtful fellow, held a Kleenex to his nose.

“We were only kidding,”
the doctors and nurses now chanted.
“We were only kidding.”

Within the Star Maker’s suite, Miss Mott handed the Star Maker the phone. “It’s Tomasso. He’s in a very excited state.”

“I shouldn’t wonder.”

Tomasso told the Star Maker everything Mortimer had said about the Star. He repeated all the offensive remarks.

“Oh, really, Dino, you’ve become such a worrier. He’s an intellectual. It’s typical sour grapes.”

Tomasso wasn’t convinced.

“Very well, then, keep an eye on him. But you’re too touchy, Dino. That’s a fault in you.”

14

A
T MORTIMER’S NEXT “READING FOR PLEASURE”
lecture, on Monday night, Jacob Shalinsky was not alone. He sat with a tiny pinched man with rimless glasses. Throughout Mortimer’s lecture the tiny pinched man took notes; he and Shalinsky whispered together, Shalinsky nodding approvingly more than once. Afterwards, by prearrangement, Mortimer grudgingly sought Shalinsky out at the corner pub. He handed Shalinsky his twelve-hundred-word article on Chagall, titled – rather catchily, he thought – “The Myopic Mystic,” and ordered drinks for the two of them. Shalinsky read Mortimer’s piece at once, pondering it unsmilingly. Finally he folded it neatly in four, pocketing it without comment.

“Is there anything the matter?” Mortimer asked.

“Cracking good stuff,
magnifique
, as an intellectual exercise, but –”

“You don’t have to print it if you don’t want to.”

“Did I say I wouldn’t print it? Not bloody likely … but, if you’ll allow me to finish, I had hoped it would be a little more from the soul. Take the title, for instance. The Myopic Mystic,” he said with obvious distaste. “Easy alliteration. Clever. Too clever by half, Mr. Griffin. No heart. I’ll tell you a good title. I. M. Sinclair wrote an appreciation of Isador Zangwill on the anniversary of his death and you know what he called it? ‘I Continually Worship Those Who Are Truly Great.’ But does Sinclair have your insights into the human
psyche? No. This is a smashing article, Mr. Griffin. I wouldn’t change a word. Not for the world.”