Establishment (31 page)

“What?”

“You ask me about the screenplay. What's to say? It stinks. Darling, there is such a thing as a way to write for the screen, a manner, a technique. You don't know any of them. Forget it.”

Sally stared at him for a moment, then leaped to her feet and, leaning across the desk, said, “Is that what you called me in here for, to tell me that my screenplay stinks?”

“I call you because you are Danny's daughter-in-law. I love Danny.”

Her voice rose. “You love Danny! That really gets to me! You love Danny enough to get all my hopes up, to put me through this wretched charade, and then you can't spare the time to tell me what was wrong with my work! Oh, no! Only that it stinks! Well, you may be Dan's bosom friend, Mr. Hargasey, but I can't help returning the sentiment! You stink, sir!”

She stood in front of him trembling with anger, her pale eyes flashing; behind his desk, Hargasey stared at her intently, not annoyed, not provoked, simply staring intently.

“You—you—” The words choked off.

“Go on, go on,” Hargasey said.

Sally swallowed, breathed deeply, and clasped her hands together to stop their trembling. “I'll take my manuscript and go,” she whispered.

“Walk across the room,” Hargasey said.

“What?”

“I said, walk across the room. It's possible, yes.”

“Why should I?”

“You want your manuscript. Walk across the room, I'll give you the manuscript.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Maybe. Who knows?”

She took two paces and then turned on him, her eyes blazing. “Damn you, no! You can't make a fool of me! You can tell me my writing stinks, but that's all you can do.”

“Take off your sweater.”

“No! Give me my script!”

Hargasey rose and came around the desk. Sally backed away. “Now look,” she said to him. “I may be skinny, but I'm strong. And I'm taller than you. I was raised on a farm with two brothers—so just don't try anything.”

He burst into laughter. “Oh, Sally, little darling, all the stories about Hollywood! You believe it all, yes? That's what's wrong with your screenplay. How old are you?”

“Twenty-two.”

“Beautiful. You could be my granddaughter. There are men my age who play with children. I don't. Take off the sweater. I want to see you without it.”

His whole manner had changed. He was gentle, cozening, intriguing. She found her anger dissipating as she pulled off the sweater, at the same time asking herself why she was doing it, why she was obeying him? He studied her for a few moments, appraising her from head to foot.

“You ever acted, Sally? Anywhere? Amateur theatricals, anything?”

She shook her head.

“It don't matter.” He went to his desk and picked up a manuscript. “Sit down over there and look at this. There's a part in there for a woman. Lotte. That's the name of the woman. You read it and think about that woman.”

“I can't act. I never acted in my life. Anyway, I can't sit down and read. I have a baby at home. I have to get back.”

He pointed to the phone. “Make a call. You want me to get a nurse to go to your home and sit with the baby? Or I'll send my secretary. Whatever you want.”

“I don't know what you're thinking,” she said plaintively.

“So just let me think. You call your house.”

“I'm not even pretty,” she said woefully.

“Sally, pretty is what this town stinks from. On every corner is pretty. Outside there is fifty girls who are pretty. Means nothing, positively nothing. They are the same, like cut out of cardboard. You got that thing Garbo had. I know, you don't look like her, thank God. She ain't my favorite. I won't even call you beautiful, but you got a face like you don't see. And with passion, that's it. Positively. All right, so I'm crazy. Outside on the lot, fifty girls come crawling with tears, I should tell them to read that script. Do me a favor. Call your house.”

She walked to the desk, picked up the phone, and began to dial.

“No, first nine. Then dial.”

She dialed again. Billy answered. “Billy,” she said, “will you be a dear and stay an extra hour or two—or until I come back?”

“Sally, what's wrong? You sound awful.”

“No, it's not awful. I'm fine.”

“I guess I can stay,” he said. “What shall I tell Joe? Will you be back in time for dinner?”

“Oh, yes.”

“And I'm good with the diapers. Don't worry.”

“And Billy, if I'm not there by five, there's a bottle in the fridge. You warm it to skin temperature. And with it, a bowl of Pablum. The directions are on the box, and just let her eat as much as she wants.”

She put down the phone and turned to Hargasey. “I don't know what I'm doing. I think I've lost my mind.”

“So you lost your mind.” He handed her the script. “Read it.” She took the script, dropped into one of the leather chairs, and began to read. Hargasey picked up the telephone, and Sally heard him say, “Get me Mike Bordon.” And then, after a moment, “Mike, I think I found our Lotte. I want you to set up a screen test.” Pause. “I know it don't happen, but it happened. You got to see her. Tall, wide shoulders, yellow hair that ain't from a bottle, looks like she just climbed out of a covered wagon. And a face like an angry angel. And she is valid.” Pause again. “Can she act? Mike, tell me, who the hell can act in this lousy industry? This one, I think of Lauren Bacall, only she has a quality Bacall should give her eyeteeth for. What can I tell you—you'll see her. In an hour.”

***

It was almost eight o'clock when Sally got home. Joe had been sitting in the kitchen, and he leaped up when he heard her at the door, then embraced her and held her as she came into the house. “I was so worried,” he said. “I was just about out of my mind. I tried calling the studio, and all I got was an answering service that told me they had closed for the day.”

“Then you're not angry at me?”

“I'm never angry at you, Sally, I love you so much. Don't you know how much I love you? I just couldn't imagine what had happened to you.”

“Oh, Joey, the most wonderful, crazy, impossible thing happened to me. You know, I went over there to Paramount because this man, Hargasey—you remember him, your father built a yacht for him—had his secretary make an appointment for me to see him. I thought he would tell me that my screenplay was wonderful. He's a funny little man, fat and bald as a billiard ball, and he didn't tell me that at all, but he just wanted to see me because he's so crazy about your dad—”

“Slow down, slow down,” Joe begged her, laughing in spite of himself. “Come on into the kitchen. I made coffee. I'll pour you a cup.”

Sally held it in until they were sitting at the kitchen table. “Just listen, Joey, and don't laugh at me and don't be angry, but almost the first thing he said to me was that my screenplay was rotten, that it was worthless, and that I didn't know the first thing about writing a screenplay. Well, I got so angry, I began to scream at him and call him names—I guess I was never so angry before—and he just sat and stared at me. He kept looking at me and telling me to walk back and forth, and then he asked me whether I had ever done any acting, and I thought he was making passes and I was so nasty to him, but he's really a darling little man. Well, he gave me a script to read, and he arranged for a screen test right there—”

“Wait, wait,” Joe said. “What are you telling me, Sally? You didn't fall for that kind of thing? It's a racket.”

“Won't you listen to me, please? It's not a scam. I'm not a fool, Joe, or some little babe in the woods. Now listen to what happened. I spent an hour reading the script. It's a Western, and I don't think it's any great shakes, but it's all right. It's called
Purple Sage
. Then Hargasey took me to this huge sound stage that had about four different sets in it. They were just using one of the sets because it was there, a western saloon, and the part they wanted me to read happened in a western saloon, but they haven't any sets for the picture yet because they haven't even started. But the set was lit up with all these big klieg lights, and there was a cameraman, and this man—his name is Mike Bordon and he's Hargasey's production manager—well, this man read a few lines as cues, just a page, but I memorized my lines on the page. I read along with him, and they filmed it. Then they had me do some other things that they filmed, and then we talked, and they were both of them so nice and kind, and they asked me to come back tomorrow, when they'll have the developed film, which they call the rushes, and Mr. Hargasey says that if I film all right, he'll give me the part, because he's sick and tired of looking for someone to play the role who doesn't exist. I mean, that's the way he talks. He's a Hungarian, but very nice. And he said not to worry about acting, because he'd find me a coach, and he thinks I'm a natural actress, whatever that is.”

She stopped and waited. Joe looked at her and said nothing, his brows knit, his face tight and worried.

“Joe?”

“I love you so much,” he said.

“Joe, you haven't looked at me in weeks. Sometimes I wonder if you know I exist.”

“That's just the way I am,” he said unhappily. “You know that, Sally. That's the way I've always been. It doesn't mean I don't love you. You're the most important thing in my life.”

Impulsively, she leaped to her feet, ran around the table, and cradled his head in her arms.

“You used to say I was dumb. I'm dumb,” Joe said.

“Oh, no, no, you're not dumb. You're the kindest, best man I ever knew. Joey, don't you want me to do this?” She let go of him and stood by the table, staring at him wide-eyed. “If you don't want me to—”

“You want it, don't you?”

“It's like a dream. Oh, Joe, I would love to be the kind of person you want me to be, and stay here and have children and keep the house for you and always be here when you want me—but I can't, and I'm not that person, and I've been so miserable.”

“You want this a great deal, don't you?”

“More than anything in the world.” She closed her eyes and stood still for a moment, her hands clasped; looking at her, Joe could understand what had happened at the studio. She was like some wild, strange creature, raised in captivity but never civilized, never truly tamed or subdued.

“We'll work it out,” he said. “Don't worry, Sally. You go ahead and do it, and we'll work it out somehow.”

When Sally returned to the studio the following day, Hargasey introduced her to a Mr. Jack Lesser, a neatly dressed, bespectacled man in his forties. “Lesser here,” Hargasey said, “is from the William Morris Agency. That's a very respectable agency for actors, makes sure they shouldn't be cheated by people like myself. I had him meet us here. I'm going to make you an offer, and he'll tell you what I offer, it ain't enough. That's his work. I could hire you for peanuts, but you're Danny's daughter-in-law, and anyway I like you. But,” he said to Lesser, “you should be paying me. I got to teach her to act, to walk, to talk.”

“My heart bleeds for you,” Lesser said, and to Sally, he added, “I work for an excellent agency, Mrs. Lavette, but you can't let Hargasey inflict me on you. You have to engage me of your own free will, because I'll ask you to sign a contract with our agency. The money you earn will come through our agency, and we deduct a ten percent commission. Now, do you want me to represent you?”

“Yes. I've heard of the William Morris Agency. Yes, of course, I'd like that.” Then she added, “If Mr. Hargasey feels I need an agent.”

“You will need one,” Hargasey said. “Believe me.”

***

Dr. Kellman called Barbara and asked her whether she could see him at his house the following evening. “I would ask you to dinner, Barbara,” he said, “but I can't get home much before nine. Would nine-thirty be all right?”

“Yes, certainly,” Barbara said. “Is it about daddy?”

“No, not really. But let's talk when you get here.”

Kellman lived within walking distance, in one of the new apartment houses on Jones Street. It was a cool, lovely summer evening, and Barbara enjoyed the walk. She had been spending too many hours at her desk, and she thought longingly of the horse she had once kept at Menlo Park, of rides on shaded hillside bridal paths, of the heated gallop around the track, the wind rushing in her face. She had sold the horse, Sandy, a gift from her father, in 1934, just as she had sold everything she owned then to buy food for the soup kitchen in which she worked during the longshore strike. It had been fourteen, almost fifteen years, and she had never been on a horse since. Had there truly been a time in her life when Sandy had been the most important object in the world? She recalled the endless hours of currying. What had happened to Sandy? What had happened to her whole wonderful, aimless, untroubled girlhood? Or had it ever been wonderful or untroubled? And by what right did she complain? She had been loved and she had given love, and she had known heights of exultation as well as depths of despair. It was deep in Barbara's nature to emerge from despondency almost the moment it found her, and by the time she reached Dr. Kellman's apartment, she was quite relaxed and cheerful and only moderately interested in the reason for his summons.

From all her mother had told her, Dan was not behaving as a convalescent patient should, and she was sure that Dr. Kellman was going to ask her to bring her influence to bear in that direction, although it did seem a bit odd that he should turn to her. So all the more her astonishment when she entered the Kellman apartment and walked into a living room crowded with people. It took only moments for Barbara to realize what the occasion was.

Here were the eighteen people who had contributed money toward the medicine for the hospital in Toulouse: Dr. Kellman and his wife; Professor Brady from Berkeley and his wife; Mrs. Seligman, eighty-nine, doyenne of the old San Francisco society; Dr. Montrosa and his wife; Dave Appelle, an accountant; Eloise and Adam Levy; two old friends of her childhood, Ruth and Leslie Adams, sisters, with their husbands; Professor Gladstone, the historian; Arnold Dell, who worked on the
Examiner
; Mrs. Gifford, a widow; Mrs. Abramson; Jed Kenton; Stephan Cassala; Dr. Murphy; Fred Cooper; and Carl Anson from the longshore union—all of them here, crowding around her, embracing her and telling her how delighted they were to see her.