The Dream Merchants (41 page)

He looked down at her. A puzzled expression began to creep over his face.

Suddenly she broke from his arms and flung herself face-down on the bed and began to sob.

He followed her to the bed and sat down beside her. He put his hands on her shoulders and tried to turn her around. She wouldn’t turn, only sobbed harder. His voice was frightened. “Dulcie, honey, what’s the matter? What did I say?”

Slowly she turned around and sat up. Her gown slipped to her waist and the tears ran down her cheeks. “Johnny,” she wept, “You’re going to hate me! I fooled you!”

He put his arms around her and drew her to him. He pressed his lips to her ear. “I’m not going to hate you,” he whispered tenderly. “What are you crying about?”

She buried her face against his shoulder. “I should have told you before, but I was afraid you wouldn’t marry me!”

His voice was genuinely frightened now. She fought an impulse to keep her triumph from showing on her face. His hands gripped tightly into her shoulders, hurting her. She welcomed the pain. It was a sign of the power she had over him.

“Dulcie, what do you have to tell me?” His eyes were staring into hers searchingly.

She looked up at him bravely. Her voice was low and full of self-reproach. “I had an accident. Years ago. When I was a kid.” Her gaze fell from his. She looked down at the bed. “The doctor said I could never have a child.” She looked up at him again, her eyes filled with tears.

Slowly the tenseness was disappearing from his face.

“Johnny, you’re disappointed!” she cried, the tears contorting her face once more. “You wanted a child!”

A look of tenderness came to his eyes. She had never seen them so soft and warm. She didn’t know they were mellowed by his disappointment. She didn’t guess how close she was to the truth.

He pressed her head to his chest. “No, darling,” he lied, his eyes looking somberly over her head to the picture of Peter he had on the dresser. He was going to name his first son after him. “It really doesn’t matter.”

She kissed his cheek, his chin, his lips. Short, quick kisses. Light as the flutter of a butterfly’s wings. “Johnny, you’re so good to me!”

He smiled slowly. “Why shouldn’t I be?” he asked. “Ain’t you my baby?”

She snuggled her head against his shoulder. “Then you’re not mad at me?” she asked in a small and hesitating voice.

He kissed her neck for an answer. He held his face against her and guided it toward her breasts. She bent forward and kissed the top of his head and smiled. He was so simple. It was so easy to keep him happy.

Her voice was still low and small. “Johnny,” she asked, “how was the test?”

She could feel him start with surprise. He tried to raise his head, but she wouldn’t let him. Her hands kept his face between her breasts.

His voice was muffled as he replied. “It was very good.”

She was silent for a while. She could feel his hands seeking her out. She let her body warm to his touch. “Was it really good, Johnny?”

He wasn’t thinking of his answer. “It was one of the best we ever saw.”

She reached over and turned off the lamp. She started to unbutton his shirt. He laughed happily and got out of bed. She could see him move in the dark as he undressed. A few minutes later his lips were against hers, her body warm against him.

***

They were quiet. The glow of their cigarettes in the darkness of the room cast their shadows on the white sheets. Slowly she placed her hand on his body and ran her fingers lightly across his chest.

“Johnny,” she said.

“Yes,” he answered, his voice filled with contentment.

“Johnny, I was thinking.”

There was a lazy curiosity in his voice as he spoke. “What about?” he asked.

“This picture of von Elster’s—” She didn’t finish the sentence. Her heart began to pound excitedly inside her, lending a breathless quality to her voice. “We’re going to be here until the end of March.”

He turned and looked at her in the dark. He was silent for a moment. “And you want to make it?”

She didn’t dare answer. She nodded her head in the dark.

“Why?” he asked simply.

She hesitated. Then the answer seemed to flood from inside her. “Because I always said I could be an actress, a good one. Because Cynthia and Warren didn’t believe me. I want to show them, Johnny. They used to laugh at me all the time. You said I was good yourself. Please, Johnny, just this one. That’s all I ask.” She was really begging now, she wasn’t acting. “Let me do this one picture. It’s the only chance I’ve got to show them. I’ll never ask again. Just let me make this picture!”

He drew deeply on his cigarette. He could feel the acrid smoke deep inside his lungs. Slowly he let it out through his nostrils. Only one picture. That was all she was asking. She was good. It wasn’t as if she were not. The test she had made was the best he had ever seen. That was why he had been so angry when he saw it. A cold fear had swept over him when he saw her face on the screen. He could not hope to hold so vivid a talent for his own, to keep her to himself.

His gaze had swept around the darkened projection room. The faces he saw were enraptured. They were alive to the emotions expressed by her. After a first startled word even Peter had responded to Dulcie on the screen.

Peter had been nice about it, too. He had not pressed him for any decision.

He loved her and he loved motion pictures too. Something inside ached when he thought that he would have to keep her from being where he suddenly knew she belonged. But he was afraid that if she once appeared in a picture, he would lose her.

Slowly he puffed at his cigarette. He could hear her breathing, she was sitting so still, almost as if she were afraid to move, afraid to do something that would displease him. Tenderness and love for her swept through him. She was so good to him, when he had thought no woman could ever be. He began to feel a little sorry for her, a little angry with himself. How could he be so cold, so heartless toward her when all she asked was so little of him?

He ground out his cigarette in the ashtray and turned to her. “Just this one picture?” he asked softly.

“Just this one,” she repeated.

He looked at her in the dark. The light from the window fell across her face. She was beautiful. Her eyes were on his, deep with an unexpressed hope, her lower lip trembled slightly, her cigarette was forgotten in her hand.

“All right,” he said quietly.

Suddenly she was upon him, her body pressing his against the bed. She was kissing him. “Johnny, Johnny!” she was saying excitedly.

He could feel her trembling. He shivered with a strange unknown fear and pulled her face down to his with a desire to feel her warmth around him.

“Johnny,” she was saying, her teeth biting excitedly against his lips. “Johnny, I love you!” And strangely enough, at the moment, she meant every word she spoke.

10

Peter put the empty coffee cup on the table and looked at Esther. “I don’t like it,” he said flatly. “I don’t like it at all. The idea of a young girl like Doris going off to Europe by herself! It’s not right.”

Esther smiled at him tolerantly. “Sometimes it’s necessary for a girl to get away from things and be by herself for a while,” she said, coming to her daughter’s defense.

Peter looked at her belligerently. “What does she have to be by herself for?” he asked. “What does she have to get away from? Everything here is fine.”

Imperceptibly Esther shook her head. Men were sometimes such blind fools, and Peter could see no more than the others. Couldn’t he see what was the matter with Doris? The way she had acted ever since Johnny came out here that morning with his wife? She didn’t answer.

A crackling sound of gunfire came through the open windows. Peter pulled out his watch and looked at it. “Holy smokes,” he exclaimed, jumping to his feet. “It’s late. Already the Western on the back lot is shooting and I planned to be down there this morning.”

The back lot was just down the hill from their house. He took his hat, walked to the door, and turned to look back at his wife. “I’m going,” he announced, “but I still don’t like what Doris is doing.”

Esther came up to him and kissed his cheek. “Go, Papa,” she said. “Don’t worry about her. She’ll be all right.”

He looked at her curiously. “Nobody ever listens to me around this house,” he said as he left. “I’m only the father!”

Peter stopped at the crest of the hill and looked back at his house. He shook his head. Something had been wrong for the last month. He didn’t understand it. He couldn’t put his finger on just what it was, but he felt certain it concerned Doris. In the past month she had lost a great deal of weight and she looked peaked. Black circles had sprung up under her eyes as if she hadn’t been sleeping well. He stood there lost in thought.

The sound of horse’s hoofs against the ground and men shouting made him turn around. He looked down into the valley. At the bottom of the hill on which he stood was a narrow dirt road. An open car with a camera mounted in the back was speeding along it. Behind the car about a dozen men on horses were riding desperately after it, clouds of dust coming up from the flying hoofs.

Peter smiled to himself and started down the path that led to the road. Some day he would have to build a house away from the studio, where the noise of the Westerns would not wake people up on the mornings they wanted to sleep late. But now he loved it. The sound that reached him at his breakfast table every morning would send the same thrill of pride shooting through him, the same pride he had felt when he first made
The Bandit
.

He reached the road and stood there waiting. They had gone past him, out of sight around a curve in the road, but they would be back in a few minutes. He calculated the time it would take for a setup to be made and for them to return. About seven minutes. He took out his watch and looked at it. Nothing like checking up on his units personally to gain the most efficiency from them.

Exactly five minutes later he heard them yelling as they came around the bend. He put his watch back in his pocket and stepped out into the road and held up his hand. This director was good, he had completed his setup in two minutes less time than the average.

The driver of the car saw him and slowed the car to a halt. In the back seat behind him the director waved his hand for the riders to stop. They pulled up sharply, their horses panting heavily. The cameraman snapped the shutter down on his camera to keep out any stray beams of light. They turned around.

Peter walked slowly to the car and looked up at the director. He recognized him. He wasn’t the director who should be working on this road, he was a unit manager. A young fellow named Gordon, he couldn’t remember his first name. “That was a quick setup, Gordon,” he said, complimenting the young man.

“Thanks, Mr. Kessler,” Gordon replied.

Peter looked into the car. “Where’s Marran?” he asked. Marran was the director in charge of this unit.

Gordon looked uncomfortable. Marran was stinking drunk back in his office. He had come in too drunk to work and Gordon had dropped him on the couch in the office and taken the unit out to do the chase scenes. “He wasn’t feeling well,” he said hesitantly. “He told me to take the unit out.”

Peter didn’t answer. He had heard rumors of Marran’s indispositions. He climbed into the car. Forgotten was his pleasure at the efficient timing of the return setup. He wasn’t paying a director two hundred dollars a week so a fifty-dollar unit man could take his picture out. “Drop me at the end of the road,” he said surlily. That would leave him only five minutes from the office.

The car started up again. Gordon turned and signaled for the riders to follow. “Might as well keep shooting,” he said to the cameraman, looking up at the sky. “This sun doesn’t look as if it will last forever.”

Peter heard him and nodded approvingly to himself. Good boy, this Gordon, he didn’t waste any light. Light was the most valuable thing in this business. You had to be ready to use it whenever you could. He turned in his seat and looked back.

Gordon’s back was turned to him. He was leaning against the back of the car, his knees braced against its side, his body hanging over it dangerously. He waved his right hand in a circle. A rider dove from his horse and tumbled over and over on the ground.

Peter nodded his head again and turned around in his seat. He sat there silently, oblivious of the sounds and noises behind him. There were many other things on his mind. He stared ahead morosely.

There was this business of George wanting to sell out the theaters. He felt that George was worrying over nothing, and he was sure that he did not want to break up the theater chain. He felt they played an important part in establishing the Magnum name across the country. He had told Johnny that he wanted to buy George out. Johnny pointed out that it would take more cash than they had available. He had suggested they go to see Al Santos and try to borrow the capital necessary. They were to see Al today at Al’s office in downtown Los Angeles. He wasn’t at all sure he could get the money from him; he owed him almost four million dollars already.

The car stopped. Peter looked up, surprised the ride was over so soon. He got out of the car and turned to the unit man. “Nice work, Tom,” he said to him.

Gordon corrected him. “Bob, Mr. Kessler.”

Peter looked at him closely for a moment, his eyebrows pulled together. “Yes,” he said absently, “Bob. Nice work.” Without waiting for a reply he turned and walked down the road.

11

Al Santos’s office was in the rear of the two-storied Bank of Independence, and through the glass he could see what was going on all over the bank. The office was very plain. Al’s clothes, too, were of a sober and conservative cut. Little trace remained about him of the carnival operator of fifteen years ago. He now looked like an exemplary representative of the banking profession. Only his eyes were the same, warm, brown, and twinkling. And the tanned leathery wrinkles on his face and the black, thin, Italian stogie clenched between his teeth.

Right now he was feeling good. Thin spirals of smoke arose from the end of his cigar as he leaned back in his chair and through half-lidded eyes looked at Johnny while Peter was speaking.