Two Weeks in Another Town (30 page)

“I’m sorry,” he said, patting Carlotta’s hand. “I was very fond of him.” Now that the dog was dead, this was true.

“It’s the one really near and dear thing I’ve lost in the war,” Carlotta said, weeping.

Well, Jack thought, everybody must expect to lose
something
in a war. But he didn’t say it. He wished he knew how to console his wife. He wished he could make her believe that when he returned, things would change, the climate would improve, California would no longer be full of horrible, vicious people, she would no longer be offered only bad parts in bad pictures, her salary would be restored, her confidence in herself re-established. But at that moment, Wilson came over in his maroon bathrobe to be introduced to his ward-mate’s famous and beautiful wife, and there was no time for comfort.

Drying her tears, Carlotta smiled at Wilson, in a very good imitation of the reckless, enticing smile she had brought with her to the Coast from Texas so many years before and which had had so much to do with her success. If Wilson saw that she had been crying, he no doubt thought that it was on account of Jack.

“Miss Lee,” Wilson said politely, rocking on his destroyed legs, “I want to tell you that I have admired you since I was a young boy…” (Wilson was now twenty-four) “…and that I have always believed that you were the most desirable lady I had ever had the good fortune to set my eyes on.”

“Well, now,” Carlotta said, and once more she sounded the way she had when Jack first met her, gay and dangerous and sure of herself, “well, now, isn’t that nice to hear?”

She didn’t stay the full two hours. She left with a good half-hour to spare. She was afraid she’d miss the train to Washington, she said. She couldn’t afford to be late these days. It wasn’t like the good old days, she said, when she was riding high and could get away with anything.

That night, when the lights were out, after they had prepared him for the operation the next morning, Jack wept. It was the first time since he had been hit that the tears had come.

“In California, I find, they have wonderful California mornings in the morning. Don’t you find?”

“Stay for lunch,” Clara Delaney said. She was lying on a rubber mattress on the sand in front of the house, tanning herself. She was wearing a very brief bathing suit and she was almost completely black from the sun, and Jack was surprised, as he was each time he saw her in revealing clothes, by the firmness of her body and the robust beauty of its lines, under the harsh, disappointed, private secretary’s face. “Maurice is out there someplace.” She waved vaguely toward the ocean. “If he hasn’t drowned. Is Carlotta with you?”

“No,” Jack said, “she’s not with me.”

He climbed over the low wall that separated the Delaney’s patio from the beach and walked toward the water’s edge. It was a weekday morning and the white curve of the Malibu beach, with its gaudy fringe of houses jammed one against the other, was almost deserted. The water was rough, and there was a wicked swell, and when the waves broke and spent their force, they receded with a choppy, dangerous green hiss and foamed into white water again as they met the next line of breakers coming in. Far out, Jack saw a speck. Delaney was swimming steadily, parallel with the shore, the dark speck rising and falling with the combers coming in to plume and break. Jack waved and after a while Delaney saw him and waved back and started in.

For a minute or two it looked as though Delaney wasn’t going to make it. The tide pulled at him and he was caught just where the breakers were pounding down and his head disappeared again and again. Then he caught a wave and hurtled into the beach and stood up, the water sucking at his knees, a sturdy, brown figure, like an old lightweight, filled out a bit by time, but not too badly, amused by the attacks of the Pacific Ocean against him. He came out, smiling, his eyes slightly bloodshot from the salt water, and shook hands with Jack, his hand dripping, before he bent and picked up a huge white Turkish towel that was lying on the sand and vigorously scrubbed his thin red hair with it. Then he draped it around his body, like a toga.

“You should’ve come earlier,” he said. “We could’ve swum together. The water’s great.”

“One day, Maurice,” Jack said, “if you keep going that far out by yourself, they’re going to find a drowned director somewhere along this coast.”

Delaney grinned. “That’ll be a laugh,” he said, “for a lot of people, won’t it? Want a cup of coffee?”

“I want to talk to you,” Jack said. “I’m in trouble.”

“Who isn’t?” Delaney said. He glanced toward his house. “Is Clara out there yet on the patio?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s take a walk,” Delaney said.

Side by side, walking on the hard sand just below the high-tide kelp, they paced along the beach. Thirty yards out, a line of pelicans skimmed along the inside edge of a wave, inches above the water.

“I’m thinking of throwing in my cards,” Jack said, “and I want your advice.”

“What cards?”

“Marriage cards,” Jack said, watching the pelicans. “Career cards. The whole hand.”

“Uh-huh.” Delaney nodded. He stooped and picked up a stone and tossed it side-arm, like a shortstop, to scale along the shallows. When he did something like that you were surprised how young he seemed, how deft and vigorous all his movements were. “I was waiting for this,” he said, without looking at Jack. “Carlotta’s been giving you a rough time, hasn’t she?”

“Yes,” Jack said. “This morning she got in at eight o’clock.”

“Did you ask her where she’d been?”

“No,” Jack said. “But she insisted on telling me.”

“Oh,” Delaney said, “it’s reached that stage.”

“Yes.”

“What do you say to her?”

“When I came back here, after the hospital,” Jack said, “I told her I’d heard about her during the war and that I wasn’t blaming her or judging her. What the hell, I was away more than five years. All I wanted, I said, was for us both to forget all that and start over again, and try to get back to the way we were…”

“The Innocent Warrior,” Delaney said. “What did she say to that?”

“She said, fine, that’s what she wanted, too. And for about two months, it
was
the way it had been. Anyway,
almost
the way it was. Then she began to duck out on parties, and disappear every afternoon…You know how dames operate out here. Then last night, she went the whole way and stayed out all night…”

“Does she want a divorce?”

“No. She says she still loves me.” Jack smiled wearily. “And in a way, she does. The other men don’t seem to mean anything much to her. At least, not individually. En masse, yes.”

“Have you any idea about why she does all this?”

“I have my theories,” Jack said. “Naturally.” He shook his head painfully, forcing himself to talk, because he couldn’t keep it to himself any longer. “It’s so different from the way she was when I met her, when I married her, until I went away…You know, before she met me, she’d only been with one man, Kutzer. When I heard about him, I thought it was the typical Hollywood thing—the ambitious girl sleeping with the producer for the fat parts and the big publicity. But it wasn’t like that at all, I found out. She was with him, and nobody else, for seven years. She loved him. With her, he wasn’t the kind of hoodlum in tweeds he seemed to be to everybody else. With her he was kind and gentle and delicate, she says, and clever and honest. And I must say, when she told him she wanted to marry me, he behaved very well. He didn’t threaten her or try to damage me—and at that time it would’ve been the easiest thing in the world for him to do me in—and he’s been a good friend to both of us ever since. And with me—until I went overseas—she never looked at anybody else. Any more than I did. I’m sure of that.”

“Yes,” Delaney said. “That’s true.” He grinned sourly. “You were the most unnatural couple. So—what do you think happened?”

“First, she was lonely…She can’t stand being alone. Then she began to feel that she was sliding…She had bad luck with two or three pictures and people began to pass her over and pick other girls for parts she thought she should have had. I don’t have to tell you how ambitious she used to be. I can understand how it must have hurt her. And she began to get hipped on the subject of getting old. I think she began to look for reassurance in bed, once she’d lost it in front of the camera. Well, if that’s what you’re looking for, you never find it in any one bed. So you keep trying other beds, I guess.”

Delaney nodded. He rubbed his head thoughtfully, pushing the frail reddish hair, matted with salt, so that it stood up erratically. “Well, Doctor,” he said, “I think there’s no need to take an x-ray. The diagnosis seems pretty clear. Now, how about you? What’re
you
going to do?”

“I’m going to get out. I can’t help her. All I can do if I stay is hate her. It’s just about all used up,” Jack said.

“I knew back in 1944 that one day you were going to come and tell me this,” Delaney said. “I was at a party with your loving wife and she came over to me and she said, ‘Maurice, I hear you’re the best lay in town.’” Delaney laughed brutally. “It wasn’t true, of course,” he said, “but the implication was dear.”

“I’m not going to ask you what happened after that,” Jack said quietly.

“No,” said Delaney. “Don’t.”

They stopped and looked out at the waves. The pelicans were coming back now, on their steady, unmoving wings, skimming a long green roller. “They obviously have some reason for doing that all day,” Delaney said, with a gesture of his head for the pelicans, “but it’s my opinion they’re just showing off; they’re saying, we don’t look like anything much when we’re sitting down, but we’re pretty hot birds on the edge of a wave, all right. They’re probably secret members of the Screen Actors Guild.” He wrapped his towel more tightly around him. There was a wind coming down the beach from the north, and a high mist that made the sunlight pale and watery. “So—” Delaney said, “do you want to move down here and stay with us? This is a pretty good place for the summer and during the week there’s practically nobody around and you can recuperate in peace. There’s a guest room over the garage and you don’t even have to see me if you don’t want to.”

“Thanks,” Jack said, “but I think not. I think I’m going East for a while, and then maybe back to Europe.”

“You got a picture to do in Europe?”

“No. I don’t think I want to do pictures any more,” Jack said slowly. “For one thing, I’ll never get back to where I was before the war. Not with this face.” He touched his jaw.

“There’re still lots of parts. Like the one you read for me that you turned down last year. Maybe you won’t get leads for a while, but…”

“I’m no good any more, Maurice,” Jack said quietly. “You know that, don’t you?”

“Well…”

“You know it,” Jack insisted.

“Yes,” Delaney said.

“You offered me that part out of friendship.”

“In a way,” Delaney said. “Yes.”

“I’m not interested any more,” Jack said. “Maybe it’s the war. I don’t know. It all seems like balls to me now. Being an actor doesn’t seem like work for a grown man to me now. I guess the reason I feel that is that I never really was an actor. I just got into it by accident…” He shrugged. “I might as well get out the same way.”

“What’ll you do in Europe?”

“Well, I’ve been talking to a couple of people,” Jack said, embarrassed, “about what the Quakers—the Friends—are doing there…refugees, rehabilitation, that sort of thing. I have a feeling in Europe this year it won’t make much of a difference if a man’s face is busted up a little here and there. Anyway, we spent so much time blowing the godamn place up, maybe it’s a good thing to put in a couple of years trying to patch it together again…”

Delaney laughed. “There’s nothing like an unfaithful wife,” he said, “to turn a man toward good works.”

“Anyway,” Jack said, “I’ll decide when I’m in New York.”

“How’re you fixed for dough?” Delaney asked.

“I have my pension,” Jack said. “A hundred and ninety bucks a month. And there’ll be a salary attached to the job. And my agent made me buy some stocks and bonds before the war, when I was so rich I didn’t know what to do with my money. They’ve almost tripled in value, he tells me. If I cash them in, I stand to get somewhere between a hundred and a hundred and twenty thousand…I won’t starve.”

“Ah, what a waste…” Delaney shook his head regretfully. “We were doing so good, you and me. We had it all wrapped up. It didn’t seem as if our luck would ever run out. Only it wasn’t just luck, either. We had a big secret. We didn’t lie to each other and we knew how to work with each other. The godamn war,” he said, with quiet bitterness. “All during the war I had a plan for us. I thought that when you came back we’d start an independent company together, you and me, and really show them how to make pictures. If you’d’ve come back in 1945, like everybody else, with a whole face, it’d’ve been a cinch, they’d have fallen over themselves to stuff the money in our hand…”

“Well,” Jack said, “I didn’t come back in 1945 with a whole face.”

“And now,” Delaney said, rubbing the side of his head reflectively, “I couldn’t get the financing to do a three-minute short advertising condoms.”

“That’s only temporary, Maurice,” Jack said, “and you know it. Plenty of people want you.”

“Sure. Plenty of people want me. On their own terms. To do their own crap.” He shrugged. “Ah, well,” he said, lightly, “it’ll change. It always does. And when it does, I’m going to come to you and grab you out of whatever you’re doing and we’ll make some pictures that’ll knock the bastards dead.” He grinned. “Just leave a forwarding address wherever you go, so that I won’t waste any time looking for you.”

“I’ll leave a forwarding address,” Jack said. It was hard to get the words out. Christ, he thought savagely, since the hospital I’m ready to cry at the drop of a hat.

“Meanwhile, if you need any dough…”

Jack shook his head, looking down at the sand.

“Well,” Delaney said, “what do you want from me?”

“You got me out here,” Jack said. “I want you to tell me it’s time to go.”

“Go,” Delaney said harshly. “Go fast. I wish I could go with you. And don’t wait. Pack and leave this afternoon. Get across the California border by midnight. Don’t look back.” His voice was bitter and strident, as though he felt responsible for what had happened to Jack and to the marvelous young girl Carlotta had been when he first saw her, as though Jack had crystallized for him all the fears and failures and betrayals he himself had suffered from, had witnessed, had inflicted, in this place. “Don’t argue with her. Don’t argue with anybody. Just go.”