Youngblood hawke, p.36
Youngblood Hawke, page 36
"Very good, Mr. Fain. But I think you'll grant that a novelist named John Dos Passos wrote half a dozen excellent novels in the exact style you have chosen, about the time you were born. You say movies are imitative. If Mr. Dos Passos had not done his work—if you had not had him to imitate—how would you have known where to begin?"
All the faces turned to Fain. He looked groggy, and he said nothing at all. He stared at the Englishman and said nothing. Perhaps half a minute went by. The Englishman said kindly, "I think in this case we'll have to say Mr. Dos Passos was Adam." His face crinkled in mischief. "But we'll certainly grant that you are Abel."
The timing of the play on words, climaxing the rout of the young man, brought a buzz and a laugh, and the director reached over to slap the Englishman's back.
Frieda Winter's voice slashed out of the shadow, clear and sharp. "Philip, you make me sick. Howard Fain has written the most tremendous American novel in years. It's a critical success, and it's going like hell in the bookstores. It's just been published in England, your own home ground, Philip, and it's a smash there too, as you undoubtedly know, if you still take the Times Literary Supplement and the New Statesman. Howard got his material by being captured in the Battle of the Bulge and spending half a year in a German prison camp. You haven't published anything in nine years. You sat out the war beside your pool in Westwood, adapting tearjerker novels for Lana Turner. I think that sums up the discussion."
After a still moment somebody in the darkness said, "Wow."
Fain said quickly, "Frieda, Philip Widdleston is a superb novelist whose work I've admired for years, and whose style I can't begin to approach."
The Englishman said with a forced laugh, "That's handsome, Mr. Fain. I did think we were just having a bit of fun. I suppose I needn't dwell on the heart condition which prevented my gathering material in the Bulge or on any other battle ground, an opportunity I do envy you." He got up and walked into the house. The conversation broke up into a delighted multiple noise. It was very late, it was almost three, but those who had stayed were agreeing it had been worth it. They had been rewarded not with one cutting to pieces, but with two.
Carmian said to Hawke, as he lit a cigarette, "It would seem perfectly obvious that Mrs. Winter has moved up to the top of the best-seller list."
All the complicated feelings in Hawke's breast, all his sickness over Frieda's revealing spring to Fain's defense, all his rage, all his excitement, all his humiliation, now became resolved in one simple, grand, exhilarating release. He did not stop to think. He scooped up Pierce Carmian by the shoulders and knees in an easy powerful movement, like a vaudeville performer. He took two strides to the side of the pool, and he threw the playwright far out into the middle of the brilliant green water.
It happened so fast, and with so little struggling, that most of the people in the garden were taken by surprise when a towering sparkling splash leaped twenty feet out of the pool; though one or two of them may have heard Carmian's belated "Hey!" when for a moment he was flying through the air. Here was a new treat, a fully-clothed man flailing and gasping out curses in the pool! They swarmed around the edge, stretching hands to Carmian, all talking at once. Georges Feydal, who alone had seen and heard the entire transaction, sat laughing cross-legged on his cushion like a demented Buddha. "Oh lovely! Oh lovely, lovely! Magnifique!" Hawke was generally ignored for the moment—he had stepped back into shadow—but Frieda was at his side almost at once.
"Now what on earth did you do that for, you big wild ape?"
Hawke, feeling wonderful to his very bones, but also somewhat embarrassed at his unthinking act, said, "Let's go home, Frieda. It's late."
"Go home? What are you talking about? Are you drunk? I'm staying at the Beverly Wilshire."
"Well, let's go there. I have no prejudices."
Carmian had slopped his way to a ladder, and two men were helping him climb out. He was saying shrilly over the din, "My lighter, that's a very valuable gold lighter, does anybody see it?" And a woman shrieked, "There it is, on the bottom. Right by that horrible spider."
Frieda said in a voice like a hiss, "Bloody, why did you throw Pierce in the pool? Now you tell me."
Hawke mumbled, abashed, "Said something about you and Fain."
"Oh Christ." She took his hand and led him almost at a run out of the garden, where all the remaining guests at the party were now surrounding the dripping playwright. She plunged into the back of the house and entered a hall which ran past the library, where the huge colored movie was dancing and talking on the wall to an empty room. "There are columnists here, you imbecile," she said. "My God, why did I ever get mixed up with a Jukes out of the hills? Where do you live? Oh, yes, Rainbow's End. Have you got a hat or anything?" Seeing that there was nobody in the living room she darted across it, still dragging him, his big hand in her tight little grip. She whisked a fur out of a hall closet and was outside the house with Hawke in tow, and there was Ferdie Lax, trotting through the car port, grinning broadly. "Leaving so soon, children?"
"Oh God, Ferdie, what a mess," Frieda said. "Where's my car? What the hell was it? I just rented the goddamned thing. Oh yes, green Cadillac, there it is. I hate green cars. Can you still drive, you Neanderthal, or are you too drunk?"
"I'm quite sober," Hawke said as she gave him keys.
Lax said, "It's okay, Frieda. He tripped and fell in the pool. That's what he said, that's the story. He's in my bedroom cleaning up. Hawke, you crazy son of a bitch, thanks a lot. The party was dying a little bit there. That boy Fain didn't last long against Phil Widdleston."
"I think it was disgusting the way those people led the boy on. Get in the car, Arthur!"
Lax said, "Why, Frieda, he was setting Hollywood straight in one easy lesson. You know how eager to learn everybody is out here."
"Yes, well, I wasn't going to let Philip get away with it," Frieda said, getting into the car. "Phil Widdleston, of all people! Howard Fain is the greatest talent in America right now, except maybe this brainless elephant here . . . What's the matter with you? Start the car!"
"Where does the key go in a Cadillac?" Hawke muttered, fumbling.
"Here, Tarzan," she snapped, taking the key from him, jamming it into the ignition slot, and starting the car with a swift jab of her high-heeled shoe on the gas. The roar of the motor seemed to relax her. She sat back and laughed, and turned to Lax. "You'll take care of Howard? That boy has had far too much to drink. I drove him here."
"I'll put him to bed myself. He's at the Beverly Wilshire, isn't he?"
"Yes. Oh lord, here they come," she exclaimed, as the front door of the house opened and several people streamed through, laughing and shouting. "Take off, Bloody!" Off they went, in a roar and a scrabble of gravel.
6
"Now where are you going?" she said after they drove for a few minutes in silence and he made a left turn.
"Beverly Wilshire."
"Then what?"
"I don't know. Nothing. I'm taking you to your hotel."
"You'll never get a cab this time of the morning. You take yourself to Rainbow's End. Then I'll drive on back to my hotel."
"Anything you say. I can walk to Rainbow's End. I walked out here."
"Yes, I know, you're the great philosophic prowler, you've made my feet blister often enough. It's after three. Keep driving."
They were at his place in five minutes. Neither of them had said a word. She sat against the door, her arms folded, the scarf of black lace on her head framing her white face in the passing flares of the street lamps. He pulled the car to the curb and turned off the motor.
"Well, good night," she said.
Hawke said, "How long are you going to be here?"
"Till Sunday."
"Let's have lunch or dinner or something."
"I'd like that very much, but I've got a lot of business to do. We'll see. I don't know whether Georges will even be human to me after you threw Pierce in the pool."
"Why, he loved it, Frieda. He was laughing like a crazy man."
"Yes, that sounds like him. Look, you fool, you didn't have to defend my honor. What exactly did Pierce say?"
"Nothing worth repeating."
"Bloody, what did he say?"
"That you had moved to the top of the best-seller list," Hawke mumbled.
Frieda looked surprised, then she threw back her head and laughed. The scarf dropped from her head. The neon rainbow flashing on and off a few feet from them bathed her face in soft colors. The car smelled very new, and there was Frieda's unchanging scent faint through the new-car odor. She said, "Is that all? It isn't even particularly clever, and it's quite harmless. You ducked poor Pierce for nothing."
"When did you get here, Frieda?"
"About midnight last night."
"Why didn't you call me?"
"Dear, I know that's your hour for the creation of new American prose. I wouldn't have disturbed you for worlds."
Hawke said awkwardly, "This Fain is quite a boy."
"He's wonderful. A Byron out of Staten Island."
Hawke said, "It's bad enough he's got such a smash hit. Why does he have to be so good-looking, and such a brilliant talker to the bargain?"
"Now, Arthur. You've done a bit of talking in your time. This was his night. He paid for it, poor thing."
"You certainly clawed up that Englishman who went for him."
"Don't you think he had it coming?"
"You seem to know Fain pretty well."
"I met him at a party, the way I met you. I put him in touch with Ferdie. That's how this party came about. Ferdie's done such a good job for you, and Howard really needs help. He talks bravely but he's stumbling and he's terribly scared. He can't get his new book started. He needs distraction. A movie job would be excellent for him, just for a while."
"I've almost finished my new book."
"Oh, you, why not? The juggernaut crashing along."
"I haven't had a big success to panic me. That helps."
She said, "Oh, sure. I'll just bet it worries you dreadfully. You and your Nobel Prize. Look, aren't you tired? I am." She yawned, looked slyly at him, and laughed. "What's the cross-examination for? Don't tell me you're jealous of Howard Fain?"
"No. It did strike me that you were ignoring me rather pointedly at that party."
"Come now, my friend! Who did what? Every time I glanced at you, it seemed, you looked away as though I had snakes for hair. I couldn't fathom it, but I figured, well, if that's how our Kentucky genius wants it, all right, I'll survive."
"You seemed so damned thick with Fain. It was news to me, that's all. It's happened mighty fast."
"Now look, Mr. Youngblood Hawke, you and I had the loveliest farewell, don't you remember? I behaved like an angel up to the last second. I may have closed the door a bit hard."
"Do you like Fain?"
"Why, I think he's enchanting. Except he makes me feel motherly, and I don't like that. You didn't make me feel motherly . . . You have a frown on that big phiz of yours, Arthur, like an oncoming tornado . . . It was more or less accidental that Howard and I came on the same plane. Georges was sending up distress howls and I had to come anyhow. I knew Howard was on his way out so we came together. Anything wrong with that? He's wonderful company, though it's mostly a monologue, and a little too much about sex. He has rather jejune ideas on the all-importance of sex."
"With which you wholly disagree."
"It has its place. There are more important things."
"For instance?"
"Love. I'm not sure Howard knows much about that. Or you either. Young men generally find out about love after it's slipped through their fingers. Then if they're lucky they get a second chance, but that doesn't happen often enough to make this one big happy world. And that concludes the evening's entertainment. I'm perishing for sleep. Good night. Call me about dinner." She moved as though to shift into the driver's seat, and reached across him to open his door.
He caught her hand. So they sat, the touch of their hands stopping them both in their positions for a moment. What he wanted to know most desperately, of course, was whether Frieda had been sleeping with Howard Fain. But it was impossible for him to put the question direct.
And suppose he found the hardihood to croak out the question, what answer could he hope for? She would get angry, or she would humiliate him further with her slippery mockery. He would never know the truth, never, unless a drunken Fain some day told him, and even then he would have no way to prove it and no sure reason for believing it. Nothing was easier than for a woman to betray a man, nothing was harder than to find it out beyond a doubt. Hawke understood in this moment, for the first time, what the relationship of Frieda to her husband probably was.
He said, "Come in for a drink."
Her eyes opened wide, her brows rose in a satiric arch. Her mouth parted in a slow smile that showed all her teeth. "That, Bloody, my boy, is just exactly what you don't want."
"I do want it."
"Well, I don't. It's hours too late. I'm not thirsty."
"One drink. Just to show there are no hard feelings."
"Well, you did defend my honor, didn't you? And nearly ruined my reputation in the process. I guess I should toast my shining knight of the Two Left Feet. All right, one drink." He eagerly opened his door and she laid her hand on his arm. "Better pull the car into the lot. All kinds of drunks roar along Sunset Boulevard this time of night, or is it morning? I don't want a wrecked rented Cadillac on my hands."
Obediently he started the motor, his arm a-tingle where she had touched him. "Good old Frieda. Presence of mind, no matter what."
She said, "One drink, exactly that, nothing more."
"One drink, Frieda."
Jeanne was not coming until Monday, he thought. This thing hadn't been planned. It had just happened.
7
Hawke sat at his desk, and Frieda sat near him in an armchair under a reading lamp, sewing buttons on a shirt. A pile of shirts lay on the floor at her feet, a smaller pile on the table beside her. It was after midnight of the following night. They had eaten a tremendous dinner at a Polynesian restaurant, and they had made love, and now Hawke was attending to his work, with perhaps a little less dash than usual, but at the regular rate of four pages an hour. Fay Pulver's heels ticked on the walk outside; ticked and stopped. Looking out from his lamplit desk, Hawke could see the shadowy form of Fay, halted near the window. He was afraid for a moment that the idiot would tap. But obviously she saw Frieda. The ticking began again, and she melted into the dark. Hawke put down the pen and yawned, thinking that perhaps Frieda ought to have met Fay Pulver. It was probably owing to Fay that she was in his villa. Had he not written that long lonesome letter after the flat business in Fay's bedroom, there would have been no opening for Frieda to start working her way back to him.
He still wondered—and he supposed he would always wonder—to what extent Frieda's appearance at the Lax party on the arm of Howard Fain had been a planned provocation. How could he know? She had fallen back into his arms, and now there was no more question of Howard Fain, if there had ever been a question. Now she was mildly hinting at postponing her return to New York for a few days, and he was mildly evading a response. She was leaving Sunday, and Jeanne was coming Monday; a damnable close call as it was. An old rhyme of which his mother was very fond was running in his mind these days:
It is good to be merry and wise,
It is good to be honest and true.
It is good to be off with the old love
Before you are on with the new.
Frieda was the old love—though not so very old in the elapsed time of their romance!—and in all truth he wanted to be off with her. He had tried. Her incursion into his life now was not really welcome, though their moments of love-making yielded much of the familiar sweetness. The thing had happened. But it had not changed his desire for Jeanne Green. He was absolutely determined that Frieda should leave Sunday as planned.
She saw he had paused in his work. "Will you please tell me why not one of those shirts has a button at the collar? What is this fatal ailment that afflicts your shirts?"
"I have a way of tearing my collar open when I'm working. Look, I can sew on those buttons myself. I was planning to do it Sunday."
"Oh sure. You'd pile up those shirts until you had to back out of this villa and then you'd just go and rent another one and start filling it with dirty shirts minus collar buttons." She had to push a letter on the table aside to make room for a finished shirt. The letter fell to the floor. She picked it up. "Sorry."
"Mama," Hawke said. "I've got to write to her before I turn in."
"Oh? Your mother?" Frieda looked at the envelope with candid curiosity.
"Go ahead and read it."
"Oh, may I? I'm a terrible snoop." She snuggled down in the armchair and held the letter close to her eyes. "So, your sister's getting married!" she said after a moment. "You'll go to the wedding, of course."
"Yes. I'm hoping my job here will be done by then, otherwise I'll fly down and fly back."
"She's marrying that strange-looking man she brought to dinner, isn't she? I hope you don't mind my saying he looks strange."
"Not at all. I always expect him to take off his wig and his face and turn out to be Fredric March or somebody. But I guess John will never take off that face."
