Spider Kiss (19 page)
During the third week of shooting, Ruth Kemp's letter came for Stag. The months of preparation for the filming of
Rockabilly
had been so crammed with early risings and late takes that the time had passed without Shelly's noticing it. Stag had been effectively put out of commission insofar as night life was concerned by the very rigors of his schedule. A week of screen tests (which, not having been taken
before
the contractual talks, led Shelly to believe Universal's spotters had been watching Stag for some time, and
knew
he had a well-developed stage presence), a week of costumes, makeup, sittings before the publicity cameras, interviews with the hennaed harridans from the fan magazines, "deportment talks" with the high brass, all these (and back through the gantlet again) combined to whisk the time away, and dull both Stag's and Shelly's interest in extra-curricular endeavors.
As though magically, a script appeared, and Shelly stood in awe of Stag as the boy disappeared for three days, no one knew where though nails were chewed to the quicks, and returned with a solid working memory of the entire screenplay. Everyone was amazed at his quick study, and a memo came down from Olympus praising him.
Stag said nothing, acted as though he had been getting "into" scripts all his life.
Shelly appeared on the set daily, appeared at the reading rooms, showed up at walk-through and blocking sessions, and soon knew the script himself. He was of the (silent) opinion that
Rockabilly
would not give the producers of
Black Orpheus
or
Paths of Glory
any heartaches. Avant-garde, it wasn't. Chopped liver, it wasn't, either, but only by the barest margin.
The screenwriter assigned to the project had made a sizeable income and a residence in Coldwater Canyon on the strength of forty-eight "B" melodramas alternately extolling the merits of various gangsters and life in The Big City. It was competent hackwork. From the outset, it was obvious the sole redeeming facet of
Rockabilly
was its star, young and scintillant Stag Preston. The director, the producer, the Senior Toady, everyone agreed they had something hot here. Whatever Stag had on stage, in person, it was not lost on the screen. And by the studious application of shadow to the face (much in the same manner Joan Crawford had been shadowed), the hardness of Stag's features was diminished. The cruel set of the mouth was retained; the masses liked their gods with a touch of what they thought was strength.
Which brought forcibly home to Shelly how little anyone really was able to differentiate between strength and cruelty. He had only recently ingested the knowledge himself.
But Stag worked. Lord, how he worked!
Then, in the third week, with shooting ahead of schedule, the letter came from Louisville. It had been forwarded by Joe Costanza from the New York offices, the name familiar to him, but to no one else in the office.
After all, who had ever heard of Luther Sellers?
Shelly shuffled the letter out of the morning's stack; he stared for a time at the return address and Luther's name in Ruth Kemp's handwriting (he assumed); a carefully-worked script that struck his memory as resembling the cards his first grade teacher had put on the blackboard illustrating how the letters of the alphabet were written. He considered opening it and reading the contents; he also considered burning the letter and flushing the ashes down the toilet, but thought better of it; if it was something that might touch Stag, then it might ameliorate the current tense situation. If it was bad news, then the little bastard deserved to suffer. If that was inhumanly possible.
He took the mail over at the noon break. The boy was having lunch with Leslie Parrish, his costar, in the studio commissary; when Stag saw his publicity man, the curling sneer appeared unbidden. "Well, if it isn't my man Shelly. Whatcha got for me, guy?"
Shelly handed him the letter.
Stag's grin melted away like mist on the moors as he read the return address. He fingered the short, squat envelope for a moment, then ripped it open carelessly. He unfolded the two sheets of note paper, a pink self-conscious shade that somehow seemed proper, coming from Ruth Kemp. He excused himself from the girl and she smiled briefly, politely, at Shelly before addressing herself to the pineapple and cottage cheese salad.
Stag read the letter, a tiny nerve in his jaw tripping. When he had read both sheets, he refolded them, put them back in the envelope, and tore the entire packet neatly in half. "So?" he said, turning an innocent expression on Shelly.
He handed the pieces to the older man and turned back to Leslie Parrish, his steak sandwich and his own world.
"So nothing," Shelly answered, shrugging.
"So I'll see you around." Stag dismissed him without turning around. Leslie Parrish smiled briefly, politely. She looked uncomfortable.
Alone in Stag's dressing room, Shelly fitted the pieces of the letter together. Once assembled, they read
Dear Luther,
Both myself and Mr. Kemp are very happy for the way you have been making such a success of yourself. Things here have not been so good as with you.
Asa has been very sick, and to be truthful the doctors do not see much hope.
The truth is that Asa is very sick and I don't know how to put it down properly, but we are all afraid he will die.
Luther, Asa keeps asking for you and if you can see your way clear to doing it for him, he loves you so, we have your old room all made up and it would only be for a couple of days. Do you think you can make it? He wants to see you so much Luther and it would make him so happy. I know we have no right to ask this of you as the last time we spoke it was not on the best of terms but this you can see is something that is breaking my heart. I am all alone Luther and as you know Asa and I have been hard pressed to make ends meet so every cent I have will have to go to make Asa comfortable for what ever time he has left — and after. I cannot write any more Luther except to beg you please to come to Asa now when he wants to see you so much.
You know you are like a son to him. Please.
With love,
Ruth Kemp
Shelly read it over again. The jagged tear lines where Stag had ripped the letter only made it easier to read. There were smudges on the paper, and small wrinkled spots where Ruth Kemp might have cried. He pictured little Asa Kemp, lying in a big bed, alone, prepared to go, not too unhappy about it, except he wanted to see the boy he had taken in, and wondering what his wife would do now that he could not run the bicycle shop. It was every man's inevitable finis, and Shelly could not work up too much sympathy, yet the callousness of the boy ignoring the letter made him queasy. Was such utter disregard for human emotions possible? Or did Stag feel a demand, a drag, from his past? Was all his callousness merely affectation, a bulwark against a return to the days and memories Stag hated and feared so much? Abruptly, Shelly remembered Stag's words on the plane as they had left Louisville that first time:
Goodbye, you sonofabitch poor, goodbye.
How much fear could one mortal shell contain? Didn't it reach a surface tension where it domed up and spilled over? Or was it like "hitting bottom"? No bottom, really, just falling and falling deeper and deeper, and never hitting the bottom that did not exist. Was it like that? Was fear like cancer? Could it rot someone out like a tree stump, like a rotten tooth, like rust on a piece of iron? Could it eat away all decency and leave something not quite human?
If it could, then Stag Preston was a prime example of the disease. "And somebody'd better get up a telethon for him," Shelly concluded aloud.
He neatly whisked up the pieced-together letter and dropped it into the wastebasket.
That afternoon, on the set, Stag ran through a scene of deep emotion, with a quaver of sincerity and hopelessness in his voice that Shelly grudgingly admitted sounded honest as hell, without a drop of phoniness or "acting" in it. At one point Stag dropped out of character and politely, in a dulcet tone, asked the director if the phrase shouldn't be put
thus
, rather than
so
, as the script offered it. The director snapped for his script girl, who came running, the place marked with a silver fingertip, and she stared over his shoulder as the page was studied. Shelly shivered inwardly as the director looked up with respect in his expression.
"Go ahead, Stag, try it that way; I think it'll play."
Stag read the line — no, that wasn't right: he lived the emotion of the line — in his personal manner, and it added, it dragged from the prosaic script a nuance Shelly had missed completely when reading it.
Around the set smiles and nods of admiration came and went … leaving behind them another glowing facet of the legend.
Shelly went out and got very drunk. That night he found himself lying naked in a heap of four girls with unpleasant body odors, unclipped and straight hair, and fingernails bitten down to the quicks. When he extricated himself, smelling musky and like the aftermath of something he had never known existed — dirty sex — he put on his clothes and staggered out of the North Beach bohemian pad. How he had gotten there he never knew. His car was nowhere in sight. He was broke, save for twenty-four cents caught in the turned-around lining of his left pants pocket.
He used a dime of the money to call Carlene collect. There was no answer at the apartment. He managed to get a cab that drove him back to the bungalow he rented; and the owner, recognizing his tenant, paid the cabbie, put it on Shelly's bill, and half-carried the exotic-smelling publicity man to the proper bed. He undressed him to his shorts, slipped Shelly between the cool sheets, and shut off the lights on his way out.
But Shelly was not asleep.
Drugged by dissipation, gagged by remorse and the itch of new ethics, sour stomached with the realization that Life Is Not A Fountain, and bewildered by the disappearance of the creature who had been Sheldon (I Want Mine) Morgenstern. But not asleep.
Never
asleep.
Cerberus standing guard to insure no one's entering the gate of Stag Preston's evil.
Ever-faithful, hammered out of his nut, grin as big as all outdoors Sheldon Morgenstern, whose Poppa said a
kaddish
for a dead son gone to Hell in Hollywood. But not asleep.
For several hours he lay there, staring at the play of lights on the ceiling from night-running trucks grinding past on the highway. Staring at lights, with his hands crossed against his chest as though he were laid out with lilies, smelling the embalmer's formaldehyde.
Rockabilly
was completed and in the cans ten days ahead of schedule. The Gods Upstairs threw a cast party at which Stag was gifted with a solid gold cigarette case and lighter, his first name tastefully spelled out in rubies on the face of it. Leslie Parrish kissed the boy several times, but for the most part smiled briefly, politely. The director made a short speech about how they had accomplished more in
Rockabilly
than they had set out to do, chiefly because of their friend the star, Stag Preston; the producer ventured a darkling hint about Academy Awards, and the hint was chased by impressed
oooh's
and
aaah's
. Stag found it necessary only to smile and bow and wink knowingly during the proceedings —until he was able to break away to ball an extra, a short girl with pixie black hair named Marcie, from Joplin, Missouri.
The film was sneak previewed in five locations simultaneously: The State Theatre in Kalamazoo, Michigan; The Varsity Theatre in Evanston, Illinois; The Boyd Theatre in Philadelphia; Radio City Theatre in Minneapolis; The Esquire Theatre in Stockton, California. There had been some talk of letting word slip at The Manor in San Mateo, California — word that Stag's first picture would be screened there — but the studio decided not to rig the results with a horde of teen-aged admirers. The sneaks went off as scheduled and when the cards had been returned, no one doubted they had a star and a money maker.
Even the most critical moviegoer — in this case a "Cinema Reviewer" for a college newspaper visiting a girl friend in Stockton —hailed Stag as (quote) That seldom-seen phenomenon, the personality that endears, excites and visually leaps off the screen (unquote).
Then followed two weeks of tour cross-country, banging the tympani for
Rockabilly
(which oddly enough, was getting the sort of puff that removed the picture from the category of "teen-age rock'n'roll ditties" and lent it serious attention).
Stag was heavily exposed: via tv interviews, in fan magazine pieces, at women's luncheons, across the high school circuit, during record shop appearances and benefits, and he appeared, with fanfare, as a feature of half-time ceremonies at the Dartmouth-Harvard game. It was to his credit that the catcalls from Ivy Leaguers too sophisticated to accept Stag as anything more than an adolescent idol — were sparse and drowned under by applause and "gimme a locomotive!"
When the night of the premiere arrived, the De Mille Theatre was the brightest jewel in all Times Square. Father Duffy's statue winced and averted its eyes; too much neon, too many cerulean minks, too much voltage in the air.
The beaverboard portraits of Stag that rose seventy-three feet above the De Mille marquee showed the boy in an artist's conception that was a cross between Horatius at the bridge and The Little Dutch Boy Who Stuck His Finger In The Dike.
Stag arrived with his co-star on his arm. Miss Parrish smiled briefly, politely, and was borne inside after the radio interviews.
One hundred and fifty-eight minutes later, as the audience poured out onto Times Square, Stag, Shelly, Freeport, Joe Costanza and an amorphous mass of hangers-on found they had left America and were residing in Valhalla.
Stag Preston was a hit. Not just a success, for that was a status that both Shelly and Freeport had known … but a hit … an unqualified smash … a state where everything touched turned to U-235. There was the
feeling
, a sort of tension in the air, a very noticeable difference in the way people looked and the way the lights blinked, and the way everything had a crystal ring in its tone. There was no contesting it, because it couldn't be defined by science or emotion or any other yardstick. It was like God or Goodness or the odor of a bakery. It was success, and the top of the ant-hill, so why think about it, why not just swing with it? It was there; you could sense it even before the columnists told you you'd been right. And the amorphous mass grew as the bandwagoners arrived.