The Fame Game (38 page)

Sometimes they would go to Gerry’s apartment and cook dinner together and make love and watch television, and sometimes they would go to a late movie (Mad Daddy with big sunglasses on and a beret pulled down over his face like a foreign movie director), and a couple of times he rented a car and they drove out to Coney Island and bought hot dogs at Nathan’s and had a private picnic on the beach because the season was over and there was nobody there but them until the cops came and chased them away. And once they went to Chinatown and wandered around and ate Chinese food and bought each other presents and went into a funny apothecary shop where they bought dried-up things wrapped in paper that were supposed to be brewed into medicines. And then they went home to Gerry’s and brewed up all the funny dried-up things and smelled them and tasted them and threw them away. And once they went to the Planetarium because neither of them had ever been there, sneaking in after the show had started and leaving early so no one would recognize him. And a couple of times they took a cab to the Cloisters, where Gerry had never been, and wandered around pretending they were living in medieval times, telling each other stories. He always went home to the hotel, alone, because the lawyer said he had to, and many times it was so late it really seemed ridiculous, but rules were rules and Elaine was asking for almost more money than he could pay. He didn’t care, really; he’d pay her anything she wanted, but the lawyer and Libra kept telling him he was crazy not to try to lower the alimony. What difference did it make? It was his money, not theirs, and Elaine was his soon-to-be ex-wife, not theirs, and his kid was going to go to private school and camp when she was old enough and have all the pretty dresses and bicycles she wanted.

Life was like a happy dream. The best thing was that he no longer had that rather embarrassing urge for fourteen-year-old girls. Mad Daddy had always felt it was kind of unseemly to want to be with all those little Lolitas because, after all, what could you really talk to them about? People would think he was mentally retarded if they knew. The thing that had always made him feel guilty about it was not that he wanted to go to bed with them, because they always made the first pass somehow, but that he enjoyed their actual company so much. He could communicate with them. People were always talking about the generation gap, but his gap was with his own generation. Gerry was all the best things of a grown-up and a little girl. She was intelligent, understanding, beautiful, funny, sexy, and she never put him down. He felt as if they’d known each other all their lives, and at the same time every day brought new surprises. He wrote little private jokes into the show for her. When he did, they watched it together at midnight, something he’d never been interested in doing before. But now he wanted to see if she liked it, and he was much more interested in the show because she was. Gerry was never unaware that it was he, Mad Daddy the man, who was with her, who was the one she loved. She didn’t squeal and sigh over his television image. She knew that was just him doing his work. It made him feel as if he had gone sane for the first time in years.

He measured her ring finger and went to an expensive Fifth Avenue jeweler Elaine had often patronized. The owner started bringing out big rocks, thinking it was for Elaine, and Mad Daddy suddenly realized that he thought big rocks were vulgar and ugly. He said no, no he wanted something dainty and romantic. Big rocks didn’t suit Gerry, because she was little and romantic too. So finally Mad Daddy designed something himself: a circle of forget-me-nots in blue enamel on gold, with a tiny little diamond in the center of each one. It looked like a wedding ring but she could wear it for her engagement ring and then he’d get her a real old-fashioned gold band for a wedding ring, the kind real live wives were supposed to wear. In the Jewish religion it said that a wedding ring was supposed to be an endless circle of gold to symbolize an endless marriage, but none of Mad Daddy’s wives had ever wanted an old-fashioned wedding ring, and he wondered if that was why none of his marriages had ever lasted. They had been jinxed from the start because he got the wrong ring. That was what he deserved for flouting the rule. Gerry wasn’t Jewish, but it didn’t matter because none of his other wives had been either. He was totally unreligious himself. It was just that he was superstitious about some things.

They decided to have an engagement party in his suite, and they invited Libra, Silky Morgan, and Bonnie the Boy. A divorce took so long, but at least they could be officially engaged, even if secretly. Mad Daddy realized that, except for Libra, he really didn’t have any friends. Even if he was divorced and could have the biggest, loudest engagement party in the world, there was no one he liked enough to invite. He didn’t much want his sister and brother-in-law. Ruth would just criticize everything as usual, starting with Gerry. So they just asked Gerry’s friends, and she didn’t seem to have any friends either. Mad Daddy was rather pleased that she didn’t have a lot of friends. It meant they both needed each other more. He wanted her to need him a lot. He would take care of her.

Libra sent over the biggest bottle of champagne in the world, on a little contraption with wheels and a handle to push it with, and Gerry ordered a cake. Mad Daddy got millions of blue and white flowers and put them in vases all around the living room, and he hung balloons from the chandelier. He arranged it so Gerry came over first, so he could give her the ring, and when he gave it to her she cried, and then he knew he was right to have designed that ring because it was perfect.

Then Libra came, with a carnation in his buttonhole, and they had champagne and cake and played all the new hit records on Mad Daddy’s new hi-fi, and then Bonnie the Boy came in for just one second because he was really very shy, and when Bonnie the Boy saw Gerry’s ring he cried because he knew he would never get married, and Mad Daddy began to feel awfully sorry for him and wondered why he used to feel like laughing whenever he saw him because the poor kid really wasn’t funny at all. Then Silky Morgan came in for a minute, between her matinee and evening performances of
Mavis!
, bringing a beautiful china breakfast set for two from Tiffany’s, with little blue forget-me-nots painted on it because Libra must have told her about the ring.

And then Lizzie Libra came poking her nose around the door, saying: “Okay, I can smell a party a mile off, and why wasn’t I invited?”

“Because you’d open your big mouth, is why,” Libra told her.

“Don’t be silly,” Lizzie said. “You really don’t even
know
me, Sam, after all these years, not that I’d expect you to, since you never see me.” Lizzie had brought some embroidered hand towels that she said were guest towels and not to be used, and which Mad Daddy recognized as the same guest towels Elaine had given her for Christmas the year before because someone had sent them to
them
and Elaine didn’t like them. Gerry pretended to like them very much, and Lizzie kept looking anxious and asking her if she was sure she really liked them; and Mad Daddy couldn’t understand why Lizzie was so worried since they were obviously hideous and Lizzie was so cheap.

Then they all had more champagne and Bonnie the Boy said to Gerry that he was really embarrassed because he didn’t know you were supposed to bring presents. Gerry told him you weren’t. And Silky Morgan left, and Libra said he wished he could take the four of them to dinner but he was sure Mad Daddy and Gerry would rather be alone anyway, which was true. So Libra said he would take Lizzie to dinner at 21, and Lizzie said: “What do you know—sentimentality finally got to the old bastard.”

After everybody was gone except Mad Daddy and Gerry, he sent down for pizza and they had it for dinner with the champagne, and then they made love and Gerry said it felt funny doing it with an engagement ring on and Mad Daddy said wait till you do it with a wedding ring on—it’s actually kind of dirty.

They figured out that if all went well with the lawyers they could get married on Valentine’s Day, and if they couldn’t then they would get married on the first day of spring. Gerry asked him if he wanted to wear a wedding ring and he said no, because he’d have to take it off for his television show and he thought it was bad luck ever to take a wedding ring off so he’d rather not have one. And she said she didn’t like them on men anyway.

They decided they would live in a penthouse because they’d both always wanted to live in a penthouse if they had to live in New York at all, and Mad Daddy wondered how he was going to be able to afford one, but he didn’t say anything because he knew everything would work out. Everything had always worked out.

They’d missed his show on TV, which didn’t seem to bother either of them, so they watched the late movie in bed and then they had to get up and get dressed so he could take her home because of the lawyers. He really hated that. It was so ridiculous. He wished they could elope that minute, to Salt Lake City, where they had Mormons with plural wives. Gerry didn’t want him to take her home and said she could get a taxi, but he said he certainly wasn’t going to let her go home alone on her engagement night. When the cab got to her front door, he didn’t even get out to take her upstairs because he knew if he did he could never stand to leave.

He felt terribly depressed when he went back to the hotel alone. Libra had left a big pile of fan mail on the living-room table, which they’d started sending over from the studio so Mad Daddy could spend more time in his suite. He looked through a few letters but they always scared him, as if those people were right there in the room, in his life, where they had no business to be. One kid had sent a picture of herself—he guessed it was a she—with the long hair the kids had sometimes you couldn’t tell, and his or her name was Barrie. He tossed the photograph into the out box with the rest of the fan mail so that his secretary at the studio could answer it. The secretary would send everyone who included a home address an autographed photo of Mad Daddy, wallet size, with the autograph signed by her. Libra didn’t approve of autographs signed by duplicating machine. Libra also didn’t approve of stars signing their own autographs because he said you never knew when some nut was going to forge your signature on a check.

Mad Daddy got back into bed and telephoned Gerry, waking her up, to say good night. They talked for forty-five minutes. They both agreed how lucky they were that they were never bored with each other, and he blew a lot of kisses into the phone, and after they hung up he felt sadder and lonelier than ever. He’d picked up the morning papers before he went upstairs and before he went to sleep alone he read the columns and saw that he had been enjoying himself very much at a party he’d never attended at a restaurant he never frequented, given by some people he didn’t know.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

In the years she was struggling to get where she was now, Silky Morgan had never thought specifically about what she expected fame to bring her. But now that her show was the first hit of the fall season and everybody said it would run as long as she cared to stay in it, she had recorded the cast album, two of the songs from it were climbing on the charts, her allowance had been raised to a hundred dollars a week, she had charge accounts at Bonwit’s, Bendel’s, and Bergdorf’s, Gerry called up every morning at eleven to read her the list of interviews and appointments that had been set up for the day, her name appeared almost daily in the columns, she was recognized in the street, she received fan mail from lunatics and a few sensible-sounding fans, and there was talk of a piece being done on her for
Life
Magazine—now she realized she was indeed famous, and for the first time she began to wonder what it was she had expected from fame and where it had all gone wrong.

She had finally persuaded Mr. Libra to let her take an apartment of her own (he insisted on a sublet) and Gerry helped her find a lovely three-room modern apartment on the East Side with a terrace, air conditioning, a uniformed doorman, a wall oven, a dishwasher, and a full wall of mirror in the bedroom facing the king-sized bed which had a purple velvet bedspread and a wall-to-wall white fur rug. The apartment belonged to a faggot interior decorator. The living room was done in white with glass tables, glass objects, and unframed modem paintings; a room to receive the public; but the bedroom was probably pure tenant, and certainly pure Silky. There was a hi-fi, with an extra speaker in the bedroom, and a large supply of the newest records, supplemented by Silky’s own collection, there was a color television set between the wall-to-wall mirror and the bed, with remote control, the living-room bar had been fully supplied by Mr. Libra as a house-warming present, and she had a one-year lease on this perfect playpen, with no one in the world to share it with.

Hatcher and his bride were on tour, the Satins hated her, and she felt strangely reluctant to have her family move in and make of this romantic haven a crash pad before she had a chance to find someone to fall in love with. It was her own place at last, she had worked like heck for it, and now she was stuck here alone day and night like Eve in the Garden of Eden without Adam.

She stocked her refrigerator and freezer with the best steaks and lots of vegetables and ice cream, taking perfect care of her health and weighing herself every day on the doctor-type scale her landlord had installed for himself in the tortoise-shell-wallpapered bathroom. Her many perfumes, colognes, and beauty aids lined the glass and brass hanging shelf. Every night and twice on Thursday and Saturday she did the show, trying to keep it as fresh every time as it had been the first time, and then she went right home in a taxi and treated herself to a glass of champagne on her terrace, watching the lights of the city, before performing her nightly beauty routine and getting into the too-large king-sized bed to watch television until she fell asleep. The reporters who took her to Sardi’s for lunch or came to her apartment to interview her asked her what she did in her spare time, and she said she read (which she still did) and saw friends (which was a lie) and wrote poetry (because Mr. Libra had told her to say that). She said she performed her own kind of meditation (another Libra fantasy) and did not add that it consisted of her half hour on the terrace at night with her lonely glass of champagne. She said she would like to get married someday and have children, but that right now she felt she was too involved in her new career to give the proper time to a relationship. She said she dated, but refused to divulge any names, and yes, most of them were black boys, although she didn’t have anything against going out with a white boy. In truth, she didn’t go out with anybody, and she wouldn’t have minded if he was green with purple spots.