Westlake, Donald E - Novel 50 (9 page)

 
          
Marcia
got me an appointment with her agent, Irwin Sandstone, a man who had guided
lots of fellas just like me to movie stardom.

 
          
The
views were magnificient, or would have been, if
Los Angeles
had anything magnificent to look at. From
this corner office high in one of the silvery godless megaliths of Century
City, one view was northward across the smog and over the boxy little houses in
peach and coral toward the low but steep hills serving as the only redan
against the proles of the Valley, while the other view was westward over
flatter and peachier but less smoggy Santa Monica toward the eternal Pacific.
Just down that way to the left lurked
Venice
, waiting for a
far-sighted developer.

 
          
The
office had been decorated with an eye to the exudation of casual power:
relaxed, but potent, the spider's parlor as a philosophical statement through
the art of interior design. In this light, well-cleaned space, Jack Pine sat
transfixed on a beautiful but uncomfortable chair in the middle of the room
while Irwin Sandstone paced slowly around him. Irwin Sandstone, a pear-shaped man
with a bald-headed toad's face and a scalloped wrinkling of the ears, held a
small slender bronze art deco figure of a naked, nubile girl in the short,
stuffed fingers of his hands. As he walked, and as he talked, he fondled this
statue, the light gleaming from his rings and from the clear nail polish his
manicurist had assured him no one would notice. He said:

 
          
"Your
career is important to me, Jack. And the reason your career is important to me
is because it's unique. If I wanted to be in the shoe business, eight million
shoes all the same, I'd be in the shoe business. The business I'm in, this
crazy mad business of show business, not shoe business, in which I thank God
I've had a certain modicum of success, in this business, every new face, every
new body, every new voice, every new talent that comes through that door is a
separate and unique challenge, another opportunity for me to prove myself. Do
you know what I mean, Jack?"

 
          
"I
think so, sir," Jack said. Today he wore brown loafers and tan chinos and
a polo shirt with an alligator on it and an open, welcoming, guileless
expression.

 
          
Irwin
Sandstone's blunt thumb caressed the statue's budding breasts. "I am a
mere servant of the creative impulse, Jack," he said, circling and
circling. "It's
your
unique gift
we're concerned with here, not the life or goals or dreams of Irwin
Sandstone."

 
          
"Yes,
sir," said Jack.

 
          
Irwin's
fingers oiled and warmed the bronze. "How to mold, how to shape, how to
bring out to the acclaim of the multitudes that unique talent deep within you,
that
is my humble duty, that is my
mantra, to serve great talents, to be the willing stepping stone on which they
rise, to do whatever is within my small powers"—with a wave at the
power-reeking office—"to bring each wonderful unique private talent to its
greatest glory. That is what I wish to do with
you
, Jack.
If
you agree.
Will you give me that task, Jack? Will you order me to make
you great?"

 
          
Accommodating,
Jack said, "Sure."

 
          
Suddenly
more businesslike, clutching the statue's legs, Irwin nodded. "Okay,"
he said, and stood still, to Jack's left, appraising him, nodding slowly to
himself, while Jack struggled to decide whether he was supposed to meet Irwin
Sandstone's gaze frankly or face forward to be studied. Compromising, he faced
more or less forward, and flicked constant glances toward the man hefting him
in his mind.

 
          
“Okay,"
Irwin Sandstone said again, the statue
forgotten,
its
head in his fist. “For your type," he said, “we start with the biker
picture, then your pathologic killer, then your patient picture. By then you're
established, you can do whatever you want."

 
          
Jack,
manfully smiling, said, “Patient picture?"

 
          
Irwin
Sandstone negligently waved the hand with the statue in it. “Nut house or
hospital," he explained. “You're a person with an affliction, see? Gives
you that human dimension, rounds you off after the psycho."

 
          
“Oh,
yeah," Jack said. “I see what you mean."

 
          
Irwin
Sandstone brought his hands together. They found the statue again, apparently
on their own, and the fat fingers stroked and fumbled as their owner gazed
appealingly at Jack to say, “Is that what you want, Jack?
Stardom?
Fruition?
Will you put yourself in my hands?"

 
          
Jack
watched those hands fondle the thin bronze girl. He shrugged. “What have I got
to lose?" he said.

 
          
O
Connor watches the movie star seated on his gray slate patio in his pale
blue terry-cloth robe, vaguely smiling, ignoring the sounds from the swimming
pool right nearby. He's good at ignoring things, O'Connor thinks.

 
          
The
reminiscence of the introduction to Irwin Sandstone floats in the lambent
air,
dissipates like opium smoke in the sun. After a little
silence, the famous Jack Pine sleepily says, "Irwin was the genius, not
me, and we both knew it." Slowly he is arching backward, body collapsing
gradually onto the slates. Lying there, blindlooking eyes gazing skyward, voice
fading more and more, "But Irwin came thruuuuuuuuuu," Pine murmurs.
"Ahh- hhhhh, I'll give himmmmmm . . ."

 
          
The
eyes close. He has drifted off, his breathing deep and even. O'Connor waits a
moment, memo pad in left hand, pencil in right, but the actor doesn't alter in
any way. At last, O'Connor leans forward from his chair, extends his right arm
forward, taps the sleeping star on the knee with the eraser end of his pencil.
"Mister Pine?" he says.
"Sir?"

           
No response.

 
          
Abruptly,
the stone-faced butler, Hoskins, appears with a silver tray bearing a glass
full of oily black muck. "Allow me to help, sir,” he says.

 
          
"He's
all yours,” O'Connor says, and leans back in his canvas chair again to watch.

 
          
Hoskins
goes to one knee, places the silver tray on the slate beside himself, props the
actor up against his raised knee with practiced ease, pinches the actor's nose
between thumb and forefinger of left hand, and with the right hand pours the
glassful of oily black muck down Jack Pine's throat.

 
          
O'Connor
winces, empathizing despite himself. He says, "Does this happen a lot,
Hoskins?”

 
          
Still
pouring, the viscous fluid slowly oozing from the glass into the unconscious
man's mouth, Hoskins says, "We have an amazing amount and variety of
chemicals in our body, sir. Maintaining the balance is not at all easy.”

 
          
"I
can see that,” O'Connor says.

 
          
The
glass is now mostly empty, only an oily metallic coating still staining its
sides. Hoskins puts the glass back on the tray, and lowers the body to the
slate. Then he picks up the tray, stands, and says, "We should be coming
around any instant, sir.”

 
          
With
which, the actor
pops
upright,
sitting at attention, legs straight out in front, arms stretched out and back
behind him like flying buttresses. His eyes are wide open. "Hoskins!” he
cries.

 
          
Hoskins
bows a deferential head in his direction.
"Sir?”

 
          
Speaking
at incredible speed, Pine says, "I've got it! We'll put white pillars
every seven feet all around the side, and put the lawn on
top,
and then we can go underneath when it's too sunny!”

 
          
"Interesting, sir,” Hoskins says.
As Pine's head
twitches back and forth, his wide eyes staring here and there like a demented
bird, Hoskins stoops, picks up the empty glass that once contained the fuzzy
drink, puts it beside the black muck glass on the tray, nods at O'Connor, and
departs, walking ramrod-stiff toward the house.

           
Pine's darting head and staring eyes
find O'Connor, gawk at him. Pine giggles. He points at O'Connor, teetering on
only one buttress, giggling with accomplishment, with his own discovery.
“People'.”
he cries.

 
          
O'Connor,
bewildered, looks around and then points the pencil at himself, saying,
"No, sir, it's just me.
Like before."

 
          
“People
magazine," Jack Pine says,
nodding, smiling,
cackling
.
"The
cover
again'.”

 
          
How
much longer can the actor possibly believe this is a press interview? O'Connor
sighs, and waits.

 
          
Hello,
hello, here I am again, just fine, doing just fine, everything's just—

           
Hello, here I am again. I'm back
with it now,
it's
back with me now, my with now is it—

 
          
Hello.
There's something terribly wrong
here, call a priest. No, wait. Maybe better not.

 
          
Hello?

 
          
Here
I am. Lost myself for a while, fell
down some rabbit hole—"I'm late, I'm late,'' as my girlfriends used to
say— fell down some black nasty . . . Dead?
Who's
dead?

 
          
Hello?

 
          
I
gaze about me, and the interviewer sits patiently, sits watching me,
sits
patiently watching me. "Hello," I say.

 
          
"Hello,”
he says. "Are you all right?"

 
          
"Jes
fine," I say.

 
          
"And
you remember—”

 
          
"The
story of my life,” I tell him, "in its endlessly unreeling permutations. I
remember now. Where exactly were we in the sequence of events?"

 
          
"Your
new agent," he says, reading from his notes, "had told you to start
with a biker picture."

 
          
“Precisely so!"
I say, delighted to be on track again.
So
inconvenient to fade in and out like
that, I really must talk to my doctors about it, find some different formulation—
No; they'll all just use those dread words:

 
          
Cut.

 
          
Down.

 
          
And
the hell you say, doc. I didn't come this far to
cut down.
Not me. “Shit!" I cry, staring at the interviewer,
who looks more and more like a fish in a sports jacket. “I've lost it
again," I confess.

 
          
“Biker
picture," he says.

 
          
“That's
it! Okay! All right, the biker was shot in the studio, came out exactly the way
we wanted. I mean
exactly
the way we
wanted: a crowd churner but a stomach pleaser as well, good gross, good
reviews, good first step.

           
“Sounds good," the interviewer
says.

 
          
Is
he trying to be
funny
? I peer sharply
at him, but he's as deadpan as ever, dead fish in a pan. “Right," I say.
“Anyway, next
was
the pathologic killer, and that
involved six weeks' location in
Mexico
.
My first time out of the
country.
Marcia had another picture then, up here, so down there I went,
all on my own.
Money in my pocket.
Fame
starting.
Travel in foreign lands. Starring in a movie! I told Buddy, up
here, before I got on the plane, I said, 'My dreams are coming true before I
dream them.'"

 
          
The
interviewer actually brightens up; he looks actually pleased for me. “That must
be terrific," he says.

 
          
“That's
just what it is. That's just what it is. But then,

 
          
what
happened next . . ."

 
          
*

 
          
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*

 
          
"Mr.
Pine?”

 
          
*

 
          
*

 
          
*

 
          
"Mr.
Pine?”

 
          
"Nuhh?

           
"You were in
Mexico
. What happened next, you said.”

           
"Oh, what happened
next.
Yeah.”
I make a smile.
"Midway through, down there, my leading lady got laryngitis, couldn't
scream at all for five days. I took the opportunity to rush home and see my
darling Marcia.”