There is something about a great horse. You can’t explain it or describe it, but when you see it you know right away. Alone in the paddock, it grazed peacefully, ignoring the visitors but clearly cognizant, not wary exactly, yet conscious enough of their presence to keep one eye cocked. A stallion, all right. There was no mistaking that, his business emerging pink and semi-erect like a salami in the window of Cantor’s Delicatessen, the one in Boyle Heights, before they moved to Fairfax. His silken skin was stretched tight and nearly translucent over pneumatic muscles that appeared to be constrained only by momentary indolence, a living version of the automobile in the driveway, whose energy was evident even when it stood still. “Nice animal,” I said. “You race him?”
“Wish I could, Larry. He’s a champion, but the same people who say I’m not an American say he can’t run on a thoroughbred track in the U.S. of A. In fact, he can’t run on a quarter-horse track like they have out in New Mexico and Texas either. He was just born on the wrong side of the tracks, you might say.”
I doubted I might say that, ever. Sometimes it seemed I was the only person I knew in L.A. who spoke the kind of English that was not learned from the movies. “No papers?”
“Not a one,” Sloane said. “But he’s fast enough to beat anything on four feet they have out here on the coast, and probably eastern horses too. Some people have got ahold of the sport, and they won’t let it go. The horses have to be in the studbook, thoroughbreds, as if there’s anything like that in the real world. In the real world, Larry, even guys like me have a chance. Maybe I had a few bad breaks, my life didn’t start out easy, and this thing with the immigration it’s no laughable matter either. But let’s say a smart guy can land on his feet or, if he’s lucky, on someone else’s.”
Was it a joke? “He’s that fast?”
“You know what I think?” Sloane asked, not waiting for an answer. “I think that if out here they ever get lip-tattooing — they’re starting it in the east, you can’t race at Belmont without your horse having it — then it’s going to be impossible to switch a horse in a race. I mean, look at this horse and look at a nag that looks just like him, except with zero ambition, owned by someone like EZ Shelupsky. OK, this one’s ears curve a little more toward each other, and maybe the white socks climb up a little higher over the fetlocks, but basically these are two gray stallions on the small side, and the only difference anyone could see is ours has the bigger dick. Maybe you being a queer could spot that, nothing personal, but in general the only time this would come into question, it would be a mare who would notice, and she’d have to be servicing both stallions, and she’d have to talk English in the bargain. So I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
“You’re going to switch this horse?”
“If I can.”
Something was coming into focus, as it does in a screenplay when you realize what the plot hinges on. “With one of Shelupsky’s?”
“Why not?”
“He wouldn’t let it happen. He’d be washed up if it did, and he doesn’t need the money.”
“Maybe he doesn’t, Larry, but I do. Besides, who’s asking EZ fucking Shelupsky?”
If ideas for a movie came to me as quickly, I’d probably have been a lot richer. This one simply appeared in my brain, sudden as an uninvited guest. “Me?’
“Nah,” Sloane said. “But you might come out ahead if you play your cards right.”
I did not want to ask what would happen if I didn’t. At cards Allen Sloane was the professional, not me. “How did you know what I’m working on?”
“The Jew movie?”
“Yes,” I said. “The Jew movie.”
“I told you, EZ’s lady told me.”
“But she’s a lez.”
“No, she isn’t.”
“She’s famously a lez, Mr. Sloane. Allen. We see each other at the same clubs.”
“I’m not talking about EZ Shelupsky’s wife, Larry. I’m talking about his lady.”
“You lost me.”
“You went to Harvard? They didn’t teach you the difference?” He smiled. “You want to know who she is, don’t you?”
“Part of me does.”
“The other part is the one to listen to. That would be the smart part. Let’s just say if anyone knew about it there’d be trouble for Shelupsky, and maybe trouble for me.”
For a moment, it was difficult to speak. I knew what Sloane was hinting at. Whoever the “lady” was she had lured Shelupsky across the color line, or he her. Just a whiff of it would make EZ producer non grata at every party in Los Angeles. Maybe it was 1939, maybe a year earlier Joe Louis had kayoed Max Schmeling, maybe if Roosevelt got us into a war black soldiers would be as good as white, but in the film industry 1939 might as well have been 1839. “You’re telling me EZ Shelupsky is fucking a — ”
“I am.”
“How do you know that, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“I don’t mind,” Sloane said, looking at once proud and vulnerable, as though he, not I, had stepped out of the closet. “Because I’m fucking her, too. I told you that.”
“You did.”
“Except I’m fucking her better.”
V
On the third day Fritz showed up at my bungalow with a request. Naturally, it was cloaked in Latin. “Duo cum faciunt idem, non est idem.”
“When two make…?”
“When two do the same…”
“When two do the same, it isn’t the same.”
“Precisely. My dear Larry, your Latin improves.”
“You’re saying?”
“Larry, my dear, please. Let me create structure. You will make dialogue to hang upon it, like lights on a tree.”
“I thought that was the plan.”
Fritz lit a Chesterfield and began strolling around my living room like a retiree whiling away his afternoon in a park. Round and round he went, the ash growing on his cigarette until it fell. I didn’t mind. I must have missed that class in queer school. Anyway, the floors were terra cotta. Twice a week a maid came in and cleaned up the mess. “But we have been ignoring this distinction. I need from you only a clear tale, a story. Beginning, middle, end. Think of it not as a film. It is a story.”
“But it is a film, Fritz.” I corrected myself. “Movie.”
“It will be, but first it must be a story. Tell it.”
“I thought I did.”
The little man ground his butt out in the ashtray and immediately lit another, holding it in that peculiar European way, between thumb and forefinger, like a freshly plucked tic. “Ab Jove principium.”
“Jove is Jupiter. That much I got.”
Fritz shook his head. “I don’t know what you were doing all the years — four? five? six? — in Harvard. Latin should be taught from grade one. In kindergarten, no? Yes, of course: Jupiter. Ab Jove principium. Start with Jupiter. That is, with the most important.”
“I thought I did.”
“Bis repetita non placent. Repetition is not well received. I shall ask again, Larry. What is the point of this film?”
Did movies have points? This was new to me, and troubling. I had spent four years creating scripts whose only intent was to entertain, and thus make money. Now this refugee in a ridiculously out-of-date suit, not even a citizen, was telling me there had to be a point. “It’s a movie, Fritz. You know why Hollywood hasn’t made a movie about someone dying of cancer? They can’t figure out where to stick in the conga line.”