“You bet on my horse,” EZ said to me. “Larry, you showed faith. You bet on EZ Shelupsky.” The man was glowing. “That Ozzie Hirsch, I told you he was a pro. Horses, they’re like the movie business — you got to believe in the impossible. Here is a nag that was a born follower, and now he’s a leader. How much you make?”
“I should have bet more,” I said. “I do believe in you, EZ.”
“I should have believed in you, Larry. You got something in your brain that translates to success. A spark. A whole fire. I’m proud of you like you’re my son. You know what?”
“What, EZ?”
“I’m going to make you a partner.”
“A partner?”
“Half and half. We’re going to make Jewish movies. I’m going to look over your treatment, and if it’s got anything to it I’m going to take you in fifty-fifty.”
“Fifty-fifty?”
“Straight up,” he said. “Half the investment, half the profits. I got to go to the winner’s circle now. They’re decorating flowers on my horse. Forty to one. They didn’t believe. But I believed. You believed. This photo I’m going to make sure is going to be on the front page of every paper in Los Angeles. EZ Shelupsky’s Broken Arrow a winner, comes from nowhere and wins bigger than all the horses of producers of white movies combined. You like champagne? Go ahead, drown your happiness in it. Waiter!”
IX
That afternoon when I was to meet Fritz at the bungalow — I’d given him a key — I planned to say nothing about the win. Part of it was shame. Here was a guy making a hundred a week, practically starvation wages in this business, and I was holding onto a fortune. But mainly it was caution: In the back of my mind I was afraid he might hit me up for a loan. I knew he sent money to people in Berlin — at our first meeting he’d questioned me on the “political reliability” of Western Union — though he never talked about them. If Fritz were to ask for money I’d be embarrassed to turn him down. But I would have had to. As — if they’d known about my good fortune — I would have had to turn down a whole list of others who would have come knocking at my door, including my comrades in the Party. I’d never been good with money, but then again I’d never really had any. Now I did.
It took me less time to turn into a capitalist than to turn off Sunset Boulevard onto Havenhurst looking for a place to park. I knew I would find Fritzi sleeping on the sofa. Somehow I didn’t feel like making him coffee. It wasn’t that I was suddenly better than Fritz. It was that it could hardly matter: the writing team of Bellringer and von Blum had accomplished precious little. In a matter of days I had to turn in a treatment — not a script but merely a three-page outline — and even that was nowhere in sight. What was in sight I recognized immediately as I parked. I doubt there were two cars like it in Los Angeles County, maybe in the whole state.
“Hello, Larry,” Allen Sloane said to me from the green leather sofa. “You do well at the track?”
“Not bad,” I said.
“I was just talking to your writing partner here. Very educated gentleman.”
Fritz stepped out of the kitchenette with a highball in his hand, a smile on his face, and a serious buzz on. Behind the thick round lenses his eyes were shiny as the bottoms of shot glasses. “You have such an interesting friend, Larry. We have much in common.”
“He’s a refugee,” Sloane said. “They want to make me one. Doesn’t get more in-common than that.”
“Hodie mihi, cras tibi,” Fritz said brightly, then helpfully translated — into German. “Heute mir, morgen dir.”
Just what I needed: he was really drunk. Any lingering hope that we might grind out a quick treatment went, as EZ might say, foof. Considering that I had joined the ranks of the rich only hours before, the threat of unemployment remained a potent presence. I was disappointed in myself, angry at Fritz, and afraid.
“Know what that means?” Sloane asked. “I bet you do. A Harvard man like you.”
“Tell me.”
“What’s to me today,” Sloane said, “tomorrow to you. Fritz taught me. What do you think of that?”
“At’s whay otay emay odaytay, omorrowtay otay ouyay,” Fritz said.
Hindi? Serbo-Croatian? “What?”
“Larry, this little guy, he speaks what, four, five languages — German, English, French, Spanish, Latin, what else, Fritz?”
“Good German.”
“I said that one.”
“But good German. The best.” Fritz smiled broadly. “Better than Hitler. Better than Goering. Better than Goebbels, no question.”
“There was another,” Sloane said.
Fritz thought a moment, a drunk looking down into his treasure chest, unsure what it contained. “Greek?”
“Ancient Greek,” Sloane said. “That, too.”
“And…” Fritz said. “And…”
“Larry. The guy speaks languages. He’s got a feel.”
“Esperanto,” Fritz said finally, having exhausted his search. “Es-per-an-to.”
“I never even heard of that one,” Sloane said. “The guy speaks languages nobody heard of.”
Fritz stretched his thick little body out on the couch, his small feet like the dots in exclamation marks. Still smiling blissfully, he dozed off. Then, abruptly, his eyelids flew open behind the thick lenses. “Esperantoway isway ethay anguagelay ofway opehay.” His eyes closed again. He was out.
“You got that?”
“Fritzi and I are supposed to be working,” I said. “We’re on deadline.”
“He’ll be okay. Give him an hour. ‘Esperanto is the language of hope.’ Little guy picked up Pig Latin in otway akesshay ofway away amb’slay ailtay. What do you say to that? If we ever get into a war with Hitler this guy — guys like this — I want them on my side.”
It was coming back to me, like roller skating or checkers. “Two shakes of a lamb’s tail?”
“See that?” Sloane said. “What better proves I’m as much an American as anyone? You grew up with Pig Latin in New York, I grew up with it in Cleveland. Aside from this being very inconvenient, the feds trying to deport me, it happens not to be right. I mean, say it happened to someone else, I’d still think so. It’s just wrong. I’m not a Russky or a Canuck. I’m a Yank.”
“Probably a rich one, after today.”
“Nah,” Sloane said. “I was rich before. What’s rich? You got some money in your pocket? In the bank? It’s how you feel. I’ve known hobos feel richer than Rockefeller, and probably there are Rockefellers — minor, outlying ones maybe — feel poor next to the big ones. I guess you made out okay.”
“Six grand to win.”
Sloane whistled appreciatively.
“I had to borrow the money from all over. My parents. Imagine that. Twenty-nine years old and I had to borrow from my folks.”
“You can certainly afford to pay them back.”
“Oh yeah,” I said. “With interest.”
“Now all you got to do is pay me back.”
Suddenly the room felt drafty, even cold. The windows were wide open. It was overcast outside, not looking like rain, but the sun was veiled behind a peculiar thick, blue fog. Though I didn’t know it at the time, this was the beginning of the smog that would be associated with L.A. for decades, made worse when manufacturing and oil refining grew almost geometrically to satisfy the needs of a country at war. Things would change: women and Negroes would join the work force in factories, the movie business would gear up for war and then grow like crazy afterward until it bumped into television. All those new workers would be driving cars. Freeways would be built. Houses would sprout in endless patches of subdivision around the exit ramps, then supermarkets and churches and schools. More people, more cars, more smog. But for now, there was only an indefinite chill as the sun was obscured by an unfamiliar blanket of blue. I slid shut the patio doors and the two casements at the side of the room. Now I could see the haze inside. Both my guests had been smoking heavily. Blue outside, blue within. “Payback time?”