Gretchen took a pair of glasses off the desk and sat down to finish the newspaper. They were Colin’s glasses, but they fitted her well enough so that she didn’t bother to go back into the bedroom to get her own. Matched imperfections.
On the theater page there was a review from New York of a new play that had just opened, with a rave for a young actor whom nobody had ever heard of before and she made a note to get tickets for the play for herself and Colin as soon as she got into the city. In the listing of movies for Beverly Hills she saw that Colin’s first picture was being revived over the weekend and she neatly tore out the listing to show it to him. It would make him less savage at breakfast.
She turned to the sports section to see what horses were running at Hollywood Park that afternoon. Colin loved the races and was a not inconsiderable gambler and they went as often as they could. The last time they had gone he had won enough to buy her a lovely spray brooch. There didn’t seem to be any jewelry on today’s card and she was about to put the paper down when she saw a photograph of two boxers sparring in training. Oh, God, she thought, there he is again. She read the caption under the photograph. “Henry Quayles with Sparmate Tommy Jordache at Las Vegas in workout for middleweight fight next week.”
She hadn’t seen or heard from her brother since that one night in New York and she knew almost nothing about boxing, but she knew enough to understand that if he was working as somebody’s sparring partner Thomas had gone downhill since the winning bout in Queens. She folded the paper neatly, hoping that Colin would overlook the photograph. She had told him about Thomas, as she told him about everything, but she didn’t want Colin’s curiosity to be aroused and perhaps insisting on meeting Thomas and seeing him fight.
There were sounds from the kitchen now and she went into Billy’s room to wake him. He was sitting cross-legged in his pajamas on the bed, silently fingering chords on his guitar. Pure blond hair, grave, thoughtful eyes, fuzzed pink cheeks, nose too big for the undeveloped face, skinny, young boy’s neck, long, coltish legs, concentrated, unsmiling, dear.
His valise, with the lid up, was on the chair, packed. Neatly packed. Somehow Billy, despite his parents, or perhaps because of his parents, had grown up with a passion for order.
She kissed the top of his head. No reaction. No hostility, but no love. He fingered a final chord.
“You all ready?” she asked.
“Uhuh.” He uncurled the long legs, slid off the bed. His pajama top was open. Skinny, long torso, ribs countable, close to the skin, skin California summer color, days on the beach, body-surfing, girls and boys together on the hot sand, salt and guitars. As far as she knew he was still a virgin. Nothing had been said.
“You all ready?” he asked.
“Bags all packed,” she said. “All I have to do is lock them.” Billy had an almost pathological fear of being late for anything, school, trains, planes, parties. She had learned to be well in advance for anything she had to do with him.
“What do you want for breakfast?” she asked, prepared to feast him.
“Orange juice.”
“That all?”
“I better not eat. I puke on planes.”
“Remember to take your Dramamine.”
“Yeah.” He stripped off the top of his pajamas and went into the bathroom to brush his teeth. After she had moved in with Colin, Billy had suddenly refused to be seen naked in front of her. Two theories about that. She knew that Billy admired Colin, but she also knew that the boy admired her less for having lived with Colin before they were married. The strict, painful conventions of childhood.
She went to wake Colin. He was talking in his sleep and moving uneasily on the bed. “All that blood,” he said.
War? Celluloid? It was impossible to tell with a movie director.
She woke him with a kiss under his ear. He lay still, staring blackly up at the ceiling. “Christ,” he said, “it’s the middle of the night.”
She kissed him again. “Okay,” he said, “morning.” He rumpled her hair. She was sorry she had gone in to see Billy. One morning, on a national or religious holiday perhaps, Colin would finally make love to her. This might have been the morning. Non-coordinated rhythms of desire.
With a groan he tried to lift himself from the bed, fell back. He extended his hand. “Give a poor old man a lift,” he said. “Out of the depths.”
She grasped his hand and pulled. He sat on the edge of the bed rubbing his eye with the back of his hand, regretting daylight.
“Say,” Colin stopped rubbing his eye and looked at her alertly, “last night, at the running, in the next to the last reel, there was something you thought was lousy …”
He didn’t even wait for breakfast, she thought. “I didn’t say anything,” she said.
“You don’t have to say anything. All you have to do is breathe.”
“Don’t be sure a naked nerve,” she said, stalling for time. “Especially before you’ve had your coffee.”
“Come on.”
“All right,” she said. “There was something I didn’t like, but I didn’t figure out why I didn’t like it.”
“And now?”
“I think I know.”
“What is it?”
“Well, the sequence after he gets the news and he believes it’s his fault …”
“Yes,” Colin said impatiently. “It’s one of the key scenes in the picture.”
“You have him going around the house, looking at himself in one mirror after another, in the bathroom, in the full-length mirror on the closet wall, in the dark mirror in the living room, in the magnifying shaving mirror, at his own reflection in the puddle on the front porch …”
“The idea’s simple enough,” Colin said irritably, defensively. “He’s examining himself—okay, let’s be corny—he’s looking into his soul in various lights, from different angles, to discover … Okay, what do you think is wrong about it?”
“Two things,” she said calmly. Now she realized she had been gnawing at the problem subconsciously ever since she had come out of the projection room—in bed before falling asleep, on the terrace looking out over the smoggy city, while going through the newspaper in the living room. “Two things. First, the tempo. Everything in the whole picture has moved fast up to then, it’s the style of the whole work, and then, suddenly, as though to show the audience that a Big Moment has arrived, you slow it down to a drag. It’s too obvious.”
“That’s me,” he said, biting his words. “Obvious.”
“If you’re going to get angry, I’ll shut up.”
“I’m already angry and don’t shut up. You said two things. What’s the other thing?”
“You have all those big close-ups of him, going on forever and I’m supposed to be seeing that he’s tortured, doubtful, confused.”
“Well, at least you got that, for Christ’s sake …”
“Do you want me to go on or should we go in and have breakfast?”
“The next dame I marry,” he said, “is not going to be so goddamn smart. Go on.”
“Well, you may think that he’s showing that he’s tortured and doubtful and confused,” she said, “and he may think he’s showing that he’s tortured and doubtful and confused, but all I get out of it is a handsome young man admiring himself in a mirror and wondering if the lighting is doing all it can for his eyes.”
“Shit,” he said, “you are a bitch. We worked four days on that sequence.”
“I’d cut it if I were you,” she said.
“The next picture,” he said, “you go on the set and I’ll stay home and do the cooking.”
“You asked me,” she said.
“I’ll never learn.” He jumped up off the bed. “I’ll be ready for breakfast in five minutes.” He stumped off toward the bathroom. He slept without the tops of his pajamas and the sheets had made pink ridges on the skin of his neatly muscled, lean back, small welts after the night’s faint flogging. At the door, he turned. “Every other dame I ever knew thought everything I did was glorious,” he said, “and I had to go and marry you.”