“Excuse me, please,” she said politely, and hurried the length of the room, toward the dressing room. A girlish graceful haste, forever eighteen. She came back with a large manila envelope and put it on the table beside the cigarette box.
“That big chest down there is a bar. If you want to fix yourself anything, I would like some of the sherry. Just half a glass, please.”
As I walked to the bar, she raised her voice and said, “It is so terribly difficult to know where to start, dear. You don’t seem to make it any easier for me.”
“Just tell me the problem. You told Walt, didn’t you?”
“Just some of it. But I would guess you want to… know all of it.”
“If I’m to help you.”
As I carried the drinks toward her, she said, “Celebrity! If all the ones who’d like to be one only could know what it means. You become such a target, actually. Slimy schemes to fasten themselves onto you for the free ride. You cannot make a single careless move.”
This was the new pose. She sipped her wine. I sat down. The suffering celebrity. Public responsibility.
She gave me a sad smile. “It isn’t worth it, you know. But you have to get into it as far as I am to realize it isn’t worth it. And then it’s too late. You can’t get out. They still follow Garbo. How long since she made a picture? A thousand years, at least. Oh, there have been some satisfactions, of course. But the things I really treasure-contentment, friendships, peace of mind, marriage-none of those things could survive all the rest of it. There is a terrible loneliness, Trav. Like being on top of a mountain, alone.”
“They pay you for it.”
“And they pay very well indeed. I’ve had good advice. I have quite a lot of money. Of course, it is invested in a lot of things, but if I should take it all out, it would be quite a large sum. That’s why I did try to… buy my way out of trouble.”
“Blackmail?”
She put her glass aside and got up quickly, pacing about in an agitated way. “Can you see how valuable it is to me… how essential to have a little time when I can be myself? Like here with you now. We can talk like two people. I don’t have to pose with you. I have to forget sometimes that I am Lysa Dean, and just be plain Lee Schontz from Dayton, Ohio, the fireman’s daughter. Sixteen-ten Madison Street.” She whirled and stopped with a leg-warmth against my knee. “You can understand that basic human need, can’t you?”
“You can’t live up to the public image at all times.”
“Thank you for understanding!”
This was another role. I guessed it was a speech out of an old movie, edited to fit the present need.
“And when I do… forget, that’s when I’m most vulnerable.”
“Sure.”
“I so want you to try to understand me. I’m not really very complex, Trav. I am the same as everyone. I have times when I feel desperate and self-destructive. I have times when I do foolish things. There are times when I do not give a damn what happens to me.”
“Sure.”
She reached and drew her fingertips across my cheek and whirled away and, sat on the couch again. “I know you’re not a prude. I can sense that. This has to be as if I’m talking to my doctor or my lawyer. But I do feel so terribly shy about this.”
“What happened?”
She sighed and made a rueful face. “A man happened to me. Of course. He was a very exciting chap. Exciting to me, at least. It happened a year ago last July, over eighteen months ago. We’d just finished shooting Jack and the Game. I was literally exhausted, but I went off with Carl. Carl Abelle. He had a ski school. We’d never had a chance to really be alone. He found a place for us. An absolutely fantastic little house. Do you know California? It was just below Point Sur, and clinging to the rock by its fingernails. Friends of his named Chipmann own it. They were in Switzerland. They have another house there. It was just the two of us…”
Her voice trailed off into uncertainty.
“Yes?”
“Trav, I am under the most terrible disciplines most of the time. I do work very hard.”
“So when you let go, you let go?”
“More than most, I guess. Just a little time of not watching every ounce and every quarter inch, every blemish and drink and calorie and bruise… God damn it, to be a woman for a change. Fry eggs, let my hair go, get stoned, have a ball. I’m naturally a very passionate woman. But I keep it all under control. Until a time like that a year and a half ago. With Carl. That’s what I try to do. Get away like that, with a certain kind of man. Then everything that’s been saved up…”
“Birds and bees. I didn’t think you went into a convent when you had time off, Miss Dean. I don’t follow this routine.”
“It’s just to explain how things happened. It was such a very private place. Carl would drive off to buy food and liquor. There were steps cut into the stone, down to a little beach way way down that you couldn’t use at high tide. There was a terrace on the ocean side, twenty feet square, about. It was a little offset so you could get morning sun too. A low broad wall around it. And a great stack of weatherproofed sun mattresses and pillows in all kinds of colors. We’d arranged it so we could have three weeks alone. Maybe that was too long. I guess it was. We were marvelously right for each other, in a purely physical way. We knew that before we went there, of course. Except on a ski slope or in bed, Carl isn’t very stimulating. It was very intense for about a week, I guess. Day and night all mixed up. Eat when you’re hungry, sleep when you’re sleepy. When the edge was gone, we both started drinking more. And we spent more and more time on the terrace in the sun. I knew I was getting too brown, but I was too lazy and relaxed to give a damn. I was drinking a lot of vodka. Hot sun and vodka kept me in a sort of permanent daze. We’d make love there in the sun, all slow and sweaty and, I don’t know, remote some how. I had a tube pregnancy when I was just a kid and damned near died and I don’t have to worry about taking care of anything. The thing is, we felt so private. You’d see a boat way out, or an airplane far away, or hear a truck sometimes on the highway. The phone was cut off. I had a little radio. You have to understand that nothing seemed important, absolutely nothing at all. Do you understand that, Trav?”
“I’ve been there.”
“Anyway, it must have been just about at the end of two weeks, we needed things and Carl drove to town to get them. He left in the early afternoon sometime. And he was gone so long I began to get damned annoyed at him. I belted the vodka pretty good, so by the time he did come back, I was getting kind of sloppy and confused. He came skidding back into the driveway with two cars following him, and the whole drunken bunch came marching into the house bellowing some goddam German skiing song. Five fellows and three girls. He’d known one of the girls up at the Valley. He ran into them in town, and had drinks with them, and decided we should have a house party. They damned near fell over when they saw who his girl was. They’d brought tons of food and beer and liquor and cigarettes from town.
“I was sore at him, but I thought that as soon as they had recognized me the damage was done, if any, and the hell with it. I guess I was getting bored with Carl and I lost any sense of caution. They were swingers, every one. The girls were darling. The fellows were fun. I guess there’s no good way to avoid telling you all, dear. It was a very scrambled evening, all things considered, and by late afternoon the next day the last holdout, the girl they called Whippy, she got tight enough to let Sonny peel her out of her swim suit and get her into the fun and games on the terrace.
“It just seemed to be a crazy time for everybody, and nobody seemed to care much, and you saw everything and did everything through a kind of sleepy crazy haze so that in my memory it’s all jumbled up. It was the first and last time I was ever in a situation like that. It’s sort of standard practice on the Riviera, with those carlight signals and horn signals to get recruits and all. It didn’t offend me. In some ways it was very exciting. But it was just too dangerous for anybody in my position. And I hadn’t wanted it to happen. Carl brought them back to the house and it just went on from there, and lasted, oh, four days I guess. When I got back to Brentwood it took me weeks to get back in shape. It all seemed like a dream.