She spent quite a while at the top of the steps, waving and smiling and posing for the photographers. This part of her life was only boring in retrospect, never while it was happening.
“This way, Sassi!”
“Wave, Miss Manoon! Thank you!”
“This way!”
“This way!”
“This way!”
“Christ,” Sassi said, and kept on smiling, and came at last down the steps, the nervous Afghans leading the way, twitching their noses like thin dowagers suspecting something awful in the tea.
On the ground there was a sort of press conference:
“How long will you be here, Miss Manoon?”
“What’s the word on you and Rick Tandem, Miss Manoon?”
“How does it feel to be a film festival judge, Miss Manoon?”
“What’s your next feature, Miss Manoon?”
Sassi answered about half the questions, and ignored the rest. She liked to get attention from the press, but this was beginning to be ridiculous.
Colored policemen in short pants stood around in nervous paralysis, as though afraid any minute they’d be accused of impure thoughts. The background was full of gawkers gawking. The sky was huge and blue and cloudless, all the planes gleamed like the silver birds they’re supposed to gleam like, and the humidity was enough to take the starch out of an ear of corn. Sassi found herself fading.
Benny Bernard was abruptly there, holding her elbow, saying to the reporters and photographers, “Okay, boys, that’s all for now, boys, there’ll be more tomorrow, boys, Miss Manoon is tired from her trip, boys, but she’s happy to be here and she’s sure it’s going to be a grand festival.”
Under her breath, Sassi said, “Good boy, Benny. Nice timing.”
“Anything for Milady,” Benny told her, steering a path for them through the crush.
A young man, painfully tall and painfully thin, was suddenly in the path. “Welcome to Jamaica, Miss Manoon,” he said, sounding very British. “I’m Bullworth Spence, from Sir Albert. The car’s this way.”
Spence gestured, and followed his own gesture away. Sassi looked in bewilderment at Benny, who said, “Tell you in the car.”
They followed Spence through the clamor to a black Rolls Royce. The Afghans and Sassi and Benny got in back, and Spence slid in beside the driver. A policeman shut the door after them and the car started slowly forward. A young photographer with a chest crisscrossed with straps took Sassi’s picture through the side window, and then at last it was all behind them.
Sassi shook her head. “What was that all about? They practicing for De Gaulle?”
“You’re hot stuff in the islands, lovey,” Benny told her. “This place ain’t blase like LA and New York. Besides, those boys got to file some wordage to justify the old expense account.”
“You know just what to say to make me happy, Benny.”
Benny, not knowing when he was being lied to for ironic effect, took that straight. “Everything okay now, lovey?” he asked. “You not sore at me any more?”
“How could I be sore at you? Where are we going now?”
Benny looked forward, but there was a glass between the front and rear seats and they apparently couldn’t be heard from up there. “You’re the guest of Sir Albert Fitzroy during the festival,” he told her. “That’s his boy Spence up front with the cabby.”
“I thought the festival was supposed to spring for a room.”
“The studio arranged it this way,” Benny said. “They thought it would be better.”
“Bless the studio. What’s a Sir Albert Fitzroy?”
“British. Head of United Kingdom Films. Also in tight with the government over there, on the board of this, board of that. You got nothing to worry about with him, he’s a faggot.”
“That’s great.”
“Anyway, you won’t be around that much.” Benny pushed an Afghan’s head off his lap and took a notebook from his jacket pocket. “You want to hear the itinerary?”
“Might as well. And don’t shove Kama around like that.”
“Sorry.” Benny opened the notebook. “Tonight there’s a party in your honor in the Fitzroy house. Technically the host is United Kingdom Films.”
“He wants me to work for him,” Sassi said.
“Could be,” Benny said. “I wouldn’t know.”
“I won’t work for him,” Sassi said. “I know that already.”
“That’s up to you,” Benny said, still reading his notebook. “Tomorrow night,” he said, “there’s the official opening dinner. Then you’re invited to—”
“When do I see movies? That’s what I’m here for.”
“Different page,” Benny said, flipping to it. “Let’s see. The first regular screening is tomorrow night, after the dinner. That’s the British entry, The Sun Never Sets. I think it’s an anti-war movie.”
Sassi shivered. “All that blood,” she said.
“But before that,” Benny said, “there’s two other movies you’re going to see. Special screenings. One at—”
“How come?”
“Because you won’t be here Friday. So you’ll see Friday’s movies tomorrow morning.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re a judge,” Benny told her. “You’ve got to see all the movies.”
“No, dummy. I mean, why won’t I be here Friday?”
“Because you’ve got to be in New York for the opening.”
Sassi frowned. “What opening?”
“Zzipp.”
Sassi looked at him as though he was crazy. “Zip what?”
“Your movie,” he told her. “The one with Rick Tandem. Opening in New York on Friday. Used to be The Siren and the Scientist.”
“Oh,” she said. “I thought they were calling it Make Mine Madball. That was the title after Up Your Banners.”
“Well, now it’s Zzipp,” Benny said. “I don’t know what it’ll be Friday. Anyway, because you won’t be here Friday, you’re getting special screenings tomorrow of Friday’s movies. They’re not bothering with the Blondie retrospective, unless you really want to.”
“The what?”
“I didn’t think you did.” Benny consulted the notebook. “You view the Russian entry,” he said, “tomorrow morning at ten thirty. It’s called The Boots of the Elk.”
“It’s called what?”
“Schweppervescence,” Benny told her. “You were the one wanted all this crap.”
Sassi looked out the car window at all the poor people.
Frank, sounding very like Broderick Crawford, said into the microphone, “Miss Manoon’s in her car now, black Rolls Royce, license plate BX 352. Still with the man and the two dogs. Stupid-looking dogs.”
The other reporters and photographers were milling around the tarmac, drifting away, calling out to each other with jokes of questionable taste. Frank headed for the fence and his rented Vespa, saying into the microphone, sounding now like Howard Duff, “The Rolls is leaving now. You are following.”
Bicycles and scooters dotted the roadway, the Rolls rolling among them like a bishop in a kindergarten. Frank hunched over the handlebars of his Vespa, the portable tape recorder resting on his right hip, the slender microphone clutched like William Buckley’s pencil in his right hand. The tape recorder was off now, and Frank amused himself with his rendition of Otto Preminger singing “Camptown Races.”
One would think a man with Frank Ashford’s talents would be earning three hundred and twenty dollars a night for the rest of his life on television, but one would be wrong. In the first place, the great era of video vaudeville is sadly behind us now, the outlets for jugglers, dog acts, mimics, and plate twirlers decreasing year by year. In the second place, it isn’t enough merely to be able to talk like Cary Grant, one has to be able to talk like Cary Grant saying something funny. One needs an act, a routine, jokes, none of which did Frank have.