22.
The lobby hasn’t changed since thirteen years before. Vikar strides past the front desk, through the sitting area with the bar beyond: “Sir?” says the concierge behind the front desk. Vikar wishes he were wearing his cap. The concierge calls again and again Vikar doesn’t answer, taking two or three at a time the steps that lead to the elevators, slipping into one just as the door slides closed.
21.
Like a private eye eluding pursuit in the ongoing movie of Los Angeles, Vikar gets off at the seventh floor and takes the stairs the rest of the way to the ninth.
20.
On the ninth floor, he heads down the long hall. The door of suite 928 is half ajar. Vikar pushes it open slightly, steps inside.
19.
To the left, in the corner of the living room, are a sofa and chair. A small table sits in the middle of the living room, a small bar behind it. The man stands in the middle of the suite gazing out the window, and turns to look at Vikar; his eyes glance to Vikar’s head and his mouth curls into a smile Vikar has seen a thousand times. “Hello!” the man says. “Come in.”
18.
He says to Vikar, “Have a seat.”
Vikar appraises the suite again, tentatively stepping into the living room and the rising lights of Hollywood through the window.
“Can I … get you something to drink?” the man says. “Vodka tonic?”
“All right.”
“Have a seat?” the man says again.
“All right.” Vikar lowers himself into the sofa in the middle of the living room. The man hands Vikar the vodka tonic but doesn’t pour himself anything. He sits in the chair across from Vikar, smiles and nods; he leans forward and folds his hands, unblinking dark eyes on Vikar with a familiar intensity. Vikar says, “For some reason, from a distance I believed you were my father.”
“Common mistake,” the man laughs.
17.
The man says in his slightly high, cracked voice, “Well, of course, I know all about you.” He gestures at Vikar’s head and laughs again. “I guess I’ve known about you since … well, since before I knew you.”
On anyone else, his smile might be a sneer. But it’s without insolence; rather it’s half serene, half ironic, the smile that rejects doom or accepts it — it’s hard to be sure. It’s the same smile with which he confronts John Wayne at the end of Red River, when Wayne says he’s going to kill him. It’s the same smile with which he refuses to be bullied by Burt Lancaster in From Here to Eternity, and then befriends him. It’s the same smile when he sees Elizabeth Taylor for the last time at the end of A Place in the Sun, on his way to the gas chamber.
“Fathers, huh?” he says, his faraway gaze from under his predominant eyebrows floating over Vikar’s face, before fixing on something somewhere just beyond him. “Nuts. Back home in Omaha, I didn’t get on with mine, especially after the Crash …” He shrugs, “He was a … narrow man. Rigid man. Sound familiar?”
“Yes.”
“Of course,” the man nods, “my Ma, uh, she wasn’t exactly easy for him to live with. She wasn’t easy for any of us to live with, with all the … lies … But nobody ever lies about being lonely.”
“I realize now,” Vikar says, “how lonely my mother was.”
“It helped in the acting, though — the thing with Pa. Never thought of motion pictures as a hiding place but … thought of my Pa when I went up against Wayne in Red River. Thought of him when I went up against Lancaster in Eternity. Pa and I, we patched things up after the accident … about the only thing after the accident that … got better.”
“Your face,” says Vikar.
The man touches his face. “Yeah.”
“It’s better now.”
He nods. “It’s better.”
“I get the right profiles and left profiles mixed up.”
“Another common mistake.” He stares at Vikar. “You got trust in your eyes, like you were just born.” He smiles the smile. “You know I was a twin?”
“No.”
“Had a twin sister. So when you’re a twin, you got four profiles in a way, right? Or maybe … one right profile cancels out the other left, and one left cancels out the other right …”
“Was it bad?”
“How’s that?”
“The accident. Did it hurt?”
“It was bad,” he nods, “can’t pretend it wasn’t. Bad outside and …” he taps his head, “… inside. Pretty much lost half my face. Bessie Mae — that’s what I call Elizabeth — she saved my life. Reached into my mouth and … pulled my teeth out of my throat, which is the only reason I didn’t choke to death. I gave her the teeth later,” he laughs, “as a sort of keepsake. The nose … never got fixed … jaw was cracked … all the nerves on the left side … Lots of pills for the pain. A lot of drink. You know, I’ll never forget the gesture of it, Elizabeth saving my life, but—” He laughs again. “I would have been Jimmy Dean if I’d died then. Hollywood is full of people who would trade their lives in a heartbeat just to be legends. Would have traded mine in a heartbeat not to go through the next nine years.” He says matter-of-factly, “Before the accident, I always was arrogant about my face. Felt a little guilty about it too, I realize now. Went to enlist in the War, before they turned me down for dysentery, and I was scared not that I’d get killed but that … something would happen to my face. Got away with a lot, because of this face. So it figures,” he smiles, “life would get me there.”
16.
He smiles at Vikar’s head. “Fantastic. Never expected to be tattooed on somebody’s head.”
“I believe it’s a very good movie,” says Vikar.
“Never figured it would be the finest thing I did. Certainly didn’t think so at the time. But then I didn’t care for many of my pictures. The ones with Zinnemann I liked all right … The Young Lions with Marlon, that was maybe my best work. But the others …” he shrugs, “Red River …”
“I believe that’s a very good movie as well.”
“Nah, I didn’t like it. They watered it down. Wayne was supposed to die at the end, but …” He looks up at Vikar and smiles. “But funny how your perspective changes, right? Before Place in the Sun, George Stevens came back from the war feeling like everything he’d done before was … a trifle. Gave up directing to fight the war, and then he … was one of the first into the camps to see … all that. Dachau. Bergen-Belsen. Afterward, he thought motion pictures should change the world … or what was the point? Can’t blame him. I probably would have agreed with him. I mean, Mister S, he just didn’t know who to fight anymore … what did he want to make empty little musicals for, right? He was all set to make a comedy with Ingrid … biggest star in the world then … that was before the country got so worked up about … her … private life … then he had to fly to Paris to tell her, ‘Can’t do it.’ A man doesn’t go his own way, he’s nothing. No more comedies, even if she was the biggest star in the world. Now, of course, with a little perspective, a person looks back and realizes, what in motion pictures can change the world more than Astaire and Rogers dancing?”