Vikar says, “Why would that man do that?”
“What?”
“Make himself into a woman.”
“Now, do we want to have this conversation or not?”
“I just wonder why.”
“Cause a bit ago you had some volatile shit going on. So are we going to have this conversation? Because if we are, you have to decide.”
“Just why. Not how.”
“Check it out,” the burglar wearily shakes his head, “who would you rather be,” to Now, Voyager on the TV, “Bette Davis or Paul Henreid?”
“Paul Henreid,” Vikar answers.
“No, man, negatory. You wouldn’t. I don’t believe you. Not a cat as seriously into the cinematic aesthetic as yourself. I’m not talking about real life or faggy shit here, I’m talking about the movies. Dig it, Paul Henreid not only lights Bette’s cigarette, he gets it going for her too.” The burglar laughs. “The movies, man! Shit that would be downright silly in real life, in the movies it’s the most out of sight thing ever. Lighting two cigarettes at once! For years after, women were always stopping Henreid in the street asking him to do that. No, man, if you were in Now, Voyager, you definitely would rather be Bette Davis.”
“Paul Henreid is in Casablanca.”
“Exactly! Exactly my God damned point! In Casablanca Paul Henreid, he’s leading the whole Resistance against all those white Nazi motherfuckers, he’s got the whole café singing the Marseillaise and shit, he’s like the noblest stone-righteous cat in the place — and you still would rather be Humphrey Bogart. Check it out,” nodding at Henreid on the TV, “Paul Henreid is the most whipped man in the history of movies, jack! Pussy whipped and he’s not even getting the pussy! Cause I can assure you positively that Bette is not letting him bang her, he’s lucky if he gets to lick her.” He laughs at the TV, stomping one foot on the floor. “All whip and no pussy for you, Paul!”
“That’s why that man became a woman?” says Vikar.
“I’m just making an empirical observation,” the burglar sighs, “that in Now, Voyager, anyone would rather be Bette Davis, and some people out there,” he says, “maybe they don’t know life isn’t a movie, they don’t know about playing the hand you’re dealt.”
“Perhaps he became a woman so he can walk into the sea with John Garfield playing the violin in the background.”
“There you go! Right on! Now you got it. He wanted to walk into the sea with the violin playing and you got to be a lady for that shit to be glamorous. Can’t do it as a man, even if you’re wearing a dress, without it being too pathetic. Especially if you’re wearing a dress.” They hear an approaching siren in the night and stop talking, but then it fades into the distance. Now, Voyager reaches the end and Max Steiner’s music swells. In unison, Vikar, the burglar and Bette Davis say, “Oh, Jerry, don’t let’s ask for the moon. We have the stars.”
50.
Vikar wakes with a start on the couch. “… check it out,” he hears a voice, “some wicked shit on the tube tonight.”
Vikar’s prisoner is still tied to the chair, watching the TV.
“My Darling Clementine,” the burglar is saying. Vikar realizes he’s fallen asleep, and that in his sleep he’s been hearing the other man’s voice as though there’s been no pause in the conversation, as though the burglar has been talking the entire time. Vikar tries to clear his head and wipes his eyes. “John Ford’s greatest movie,” says the bound man, “now I know what you’re going to say …”
It’s four in the morning, hours since Vikar called the police.
“… Stagecoach. Right? The Searchers. Well,” the burglar continues, “Stagecoach was a distinct landmark in the genre, no getting around it. But that shit hasn’t aged well—”
“Uh.”
“—though no one wants to cop to it, while The Searchers is one wicked bad-ass movie whenever my man the Duke is on screen, evil white racist honky pigfucker though he may be. I mean he may be a racist pigfucker, but he’s bad in The Searchers, no getting around it.”
“Bad?”
“I can see I need to choose my words more carefully,” says the burglar. “I mean Duke gives a performance of terrifying intensity and sublime psychological complexity, whether by intent or just natural fucked-up white American mojo. The Searchers loses it, though, whenever Jeffrey Hunter and Vera Miles come on — Ford, he couldn’t direct the ladies for shit, unlike my man Howard Hawks where all the ladies are fine and kick-ass on top of it, even if they’re all versions of the same fox, or as William Demarest puts it down in Preston Sturges’ The Lady Eve, ‘Positively the same dame!’” The burglar stomps his foot and laughs, pleased with himself. “I mean Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not actually has some of the same exact lines as Jean Arthur in Only Angels Have Wings. But now My Darling Clementine here, it’s practically noir Western, all moody and shit, Ford’s first after the War and all the concentration camps and maybe he wasn’t in his usual sentimental rollicking drunk-Irish jive-ass mood. Check out my man Henry Fonda as Wyatt Earp and, dig it, Victor Mature as Doc Holliday and, dig it again, Walter Brennan as Pa Clanton! I don’t mean no Grandpa McCoy from TV, I mean in My Darling Clementine Walter Brennan is one stone fucked-up killer, you hear what I’m saying? ‘When you pull a gun, kill a man!’ Damn! My Darling Clementine, it’s got the inherent mythic resonance of the Western form but in terms post-War white folks understood, figuring they were all worldlier and more sophisticated than before the War. Ford’s creation of the archetypal West, laying out codes of conduct that folks either honored or betrayed — and I’m just trying to give the motherfucker due credit, not even holding against him, not too much anyway, the fact that he played a Klansman in that jive Birth of a Nation bullshit — anyway Ford’s view of the West was so complete by this point that Hawks, Budd Boetticher, Anthony Mann, they could only add to it, you hear what I’m saying? But of course the Western changed along with America’s view of itself, from some sort of heroic country, where everybody’s free, to the spiritually fucked-up defiled place it really is, and now you got jive Italians, if you can feature that, making the only Westerns worth seeing anymore because white America’s just too fucking confused, can’t figure out whether to embrace the myth or the anti-myth, so in a country where folks always figured you can escape your past, now the word is out that this is the country where you can do no such thing, this is the one place where, like the jive that finally becomes impossible to distinguish from the anti-jive, honor becomes impossible to distinguish from betrayal or just, you know, stone cold murder … what are you doing?”
Vikar unties him from the chair. “Don’t break into my place again,” he says.
The burglar looks almost hurt, but he stands from the chair slowly, a bit painfully, and arches his back and rubs his wrists. “O.K., man,” he answers quietly, “solid.”
“I’m sorry about your head,” Vikar says.
The burglar’s eyes return to the movie. “It’s cool. Occupational hazard. Hey, uh,” there’s a slight pleading in his voice, “can I just see the rest of this?”
“Well.” Exhausted, Vikar is due on the Paramount lot in five hours.
“There’s this scene coming up where Henry Fonda is having a drink in the saloon and,” the burglar starts laughing again, “he says to the saloon keeper, ‘Mac, you ever been in love?’ and Mac answers, ‘No, I’ve been a bartender all my life.’ Oh man!” the burglar slaps his thigh.