He left Bruce, who had fallen into a somber, reflective silence, leaning on the handle of the carpet sweeper in the middle of the room.
Outside, across the street, on a vacant lot that rose quite steeply above the rest of the ground around it, there were two Army trucks and an anti-aircraft gun and soldiers in helmets were digging in. The gun, poking its long, covered muzzle up at the sky, and the busy soldiers sc.r.a.ping out an emplacement as though they were already under fire, struck Michael as incongruous and comic. This, too, must be a local phenomenon. It was impossible to believe that any place else in the country, the Army was going to these melodramatic lengths. And, somehow, soldiers and guns had always seemed to Michael, as they did to most Americans, like instruments for a kind of boring, grown-up game, not like anything real. And this particular gun was stuck between a woman"s Monday washline, bra.s.sieres and silk stockings and pantie girdles, and the back door of a Spanish bungalow, with the morning"s milk still on the steps.
Michael walked toward Wilshire Boulevard, toward the drugstore where he usually had his breakfast. There was a bank building on the corner, with a line of people outside the door, waiting for the bank to open. A young policeman was keeping them in order, saying over and over again, "Ladies and Gentlemen. Ladies and Gentlemen. Keep your places. Don"t worry. You"ll all get your money."
Michael went up to the policeman, curiously. "What"s going on here?" he asked.
The policeman looked sourly at him. "The end of the line, Mister," he said pointing.
"I don"t want to get inside," said Michael. "I haven"t any money in this bank. Or," and he grinned, "in any other bank."
The policeman smiled back at him, as though this expression of poverty had made sudden friends of them. "They"re gettin" it out," he gestured with his head to the line of people, "before the bombs fall on the vaults."
Michael stared at the people in the line. They stared back with hostility, as though they suspected anyone who talked to the policeman of being in conspiracy to defraud them of their money. They were well dressed, and there were many women among them.
"Back east," the policeman said in a loud, contemptuous stage whisper. "They"re all heading back east as soon as they get it out. I understand," he said very loudly, so that everyone in the line could hear him, "that ten j.a.panese divisions have landed at Santa Barbara. The Bank of America is going to be used as headquarters for the j.a.panese General Staff, starting tomorrow."
"I"m going to report you," a severe middle-aged woman in a pink dress and a wide blue straw hat said to the policeman. "See if I don"t."
"The name, Lady, is McCarty," said the policeman.
Michael smiled as he moved on toward his breakfast, but he walked reflectively past the plategla.s.s windows of the shops, some of which already had strips of plaster across them to protect from concussion the silver tea sets and evening gowns displayed in them. The rich, he thought, are more sensitive to disaster than others. They have more to lose and they are quicker to run. It would never occur to a poor man to leave the West Coast because there was a war on somewhere in the Pacific. Not out of patriotism, perhaps, or fort.i.tude, but merely because he couldn"t afford it. Also, the rich were accustomed to pay other people to do their manual work for them, and their dirty jobs, and a war was the hardest labor and the dirtiest job of all. He thought of the gardener, who had lived in this country for forty years, and Bruce, drunk on gin and prophecy, whose grandfather had been freed in South Carolina in 1863, and he remembered the grasping, tight, hostile expressions on the women in the line before the bank and he thought of himself sitting on the edge of the pink bed worrying about tax and alimony. Are these the people, created in greatness by the work of Jefferson and Franklin, he thought, are these the bitter farmers and hunters and craftsmen who came out of the wilderness, furious for liberty and justice, is this the new world of giants sung by Whitman?
He went into the drugstore and ordered orange juice, toast and coffee.
He met Cahoon at one o"clock at the famous restaurant in Beverly Hills. It was a large dark room, done in the curving, startling style affected by movie-set designers. It looks, Michael thought, standing at the bar, surveying the crowded civilian room, in which one uniform, on a tall infantry sergeant, stood out strangely, it looks like a bathroom decorated by a Wool-worth salesgirl for a Balkan queen. The image pleased him and he gazed with more favor on the tanned fat men in the tweed jackets and the smooth, powdered, beautiful women with startling hats who sat about the room, their eyes pecking at each new arrival. There was an air of celebration and generosity hanging over the room, and people clapped each other on the back and talked jovially and louder than usual and bought each other drinks. It reminded Michael, more than anything else, of the c.o.c.ktail hour in fashionable bars in New York on the afternoon before New Year"s Eve, when everyone was stoking up for the night of hope and merrymaking ahead.
There were rumors and anecdotes about the war already. A famous director walked through the room with a set face, whispering here and there that of course he didn"t want it spread around, but we hadn"t a ship in the Pacific, and a fleet had been spotted 300 miles off the Oregon coast. And a writer had heard a producer in the MGM barbershop sputter, through the lather on his face, "I"m so mad at those little yellow b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, I feel like throwing up my job here and going-going-" The producer had hesitated, groping for the most violent symbol of his feeling of outrage and duty. Finally, he had found it, "-going right to Washington." The writer was having a great success with the story. He was going to table after table with it, cleverly leaving on the burst of laughter it provoked, to move on to new listeners.
Cahoon was quiet and abstracted and Michael could tell that he was in pain from his ulcer, although he insisted upon drinking an old-fashioned at the bar before going to their table. Michael had never seen Cahoon take a drink before.
They sat down at one of the booths to wait for Milton Sleeper, the author of the play Cahoon was working on, and for Kirby Hoyt, a movie actor whom Cahoon hoped to induce to play in it. "One of the most irritating things about this town," Cahoon growled. "Everybody insists on doing business over lunch. You can"t sign a barber without stuffing his face first."
Pharney came ambling down the room, smiling, and shaking hands in a royal pa.s.sage across the booths. He was an agent for a hundred and fifty of the highest-priced actors and writers and directors in Hollywood, and this restaurant was his regal domain and lunchtime his solemn hour of audience. He knew Michael well, and again and again had tried to persuade him to come out and learn the business, promising him fame and fortune as a director.
"h.e.l.lo," Pharney said, shaking hands, smiling in the insolent, good-natured way that he had found impressed people into giving more money than they had intended for his clients. "How do you like it?" he asked, as though the war were a production he had himself supervised and of which he was very proud.
"Best little old war," Michael said, "I ever was in."
"How old"re you?" Pharney peered shrewdly at Michael.
"Thirty-three."
"I can get you two stripes," Pharney said, "in the Navy. Public Relations. Radio stuff. Want it?"
"Christ," said Cahoon, "does the Navy use agents, too?"
"Friend of mine," Pharney said, unoffended. "Full Captain. Well?" He turned back to Michael.
"Not at the moment," said Michael. "I"m not ready to go in for two or three months."
"In three months," Pharney said, grinning across them at two glittering beauties in the next booth, "In three months you"ll be tending gardens in Yokahama."
"The truth is," Michael said hesitantly, trying to make it sound unheroic, "I think I want to go in as a private in the Army."
"My perishing a.s.s," Pharney said, "what for?"
"It"s a long story," said Michael, feeling immodest and embarra.s.sed. "I"ll tell you another time."
"Hamburger," Pharney said cheerfully. "That"s all a private in the Army is. Grind him down fine and don"t mind if there"s a little fat in it. Have a good war." He waved and was off, down the saluting line of booths.
Cahoon stared gloomily at two comedians who were making their way along the bar, laughing loudly and shaking hands with all the drinkers. "This town," he said, "I"d give the j.a.panese High Command five hundred dollars and two seats to the opening nights of all my plays if they"d bomb it tomorrow. Mike," he said, without looking at Michael, "I"m going to say something very selfish."
"Go ahead," Michael said.
"Don"t go in till we get this play on. I"m too tired to get a show on by myself. And you"ve been in on it since the beginning. Sleeper"s a horrible jerk, but he"s got a good play there, and it ought to be done ..."
"Don"t worry," Michael said softly, half afraid already that he was leaping at this honorable excuse in friendship"s name to remain aloof from the war for another season. "I"ll hang around."
"They"ll get along without you," Cahoon said, "for a couple of months. We"ll win the war anyway."
He stopped talking. Sleeper was threading his way through the crowd toward their booth. Sleeper dressed like a forceful young writer, dark-blue work shirt and a tie that was off to one side. He was a handsome, heavy-set, arrogant man, who had written two inflammatory plays about the working cla.s.s several years before. He sat down without shaking hands.
"Christ," he growled, "why do we have to meet in this Chanel douche bag?"
"Your secretary," Cahoon said, mildly, "made the date."
"My secretary," Sleeper said, "has two ambitions. She wants to lay a Hungarian producer at Universal and she wants to make a gentleman out of me. She"s the kind of girl who"s always saying she doesn"t like your shirts. Know that kind?"
"I don"t like your shirts, either," said Cahoon. "You make two thousand dollars a week, you don"t have to wear things like that."
"Double Scotch," Sleeper said to the waiter. "Well," he said loudly, "Uncle Sam has finally backed his tail into the service of humanity."
"Did you rewrite Scene Two yet?" Cahoon asked.
"For Christ"s sake, Cahoon!" Sleeper said. "Do you think a man can work at a time like this?"
"Just thought I"d ask," said Cahoon.
"Blood," said Sleeper, sounding, Michael thought, like a character in one of his plays. "Blood on the palm trees, blood on the radio, blood on the decks, and he asks about the second scene! Wake up, Cahoon. A cosmic moment. Thunder in the bowels of the earth. The human race is twisting, tortured and bleeding in its uneasy sleep."
"Save it," said Cahoon, "for the trial scene."
"Cut it." Sleeper glowered heavily under his heavy, handsome eyebrows. "Cut those brittle, Broadway jokes. That.time"s pa.s.sed, Cahoon, pa.s.sed forever. The first bomb yesterday dropped right in the middle of the last wisecrack. Where"s the Ham?" He looked around him restlessly, tapping the table in front of him.
"Hoyt said he"d be a little late," Michael said. "He"ll be here."
"I"ve got to get back to the studio," said Sleeper. "Freddie asked me to come in this afternoon. The studio"s thinking of making a picture about Honolulu to awaken the American people."
"What"re you going to do?" Cahoon asked. "Are you going to have time to finish the play?"
"Of course I am," said Sleeper. "I told you I would, didn"t I?"
"Yes," said Cahoon. "That was before the war started. I thought you might go in...."
Sleeper snorted. "To do what? Guard a viaduct in Kansas City?" He took a long sip of the Scotch the waiter placed before him. "The artist doesn"t belong in uniform. The function of the artist is to keep alive the flame of culture, to explain what the war is about, to lift the spirits of the men who are grappling with death. Anything else," he said, "is sentimentality. In Russia they don"t take the artist. Write, they say, play, paint, compose. A country in its right mind doesn"t put its national treasures in the front line. What would you think if the French had put the Mona Lisa and Cezanne"s self-portrait in the Maginot Line? You"d think they were crazy, wouldn"t you?"
"Yes," Michael said, because Sleeper was glaring at him.
"Well," Sleeper shouted, "why the h.e.l.l should they put a new Cezanne, a living Da Vinci there? Christ, even the Germans keep their artists at home! G.o.d, I get so weary of this argument!" He finished his Scotch and looked furiously around him. "I can"t stand a tardy Ham," Sleeper said. "I"m going to order my lunch."
"Pharney," said Cahoon, smiling slightly, "can get you two stripes in the Navy."
"Screw Pharney," said Sleeper. "Flesh-peddling provocateur. Ham and eggs," he said to the waiter, "and asparagus with Hollandaise sauce. And a double Scotch."
Hoyt came in while Sleeper was ordering and made his way quickly to their table, shaking hands with only five people in his pa.s.sage.
"Sorry, old man," Hoyt said as he slipped onto the green leather bench behind the table. "Sorry I"m late."
"Why the h.e.l.l," Sleeper asked pugnaciously, "can"t you get any place on time? Wouldn"t your public like it?"
"Confusing day at the studio, old man," Hoyt said. "Couldn"t break away." He had a clipped British accent which had never varied in the seven years he had been in the United States. He had taken out American citizenship papers when the war began in 1939, but otherwise he seemed exactly the same handsome, talented young toff, via Pall Mall out of the Bristol slums, who had got off the boat in 1934. He looked distracted and nervous and ordered a very light lunch. He did not order a drink because he had a tiring afternoon ahead of him. He was playing an RAF Squadron Leader and there was a complicated scene in a burning plane over the Channel, with process shots and difficult closeups.
Lunch was a tense affair. Hoyt had promised to re-read the play over the week-end and give Cahoon his final decision about whether he would appear in it. He was a good actor and just right for the part, and if he didn"t play it, it would be a difficult job to find another man. Sleeper kept drinking double Scotches gloomily and Cahoon poked drably at his food.
Michael saw Laura at a table across the room with two other women, and nodded coolly at her. It was the first time he"d seen her since the divorce. That eighty bucks a week, he thought, won"t go far if she pays for her own lunch in this place. He was angry at her for being improvident and then was annoyed at himself for worrying about it. She looked very pretty and it was hard to remember that he was angry at her and also hard to remember that he had ever loved her. Another face, he thought, that will pull vaguely and sadly at the heart when glimpsed by accident at one end of the country or another.
"I"ve re-read the play, Cahoon," Hoyt said, a little hurriedly, "and I must say I think it"s just beautiful."
"Good." Cahoon started to smile broadly.
"... But," Hoyt broke in a little breathlessly, "I"m afraid I can"t do it."
Cahoon stopped smiling and Sleeper said, "Oh, Christ."
"What"s the matter?" Cahoon asked.
"At the moment ..." Hoyt smiled apologetically. "With the war and all. Change of plans, old man. Truth is, if I went into a play, I"m afraid the b.l.o.o.d.y draft board"d clap its paws on me. Out here ..." He took a mouthful of salad. "Out here, it"s a somewhat different case. Studio says they"ll get me deferred. The word is from Washington that movies"ll be considered in the national interest. Necessary personnel, y" know ... Don"t know about the stage. Wouldn"t like to take a chance. You understand my position ..."
"Sure," said Cahoon flatly. "Sure."
"Christ," said Sleeper. He stood up. "Got to go back to Burbank," he said. "In the national interest."
He walked out heavily and bit unsteadily.
Hoyt looked after him nervously. "Never liked that chap," he said. "Not a gentleman." He chewed tensely on his salad.
Rollie Vaughn appeared at the table, red-faced and beaming, with a gla.s.s of brandy in his hand. He was English, too, older than Hoyt, and was playing a Wing Commander in Hoyt"s picture. But he was not on call for the afternoon and could safely drink.
"Greatest day in England"s history," he said happily, beaming at Hoyt. "The days of defeat are over. Days of victory ahead. To Franklin Delano Roosevelt." He lifted his gla.s.s and the others politely lifted theirs, and Michael was afraid that Rollie was going to heave the gla.s.s into the fireplace, now that he was in the RAF at Paramount. "To America!" Rollie said, lifting his gla.s.s again. What he"s really drinking to, Michael thought unpleasantly, is the j.a.panese Navy, for getting us in. Still, you couldn"t blame an Englishman ...
"We will fight them on the beaches," said Rollie loudly, "we will fight them on the hills." He sat down. "We will fight them in the streets ... No more Cretes, no more Norways ... No more getting pushed out of any place."
"I wouldn"t talk like that, old man," Hoyt said. "I had a private conversation not long ago. Chap in the Admiralty. You"d be surprised at the name if I could tell it to you. He explained to me about Crete."
"What did he say about Crete?" Rollie stared at Hoyt, a slight belligerence showing in his eyes.
"All according to the over-all plan, old man," said Hoyt. "Inflict losses and pull out. Cleverest thing in the world. Let them have Crete. Who needs Crete?"
Rollie stood up majestically. "I"m not going to sit here," he said harshly, a wild light in his eye, "and hear the British Armed Forces insulted by a runaway Englishman."
"Now, now," Cahoon said soothingly. "Sit down."
"What did I say, old boy?" Hoyt asked nervously.
"British blood spilled to the last ounce," Rollie banged the table. "Desperate, b.l.o.o.d.y stand to save the land of an ally. Englishmen dying by the thousand ... and he says it was planned that way! "Let them have Crete!" I"ve been watching you for some time, Hoyt, and I"ve tried to be fair in my mind, but I"m afraid I"ve finally got to believe what people"re saying about you."
"Now, old man," Hoyt was very red in the face and his voice was high and rattled. "I think you"re the victim of a terrible misunderstanding."
"If you were in England," Rollie said, bitingly, "you"d sing a different tune. They"d have you up before the law before you"d have a chance to get out more than ten words. Spreading despondency and alarm. Criminal offense, you know, in time of war."
"Really," Hoyt said weakly, "Rollie, old man ..."
"I"d like to know who"s paying you for this," Rollie stuck his chin out challengingly close to Hoyt"s face. "I really would like to know. Don"t think this is going to die in this restaurant. Every Englishman in this town is going to hear about it, never fear! Let them have Crete, eh?" He slammed his gla.s.s down on the table and stalked back to the bar.
Hoyt wiped his sweating face with his handkerchief and looked painfully around him to see how many people had heard the tirade. "Lord," he said, "you don"t know how difficult it is to be an Englishman these days. Insane, neurotic cliques, you don"t dare open your mouth ..." He got up. "I hope you"ll excuse me," he said, "but I really must get back to the studio."
"Of course," Cahoon said.
"Terribly sorry about the play," said Hoyt. "But you see how it is."
"Yes," said Cahoon.
"Cherrio," said Hoyt.
"Cherrio," said Cahoon, with a straight face.
He and Michael watched the elegant, 7500-dollar-a-week back retreating past the bar, retreating past the defender of Crete, retreating to the Paramount Studios, to the prop plane afire that afternoon against the processed clouds ten miles off the Hollywood-Dover coast.
Cahoon sighed. "If I didn"t have ulcers when I came in here," he said, "I"d have them now." He called for the check.
Then Michael saw Laura walking toward their table. Michael looked down at his plate with great interest, but Laura stopped in front of him.
"Invite me to sit down," she said.
Michael looked coldly up at her, but Cahoon smiled and said, "h.e.l.lo, Laura, won"t you join us?" and she sat down facing Michael.
"I"m going anyway," Cahoon said before Michael could protest. He stood up, after signing the check. "See you tonight, Mike," he said, and wandered slowly off toward the door. Michael watched him go.