The Deer Park Read online

  “No,” I said.

  “Oh, I thought you were somebody else,” she said and looked away again.

  They were talking about their children and I guessed, as Eitel later confirmed, that they were the wives of important men and men who wanted to be important, the husbands off in chase of one another through the Laguna Room while the women were left behind.

  “What do you mean, California is no good?” one of them said fiercely. “It’s wonderful for children.”

  When a man went by, they tried to pay no notice. I realized that in walking past with a clumsy smile, showing how I didn’t know if I was supposed to talk to them or not, I had done the dirty service of reflecting their situation. A few other men came in after me, and I saw that they either walked by without a look, or stopped for a brief but wild gallantry which went something like this:

  “Carolyn!” the man would say, as if he could not believe he saw the woman here and was simply overcome.

  “Mickey!” one of the six women would say.

  “My favorite girl,” the man would say, holding her hand.

  “The only real man I know,” the deserted wife would say.

  Mickey would smile. He would shake his head, he would hold her hand. “If I didn’t know you were kidding, I could give you a tumble,” he would say.

  “Don’t be too sure I’m kidding,” the wife would say.

  Mickey would straighten up, he would release her hand. There would be a silence until Mickey murmured, “What a woman.” Then, in the businesslike tone which ends a conversation, he would say, “How are the kids, Carolyn?”

  “They’re fine.”

  “That’s great. That’s great.” He would start to move away, and give a smile to all the women. “We have to have a long talk, you and me,” Mickey would say.

  “You know where to find me.”

  “Great kidder, Carolyn,” Mickey would announce to nobody in particular, and disappear into the party.

  All through the Laguna Room, wherever there was a couch, three wives were sitting in much that way. Since a lot of the men had come without women, the result was that men got together with men, standing near the pool, off the dance floor, at the café tables or in a crowd near the bar. I picked up a drink and wandered through the party looking for a girl to talk to. But all the attractive girls were surrounded, though by fewer men than squeezed up to listen to a film director or a studio executive, and besides I did not know how to get into the conversations. They were all so private. I had been thinking that my looks and my uniform might not do me any harm, but most of the girls seemed to like the conversation of fat middle-aged men and bony middle-aged men, the prize going to a German movie director with a big paunch who had his arms around the waists of two starlets. Actually I wasn’t really that eager. Being stone sober, the fact was that it was easier to drift from one circle of men to another.

  In a cove of the bar formed by two tables and the tip of one of the pool’s tentacles, I found Jennings James telling a joke to several feature actors of no particular celebrity. Jay-Jay rambled on, his eyes blurred behind his silver-rimmed glasses. When he was done, other jokes were told, each more stray than the one which went before. I quit them after a while, and Jay-Jay caught up to me.

  “What a stinking party this is,” he said. “I’m supposed to work tonight, show the photographers a good time.” He coughed with stomach misery. “I left all those photographers over at the canopy table. You know it’s the truth about photographers, they’d rather eat than drink.” Jay-Jay had an arm on my shoulder, and I realized he was using me as an escort to reach the men’s room. “You know the line of poetry, ‘Me-thought I saw the grave where Laura lay’?” he started to say. But whatever it was he wanted to add was lost, and he stood looking at me sheepishly. “Well, that’s a beautiful line of poetry,” he finished, and like a kid who has clung to the back of a streetcar while it climbs the hill, and drops off once the top is reached, Jay-Jay let go my arm and, listing from the change in balance, went careening to the urinal.

  I was left to stand around the edge of one group or another. A director finished a story of which I heard no more than the last few lines. “I sat down and I told her that to be a good actress, she must always work for the truth in what she’s playing,” the man said in a voice not empty of self-love, “and she said, ‘What’s the truth?’ and I said it could be defined as the real relation between human beings. You saw the performance I got out of her.” He stopped, the story was over, and the men and women around him nodded wisely. “That’s wonderful advice you gave her, Mr. Sneale,” a girl said, and the others murmured in agreement.

  “Howard, tell the story about you and Mr. Teppis,” one of them begged.

  The director chuckled. “Well, this story is on Herman, but I know he wouldn’t mind. There are enough stories on me in my dealings with him. H.T.’s got an instinct which is almost infallible. There’s a reason why he’s such a great movie-maker, such a creative movie-maker.”

  “That’s very true, Howard,” the same girl said.

  I moved on without listening any more and almost bumped into the subject of the story. In a corner, off on a discussion, were Herman Teppis and two other men who were not too different from Teppis. They had been pointed out to me already as Eric Haislip, head of Magnum, and Mac Barrantine from Liberty Pictures, but I think I would have guessed in any case, for the three men were left alone. If I had drunk my liquor more slowly, I might have felt the social paradox which allowed only these men to be able to talk without the attention of a crowd, but instead I placed myself at the elbow of the producer named Mac Barrantine. They continued their conversation without paying any attention to me.

  “What do you think you’ll gross on The Tigress?” Eric Haislip was saying.

  “Three-and-a-half to four,” Herman Teppis said.

  “Three-and-a-half to four?” Eric Haislip repeated. “H.T., you’re not talking to the New York office. You’ll be lucky to get your money out.”

  Teppis snorted. “I could buy your studio with what we’ll make.”

  Mac Barrantine spoke slowly out of the side of a cigar. “I claim that you just can’t tell any more. There was a time when I could say, ‘Bring it in at one-and-a-half, and we’ll gross a million over.’ Today, picture-making is crazy. A filthy bomb I’m ashamed of makes money, a classical musical comedy vehicle like Sing, Girls, Sing lays an egg. You figure it out.”

  “You’re wrong,” Herman Teppis said, prodding him with a finger. “You know the trouble? People are confused today. So what do they want? They want a picture that confuses them. Wait till they get really confused. Then they’ll want a picture that sets them straight.”

  “Now you’re required to show them real things on the screen,” Eric Haislip sighed.

  “Real things?” Teppis exploded. “We bring real things to them. Realism. But because a fellow in an Italian movie vomits all over the place and they like it in some art theater doesn’t even have air-cooling, we should bring them vomit?”

  “There’s no discipline,” Mac Barrantine said. “Even a director, a man with a high-powered tool in his hands. What does he do? He runs amuck like a gangster.”

  “Charley Eitel cut your throat,” Eric Haislip said.

  “They all cut my throat,” Teppis said passionately. “You know something? My throat don’t cut.” He glared at them as if remembering times when each of them had tried to treat him to a razor. “Bygones. Let it be bygones,” Teppis said. “I get along with everybody.”

  “There’s no discipline,” Barrantine repeated. “I got a star, I won’t mention her name. She came to me, she knew that in two months we were starting production on a really big vehicle for her, and you know what she had the gall to say? ‘Mr. Barrantine, my husband and I, we’re going to have a baby. I’m six weeks along.’ You’re going to have a baby?’ I said, ‘where in hell’s your loyalty? I know you, you’re selfish. You can’t tell me you want the heartache of bringing up an infant
.’ ‘Mr. Barrantine, what should I do?’ she bawled to me. I gave her a look and then I told her. ‘I can’t take the responsibility for advising you what to do,’ I said, ‘but you damn well better do something.’ ”

  “She’s going to be in the picture, I hear,” Eric Haislip said.

  “Of course she’s going to be in the picture. She’s an ambitious girl. But discipline and consideration. Do any of them have that?”

  Eric Haislip was looking at me. “Who are you? What do you want here, kid?” he asked suddenly, although he had been aware of me for several minutes.

  “I’ve been invited,” I said.

  “Did I invite you to sit on my lap?” Mac Barrantine said.

  “You’d be the first,” I muttered.

  To my surprise, Teppis said, “Leave the boy alone. I know this boy. He’s a nice young fellow.”

  Barrantine and Haislip glowered at me, and I scowled back. We all stood nose to nose like four trucks meeting at a dirt crossroad. “The youth, the young people,” Teppis announced. “You think you know something? Listen to a young fellow’s ideas. He can tell you something. This boy has a contribution.”

  Barrantine and Haislip did not seem particularly enthusiastic to hear my contribution. Conversation ground along for several minutes, and then they left on the excuse of filling their drinks. “I’ll call the maître dee,” Teppis offered. They shook their heads. They needed a walk, they announced. When they were gone, Teppis looked in a fine mood. I had the suspicion he had come to my defense in order to insult them. “First-rate fellows,” he said to me. “I’ve known them for years.”

  “Mr. Teppis,” I said irritably, “why did you invite me to your party?”

  He laughed and clamped a hand on my shoulder. “You’re a clever boy,” he said, “you’re quick-tongued. I like that.” His hoarse thin voice drew a conspiratorial link between us whether I wanted it or not. “You take the desert,” he confided to me, “it’s a wonderful place to make a human being feel alive. I hear music in it all the time. A musical. It’s full of cowboys and these fellows that live alone, what do you call them, hermits. Cowboys and hermits and pioneers, that’s the sort of place it is. Fellows looking for gold. As a young fellow, what do you think, wouldn’t you like to see such a movie? I like history,” he went on before I could answer. “It would take a talented director to make such a story, a fellow who knows the desert.” He poked me in the ribs as though to leave me breathless and therefore honest. “You take Eitel. Is he still hitting the booze?” Teppis said suddenly, his small flat eyes studying my reaction.

  “Not much,” I said quickly, but my look must have wandered because Teppis squeezed my shoulder again.

  “We got to have a long talk, you and me,” Teppis said. “I like Charley Eitel. I wish he didn’t have such a stain on his character. Politics. Idiotic. What do you think?”

  “I think he’s going to make the best movie of his life,” I said with the hope I could worry Teppis.

  “For the art theaters,” Teppis stated, and he pointed a finger to his brain. “It won’t be from the heart. You’re too fresh for your own good,” he continued with one of his fast shifts, “who’s interested in your ideas? I’ll tell you what the story is. Eitel is through.”

  “I disagree,” I said, cheered to realize I was the only one at this party who did not have to be polite to Herman Teppis.

  “You disagree? What do you know? You’re a baby.” But I thought I understood what went on in him, the fear that he might be wrong chewing at the other fear he might make a fool of himself by considering Eitel again. “Now listen, you,” he started to say, but we were interrupted.

  “Good evening, daddy,” a woman said.

  “Lottie,” Teppis said moistly, and embraced her. “Why didn’t you call me?” he asked. “Ten o’clock this morning and no call from you.”

  “I had to miss it today,” said Lottie Munshin. “I was packing for the trip.”

  Teppis began to ask her about his grandchildren, turning his back almost entirely on me. While they spoke I watched Carlyle Munshin’s wife with interest. She was one of those women who are middle-aged too soon, her skin burned into the colors of false health. Thin, nervous, her face was screwed tight, and in those moments when she relaxed, the lines around her forehead and mouth were exaggerated, for the sun had not touched them. Pale haggard eyes looked out from sun-reddened lids. She was wearing an expensive dress but had only succeeded in making it look dowdy. The bones of her chest stood out, and a sort of ruffle fluttered on her freckled skin with a parched rustling movement like a spinster’s parlor curtains. “I was delayed getting here,” she said to her father in so pinched a voice I had the impression her throat was tight. “You see, Doxy was littering today. You know Doxy?”

  “It’s one of the mutts?” Teppis asked uncomfortably.

  “She took the state-wide blue ribbon for her class,” Lottie Munshin said. “Don’t you remember?”

  “Well, that’s good.” Teppis coughed. “Now, why don’t you leave those dogs out of your mind for a couple of weeks, and you take a good vacation. You relax. You have a good time with Collie.”

  “I can’t leave them for two weeks,” she said with something like panic. “Salty litters in the next ten days, and we have to start training Blitzen and Nod for the trials.”

  “Well, that’s fine,” Teppis said vaguely. “Now, there’s a fellow I got to see, so I’ll leave you in the company of this young man. You’ll enjoy talking to him. And Lottie, you remember,” he said, “there’s more important things than those dogs.”

  I watched him walk away, nodding his head to the people who swarmed to greet him, carrying them one at a time like parasite fish. One couple even moved off the dance floor and came hurrying toward him.

  “Do you like dogs?” Lottie Munshin asked me. She gave a short rough laugh for punctuation, and looked at me with her head cocked to one side.

  I made the mistake of saying, “You breed them, don’t you?”

  She replied; she replied at length; she insisted on going into details which led into other details, she was a fanatic, and I stood listening to her, trying to find the little girl who had grown into this woman. “Collie and I have the best ranch within the county limits of the capital,” she said in that pinched voice, “although of course keeping it up devolves upon me. It’s quite a concern, I can tell you. I’m up at six every morning.”

  “You keep an early schedule,” I offered.

  “Early to bed. I like to be up with the sun. With such hours everybody could keep themselves in fine condition. You’re young now, but you should take care of yourself. People should follow the same hours animals do, and they would have the natural health of an animal.”

  Over her shoulder I could see the dance floor and the swimming pool, and I was pulled between my desire to quit her for people who were more interesting, and my reluctance to leave her alone. While she spoke, her bony fingers plucked at her chin. “I’ve got a green thumb,” she said. “It’s an unusual combination. I breed dogs and things grow under my thumb. Sometimes I think my father must have been meant to be a farmer because where else could it have developed in me?”

  “Oh, look. There’s your husband,” I said with relief.

  She called to him. He was some distance away, but at the sound of her voice he looked up with an exaggeration of surprise which betrayed he was not surprised at all, and came moving toward us. As he recognized me his expression changed for a moment, but all the same he shook my hand warmly. “Well, we meet again,” he said broadly.

  “Carlyle, I meant to ask you,” Lottie Munshin went on in a worried voice, “are you going to try that favorite-food diet?”

  “I’ll give it a look,” he said in a bored tone, and caught me by the arm. “Lottie, I have something to talk over with Sergius. You’ll excuse us.” And with no more than that he steered me under a yucca tree, and we stood in the harsh shadow made by a flood lamp above the fronds.

  “Wha
t are you doing here?” he asked.

  Once again I explained that I had been invited by Herman Teppis.

  “Eitel, too?”

  When I nodded, Munshin burst out, “I wouldn’t put it past Eitel to bring Elena here.” As he shook his head with indignation, I began to laugh.

  “It’s a rotten party,” I said, “it needs some kicks.”

  Munshin surprised me. A calculating expression came over his face and suddenly he looked like a very tough clown to me, a clown who in a quiet private way knew more than a few corners of the world. “It would be worth a lot of money to know what’s in H.T.’s head,” he muttered to himself, and walked away leaving me beside the yucca tree.

  The party was becoming more active. People were going off by couples, or coming together at one center of interest or another. In a corner a game of charades was going on, the dance floor was nearly filled, a well-known comedian was performing for nothing, and an argument about a successful play almost killed the music of the rumba band. A drunk had managed to climb the boom which supported the papier-mâché camera, and he was quarreling with the cameraman who was trying to get him to go down. Nearby, his wife was laughing loudly. “Ronnie’s a flagpole sitter,” she kept announcing. The swimming instructor of the hotel was giving a diving exhibition in a roped-off portion of the pool, but only a few were watching her. I had a couple of drinks at the bar, and tried to work into one circle or another without success. Bored, I listened to a folk singer dressed like a leatherstocking, who sang old ballads in a quavery twang which could be heard above the dance orchestra. “Isn’t he talented?” a woman said nearby.

  I felt a tap on my shoulder. A blond man whom I recognized as the tennis professional of the Yacht Club smiled at me. “Come on over,” he said, “somebody would like to meet you.” It turned out to be the movie star, Teddy Pope. He was a tall man with an open expression and dark-brown hair which fell in a cowlick over his forehead. When I came up with the tennis player, he grinned at me.