Росс Макдональд - The Three Roads

“My first name’s Bret.”

“Mine’s Paula.”

“I know.”

“Really? I thought movie writers were practically anonymous.” Damn it, she said immediately to herself, I had to get that in, didn’t I? I never can resist a chance to brag.

“I didn’t know you were a writer. I asked Bill what your name was an hour ago – as soon as I saw you.”

“Why?” From any other woman it would have been a request for flattery, but from her it wasn’t. She simply wanted to know.

He took her at her word. “You look honest. I won’t deny you’ve got the trimmings.…”

“Did you say your name was Diogenes? Lieutenant (j.g.) Diogenes?” She was flattered after all, but a little irritated too.

“You asked me,” he said uncomfortably. “I thought I’d like to talk to an honest woman for a change. I haven’t really talked to a woman for over a year.”

He was sitting in an awkward and embarrassed attitude with his hands on his knees. His hands were brown and thin, ridged by taut tendons and veins that branched into small blue tributaries, like a contour map of a country she didn’t know.

“Does it feel so strange?”

“The whole country seems strange. It strikes you when you come back to civilian society after some sea duty. People seem to be thinking exclusively about themselves.”

She thought about the number of bonds she had bought and the number of pints of blood she had given, and wished her record had been better. “Is it different at sea?” she said defensively.

“Maybe not so very different. We have our in-groups and our out-groups. There’s a good bit of anti-Semitism, especially among the officers, and of course the Negroes on board get a separate deal. But there’s something else besides, an over-all feeling for the ship that comes before everything else. Am I boring the living daylights out of you?”

“No. But I’ll bet you’re a sociologist in real life.”

“Not me. I studied history and law.”

“You’ve been to Washington then.”

“I was an underling in the State Department for a while. Does it stick out like a sore thumb?”

“Everybody that goes to Washington comes back so serious-minded.”

He answered a little peevishly: “You overestimate me. I always have been serious-minded. I suppose I’ve gotten worse since we came into the war.”

“Were you out long, this last time?”

“Long enough. Just over a year. Nothing to gripe about really. But it makes you feel kind of wooden.”

She had noticed that there was something wooden about his face. It was a lean brown mask, as if the pressures of war had forced it into a rigid mold and the Pacific sun had dried and baked it. Each bone and muscle was distinctly anatomized under the tight skin, but the sense of life was to be found only in his eyes.

They were hard and deep, dyed dark blue by the uniform he was wearing.

His eyes were watching the couples still caught and gyrating in the currents of the music. “It’s coming back to the States that really gets you down. When you’ve been out for a while you’d willingly barter your soul for a couple of weeks Stateside. You catch yourself secretly wishing that the engines will break down and you’ll have to come back for repairs. As a matter of fact that’s what happened.”

“You have two weeks?”

“Three weeks. Nineteen days left. But now that I’m here I don’t like it.”

That had the earmarks of a direct insult, and she could not keep the sharpness out of her voice. “What don’t you like?”

“Civilians, I guess. It wasn’t so long ago that I was one myself. But now they seem so damn frivolous. There’s method in their frivolity of course. They don’t forget to look out for number one.”

“I take it I strike you as frivolous?”

“Sure you’re frivolous. You said you wrote screenplays, didn’t you?”

“I try to write as good ones as I can.”

“Did you ever write one that wasn’t about a couple of nitwits fighting for a permanent possession of a pair of false breasts? Did you ever see one that wasn’t?”

“You haven’t seen many movies, have you?” She was trying hard to be superior, but she couldn’t suppress the anger in her voice. “You probably never heard of Grand Illusion , for example?”

“Never did,” he admitted cheerfully. “But I’ve seen enough movies – too many. We have one every night on the ship. Even in the Pacific you can’t get away from Hollywood. It covers the globe like a thin coat of paint.”

Her reason was beginning to recover and to reflect on the novelty of her position. Like nearly everyone below the rank of producer, she had become hypercritical of Hollywood. Griping on the job was the occupational disease in the writers’ building (in the producers’ building it was stomach ulcers). But it was a little late to tell him that he had taken the words out of her mouth.

“I suppose you’ve got to have your daily crack at Hollywood,” she said more coolly. “All intellectuals do, don’t they, like the Boy Scouts and their daily deed?”

“You don’t have to be an intellectual to get fed up with general lousiness.”

“Of which lousiness I seem to be an integral part?”

“Why reduce everything to the personal?”

“But it’s all I can see,” she chirped ironically. “General ideas are terribly bewildering to a frivolous addlepate like me.”

“That griped you, didn’t it?” He stood up unexpectedly and reached for her hand. “Let’s get out of here. It takes about an hour for boogie-woogie to explore its limitations.”

“You’re as opinionative as hell,” she said. But she rose obediently and followed him out of the room.

The concrete steps that led down from the studio to the shore were steep, and there were a hundred and fifty of them. Paula was silent as they descended, concentrating on her three-inch heels. When they were part way down she stumbled and took hold of his arm. She stumbled again before they reached the bottom, and his muscles tightened in her hand and became as hard as wood. It gave her a queer feeling, and a rather frightening one, which her fancy translated into an image of the body beneath the blue uniform, a body carved by exertion, pared lean by the wind, polished by the sun, with blankness like a fig leaf guarding her mind from the bronze loins.

She was glad when the sea spread out before them, and she let her mind spread with it under the pure stars. They walked along the dark path toward her hotel. The tide was high and bringing in a heavy surf that roared lonesomely in the deep coves and struck upon the rocks with white polar paws of foam. It was wild and terrifying to her, like the mating of horses. She shivered a little, though her coat was warm, as if the sea might be able to reach her where she stood.

She couldn’t bear to be passively frightened. Deep in her heart she was an animist who believed that the sea was conscious of her and threatening her personally. She stepped over the low wall beside the path, ventured out on a slippery rock just above the reach of the spray, and stood there laughing at the ineffectual waves.

He came up behind her shouting: “You must be crazy! In those heels!”

She turned and laughed at him too. A gust of spray came up and drenched her legs, but she went on laughing.

He put both arms around her and dragged her away from the edge.

“Don’t count too much on those invisible wires. You’re not drunk, are you?”

“I’m just feeling good. I showed him I wasn’t afraid.”

“Him?”

“ ‘He,’ then, if you must be technical. I showed he!” She laughed in his face.

His embrace was rough and awkward, as if he was performing an unwilling duty, but after years in Hollywood she didn’t care for men who were smoothly expert in such matters. She held her face turned up to his to let him kiss her if he wished. When he disregarded the opportunity she felt like a hussy, and her exultation changed to anger.