Alison Lurie - The Nowhere City

“I brought out the stuff Maxie got from the studio, so you can look it over,” Glory said, setting a cardboard carton on the table beside Katherine’s iced tea. “And here’s some stationery.” It was pink, embossed with silver initials. “I got a lot more back in the house when you need it; I practically never use the stuff. I mean if the phone’s working, why write a letter? ... Here’s some stamps; I guess you better get some more, though. ... And these are the photos.” She put down a stack of postcard-sized pictures of a stupid chorus girl grinning in costume and showing fantastic cleavage. Katherine looked from them to Glory in her beach robe and curlers—there was no resemblance whatsoever. “And all the rest of the crap is letters. Here.” Glory tossed a handful of mail back into the box and shoved it across the table to Katherine. “Have fun.”

“But what am I supposed to do?”

“Answer them.” Glory shrugged, and poured beer into a glass, tilting it to keep down the foam.

“But I don’t know what to say,” Katherine protested, feeling embarrassed and incompetent. “I never did exactly this kind of work before.”

“Just give them what they want. ... Didn’t Iz clue you in what this is all about?” Katherine shook her head. “Ah, for shit’s sake.” Glory set her beer down and wiped foam off her mouth. “Well, it’s like this, a kid socked me at a première last month, a fan, and so I socked her back and got myself some bad publicity, you probably read about it.” (Katherine shook her head again.) “So Maxie Weiss, that’s my agent, had the idea to put out a release, a story for the papers, see, I’m really crazy about fans, I just love ’em so much I answer all their creepy letters personally, instead of letting the studio do it; get the picture?”

“I think so,” Katherine said, taken aback by the insouciant directness of this statement, rather than by the assumption that she was going to be composing lies for Glory. Dealing in lies, or at least polite half-truths, was something one took for granted on any job. “You want me to write to them and say how much you appreciate their interest and that kind of thing.”

“Yeah. Just keep it short and sweet. For instance—” Glory reached into the box, took a letter at random, and tore it open. She squinted close at the awkward handwriting, done in pencil on cheap lined notebook paper, and read as rapidly as possible: “‘Dear Glory Green I saw Three Dumb Mice four times I enjoyed it very very much especially your scenes I am 15 years old besides you my favorite stars are Doris Day and Sandra Dee I am enclosing 25 cents could you please send me an autograph picture for my album yours truly Florrie Ridley.’ Here. Just write her thanks very much and send the photo.”

“But she said she wants it autographed.”

“So autograph it. She’s not going to know the difference. ... Lessee. Here’s a longer one. ‘My dearest Miss Green since I first saw your extremely lovely face and form in Restless I have been Restless about you I have 23 pix of you already My favorite one is in the bikini with the octopus that was in Screen Lives I just want to let you know that You are my new Secret Movie Love Dream and I am sleeping with this photo every night next to my pillow not under it as I do not want to tear or crush your very lovely form please send all your most recent pix I enclose one dollar to cover mailing costs your not-so-secret admirer Earl G. Jorgensen.’ How d’you like that!” Glory giggled and held out the letter to Katherine, who took it by the corner as if the paper were smeared with invisible slime.

“Boy,” Mona said. “What a creep.”

“You don’t want me to answer this one.”

“Naw, I guess you better just mail him a couple of photos.”

“You send that nut a picture, you know what he’ll do with it,” Mona remarked.

“So what? He’s paid for it.” Glory felt her curlers again, unconcerned. “I’ve got plenty a lot worse than that. ... The poor jerk, after all. He probably can’t get his kicks any other way.”

“Yeah, all right. But all the same it’s kind of disgusting to think of that creep sitting in his room somewhere playing with your photo and pulling himself off, ’cause he can’t find himself a girl.”

“Aw, how do you know? Maybe he’s even married. There’s a lot of people can’t feel physical about what they’ve got around at home.” Glory shrugged. Katherine, still holding the letter, looked from one to the other. She had never heard women speak so bluntly, and wondered if they were doing it on purpose to embarrass her, though they seemed not to be paying her the least attention.

“Oh hey, that reminds me. I knew I had something to tell you!” Mona exclaimed. “You know that kid Lucille that was in the Johnny Espy Show with me, she was going to the doctor for these awful cramps she had every month? Well, she got to talking to him about her private life and she finally let on her and her husband just weren’t getting any bang out of doing it any more. Well, so this doc told her it wasn’t psychological like she was scared of; the trouble was she didn’t have any muscle tone down there at all, since she had her baby.”

“Yeah?” Glory considered. “It could be. That was how Brandy said it was with her after she had Joe Junior. They sewed her up wrong or something and her clutch was all flabby for months, she couldn’t feel a thing. She said she coulda driven Joe’s motor-bike through there without getting a charge. You know she went on one of those dumb health plans.”

“Lucille’s really sold on this doctor,” Mona went on, sliding down the diving-board towards them. “He taught her these crazy exercises you do in the bathtub, to strengthen your muscles. She said it took her a couple months to really get into condition, but now her and her guy are having a ball. So now she’s trying to turn everyone on; she wants me to go to her doc and learn the routine. What d’you think? I mean, it’s scientific. You could come too.”

“No, thanks,” Glory said, laughing. “Not me. There’s only one kind of exercise I ever want to do with that part of me.”

Nearly positive now that Glory, at least, was trying to shock her, Katherine was equally determined not to react. So she laughed too, as well as she could, and said: “I agree. I certainly wouldn’t go. ... Well, after all,” she went on as they looked at her expectantly. “What kind of doctor would it be that would want to be doing that sort of work all day long, instead of taking care of people who are really sick?”

“You mean he might be some kind of weirdo,” Mona said. “Sort of a mad scientist.”

“No.” Katherine recognized a stereotype which, in her experience, had no basis in reality. “Just rather unprincipled.”

“She means he might jump you when he had you on the table, or something kinky,” Glory interpreted.

“Aw, they can’t do that,” said Mona.” They get thrown out of the union if they try to get funny with a patient.”

“Yeah?” Glory said. “What about that guy over on Crenshaw that was making out with all the girls in the Blue Dog? ... Hey.” She lifted her head to listen.

“Your phone’s ringing.”

“Goddamn it.”

Glory got out of her chair and slouched across the patio. Inside the house, they could hear her answer the phone in a completely different voice, full of sex and sleepy enthusiasm: “Hel-lo ... Oh hi, baby ... Yeah, swinging ... fading out as she crossed the room and flung herself on a sofa. “She’s talking to someone she’s intimate with; she’s having an affair,” Katherine thought. Or was she only superbly pretending? “Glory and I have the opposite problem professionally,” Iz had explained the other day. “See, the actor has to express what he in fact doesn’t feel. That’s their job, and sometimes there’s a carry-over. Well, that’s her problem. On the other hand, a psychiatrist often has not to express what he does genuinely feel. Which is even harder on him.” (Had he meant her to take that personally? Was it a kind of excuse he was offering?)