Alison Lurie - The Nowhere City

Glory’s own car was parked round the corner. She refused Iz’s offer to drive, and kept up her silence on the way, interspersed with short, discouraging answers to his questions and comments about the show. She was not going to get excited, she resolved; she was going to be very polite and distant. However, as they sat in the line of automobiles waiting to enter the automatic car wash, she remembered an obligation and said coolly to Iz:

“Hey, I oughta thank you for talking to that crazy kid’s mother for me. It must’ve been a drag.”

“Ah, it wasn’t so hard. All she wanted was for somebody to listen to her for a while.”

Glory let her foot off the brake, moved up in line, and stopped again. “The last time I listened to her, she started right in screaming about money, and how she didn’t have much loot, but she was an American citizen. I figured she was trying to put the grab on me. I mean, how was I to know she wanted to keep the kid out of the studio? I thought they were playing it together.” Glory laughed shortly, then sighed. “You figure it’ll work out all right, that phony screen-test business?”

“I think so.” Consulting hastily together in a corner of the rehearsal hall (while Bobi’s mother waited in the lobby), Iz and Maxie Weiss, Glory’s agent, had agreed that an imitation screen test was to be arranged for Bobi Brentwood on the Superb lot. She was to be informed afterwards that though she looked pretty good, she needed some professional training. She would then be encouraged to enroll in an acting class which was also a kind of group therapy. “The trouble is,” Iz said, “the mother definitely needs help too; but what can you do—you have to start somewhere.”

“She’s not in such bad shape,” Glory said, moving up in line again. “She’s not near as flippy as my mother was.”

“That’s a great recommendation,” Iz began. He was going to go on, but luckily for his marriage an employee of the automatic car wash opened the door of the T-Bird and began to vacuum the interior around them. “You want to get out?” Glory shook her head. “Okay.” Iz shrugged. The man finished, wound up the windows, shut the door, and motioned for Glory to drive forward.

At the entrance, another employee hooked the car on to the rotary chain that would pull it through the building. Glory shifted into neutral and sat back. Up till now she had been unnoticed, but the man with the vacuum tank had recognized her and was alerting the others. The word passed round quickly, so that when her car was jerked forward into the tunnel it was met by eight or ten men of varying ages and races, all damp with soap and steam, and many stripped to the waist because of the heat. They stared avidly at Glory in her stage make-up and tight, low-cut dance costume. Undisconcerted, she sat coolly back in the far corner of the seat away from Iz, who self-consciously stroked his beard and frowned.

The car lurched forward again, tripping the switch of the first rinse. A torrent of water poured down over them, streaking the glass and blurring the faces and bodies outside. Within the car the light of a wet dusk softened Glory’s face. Iz reached over and stroked the line of her neck, and then down towards her breast. Glory stiffened. The bastard, he thinks he can just walk right back in without saying a goddamn word, she thought. She tried to give Iz a cold stare, but lisped with emotion as she said:

“Tho what’s that for?”

The automobile jerked forward again, out of the water, and two men, one on each side, began to wipe it with soapy rags. They swept the pink metal in wide, mockingly sensual gestures, grinning at Glory through the dripping windows, as if it were her own body. As before, she paid absolutely no attention, as unconscious of her audience as an actress on a movie screen; Iz frowned nervously.

“Because I wanted to,” he said. “You’re very attractive, even with all that greasy stuff on your face. I want to touch you. I want to sleep with you.”

It was a tactical error. The tremor went out of Glory’s voice. “I’m a very beautiful girl,” she said flatly. “Lots of men want to sleep with me.” She turned and gazed out of the window through whorls of soap.

“Aw, babydoll!” the man on that side called to her. “Don’t give me that dirty look.” There was a burst of appreciation around him, followed by more shouted remarks.

Another jerk. The car moved forward under the second rinse, which fell with a blinding crash, drowning the faces and voices outside.

“Listen, pie-face,” Iz began again, putting his hand on hers where it lay on the shiny upholstery. “It’s not only your physical attractiveness.” No response. Her hand lay limp under his. “I miss the whole relationship. I really like you. And you like me.”

No response. Her head was still twisted away; floods of water passed behind it. “Ah, shit,” Iz said. “I love you.”

Glory turned and looked at him. Under the sugar-candy hair her face was in ruins, the perfect mask streaked and wet with clotted powder, dripping mascara, and tears.

“Oh, go fuck yourthelf,” she said, and burst into sobs.

“So it’s all set up,” Maxie told Iz and Glory. They were standing together in the rehearsal hall after the lunch break, waiting for the show to get going again. “Judd says the kid can come over Tuesday P.M. about four-thirty: he’ll wait for her. Her mother can bring her over; she should just go to the main gate and ask for Judd Hubert, tell her that’s the cameraman, and he’ll fix it up. You want I should call the mother, I got her number.”

“No, I’ll do that. I told her I would.” Iz took out a notebook and pen.

“Aw, Maxie, that’s great,” Glory said. “That’s real quick work.”

“I shoulda had a glass milk,” Maxie complained. “I didn’t eat since breakfast; now my stomach is acting up again.”

“Send out for it.”

“Yeah.” Maxie sighed deeply, and looked round. At the piano a well-known popular composer and the dance director were quarreling over the second chorus of a song; the effeminate voice of the latter rising at intervals into a petulant shriek. Two beautiful girls were leaning against the stage nearby drinking soda out of cans and complaining in persistently whiny voices about their costumes; and a famous comic sat facing the wall, reading Billboard, sulking, and picking his nose. The floor of the rehearsal hall was gradually becoming covered with cigarette butts, coffee-cups, newspapers, candy wrappers, and chewed chewing-gum.

“Will somebody please tell me why I ever went into this business,” Maxie asked. “Why I didn’t just stay with my father. He had a fine movie house in Westchester, a good business. He wanted me to walk into his shoes, but I turned it down and broke his heart. How do you explain that?”

It was a rhetorical question, addressed to the ceiling, but Iz answered it.

“Possibly you wanted to defy him: it’s natural.” He shrugged. “Also you were probably attracted by the glamour of the entertainment world that, as a child, you saw second-hand. You wanted to meet stars, get to know them personally.”

“Yeah,” Maxie groaned. “Do I know them personally.”

Iz put his notebook and pen up. “Well, I’ve got a two o’clock kleptomania,” he said, “I’ve got to go. You’ll be home about seven?” Glory nodded. “Okay. I’ll call you.”

Alone with Maxie, Glory noticed his fat, sour face. “Aw, Maxie honey,” she said. “Don’t look so down. It’s going to swing all right. Everything’s okay now.” She gave him a warm, natural smile, one of those that had made her famous, full of sensual love for the whole world.

Years of intimacy with actors and actresses had made Maxie impervious to every sort of smile. “You think everything is okay, baby, you’ve got a limited view of my situation,” he complained. “If I live through this, I’ve also got to get Paul Demeray out of his recording contract; on top of that his wife is expecting again in the middle of her picture, Smit doesn’t want to work with Foss this year, and a million more.”