James Cain - Serenade

Chadwick went into a gag clinch with me when we came in, but when she saw Juana the grin froze on her face and her eyes looked like a snake’s. There were twenty or thirty people there, and she took us in and introduced us, but she didn’t take us around. She stood with us, near the door, rattled off the names in a hard voice. Then she sat Juana down, got her a drink, put some cigarettes beside her, and that was all. She didn’t go near her again, and neither did any of the other women. I sat down on the other side of the room, and in a minute they were all around me, particularly the women, with a line of Hollywood chatter, all of it loud and most of it off color. They haven’t got the Hollywood touch till they cuss like mule-skinners and peddle the latest dirty crack that was made on some lot. I fed it back like they gave it, but I was watching Juana. I thought of the soft way she talked, and how she never had said a dirty word in her life, and the dignified way she had stood there while she was being introduced, and the screechy way they had acted. And I felt something getting thick in my throat. Who were they to leave her there all alone with a drink and a pack of Camels?

George Schultz, that had done the orchestrations for “Bunyan,” went over to the piano and started to play. “Feel like singing, boy?”

“Just crazy to sing.”

“Little Traviata?”

“Sure.”

“O.K., give.”

He went into the introduction of Di Provenza il Mar . But this thing in my throat was choking me. I went over to Juana. “Come on. We’re going home.”

“You no sing?”

“No. Come on.”

“Hey, where are you? That’s your cue.”

“Yeah?”

“You’re supposed to come in.”

“I’m not coming in.”

“What the hell is this?”

We went out and put on our things and Chadwick followed us to the door. “Well, you don’t seem to enjoy my little party?”

“Not much.”

“It’s mutual. And the next time you come don’t show up with a cheap Mexican tart that—”

That’s the only time a woman ever took a cuff in the puss from John Howard Sharp. She screamed and three or four guys came out there, screen he-men, all hot to defend the little woman and show how tough they were. I stepped back to let them out. I wanted them out. I was praying they’d come out. They didn’t. I took Juana by the arm and started for the car. “There won’t be any next time, baby.”

“They no like me, Hoaney?”

“They didn’t act like it.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know why.”

“I do something wrong?”

“Not a thing. You were the sweetest one there.”

“I no understand.”

“You needn’t even bother to try to understand. But if they ever pull something like that on you, just let me know. That’s all I’ve got to say. Just let me know.”

We went to the Golondrina. It’s a Mexican restaurant on Olvera Street, a kind of Little Mexico they’ve got in Los Angeles, with mariachis , pottery, jumping beans, bum silverware, and all the rest of it. If she had dressed for me, I was bound she was going to have a good time if I had to stand the whole city on its ear to give it to her. She had it. She had never been there before, but as soon as they spotted her they all came around, and talked, and laughed, and she was back home. The couple in the floor show made up a special verse of their song for her, and she took the flower out of her hair and threw it out there, and they did a dance with it, and gave her some comedy. Their comedy is a lot of bum cucaracha gags, with a lot of belly-scratching and eye-rolling and finger-snapping, but it was funny to her, so it was funny to me. It was the first time I had ever had a friendly feeling toward Mexico.

Then I sang. A big movie shot is an event in that place, but a Mexican would never pull anything, or let you know he was looking at you. I had to call for the guitar myself, but then I got a big hand. I sang to her, and to the girl in the floor show, and whanged out a number they danced to, and then we all sang the Golondrina . It was two o’clock before we left there. When we went to bed I held her in my arms, and long after she was asleep this fury would come over me, about how they had treated her. I knew then I hated Hollywood, and only waited for the day I could clear out of there for good.

Under their contract, they had three months to call me for the next picture, and the way the time was counted, that meant any date up to April 1. It was just before Christmas that I got the wire from the New York agent that she had a tip the Met was interested in me, and would I please, please , let her go ahead on the deal? I began to rave like a crazy man. “Hoaney, why you talk so?”

“Read it! You’ve been going to school, there’s something for you to practice on. Read it, and see what you’ve been missing all this time.”

“What is ‘Met’?”

“Just the best opera company in the world, that’s all. The big one in New York, and they want me. They want me! — she’d never be sending that unless she knew something. A chance to get back to my trade at last, and here I am sewed up on a lousy contract to make two more pictures that I hate, that aren’t worth making, that—”

“Why you make these pictures?”

“I’m under contract, I tell you. I’ve got to.”

“But why?”

I tried to explain contract to her. It couldn’t be done. An Indian has never heard of a contract. They didn’t have them under Montezuma, and never bothered with them since. “The picture company, you make money for her, yes?”

“Plenty. I don’t owe her a dime.”

“Then it is right, you go?”

“Right? Did they ever give me anything I didn’t take off them with a blackjack? Would they even give me a cup of coffee if I didn’t pack them in at the box office? Would they even respect my trade? This isn’t about right. It’s about some ink on a dotted line.”

“Then why you stay? Why you no sing at these Met?”

That was all. If it wasn’t right, then to hell with it. A contract was just something that you probably couldn’t read anyway. I looked at her, where she was lying on the bed with nothing on but a rebozo around her middle, and knew I was looking across ten thousand years, but it popped in my mind that maybe they weren’t as dumb ten thousand years ago as I had always thought. Well, why not? I thought of Malinche, and how she put Cortés on top of the world, and how his star went out like a light when he thought he didn’t need her any more. “... That’s an idea.”

“I think you sing at these Met.”

“Not so loud.”

“Yes.”

“I think you’re a pretty bright girl.”

Next day I hopped over to the Taft Building and saw a lawyer. He begged me not to do anything foolish. “In the first place, if you run out on this contract, they can make your life so miserable that you hardly dare go out of doors without some rat shoving a summons at you with a dollar bill in it, and you’ll have to appear in court. Do you know what that means? Do you know what those blue summonses did to Jack Dempsey? They cost him a title, that’s all. They can sue you. They can sew you up with injunctions. They can just make you wish you never even heard of the law, or anything like it.”

“That’s what we got lawyers for, isn’t it?”

“That’s right. You can get a lawyer there in New York, and he can handle some of it. And he’ll charge you plenty. But you can’t hire as many lawyers as they’ve got.”

“Listen, can they win, that’s all I want to know. Can they bring me back? Can they keep me from working?”

“Maybe they can’t. Who knows? But—”

“That’s all I want to know. If I’ve got any kind of a fighting chance, I’m off.”