Fletch’s Moxie

23

The inside, the bar area of Durty Harry’s, was virtually empty, but there was a huge crowd sitting and standing on the patio, all facing into the same corner.

Fletch got a beer from the bar and went out to the patio.

Quite a diverse collection of people had gathered. There were the tourists in the best light colored clothing one can really only buy in a big city but never really wear in one. Their faces and arms and legs were red and stiff with sunburn. There were the genuine denizens of Key West, the Conchs, who prefer to keep themselves as pale as Scandanavians in deep Scandanavian winters. They think of the sun as enemy, and run through it from building to car and car to house. There were some art-folk of all ages, their faces and bodies looking as if they’d lived plenty, their bright, quick eyes showing they wanted to live plenty more. There were the cocaine cowboys in their stringy leather and denim; the girls in their full skirts and full blouses and dead hair. And there were the drunks, with the weird blue in their skin which results from mixing too much constant alcohol with too much constant sun.

And sitting in the corner, the object of everyone’s attention, sat and spoke Frederick Mooney. With his gray hair, stubble of beard, broad face and big eyes, he easily could have been the reincarnation of the person whom the people in Key West would most like to see reincarnated—Ernest Hemingway. Mooney was Papa, all right, and these were his children gathered around him.

Sipping his beer, Fletch leaned against the door jamb and listened.

“… not glorious, not glamorous at all,” Mooney was saying. “Anyone who thinks so knows nothing. Anyone who thinks acting is simply a matter of popping the eyes in surprise…” Mooney popped his eyes in surprise at the crowd; there was a titter of admiration. “… of doing a double-take …” Mooney did a doubletake; the people laughed. … “quivering the chin …” Mooney’s chin quivered apparently uncontrollably; the people laughed harder. “… to weep…” Tears swelled in Mooney’s eyes and dribbled down his cheeks; the people applauded. “… don’t know what acting is.” The virtuoso wiped his instrument dry and thrust it forward at his audience. “An actor must learn his craft. And his skill is not just in learning to control every muscle of his face. Not just in learning how to set his shoulders expressively. Not just in learning that how he places his feet—even when they are out of sight, off-camera—invariably is more important than anything he does with his face, because how you place your feet, how you balance yourself, how you posture yourself says more about who you are, your attitudes than anything else.”

Sitting back in his chair in the attitude of a grandfather at the end of a full meal, Mooney reached for the bottle of cognac on the table, brought it to his lips, and took a good-sized swallow. “Thirsty work, this.” He anticipated a burp, worked it up from his innards, gave full sound to it. He blinked and smiled in happy relief at his audience, and they applauded.

“The craft, the skills,” Mooney said. “Barrymore once said, he’d rather have straight legs than know how to act. Of course, Barrymore had straight legs.” He paused to allow his audience to laugh, and they did. “An actor must learn how to move in his clothes. You know that a man moves differently in a toga than he does in blue jeans… than he does in medieval hose… than he does in black tie. But do you know an actor must learn these skills? Even if an actor does not smoke those dirty weeds…” Disdainfully, Frederick Mooney waved his hand at a woman smoking a cigarette, “… he must learn to handle a cigarette as if he were addicted. One handles a cigarette differently than one handles a cigar. Few actors are, in themselves, violent people. No acting schools I’ve heard of have pistol firing ranges. Yet when an actor handles a gun, he must have learned to do so… so naturally that the gun seems an extention of his hand—not something strange and foreign to him, but something so much a part of his being, so necessary to his mental attitudes that the audience knows he can use it and will use it. My training was such, having been dragged up through the music halls of England and the carnivals of America as well, I not only learned the rhythms of Shakespeare, but how to handle a sword and fence with it as if my life depended upon it. I learned to ride a horse both like a Guardsman and an American Indian. John Wayne once said that he didn’t know much about method acting, but he sure knew how to stop a horse on the mark. Of course, John Wayne could stop a horse on the mark.” Again his audience chuckled. Looking at his audience, tying them all together by his gaze, Mooney saw Fletch. In his eyes there was only the barest flicker of recognition. He continued his lecture. “It may not seem it to you—oh, you who watch an actor act and think you can judge him, but who haven’t the slightest knowledge or appreciation of the skills he employs to entertain you—but an actor must learn to ride a horse and a motorcycle, to use a rope, a lariat, to drink from a wine flagon, and open a bottle of champagne, to hold a violin, and to perform a right uppercut to the jaw—perfectly.”

Mooney stopped talking. He moved his eyes over the surface of the small table before him like a farmer looking for first signs of a crop. He seemed to find no growth, and his look was sad.

Finally, sensing his lecture was over, the people began asking him questions.

Mister Mooney, how did you enjoy playing opposite Elizabeth Taylor?

What’s the greatest role you’ve ever played?

Is it true you actually took heroin to play the jazz pianist in Keyboard?

Mooney folded his arms over the table and dropped his head. “Nothing’s true,” he muttered. “Nothing’s true. It’s all a lie.”

Fletch worked forward through the crowd. He stepped over some people sitting on the floor.

What’s your next picture going to be?

“Nothing’s true.”

You think you could ride a horse now, the state you’re in?

Fletch picked up Mooney’s flight bag. Mooney raised his head slowly and looked Fletch in the eye a long moment.

“Ah, Mister Paterson.”

“Came to carry your bag,” Fletch said.

“Kind of you.” Widely, he pointed at the bottle on the table and at the bag. “That bottle goes in that bag,” he said.

Fletch put the cork in the bottle and the bottle in the flight bag.

Did you really get malaria making Jungle Queen?

“Yes,” Mooney answered, standing up, “and I’ve still got it.”

You’ve just got the shakes, Mooney. The sweats.

Mooney stumbled a few times picking his way through the crowd but never actually fell. Fletch did not hold onto him. At that moment, Mooney was far from being the graceful, competent person he was just describing, with all the skills of an actor.

The people who were most kind in getting out of his way, letting him pass, were those most apt to reach out to him, touch him, touch his clothes as he passed.

“I want to say good night to the dog,” Mooney said to Fletch. “Dog?”

“The black dog.”

Again, when they were in the less congested bar area, Mooney said, “I really would like to say good night to that dog.”

“I don’t see a dog, Mister Mooney.”

“Big, black dog,” Mooney said. “Name of Emperor.”

Fletch looked around. “I don’t see any dog, Mister Mooney.”

“He’s on the other side of the bar,” Mooney said.

“Why don’t we go this way? It’s quicker.”

“All right.” He smiled wonderfully at Fletch. “I’ve given that lecture ten thousand times,” he said. “Know it as well as the ravings of Richard III. It’s all nonsense, of course.”

At the entrance to the alley, Mooney looked back into the bar. “A clean, well-lighted place,” he said.