Fools die

Chapter 39

One of the things I never admitted to Janelle was that my jealousy was not merely romantic, but pragmatic. I searched the literature of romantic novels, but in no novel could I find the admission that one of the reasons a married man wants his mistress to be faithful is that he fears catching the clap or worse and then transmitting it to his wife. I guess one of the reasons this couldn’t be admitted to the mistress at least is that the married man usually lied and said he was no longer sleeping with his wife. And since he was already lying to his wife and since if he did infect her, if he was human at all, he’d have to tell both. He was caught in the double horn of guilt.

So one night I told Janelle about that and she looked at me grimly and said, “How about if you caught it from your wife and gave it to me? Or don’t you think that’s possible?”

We were playing our usual game of fighting but not really fighting, really a duel of wits in which humor and truth were allowed and even some cruelty but no brutality.

“Sure,” I said, “But the odds are less. My wife is a pretty strict Catholic. She’s virtuous.” I held up my hand to stop Janelle’s protest. “And she’s older and not as beautiful as you are and has less opportunity.”

Janelle relaxed a bit. Any compliment to her beauty could soften her up.

Then I said, grinning a little, “But you’re right. If my wife gave it to me and I gave it to you, I wouldn’t feel guilty. That would be OK. That would be a kind of justice since you and I are both criminals together.”

Janelle couldn’t resist any longer. She was almost jumping up and down. “I can’t believe you said something like that. I just can’t believe it. I may be a criminal,” she said, “but you’re just a coward.”

Another night in the early-morning hours, when as usual we couldn’t sleep because we were so excited by each other after we had made love a couple of times and drunk a bottle of wine, she was finally so persistent that I told her about when I was a kid in the asylum.

– -

As a child I used books as magic. In the dormitory late at night, separate and alone, a greater loneliness than I have ever felt since, I could spirit myself away and escape by reading and then weave my own fantasies. The books I loved best at that early age of ten, eleven or twelve were the romantic legends of Roland, Charlemagne, the American West, but especially of King Arthur and his Round Table and his brave knights Lancelot and Galahad. But most of all, I loved Merlin because I thought myself like him. And then I would weave my fantasies, my brother, Artie, was King Arthur and that was right too, and that was because Artie had all the nobility and fairness of King Arthur, the honesty and true purpose, the forgiving lovingness which I did not have. As a child I fantasized myself as cunning and far-seeing and was firmly convinced that I would rule my own life by some sort of magic. And so I came to love King Arthur’s magician, Merlin, who had lived through the past, could foresee the future, who was immortal and all-wise.

It was then I developed the trick of actually transferring myself from the present into the future. I used it all my life. As a child in the asylum I would make myself into a young man with clever bookish friends. I could make myself live in a luxurious apartment and on the sofa of that apartment make love to a passionate, beautiful woman.

During the war on tedious guard or patrol duty I would project myself into the future when I would be on leave to Paris, eating great food and bedding down with luscious whores. Under shellfire I could magically disappear and find myself resting in the woods by a gentle brook, reading a favorite book.

It worked, it really worked. I magically disappeared. And I would remember in later actual time, when I was really doing those great things, I remembered these terrible times and it would seem as if I had escaped them altogether, that I had never suffered. That they were only dreams.

I remember my shock and astonishment when Merlin tells King Arthur to rule without his help because he, Merlin, will be imprisoned in a cave by a young enchantress to whom he has taught all his secrets. Like King Arthur, I asked why. Why would Merlin teach a young girl all his magic simply so he could become her prisoner and why was he so cheerful about sleeping in a cave for a thousand years, knowing the tragic ending of his king? I couldn’t understand it. And yet, as I grew older, I felt that I too might do the same thing. Every great hero, I had learned, must have a weakness, and that would be mine.

I had read many different versions of the King Arthur legend, and in one I had seen a picture of Merlin as a man with a long gray beard wearing a conical dunce like cap spangled with stars and signs of the zodiac. In the shop class of the asylum school I made myself such a hat and wore it around the grounds. I loved that hat. Until one day one of the boys stole it and I never saw it again and I never made another one. I had used that hat to spin magic spells around myself, of the hero that I would become; the adventures I would have, the good deeds I would perform and the happiness I would find. But the hat really wasn’t necessary. The fantasies wove themselves anyway. My life in that asylum seems a dream. I never was there. I was really Merlin as a child of ten. I was a magician, and nothing could ever harm

– -

Janelle was looking at me with a little smile. “You really think you’re Merlin, don’t you?” she said.

“A little bit,” I said.

She smiled again and didn’t say anything. We drank a little wine, and then she said suddenly, “You know, sometimes I’m a little kinky and I'm afraid, really, to be that way with you. Do you know what’s a lot of fun? One of us ties the other up and then makes love to whoever is tied up. How about it? Let me tie you up and then I’ll make love to you and you’ll be helpless. It’s really a great kick.”

I was surprised because we had tried to be kinky before and failed. One thing I knew: Nobody would ever tie me up. So I told her, “OK, I’ll tie you up, but you’re not tying me up.’,

“That’s not fair,” Janelle said. “That’s not fair play.”

“I don’t give a shit,” I said. “Nobody’s tying me up. How do I know when you have me tied up you won’t light matches under my feet or stick a pin in my eye? You’ll be sorry afterward, but that won’t help me.”

“No, you dope. It would be a symbolic bond. I’ll just get a scarf and tie you up. You can break loose anytime you want. It can be like a thread. You’re a writer, you know what ‘symbolic’ means.”

“No,” I said.

She leaned back on the bed, smiling at me very coolly, “And you think you’re Merlin,” she said. “You thought I’d be sympathetic about poor you in the orphanage imagining yourself as Merlin. You’re the toughest son of a bitch I ever met and I just proved it to you. You’d never let any woman put you under a spell or put you in a cave or tie a scarf around your arms. You’re no Merlin, Merlyn.”

I really hadn’t seen that coming, but I had an answer for her, an answer I couldn’t give. That a less skillful enchantress had been before her. I was married, wasn’t I?

– -

The next day I had a meeting with Doran and he told me that negotiations for the new script would take awhile. The new director, Simon Bellfort, was fighting for a bigger percentage. Doran said tentatively, “Would you consider giving up a couple of your points to him?”

“I don’t even want to work on the picture,” I told Doran. ‘That guy Simon is a hack, his buddy Richetti is a fucking born thief. At least Kellino is a great actor to excuse his being an asshole. And that fucking prick Wagon is the prize creep of them all. Just get me off the picture.”

Doran said smoothly, “Your percentage of the picture depends on your getting screenplay credit. That’s in the contract. If you let those guys go on without you, they’ll work it so you won’t get the credit. You’ll have to go to arbitration before the Writers Guild. The studio proposes the credits, and if they don’t give you partial credit, you gotta fight it.”

“Let them try,” I said. “They can’t change it that much.”

Doran said soothingly, “I have an idea. Eddie Lancer is a good friend of yours. I’ll ask to have him assigned to work with you on the script. He’s a savvy guy and he can run interference for you against all those other characters. OK? Trust me this once.”

“OK,” I said. I was tired of the whole business.

Before he left, Doran said, “Why are you pissed off at those guys?”

“Because not one of them gave a shit about Malomar,” I said. “They’re glad he’s dead.” But it wasn’t really true. I hated them because they tried to tell me what to write.

– -

I got back to New York in time to see the Academy Awards presented on television. Valerie and I always watched them every year. And this year I was watching particularly because Janelle had a short, a half hour film, she had made with her friends that had been nominated.

My wife brought out coffee and cookies, and we settled down to watching. She smiled at me and said, “Do you think someday you’ll be there picking up an Oscar?”

“No,” I said. “My picture will be lousy.”

As usual, in the Oscar presentations they got all the small stuff out of the way first, and sure enough, Janelle’s film won the prize as the Best Short Subject and there was her face on the screen. Her face was rosy and pink with happiness and she was sensible enough to make it short and she was guilty enough to make it gracious. She just simply said, “I want to thank the women who made this picture with me, especially Alice De Santis.”

And it brought me back to the day when I knew that Alice loved Janelle more than I ever could.

– -

Janelle had rented a beach house in Malibu for a month, and on weekends I would leave my hotel and spend my Saturday and Sunday with her at the house. Friday night we walked on the beach, and then we sat on the porch, the tiny porch under the Malibu moon and watched the tiny birds, Janelle told me they were sandpipers. They scampered out of the reach of the water whenever the waves came up.

We made love in the bedroom overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The next day, Saturday, when we were having lunch instead of breakfast, Alice came out to the house. She had breakfast with us, and then she took a rectangular tiny piece of film out of her purse and gave it to Janelle. The piece of film was no more than an inch wide and two inches long.

Janelle asked, “What’s this?”

“It’s the director’s credit on the film,” Alice said. “I cut it

“Why did you do that?” Janelle said.

“Because I thought it would make you happy,” Alice said.

I was watching both of them. I had seen the film. It had been a lovely little piece of work. Janelle and Alice had made it with three other women as a feminist venture. Janelle had screen credit as star. Alice had a credit as director, and the other two~ women had credits appropriate to the work they had done on the film.

“We need a director’s credit. We just can’t have a picture without a director’s credit,” Janelle said.

Just for the hell of it I put my two cents in. “I thought Alice directed the film,” I said.

Janelle looked at me angrily. “She was in charge of directing,” she said. “But I made a lot of the director suggestions and I felt I should get some credit for that.”

“Jesus,” I said. “You’re the star of the film. Alice has to get some credit for the work she did.”

“Of course she does,” Janelle said indignantly. “I told her that. I didn’t tell her to cut out her credit on the negative. She just did it.”

I turned to Alice and said, “How do you really feel about it?”

Alice seemed very composed. “Janelle did a lot of work on the directing,” she said. “And I really don’t care for the credit. Janelle can have it. I really don’t care.”

I could see that Janelle was very angry. She hated being put in such a false position, but I sensed that she wasn’t going to let Alice have full credit for directing the film.

“Damn you,” Janelle said to me. “Don’t look at me like that. I got the money to have this film made and I got all the people together and we all helped write the story and it couldn’t have been made without me.”

“All right,” I said. “Then take credit as the producer. Why is the director’s credit so important?”

Then Alice spoke up. “We’re going to be showing this film in competition for the Academy and Filmex, and on films like this, people feel the only thing that’s important is the directorship. The director gets most of the credit for the picture. I think Janelle’s right. ”She turned to Janelle. “How do you want the director’s credit to read?”

Janelle said, “Have both of us being given credit and you put your name first. Is that OK?”

Alice said, “Sure, anything you want.”

After having lunch with us, Alice said she had to leave even though Janelle begged her to stay. I watched them kiss each other good-bye and then I walked Alice out to her car.

Before she drove away, I asked her, “Do you really not mind?”

Her face perfectly composed, beautiful in its serenity, she said, “No, I really don’t mind. Janelle was hysterical after the first showing when everybody came up to me to congratulate me. She’s just that way and making her happy is more important to me than getting all that bullshit. You understand that, don’t you?”

I smiled at her and kissed her cheek good-bye. “No,” I said. “I don’t understand stuff like that.” I went back into the house and Janelle was nowhere in sight. I figured she must have gone for a walk down the beach and she didn’t want me with her, and sure enough, an hour later I spotted her coming up the sand walking by the water. And when she came into the house, she went up to the bedroom, and when I found her up there, I saw that she was in bed with the covers over her and she was crying.

I sat down on the bed and didn’t say anything. She reached out to hold my hand. She was still crying.

“You think I’m such a bitch, don’t you?” she said.

“No,” I said.

“And you think Alice is so marvelous, don’t you?”

“I like her,” I said. I knew I had to be very careful. She was afraid that I would think Alice was a better person than she was.

“Did you tell her to cut out that piece of negative?” I said.

“No,” Janelle said. “She just did that on her own.”

“OK,” I said. “Then just accept it for what it is and don’t worry about who behaved better and who seems like a better person. She wanted to do that for you. Just accept it. You know you want it.”

At this she started to cry again. In fact, she was hysterical, so I made her some soup and fed her one of her blue ten-milligram Valiums and she slept from that afternoon till Sunday morning.

That afternoon I read; then I watched the beach and the water until dawn broke.

Janelle finally woke up. It was about ten o’clock, a beautiful day in Malibu. I knew immediately that she wasn’t comfortable with me, that she didn’t want me around for the rest of the day. That she wanted to call Alice and have Alice come out and spend the rest of the day. So I told her I had gotten a call and had to go to the studio and couldn’t spend the rest of the day with her. She made the usual Southern belle protestations, but I could see the light in her eyes. She wanted to call Alice and show her love for her.

Janelle walked me out to the car. She was wearing one of those big floppy hats to protect her skin from the sun. It was really a floppy hat. Most women would have looked ugly init. But with her perfect face and complexion she was quite beautiful. She had on her specially tailored, secondhand, specially weathered jeans that fitted on the body like skin. And I remembered that one night I had said to her when she was naked in bed that she had a real great woman’s ass, that it takes generations to breed an ass like that I said it to make her angry because she was a feminist, but to my surprise she was delighted. And I remembered that she was partly a snob. That she was proud of the aristocratic lineage of her Southern family.

She kissed me good-bye and her face was all rosy and pink. She wasn’t a bit desolated that I was leaving. I knew that she and Alice would have a happy day together and that I would have a miserable day in town at my hotel. But I figured, what the hell? Alice deserved it and I really didn’t. Janelle had once said that she, Janelle, was a practical solution to my emotional needs but I was not a practical solution to hers.

– -

The television kept flickering. There was a special tribute in memory of Malomar. Valerie said something to me about it. Was he a nice person? and I answered yes. We finished watching the awards, and then she said to me, “Did you know any of the people that were there?”

“Some of them,” I said.

“Which ones?” Valerie asked me.

I mentioned Eddie Lancer who had won an Oscar for his contribution to a film script, but I didn’t mention Janelle. I wondered for just a moment if Valerie had set a trap for me to see if I would mention Janelle and then I said I knew the blond girl who won a prize at the beginning of the program.

Valerie looked at me and then turned away.