The Deer Park (2 page)

T
O MOST OF THE BAR
-
FLIES
in Desert D’Or I must have been passing impressive. I had my First Lieutenant’s bars and my wings, I had combat decorations from that Asiatic war which has gone its intermittent way, I even looked the part. I had blond hair and blue eyes and I was six-feet one. I was good-looking and I knew it; I had studied the mirror long enough. Yet I never believed I was convincing. When I would put on my uniform, I would feel like an unemployed actor who tries to interest a casting director by dressing for the role.

Of course, everybody sees himself through his own eyes, and I can hardly know with any confidence how I looked to other people. In those days I was a young man who felt temporarily like an old man, and although I believed I knew a great many things, I was able to do very little I wanted to do. Given the poker money, however, and the Air Force uniform and me with our arms around each other, most people assumed I was able to take care of myself, and I was careful not to correct their impression. There is that much to be said for having the build of a light-heavyweight.

I saw only a few people regularly. It would have taken too much effort to find new friends. In the off-season, any celebrity who lived in Desert D’Or was surrounded by a court. It did not matter where you went to visit; dependably there would be the same people pouring the host’s drinks, laughing at his remarks, working I suppose as servants of his pleasure, so that his favorite games were played, his favorite stories were told, and the court was split into cliques which jockeyed for his favor. Nothing was so unusual as to find two celebrities who liked to see each other often.

At Dorothea O’Faye’s home which she called The Hangover—it was the place I went to most often, Dorothea having picked me up one night in a bar and taken me home with her friends—the court was made up of a garage owner and his wife, a real-estate operator and his wife, a publicity man for Supreme Pictures, an old show girl who had been a friend of Dorothea’s years ago, and a drunk named O’Faye who had been married to Dorothea, had been divorced, and now was kept by her to run odd errands. Dorothea was a former personality who had been an actress of sorts, a night-club singer of some reputation, and had temporarily retired at the age of forty-three. Years ago, a friend advised her to invest in Desert D’Or property, and it was said that now Dorothea was rich. How rich she was no one could guess, however, for she had the secrecy about money which gives itself away in being generous and stingy by turns.

Dorothea was handsome with a full body and exciting black hair, and she had been notorious as a show girl years ago, and famous again in her night-club days as a singer. Her boast was that she had been everywhere, had done everything, and knew everything there was to know. She had been a call girl, a gossip columnist (at separate times, be it said), a celebrity, a failure; she had been born in Chicago and discovered in New York, her father had been a drunk and died that way, her mother had disappeared with another man. Dorothea had done her father’s work when she was twelve; he was a sot of a janitor, and she collected
rent from tenants and put the garbage out. At sixteen she was kept by the heir to a steel fortune, and a couple of years later she had an affair with a European prince and gave birth to his illegitimate son; she had made money and lost money, she had been married three times, the last to a man of whom she said, “I can’t remember him as well as guys I’ve had for a one-night stand.” She had even had her great romance. He was an Air Force pilot who was killed flying the mail, and she would tell me that was why she took to me. “I never knew a guy like him,” she would sigh. When she was on the sentimental side of her drinking she would decide that her whole life would have been different if he had lived; sober, or very drunk, she thought the opposite. “If he hadn’t died,” she would say, “we’d have killed it. The great thing is when something good hasn’t time to be spoiled.”

Known for her rough wit and the force of her style, Dorothea was considered a catch by that revolving troupe of oilmen, men who made their money in the garment industries, and men … let me not pursue the series. What characterized most of them was that their business allowed them to travel and they worked for the reputation of having women who opened the eyes of other men. I admired the convenience of their itinerary which was triangulated by California, Florida, and the East. Generally, these men were seen with young women—models kept by millionaires, or child divorcées so fortunate as to be mixed in scandal—but Dorothea offered, in contrast to these girls, a quick mind and a tough tongue which was respected greatly. My theory is that her men took her out like a business partner, and in all the sweat of a night club, they found Dorothea easy, they could talk to her. By the parade of her admirers I was always told, “She’s a great kid. She’s one of the best.” To which Dorothea might answer when asked her opinion, “He’ll pass. He’s a bastard, but no phony.” She had categories. There were good guys, bastards, and phonies, and the worst was a phony. A good guy, I learned by example, was a guy who made no excuses about looking out only for himself. A bastard
was a man who had the same philosophy but took extra pleasure in hurting people. A phony was somebody who claimed to be concerned with anything but himself. For a while, she had trouble with me, she hardly knew where to set me in the cosmos of good guys, bastards, and phonies. I was out for a good time as I always told her, and she approved of that, but I also made the mistake of telling her I wanted to write, and writers were phonies in her book.

All the same, she had her points. Her loyalty was strong. To be her friend was to be her friend, and if she was rough in business, as I often heard, it was her code never to leave you in needless trouble. She was a generous woman. There were always people for dinner, there was always whisky, and though she had two living rooms in her house puffed with heavy velvet furniture, the court stayed in the paneled den with its big home bar, its television set, and its night-club posters of old engagements Dorothea had played. Now, at Dorothea’s, all that was played were the games she liked, the gossip was told which interested her, and we spent evening after evening in doing almost exactly what we had done the night before. Her favorite was the game of Ghost, and I had to admire the heat with which she worked to win. Dorothea had had no education, and to be able to spell down everybody in the house left her in a fine mood.

“What are you thinking, cupcake?” she would say afterward, chucking the old chorus girl under the chin.

“You’re tremendous,” her friend would say adoringly.

“Oh, Dorothea’s great,” the garage owner would rumble.

“Angel, make me a small Martin,” Dorothea would say, and hand her glass to someone.

Dorothea had lasted. If her night-club days were finished, if her big affairs were part of the past, she was still in fine shape. She had her house, she had her court, she had money in the bank; men still sent airplanes for her. Yet when Dorothea was very drunk, she was violent too. She always had liquor inside
her, she was always restless, she used up people and time—you could go to her place for breakfast and eat scrambled eggs at four in the afternoon after hours of drinking—but unless she was very drunk, Dorothea was agreeable. Very drunk, she was unmanageable; she abused people, she threw things. Once she was even slapped around by a man and woman in a roadside brawl. A really drunken evening had to end with Dorothea screaming, “Get out, get out you son of a bitch before I kill you.” She could say it to anybody in the court, it did not matter who; she was most fond of saying it to one of her rich men friends. She hated to be alone, however, and such tantrums were rare. One could spend whole days with her, and all of the night, and at six in the morning when Dorothea was ready for bed, she was still coaxing us in her rough deep voice to stay a little longer. So automatic became the habit, that on those week ends and odd nights when Dorothea was away on one of her dates, the court still gathered at The Hangover, still drank in her pine-paneled den. Nobody knew how to stay away. Hours before going there, I could sense the worry that there was no other way to spend the evening.

About a month after I met her, Dorothea settled on one rich man. His name was Martin Pelley, and he had a pear-shaped head, a dark jowl, and sad eyes. He had made a lot of money in oil wells, but there was something apologetic about him, as if he were explaining, “I learned how to make money, but I never learned nothing else.” Recently, his second marriage had been finished off in Desert D’Or. I remember his wife who was a platinum blonde with a neck corded by tension. They had had fights. You could not go by Pelley’s suite at the Yacht Club without hearing the terrific abuse she yelled at him. They were now getting a quick Mexican divorce, and Martin Pelley had found his way to The Hangover. He adored Dorothea. His big body would sit heavily in an armchair through the evening, he would chuckle at the quips of the court, he would have an anxious scowl on his forehead as though looking
for some new way to win our approval. When Ghost was played, he was the first to go out. “I’m a bonehead for this sort of stuff,” he would say easily. “I’m not quick like Dorothea.”

All the same, he was a spender. His preference was to invite everybody out from The Hangover for steak and drinks at a desert roadhouse, and when he was drunk he was very genial. Any young woman he called “Daughter,” and he would tell us over and over again, “I had a little girl, you see, by my first marriage. The cunningest little bugger. She died, age of six.”

“You got to get rid of it,” Dorothea would say.

“Ah, I just think about her once in a while.”

For two weeks he was at Dorothea’s every night. The first time he found her out for the evening, he paced the floor and did not hear a word we said. The court learned from Dorothea about the fight which followed.

“You son of a bitch,” Dorothea said, “nobody owns me.”

“What are you, a tramp?” he asked her. “I thought you had character.” He gripped her shoulder. “You always said you wanted to get married again and have kids.” This was one of Dorothea’s favorite themes.

She twisted herself loose. “Get your hooks off me. What do you think, you’re throwing some pipes around?”

“I want to marry you.”

“Go blow.”

The quarrel ended with Pelley taking Dorothea to bed. Nothing happened.

He could not get it out of his mind. He apologized to Dorothea again and again. The apology was painted on his face. I overheard them one night in a corner, and I think he wanted me to overhear for he did not speak softly. “I used to be great, you see,” he told her. “When I was a kid, I’d do it so much I got a strain, I had to see a doctor, that’s the truth. I know there’s no way you can believe me, but I was great.”

Dorothea cuddled to him, her bold eyes full of sympathy. “For Christ’s sakes, Marty, I don’t hold it against you.”

“I got a strain. You don’t believe me?”

“Sure, I believe you.”

“Dorothea, you’re a champ.” He held her wrists in his large paws. “I tell you, I was great. I’ll be great again.”

“There’s no rush. Listen, there was a guy I knew. He was the greatest in the hay, and in the beginning he was the same as you.”

Dorothea grew tender toward him. Their romance began on the sure ground of his incapacity. Pelley would have been absorbed into the court at The Hangover if it weren’t for the many times he insisted on standing treat. Dorothea’s evenings with other men came to an end. Now her rich friends were asked to visit the house, and hours were spent at Ghost with Pelley working sullenly against the new visitor. Finally, everybody accepted him as Dorothea’s boy friend. There even came the night when the fat ex-chorus girl telephoned me and announced excitedly, “Marty made it. He and Dorothea finally made it. They want to celebrate.” When I didn’t answer immediately, she added, “Don’t you even want to know how it was?”

“What do I care?” I said.

“Dorothea didn’t tell me, but she kind of hinted it was just a beginning.”

We celebrated that night. Pelley acted like a new father passing out cigars. He not only bought champagne for everybody, but he nursed Dorothea through the meal as if she had just left the hospital. “You’re a bunch of champs,” he said to the people at the table, “you’re all champs, I never knew such champs,” including by this the fat show girl, the garage owner, the realtor, the wives, the press agent, myself, all the friends of Dorothea, even the drunk O’Faye who once had been her husband.

T
HAT WAS A STORY
. When I thought of it, I would be sorry for O’Faye. A natty little sport with a smile and a hair-line mustache, I could never believe that years ago there were nights when Dorothea wept because she had lost him.

She was seventeen when they met, and he was a vaudeville hoofer on the crest of a vogue. Dorothea lived with him, she was crazy about him as she swore, worked out song-and-dance routines to support the act they did together, and suffered his cheating, for he liked a different girl every night. They got nowhere together; she was always hinting that she wanted to settle down, to have children, and he would smile and say she was too young and ask her to look at the silk shirt he had bought that day. She thought how to save money and he thought how to spend it. When she found herself pregnant, he gave her two hundred dollars in cash, left the address of a doctor friend, and moved his belongings out.

Dorothea sang in night clubs, she had a pattering little song for trade-mark: “I’m Sighin’ For My Scion Who’s a Yale Man,” and her audiences loved it. Her name was well known, she was nineteen and beautiful, and she was secretly pregnant again. That was the passing affair with the passing European prince and it delighted a pure vein in her. She was the janitor’s daughter and she now carried royal blood. She could not bring herself to extinguish such a creation. Three months went by, four months went by, it was much too late. O’Faye saved her. His vogue running down, his drinking begun, he dropped in to see her one day, and sympathized with her predicament. O’Faye
was a rolling stone, he would never marry a girl who carried his own child, but he considered it right to help a friend out of her trouble. They were quickly married, and as quickly divorced, and her child had a name. Marion O’Faye she called him, and starred in a musical comedy that year. Later, years later, after Dorothea had made money and lost it and made it again, when she was retired in Desert D’Or, her gossip column sold and her court formed, O’Faye showed up again. He was a wreck, no doubt of that. His hands shook, his voice had lost its size, his working days were over. Dorothea was pleased to take him in; she hated to owe a debt. He had lived at The Hangover ever since, and she gave him a modest allowance. Between Marion Faye the son (as a boy he had dropped the “O”) and the nominal father, there was nothing at all. They looked at each other as curiosities. For that matter, Marion looked at his mother in the same way.