The Deer Park (27 page)

“I was just thinking you were sick of me,” Elena would answer, uncertain tears in her eyes.

The hook had to be seated over and over; she had resources
for such a struggle; he would be amazed at times how she read his mind, the two of them sitting over a drink, chatting about nothing while his thoughts were working on the problem of being free. He might even be telling her how pretty she looked that evening, and the child’s eyes would stare back at him, the open green eyes, and she would say, “Charley, you want out, don’t you?”

“What gives you these ideas?” he would say, pretending to be angry, fighting the single word “Yes!” which twitched at his nerves, so much did he want to say it. But that would be fatal, for however it ended the damage would be too great. Either she would leave him and he would be unable to work just when he had found his rhythm; or what was worse, the calculating numbness he had been at such ends to cultivate in himself would disappear and he would be open to her pain, there would seem nothing more terrible in all the world than that she should suffer, and so the fish would be free, it would be no longer a fish, it would be Elena, and he would have to start all over again. So he must be patient, he must be cold, and all the while he must act, manufacturing warmth he did not feel.

He had come to the conclusion that to be able to end this affair, he must understand it first. Why should a second-rate man spend so much time on a fifth-rate woman? It was not logical. Second-rate men sought out second-rate women; the summits of society were inhabited by such people, and why had he deserted his caste? But he knew the answer or thought he did; there was always Faye’s mocking presence, and the words he had said a week ago, “You’re scared, Charley, you’re really scared.” Was it true? In the last two years he had performed badly with many women. Those were the laws of sex; borrow technique in place of desire, and sex like life would demand the debt be paid just when one was getting too old to afford such a bill. If he had clung to the Rumanian, he was chained to Elena. Could the fishing contest be another joke he played
on himself, and would he never let her go, not so long as his delicate manhood depended on her? He had come to resent the attraction of their love-making. The confusion these days was that often he enjoyed her as much as ever, and in his sleep, he would sometimes be aware that he was holding her and whispering love-words to her ear.

In the past his pleasure had been created by the situation; a rendezvous with a woman in a hotel room had more charm than to take her to his home. Now, his life seemed stripped of interest. The inevitable progress of a love affair, Eitel thought. One began with the notion that life had found its flavor, and ended with the familiar distaste of no adventure and no novelty. It was one of the paradoxes he had cherished. The unspoken purpose of freedom was to find love, yet when love was found one could only desire freedom again. So it was. He had always seen it as a search. One went on, one passed from affair to affair, some good, some not, and each provided in its own way a promise of what could finally be found. How sad to finish the journey and discover that one was unchanged, that indeed one was worse; still another illusion was lost. He had merely succeeded in spoiling the memory of his old affairs. Elena stimulated his perception of what it meant for a woman to desire a man, and with his vulnerability to being found unattractive, he wondered how he could make love now to someone else. It was true; he was frightened; and he brooded for such comforts as the blessing of living alone. He had come to desire an affair with a woman for whom he cared nothing, an affair simply exciting, exciting as the pages of a pornographic text where one could read in safety and not grudge every emotion the woman felt for another man. It was the only sort of affair for which he was suited, he told himself, and instead he was locked in Elena’s love. He could not even manage to have some trivial affair, for he had neither time enough nor money and Elena could never be deceived three times a week. It was true, Eitel would think, marriage and infidelity were wed, and one could
not exist without the other. Many nights he sat in the living room with Elena and felt if he did not quit her for an hour, he would leave her forever.

The visits of Marion Faye made these feelings more intense. Eitel tried to say to Marion, “But she loves me. Don’t you understand why I feel responsible?”

“She doesn’t love you,” Faye said. “She wouldn’t know what to do if she didn’t think she was in love with somebody.”

“You give her no credit,” Eitel insisted, but something turned in him. How loathesome was the thought that she didn’t love him.

“When a man gets older,” Faye said, “there comes a time when he can be a sport with only one woman.” He smiled. “For instance my stepfather, Mr. Pelley.”

“Maybe one of these days I’ll ask you for a girl,” Eitel heard himself say.

“What’s the matter? You getting tired of the circus?” Faye said, and Eitel could imagine what Elena’s night with Marion must have been. “Let’s make it for this evening,” he said.

“What will you tell Elena?”

“I’ll tell her something,” Eitel snapped, and his date with Bobby was arranged.

He told Elena that Collie wanted him for a conference on the script and that they were going to meet in a town midway between the capital and Desert D’Or. That was easy enough. For one night almost any excuse would do, and the arrangements made with Marion, he drove out to the bar where Jay-Jay was waiting for him, trying not to think about Elena alone in the house. She hated to be alone, starting at noises, oppressed by the silence of the desert, careful to lock all the doors and windows.

Jay-Jay was drunk already. He was crazy about Bobby, he told Eitel, she was a good little girl. She had registered already in a hotel room and would be waiting for them. So they went off together, Jay-Jay stopping long enough to buy a bottle, and
then they went on to meet her. As luck would take it, the hotel where Bobby had rented a room was the one in which Elena had waited for Collie, and with the sour bite of memory Eitel was forced to think of the morning he had come here to pick up her clothing.

As soon as he was introduced to Bobby, he was convinced it was a mistake. If he had a type, Bobby was certainly not it; her eyes seemed to say, “I wish we didn’t have to meet under such circumstances.” This would be another of Faye’s jokes.

The three of them sat around in the hotel room, Jay-Jay passing the bottle while they dipped into a melting bowl of ice cubes. Bobby was shy. She would keep her head turned to Jay-Jay, talking to him about friends Eitel did not know, saying Larry had lost a roll at poker dice, and Barbara was pregnant again, and Dan was marrying a bar girl in the capital, and Lillian had her band organized but no good contracts, and on it went; Eugene was doing female impersonations and Renee had another crush. Eitel listened, watching Jay-Jay with amusement, for Jay-Jay was so warm, he liked Bobby so much, he would cluck his tongue at other people’s troubles and give Bobby passing compliments. “You’re the loveliest, sweetie,” Jay-Jay said, and Bobby smiled. “I adore this man,” she told Eitel.

“It’s a romance,” Jay-Jay said and looked at his watch. He would have to be moving on, he told them. Eitel knew where; in the course of an evening Jay-Jay might arrange three or four introductions for Marion. As he was about to leave the room, he motioned to Eitel. “Sweetie, you got to excuse us,” he said, “Charley’s promised me a tip on a horse.”

“If it’s a good bet, let me in,” Bobby chimed, and Eitel smiled. “Jay-Jay and I only bet losers,” he said.

In the hotel corridor, Jay-Jay swayed slightly. “Charley,” he muttered, “she’s a good kid, she’s all right, Bobby. Only I ought to tell you, she’s kind of cold, can’t help it, one of those. But you don’t have to worry cause she’ll do anything you want.” In a quick resumé, Jay-Jay explained exactly what was “anything.”
Eitel listened with distaste. “Poor Jay-Jay, he’s worse than me,” Eitel thought, and gave him a farewell tap on the shoulder.

Back in the room Bobby continued to chat in her bright little voice. “Jay-Jay’s a wonderful person,” she said to Eitel. “Do you know anyone nicer?”

“Hard to say,” said Eitel.

“When I get the blues he’s always very kind and considerate. Sometimes I wouldn’t know what to do without him.”

“Do you have the blues often?”

“Well, the last couple of months have been very hard. You see, I just got divorced a little while ago.”

“And you miss your husband?”

“It isn’t that. He was hard to take. But I don’t care how old-fashioned this sounds, you need a man in the house, don’t you think so?”

They had to get out of the hotel room, Eitel thought; it was stifling to remain here. “I’ve seen you somewhere before, haven’t I?” he said, as he had said once to Elena.

Bobby nodded. “You did, Mr. Eitel.”

“Recently?”

“Well, maybe it was two years ago. You see, I was an actress. I still am, of course. I think I’m good, really I do, people have said I have talent, but you know, no pull.” She sighed. “Anyway, my husband knew a producer who owed him a favor, and so I was able to get an extra card. Once I was an extra in a crowd scene in one of your pictures.”

“Which one?” he asked.

“
Flood on the River
.”

“Oh, that,” Eitel said.

“No, Mr. Eitel, really I think it was a wonderful picture. You’re a wonderful director.” She looked carefully at him, and then said with energy, “I’m so happy to meet you at last.”

She had a personality which was interchangeable with a thousand other actresses. It was obvious she had been taught that an actress must use her personality, and so she was forever
using it, forcing her wan face and soft voice into artificial enthusiasm, artificial disgust, artificial gaiety.

“You enjoyed working with me?” he offered.

“It was an awful day for me,” Bobby said despondently.

“Why?”

“Well you see, I was such a crazy kid. I mean … oh, I don’t know, I had all kinds of ideas. I thought if I could get my face in the camera, maybe somebody would recognize me.”

“You mean some studio executive would say, ‘Who is that girl? Send for her!’ ”

“That’s right.” Bobby sipped her drink reflectively. “What a nut I was,” she said in a tone which was both cheerful and valiant. “I remember at the end of the day, a woman who’d been an extra for years came up to me and told me not to get up front so much. They won’t hire you, honey, if your face gets too familiar to audiences,’ she said to me, and she was right.” Bobby laughed nervously. “So, you see, no stardom.”

“Unhappily, I’m afraid your friend was right about not working close to the camera if you’re an extra.” The conversation reminded him of things Elena had said the night he met her, and he felt low. How could he ever possibly make love to Bobby?

It was obvious Bobby expected him to make the first move. She was so green. He held out an arm to her, and she put her hand in his, and sat timidly on his lap. After he kissed her, he knew he had to get out of this room. Her lips were stiff and frightened, and her body had a rigidity he understood only too well.

“Look,” he said, “couldn’t we go someplace else? Hotel beds always look like cadavers to me.”

She laughed and seemed a little more relaxed. “I don’t know,” Bobby said doubtfully. “You see, we could go to my house, but it’s nothing much. I hate to show you what a mess it is.”

“I know it’s more pleasant than this place.”

“Oh, it’s comfy all right, but you see, Mr. Eitel …”

“Charley.”

“Well, Charley, my two little girls are there.”

“I didn’t know you had children.”

“Oh, yes. They’re wonderful kids.”

That was the answer, Eitel thought. He would go home with her, he would talk a while, he would pay her and excuse himself on the plea that the children made him uncomfortable. “Let’s go,” he said softly.

On the drive across town, she continued to chat. There were times, she told him, when she was sick of everything. She had had such a rotten time in the capital. If she ever got a little bit ahead, she thought she would go back to her home town. She knew a fellow there who still wanted to marry her, children and all; they had been sweethearts in high school. He knew her mother and father who were the sweetest people in the world. Only she had been so stupid, she had married a musician. “That’s advice I can give anybody,” Bobby said. “Never follow a man who blows a horn.”

In her tiny furnished four-room bungalow with its cheap wrought-iron furniture, one red sofa and two green armchairs, and the mounted photographs of her parents and children on the wall, he did not feel a great deal better. Bobby was making drinks, the baby sitter had left, and somewhere, probably in the kitchen, she had turned on the radio. Directly across from where he sat was a spindly lamp and next to it, a bird cage with a parakeet. If she ever prospered as a call girl, she would move to another house, the furniture would be changed, there might even be a maid, but the bird would remain with her. He felt unaccountably sad for Bobby, so sad that tears came to his eyes; only Marion could find joy in making Bobby one of the girls.

She had come back with a drink for him, and because she did not know what to do, she was talking to the bird. “Pretty Cappy, pretty Cappy,” she lisped, “do you love me, pretty Cappy?” The bird was silent and Bobby shrugged again. “I never can get Captain to make a sound when company’s around.”

“Let’s dance,” Eitel said.

She did not dance well, she was rigid. Nothing with her body would come easily. When the number ended, she sat down on the couch beside him and they began to neck. It was all wrong; she kissed with the tense activity of a fifteen-year-old, and it seemed as if their lips never quite met. He would have to get out of here, Eitel told himself again.

At that moment the baby began to cry. “It’s Veila,” Bobby whispered with relief and she sprang away and tiptoed into the bedroom. He hardly knew why, but he followed her and stood beside Bobby as she rocked a one-year-old child in her arms. “She’s wet her pants,” Bobby said.

“I’ll hold her while you change the diaper.”