The Love Machine (51 page)

“Now, Alfie, you’re not in love with me,” she had answered.

“Of course not. I adore Gavin. He’s the love of my life—this season. But, luv, when I’m in a picture I have to mesmerize myself into being in love with my leading lady so I’ll come across butch. Unfortunately, it sometimes works too well, and when the picture is over, I have to rush to Palm Springs to get the lady off my back. But you’ve been so distant that you’ve become an obsession with me.”

She had told this to Adam and he had laughed. “You owe it to him, he made you look great in the picture. And an obsession is the worst type of sickness. With an obsession, you’ve got to come to grips with it—not let it smolder and take hold of you.”

“You mean you’d let me sleep with Alfie?” She was teasing.

“Sure, if you let me watch.” He meant it.

To her amazement, she had called Alfie and told him Adam’s offer. Alfie accepted eagerly. He came to the beach house and made love to her while Adam lay beside them on the bed. The crazy part of it was that she felt no shame. And when it was over, she watched while Alfie made love to Adam. And it all seemed perfectly normal and relaxed. Afterwards, they all went into the kitchen and made scrambled eggs. And they remained the best of friends.

Perhaps Adam had a point. Alfie was back with Gavin but her obsession about Robin Stone was still festering. She was positive that one day they would get together. He would be tanked up on vodka—that was the only way it could happen. And when he yelled
“Mutter
, Mother,
Mother”
she ’d leap out of bed and throw a pitcher of cold water on him. Let him try and say he’d had a blackout after that!

Adam cut into her thoughts by dropping the towel and coming to her. When it was over they raced into the ocean, and when they went back to the house she curled into Adam’s arms and fell asleep and dreamed of Robin.

They flew to San Francisco to catch the sneak preview of the picture. She sat clutching Adam’s arm while he nibbled the buttered popcorn. Karl Heinz sat in front of them with a young ingenue. A few other members of the cast sat across the aisle.

She watched the film intently and wished she could be objective enough to analyze her performance. She knew that she had never looked as exciting—the cinematography was fantastic. She was all eyes, cheekbones and windswept hair. The clothes were fantastic. Adam had complained that she was too thin, but it certainly paid off on the screen. She shifted nervously in her seat. The big scene was coming. When it began she peered cautiously at the audience. She couldn’t believe it—people were actually affected by her performance.

And then the music swelled and the picture was over. Adam grabbed her hand, whispering as they ran up the aisle of the
theater, “Baby, you’ve turned into one hell of an actress. That last scene really had it.” They got out of the theater just as the audience was beginning to spill into the aisles. They stood across the street and waited for Karl Heinz and the others. Maggie was still apprehensive until Karl Heinz approached. His face was beaming. He held out his arms and kissed her.

A week after the sneak preview, Hy Mandel, her agent, met her in the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel. He waited until they had ordered a drink, then he tossed the new contract to her with a flourish. “We did it, honey! When the heads of Century lamped the screening of the new epic, they realized it was stupid to try and force you to stay with the old deal at seventy-five thousand a picture. Like I said, ‘Gentlemen—she’ll do these pictures for you as an unhappy actress. And what will happen? She’ll be unhappy and she’ll be lousy. And you’ll destroy a potential star. What will the stockholders say to that? Especially since it’s now a road-show picture—three and a half hours with an intermission yet.
Starring
Maggie Stewart.’ I hammered it home. How will it look, I asked them, if they didn’t know how to take a star another director created, and continue to build her. And it worked! Look at the new terms—two hundred and fifty thousand apiece for the next two pictures, and three hundred thousand for the third, plus twenty percent of the net profits!”

She nodded and sipped her Bloody Mary. Hy rushed on. “Now look, principal photography on the new picture won’t start until February. They want you back January fifteenth for wardrobe.”

“January fifteenth! How wonderful! It’s only December tenth!”

“That’s right. We’ve arranged a nice little vacation for you.”

She looked at him suspiciously. He laughed. “So maybe it isn’t exactly a vacation, but we had to give a little to get. Now, there’s going to be a tremendous opening of
The Torn Lady
in New York, and —”

“The Torn Lady?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Is that the title they’ve settled on?”

“Don’t knock it, honey. When it was called
Henderson
, that automatically geared it toward the male star. This way, it’s your picture.”

She smiled. “All right. Now what’s the hitch? What do I have to do?”

“Well, it’s not really anything rough—a trip to New York to attend the opening isn’t exactly factory work.”

“It also means interviews, television shows, and not a minute to myself.”

“Wrong again. The picture opens December twenty-sixth. You don’t have to be in New York until the twenty-second.”

“And I work from the twenty-second straight through the big gala opening night.”

“Yes, but meanwhile you’re free from now until the twenty-second. And if you want to go to New York earlier and see some shows, they’ll spring for that. Or if you want to stay on a week after … it means a vacation either way. As long as you’re back here the fifteenth. Why not go now? It’s all on Century.”

She shook her head. “I think I’ll stay at the beach and just rest. The good weather is still holding out.”

“Maggie”—he paused—“I don’t want you to stay at the beach—with Adam.”

She looked at him curiously. “Everyone knows I live with Adam.”

“Why don’t you two kids get married?”

“I don’t want to.”

“Then why live with him?”

“I’m lonely. I’ll stay with him until I—” She stopped.

“Till you find the right man? Maggie, did it ever occur to you that you won’t find anyone else as long as you stay with Adam?”

“I’ve found him.”

Hy stared at her with unmasked surprise.

“I found him four years ago,” she went on, “but—”

“He’s married?”

She shook her head. “Hy, let’s forget it. I’m happy with my work, happy with Adam.”

“I’m sixty years old,” he said slowly. “I’ve been married to Rhoda for thirty-two years. Rhoda is fifty-nine. At the time I married her I had a small office on West Forty-sixth Street and Rhoda was teaching school. When we got married she was a twenty-seven-year-old virgin and I wasn’t surprised. We expected
girls to be virgins in those days. Today a twenty-seven-year-old virgin would be a freak. Today a guy who is true to his wife is a freak. Well, I’m one of those freaks. So maybe Rhoda is twenty pounds overweight. And maybe I’ve slowed down—it’s been two or three years since Rhoda and I slept together. But we have a good life. We got grown children and grandchildren and we still have a double bed and we enjoy lying in it together and sometimes even holding hands when we watch television. But we hold hands with a different kind of love now. Ever since I got to be a top agent out here—and now especially since you’ve become so hot—I suddenly find I’m being given the eye by twenty-one-year-old beautiful shiksas. These same little shiksas wouldn’t have given me the right time when I was in my prime. There was one just the other day—I never saw such a body. She bent down and all but dropped the boobies on my desk. But you know something? I look in the mirror each morning when I shave. I see a guy with too little hair and too much belly. Maybe if I took on the little blonde I’d get it up pretty good. Maybe we’d roll together in bed. But who am I kidding? She’s not rolling with me because of my profile. It’s my connections she wants. So I say, Hy, is it worth it? And I say no. But I’ve seen other guys my age get tied up with girls younger than their married daughters. But I will say they don’t flaunt it. They go to La Rue Saturday night with their wives. They go to Hillcrest every Sunday with their wives. See what I mean? If they want it on the side, okay—but they keep up some semblance of a front for the children and the wife. Maggie, you have no children—but you have a public, and there are a lot of people who still think like me and they won’t pay three dollars to go see a beautiful girl crying over dying and leaving her child and husband when they know she’s flagrantly living at a beach-house without a wedding ring.”

“I’ve spent enough of my life living up to conventions and rules,” she said sullenly.

His sigh was heavy. “Maggie, what is it with you kids today? Am I that out of touch? Look, all I ask is for you to marry Adam, or get your own place. Then sleep with him, run up and down the beach with him—but please get your own place.”

She laughed. “All right, Hy, when I come back from New
York, I’ll check into this hotel. Meanwhile, you can look for an apartment for me.”

“It just so happens, I’ve already accidentally stumbled on just such a place. A furnished apartment at the Melton Towers—four hundred a month, switchboard service, right in Beverly Hills. Come. I’ll drive you there.”

She saw the apartment. It was perfect for her needs—a large living room, full kitchen, master bedroom, small den with a wetbar. The manager who showed the apartment had the lease all drawn up. Maggie laughed when she realized Hy had chosen the apartment before their talk. The next day Adam helped her move. He stayed at the beach, as he was blocking out the script for a new picture.

After two days alone in the new apartment, she grew fidgety. Adam was leaving the following week for location shots in Arizona. She’d be alone in Los Angeles. She called Hy and told him that if the studio still wanted to pay her way, she’d go to New York and do the publicity.

Adam took her to the airport. She posed for the airlines publicity man. Then Adam took her to the TWA Ambassadors lounge for a drink. “I’ll be away for three months with the picture,” he said. “When I come back, I’ll move in with you. It’s a nice apartment. Besides, it gets too damn cold at the beach in March.”

She stared at the planes being serviced on the airfield. “I told you what Hy said.”

He smiled. “Well, tell him I’m a nice Jewish boy, too. We might as well get married, Maggie. I think it could work. You won’t mind if I shack up once in a while with another dame.”

“I don’t think I want marriage to be that way,” she said slowly.

“Oh, you want it all neat and orderly like the kind you had in Philadelphia?”

“No, but I don’t want to be
part
of a marriage—like the apartment, the furniture. I want you to be jealous of me, Adam.”

“You didn’t exactly blindfold yourself when Alfie was in bed with us.”

“But don’t you understand—that wasn’t the real me.”

He looked at her with his intense direct stare. “Cut the shit, Maggie. No one goes back. The girl that slept with Alfie is you. Now suddenly you start getting dewy-eyed about what you want
in a marriage. What we’ve had at the beach is what there is to marriage in our kind of life.”

He took her silence as acceptance and reached for her hand. “We’ll get married when I come back from Arizona. I’ll release it to the press after I leave you today.”

She pulled her hand away. “Don’t you dare!” Her eyes flashed in anger. “I’m not about to throw my life down the drain living with you and pretending that acting is art. It’s a business! But there’s more to life than living this business every second, and making excuses for sexual deviations because we’re artists. I want a husband, not a bright young director who smokes pot and makes it with a boy occasionally for kicks.”

His expression was grim. “When you sound off, you don’t try to sugar-coat it.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that—we’re through.”

“Maybe we really never got started, Adam.”

“Well, good luck. But the beach house is always waiting.”

A press agent named Sid Goff from Century Pictures was waiting when Maggie’s plane landed at Kennedy Airport in New York. The photographers moved in and the bulbs went off. Sid took her hand luggage and escorted her to the long black limousine the studio had ordered. The press followed and bombarded her with questions while the luggage was stored in the trunk. There was one final flash of cameras, the car pulled away from the airport and she leaned back and relaxed.

“Don’t let all that action fool you,” Sid Goff said glumly. “We may not make a paper.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

“Diana Williams is due in on the next flight. She’ll probably grab all the newspaper space tomorrow.”

“I thought she was doing a TV series,” Maggie said.

“It’s been canceled—so now she suddenly wants to do a Broadway show. Ike Ryan has signed her. It goes into rehearsal in February.”

Maggie smiled. “Well, don’t be concerned. All Century cares about is press coverage on the day of the premiere.”