The Girl with the Bear Rug Eyes

"Call for you on two, Mr. Forrest. Mr. Hank Bullett. You have a luncheon engagement with him at one at the Golden Spoon, sir."

"Thanks, Marilyn . . . Would you please ask one of the girls to pick up the report in my box and pass it on to Mr. Wainwright? . . . Put Mr. Bullett on, please."

"Yessir."

"Hello, Hank?"

"Hi, Phil. That operator of yours got a mighty cuddly voice, you know?"

"I never noticed . . . Listen, Hank, don't we have a lunch date? I want to drop something off with you."

"Yeah, we had one. But listen, old buddy. I got to beg off. I'm hung up."

"Well, OK. I know how busy you educational-TV writers are. How's the show coming?"

"Pretty messy. We're doing mostly schlong stuff now and very little cerebral."

"What the hell is schlong?"

"The messy stuff that you have to wear a raincoat. Pies, flour, soapy water, dripping chocolate. Ratings go up in proportion to how damaged the contestants get. With this new stunt I thought up, we ought to field a twenty-seven. It's a series of races between two husband-wife teams. There's these different-type beds, you know? Cot, sofa, hammock, Louis the Fourteenth with a canopy yet. Which wife can blow up the balloon first and bust it and then the husbands sprint and dive into the beds. Starts out quiet, but they get progressively gooier. Taffy, mud, glue. Screams."

"Who's in shape to do all the diving, for God's sake? A gymnast couldn't do it."

"You'd be surprised at the country's athletes when there's coupons for iceboxes and trips to Hawaii on the line. And schlong gets 'em in the tent, Phil. We're selling plenty skin lotion."

"Where are you now, Hank?"

"In the sack, composing witty lines for B girls. How's this? 'I like older men bec – –' "

"What the hell are you doing in the sack at noon? Why aren't you at the office, stirring hot pitch for the husbands of America to fall into?"

"Because I'm truly beat, man. Kerouacked. Like whooo! That's how come I can't make lunch."

"Affair of the heart?"

"Mostly the back. We got this new dark-haired production assistant that just came on the show day before yesterday. One of these girls that carries a clipboard like it was Brando's shirt. And the minute our eyes clashed yesterday, I knew it was a thing. Clickarootie! So after the talk-down session yesterday afternoon I asked her out for a drink. Guess what she ordered! Some kind of Chablis, whatever the hell that is. I figured, Oh boy, a non-alcoholic, she's a basket-hanger, you ain't never going to get this chick boiled, Hank. So we're unlaxing, talking TV and Akiyoshi and Cannonball Adderley – she was to the Newport thing, turns out – and sex and Zen– –"

"And sex."

"And sex, and then all of a sudden she passes me on the curve. She's making these statements, way out. I mean this girl sounds real far out, real far out. So I'm heavy-footing, I'm talking bold and she's keeping up – very frank stuff, Paul–"

"Phil.''

"Phil. Jesus, why did I make that slip? What's with me these days?"

"Ask your shrinker."

"Listen. Don't think I don't need it. I got the evidence. Anyway, the reason I'm not making it today is account of that chick. I'm supposed to show for the talk-down at five, but I don't know how the hell I'll make it. I'm a wreck. Listen, do I sound funny?"

"Rosen and Jacoby are funnier."

"I mean my speech. Because I got this swollen lip on one side makes me look like Cheetah. I put myself on a liquid-type diet."

"Your labials are a bit sluggish. But, like the announcers say, it's the vowels that express your personality."

"And I still got good vowel movement, thank God. Hey! Throw me a cover line, quick!"

" 'Thank you, mother.' 'I know there are people out there because I can hear you breathing.' 'I'll fire the s.o.b. that wrote that one.' "

"You should do our warm-ups. Your cover lines need cover lines."

"So what happened?"

"I'd tell you, Phil, but I know that cuddly operator of yours is listening in . . . Hi, peaches . . . OK (Did I hear a click?) . . . Anyway, we're relating, like the social workers say, and she's sober but talking mucho grande and I say all of a sudden, 'Do you dig Mitch? Because I got a great waxing of an oldie, The Yellow Rose of Texas, that should glom many spins turntable-wise.' "

"Do you honest to God talk like that to production assistants?"

"It's love-talk, man. Don't knock it. Shows them you think you're with it."

"What's she look like?"

"Well, she's healthy enough upstairs, (continued on page 101)Bear Rug Eyes(continued from page 35) but she wouldn't knock you out face-wise. Cute little roll when she walks – an occupational thing, I guess. But the main thing is she has these real bear rug eyes that she could be reciting Edgar A. Guest and you would still communicate."

"So then?"

"So I say, 'How about hearing it?' She says, 'OK, when?' Is she bluffing? I say, 'How about like now?' 'No,' she says, 'I got to see about some props for the show. We're low on pastry.' And her pretty mouth opens in a chuckle. I figure, Uh-oh. A snow job. Two bucks' worth of Chablis down the drain and zero-zero. I guess my face showed it. Then she looks thoughtful and says, 'But how about like ten o'clockish?' Real hip, eh, Phil? So I give her my address and call off a thing with Manda. Poker, you know?"

"Which is Manda?"

"The off-off-Broadway one that thinks I'm going to marry her. You met her, remember? I mean, she practically bought the old shoes!"

"You could do a helluva lot worse, buddy."

"Man, I lived with this chick for two months. I know what domesticity with her would be like. All the time fights, listening to Stanislavsky, socks in the bathroom . . . Incidentally, you're a player, in case you get quizzed."

"Winner or loser?"

"Loser, a bill and a half. You're dying to pull even, in case I got to bust more dates. I won twenty, so these games shouldn't seem uneconomic."

"Your friend show up?"

"She showed up. A cuckoo! She broke every damn rule in the book! You know how every boy's ideal is to find a real presentable for-fun girl who you can play like a banjo? Well, this one you play like a missile. I mean the kind of missile that really goes off. With a very short countdown. I'd shaved and laid out the liquor – even a flagon of Chablis, because that's the kind of sport I am – when she knocks at five to ten. Her coat is hardly off when we're cozying on the couch watching TV and the hell with drinks or my Gleason album. The show is some kind of cowboy jazz and I'm pointing out boners, like the shadow falling on one side of the street one time and the other side the next time – this is better than Songs of Solomon, I've found out – and, well, I won't get clinical on account of little big-ears on your switchboard over there. But suffice to say she's got a very passable, pneumatic body and we're improvising like crazy, the furniture is crashing all around us, and the first thing I know my back is on fire – all over scratches – and she bit my lip so hard with her pretty little teeth I had to tell Irma I got into a fist-fight. All this action in about twelve minutes by the clock – before the middle commercial."

"Is the fight at the poker game?"

"No, at a bar. I'll carry the ball on this. It's safer . . . Man, I tell you, I am one gasping wreck after a couple hours' tussling. Utterly done done. So finally the set is humming with no picture on the screen, it's three in the morning and I got to boot her the hell out of there. But this chick is stubborn as well as energetic. She lives in Newark. I'm bloody, I ache, but – she knows I got a car – she wants me to drive her to Newark! Either that or she stays, she says. You ever see a girl with no clothes on stick her chin out and act stubborn? A real scene. But I know if I drive her to Newark there'll be a smashup, sure. She'll attack me at the toll booth or inside the Lincoln Tunnel. The nails on this cuckoo! Finally, by acting tough, I convince her I got a very finicky (finicky!) roommate that works nights at a nightclub and it's really his pad, so I got to be on my good behavior. So she finally gets dressed, burned up, and goes. I just have time to pick up the furniture and put ointment on my back, as much as I can reach, and put on thick pajamas so the grooves don't show through, when Irma staggers in. She's pretty loaded, but still rational. But she's tired, thank God, so she just waves in a friendly way and flops into the sack.

"I got no more trouble for the rest of the night, except that I have to lie on my stomach and the pain in my back is killing me so much I can't sleep. Who needs it? I kept asking myself. In the morning when she got up she sees me lying there like a cover for Rugged Adventure, hoping the blood don't show. It didn't and she swallowed the story how I got my lip and waggled off to work. So that there is why – between loss of epidermis, sunk eyes and big lip – I'm not eating in public. End of tale. I'm doing my schlong stuff for the show right here."

"Well, listen, Hank. You want to make it tomorrow? I'm free and there's this script we think needs doctoring and it might mean an interesting piece of change for you."

"I can't, Phil. Listen. Can you mail it? Along with whatever other poop there is on it? Because I may not be able to make it tomorrow, either."

"Hell, you'll be healed by then."

"I kind of doubt it. Because the chick is coming back tonight."

"Lock the door. Anyway, how do you know she's coming back?"

"Because I phoned and asked her."

"Oh."

"Yeah . . . Well, so long, Phil."

"So long, Hank. I'll mail that thing."

"Crazy. Sorry I couldn't make it. But I'm really beat."

"OK. 'Bye."

"Mr. Forrest? While you were on the phone, a Mr. Baker of Judson, Pierce and Finch called. Hilltop 9-5000. He'd like you to call back. No message. And the photos from Famco just came. Shall I have them sent in, sir?"

"If you would, Marilyn."

"And one other thing, Mr. Forrest. Will you be going out to lunch at one?"

"Yes, but it'll be a quickie."

"Uh, one more thing, sir."

"Yes?"

"While I was waiting to see if you were through on the phone so I could switch Mr. Baker to your line, I happened to overhear you were going to mail some kind of package over to Mr., uh, Bullett. Now, I could drop it off during my lunch hour today and it would. uh, arrive that much sooner."

"Well, isn't that pretty inconvenient for you, Marilyn? His apartment's in the sixties, and I might not have it ready till about two-thirty."

"That's all right, sir. I'll wait."