Double Take

When Jessica walked into the club car, everyone knew with one startled glance that this was somebody special, someone important, and I sat watching their eyes and mouths pop open. Out of the world's three billion people there can't be more than, say, a hundred women like Jessica Maxwell. Her red-brown hair was thick and shining with health, her brown eyes magnificent, her complexion so flawless your fingers ached to touch it, her figure marvelous. But that doesn't tell you how beautiful she was; I can only say that if you were staggering toward a hospital with three bullets in your chest, you'd stop and turn to stare after Jessica if she walked past.

She said, "Hi, Jake," smiled so that an actual chill ran up my spine, and sat down beside me. People sat sipping drinks, glancing out windows, turning pages and sneaking looks, but I was pretty sure no one actually recognized her. She'd been in only two pictures, in small parts; on the screen less than a minute in one of them. But of course they knew she almost had to be in pictures; we were out of Los Angeles station only 20 minutes, and with looks like hers what else could she be?

We talked, I made a joke or so, she laughed delightedly, and every man in the car sat sizing me up, eyes narrowed, resentful, wondering who the hell I was to be with a girl like Jess. Well, I wondered, too. I work for the same studio, and was in love with Jessie or close to it, but who wasn't? I didn't even know her well--just through this one picture --and I'm only a dialog director. Eventually I'll be a director, maybe a very damn good one, but no one else knows that, and right now I'm not much in job or looks, either. I'm only average height, skinny, 26, name of Jake Pelman, and slightly homely. I freely admit I'd rather be handsome, taller, heavier, the world's finest rumba dancer, and a master with foil and épée. But as things stood, I had to wonder why a girl like Jess had asked me, even urged me, to take the train with her. We were going to New York on location to make a few last scenes for the picture, most of which had already been filmed at the studio, and everyone else in the unit was flying, of course; it's a long trip. So with Jess and me alone, and nothing else to do but get better acquainted, my hopes were high.

"Jake, would you like to come back to my bedroom?" Jessie said after ten minutes or so, and I allowed as how I would, and stood up. A minute later she was unfastening her bag, handing me a script and explaining that three uninterrupted days on the train were a wonderful chance to get her New York scenes to perfection. Would I mind helping? Read through the scenes with her, and coach her? It was why she'd wanted me to come along, she explained innocently; at least I think it was innocently.

After a few stunned seconds in which I stood hooting with inaudible invisible jeering laughter at myself and my hopes, I said I'd be glad to, and we settled down to work on Jessie's scenes for most of the next three days. I didn't blame her; these final few scenes were the biggest of the picture for Jessie. One in particular--we worked on it through Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and almost to Grand Central Station--was her chance to be noticed, and she knew it. Maybe every actor or actress has a part like this early in his or her career; the big one, the one that counts if only you recognize it. Jessie did: she understood instinctively that this particular scene in this particular picture was her first step, and one she had to take, toward stardom or oblivion.

We worked. We also had an occasional drink in the club car, ate our meals together, sat and talked or read, even played a little gin, and got to know each other. But mostly we worked on' that scene. In the picture Jess was the daughter of a woman speak-easy owner in New York, played by the star; like most other studios these days, we were making a picture set in the 1920s. In her big scene, Jess was in love with a much older man, and was heartbroken when he left her. An hour and a half out of New York, Jessie laid her script on the seat beside her and said, "I'm not getting it, am I, Jake? I'm no closer than the day we started," and the truth was no; she wasn't getting it at all.

But I wasn't that truthful. I shrugged, looked thoughtful, then said, "It still needs work, Jess, but it'll come. Right now, though, let it alone; drop it. Forget it till you work out in New York with the actor. Ernie'll be there; he'll help." Ernie Wyke was the director, a good one; I'd learned from him and would learn more. But I knew he wasn't going to be able to help Jessie.

I knew it because now I knew something else; that she didn't give a damn about me. She was a beautiful girl, and a nice one; I'd have liked Jess if she'd been homely. She had none of the arrogant defensiveness of so many very good-looking women. But now I knew she was selfish. Not in an unpleasant way; she liked me, she liked most of the people around her, out of her own naturally cheerful nature. But all she was really interested in was her own ambition and self. And why not? She was only 20; plenty of child in her yet. When she'd lived longer I was certain she'd change; she was warmhearted and there were reserves of sympathy and understanding still untouched in her. But before she changed, her career could be finished. Sometime tomorrow she'd have to seem before the camera what she might need years to become, and I knew she couldn't do it.

She wasn't getting this part because she didn't understand it. She couldn't feel what the character she was playing felt, which was love. She could play young love. On the screen with a young handsome man, all Jessie had to do was say she loved him and the audience believed her; they did her work for her. But now she had to show them that she was in love with a man more than old enough to be her father, be heartbroken when he left her, and make the audience believe every word and moment. And because this career-anxious girl had never let herself know what love was, she couldn't imagine or feel it now. Riding along beside the Hudson talking with Jessie, pretty sure I was in love with her now, I knew she was going to flop and that there was nothing to do about it. She didn't know, though; Ernie was going to show her how.

• • •

In New York, Al Berg, the unit manager, had booked Jessie for the Plaza, and had me miles away, at the Gramercy Park. Al had also found an empty two-story brownstone house just off lower Fifth Avenue, the street on which all our shooting would take place. He'd rented the house as a unit headquarters for our day of filming, so after I checked into the hotel and changed into wash slacks and a checked shirt, I walked over.

It was a fine spring night, temperature about 70. Passing Gramercy Park on the way to Fifth, I could smell cut grass and see the new green of the tree leaves in the light from the street lamps. Then, walking down the east side of Fifth toward Washington Square, I saw why we were filming down here. This part of Fifth Avenue hadn't really changed too much since the Twenties. Some of it had changed, of course; there were big new apartment buildings. But the location department had found stretches of several blocks that still looked, so they said, very much as they had in the middle Twenties. It's a nice part of town, usually quiet and--it's always seemed to me-- a little separate from the noisy, always-changing rest of New York.

Our headquarters, I saw when I got to the old house, would do very well for a short scene we had: Jessie walking down the front steps pulling on a pair of gloves. And I knew Al probably had a use for every room inside. In the living room he had some rented furniture, and four members of the unit were sitting around talking; the front door and all windows were wide open and, because there were no screens, the lights were out, though there was a fair amount of light from a street lamp just outside. Sitting there drinking coffee or soft drinks were Alice Weeks, Oscar Jorgensen, a girl I didn't know and a young guy in a T-shirt who was a camera assistant. I nodded at him and spoke to Alice, who was in charge of our costumes--a tall thin woman in her 40s wearing a summer dress. Oscar, who was in shirt sleeves, was our property man--thin, middle-aged, bald and permanently worried. He introduced me to the girl, who was sitting sideways on a window ledge, one of her feet up on the sill. She was wearing black stretch pants and a very loose hip-length blouse with big wide horizontal stripes. As I thought, she was an actress, an extra hired here in New York for a walk-on part.

I sat down, and took some kidding about having come to New York by train; this was mostly speculation over whether my reason was cowardice about flying, lechery for Jessie Maxwell, or both. This was the lull before the storm, and I sat enjoying having nothing to do. The following morning the rest of the unit would arrive and the work and confusion would begin. Some 30 to 40 people would be here: carpenters, electricians, grips and gaffers, a cameraman who did not operate the camera, camera operators and assistants who did, a sound mixer, boom man, recorder and cableman, make-up men, hairdressers, special-effects man, a check woman, script girl, and a dozen others including a couple of whistlemen and wigwags, who are the guys who blow whistles and wave flags to keep people from walking onto sets after shooting starts. All these people with all their equipment, including a few hundred miles of cable, would begin getting in one another's way, apparently. Actually they'd be working together in that amazing cooperation of a hundred disparate skills that gets the little tiny pictures onto the little squares of film.

(continued overleaf)

Oscar Jorgensen hadn't said much, and pretty soon he walked to one of the open windows and stood there, hands in pockets, staring out. The camera assistant, whose name, I remembered now, was Joe Lani, said, "Don't worry, Oscar; if we have to, we'll push it for you."

Oscar just said, "Yeah," without turning around.

I said, "What's the trouble?"

"He's worried about the bus."

"Didn't it get here?" For a moment I was panicky; we had to use this bus in our two biggest scenes.

"Oh, it got here all right," Oscar said.

"Is it OK?"

"Sure. We lashed it to a flatcar with cable, covered it with plastic sheeting and put a waterproof tarp over that. I saw to it myself; it got here OK."

I smiled, thinking about the bus. This was one of the old, blunt-nosed, green-and-cream Fifth Avenue buses with open-air seats up on a top deck that you reached by climbing a winding staircase at the back. For all I knew, this was the only one left in the world; they'd last used them in New York years ago. The studio had bought it then, directly from the bus company; it still had its original 1926 license plates. They'd shipped it 3000 miles to Hollywood and used it on an indoor street-set in a picture about New York of the time. Now, 30-odd years later, for a picture about that same but now-vanished New York, they shipped the bus back to be filmed on the streets. Hollywood has changed a lot, but in some ways it never disappoints you. I said, "Where is it now?"

"Half a block from here. There's a new apartment building near University Place, not quite finished, no tenants in yet. Al rented the garage in the basement, and it's in there. We trucked it over covered with the tarp, so we wouldn't get a crowd."

"Then what's the trouble?"

"It came a day late; less than two hours ago. I wanted to drive it, test it out in the railroad yard. It's got to work tomorrow morning for absolute sure." He shrugged, worriedly. "It's probably all right. I had it in perfect shape when we left; no reason it shouldn't be now."

"Couldn't you drive it now, Oscar? Around the block a couple times just to be certain?"

Alice said, "The cops, Jake, boy. They'd yak if it drew a crowd, and hand us a ticket for expired license plates."

I nodded. In most cities the police will let a movie company do almost anything: block off streets all day and paint the city hall in stripes. But movie companies are no novelty or joy to the New York cops, and if you mess up traffic by not following their orders, they'll throw you out. I said, "What about later tonight? There wouldn't be enough people out to get a crowd."

"I'd like to," Oscar said, turning around. "Hell, I've got to. You think it's OK. Jake?"

"Sure, if you wait till after midnight." I smiled with sudden pleasure. "And when you do, I want to ride along. That'll be a sight, an old double-decker trundling down Fifth again. You won't get a crowd, but a few people will see us and think they're out of their minds."

Everybody smiled, and Joe Lani said, "Hey, Alice; you brought uniforms, didn't you? Bus driver and conductor?"

"Of course."

"Well, if a couple of us put them on, that'd really be a sight!"

Even Oscar grinned, against his will, and the girl on the window sill said, "If my costume's here, too, can I come along?"

And that set us off. Everybody in the room was putting down his cup or pop bottle, then we all piled upstairs. Alice had her costumes in an empty bedroom, locked in their stenciled, olive-drab, heavy plywood shipping cases. Then, cautioning us, warning us what she'd do if we damaged or lost a thread of her costumes, cursing us out in advance, she handed them out: conductor's uniform and fare collector for Joe; a suit, white shirt, bow tie and black shoes for me; a pair of dresses, hats and purses of the Twenties for herself and the girl; and of course Oscar took the bus driver's uniform for himself; no one else was going to drive that bus. During this--I heard the cab door slam downstairs--Jessie arrived, heard us, came up, and we briefed her on what was going on, and of course she wanted to go, too.

Alice gave her, along with the full set of warnings she'd given us, one of the three costumes Jessie would wear during filming; then we all went to the dressing rooms--two bedrooms fitted out with portable make-up tables and lighted mirrors. My outfit was too big, and Joe's uniform too small, so we traded and I became the bus conductor. I was just as glad. The 1926 suit was authentic but not much different from Ivy League suits of today, and I thought I cut a more interesting figure as the conductor.

Downstairs we looked one another over. The women looked great. They wore the kind of costumes we've all become pretty familiar with lately: the short skirts, oddly placed hiplines, the tight-fitting felt hats. Jessie looked terrific; it's hard to believe that a fallible, mortal human being could be so beautiful. She has spectacularly handsome legs, and of course this outfit showed them off; I think that's one reason she got the part. Her dress and hat, which were powder blue, had been made especially for her, and in some way I don't understand they'd been subtly modernized. They were like the others, yet not quite, so that Jess didn't really look strange or old-fashioned, but just magnificently beautiful. The other two--the girl in a peach-colored dress and Alice in tan-- looked OK, and so did Joe. Oscar and 1 didn't look like much of anything in a couple of worn-looking blue uniforms and caps with shiny black peaks.

We had to wait for over an hour; Oscar wouldn't start till 12:30. So we sat around downstairs talking, excited, laughing a lot. Alice wouldn't let us smoke for fear of burning a hole in one of her costumes, and whenever one of us went to the kitchen and came back with coffee, she made him drink standing up and leaning forward so as not to spill a drop on her outfits.

At half past 12 we all walked half a block east and across the street to the new apartment building, then down a ramp of new white concrete, and through the entrance to the basement garage; it was high-ceilinged just here, designed so that a moving van could back right in and up to the doors of a service elevator. Oscar snapped on a light switch, and there she stood like a great square elephant covered by a big brown-canvas tarpaulin. Joe and I helped Oscar drag it off, then I stood smiling with pleasure. I'd been a little kid when I'd last seen one of these, but I remembered everything I saw now: the boxlike metal hood over the motor, surmounted by a radiator cap; the green metal-spoked wheels and hard-rubber tires; the upward-slanting sides, the rattly wood-framed windows; and way up on top, the metal-grilled wooden-railed fence enclosing the outdoor seats of varnished wood. They were fine old buses, a joy to ride, even if a shade less profitable than the miserable monsters they have now, and I was glad to see one again.

She started up quickly enough, Joe cranking the engine after Oscar showed him how. For maybe a minute Oscar idled the motor, then he smiled and beckoned us in. I told Joe to turn off the garage lights; he obeyed automatically, and while he was doing that I got into the bus and sat down next to Jessie. We smiled at each other, the garage lights went off and Oscar turned on his headlights. He shifted gears, Joe hopped on and Oscar pulled up the ramp in low. We drove west three quarters of a block to Fifth, Oscar listening to the engine with his head cocked. It sounded fine, the chain drive grinding away smoothly just as I remembered.

At Fifth Oscar stopped, and a very nice coincidence happened, one that pleased us all. A car drove past the front of the bus, and it was one of those magnificently restored old cars, a handsome square-topped sedan looking as good as the day it was new, which was probably (continued on page 140) Double Take (continued from page 114) when this bus last rolled along Fifth, and we all smiled with pleasure. Then Oscar snapped on the inside lights and we all looked around: at the wooden seats, at one another in this strange environment, at the old advertisements above the windows. One was for Fels-Naptha, but it was for yellow bars of soap, not granules in a package; another showed a drawing of a handsome young dimple-chinned man wearing a high stiff Arrow collar.

Oscar shifted, let out the clutch and turned south onto Fifth Avenue, and there was not a soul in sight as far as we could see in either direction, and I felt a stab of disappointment. We wanted to startle a few people; we were out to play a joke. It wasn't a practical joke; to my mind that phrase means cruelty, a joke that is no joke but an embarrassment, annoyance, shock, or even injury to someone. We intended the opposite; I was entirely certain that to anyone seeing the incredible vision of this lighted old bus, our costumed selves inside it, wheeling slowly along Fifth Avenue in the middle of the night, it would be an astonishing sight and pleasure never forgotten.

We were disappointed as kids, and I'm sure that's why Oscar drove farther than he meant to; someone just had to see us. He drove through one block, then another and into a third, along the deserted late-at-night street, and we didn't see a person or a car. Then a woman walked out of a doorway with an Airedale on a leash. The dog stopped, the woman stood waiting, and as we rolled past she glanced up at us. There was no change of expression on her face, she showed absolutely no interest, and as her dog moved on, so did she without a backward glance. "She's from out of town," Joe said. "She thinks it's a regular bus."

Alice said, "Did you see her dress and hat? Hell, half the women in the country are wearing cloche hats and short dresses these days; we're no surprise to her, we're the latest style!"

Oscar was pulling to the curb; 50 feet ahead under a street light, two men frowning in conversation stood waiting for a bus, and he was going to oblige. He yelled, "On your feet, conductor!" and as I got up quickly and walked to the rear of the bus, Oscar slowed and stopped.

The two men stepped up onto the back platform without a break in the sound of the older man's voice, a gray-haired man of 60 in a wide-brimmed Panama hat and a snow-white suit. The younger man, who wore a gray business suit, stood listening, his eyes never leaving the older man's face. The man in white brought change from his pocket, and held out his hand, still talking. I lifted my fare collector, a little nickelplated contrivance with a slot in the top, and he turned just long enough to push two dimes, one after the other, into the slot, and a chime sounded each time. Then 1 reached overhead, tugged at a rope, a bell tinkled over Oscar's head, and he pulled out from the curb. Our two passengers stood where they were, on the back platform, and the older man's voice--urging, selling, persistent-- never stopped once, and now I was aware of what he was saying.

I don't really know anything about stocks or the stock market, but I've taken a small flyer now and then. Sometimes I've made a little, more often I lose, but I'm always hoping for hot tips. Now I seemed to be hearing some, and I stood making an effort to remember them. "Buy any of them, Georgie," the older man was saying for at least the second time. "It doesn't matter which, I guarantee you can sell out at a profit in a month. You won't want to, though. You'll thank me, and ask to buy more. But right now, start small and convince yourself. Buy a hundred RCA at around forty-four for a starter. A little New York Central at one-thirty, and some General Motors at a hundred and forty-one." Listening to this money talk, watching those two anxious profiles, I knew they could have stepped onto a red-white-and-blue bus manned by a crew in clown suits without noticing it, and I glanced at the others, all looking back here anxious to be noticed, and shrugged.

At the beginning of the next block Oscar pulled to the curb again, and a boy and girl got on. Neither was more than 19, and they climbed the narrow stairs to the next deck holding hands--no easy trick. I followed, my fare collector ready, and on the top deck they sat way up front in the first seat. The girl's head found the boy's shoulder, his arm went around her, and I dropped the fare collector in my pocket. I didn't bother wondering why they'd showed no surprise about the bus they'd boarded; they were aware of only themselves, and I stood there envying them. It was wonderful up here under the summer stars, the air balmy, and I wished Jessie and I were up here as they were. A buzzer sounded, the bus swung to the curb, and I looked downstairs to see the two men, the older one still talking, step off and walk away into the night, and I went downstairs again to sit next to Jessie.

Half a dozen yards from the Washington Square arch, Oscar slowed and stopped at the curb. He'd lived in New York once, and he remembered; this was where the old buses always waited for a few minutes before swinging in a half circle to head north again. "We're some big surprise to the natives, aren't we?" Joe said sarcastically; he and the girl were sitting together now, up near the front of the bus.

She said irritably, "What's the matter with people, anyhow?"

"Well, what did you expect?" Alice Weeks said, across the aisle. "After all, this is New York. I once saw twenty-five elephants walking west on Fifty-seventh Street at three o'clock in the morning; absolutely silent, walking trunk to tail, on their way to Madison Square Garden where the circus began next day. And a guy on a street corner never stopped reading his paper. You can't surprise them; they don't believe what they see. They think we're advertising something."

"Or making a movie," Jessie said, smiling.

We sat waiting, not quite knowing why. Then, just as Oscar shifted gears and began pulling away, a man in a light summer suit came walking out from under the arch, saw the bus, ran for it, and I stood and walked up front; the conductor shouldn't be seen sitting next to a passenger. He hopped on, walked down the aisle, saw Jessie, and I was instantly sorry I'd stood.

Because he was a very handsome guy-- lean-faced, blue-eyed, wavy black hair-- and he stopped motionless, staring down at Jess. Then, slowly, not taking his eyes from that wonderful face, he sat down beside her, and something I've never before actually seen happened under my eyes. Jessie saw it, too; she turned and saw a man falling in love with her.

We've all heard love at first sight discussed; usually it's a debate about whether it's possible. But I think it happens all the time. A man and woman meet, and something often happens right then and there, for one or both of them. But usually weeks or months have to pass before they admit what it is. Meanwhile, that instantaneous burst of feeling is called most anything else. But the truth remains that people often fall in love in a single look; the only thing rare about it is people who recognize it.

Jessie did. She saw it in his face, but whether he knew it himself I don't know. I walked down the aisle and stood listening; I couldn't help it. His voice was low, meant only for Jessie, but I heard. With absolute simplicity he said, "Look, I don't know what to do. I'll never again see a girl like you as long as I live. I don't know what to say, but I can't just sit here and let you go. I've got to know your name and see you again, I've got to. You must know that?"

There was no mistaking the quiet passionate truth in his voice, and I hated to look Jessie full in the face for fear of what I'd see there, too. But I did, and I saw that she was pleased--not because he was handsome, I thought; she saw handsome men every day of her life--but because a response like his couldn't help but affect her or any other woman, I suppose. But she hadn't fallen in love with him; Jessie wasn't falling in love with anyone just now. She smiled-- pleasantly, sweetly; Jessie's a nice girl-- and actually reached out and patted his hand. "No," she said kindly. "I don't live here; I'll be gone in a day or so."

"But where--"

"No," she repeated, still nicely but with an edge of finality, and turned away from him.

He sat staring at her; his mouth opened to speak once or twice; then he suddenly swung away, standing up, and walked fast down the aisle to the back of the bus, and hopped off. I was staring after him, so was Jess, so were the others; they hadn't heard what had been said, they were too far front, but they knew something had happened. Out on the street, dwindling behind us, he stood on the asphalt paving of Fifth Avenue in the summer night staring after us. Then he turned abruptly to the curb, stepped up, and was gone.

We drove straight back to the garage; the young couple on the top deck was gone when I checked. In the garage we covered the old bus with the tarp, then walked back to the house and changed to our own clothes. Nobody had much to say; our little joke hadn't really worked out. I was going to offer to take Jessie to her hotel, but when I came out of the dressing room she was gone.

• • •

Work started at eight sharp the next morning, and Jessica's big scene was the first tiling Ernie Wyke had scheduled. Until noon we had the two blocks we'd asked for on lower Fifth Avenue; barricaded at both ends and at the side-street entrances, a cop at each barrier detouring traffic and keeping spectators at bay. We had the two blocks again in the afternoon from two until four, then we had to be finished and off the street for good. Out of camera range stood a generator truck, a sound truck, a motorized camera dolly, a motorized sound-boom dolly, a sprouting of reflectors on stands and other odds and ends of equipment, and a scattering of people of the unit standing around or sitting on the curb. Out in the street stood three period cars Al Berg had located here and rented, and our bus. All four motors were running, costumed drivers at the wheels, and inside the bus sat half a dozen men and women in Twenties costume, including Jessie in the light-blue outfit she'd worn the previous night.

Before he began filming, Ernie sent them through the scene. On a street corner just beyond the waiting cars and bus, an actor stood waiting for his cue; he was a friend of Ernie's, a middle-aged New York actor who was in a play here, and who had occasionally played small picture roles. This was the man, in the story, whom Jessie was in love with; a man very nearly three times her age. In the story he was important and frequently referred to, but he actually appeared only three times, each briefly, and it was really a small part. There'd been no need to bring anyone from Hollywood for it; any competent actor of his type and age could handle it, and I was seeing him now, waiting there on the corner, for the first time. My only criticism of him was that he looked like an actor: the plentiful crisp gray hair, at least part of which was probably an expensive hairpiece; the good but blurred profile; the not-too-portly figure, because he'd had to keep in reasonable shape to get work; the magnificent tailoring. He didn't look quite real.

Ernie said to him, "All right, Frank, let's go through it," and Frank began slowly pacing his street corner, glancing often at his watch. Ernie beckoned, and now the waiting automobiles drove past Frank one at a time, passing between him and the camera out in the middle of the street. The camera was centered on Frank, though it wasn't turning. A moment after the third car passed, the bus came along, drawing toward the curb, and it stopped at the street corner cutting Frank from view. Just behind the bus, and just out of the scene, the motorized camera dolly and sound-boom dolly had followed along. On the other side of the bus, just out of the previous shot, another camera was centered on Frank and the rear exit of the bus, and I knew Frank was standing there, a gentle smile on his face, offering a hand to Jessie as she stepped off the bus.

I walked around the two dollies to watch the rest of the scene. Frank was speaking a phrase of greeting, Jessie smiling tremulously in response, and the bus was moving on up Fifth, still in the scene as Frank took Jessie's arm and they began to walk ahead. Now the two dollies in the street began to follow, keeping abreast, the microphone on its boom suspended over their heads just out of camera range--and the cars and bus, out of the scene now, U-turned and came back; the sounds of their motors as they passed would be picked up as appropriate street noise.

I won't repeat the dialog' as they walked along those two blocks of Fifth Avenue, but the point of it was that Frank told Jessie he was not going to see her again, that he was too old for her. It went on longer than that, but that was the gist of his speech: He loved her and would never stop, but he was plainly too old for a young girl, it had to be recognized and he was doing so, even if she refused to face it.

Jessie argued with him, pleaded, and finally begged. But he could not be changed, and presently he left her, walking toward the side street just ahead, then turning the corner out of the scene. As he disappeared--and this was the big point of the scene, this was the scene, the climax--the camera turned full on Jessie's face, and her face had to show what she felt. This was tragedy, a truth to be accepted, as she knew, but the most sorrowful moment of her life. Jess had to show that. During the rest of the scene, her face filling the screen, she had to make the audience know it was true; that this young and beautiful girl genuinely loved this man so much that his leaving her life broke her heart.

And she showed nothing of the sort. With Ernie, 1 stood beside the camera watching her--and her hands rose as though to reach after him, her mouth opened as though to call, then her face assumed an expression of sorrow. And you didn't believe it, because neither did she. She couldn't show what she'd never felt herself.

Ernie said, "Fine, Jess, you're getting it. Let's try again." Frank came back around the corner, and Ernie took Jessie's arm and began to talk as we all walked back toward the beginning of the scene, trying to find a way to make her feel it.

It was the worst morning I ever went through; if I could have, I'd have just walked away, and kept on walking for a long time. I'd hoped Ernie would find the key for Jess, though I didn't think he would, and he couldn't. After a while he began filming; he had to get the scene in the can. If anything, Jessie got worse; trying the scene in a variety of ways, as an actor who isn't getting it will sometimes do, hoping to somehow get it on film by accident.

At 11 o'clock Ernie told her that any of several versions we'd filmed were great, and it was time to go ahead with the rest of the schedule. Then he went on to clean up several short takes, including the one of Jessie leaving her house, coming down the front steps pulling on her gloves. We picked up on those again at 2 o'clock, and were finished by 3:15. Ernie looked at his watch. "All right," he called, keeping his Voice calm, "as long as we have time, let's try the big scene once more. We'll take it from Jessie stepping off the bus."

Frank and Jessie walked to their street corner, the bus moving into position, and Ernie and I went along. This take, somehow, had to be at least acceptable; the others flatly would not do, and Ernie knew that. But he spoke quietly. He said, "Jess, Frank's an old-timer, he might have a thought for you while they're setting up." Then he left to give Frank a chance to say anything he could think of that might help. It was all Ernie had left to try; he'd said all he knew how to say, and by the time we shot this one last take, we'd have to pack up and clear the street.

Jessie looked at Frank. "Well?" she said sardonically: she knew as well as the rest of us how badly she was doing.

Frank wanted to help, but didn't know how, either. He quirked his mouth, annoyed at the situation, and said, "I don't know what to say," and for a reason I couldn't pin down, the words were familiar, and I saw Jessie's eyes widen as though she recognized them, too. For a moment she stared at Frank's face, then her eyes narrowed, studying it feature by feature, and I stepped over beside her and saw what she saw.

I have no explanation for this; I simply don't know how or why it happened. All I can say is that in a single instant of understanding I suddenly knew why a woman had stood with her dog at the curb the night before watching without interest as our bus drove past her. i knew why she wore a fringed knee-length dress and a felt hat like a helmet; and I understood why a young couple in their teens climbed to the upper outside deck of a Fifth Avenue bus as though they'd done it many times before. And that evening, in the New York Public Library, I proved by the flaking brown-edged back files of the Times what I already knew. Listed in the market quotations were the stocks the man in white had mentioned, and the prices he'd quoted were correct --not for today, but for June 15, 1926. In some way beyond explaining or understanding, the conditions for this were precisely right; and in our ancient two-decker bus with the 1926 plates, dressed as we were then, that is the time--that is the lost June night and Fifth Avenue-- that Oscar somehow drove into. And it was Frank, just outside Washington Square, who had stepped onto that bus and sat clown next to Jessie.

I knew it now, and so did Jess as she stared at Frank's face--slashed with lines now, no longer lean and tight to the bones, and 38 years older--but the same face past all doubt. She said, "Frank? Did you ever get on a bus like this"--she pointed to it at the curb beside them-- "late one night in 1926? And see a girl like me, dressed as I am now? And you sat down beside her, and fell in love at that moment?"

He smiled, and with an old-style actor's gallantry, said, "No, because if I had, how could I ever forget it?" and there was no memory at all in his eyes.

Ernie called out, Jessie stepped onto the bus platform, the cameras turned, and they moved through the scene once again. At the street corner, just as he had in so many other takes, Frank turned to leave, saying, "I'm going. I won't come back. But I'll never forget you. Remember that; I'll never forget." And as Jess stared after him, her hands rose like claws toward her open mouth, and that beautiful face suddenly distorted into a grimace of terrible forsaken loneliness, and genuine tears streaked down through her make-up in a look that--real as her feelings were, Jessie's an actress and never forgets the camera-- may damn well bring her next year's Oscar as best supporting actress.

It raised the hair on my neck, that long look after Frank, and for a moment I thought it was grief for the vanished young Frank who had once fallen in love with her. But it wasn't for him at all, and it wasn't grief. I think it was shock, I think it was fright. She was crying for herself because suddenly she understood that love will not wait. It cannot be postponed; it dies instead. She suddenly knew that she couldn't continue to deny it, and deny herself--fending love off till her career was established-- and then hope to find it and her capacity for it still patiently waiting. Jessie had had a glimpse of the future, her own future in which she stood forgotten by the man--whoever he might still be-- who could love her forever, given the chance.

She knew it then, standing before the turning camera, shocked at her own loneliness. And she knew it, the filming over, in the lounge of the Plaza having a drink with me. Because she said, "Are you going back by train, Jake?"

I said, "I don't know; why?"

"Because if you are, I'd like to go with you." And I knew that on the long leisurely trip back, whatever might have happened between us before and hadn't been allowed to, was going to have its chance.