Chariot of Fire

It Was a blooded stallion, but of metal and glass; gleaming and grave like a stallion; haughty as one; poised with dormant power and ready to spring into speed at a touch.

Its wood was South African burled walnut, its leather, that used in the finest gloves. It was convertible, and contained a small bar, a stereophonic radio, a dictation machine and a telephone--but only one, because its owner, Robin Craig, was anxious to avoid ostentation. "As to color," the Rolls-Royce representative had murmured when Robin had first presented his specifications, "what is your preference, Mr. Craig?"

Robin knew exactly what he wanted, for he had dreamed of such a car for too many years. What he wanted may have seemed slightly suspect to some, but Robin didn't mind: having seen to it that the whole of Hollywood thought of him as the busiest swinger in town, he could afford to be a little gay in his choice of shoes, of trousers, of haircuts and of car colors. So "Lavender," he said. "To match my eyes." His eyes were indeed that rare hue, a gift, via a Mendelian detour, from a great-aunt. Rolls-Royce representatives are trained to accept outré demands, and a representative in Beverly Hills must, early in his career, be thrice-immune to them. So this representative, nodding, making a neat notation on a pad, said evenly, "Lavender. Yes, Mr. Craig."

When, on a Saturday, they phoned to tell him it was ready, he left his old car, a Lincoln Continental, at his Bel Air home, and took a cab into Beverly Hills to pick up the Rolls-Royce. The beauty of it thrilled him, pumped blood into his face, contracted his stomach lining, congested his throat, made him feel the way he'd felt the first time he ever saw a girl with all her clothes off. He filled out the papers in a daze, not seeing them, not hearing the routine questions, saying nothing when the Rolls-Royce man, presenting him with the keys, said, "Thank you, Mr. Craig."

He drove the purring creature, top down, all over the Beverly Hills shopping area, honking and waving whenever he spotted a friend strolling in or out of Blum's, or Frascati's, or Martindale's Book Store, or the little shop that, quite without guile, called itself Carl Jung, Accessories; he dropped in on his agent and bullied the poor protesting man into taking a spin with him; he regaled his wife, his kids and several cronies from his car phone and placed a long-distance call to his mother in the Bronx; then, unknowingly winding tight the spring of fate's infernal machine, he headed for the Laurel Canyon home of Sandra Cayden. Maybe, he told himself, maybe with this car I'll finally be able to make it with Sandy.

Sandy, at that precise moment, was making it with Rudy. They made it very well, and were quite pleased with what they had made when it was done. "Whew," Rudy was saying. "That takes the stuffing out of a chap."

"Who needs a stuffy chap?" drawled Sandy, affectionately.

"Which reminds me, love. Have you been seeing Rob Craig?"

"Light me a cigarette, Rudy? No, not really. Lunch once or twice in the commissary."

"Do you like him, then?"

"Oh, he's sweet, I suppose, but kind of gauche and dumb. Besides, he's been married to the same woman since I was eight years old. And three kids yet."

"That wouldn't stop him, you know. And it wouldn't stop you."

Coyly: "Is it your business?"

He grabbed her indecently, roughly, in a gesture half truly possessive and half a jocular parody of possessiveness.

"You know ruddy well it's my business, you little parcel." She screamed in mock terror, giggled, became excited, and began to work those sweet arts designed to put the stuffing back into him; after which, she proceeded to take it out of him again, such being the cycle and droll paradox of love.

Sandra Cayden was a tough, sharp, lovely little piece of 18. She was as bright as chromium, which does not necessarily mean she was as hard or as cold as chromium. She was that perky, chirping bit of golden fluff so aptly called a chick in the going argot. A chick she was indeed, so soft, so small, so irresistible, so drowsy and blinking from the cozy humid warmth of the recent egg, so unerringly knowledgeable about where and where not, when and when not to peck for sustenance, to snuggle for shelter. She also knew, intuitively and unchicklike, precisely the right occasions when rebellion would net her more profit (in respect, image and social altitude) than conformity. Such rebellion might take the form of--temporarily, at least--avoiding the bed of the famous star Robin Craig in favor of that of the less influential (but more chic) young Rudy, who was only the associate producer on the film in which she and Robin were costarring. Her body was a molded pink pudding and showed to optimum advantage in a bikini--a compact arousement of hard little breasts, deep-dish navel, rounded belly, jutting fanny, perfectly graduated legs, enchantingly feminine feet. From toe-tip to topknot she was a menu of rich desserts, a magnet for hands and mouths.

Thoroughly stuffingless now, Rudy was lying on his side, idly gawking out between the slats of her louvered bedroom window. "Who do you know owns a Rolls?" he asked suddenly.

"Let's see, there's--"

"Who do you know owns a lavender convertible Rolls?"

"Lavender? Convertible? Nobody."

"Then Nobody just pulled into your driveway."

"Probably turning around."

"No, he's getting out. Christ, it's Rob."

"Rob Craig?"

"Speak of the devil."

"Oh, hell. Did you park at least a block away, like I told you?"

"My unassuming little Lark is well hidden, yes. But he'll see your car and know you're at home."

"Did you see my car when you came in?"

"Well, no..."

"My unassuming little Jaguar is having its thousand-mile checkup."

"Then..."

"Then, Rudy darling, we just lie here and hold our breaths until he goes away."

The door chime made its velvety sound, once, twice. They said not a word. At length, Rudy announced, "There he goes."

"Shove over a minute--I want to get a look at that Rolls." She rose nudely on all fours and squinted through the slats. "Crazy," she said. "I dig that grillwork."

He gently slapped her poised rump. "I dig this grillwork," he said. "The other I can do without."

"You don't like it, really?"

"It's so English."

"But you're English."

"Giving me the right to hate what's wrong with England's green and pleasant land. It's all summed up in that grillwork backing out of your driveway right now. That stiffness, that status quo, that 'We will never change' attitude, the whole bloody awful Establishment." He looked over her shoulder at the retreating Rolls-Royce. "I'll give him time to get away, then I must toddle." He began to dress.

Rudy Smith came of what used to be called Old Family, his full name being Leander Creighton Rudolph-Smith, Jr. He was clever, good-looking, young, educated within an inch of his life, had taste, and liked to think of himself as a Survivor. He had survived his family's loss of fortune by getting into the motion-picture business, largely through show-business friends met on the Côte d'Azur when he was yet a child and his family was still affluent. He could be, and usually was, quite charming, and he had many small but cozy accomplishments: he told a good story, was an easeful dancer, a skillful parlor mimic, passably played bridge, gin rummy, guitar, and spoke French, Italian and German fluently, English less well.

"See you tomorrow?" asked Sandy.

"No, more's the pity. I have one of those damned Sunday discussions with Burnham and that lot at his Malibu place. It'll start with brunch, then drag on through cocktails, dinner, and probably he's laid on a private screening of some rot, and by that time I won't be good for anything. Not to mention the long drive back."

"Then I'll see you Monday."

"Oh, absolutely. You have an eight-thirty call Monday morning, remember? For hair?"

Damn these costume pictures."

He pulled on his trousers. "Get to bed early tomorrow, old love." He pulled on his socks. "Alone."

"And if I don't?"

He tugged at the toes of her left foot, one by one, emphasizing the five syllables of "I, will, break, your, neck." The final tug, on the big toe, made her yell "Ouch!"

As he took his leave, she stood behind the door, to mask her nudity, with only her head showing. "You've probably wrecked my toe," she pouted. "It'll be all your fault if I develop a limp and hold up production."

"Couldn't care less. It's not my money. I'm on a salary, so the longer the better."

"And look what you did to my shoulder. See that red mark?"

He kissed it. "Krasnaya," he said. "In Russian that means both 'red' and 'beautiful.'"

"I don't believe it. What if they want to say 'The beautiful blue sky'? They have to say 'The red blue sky'?"

"Don't ask me. Ask Clay Horne. That's who I got it from." He cantered lithely away and she shut the door.

• • •

Clayton Horne had unearthed the dubious krasnaya tidbit while researching the screenplay he had written for Robin Craig and Sandra Cayden. It was a historical fudge titled The Invader of Moscow, cadged from Pushkin, and was being filmed in the new process, CinAmaze (wider and taller than Cinerama). Outdistancing Cleopatra, Lawrence of Arabia, El Cid and other hard-ticket road-show spectacles, it was planned as a three-parter, with two intermissions, (continued on page 110)Chariot Of Fire(continued from page 104) "like a regular play, only longer." Horne had not counted on quite that much size when he first tapped out the original three-page outline one idle afternoon and dropped it on his agent's desk. But the agent, sniffing money, had promptly registered the title, multilithed a couple of dozen copies, and clobbered the town's most epic-happy producers until one of them, Ira Burnham, biting, had hired Horne, at a considerable weekly stipend, to work up a Treatment, a First Draft, a Second Draft, a Polish, a Temporary Complete and a Final Shooting Script. This was known as "licking the story," a phrase which aptly though unconsciously synthesized the suspicious, hostile attitude toward that archenemy, the script. Each of the parts would be 90 minutes in length, the whole to last four and a half hours, not counting the two intermissions. It was budgeted at $12,000,000, but the smart boys said they'd be lucky if they brought it in under $30,000,000.

The more spectacular exteriors of battle and beleaguerment had already been filmed on location in Peru, and now the company was back in Hollywood to shoot the interiors at the studio and the less sweeping exteriors on the studio's hill-flanked ranch in the Valley. Sandra Cayden had not journeyed to Peru; the scenes between her and Robin, being "intimate," did not require the Peruvian vistas as backdrops. Sandra had, in fact, met Robin for the first time only a week before, when the studio shooting had begun.

Monday morning, Robin in his Rolls sailed through the studio gate, on his way to the sound stage, in a lavender mist of ego, waving and smiling. His simple bumpkin joy was contagious, irresistible; the guards affectionately waved and smiled back.

In a comparatively quiet corner of Stage 12, the hairdresser was putting the final touches to Sandy's sculpted coiffure. She was already in costume; her bosom, creamy and cloven, was taped high inside the low-cut period bodice. Rudy stood next to her, engaged in easy conversation. Robin joined them. "Drove by your place yesterday," he said to Sandy, "but you weren't home. Wanted to show you the new heap. Hi, Rudy."

"Hi, Rob."

"New heap?" Sandy asked with elaborate innocence.

"Oh, you've got to see it. Come on outside. You, too, Rudy..."

"No time, Rob. You've got exactly fifteen minutes to get into make-up, wig and costume."

"I can do it in ten. Come on, don't be such an associate producer." And outside they went to admire the pastel Rolls. A small crowd of grips, juicers and bit players had already gathered around it. The atmosphere was quiet, worshipful, with only an occasional low whistle or moan of adoration. When Robin spoke, his voice was cathedral soft: "It's like riding on cotton candy." Then, seductively: "One short spin around the lot. How about it?"

Sandy began to soften, but Rudy said, "Seriously, Rob--we don't have the time."

Robin Craig smiled casually into Rudy's eyes, saying, "You'll make the time, old buddy, won't you." It was not a question.

Rudy turned on his heel and strode away. Robin Craig, with a courtly bow, escorted Sandy into the dazzling car.

While Rudy waited for them to return, he wandered onto the adjoining sound stage, 14 (superstition forbade a Stage 13). There, the day's shooting would soon commence on A-Ok, a musical exploitation quickie starring the recording favorite Tommy Rondo. The winning combination of the popular singer and an up-to-date space-age story in which he played a young singing astronaut was considered a box-office natural. Rondo, clad in opalescent space gear no more fantastic than his usual garb, was pacing with corrugated brow while a dialog coach trudged patiently beside him, script in hand.

"Can I carry your books, Vera Mae?" said Tommy Rondo. "Can I carry your books, Vera Mae? Can I carry your books, Vera Mae? Can I carry your books, Vera Mae? Can-I-carry-your-books-Vera-Mae?"

"Tommy," said the dialog coach with deep gentleness, "it's more like, just: Can I carry your books, Vera Mae? Simply. No stress. Try it once again, all right?"

God in His mercy, giving us a fighting chance, has written in glaring colors, Danger! Contains Highly Concentrated Evil! Poisonous! Inflammable! Corrosive! on the labels of His viler spawnings; but we have made ourselves colorblind, for it has become de rigueur to ignore those signs. We foolishly have taught ourselves to look past exteriors, to exercise "intelligence" and magnanimously disregard ugliness so deep that even our withered, atrophied instincts sometimes (but too seldom) rise and weakly bristle, as they were intended to bristle, at the sight of the shark's metal face, the tarantula's crouch, the vulture's hunched stance, the insane aspect of the bat, the ignoble scrounginess of the jackal. It was by dint of this fashionable blindness that Tommy Rondo was able to walk the earth unhindered, unchallenged, even trusted. More than trusted: idolized, adulated, deemed enticing. He was fortunate to have been born in such an age and have slavering approval wash over him in brackish waves, for in other, more instinctual times he might have been caged and pilloried on the basis of his looks alone.

"Can I carry your books, Vera Mae?"

"That's it, Tommy! You've got it! Now one more time, and not quite so heavy on the 'books'..."

"Cool it, man, I've had it," said Tommy Rondo, leaving the dialog coach and walking over to a girl who had been unobtrusively waiting for him to finish. Mark well that "unobtrusively," for Rudy did; the beautiful girlfriends of Hollywood stars, when they waited for their beaux, customarily did so with calculated and unabashed obtrusiveness; but this one wore her beauty comfortably, as if it were an old trench coat. She struck Rudy as being vaguely familiar, yet she was not an actress, nor had he ever met her. Outside, he could hear Robin and Sandy returning. Robin was saying, "Laura Benedict has the same thing in gold, but I think gold is vulgar, don't you?" Rudy hurried back to Stage 12 and hustled Robin into costume.

The actors finished relatively early that day--5:30--but Rudy was obliged to stay behind to hear one of the monologs which his producer, Ira Burnham, called discussions. "...Some of the Peru footage, have you seen it, Rudy? Bad. Sun in the camera. That long shot of the run away coach rolling down the hill and smashing into the tree, it's a mess, you can't see a thing, what kind of camera work is that, this is what we're paying him a fortune for, to get the sun in our eyes? Terrible stuff. Got any ideas?"

"Leave everything to me, Burnie..."

It was seven before Rudy left the studio, driving straight for Sandy's place.

Arriving there, he pulled up short, surprised to see a strange car in her driveway. No, not strange--his mind rushed in to it like a zoom lens and recognized it for the lavender Rolls. Surprise giving way to jaw-clenched anger, Rudy spun the wheel and screeched away from the scene, which was indeed revolting, consisting as it did of the Rolls and Sandy's Jaguar parked cozily side by side. From inside the house floated music and a spray of laughter, but Rudy, accelerating recklessly, was already too far away to hear these inflammatory sounds.

His first act, upon returning to his bachelor apartment above the Strip, was to pour and drink a stiff serving of Scotch. His second act was to pour and drink another. His third act was to kick a hassock all the way across the living room, yelling, "Lavender, sweet ruddy Jesus!" His fourth act was to phone a young professional lady he knew of and invite her over, an invitation which she accepted. In the fifth act, he was almost a nonparticipant, his guest taking the (continued on page 216)Chariot Of Fire(continued from page 110) lead--quickly and deftly like the crafts woman she was--as per his curt instructions. She left scant minutes after arriving.

By morning, Rudy was his cordial self again. He bestowed cheery greetings upon all. Between takes, he approached Sandy and said he thought he might drop around that evening. Too brightly, she said, "Fine, darling, do that. Oh: but call first, will you? Just in case I have to go out?"

He did call. "It's me, dear, I'm on my way."

"Oh...well... I'm feeling rotten, I'm afraid. I have this awful headache, and my tummy's all upset..."

"That's a pity. I'll read to you, or we'll watch the telly."

"Oh, that's real sweet of you, but please don't bother..."

"No bother. That's what friends are for."

"I'd rather you didn't..."

"Nonsense, it'll cheer you up."

"I look dreadful, and my hair's a mess..."

"Darling, this is Rudy, who's seen you in the morning with a hangover! You're being silly."

"Please, Rudy!"

"Oh, very well, I won't insist." Then lightly, he added: "Do you have someone there?"

"What? No!"

"All right, old love, don't get in a sweat. I'll see you in the morning--if you're feeling better. Bye-bye."

He hung up and dialed the Craigs' private number. It was answered by Kate Carver, Robin's actress wife and the mother of two of his three children. "Hello, Kate, Rudy here. Is Robin about?" She said he was dining out with his agent. "Oh, well, it's nothing urgent, really--just wanted to remind him of his early call in the morning..."

Then he dialed Sandy again, and expertly mimicked the gross tones of Robin's manager. "Lemme talk to Raab. It's impawtint."

Sandy said, "Just a minute," and he heard her call "Rob?..." He hung up.

He stood at the phone for a long moment, staring at it. His mouth hardened. Nasty little half-formed schemes skittered across his mind. Like apprising Kate of Robin's true whereabouts. As he began to dial the Craigs' number again, he wondered what precisely he should say. The dial whirred and snicketed; generations of gentlemanly codes buffeted him with qualms; the Craig phone began to ring...

The qualms alone did not change his mind, but something more cynical did. He sensed that Kate was undeceived by Robin's ingenuous ruse about dining with his agent; it was a little face-saving game they played to keep the home intact, a game called I'll Pretend I Don't Know If You'll Pretend You Don't Know I Know. Kate knew exactly what her husband was doing; she just didn't know who he was doing it with--although she probably suspected even that. In the first year of their marriage, Robin had returned home late one night, wilted by remorse. He woke up Kate and contritely confessed all. She sat up in bed, listened patiently, lit a cigarette and slapped him a powerful whack in the face. "You idiot," she said. "Don't ever tell me that sort of thing again. If I don't know about it, I don't have to react to it. But if you spill your guts to me, then I have no choice, I have to react, I have to play the injured wife with all the trimmings--tears, hysteria, recriminations. That may be what you want, but it's not what I want, and I'm not going to give it to you. So the next time you trot after the biggest pair of bra cups on the lot, please have the common decency to lie to me. You're an actor, aren't you? Act!"

Rudy, aware of this agreement between the Craigs, hung up before Kate had a chance to answer the phone. He felt sapped, stymied, impotent, and he slept badly that night.

• • •

Exactly when the lavender Rolls-Royce became Rudy's bête noire is difficult to pin down. He saw it with increasing frequency in Sandy's driveway, a blatant bulletin to all the world, and, every time, his heart was pierced by remembrance of the humiliating parking ritual he had been forced to go through ("Did you park at least a block away, like I told you?"). He began to see the lavender car in the parking lots of Sandy's favorite restaurants, too, and it became a hateful thing to him, its beauty transformed into ugliness by the corrosive alchemy of jealousy and sexual defeat. He grew to detest more than ever the distinctive grillwork of the Rolls, any Rolls, and the sight of it, even in a magazine photograph, made the bile first trickle, then flow, then gush through him.

On the set, tension began to crackle, causing actors to garble lines, grips to drop props, placid make-up men to suddenly curse and stomp off. Stage 12 came to be known as Retake Row. And yet not one overt word of argument or contention had been spoken among Rudy, Robin and Sandy. All their congress had been frosted courtesy, with rigid smiles pasted upon their faces like gummed stickers.

One day, when the picture, marred and bloated, started to drift toward the reefs of Overschedule, Ira Burnham took Rudy aside at the lunch break for a discussion. The discussion circled (lazily but inexorably, like a carrion bird) over the topic of teamwork."...You're on a team, Rudy, I know you understand that, with your English background, cricket, the playing fields of Eton, and I know that when in doubt, you'll always remember it's the team that comes first, the team being in this case the picture. The picture comes first. Nothing else. Personal feelings? They're fine, so long as they don't disturb the harmony of the company. Harmony, Rudy, that's the key word. Any time a personal feeling starts to enter in, you'll ask yourself: Is it good for the harmony of the team? Or is it bad. Will the picture be untouched by this? Or will it suffer. And sometimes, you know, Rudy, sometimes we have to--and this goes for all of us--sometimes we have to sacrifice something, make a little personal sacrifice, do an unselfish thing, for the good of the team, to preserve that harmony..."

The voice went on, but Rudy no longer felt obliged to listen, for he knew exactly what it was saying. It was saying, in the silkiest, most righteous euphemisms, "It's our job to keep Robin happy. If he wants a cup of coffee, we get it for him. If he wants a smoke, we light it for him. If he wants our girl, we do everything but shove it in for him."

Pleading hunger, Rudy was able to leave Burnham in mid-discussion, but he did not go directly to the commissary. First, he stopped off at Stage 14. The red light was on, forbidding entrance temporarily, but it soon winked off, indicating the end of the take, and Rudy slipped inside.

Tommy Rondo was saying to his director, "I loused up the lip sync on the last chorus, Herbie. Let's shoot that hunk again."

"It looked fine to me, Tommy."

"Again, all right?"

"Again, everybody, last chorus, this is a take..."

The buzzer rasped, the red light went on, and from a loudspeaker came the prerecorded singing voice of Tommy Rondo. Bathed in light, the real Tommy Rondo ground his hips like a stripper and silently mouthed the words of the title song:

Ay oh kay!

Ay oh kay!

Shoot me inta awbit, baby,

Right away!

Don't delay!

Tuhday's the day!

We'll blast off tuhgetha cuz we're

Ay oh kay!

Rudy noticed the girl again. She sat relaxed in a canvas chair, oblivious to the din around her, spectacles on her nose, reading a book. The question nagged him: where had he seen her before?

The take was completed to everybody's satisfaction, and the lunch break was called. Rudy overhead Tommy Rondo tell the girl that he couldn't take her to lunch after all, he had to huddle with his press agent, would she mind lunching alone in the commissary? Shrugging, she left the sound stage. Rudy, on the way to the commissary himself, strolled a few paces behind her, admiring the casual grace of her walk. They traveled a quaintly twisting path, a nursery-rhyme path, gliding past shadowed bungalows that seemed to be made of pound cake. Then her patrician fingers lost their grip on the book, and it fell, with a little clop, onto the path. Diving for it, Rudy swept it up with a single swoop. Their eyes met and locked. With the sweetest of smiles and only a flicker of satire, Rudy said, "Can I carry your book, Vera Mae?"

She laughed aloud. In this appreciation of his little jest, a bond instantly coupled them, leaping from one to the other like an electric arc. "Thanks," she said.

The book, he saw, was Clayton Horne's latest. "Are you enjoying this?" he asked.

"Well, it's pretty slick in parts, but, yes, I am. I like it."

"Sometime I must introduce you to the author."

"You know him?"

"We're both on the same picture..."

Information was swapped, including names. When Rudy learned hers, he snapped his fingers. "Mavis McClure. Of course. No wonder you looked so familiar. You're the model--the one on all the billboards."

"Not quite all."

They were approaching the commissary. "Will Mr. Rondo mind awfully if I invite you to lunch?"

"Mr. Rondo doesn't have the right to mind awfully."

And so they lunched; and, later, dined; and from this first glinting contact sprang a loveship of such bright, such cleansing ray, that both partners were transformed into new creatures carrying only patchy resemblances to what they had been before. The lissome coolth that had been Mavis' distinguishing stamp was burned away by a withering, humid, happy lust, while Rudy's brittle flippancy dissolved in the rich and softening balm of deep serenity.

They would have lunched together every day, but Mavis preferred to avoid the studio because of Tommy Rondo. So they dined together every evening, and slept together every night, and went to movies together, and museums together, and markets together, and on weekends they went to the beach, or boating, or up to the mountains to ski. During the week, Rudy's job decreed they make love only at night, but on Saturdays and Sundays their hearts knew no clock, and they made love in the morning, in the afternoon, in the early evening just before dinner, and in the wee hours, cleaving suddenly together out of sleep; in his bed, in hers, in hotels and motels, in the back of the car, and once on a deserted beach at night, in the pitch dark, on the cold damp sand, against a drifted log, with the noisy vast black ocean at their heels and all the eyes of heaven staring.

It was not only they who had changed; the world around them was freshly made--the color of air, the odor of grass, the slope of a hill, the shape of a building, bird song, sunshine, moonlight. "My God, it's absolutely marvelous," he said to her with amazement. "All the clichés and all the songs. You suddenly discover all the trite old bloody things are true. Love makes the world go round. Love, your magic spell is everywhere. I've got you under my skin, I've got you deep in the heart of me, so deep in my heart you're really a part of me. One alone to be my own. Everything's coming up roses. And the bit about the heart standing still and the other bit about the heart taking wing. It did stand still when we met, by Christ, and it does take wing when I'm with you. Isn't there something about ain't love grand? Oh, it is that. Grand. Grand and glorious. Clichés again, but who the hell cares? Do you know how I feel? Like Cyrano, when he first learns that Roxane loves him. Remember? He says he feels too great to do battle with ordinary men, and he cries, 'Bring me giants!'"

"This singer chap," Rudy asked one day, "Tommy Rondo. I'm curious. What did you see in him? He's not your sort, really."

"I could say the same of Sandy Cayden."

"Ah, but at least Sandy is pretty and rather sweet. You can't tell me Rondo is either of those. He's a cold, slimy creature, a fish, that little South American one with all the teeth. You certainly can't say he has any charm, or tenderness, or even brute strength. He's just a nasty little boy."

"You're forgetting one thing about nasty little boys."

"What's that?"

"They usually get what they want."

"And Rondo wanted you."

"Yes."

"There it is, you see!" Rudy crowed triumphantly. "I wanted you, too, and I got you! So what price nasty little boys now?"

Mussing his hair, she cooed, "What makes you so sure you're not a nasty little boy? In your own cultivated, teddibly English way?"

He laughed; and, in lieu of answer, hungrily embraced her. In his mind, while they kissed, an unvoiced reply was forming:

I'll tell you. It's because I can be changed by love. Because I don't hammer love into a shape that suits me. I let love do the shaping. I let it mold me. I let it make me what it will, make me over into a different person, if that's what it wants...

• • •

Rudy first suspected he was a different person when he noticed himself feeling not much of anything one way or the other when Kate Carver started divorce proceedings against Robin Craig and the grapevine began hinting at imminent marriage between Craig and Sandy Cayden. He greeted the news with a bless-you-my-children and a tolerant shrug. But the full realization of the change he had undergone struck him forcibly when, one day on the lot, he found he could look at the lavender Rolls-Royce with complete detachment. It meant nothing to him. He did not hate it anymore. I'm cured, he told himself, it's over! With almost a giggle, he walked to the car and gave it a friendly pat on the grillwork.

Magically, as if by that touch of flesh to metal, Rudy was charged with energy and purpose. He felt himself expand, grow, open up. From that moment, his work improved. Ira Burnham watched, pleased and surprised, as Rudy, with bracing brio, began to pull the sagging, overschedule picture together almost singlehanded. Burnham nodded and flattered himself that his discussion had turned the trick. "Teamwork," he smiled, "harmony."

Love does not conquer all. It makes room for all. It shatters time and then rebuilds it, packing every hour with a hundred minutes, every week with at least a dozen days. Under its warmth, ideas proliferate, explode like popcorn; and clogged incentives flow. Rudy, thawing, reaching out, cornered Clayton Horne on the lot. "Clay, what do you feel about Invader of Moscow? How would you describe it?"

"Why, a great story of a titanic man, an epic for all time, a stirring super-drama of--"

"No. Seriously."

"Seriously? Three hundred and seventy-five pages of rodomontade and fustian. The survival of the fattest. A gigantic comic book. You want I should go on?"

"Look, old boy. Why not write a great picture? Eh? Why not?"

"Nobody's asked me."

"I'm asking you. The two of us, on weekends, working together, a sharp, simple script, small screen, black and white. I have connections with all sorts of moneyed people. And we wouldn't need all that much, you see. Two hundred thousand. Think of it this way--a low-calorie diet, an exercise to trim the fustian from your talent, get it back to its old lean strength. Not a comic book. A novel on film..."

"Rudy."

"Yes?"

"You sound just like one of Ira's discussions."

They began to meet on weekends at Rudy's apartment. While they paced, and argued, and talked about story and character and angle and premise, Mavis would sit quietly in the background, reading a book, sunning herself outside on Rudy's minuscule patio, or applying frosted coral polish to the nails of her fingers and toes. Sometimes, she would make lunch for them. Sometimes, she would remain in the bathroom, luxuriating in a warm tub, the water viscous with scented oils, the door ajar just enough to let her hear the shoptalk in the other room. In these talks, Horne was the devil's advocate, acid-testing all ideas, now with a cynical cash-register clang, now with the voice of artistic purity: "Oh, wow, Rudy, an old-time tragic ending? It's too downbeat, a real hangup, who needs it?" Then: "Sunshine and roses! Can't do it! Too cornball, Rudy, too pat, too upbeat!"

The California seasons imperceptibly changed, and their little story took shape, while, weekdays, their larger project lumbered in the general direction of its conclusion. Mavis had begun absenting herself from their weekend sessions, and, one Saturday evening, as dinnertime loomed, Rudy asked Horne if he would mind, on his way home, dropping him off at Mavis' place. "I let her take the car, you see, to go shopping. It's right on your way, not far from here actually, on La Cienega just off Sunset, practically at the top of that hill."

"Sure, Rudy, hop in."

As Horne drove east on the Sunset Strip, Rudy chattered: "I have such good feelings about this story of ours, Clay. I know it's going to have tremendous prestige. It will do such a lot for both of us. I've been thinking, do you suppose it would be too brazen of me to try and direct it? I mean, there's an awful lot of bosh talked about directing, it's not all that difficult; God knows I've seen enough films directed, by the best of them and the worst..."

"Turn here at La Cienega?"

"Yes, that's right. Her place is almost at the top of the hill here... yes, there's my car parked in front, see?... I'll just get out here...well, I'll be damned, there's that bloody lavender Rolls parked right next to it...small world, what?...You know I used to hate that car? Actually. But now I look at it and there's no feeling, nothing. I wonder who Rob is visiting around here?"

"Rob?"

"Rob Craig. It's his car, after all."

"Not anymore it isn't. Don't you read the trades?"

"What do you mean?"

"Sandy made him get rid of it."

"Not really! But she likes the damned thing! She 'digs that crazy grillwork.'"

"She gave out an interview saying that it symbolized everything that was wrong with England. The status quo, the Establishment, all that stuff."

Rudy guffawed. "Priceless! That's priceless!"

"What's so funny?"

"Never mind, tell you tomorrow. Oh dear, that's good. So she made him get rid of it, did she? Marvelous. Who bought it, do you happen to know?"

"Some unlikely type. Fabian or somebody. No. Tommy Rondo."

Rudy had been halfway out of the car. Now he froze--and then lunged inside again, almost pouncing on Horne. Viciously, he said, "Is that your idea of a joke?"

"Joke! No! What the hell's wrong with you!"

"You're sure about that, are you? You started to say Fabian. Are you sure it wasn't? Or Frankie Avalon, Bobby Darin?"

"What does it matter?"

"It matters."

"Rudy. Jesus. Don't jump on me like that. It's not my car. In Daily Variety, just yesterday morning, Army Archerd's column, it said Rob sold his famous lavender convertible Rolls-Royce to Tommy Rondo. So?"

Rudy collapsed against the back of the seat. "I'm sorry, Clay. It's that car. That damned car..."

"Aren't you getting out?"

After a moment, Rudy replied, "Why? Where would I go?"

"Mavis," Horne said patiently, "is expecting you."

"Oh, is she."

"Rudy, are you feeling all right?"

"Expecting me. That's true, she is. It's me she's expecting." Rudy opened the door and climbed out.

"Rudy? You all right? You sure?"

He watched Rudy walk directly to the front door of Mavis' building, slowing down as he neared the Rolls-Royce, looking at it, drinking it in as if to memorize every line and iridescence of it. Horne waited until Rudy disappeared inside the building before he started the car again and descended the La Cienega hill.

Standing outside Mavis' flat, Rudy could hear the phonograph playing: Ay oh kay! Ay oh kay!

And again do I endure this? he asked himself. Do I go home, as I did before, and get drunk, and hire a specialist to come and siphon the rage out of me? Do I smile tomorrow morning? Do I phone Mavis and listen to excuses about headaches? Do I pretend nothing is happening? Am I a courteous, polite, civilized, restrained, refined, bloody little English gentleman?

No. Not this time.

He yanked open the door. The music was deafening. Mavis was sitting in a chair, nervously smoking a cigarette. Tommy Rondo was putting on a performance for her, doing the twist and mouthing the recorded words exactly as if he were in front of the camera.

Mavis, looking up, said something like "Oh, Rudy. Tommy just dropped in to bring me his new record. I told him I was ex--" But the music drowned out most of this, and, besides, Rudy was not listening. He was focused on Tommy Rondo.

"Get out."

"Wah?"

"Get out, you little swine."

"Now, hold awn..."

"Rudy! Please! Tommy just--"

"Get out or I'll--"

Tommy Rondo ripped the tone arm off the record. The silence pounded upon them. "Or you'll what, limey?"

"Or I'll break your ugly nose for you."

"Rudy!"

"No you won't. You won't break nobody's nose, limey. An' you know why? Because you know damn well that if you did, you'd get your ass deported outa here so fast ... Just remember that. You're a foreigner. A alien. You can't touch me. You can't lay a pinkie on me."

(The little cockroach is right. I can't.)

"And," Rondo went on, "as for gettin' outa here, well, Mavis is an ole frien' of mine and I'll just visit with her any time I want."

Rudy turned to Mavis. "We have a dinner date. Are you coming?"

"Rudy darling, please don't be like this. Tommy just dropped in. That's all. It doesn't mean anything. Please sit down. And have a drink. Then we'll go."

"Very well. But first you tell him to leave."

She lost patience and flared. "You're being ridiculous, Rudy! You're being boorish and embarrassing and ridiculous and I won't tell Tommy to leave."

"As you wish." He walked to the door.

"Rudy. Come back."

"Leddim go, whaddaya need him for? He's not in my league. You hear that, limey? You're not in my league."

Rudy turned and walked back into the room. He faced Tommy Rondo. He was frighteningly calm. He spoke slowly. "You're right, I'm not in your league. We're different, you and I. May I tell you something? When I was in the army, it was the English army, you see, I had a rather marvelous sergeant major. He was Irish. And whenever he ran across a recruit who was absolutely hopeless, a bumbling, half-human, incompetent idiot, he went up to that poor sod, and he looked him straight in the eye--like this--and he said..." (Rudy slipped into a rich brogue) "...'You were neither bahrn nor creaythed. Someone had a bash against a wall, and the sun hatched you out.'"

As Rudy walked to the door again, he snapped crisply to Mavis: "The car keys." She dug them out of her purse and gave them to him.

"Rudy, please listen--"

"You know where to find me, when the--concert--is over." He decided not to slam the door.

Outside, in the street, seeing his own yellow Lark next to the Rolls-Royce in the slanted platoon of head-in parking along the curb, the difference in status hit him cruelly. And he was not the only one. "Hey, limey!" As he was getting into his car, he heard the yell and he turned to see Tommy Rondo leaning out of Mavis'window. "That your car, that little yella baby? Well, take a look at mine, take a good look. That baby belongs to a star. Not a loser like you. Remember what I said, limey--you're not in my league. Not in my league!"

It took every last atom of Rudy's will power to back out and drive off without ramming one of the arrogant lavender fenders into accordion pleats.

He had no sooner entered his apartment than his phone emitted a single clear ping, like a fine crystal goblet being struck by a butter knife. It had that odd habit of thus clearing its throat a couple of seconds before getting down to some serious ringing. Sure enough, after a short silence, it began to ring. His first impulse, galvanic, was to answer it; then he checked himself. No--he would not speak to her. Let her come to him; he would not allow her to smooth things over on the phone while Rondo sat sniggering beside her, stroking her neck or committing God knew what other abominations. The telephone rang and rang. He thought it would explode; he felt that the jabbing peals of ringing would pile up and join into a single uninterrupted crescendo of a ring that would grow and grow as the trembling telephone swelled to a shapeless black blob and finally burst.

When he could stand it no more, when he was ready to rip the phone out of the wall, it stopped ringing. He waited a moment, then called his answering service."I'm taking no more calls tonight. None whatever." Mechanically, he phoned the Gaiety Delicatessen for some food, and when it came, he ate it without tasting it.

At length, he went to bed. He could not sleep. He wept in frustration and anger. Hours later, he drifted into a kind of deadness. But the old hate, not dead, but merely dormant, was awakened, and it was all the more potent for its short fallow period. It flourished like an acrid weed in Rudy's mind, killing all other thoughts, even in his dreams. The Rolls-Royce had become a fevered, festering impostume of all that he despised and resented; a sentient creature whose grillwork gloated and leered; a beast, set on destroying him.

He awoke with a cry, slimed with sweat, unrested, his eyes feeling like salted nuts, his head throbbing, his stomach on fire. He looked at the clock; it was 3:30 in the morning. With a groan, he stumbled into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of milk. Drinking it, he wandered aimlessly toward his desk.

Pages of the script he and Horne were writing lay scattered there. They seemed vapid to him now, these pages toward which he had felt so enthusiastic just a few hours before. In the ashtray, a couple of crushed-out cigarettes were tinted with Mavis' coral lipstick, making him think not only of her lips, but of her coral-tinted fingers and toes as well, then of her whole body, and the taste and aroma of her flesh.

He sat down at the desk, and, when he had finished his milk, brought out a sheet of his personal stationery. He sat for a moment staring at the wall and clicking his ballpoint. After a time, he began to write, in a neat, small hand:

Dear Mother,

I know I have not written for a long time, but you have been in my thoughts very often these past few weeks, so please do not think ill of me.

You may wonder why I am writing after such a long silence, and the fact is I have no one to talk to except you. How I wish you were here in this room, so I could really talk to you, but you aren't, so we will just have to make the best of it, I suppose.

The thing is that I don't know where to turn. I have been very brave living here in this strange country all alone without you, but now it just seems that I have reached the end of my rope. You mustn't worry, because I am in good health and have plenty of money, it's nothing of that sort. I simply do not know where to turn.I have no friends. I have no one to say they love me. I am so lonely and frightened that I don't know what to do. Remember when I was away at school, and the other boys made fun of me because I was smaller than the rest, and I was so desperately unhappy that I had to write home to you and tell you all about it. I feel that way now.

They are mocking me, these horrible low people you would not have let in the back entrance in the old days. They are hurting me. They are stepping on my heart with their dirty shoes. They are taking everything I love away from me and I don't know how to fight back.

Please, Mum, tell me what to do.

Your loving son,

Rudy

He folded the letter into an envelope, addressed it, stamped it and put his clothes on. He walked to the corner mailbox and dropped the letter in. Then he walked back to his apartment and, this time, slept soundly. There had been no return address on his envelope, so the letter, after many travels, scribblings and rubber stampings, would eventually come to the end of its peregrinations in a dead-letter office someplace, where it would lie unopened, possibly for eternity. Mrs. Rudolph-Smith, Rudy's mother, had been dead for nearly five years.

• • •

The next morning was a fine one from the photographer's standpoint--plenty of light, but just enough in the way of lowering clouds to make for interesting shadows on the hills and an over-all ominous tone. The second unit, under Rudy's supervision, was out on the ranch. No actors were present; none were necessary.

Rudy watched dully as two dummies, in period finery, were strapped inside a breakaway coach. In a flat, unanimated voice, for he felt defeated and hollow, he explained the situation again to the second unit director. "No, we won't need horses for this, because we have some good close shots, from the Peru stuff, of the horses becoming separated from the coach at the top of the hill. All we want today is a long shot of the coach rolling backward down the hill and crashing into that tree over there."

"And if it doesn't hit the tree? That's going to be a tough one to manage."

"I'm willing to do as many as five takes of the long shot, but if by the fifth we still miss, then we'll move the camera in close to the tree and have an off-camera truck push the coach into it. That means cheating and doing the scene in two cuts, and I'd much rather one great sweeping long shot, but we can't spend all day out here. We're overschedule and overbudget as it is."

A Jeep towed the coach to the top of the hill. The usual shouts ricocheted back and forth--"This is a take: roll 'em." "We're rolling." "Action!"--and the coach was released. It clattered down the hill, gaining momentum, the strapped dummies stiff and staring inside it. One of the grips, watching, kept up a soft-muttered litany, as if he were crooning to a pair of dice: "Hit the tree, honey, hit it, hit it, hit it, hit it..."

The coach made a hell of a noise and went to pieces like a strawberry box when it struck the tree; splintered wood exploded in all directions; a wheel tore loose and wobbled obligingly and picturesquely away; dust whipped and writhed in the sun as if strategically applied by a painter's brush. The second unit director, manic with joy, whispered fiercely to the cameraman, "Hold that...I want all that dust...hold it...wait till it settles...a little bit more...Cut!"

The whole crew erupted in yahoos and applause. The second unit director wheeled around to Rudy. "One take! We got it in one take! Wasn't it great?"

Rudy's face was transfigured. The second unit director interpreted this as a facsimile of his own feelings. So when Rudy murmured "Yes, that's it," he naturally assumed he meant Yes, that's fine, that's exactly what we want.

Although what Rudy added, one second later, did seem kind of strange, but then these Englishmen were pretty weird sometimes: it sounded almost like "Thank you, Mum."

The rest of that day Rudy spent in a visionary's cloud, and the world that filtered through to him was bent by strange refractions. There were certain things he did not know, but he was by that time so insulated by his own hates that the knowing of these things would have changed him little. Human resilience had fled from him; fired in the kiln of his obsession, he was not so much a man now as a ceramic--rigid, brittle, glazed. If Mavis had tried, all night, to reach him and had met with nothing but the stone wall of his answering service, Rudy neither knew nor longer cared. She, hurt and humiliated by his behavior, could have sought solace from Tommy, and many men would have understood, but not this new edition of Rudy. Actually, she did not seek such solace, for two reasons: she didn't want to, and there wasn't enough time...

Ten minutes after Rudy had stormed out of her apartment, Rondo had looked at his watch and said, "Gotta split. Gotta catch that plane. Gotta be in the Apple for that personal appearance tuhmorra. Hey, gotta great idea--come along." When Mavis declined the invitation, he said, "Drive me to the airport at least." This, too, she begged out of because she wanted to be there if Rudy returned or called. "All right, be that way," Rondo had finally said, departing, "but I sure don't wanna leave the Rolls in the airport parking lot for three days. I'll take a cab to the plane and leave the car in front of your pad, dig? Pick it up when I get back. Here, I'll even leave you the keys. Live a little!"...

The following night, after having successfully brought off the coach shot and other outdoor footage, Rudy went home, again ordered the answering service to hold all calls, then methodically downed a pint of Scotch, ounce by separate ounce. He was deliberately building up Dutch courage. "Scotch courage," he chuckled in drunken emendation. Then, at precisely two in the morning, he took a small brown paper bag from his desk and went outside to his car. He had gotten the bag at a hardware store earlier in the evening. It contained a pocket flashlight, two alligator clips, some rubber tubing and a short piece of wire.

As he drove east on deserted, two-A.M. Sunset Strip, he spoke to himself. "If it's not there, I'll go in and get Mavis out of bed and apologize for last night, and we'll kiss and make up."

He frowned. "But if it is there..."

It was. As he turned off, onto the La Cienega hill, he saw the lavender Rolls-Royce parked head-in to the curb in front of Mavis' place. "Not in your league, eh? I'll show you what league I play in, m'lad, a bigger bloody league than yours!"

Suicide, the grand gesture, a blaze of glory, purification by fire: the major leagues, The Big Time.

("Oh, wow," Clayton Horne would say to such a script. "A real hang-up. Too downbeat, Rudy. An old-time tragic ending? With Our Guy getting burned to a crisp, all for the sake of la grande passion? You'll never get it past the front office. Who needs it?")

"England's green and pleasant land," Rudy muttered thickly as he drove closer to the Rolls-Royce. Then he raucously sang the Blake words, to the dirgelike tune some dull knighted drudge had weighted them down with:

"...Till we have built Jer-oos-ah-lem In England's green and pleasant land!"

He parked near the Rolls and climbed into it, paper bag in hand, and began to work, still singing:

"Bring me my bow of burning gold!

Bring me my arrows of desire!"

A few years before, in Paris, Rudy had worked as a kind of coffeeboy for a French director who was shooting a crime film. He had watched take after take of a sequence in which an automobile thief had started a car without benefit of its key. The little trick was called "jumping the ignition," and it was done very simply, by getting behind the dashboard and, with the aid of a couple of alligator clips, affixing a short piece of "jumper wire" to the ignition leads.

Now, crouched under the dashboard of the Rolls, with the pocket flashlight held in his teeth, Rudy worked with swiftness and concentration. The world around him was silent, for Hollywood at two in the morning is a tomb. While he worked, he saw again in his mind the dramatic long shot of the coach careening down the hill to its destruction. He was rewarded for his labors when, after several minutes and one tiny electric shock, the motor turned over with a genteel hum. Smiling, he uncurled from his crouching position and sat behind the steering wheel.

Carefully, he backed the Rolls-Royce out of the parking slot and aimed it southward, downward, toward the bottom of the hill. Braking it, he got out and, dipping the rubber tubing into the tank and sucking as if at an ice-cream soda, he siphoned a quantity of gasoline out of the car and onto the sloping street until it gurglingly formed an enormous and highly fumid pool. Then he climbed back in the front seat and relaxed, chuckling quietly. He lit a cigarette with the car's lighter. He stroked the fine glove leather of the seat and the hardwood fascia of the dash. He snapped on the radio. It warmed up instantly and caterwauled:

Ay oh kay!

Ay oh kay!

Shoot me inta awbit, baby,

Right away...

Rudy broke up at that; his laugh drowned out Rondo's voice. And he went into his own number again:

"Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!

Bring me my chariot of fire!"

Then, his face gashed in two by its grin, he carefully flipped the glowing cigarette out the window, into the pungent petroleum sea, and braced himself for immolation.

Nothing happened. Tommy Rondo went on singing.

Rudy leaned out and looked down at his cigarette, which, by a not overly freakish fillip of fate, had been drowned by the gasoline before it had had a chance to ignite.

"What the bloody hell," he mumbled, climbing out of the car.

He slapped all his pockets for matches, but found none. As if in a dream too ridiculous to believe, he discovered himself trudging mundanely half a block up Sunset to an all-night drugstore, obtaining a book of matches and trudging back to the Rolls-Royce again. During the trek, he saw no one except the bored drugstore man.

Now he stood in the middle of the street, doggedly striking matches and tossing them into the pool of gas, cursing as they went out before hitting the combustible liquid. Finally, he used one match to ignite the rest of the book, and threw this little torch into the pool.

Whoomp!!!

The Rolls-Royce burned with a wild orange flame that flapped and roared a mad magnificence, garishly tinting the two-A.M. sky, sending out crashing breakers of heat. A brilliant monster made of noise and light, it stood raving near the summit of that hill; stood there for an untimable and solid moment like a devil's beacon; and then--whether because the brakes melted, or what, was never known--began to slither down the hill, a bright and awful snail at first, a hissing rocket next, and finally a terrifying meteor, screaming down and down and on and on, as Rudy, his hair and eyebrows gone, watched with gaping jaw its bright descent, feeling and looking like that forlorn cartoon coyote when outsmarted by the beep-beeping road runner. Stunned, cheated, he asked himself where it would stop: would it blaze right on past Santa Monica Boulevard, scorching the railroad tracks, and then keep barreling on down La Cienega? My God, he said silently, it's downhill all the way to Wilshire practically, isn't it? Where will it ever stop?

It was stopped at Holloway, the very first crossing, by the telephone pole on the northwest corner. The fire hydrant there, flung loose by the impact, unleashed as in revenge a giant's arm of water many tons strong that thrust and held the burning car 15 feet into the air, making it bob and dance like a ping-pong ball in the jet of a public drinking fountain, before it flipped over and grandly crashed into the street. The water then spouted triumphantly a full 100 feet toward the sky.

The Rolls-Royce was, by then, a drenched black corpse, its glory dead, its terror gone, its brief career of fire a grotesque episode already fading, an epic seen by an audience of precisely one.

For when, in the ensuing quiet, Rudy turned for the cold snap of handcuffs on his wrists, he learned that he was quite alone. No one was there to admire or admonish, to punish or praise; he could walk away scot free; and much the worst of all, he was still alive. It was absolutely infuriating.

But Rudy liked to think of himself as a Survivor. He was determined to survive even this. And so, his madness cauterized away by his hot deed, he squared his scorched shoulders and walked straight into the bedroom of the slumbering Mavis.

Tommy Rondo cried like a baby when he heard about his car: it had carried not a cent of insurance. The police were unhappy, too, about never finding the culprit. Robin and Sandy grew hateful toward each other and were divorced within a year, community property laws stripping Robin ruthlessly for the second time. Ira Burnham lost money on The Invader of Moscow and developed an ulcer. As for Rudy and Mavis ("Oh, no!" Horne would have wailed: "Too cornball! Too pat! Too upbeat!")--they surprised everybody, Including themselves, by living happily ever after.