Billy hushed and waited her out.
“I can’t pay you,” she said, finally looking up at him again.
“I’m independently wealthy, Peg. That’s always been a talent of mine.”
“You can’t own the rights to anything that we make here. Olive won’t stand for it.”
“You can have all of it, Peg. And you might even make a nice lump of brass off this venture, too. If you’ll only let me write this show for you—and if it’s as good as I think it could be—why, you’ll make so much money, your ancestors will never have to work again.”
“You’ll have to put that in writing—that you’re not expecting to earn anything out of this. Olive will insist on it. And we’ll have to produce it on my budget, not yours. I don’t want to get tangled up with your money again. It never ends well for me. Those have to be the rules, Billy. It’s the only way Olive will let you stick around.”
“Isn’t it your theater, Peg?”
“Technically, yes. But I can’t do anything without Olive, Billy. You know that. She’s essential.”
“Essential but bothersome.”
“Yes, but you are only one of those things. I need Olive. I don’t need you. That’s always been the difference between you.”
“By God—that Olive! Such staying power! I never could understand what you saw in her—other than that she comes dashing to serve you whenever you have the smallest need. That must be the appeal. I never could offer you such loyalty, I suppose. Solid as furniture, that Olive. But she doesn’t trust me.”
“Yes. Precisely true on all counts.”
“Honestly, Peg—I don’t know why that woman doesn’t trust me. I’m very, very, very trustworthy.”
“The more ‘very’s’ you use, Billy, the less trustworthy you sound. You do know that, right?”
Billy laughed. “I do know that. But, Peg—you know that I can write this script with my left hand while playing tennis with my right hand and bouncing a ball off my nose like a trained seal.”
“Without spilling a drop of your booze in the process.”
“Without spilling a drop of your booze,” corrected Billy, lifting his glass. “I took this from your bar.”
“Better you than me at this hour.”
“I want to see Edna. Is she awake?”
“She doesn’t get up till later. Let her sleep. Her country is at war and she just lost her house and everything. She deserves some rest.”
“I’ll come back, then. I’ll head back to the club, take a shower, have a rest, come back later, and we’ll get started. Hey, thanks for giving my apartment away, I forgot to mention! Your niece and her girlfriend have stolen my bed and thrown their underwear all over my precious place that I never once used. It smells like a bomb went off in a perfume factory in there.”
“I’m sorry,” I began, but both of them waved at me dismissively, cutting me off. It obviously didn’t matter in the least. I’m not sure I mattered in the least, when Peg and Billy were so focused on each other. I was lucky I got to be sitting there at all. It occurred to me that I should just keep my mouth shut so I would get to stay.
“What’s her husband like, by the way?” Billy asked Peg.
“Edna’s husband? Apart from being stupid and talentless, he has no faults. I will say he’s alarmingly good-looking.”
“That, I knew. I’ve seen him act, if you can call it acting. I saw him in Gates of Noon. He’s got the vacant eyes of a milk cow, but he looked like a million bucks in his aviator scarf. What’s he like as a person? Is he faithful to her?”
“I’ve never heard otherwise.”
“Well, that’s a thing, isn’t it?” said Billy.
Peg smiled. “Yes, it’s a real marvel, isn’t it, Billy? Imagine! Fidelity! But yes, that’s a thing. So she could do worse, I suppose.”
“And probably will someday,” added Billy.
“She thinks he’s a great actor, is the problem.”
“He has offered the world no evidence of this fact. Bottom line—do we have to put him in the show?”
Peg smiled, ruefully this time. “It’s slightly disconcerting to hear you use the word ‘we.’”
“Why is that? I’m simply crazy about that word.” He grinned.
“Until the moment you stop being crazy about it, and you disappear,” she said. “Are you really part of this venture now, Billy? Or will you be on the next train back to Los Angeles as soon as you grow bored?”
“If you’ll have me, I’ll be part of it. I’ll be good. I’ll behave as if I’m on parole.”
“You should be on parole. And yes, we do have to put Arthur Watson in the play. You’ll figure out a way to use him. He’s a handsome man who isn’t very bright, so have him play the role of a handsome man who isn’t very bright. You’re the one who taught me that rule, Billy—that we must work with what we have. What did you always tell me, when we were on the road? You’d say, ‘If all we’ve got is a fat lady and a stepladder, I’ll write a play called The Fat Lady and the Stepladder.’”
“I can’t believe you still remember that!” said Billy. “And The Fat Lady and the Stepladder is not such a bad title for a play, if I do say so myself.”
“You do say so yourself. You always do.”
Billy reached over and laid his hand on top of hers. She let him do it.
“Pegsy,” he said, and that one word—the way he said it—seemed to contain decades of love.
“William,” she said, and that one word—the way she said it—also seemed to contain decades of love. But also decades of exasperation.
“Olive’s not too upset that I’m here?” he asked.
She took back her hand.
“Do us a favor, Billy? Don’t pretend to care. I love you, but I hate it when you pretend to care.”
“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I care a lot more than people think I care.”
TWELVE
Within a week of his arrival, Billy Buell had written a script for City of Girls.
A week is an awfully short time in which to write a script, or so I’ve been told, but Billy worked nonstop on it, sitting at our kitchen table in a cloud of pipe smoke, clattering away steadily at his typewriter till the thing was done. Say what you want about Billy Buell, but the man knew how to bang out words. Moreover, he didn’t seem to suffer at all during his creative burst—no crises of confidence, no tearing at the hair. He hardly paused to think, or so it appeared. He just sat there in his fine doeskin trousers, and his bright white cashmere sweater, and his spotless ecru Maxwell’s of London custom-made shoes, calmly typing away as though taking dictation from some invisible and divine source.
“He’s monstrously talented, you know,” Peg said to me, as we sat in the living room one afternoon, making sketches for costumes and listening to Billy’s typing in the kitchen. “He’s the kind of man who makes everything look easy. Hell, he even makes it look easy to make things easy. He produces ideas in torrents. The problem is, you can usually only get Billy to work when his Rolls-Royce needs a new engine, or when he gets back from vacationing in Italy and notices that his bank account is down a few bucks. Monstrously talented, but also monstrously inclined toward laziness. That’s what you get for coming from the lolling-about class, I suppose.”
“So why is he working so hard now?” I asked.
“I’m not able to say,” said Peg. “Could be because he loves Edna. Could be because he loves me. Could be because he needs something from me and we just don’t know what it is yet. Could be because he’s gotten bored out there in California, or even lonely. I’m not going to examine his motives too fiercely. I’m glad he’s doing the job, in any case. But the important thing is not to count on him for anything in the future. By future, I mean ‘tomorrow’ or ‘in the next hour’—because you never know when he’s going to lose interest and vanish. Billy doesn’t like it when you count on him. If I ever want privacy from Billy, I’ll just tell him that I desperately need him for something, and then he’ll run straight out the door and I won’t see him for another four years.”