The game broke up. We had never exchanged a name. They went trotting into the sea, and I went walking back to Bahia Mar. After my shower, I got out the battered old looseleaf address book and sat in the lounge in my robe, turning pages, looking for the right California connection: And in the L’s I found Walter Lowery, both his business phone in San Francisco and his home phone in San Mateo. I brought the phone on the long cord over to the curved yellow couch, swung my feet up and tried the San Mateo number, got a recorded announcement, got a different number from information and entered it in my book, and tried it.
“Hello?” said a cautious female voice.
“Marty.”
“No. This is Ginny. Who is this?”
“My God, you sound all grown up, Gin. This is T. McGee, your honorary uncle in Florida. Your father around?”
“Hi! I’ll get him. Hold on.” After a long minute he came on and said, “Obviously, sir, you are an impostor pretending to be a friend I used to have.”
“Time flies, friends flee, temperance fuggit. Look, maybe I’m coming out there.”
“People usually know whether they are coming out or not.”
“Then let’s say I will be out. When is not certain. I am out of touch. You still have the office in Los Angeles?”
“Yes, we do.”
“Is Lysa Dean still a client?”
“Let’s say she doesn’t have as many legal problems as she used to. But yes. We’re still on a retainer arrangement.”
“And you do remember recommending me to her?”
“Indeed I do. Let’s say she was very satisfied with your performance professionally, and furious as hell at you about something else, which she never explained.”
“I get the impression she’s doing a lot of game shows.”
“Indeed she is. At very good rates. She’s in demand because she is really very quick and often very funny, which is rare out here with most actresses. And she gets some cameo roles now and again.”
“She gave me the impression-back when I knew her-of knowing everything about everybody out there.”
“Gossip is a hobby with Lee.”
“Did she ever marry that forty million dollars from Hawaii?”
I heard him sigh. “She came close, buddy. Really close. He was on the verge of getting his annulment through the Vatican when his wife came down with leukemia. So what could he do? He settled a nice little bundle on Lee, and they kept up the relationship, and he died of a heart attack last year. His wife is still living.”
“Lee live in the same place?”
“Same house. Beverly Hills. She redecorates it every twenty or thirty minutes.” I read him the address out of my book and he confirmed it.
“Have you got her unlisted number?”
“Before we go into that, Travis, if she feels toward you like I think she feels toward you, you won’t get past hello. Secondly, it is quarter to ten out here, and she won’t even lift the edge of her sleep mask or take out an earplug until noon.”
“So I’ll call her at four o’clock my time. And I will never tell her where I got the number. And I will try to keep her from hanging up on me.”
“I’ll give you the number if you tell me what you did to make her so furious.”
I thought it over. It certainly wasn’t in the kiss-and-tell category. “Well, Walter, our business was finished. She had the photographs and the negatives back. I was at her place to pick up the money I had coming, by agreement. She started worming around on my lap, starting to shuck herself out of her tight knit pants, and I suddenly wanted no part of her. So I gave her a big push and she went flying back and landed on her fanny on a white furry rug and rode it backward all the way across the room. I told her I would take the short count on the money but I would like to skip the thankful bang, as it would mean very little to me and less than nothing to her. So I left, dodging, elephants from her little collection. And she knew a lot of ten- and twelve-letter words. Knew them real loud.”
“Mother of Moses in the morning,” he said in an awed hushed voice. “I doubt there’s three idiots in the world have turned that down. Maybe there’s only one. And you think she won’t hang up?”
“Time has passed, Walter. Woman’s curiosity. Maybe she has a little feeling of disbelief Maybe it didn’t really happen that way.”
“Can I ask you why you want to talk to her?”
“To get a line on some other people out there.” He waited and when I didn’t go into it any further, he said, “If they’ve had any connection at all to the Industry Lysa Dean will know when and where they got every traffic ticket.”
I wrote down the number he gave me, and then we chatted a little while about old times, old places, old friends. He said it wasn’t the same out there, wasn’t as much fun. The money had gotten too heavy. You get a budget over twenty million dollars, a lot of the fun goes out of moviemaking. But people were getting in trouble as often as before, and he was kept busy. He said Ginny had grown into a truly beautiful girl, and if she ever tried to get into the Industry, he would shave her head, bind her feet, and have all her teeth extracted. Marty got on to tell me how much they both missed me, and why not come out once in a while, and I said that from now on I would.
That is one of the great troubles, I thought, after I hung up. The people you have great empathy with are never conveniently located nearby. Many are, but the rest are scattered far and wide. You see them too seldom. But you can always pick up right where you left off. You know who they are. They know who you are. No reintroductions required.
I took the robe off and worked with the weights until I needed another shower. Had a drink, fixed a light lunch, went to bed and set the alarm for four. When it awakened me, I looked in the address book and checked out her new number and dialed it. I had made some notes beside her name. Little things she had told me, accidentally or on purpose. I looked at the notes as the phone rang.
A woman’s voice answered by repeating the last four digits of the number, on a rising intonation of question, “Three three five five?” She had a subtly Japanese way of handling the consonants.
“Lysa Dean, please.”
“I will see if she is in at the moment. May I say who is calling?”
“Tell her I have a message from Walter Lowery’s office.”
“You may give me the message, sir.”
“My instruction is to give it to her personally.”
“Just a moment, please.”
I sat listening to the electronic humming.
“Who are you?” demanded Lysa Dean. “What the hell does Walter want told me on a Saturday? That I’m being audited again? I already for Christsake know that.” The throaty, furry, flexible voice had a steely ring behind the fur.
“I scampered out of your life in a hail of elephants, love.”
“What?”
“This is Lee Schontz, isn’t it? From Dayton, Ohio. Would it have been 1610 Madison Street? Was daddy a fireman? Do you photograph well in the buff, love?”
“Could it be… No! McGee? Is this you, McGee, you rotten dirty son of a bitch?”
“Lee, it’s so damn wonderful to hear your voice.”
“Let me sit down. Jesus! You got me out of the shower. What the hell do you mean, calling me? What a nerve! Where did you get this number? I had it changed two weeks ago. Did you get it from Walter? I’ll tear him to ribbons!”