Tansi was telling me how the Strand twins amused her, but she stopped.
James Dean was standing just inside the front door. Oddly, he just seemed to appear: an apparition materializing from another world. But, of course, he’d strolled in, in a leather jacket and biker boots. He sat across the room, but didn’t acknowledge us, and I watched his profile: rigid, the flexible mouth, the cigarette dangling. He noticed me watching him, but turned away, looking away, too, from Alva and Alyce Strand. I saw him suck in his breath.
Clearing her throat, Tansi yelled across the tables: “Jimmy, here.”
He shook his head. No.
Jimmy’s presence compelled the eatery into an awkward paralysis. People stopped talking and watched him. Looking up, Jimmy caught my eye. Sheepishly, I smiled. Jimmy narrowed his eyes, tucked his head into his chest like a bantam cock, and turned away. I felt foolish, rebuffed, the slight acknowledgement I’d offered rejected. For a second, I was furious. How dare he? I was Giant; I was Show Boat; I was-I stopped. I had no idea what I was to boys of his generation. I wrote words down and sometimes actors read them into cameras. Suddenly, I felt ancient-an attitude I never allowed myself. The dowager in the diner. The waitress had placed two sodas on the table, and I pushed mine to the side. Tansi, I noted, quickly drained her glass and was now munching on an ice cube.
Tansi looked flustered. “It isn’t personal, Edna. He’s moody sometimes.”
“He’s downright rude.”
“Oh, Edna, no.”
“He’s a brat.” I paused. “And stop defending him, Tansi.”
“I’m not…”
“He’s allowed to get away with boorish behavior because you let him.”
“Talent has its entitlements.”
“Nonsense. I’ve been talented all my life, and I…”
Tansi cut me off. “And you’ve been known to be imperious. Even rude sometimes. I mean no offense, I…”
I pulled back, smiled. Good for you, Tansi, I thought. “None taken. But I’m that way with fools. Jimmy has to learn to sort out his rudeness.”
Tansi shook her head. “Maybe you should give him lessons.” She meant it humorously-even her eyes got bright-but the line came out too quickly, too strident.
I glared.
When I turned to look at Jimmy, he was gone. I hadn’t even heard the chimes over the door ring. Maybe he was an apparition.
Late that night, in my hotel suite, settling into my pillows with tea and a Mary Roberts Rinehart mystery I had trouble following, my phone rang.
“I’m in the lobby,” Jimmy said.
“And?”
“Invite me up.”
I glanced at the clock. “Jimmy, it’s after ten.”
“So?”
“For a minute.”
Within seconds he was there, slumped into a chair by the window, his leather jacket still zipped up, looking around the room. “They’re really scared of you, Miss Edna, if you get all these rooms for yourself.”
“I’m famous.”
“So am I.”
“What do you want, Jimmy?”
He shrugged his shoulders and mumbled.
“You’re going to have to be more articulate with me. I’m old, hard of hearing, and I value oratory as a lost art.”
“You know, in high school I won the Indiana state competition for oratory.”
“And as a prize, they took away your need for future clarity?”
He laughed. “I love it. You won’t let me win.”
“I didn’t know we were in a contest.”
“Everything is a contest in life.”
“And you have to win?”
“Of course. I always do.”
“And you need to do battle with old ladies in sensible shoes and beauty-parlor perms?”
His eyes widened. “Everybody lets me win these days. It ain’t fun.”
“Maybe you need new combatants.”
“That may be so. I got no one to fight with.”
“You seem to have your crew-Tommy, Polly, Lydia, Nell…”
He cut me off. “Miss Edna, I’ve come here to beg and plead.”
“I don’t know you, Jimmy.”
“Yes, you do.” He looked toward the window, out into the black night. “I got famous too fast.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. “I heard about your Hill Number One TV show.”
He shook his head. “Oh, that. The Strand twins. They’ll disappear.”
“Like Carisa Krausse?” I wanted to challenge him.
Jimmy slumped back, folded and unfolded his arms. He started to speak, then stopped, stammered. Grunted. “What?” I asked.
“Sort of why I’m here.”
“Jimmy, you were rude to us at Googie’s.”
He looked surprised. “How so?”
“You enter, I assume through the front door, although legions of fans may ascribe other powers to you, and you ignore civilized nods of hello.”
He didn’t answer.
“I don’t like rudeness.” My voice was a little too strident. I was surprised that I was nervous.
“I wasn’t being rude.”
“Perhaps we’d both better consult the same dictionary then.”
“You do got a way about you, Miss Edna.” He sat up, grinning. “I wanna be like you when I grow up.” He tilted his head and looked at me, as though expecting a laugh. But I sat there, lips pursed. “Look,” he said, “rude is not ignoring you in a dumb diner. That’s just-just, well, nothing. It’s, it’s, like, well, nothing. Rudeness, if you think about it, is barging in here late at night, uninvited, and jostling with you, working myself up to asking a favor of you. That’s the real rudeness.”
I fell under his spell, a little intoxicated by his hazy, narcotic drawl. I sat back, relaxed. “Tell me about Carisa Krausse.”
“Hey, we had an idle fling in Marfa. I was bored, there was nothing to do. She was pretty, she was always around me, Pier Angeli had just left me, and, well, nothing happened. A couple late-night rides in a car I borrowed from Mercy. They took my car away so I wouldn’t kill myself. Suddenly, I see she’s falling for me. Before Marfa, back here, in rehearsals, she was around, and I’d sensed her…well…instability. But sometimes I lack common sense. I swear we never…we…there is no way any baby is mine, Miss Edna. Not with her.”
“What about other women?” He was sitting up now, the sober schoolboy before the demanding teacher.
“That’s mostly PR. Like Terry White, that pretty vacuum. You know, the studio had me and Terry go to a movie. So the limo pulls up, she says not one damn word to me, not one, but the minute we get out of the limo and the reporters are there, the big smile comes on, she grabs my arm, and acts like we’re lovey-dovey boyfriend-girlfriend. Not a word the whole time.” He sighed. “Sometimes I actually like the girls they hand me. Most times I don’t.”
“But your reputation?”
His eyebrows raised, the eyes unblinking. “I don’t know what reputation I have.”
“Mercy says you ‘sort of’ go through women.”
Jimmy looked at the ceiling, then burst into laughter. “Love that Madama. So…so…”
“Truthful?”
“Maybe so.” He crossed and uncrossed his denim-clad legs, stared at his boots. “I’m not sure what to do around women,” he said, suddenly.
“What does that mean?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I just got some questions I gotta answer.”
Now I was confused. “About what? Marriage?”
He opened and closed his eyes, blinking wildly. “Well, sex, frankly.”
Not a subject I was comfortable with, truly. I winced. Birds and bees may indeed do it, but not on my watch. I’m almost seventy, and I stare like a deer in the headlights at the mention of that monumental and ferocious three-letter word.
“I’m not following you.” And I wasn’t.
“Forget it.” He stood up and walked to the window, looking down into the street. “You got some good view of an empty city here.” He pointed. “Somewhere over there is Chinatown. The street of the Golden Palace. You can get your fortune told there.” He looked back at me. “You know, L.A. has a real different energy than New York. New York is pulsating and real nervous-like. It’s jumpy and feverish. It’s all throb and burst. That’s where artists can grow. You know that. You live there. L.A. is emptiness. So much room to wait things out, to dream and not to do. People, you know, float from one exhibitionist outpost to another, grasping for ideas that are best left untouched.” Most of what he’d just said was mumbled, and he seemed to laugh at the end of each line, as though embarrassed by the sentiment.