I went that night to the Rock Club, with the magazine in hand; there was a painting of Hedy Lamarr looking gorgeous on the cover, her head tipped back to show off her white neck. Rocky was sitting at his favorite banquette in the corner, where Penny had thrown her legs across my lap six years before. The club was half filled. Onstage, a trio of Spanish girl singers tragically harmonized on “Enjoy Yourself — It’s Later Than You Think.” They had red roses tucked behind their ears; the girl in the center held the neck of the mike stand like she couldn’t decide whether to kiss or strangle it.
I shook the magazine at Rocky. “What’s this?”
“Hedy Lamarr,” he said.
“I’ve been reading your press,” I told him.
“Yeah? How’d it come out? The reporter got me a little drunk.” He snuffed his cigar. As though it took someone to get Rocky a little drunk.
“I’m a nice guy?” I said.
He must not have read the article; he was authentically confused. “Are you trying to establish a reputation as a son of a bitch I don’t know about yet?”
I read him the pertinent passage, then tossed the magazine down on the table, where it careened into the candle. Fine. Let the whole place burn.
“They used that, huh,” said Rock, staring at Hedy Lamarr’s throat. “That’s not so bad.”
“This success,” I said. “This is all your doing?”
He thought for a second. I assumed he was mustering up an apology. Then he looked at me. “This success? This success you’re not so impressed with? Probably not. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have had a different, possibly more interesting success without you. Why do you think I get paid more?”
“That’s a good question. That’s a very good question. Because we have a contract together. And the contract says it’s my turn to get more money. In fact, I’m long overdue. I figure, you owe me.”
The singers finished their song. Rocky clapped, still looking at me. “You know, kid,” he said, “you were more interesting when you didn’t talk about yourself so much.”
“What?”
“When I first met you. You shut up all the time. You never said anything except to ask a question.”
“And I was interesting then.”
“You were fascinating.”
“Watch me shut up,” I told him, and stalked out of the club.
He could have at least lied and said he’d been misquoted. Maybe I’d quit after all! Rocky could find one of those dime-a-dozen straight men. Just lean over and pick one up off the sidewalk, if it was that easy.
It might have been, I think now. Maybe I should have quit the team then, taken that early retirement. We could have been friends for the rest of our lives. I would have forgiven him. He was drunk. He was scared.
But at the moment it felt like Rock had been beating me at an eighteen-year game of poker. If I quit now, I’d never get even. I still had the orginal contract, the one that said that Rocky would get sixty percent more for the first ten years, and then the terms would reverse. He owed me eight years in back wages, the way I figured it. I steamed the page out of my scrapbook and took it to Tansy, who doubted it was legal. He urged me to calm down. “I’ll talk to Rock,” he said. “How’s fifty-fifty? That’s fair, right?”
“Barely,” I said.
But Rocky wouldn’t budge, and then he stopped talking to me completely.
We were shooting a racetrack picture — I played a tout, Rocky a jockey — and he only looked at me when the cameras were rolling. Then he was exuberant. The scene ended, and he walked away in disgust. It made me crazy. You do not exist, you do not exist. “Rocky, this is foolishness,” I told him. He didn’t care. Okay, then. If I didn’t exist, then he didn’t either.
Our first major falling out. After a while, it was almost like we weren’t mad with each other, just shy. We declared nothing. We just stopped talking. For our radio show, we picked up our scripts; for the picture, we hit our marks and said our lines. I don’t think the audience noticed the difference. Everyone was on my side, but everyone humored Rock. Jessica told me I should apologize, if not for me, then for our kids, who missed him.
“What am I apologizing for? Making less money? Being a sucker?”
“We have all the money we need,” she said. “You know Rocky. He won’t apologize. Don’t drag your heels just to punish him.”
“That sounds very wise,” I said, “but I’m not going to roll over. I do it for every single other thing.”
She sighed. “He’s an unhappy man. If a little money makes him happier—”
“It isn’t the money,” I insisted.
“So you keep saying, dear, and then you explain how it is.”
Those couple of months were our first silence: not the longest one, but the deepest. Once you’ve stopped speaking to someone, no matter how sincerely you then make up, there’s a new chance that you’ll stop speaking again. Every time, though, is different: sometimes you’re furious and sometimes merely peevish; sometimes you struggle not to call the other person up in the middle of the night to yell or apologize, and sometimes it’s just something that you do, like the morning crossword or calisthenics. After that first time it was easy: mad? Stop talking.
But that time, of course, we made it up.
Baby in Bright Water
Where was I? At the studio. I figured it out later, I mean, I wrote down everywhere I’d gone that day, and at just what time, accounting for travel, for conversations in hallways, for visits to the canteen and the men’s room. I was sitting in one of those canvas-backed director’s chairs that civilians believe movie people spend all their time in, my name stenciled across the back. We were posing for stills. The most hackneyed shot in the world, both of us leaning back, one careful elbow hooked over the canvas so that we would not obscure our names or the little drawings — mortarboard on my chair, Rocky’s striped shirt (empty of Rocky) on his. In real life we hadn’t spoken to each other in a month, but in publicity photos we were the best of friends, smiling at the camera, our elbows nearly touching. It was supposed to look as though the photographer, strolling up behind us, had said, “Heya, boys!” and snapped the picture. That took two hours.
Then I went to Musso’s with Neddy. We ate tongue sandwiches; that’s what I remember. (Tongue was one of the only things Rocky would not eat. “I only like human tongues in my mouth,” he said, “but past that I’m not particular.”)
“He’ll cool down,” said Neddy. “He never stays mad for long.”
“Maybe I won’t cool down. How come nobody ever worries about that?”
Neddy got the look on his face that meant that if he were a laughing man, by now he’d be in hysterics. He gestured at my sandwich with his sandwich. “Bite your tongue. Because you’ve always cooled down. What do you think is the secret of Carter and Sharp? You’re the only son of a bitch who can take him. You’re the only one who’ll never walk out.”
“That’s all?” I said. “Good God, Neddy, I’d like to think that’s not it. I’d like to think I had some talent. I’d like to think—”
And then the waiter came to our table, and handed me the phone, and it was Jessica saying, “Come home.”
“What is it?” I asked, and she said, “The Baby,” and hung up.
She hung up because she could not bear me asking for specifics. The specifics were this: my beautiful family was in its beautiful home. They had everything they could want, including, behind the house, that heart-shaped swimming pool with the wrought-iron fence. Jessica was the only one who swam; I still didn’t know how. She complained about the shape. You could not travel one long line across the heart without bumping into a point or a curve. Every morning, nearly, she dove into the pool for a few irregular laps, and then she’d get out, and she’d shut the iron gates.