He decided to go find out.
He stepped down off the porch and crossed the crackling gravel to the theater. But all the doors were locked. Eight of them, eight glass doors marching along in a row, and he checked them one by one, from this end to that end, and they were all locked.
She left her car here? She went home without it?
That was silly. He knocked on the nearest glass door. Then he kicked it a little bit. And finally he saw one of the inner doors open, and Mary Ann herself peered across the lobby at him. She identified him, and then she came over and stood on the other side of the glass door and called, “What do you want?” Her voice sounded muffled and far away.
He just looked at her. He didn’t know how to answer the question in five or six words, and five or six words is about as long as a conversation can run at a clip with a locked glass door in the way. She waited, and he waited, and finally he boiled it all down to its simplest form, and shouted it through the glass: “I want a cup of coffee.”
She looked surprised, and shouted, “I haven’t got any coffee.”
“Listen, would they be” — he turned his head, and pointed toward the Lounge — “open this time of—?” It wasn’t any good. He gazed unhappily at her through the glass. “Do we have to shout through this door all the time?”
“There’s coffee in the kitchen,” she shouted, and turned away.
“God damn it!”
She turned back, surprised again. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Listen,” he shouted. “You don’t have to lock the damn — there’s no need to — I didn’t kill her, for Christ’s sake!”
“I never said you did!”
“That captain cleared me, I couldn’t have done it, the timing’s wrong.”
“That’s wonderful for you,” she said, trying to shout sarcasm. “But I have work to do.”
“At six o’clock in the morning?”
She came up close to the glass and studied him intently. “Are you drunk?”
“No! I’m hung over!”
That last about did it. His head split wide open and the sunlight seared in. He screwed his face up and put his hand to his forehead and turned away. “Never mind,” he muttered, too low for her to hear. “Just never mind.”
Behind him, there sounded a series of clicks, and she pushed open the door. When he looked back, she was standing in the doorway smiling at him. “Every time I see you you’re hung over,” she told him. “Are you hung over every day?”
“Except in Lent.”
“You want somebody to make you a cup of coffee, is that it?”
“I didn’t know when Mrs. Whatsername came to make breakfast, and if I tried it myself right now I’d blow up the house.”
“She isn’t coming at all. She called last night. The killing scared her away. She’ll be back when the fiend is caught, and not before. That was her word, fiend.”
“It’s as good as any.”
“That’s right, you saw her. So I suppose it’s all right for you to be hung over again today.”
“Thank you.” He started to reach for a cigarette, then changed his mind again. Coffee first. Then another thought occurred to him. “Are you really working at six o’clock in the morning?”
“It isn’t six o’clock, it’s after six-thirty. And yes, I really am. Or I was, until you showed up.”
“Do you always work at six o’clock in the morning?”
“Six-thirty. And no, I don’t. But there is a lot to do, and I don’t think I’ll get much chance to work later on today.” She smiled and patted his arm. “Come on, I’ll make you that coffee.”
They headed back for the house and he said, “What do you do here, anyway? I mean, I know what you do, publicity and assistant director and all that, but how come? You want to be an actress?”
“No, sillier than that.” She seemed less her practical self all at once, younger and more shy.
When she didn’t go on, he prodded her, saying, “Such as what?”
“Director.” She said it so softly, so hesitantly, that he could hardly hear the word; but once it was out, she strengthened, and the words came out of her in a sudden rush. “I want to be a director, Mel. I know, women aren’t even supposed to think that way, but that’s what I want. I have so many ideas, things I want to do— I have playbooks home, hundreds of them, full of staging directions, blocked down to every turn, every step. I have cast lists — you wouldn’t believe some of my casting, some of the plays and people I’d like to bring together. And movies!”
They were standing now on the porch, but they weren’t getting any closer to the kitchen. She stood there in front of the door, her face animated, her words quick and jumbled, her hands gesturing every which way as she talked. “There are so many things that haven’t even been tried! I go to a movie, and I look at a scene, and I say to myself, why didn’t they do it this way, why didn’t they put the camera here or here, why didn’t they get a set that, that— Oh, I don’t know, it’s just, just — I see it all so different! And when I watch Ralph work — he’s an awfully good director, Mel, he really is, but I watch him, and I think, why not have the actors do this or this, why not— You know who’s my ideal? Margo Jones, that’s who. To have my own theater, my own theater, and direct, find new plays, and new ways to do them, new, new — new approaches. I have it all in my head, and I’m learning more every day, and I don’t care what I do, I’ll do publicity or get coffee or hold the prompt book, I don’t care, just so I — just to be near it and keep on learning. Do you see?”
It was too early in the day for Mel to see much of anything clearly, but he did understand the intensity in her, and he reacted to it as he always reacted to selfless intensity, with a desire to be helpful and a feeling of sadness, because this kind of flame so rarely survived for very long, in a world that had no real use for such warmth. His voice was more serious — and compassionate — than he’d expected, as he said, “Then you ought to be in New York. You won’t get anywhere here.”
“Margo Jones didn’t work in New York, she worked in Dallas.”
“She worked in New York sometimes, and Cartier Isle is no Dallas.”
All at once, she slumped, as though already tasting defeat. “I know,” she said. “But I’m a coward. I’m twenty-two; if I’m ever going to get started it’s got to be now. But you can’t imagine how New York scares me, Mel. Here, I can make believe I’m still learning, still storing up knowledge, still getting ready for the big day. But to go to New York— I wouldn’t know anybody, I wouldn’t know where to start or what to do. If I wanted to be an actress, I could start out with little parts, I suppose, and build up. But there aren’t any minor roles for directors, there just aren’t.”
“Have you ever directed anything?”
“Oh, nothing, nothing.” She shook her head in irritation. “Just high school, and little shows at church, and sometimes I’ve taken over scenes for Ralph here, that’s all.”
“Well, you’ve met people here, people from New York. Can’t you make any contacts here, people who could help you when you got to New York, or introduce you to somebody else who could help you?”