On the other side of the road, the country was wilder and scrubbier, sloping steeply upward from the road, blending into the mountains that ringed town and lake.
He closed his eyes. His instinct was to talk with her — she was female, and pleasant to look at — but he just didn’t have the strength. Faintly, he said, “Remind me to talk to you tomorrow.”
“All right.” From the sound of her voice she was smiling again.
“I’ll tell you the story of my life.”
“That’ll be nice.”
They rode the rest of the way in silence, Mary Ann Mc-Kendrick driving and Mel recuperating. The world was orange on his closed eyelids; down inside there, he was untying his nerves.
He opened his eyes when the smoothness of blacktop under the Ford’s tires gave way to the chattering harshness of gravel. Ahead of him was a red barn, but redder than any red bam he’d ever seen before, redder than Chinese red or fire-engine red, a bright bright red that made the barn look as though it were made of gleaming metal. Combined with the red were streaks and slashes of white trim, and great white block letters along the front that read:
The blue-gray gravel covered the entire expanse of ground between road and barn, and extended an additional pseudopod around to the right, between barn and house. The house — which he saw only after his eyes and brain got a little used to all that red barn — was a decrepit farmhouse, three stories high, bulging with bay windows. There had apparently been no paint left over, because the clapboard siding of the house was weathered gray, the color of driftwood.
Three cars were parked in front of the barn; a red MG — looking anemic in these surroundings — an old black dusty Dodge coupe, and a white Continental convertible. Mary Ann McKendrick stopped the station wagon next to the other three, and said, “Leave your bag here. You’d better go straight in and see Mr. Haldemann.”
“Whatever you say.” He put the clip-ons back in the glove compartment. “Is that where I live?” He pointed at the house.
“Uh huh.”
“I better buy a cross.”
She was properly baffled, like a good straight-woman. “What? Why?”
“I’ll tell you,” he said. “A vampire comes in, and you wave a Star of David at him, he laughs in your face.”
“Oh. I wouldn’t know about that.”
Was there a sudden chill in the air? Or was he just being oversensitive again? And why, he asked himself, did he always make a point of letting people know he was Jewish the minute he met them?
It was the wrong time for introspection; it just made his head ache more. Besides, Herr Haldemann was waiting.
He got out of the car. “Where do I find the young Mr. Haldemann?”
“Just inside. The office is to the right.”
“See you later.” But he had the feeling she didn’t like him.
He walked across the gravel to the entrance, which had been lifted entire from some defunct movie house and spliced into the front of this structure, looking odd and anachronistic and somehow tilted out of true. Eight glass doors across in a row, reflecting Mel as he came walking up.
Inside, the lobby was very shallow and functional, with a red carpet, and a ticket window on the right. There were only two doors from lobby to theater, at opposite ends of the lobby’s rear wall. The wall between was covered with a montage of black-and-white photographs of actors and actresses and scenes from plays. Posters on the left-hand wall proclaimed the season’s schedule and the names of the resident company, ten in all, six men and four women. Mel’s name was third from the bottom, with only two girls’ names beneath.
There was a juicy round blond girl behind the ticket window, smiling at him in grateful appreciation of the difference between girls and boys. He went over and said, “I’m looking for the office. I’m Mel Daniels.”
“Oh, you’re the naughty boy.”
“You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet. Where’s the office?”
“Through the door and to the right. I’m Cissie Walker.”
“You don’t look sissy to me.”
She giggled, and tried without success to look demure.
So the hell with Mary Ann McKendrick.
He went through the door and to the right, and saw a door with the word Office on it. “This must be the place,” he muttered, for his own amusement, and went on in.
It wasn’t a small room, but it was so crowded with furniture it looked tiny. There were three large tables and two large desks, an assortment of chairs, and filing cabinets and wastebaskets and coatracks filling the space left over. Papers and posters littered every surface.
A man of about thirty-five, prematurely balding, very tall and lean, harried-looking, dressed in blue polo shirt and gray slacks, a yellow pencil behind one ear, sat at a desk and talked desperately on the telephone. He was the only one in the office. He said, “But I need that sofa. We paid for that ottoman, Mr. Gregory... I understand that, Mr. Gregory, but...”
It went on that way. Mel cleared a stack of programs off a chair, put them on a table, and sat down. The man on the phone didn’t acknowledge his presence at all. Mel waited a few minutes, listening to half the conversation and trying to guess at the other half, and then lit a cigarette. Immediately the man on the phone shoved an ashtray toward him. He nodded his thanks, and settled back to wait.
Finally it ended. They weren’t going to get the sofa. The man hung up, looked at Mel, shook his head, and said, “It’s the same thing every year. You’re Daniels, I guess.”
“That’s right.”
“Actors are idiots, Daniels.” He didn’t sound angry or sarcastic, only long-suffering. “I don’t know why I have anything to do with them. One sends me his roommate’s picture by mistake, one shows up a day late — I just don’t know.”
“I guess you’re Mr. Haldemann.”
“I guess I am. I’m not sure any more. Mary Ann get you settled?”
“She told me to come in here first.”
“Oh. Well—” He scrabbled through the mess on his desk. “As long as you’re here—” He opened desk drawers. “There’s some forms to fill out. Withholding, and—” He kept opening drawers. “I don’t suppose you have a pen.”
“They won’t let me have anything sharp.”
“Uh? Oh. Actors are idiots? Nothing personal, Mel. Mel?”
“Mel.”
“That’s right. Bob. I mean me, I’m Bob.”
“Hello.”
“Mm. Here we go. Just clear off a space on that table there. This won’t take long.”
There was a form for the theater’s records, and a form for Equity, and the withholding form for taxes. He did the withholding form last and looked over at Bob Haldemann to say, “On this tax form. Stage name or real name?”
“What? Legal name.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
He wrote it out carefully: Melvin D. Blum. Which brought back to mind his argument with his father over the name-change. “Dad, listen. Can you see it? In great big lights on Broadway, that brand-new star, Mel Blum. Forget it.” “And what about Shelley Berman?” “Berman is Berman, Blum is Blum.” “A son of mine, to be ashamed of his heritage, is—” “What ashamed? Listen, do you know what Cary Grant’s real name is?” “Cary Grant is Jewish?” “No, he’s English. And his name is Archie Leach. You see what I mean? It isn’t heritage, it’s you got to have a good-looking name. You think anybody’s really named Rock Hudson?” “How am I supposed to hold my head up, I produced a son to change his name?” “It’s a stage name, for Christ’s sake. Everybody does it.” “Shelley Berman—”