“The back ain’t bad, either, but that’s something else I don’t do that my husband would probably go for.”
“Pardon?”
“He’d probably like me to come on to you and take you off in the bushes somewhere and give you something to remember me by.”
“I was just making a smart remark. I wasn’t coming on to you, Mrs. Castile.”
“Millie, please. No, I know you weren’t, but I was just trying to get back on a subject we were talking about earlier, which is my being an actress and not a whore. See, my husband thinks that since there’s nothing wrong with me humping on screen, why not hump an occasional media guy for a little better press, you know? Only familiarity breeds contempt and I don’t think giving the boys in the press room a free ride would do my career any good, and certainly not my husband’s. I mean, I would think it would tend more to make media people contemptuous of him, and do his career harm in the long run.”
“You’re certainly frank about all this.”
“Which is what makes my husband upset with me. He’s afraid you’ll put every word I say into your article. Will you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Do you want me to?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” She smiled. Very genuinely, showing her gums. “All this frank talk may be a front after all, huh? Just my way of catching your imagination and getting some play in your magazine? And without even once going into the bushes with you.”
We both laughed a little at that, and I said, “You said before you ran a beauty shop. Do you mean you worked in one, or managed it, or what?”
“I owned it. It was my family’s. My folks and my only sister got killed in a plane crash when I was in high school. So I inherited the family business. An aunt helped me run it. She ran it solo, while I went to beauty school. Why? That’s certainly boring stuff. Does Oui want that?”
“I don’t know. I’m just interested. What about your husband? How did you meet him?”
“Well, he’s older than me, I’m just over thirty. He’s in his thirties, too, but closer to forty. He was managing a restaurant in the same neighborhood… this was in New York… and we were going together. He was into old movies, was taking some courses at a college, not going for a degree or anything, just taking courses, anything to do with film: I was bored with what I was doing. I’d done some little theater type stuff, and high school drama before that, and liked it, liked it a whole lot better than doing somebody’s hair. Always did have stars in my eyes, I guess, and so Jerry and me hit it off, and he’d heard about the porno stuff people were doing, a lot of it was on the West Coast, nothing too good was being done in the east, so we decided to get into it. I financed it… I had money, from my parents, and I have an uncle who’s a soft touch, and is to this day.. and we started making movies, That’s, what… maybe five years ago. And we both always figured we’d use it as a springboard… never had any intention of staying in porno. We always knew we’d go aboveground. And it’s finally happening.”
“You mean the contract your husband signed to do a movie for American International.”
“Well, it’s really more than that. It’s got options that make it a multi-picture contract, really. It’s the bigtime, it really is.”
“What about you? Your movie career?”
“I’ll be in everything Jerry does. You just saw me shoot my last fuck scene, kiddo. I may take my clothes off on camera again, but it won’t be to do anything obscene.”
There was a sort of logic to that that was somehow irrefutable.
Across the way, in another booth, Richie and the fat cameraman, Harry, were sitting, talking. Or anyway Richie was talking: Harry just sat and scowled. Richie seemed a little frayed around the edges; he was waving his hands a lot and maybe was thinking about crying. I couldn’t hear anything they were saying: the one-sided conversation was intense but the volume was low.
“Lover’s quarrel,” she said, noticing me watching the two men.
“That so?”
“Yeah. I think Richie was in the sack with Frankie last night, and Harry found out, and brother. “
“Oh. Is everybody around here queer?”
“Not me. But I’m a married lady. If you’re horny, you’ll have to take a shot at Janet.” And she smiled. “That’s a laugh. If you can get that cold little bitch in the sack, you can have me for dessert, married lady or not.”
I was tempted to take her up on that. She was, after all, one of the best looking women I’d ever seen. And I liked her. For an actress, she was remarkably honest.
But that had been her exit line; she rose and swayed off, and just as she did, fat Harry rose and left his friend Richie alone in the booth.
So I joined him.
19
“Mind if I join you?” I said.
The kid looked up, smoothed the front of his demim jumpsuit absent-mindedly. He pursed his lips, which made his scraggly blond mustache quiver like a caterpillar thinking about starting its cocoon. Then he looked down again, and muttered, “Go ahead.”
He sat with his elbows on the booth’s transparent plastic tabletop, heels of his hands pressed to his forehead.
I sat across from him and waited him out. I think he wanted me to start, wanted somebody to ask him what was wrong, to make sympathetic sounds. I’m not particularly good at sympathy, so I waited him out.
“Ever had one of those days?” he finally asked, peeking out at me with those slightly bloodshot eyes, between the heels of his hands.
“Get out of the wrong side of the bed?” I asked. Innocently.
“You can say that again.”
I decided not to.
“I’m a screw-up,” he said, lowering his hands. “It’s that simple.”
I couldn’t see arguing with him. He’d been a real asshole when he’d met me at the door; I was still holding that against him.
Which happened to be the subject he started in on, to illustrate that he was a screw-up.
“Like when you came to the door,” he said. “I misjudged you. I thought you looked… I’m sorry… but I thought you looked suspicious. I know that’s silly. You’re a very normal looking guy. I mean, nice looking, even. But I misjudged you. Screwed up.”
“It’s okay,” I said. Not meaning it.
“No, really. I mean, if I’d known you were from Oui magazine.. ”
“You might not’ve called me ‘smart-ass’ so many times?”
“I had that coming. Go ahead. Lay me out.”
“No thanks.”
“Look, I… I’m glad you sat down. I’d like to start over.”
“I only sat down because for my article’s sake I need to get to know everybody involved with the filming… including you. But according to what your friend Harry said, I guess you might not be too willing to talk to me. He doesn’t seem to be.”
“Harry just doesn’t want it getting out he’s done a porno. He.. he just doesn’t understand.”
“What doesn’t he understand?”
“A lot of things. Jerry Castile, for one. Harry doesn’t understand who Jerry Castile is. All Harry can see here is a porno film being shot. He doesn’t see this for what it is.”
“What is it?”
“Film.” He said it almost religiously.
“I see.”
“Castile is… he’s a director. What more can I say?”
“Not much.”
“That’s right. After you’ve said it… after you’ve seen him for what he is… a director… it makes all the difference. Subject matter, what’s that? It’s not substance that counts. It’s style. Look at Howard Hawks.”
“What?”
“Look at Howard Hawks. He did westerns, he did comedies, war pictures, a private eye picture, crime pictures. but in them all, through them all, he was Howard Hawks.”
“I can’t argue with that,” I admitted.
“Look at Hitchcock,” he went on. “Suspense films. That’s what the public thinks of when they think of Hitchcock. But is it the subject matter of those films that’s important? No. It’s the style. It’s Hitchcock.”
“That’s a real good point.”
“I could make the same point about Alan Dwan, Fritz Lang, Samuel Fuller, a dozen others.”