“Your career is important to me, Jack. And the reason your career is important to me is because it’s unique. If I wanted to be in the shoe business, eight million shoes all the same, I’d be in the shoe business. The business I’m in, this crazy mad business of show business, not shoe business, in which I thank God I’ve had a certain modicum of success, in this business, every new face, every new body, every new voice, every new talent that comes through that door is a separate and unique challenge, another opportunity for me to prove myself. Do you know what I mean, Jack?”
“I think so, sir,” Jack said. Today he wore brown loafers and tan chinos and a polo shirt with an alligator on it and an open, welcoming, guileless expression.
Irwin Sandstone’s blunt thumb caressed the statue’s budding breasts. “I am a mere servant of the creative impulse, Jack,” he said, circling and circling. “It’s your unique gift we’re concerned with here, not the life or goals or dreams of Irwin Sandstone.”
“Yes, sir,” said Jack.
Irwin’s fingers oiled and warmed the bronze. “How to mold, how to shape, how to bring out to the acclaim of the multitudes that unique talent deep within you, that is my humble duty, that is my mantra, to serve great talents, to be the willing stepping stone on which they rise, to do whatever is within my small powers” — with a wave at the power-reeking office — “to bring each wonderful unique private talent to its greatest glory. That is what I wish to do with you, Jack. If you agree. Will you give me that task, Jack? Will you order me to make you great?”
Accommodating, Jack said, “Sure.”
Suddenly more businesslike, clutching the statue’s legs, Irwin nodded. “Okay,” he said, and stood still, to Jack’s left, appraising him, nodding slowly to himself, while Jack struggled to decide whether he was supposed to meet Irwin Sandstone’s gaze frankly or face forward to be studied. Compromising, he faced more or less forward, and flicked constant glances toward the man hefting him in his mind.
“Okay,” Irwin Sandstone said again, the statue forgotten, its head in his fist. “For your type,” he said, “we start with the biker picture, then your pathologic killer, then your patient picture. By then you’re established, you can do whatever you want.”
Jack, manfully smiling, said, “Patient picture?”
Irwin Sandstone negligently waved the hand with the statue in it. “Nut house or hospital,” he explained. “You’re a person with an affliction, see? Gives you that human dimension, rounds you off after the psycho.”
“Oh, yeah,” Jack said. “I see what you mean.”
Irwin Sandstone brought his hands together. They found the statue again, apparently on their own, and the fat fingers stroked and fumbled as their owner gazed appealingly at Jack to say, “Is that what you want, Jack? Stardom? Fruition? Will you put yourself in my hands?”
Jack watched those hands fondle the thin bronze girl. He shrugged. “What have I got to lose?” he said.
Lude
O’Connor watches the movie star seated on his gray slate patio in his pale blue terry-cloth robe, vaguely smiling, ignoring the sounds from the swimming pool right nearby. He’s good at ignoring things, O’Connor thinks.
The reminiscence of the introduction to Irwin Sandstone floats in the lambent air, dissipates like opium smoke in the sun. After a little silence, the famous Jack Pine sleepily says, “Irwin was the genius, not me, and we both knew it.” Slowly he is arching backward, body collapsing gradually onto the slates. Lying there, blind-looking eyes gazing skyward, voice fading more and more, “But Irwin came thruuuuuuuuuu,” Pine murmurs. “Ahh-hhhhh, I’ll give himmmmmm...”
The eyes close. He has drifted off, his breathing deep and even. O’Connor waits a moment, memo pad in left hand, pencil in right, but the actor doesn’t alter in any way. At last, O’Connor leans forward from his chair, extends his right arm forward, taps the sleeping star on the knee with the eraser end of his pencil. “Mister Pine?” he says. “Sir?”
No response.
Abruptly, the stone-faced butler, Hoskins, appears with a silver tray bearing a glass full of oily black muck. “Allow me to help, sir,” he says.
“He’s all yours,” O’Connor says, and leans back in his canvas chair again to watch.
Hoskins goes to one knee, places the silver tray on the slate beside himself, props the actor up against his raised knee with practiced ease, pinches the actor’s nose between thumb and forefinger of left hand, and with the right hand pours the glassful of oily black muck down Jack Pine’s throat.
O’Connor winces, empathizing despite himself. He says, “Does this happen a lot, Hoskins?”
Still pouring, the viscous fluid slowly oozing from the glass into the unconscious man’s mouth, Hoskins says, “We have an amazing amount and variety of chemicals in our body, sir. Maintaining the balance is not at all easy.”
“I can see that,” O’Connor says.
The glass is now mostly empty, only an oily metallic coating still staining its sides. Hoskins puts the glass back on the tray, and lowers the body to the slate. Then he picks up the tray, stands, and says, “We should be coming around any instant, sir.”
With which, the actor pops upright, sitting at attention, legs straight out in front, arms stretched out and back behind him like flying buttresses. His eyes are wide open. “Hoskins!” he cries.
Hoskins bows a deferential head in his direction. “Sir?”
Speaking at incredible speed, Pine says, “I’ve got it! We’ll put white pillars every seven feet all around the side, and put the lawn on top, and then we can go underneath when it’s too sunny!”
“Interesting, sir,” Hoskins says. As Pine’s head twitches back and forth, his wide eyes staring here and there like a demented bird, Hoskins stoops, picks up the empty glass that once contained the fuzzy drink, puts it beside the black muck glass on the tray, nods at O’Connor, and departs, walking ramrod-stiff toward the house.
Pine’s darting head and staring eyes find O’Connor, gawk at him. Pine giggles. He points at O’Connor, teetering on only one buttress, giggling with accomplishment, with his own discovery. “People!” he cries.
O’Connor, bewildered, looks around and then points the pencil at himself, saying, “No, sir, it’s just me. Like before.”
“People magazine,” Jack Pine says, nodding, smiling, cackling. “The cover again!”
How much longer can the actor possibly believe this is a press interview? O’Connor sighs, and waits.
Hello, hello, here I am again, just fine, doing just fine, everything’s just—
Hello, here I am again. I’m back with it now, it’s back with me now, my with now is it—
Hello. There’s something terribly wrong here, call a priest. No, wait. Maybe better not.
Hello?
Here I am. Lost myself for a while, fell down some rabbit hole — “I’m late, I’m late,” as my girlfriends used to say — fell down some black nasty... Dead? Who’s dead?
Hello?
I gaze about me, and the interviewer sits patiently, sits watching me, sits patiently watching me. “Hello,” I say.
“Hello,” he says. “Are you all right?”