“But surely you’ve been to an eye doctor,” I said.
“Yes. It’s severe astigmatism.”
“Well, then, he can prescribe glasses.”
“He made a pair up for me. They’re thick, Pepper. They’re awful.”
“Well, so what about it?”
“If I wore them, anybody could tell I’m far-sighted. Since you taught me to move so well I just couldn’t; they’d detract from my appearance. I’d only be clumsy Arnold again. I even tried contact lenses, but they hurt my eyes and made them water. Onstage I looked like I was crying.”
So he was vain. That was what had been underneath the clumsiness we’d rubbed off. I’d taught him to move and now he couldn’t stand not to be graceful, glassless Arnold.
I’ll say this much: he didn’t give up. He was determined to stay in show business. That must have been part of his vanity too, even in the beginning. I mean, maybe the idea of show business didn’t even have anything to do with his talent. Maybe his memory was just a lucky excuse he could use to justify being on a stage. By now, he was terribly far-sighted but he decided to make a strength of his weakness, and he conceived a plan to move his act outdoors. He went into the desert around Las Vegas and started to memorize larger and larger objects further and further off. He began with cactuses a hundred yards away and ended with a mountain range twenty miles in the distance. Arnold had become a living map!
BERNIE PERK: Incredible!
PEPPER STEEP: It was impractical, of course. He couldn’t get a good crowd to come with him into the desert, and even if he had only someone as far-sighted as himself could have appreciated his accomplishments. We gave it every chance. While in the West we went to Arizona, and Arnold committed to memory the entire south rim of the Grand Canyon, and every bend and twist of the Colorado River for two hundred miles. The Forest Ranger was very impressed and offered him a job. He might have taken it, but the Park Service wouldn’t let him wear his tuxedo.
It was all absurd, of course, but Arnold was as determined to work up his new act as he had been to learn how to move well. It was all he could think of. He had an idea that he needed to be in a dependable climate, one where it was always clear, and so he chose Palm Springs. He asked me to come with him, but I told him I couldn’t. It broke my heart to have to leave him, but I had my career in Hartford — and frankly, I couldn’t see abandoning it in order to chase a will-o’-the-wisp. I tried to talk him into coming back with me, but he was obsessed with his act. I tried to persuade him to sacrifice a little of his appearance, but he was convinced he could still have both.
I saw Arnold only once more. About a year after Las Vegas he sent me a wire saying that he was returning to Hartford and asking me to meet his plane. For old time’s sake I did.
When he appeared in the doorway of the big jet he looked like a movie star. He was wearing one of those cream trenchcoats and a smart little cap. Though it was winter and already past nine o’clock in the evening, he had on huge green sunglasses and carried a chic airline suitcase of olive green leather — one of those things with enormous bulging zippered pockets. Somehow I knew that his sunglasses were not prescription lenses.
We went back to my studio.
“I’ve given up the idea for the act, Pepper,” he said.
“Oh?”
“It was silly. I’ve enormous land masses in my head, but it could never come to anything as an act.”
“It was too ambitious, Arnold.”
“Yeah. When I was still in California I took a plane up to Seattle. I’ve got the shoreline of practically the entire West Coast memorized — except for cloud cover and fog banks.”
“I see.”
“There’s no way to use it.”
“You still won’t wear glasses?”
“No.”
“What happened to the things you used to know? What happened to the carpet on my staircase?”
“Gone. All gone, kid. I can’t see it. The light that failed.”
“Oh, Arnold.”
“What the hell? Let’s not be so gloomy. How d’ya like my shirt? I had about a dozen of them made up in Springs. In pastels, stripes. No breast pocket, did you notice? That’s one of the latest wrinkles.”
“Oh, Arnold.”
“The shoes are reindeer suede. Handmade, of course. The heels are meerschaum.”
“What’s the lettering on my card index file?”
He closed his eyes and opened them again. “Can’t make it out, Pep.”
“Oh, Arnold.”
“That’s all over. I’ve given up the act. I’ve come back, sweetie. We’re together again.”
“No, Arnold. We’re not. I met your plane, but it’s over between us. You’d better leave now. My friend is terribly jealous.”
“Oh, Pepper.”
“Please go, Arnold. I’d prefer there were no scene.”
At the door Arnold turned once and shrugged. He tipped his funny little hat forward on his head and shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his raincoat. He was the elegant lonely man, like Frank Sinatra on an album cover.
There wasn’t anyone else, of course … There isn’t anyone else. And all Arnold had meant to do in the doorway was make me love him. He thought I would love him if he was handsome and graceful, but I’d loved him for what was in his mind, for what he could remember. He was a peacock now, the world as much a blur to him as it is to the rest of us.
I’m sorry. Forgive me. I’m sorry I’m crying. I don’t mean to cry. Please. I’m sorry.
BERNIE PERK: Oh, Pepper.
DICK GIBSON: Ladies and gentlemen, we pause now for station identification.
Among the guests in the studio all hell broke loose during the station break. They talked excitedly to one another, and called back and forth along the row of theater seats like picnickers across their tables. Though they had nothing to say themselves, Behr-Bleibtreau’s people turned back and forth trying to follow the conversation of the others. Indeed, there was a sort of lunatic joy in the room, a sense of free-for-all that was not so much an exercise of liberty as of respite— as if someone had temporarily released them from vows. School was out in Studio A, and Dick had an impression of its also being out throughout the two or three New England states that could pick up the show. He saw people raiding refrigerators, gulping beers, grabbing tangerines, slashing margarine on slices of bread, ravenously tearing chicken wings, jellied handfuls of leftover stews.
Pepper Steep had joined Jack Patterson in exhausted detachment; though he said nothing, Mel Son looked animatedly from one to the other. Behr-Bleibtreau also seemed exhausted.
Of the members of his panel, only Bernie Perk seemed keyed up. He jabbered away a mile a minute, so that Dick couldn’t really follow all that he was saying. The druggist wanted to know what had happened to everyone. “What’s got into Pepper?” he asked. “What’s got into Jack?”
Dick couldn’t tell him. He had no notion of what had gotten into his comrades. All he knew was that he was impatient for the commercial to be finished and for the show to go back on the air. He couldn’t wait to hear what would happen next, though having some dim sense of the masquelike qualities of the evening, and realizing that thus far his guests had “performed” in the order that they had been introduced, he had a hunch that it would involve Bernie.
It did.
BERNIE PERK: May I say something?
DICK GIBSON: Sure thing.
BERNIE PERK: Okay, then. What’s going on here? What’s got into everyone? What’s got into Pepper? What’s got into Jack? I came here tonight to talk about psychology with an expert in the field. But all anyone’s done so far is grab the limelight for himself. Everyone is too excited. Once a person gets started talking about himself all sorts of things come out that aren’t anybody’s business. I understand enough about human nature to know that much. Everybody has his secret. Who hasn’t? We’re all human beings. Who isn’t a human being? Listen, I’m a mild person. I’m not very interesting, maybe, and I don’t blow my own horn, but even someone like myself, good old Bernie Perk, corner druggist, “Doc” to one and “Pop” to another, could put on a regular horror show if he wanted to. But it isn’t people’s business.