But there weren’t any answers for questions like that. A person is who he is, and he can’t guess who he would be if he was somebody else. The question doesn’t even make sense. But I guess it’s just impossible to think at all about movie stars without some fantasy or other creeping in.
My plane for Los Angeles left New York a little after seven p.m. and took five hours to get across the country, but because of the time zone differences it was only a little after nine at night when I landed, and still not ten o’clock when the taxi let me off at a motel on Cahuenga Boulevard, pretty much on the line separating Hollywood from Burbank. The taxi cost almost twenty dollars from the airport, which was kind of frightening. I’d taken two thousand dollars out of my savings, leaving just over three thousand in the account, and I was spending the money pretty fast.
The cab driver was a leathery old guy who buzzed along the freeways like it was a stock-car race, all the time telling me how much better the city had been before the freeways were built. Most people pronounce Los Angeles as though the middle is “angel”, but he was one of those who pronounce it as though the middle is “angle”. “Los Ang-gleez”, he kept saying, and one time he said, “I’m a sight you won’t see all that much. I’m your native son.”
“Born here?”
“Nope. Come out in forty-eight.”
The motel had a large neon sign out front and very small rooms in a low stucco building in back. It was impossible to tell what color the stucco was because green and yellow and orange and blue floodlights were aimed at it from fixtures stuck into the ivy border, but in the morning the color turned out to be a sort of dirty cream shade.
My room had pale blue walls and a heavy maroon bedspread and a paper ribbon around the toilet seat saying it had been sanitized. I unpacked my duffel and turned on the television set, but I was too restless to stay cooped up in that room forever. Also, I decided I was hungry. So I changed into civvies and went out and walked down Highland to Hollywood Boulevard, where I ate something in a fast-food place. It was like New York in that neighborhood, only skimpier. For some reason Los Angeles looks older than New York. It looks like an old old Pueblo Indian village with neon added to it by real estate people. New York doesn’t look any older than Europe, but Los Angeles looks as old as sand. It looks like a place that almost had a Golden Age, a long long time ago, but nothing happened and now it’s too late.
After I ate I walked around for half an hour, and then I went back to the motel and all of a sudden I was very sleepy. I had the television on, and the light, and I still wore all my clothes except my shoes, but I fell asleep anyway, lying on top of the bedspread, and when I woke up the TV was hissing and it was nearly four in the morning. I was very thirsty, and nervous for some reason. Lonely, I felt lonely. I drank water, and went out to the street again, and after a while I found an all-night supermarket called Hughes. I took a cart and went up and down the aisles.
There were some people in there, not many. I noticed something about them. They were all dressed up in suede and fancy denim, like people at a terrific party in some movie, but they were buying the cheapest of everything. Their baskets were filled as though by gnarled men and women wearing shabby pants or faded kerchiefs, but the men were all young and tanned and wearing platform shoes, and the women were all made up with false eyelashes and different-colored fingernails. Also, some of them had food stamps in their hands.
Another thing. When these people pushed their carts down the aisles they stood very straight and were sure of themselves and on top of the world, but when they lowered their heads to take something off a shelf they looked very worried.
Another thing. Every one of them was alone. They went up and down the aisles, pushing their carts past one another – from up above, they must have looked like pieces in a labyrinth game – and they never looked at one another, never smiled at one another. They were just alone in there, and from up front came the clatter of the cash register.
After a while I didn’t want to be in that place any more. I bought shaving cream and a can of soda and an orange, and walked back to the motel and went to bed.
There wasn’t anybody in the phone book named Byron Cartwright, who was the famous agent who had changed Estelle’s name to Dawn Devayne and then guided her to stardom. In the motel office they had the five different Los Angeles phone books, and he wasn’t in any of them. He also wasn’t in the yellow pages under “Theatrical Agencies”. Finally I found a listing for something called the Screen Actors’ Guild, and I called, and spoke to a girl who said, “Byron Cartwright? He’s with GLA.”
“I’m sorry?”
“GLA,” she repeated, and hung up.
So I went back to the phone books, hoping to find something called GLA. The day clerk, a sunken-cheeked faded-eyed man of about forty with thinning yellow hair and very tanned arms, said, “You seem to be having a lot of trouble.”
“I’m looking for an actor’s agent,” I told him.
His expression lit up a bit. “Oh, yeah? Which one?”
“Byron Cartwright.”
He was impressed. “Pretty good,” he said. “He’s with GLA now, right?”
“That’s right. Do you know him?”
“Don’t I wish I did.” This time he was rueful. His face seemed to jump from expression to expression with nothing in between, as though I were seeing a series of photographs instead of a person.
“I’m trying to find the phone number,” I said.
I must have seemed helpless, because his next expression showed the easy superiority of the insider. “Look under Global-Lipkin,” he told me.
Global-Lipkin. I looked, among “Theatrical Agencies”, and there it was: Global-Lipkin Associates. You could tell immediately it was an important organization; the phone number ended in three zeroes. “Thank you,” I said.
His face now showed slightly belligerent doubt. He said, “They send for you?”
“Send for me? No.”
The face was shut; rejection and disapproval. Shaking his head he said, “Forget it.”
Apparently he thought I was a struggling actor. Not wanting to go through a long explanation, I just shrugged and said, “Well, I’ll try it,” and went back to the phone booth.
A receptionist answered. When I asked for Byron Cartwright she put me through to a secretary, who said, “Who’s calling, please?”
“Ordo Tupikos.”
“And the subject, Mr Tupikos?”
“Dawn Devayne.”
“One moment, please.”
I waited a while, and then she came back and said, “Mr Tupikos, could you tell me who you’re with?”
“With? I’m sorry, I . . .”
“Which firm.”
“Oh. I’m not with any firm, I’m in the Navy.”
“In the Navy.”
“Yes. I used to be—” But she’d gone away again.
Another wait, and then she was back. “Mr Tupikos, is this official Navy business?”
“No,” I said. “I used to be married to Dawn Devayne.”
There was a little silence, and then she said, “Married?”
“Yes. In San Diego.”
“One moment, please.”
This was a longer wait, and when she came back she said, “Mr Tupikos, is this a legal matter?”
“No, I just want to see Estelle again.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Dawn Devayne. She was named Estelle when I married her.”
A male voice suddenly said, “All right, Donna, I’ll take it.”
“Yes, sir,” and there was a click.
The male voice said, “You’re Ordo Tupikos?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. It wasn’t sensible to call him “sir”, but the girl had just done it, and in any event he had an authoritative officer-like sound in his voice, and it just slipped out.