Love Among the Cannibals Read online

  This little chick with her hair in a pony tail came up from behind us, sprinkled a little sand on me, then pitched her camp where the tide had smoothed the sand. She spread out her little towel, let down her straps, put on her gem-studded glasses with the built-in visor, daubed Noxzema on her nose, then lit up a Parliament and smoked. I thought the little leather case might have her lunch, her radio, and her sun-tan lotion, but this was no run-of-the-mill sort of chick. Not on your life. She opened it, cranked it, and put a record on the gramophone. Owing to the radio Mac was playing, we didn’t hear her taste in music till he turned it off. A sultry-type songbird was crooning a number entitled “What Next?” That happened to be the last song we had written with a chance to catch on. The songbird was the not-so-little girl we call Pussy, the one with Mac’s hand on her thigh, who specializes in what I call Music for Leching, without accompaniment. She sings under the name of Faith Amor. The one exception to my practice of using clichés, and not writing them, will be found in “What Next?” I had to write them. It explains the song’s brand-new old look.

  What next?

  The life of love I knew

  No longer loves

  The things I do.

  What next?

  When Mac heard those moving lines he sat up and barked, “Man, it’s great! You know what I mean?”

  This little chick really did.

  “Ah think she is simply wonnaful,” she said, modestly pulling up one suit strap. “If Miss Ah-moh does it, I just have to have it. Ah reahly do.”

  If you keep your ear to the ground for clichés, as I have to, you get these shockers. First you hear it, then you meet it in the flesh. Since Mac gives the impression of being a little deaf, she turned her blinkers on me.

  “It’s a nice song,” I said. “What’s the girl’s name?”

  Nothing rocks these chicks back so much as to hear they are mad about someone you never even heard of. She rocked back and said, “You nevah hurt of Miss Ah-moh?”

  “You mean Pussy?” I said. “The chick on the strip?”

  That cut her. You could see where she was cut.

  “Pussy can do a nice piece, all right,” I said, “if she’s got the right material.”

  “Ah’m sho yoh can’t mean Miss Ah-moh,” she replied. “Ah nevah hurt Miss Ah-moh refurt to as Pussy.”

  “Her mummy calls her Pussy, her daddy calls her Pussy, her friends call her Pussy, and we call her Pussy.”

  “Yoh ackshilly know huh?”

  “Mr. Macgregor here does,” I said, giving Mac the nod. “He wrote the song foh huh.” I have to watch myself with these Suthun belles, since I tend to imitate their lingo.

  “Yoh ackshilly dit?” she said, looking at Mac. Mac ackshilly did, but I could sympathize with her. “Ah feel chus mortafite, Mistuh MacGraw—” she began, but if you’re going to follow what it is she says I ought to stop telling you how she sounds. But if what she said really mattered, I’d translate it for you. It’s all in how she sounds. What she went on to say was that if she had half the sense she was born with, a doubtful statement, she would have known it was the song, not just the ah-tist, that appealed to her. She managed to say that, then she looked at Mac as if talking to him would move him to speech.

  “Pussy hams it up a little,” I put in, “but it’s not a bad piece.”

  She wiggled like a wet puppy on her towel, then she pinched herself and asked Mac if she was asleep or if she was awake. That was actually one that Mac might have answered, but he let it pass. Then she wanted to know if we thought she was crazy, a young unchaperoned little girl like herself, coming down to the beach with nothing but her record player and her Parliaments. I was about to answer that one when she sighed, then said:

  “Mistuh MacGraw, ah get so sick an’ tahd talkin’ to mahself.”

  Mac generally looks so dead that any sign of life in him makes quite an impression. It made one on her. It made one on both of us. He suddenly sat up, leaning forward so far that the crucifix he wears around his neck swung free on its chain, showing the 18-carat stamp. He’s not religious, but he believes in playing the odds. I could see the idea drip through his mind that there was a song here, a great one, and the words “so sick an’ tired talkin’ to myself” formed on his lips. Then it crossed his mind why he thought so. Someone had already done it. The wind of hope that had filled him seemed to leak out through his pores.

  “Yoh know why ah come to the beach, Mistuh Mac-Graw? Ah come to thaw out. Ah was nevah so colt any-wheah in mah life as ah am out heah.”

  She shivered. If I had half the brains I was born with, I would have heard the alarm right there. Mac’s alarm, I mean. The buzzer that rings when one of his Million-Dollar Babies turns up.

  “It’s a nasty climate—” I said, edging away. “You freeze in the fog, then—”

  “Honey—” she said, giving herself a little hug, “ah doan mean that climate. Ah mean the hu-man climate. Ah nevah crossed paths with so many colt shoulters in all mah life.”

  In a moment of excitement he can hardly bear, Mac will take off whatever hat he is wearing, run one hand through his hair, then put the hat back on, pulled down tight. He did that. Then he looked at me and said, “Crossed paths, man! Crossed paths an’ cold shoulders!”

  His eyes were on me, but they were actually leafing through our song-title file. If “Crossed Paths” wasn’t there now, it soon would be.

  “Miss—” I began, but she was telling Mac that the only friend she had was her little record player, and by that she meant it was the only friend she had of the masculine sex. Was she out of her mind to think her little gramophone was her boy friend? Well, she did. It just went to prove how lonely she was. She was one of these chicks who close or flutter their eyelids whenever their mouth is open, acting on the same principle as these dolls with the weights in their heads. I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. Her pretty little cold shoulders were covered with duck bumps. I thought Mac would take his shirt off and wrap it around her, but he was too excited, too full of the big one, so all he did was jam the hat down around his ears, then say:

  “Baby—you sing?”

  “Mistuh MacGraw!” she said, shocked with recognition. “Why, Mistuh MacGraw.”

  “Miss—” I began.

  “What in the wohld should evah make you think so, Mistuh MacGraw? Ah do sing. Ah suppose ah should say ah wanna sing.”

  “Miss Garland—” I said. That clicked. I mean that cut her to the quick.

  “Harcum,” she said. “Miss Billie Harcum. Ah’m a stootun of Marlene Mazda Joyce, although yoh-all probly know huh, an’ refuh to huh as somethin’ else.”

  “Muzzy Joyce has some nice contacts, Miss Harcum,” I said. “We sometimes find a cage for her little songbirds. You dance?”

  “Why, Mistuh—”

  “Horter. Of Macgregor & Horter.”

  “Ah’m the awfullust fool, Mistuh Hortuh. Ah know yoh name as well as mah own.”

  “Let’s focus on Mac here then,” I said. “The name is Macgregor, not MacGraw, but he’ll probably insist that you call him Mac.”

  “Oh, Mistuh Macgregaw!”

  “My name is Earl,” I went on, “but I don’t insist on it.”

  “Uhl? Ah chus love Uhl as a name.”

  “We’re not casting right now, Miss Harcum, but we have a small spot for some dark-complected dancers—Mexicali roses instead of Memphis roses, if you know what I mean.”

  She did. I waited to see if she could take it, and she took it.

  “You’ll need a little more color,” I said, sizing her up. “The shade we’re going to want is octoroon, or light mulatto—”

  When I said mulatto she darkened to the shade I had in mind. Over the years I’ve noticed that a flush of indignation does more for a girl than Max Factor. There’s more to flush in a woman, that is, than her face and eyes.

  “You’ll do if you can dance, honey,” I said, and she suddenly saw right through me. I was a card. It had taken her all that time to ca
tch on. I didn’t really mean what I’d said about mulatto, it was just my way of pulling her pretty leg. She put it out where I could reach it, and said:

  “Mistuh Hortuh, ah’m essenchuly a singah. A singah of the contnental type.”

  Continental-type singers, aus Weehawken and Memphis, are almost as rare as girls who sing in dime stores.

  “What we need is dancers, Miss Harcum,” I began, but Mac sat up suddenly and barked:

  “Baby, can you take it?”

  “Take it?” echoed Miss Harcum. Fearing the worst, she turned to me.

  “We have a little test number, Miss Harcum,” I said. “If a girl can’t take it—” I rolled my eyes, shrugged my shoulders.

  “Can ah try—right heah, Mistuh Hortuh?”

  “Sure, baby!” barked Mac. “If you’ll turn that thing off—” and he wagged his hand at her whining record player. I don’t sing our stuff often, but when I do Mac knows I like it quiet. Our little cannibelle number, as a matter of fact, is a litmus test. The chick can take it or leave it, and we can take or leave the chick. Miss Harcum wiggled over to switch off her machine, then she came over like a seal with a fish at its nose, and let me have the benefit of her pretty little duckies. I wet my lips, huskily crooned:

  “Baby cannibelle, once you try it,

  I’m the dark meat in your diet,

  You eat me while I eat you,

  Since it’s the economical thing to do,

  Baby, baby can-ni-bellllle!”

  Well, they don’t do it so much any more, but she almost swooned. The Memphis type, her type, don’t go in for playing it cool. She bit down on her lip, gasped for air, scooped little holes in the sand to hide her feet in, and gave no thought to the fact that both of her straps were down.

  “Man,” bellowed Mac, “she can take it! You know what I mean? She took it!”

  “Oh, Mistuh Mac—”

  “—gregor,” I said. “The number’s not particularly Latin-American, but it is muy Acapulco,” giving the muy a roll that made it clear just what I meant.

  “Aca-pulco?” she said. “Now did you evah— Ah’m invited to a pahty of some folks who just come from Acapulco. Theatuh people. You would know theah names. Ah’m invited but ah jus got too much self-respeck, I suppose.”

  “What kinda party is it, baby?” said Mac, since he loved nonrespectable parties.

  “It’s not the kinda pahty a respectable gurl is seen at alone.”

  I got the picture pretty well, and said, “Too bad all our nights are sewed up, Miss Harcum, but since Mac, here—”

  “Baby—” said Mac, “when is it?”

  “This particulah pahty just so happens to be tonight, Mistuh MacGraw.”

  “Baby—” chanted Mac, but in his excitement he forgot what he meant to say. But I hadn’t. When a chick has passed the Horter test, it’s always the same.

  “You happen to have a girl friend, Miss Harcum?” I said.

  “Mistuh Hortuh—” she said, fluttered her eyes as if the idea of a girl friend left her nonplused. It gave me time to slip a pencil out of Mac’s shirt pocket, tear off a piece of his score. When her eyes stopped fluttering it crossed her mind that she did have a girl friend, one she worked with, and being theatuh people they all more or less lived in the same house. I took the address, the telephone number, and to make sure we would find the place after dark we drove her home and dropped her off on our way to eat.

  This car the studio put at our disposal was in the quiet, unassuming good taste of a hot-rod parts manufacturer on his day off. Fireman red, with green leather upholstery, it had a crush-proof steering wheel, a crush-proof dash, compartments in the doors for whisky and soda, and a record player where the glove compartment usually is. We didn’t even have to buy our own records. They supplied us with them.

  I’d say one of Mac’s ideas of heaven is to have Eddie Duchin playing Cole Porter while we cruise along the coast highway toward Santa Barbara. You don’t have to whistle at the girls in this car, just sit in it with the top down, the music going, while you drive along the strip. This little chick and her friends lived in Westwood, in one of those attractive slums for tomorrow, a cool arrangement of glass and tin sloped to catch the heat. This chick had sworn her girl friends would be dying to meet me, an actual living man who wrote song lyrics, but she came down the steps alone, and joined us in the front. I must say she looked sharp. You know how these little girls learn to walk so they make a sharp clack on the pavement, and almost whinny when they pull up alongside your fence.

  She climbed in—she got in between us—then she said she just had to be frank with me, and that her girl friends didn’t feel they should be running around with a man my age. “Well, what age am I?” I said, since I hadn’t mentioned my age. “All ah said was you certainly weren’t over forty,” she replied. I could see she pulled that deal just to flatter Mac, in his baby-face thirties, and at the same time have the two of us to herself. All the time she put on this little act her hand was on my knee, not Mac’s, indicating that a man my age offered certain advantages.

  Anyhow, I went to this party without a chick. We drove back to Sunset, I remember, into that section they call Bel Air, then we drove into the hills where the movie stars live. You can’t bring the Riviera over in crates, the way Citizen Kane would have liked to, but you can name the streets Cannes, Antibes, Monaco, with an Italian wing running from Amalfi to Sorrento. We took the French wing, that night, and followed it to the summit of the hill, where we curved along the vine-covered wall of a château. So that the effect wouldn’t be lost, or if you came up at night and might have missed it, the drive in went across a drawbridge over a moat. Inside the open court, about the size of a gym, there were representative sports cars of all nations, with a patriotic sprinkling of Thunderbirds. On the East Coast that would mean money, but here on the West Coast a soda jerk, willing to choose between a chick and a Thunderbird, can have the Thunderbird. He lives in a closet, gulps his sandwich at the counter, and can’t afford the salve for his athlete’s foot, but when you see him on Sunset he’s on a par with the movie stars. Unless they get off the highways, it leaves most movie stars with no place to turn.

  Surrounded with all that quiet, imported good taste, our bright fire wagon had a certain class, and I left it where we could sneak off early, since I intended to.

  One of these professional catering outfits had taken over the place. They had a fellow in the yard to lead you to the right door, a man at the door to size you up and frisk you, then one in the hall to guide you to the proper facilities. One of the minor dividends of forty-one years, fifteen of them passed among the gay counterfeiters, is that you can size up a piece of scenery pretty fast. The way these caterers knew their way around they probably lived in it. This mansion full of trophies—they had a viking sled with the reindeer harnessed in the main hallway—was probably rented out, furnished, for parties of this type. This one had been given an Acapulco flavor by stringing a fish net along the stairway, and scenting the place with the smell of Mexican cigarettes. They had a Mariachi outfit from Olvera Street, featuring an old man, his shoulders snowy with dandruff, who would let out that yip so characteristic of carefree, childlike, passionate Mexican life. The drinks were served in those blurred Mexican glasses, by waiters in creaky huaraches, and aficionados were encouraged to take their tequila straight. I’m nothing if not an aficionado, and I attracted more than the usual attention by scoffing at the plate of sliced limes, and crying for salt. I had spent most of one summer mastering tequila and salt. You sprinkle a little salt on the back of your hand, where you can lick it off, like a tourist, or by tapping the wrist, sharply, get the salt to hop into your mouth. I did, then raised my eyes to see—the way a man meets his fate in the movies—a woman, a young woman, who had just entered the room. The directness of her gaze caught me unprepared. I returned it, that is. The word chick—the word I rely on—did not come to mind. This tremendous girl—the scale of this girl made me step back a pace to see her�
�wore one of the flowers, one of the favors for the ladies, in her hair. That’s all I could tell you. I turned away at that point to collect myself. It took me more than a moment. The jigger-size glass that held my tequila was slippery on the outside from what I had spilled. You know the feeling you have that in your grasp, within your grasp, you have the dream that has always escaped you—followed by the feeling that your eyes, and your heart, have cheated you again. When I turned she was gone. Gone. Had she really been there? I walked back to the main hall where I could see up the curve of the stairs, where the women congregated; pretty good-looking women, in the main, thanks to the California sun. But this girl was not there. Looking up the flight of stairs it occurred to me that I wouldn’t know this girl by how she looked—I didn’t know how she looked—I would only recognize her by how I felt. How did I feel? The way I often feel in elevators.

  They had a table of food in the center of the hall, one of these smorgasbord setups where you help yourself, and just to occupy myself I selected a plate of food. I have to do that for Mac, anyhow, otherwise he will eat nothing but stuffed olives, stuffed olives being for him what baba au rhum is for me. A symbol of the carefree, indulgent life lived by the rich in the Great Bad Places. I let him have some pumpernickel to settle his liquor, then I found him very chummy with the Señorita, a bugle-voiced Mariachi singer from First Avenue and 96th. Since Miss Harcum had brought him to this party, I brought him back to the main hall, where she was waiting, having sprayed herself with something irresistible. I got myself some stuffed celery hearts and a tall drink with the cidery flavor of Sidral, then stepped into a room off the main hall that was not occupied. It had some comfortable chairs, and a big window that looked toward the sea. What they call the jewel box was glittering between the foothills and the coast. It was still just light enough to make out the shore, the dark hulk of Catalina, and the blinking lights on an airliner that had just taken off. I moved a chair around so I could face it, having once, as a poet, compelled myself to sit and stare at what I considered beautiful. It’s impossible. Try it sometime. If the sight really moves you, the first thing you do is turn away. That’s how, I would say, we know that it’s beautiful. We can’t really cope with the sensation except to turn away and talk about it, but I had once made the effort, years ago, on the isle of Capri. The view across toward Naples, or south toward Sorrento, is of that sort. Something in the mind lights up, then blacks out, at the sight of it. I sat there all afternoon, staring, but when I think of Capri right now what I see are the views in my Uncle Clyde’s stereopticon library. It is still intact. Vesuvius wears its immortal plume. A woman dressed like my mother gazes toward it from beneath her parasol.