22
MORTIMER AND JOYCE WERE AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE when the doorbell rang.
“Ziggy! Its Ziggy!” Mortimer embraced his old friend. “God damn it, Ziggy, but I’m glad to see you. If only you knew how glad!”
“Um, sure,” Ziggy said, disengaging himself, glancing apprehensively at Joyce over Mortimer’s shoulder, wondering what manner of reception she would give him. “Look, man, I’ve only got French bread on me. Like there’s this taxi waiting …”
Mortimer hurried outside to settle with the taxi driver.
“Coffee?” Joyce asked noncommittally.
“You’re looking very well,” Ziggy said.
Which was when Joyce realized that she was still wearing her chiffon negligée. “Oh, dear,” she said, her cheeks reddening. “Excuse me a minute.”
Joyce returned buttoned up to the throat in her brown velvet dressing gown, hand in hand with Doug.
Ziggy grinned at the boy. “Remember your Uncle Ziggy, kiddo?”
“Y-y-yes.”
Mortimer poured Ziggy a vodka-on-the-rocks and explained, “This is terrible, Ziggy, but I must go to the office this morning. There’s something I simply must straighten out. Look, don’t go out, will you? I’ll hurry back.”
Ziggy nodded graciously. Joyce poured him another coffee.
“What’s bugging Mortimer? I’ve never seen him look so lousy.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Joyce said, pushing her chair back from the table and fleeing to the kitchen.
Oi, Ziggy thought, oi, as he heard sobs coming from the bedroom. He finished his coffee and poured himself another cup. There was no household money in the coffee tin. Or the sugar canister. Suddenly Doug stood before him, beaming.
“Daddy’s got a popsie,” Doug said.
“Mortimer! No shit?”
“Quite,” Doug said, getting into his coat. “I think it’s rather super, don’t you?”
“You cutting out, kid?”
“I thought perhaps you’d like to speak to Mother alone.”
“I see.”
“I won’t be back until three. I haven’t got a key so I’ll have to ring, actually.”
“You’re a swinger, kid. Ciao”
“Ciao.”
Ziggy rubbed his jaw pensively. He slipped a hand under his armpit, withdrew it, and smelled. Foo! He reached for the kitchen towel, wet it, and wiped under both armpits. He found the cutlery drawer, took out a paring knife, and methodically cleaned his fingernails. Then Ziggy went into the hall, studied himself in the mirror, and ruffled his hair. He started for the bedroom, where she was still sobbing fitfully. Wait! Ziggy lowered his hand into his underwear, took a good grab, and had a whiff of his fingers. Pig! He went back for the kitchen towel.
“May I come in?” he asked in his tippy-toe voice.
Naturally she didn’t answer. So Ziggy turned the door handle softly and sat down beside her on the bed, where she lay face down. “Joyce?” He began to stroke her tenderly, from top to bottom. “Stop crying, Joyce.” He raked her more slowly now, lingering where it was warmest. “I hope you’re not contemplating the bitchy thing, the obvious thing …”
“What?” Joyce turned over sharply, arching away from his hand, the five fevered fingers. “You bastard,” she said.
Ziggy nodded, emphatically agreeing. “You’re the only one,” he said, “who has always been able to see right through me.”
“Oh, you’re rotten,” she said, as he reached for the top button of her dressing gown. “Mortimer looks up to you. There’s nobody he admires more.”
“Yes, yes. And who could blame you, poor kid, if you wanted to get even with him.”
Mortimer found Dino Tomasso in a state, all but frothing with anger. “Yes? What is it, Mort?”
“Before the Star Maker flies back to America, I must speak with him. I insist, Dino.”
Pacing, favoring his artificial leg, Tomasso turned his unseeing eye on Mortimer. “The Star Maker isn’t flying back to America tomorrow. He’s going into the Clinic. He’s mad, certifiably insane.”
“I don’t understand.”
“What do you understand? Shmuck.”
“Rather more than you think.”
“But what about me? He promised me. I’ve got no sons, he said. You’re my son, Dino. He put it in writing. Now the old bastard is going into the Clinic. I tell you, I could cut my tongue out. If I had a knife …”
“Why?”
Dino Tomasso sank into his chair. “I never should have blown my stack. No matter what, I never should have talked back to the Star Maker.” All at once Tomasso was weeping. “Go now,” he said, banging his head against his desk. “Go now.”
“Is the Star Maker sick?”
“Sick? If he pulls it off, we’ll all be sick. He can’t,” Tomasso said, knocking wood. “No, no, even the Star Maker, Blessed Be His Name, can’t.”
“Can’t what?”
“Can’t what?” Tomasso brought a three-fingered hand fearfully to his mouth. “I didn’t say it. I never told you what. Isn’t that the truth?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, my God, what’s come over me? Sit down, Griffin. Stop grilling me. Let me get a grip on myself.” Tomasso leaned back in his chair, his eyes shut. “Go know,” he said over and over again.
“Dino, I must speak with the Star Maker.”
“You’ve seen the Our Living History file?”
Mortimer nodded.
“Big eyes! Snooper! Spy! Mort, I’m going to do you a favor.” Mortimer waited.
“The picture’s finished. They wound up yesterday. You know that?”
“Yes.”
“Here,” Tomasso said, shoving a package at him: some files from Personnel and three books. “There’s a Bentley with a driver waiting outside. You are to deliver this to the Star Maker personally. At his office. No straying on the set, understand? This is a bad day.”
“Okay,” Mortimer said, taking the package.
“One minute.” Tomasso bit his lip; his face clouded. “Mort, I shouldn’t say this, but … don’t let the Star Maker talk you into anything.”
“Talk me into what?”
“Look at me.” Tomasso hiked his trouser leg up, revealing his artificial limb. He turned his unseeing eye on Mortimer. “Do I have to spell it out for you?”
“I’ll take care of myself,” Mortimer said placatingly.
“Wait. You’ve got the hots for Polly Morgan, haven’t you?”
“Well, you warn her to take care too. You warn her to take special care.”
Still Mortimer failed to comprehend.
“Do not repeat this, but the Star Maker no longer rigidly believes in his own immortality. He plans to double-cross us all. He wants an heir.”
“Marriage,” Mortimer asked, aghast, “at his age?”
“Marriage? Go know. After all these years, go know. You’d better get moving. You’re late already.”
What, Mortimer wondered, speeding toward the studios, was Tomasso getting at? Surely the Star Maker was no longer capable of producing an heir. Unless the cunning old bastard had test tubes full of his semen stored away in a deep-freeze somewhere. He invites an unsuspecting, beautiful young girl, say Polly Morgan, to his suite, then when she’s least expecting it, whamo! Artificial insemination. Nonsense. And yet – and yet – what did he need these three books for? Feeding Your Baby and Child, by Spock and Lowenberg, Your Baby and You, by Seymour Freed, and Natural Childbirth, by Grantly Dick Reid. Mortimer turned to the files he had been given. The medical history and X-ray data on three girls from the typing pool, including the replacement for poor Miss Spaight, who had died while undergoing her hysterectomy. And Polly Morgan’s case history! Peeking, Mortimer discovered that Polly was still a virgin, of all things. How very, very odd, he thought. But what did the obscene, undying Star Maker want with these files? Was he about to select a mistress?
Mortimer climbed out of the Bentley opposite Sound Stage D, which was ringed with black-uniformed guards. As two guards closed in on him, Mortimer showed his pass and was instructed to take the first stairway to the right, which would lead him to the Star Maker’s suite. But once inside the studio, Mortimer was drawn to the heavy door to the sound stage. He had never been on a film set before. Pushing open the door, he slipped inside. The studio was enormous but stark, with the size and feel of a factory floor, heavily scaffolded, huge lights suspended from ropes. In the far corner, Mortimer made out a high-spirited, elegantly dressed group, drinking champagne and eating smoked salmon and caviar from a long table. Dominating the party, looking curiously sad and preoccupied amid such gaiety, stood the towering Star. This, Mortimer thought, must be the last-day party for the unit; he had read about such things. Stepping cautiously over open paint buckets, careful not to trip over tangled black cables, threading his way between flats, Mortimer, keeping to the shadows, gradually edged closer to the group, recognizing the faces of familiar actors and actresses.
Then, from his vantage point, Mortimer noticed something decidedly odd. Black-suited motorcycle riders moved from door to door, locking all but one. Other black-suited riders, their faces expressionless, filtered through among the celebrants, ushering them out of the unlocked door. While the riders seemed intent on emptying the studio, the Star rushed from guest to guest, imploring them to stay on, this laconic hero of a thousand cinema duels looking absolutely petrified. The Star’s terror, it seemed to Mortimer, was edging on hysteria, as one by one the guests melted away. Soon there were but two performers left drinking with the Star, a well-known character actor and a gorgeous actress. An impatient black-suited rider strode up to them, whispered something, and they instantly put down their unfinished drinks.
“No, no, stay,” the Star shrieked. “Have another one.”
Apologetically, they retreated.
“Please stay. Please, please.”
As soon as they were out of the door, the bolt was driven home and the lock was secured. Then, silence. The towering Star walked up to the long table, lips curled defiantly, and poured himself a glass of champagne, just as he had done when threatened in so many films past. Only this time there was an added detail. Tears streamed down the Star’s cheeks.
Mortimer, his heart thumping, watched as two black-suited men carried out a thin seven-foot-long black box and set it down on the floor with immense care. They were followed by two more men, wheeling an incredible-looking machine with a menacing pumplike device attached. The men rolled the rubber-wheeled machine to a stop beside the long black box and immediately began to adjust a number of dials. Then a studio door cracked open and shut, admitting two of the Star Maker’s doctors and a very pretty, giggly nurse.
“Ready! Steady! Go!”
The doctors and the nurse, wearing white, raced for the long table and began to gorge themselves on champagne and caviar. They were indifferent to the black-suited riders who now began to close in on the Star.
“No,” the Star howled, picking up an empty bottle, “not this time, you don’t.”
“Double negative,” one of the doctors said to the nurse, making her fall about with laughter.
The circle of black-suited men tightened. Klieg lights were flicked on, searching out the Star.
“Now come on,” the leader of the black-suited riders pleaded. “Be a good boy.”
“No!”
“Why make trouble for us? In the end …”
“I’m not going to let you do it. Not this time.”
“But you’re going to start on another film in a month’s time. Thirty-one days from today.”
“That’s what you promised last time. I want a life of my own. I want to get married. I –”
“Don’t make me laugh.”
“If you let me go,” the Star begged, retreating, “I’ll be good. I’ll do anything you say. So help me God.”
“Don’t be childish. You know the rules.”
Without warning, two black-suited riders lunged for the Star. He avoided them, disappearing among the flats.
“Now remember, guys, he’s not to be damaged. It’s as much as your life is worth if you so much as bruise him.”
One of the doctors bounced the nurse on his lap. The other doctor, having had his fill of smoked salmon, began to wrap what he couldn’t eat. Suddenly there came the clatter of a man pulling desperately against a locked door. A whistle blew. “There he is,” one of the black-suited riders called out.
As the riders regrouped, closing in on the Star, the doctor opened his legs, letting the nurse crash to the floor. He picked up a syringe and started wearily toward the Star.
“Easy does it. Now remember, guys. You mustn’t puncture him.”
Once more the adroit survivor of a hundred and one cinema chases eluded his pursuers, knocking over and shattering a klieg light.
“Where is he now?”
“That’s not our problem. It’s the broken glass we’ve got to worry about.”
“Christ!”
“You two. Sweep it up immediately. All we need is for him to trip over that.”
Now the nurse sat on the other doctor’s lap, shoveling caviar into his mouth until the cheeks were inflated.
“Over there!”
The Star was trapped in a spotlight, high over the studio floor, swinging from a cable, reminding Mortimer, more than anything else, of his Academy Award-winning Captain Kidd’s Revenge.
“If you come a step closer,” the Star shrieked girlishly, “I’ll throw myself down.”
“Oh, no, you wouldn’t. You’ll break.”
“I don’t care.”
A black-suited rider whistled as he opened the long black box, velvet-lined and mothproofed. The doctor with the syringe approached again, suppressing a yawn.
“Lower him down gently,” the leader of the black-suited riders called out when suddenly Mortimer was seized from behind. He jumped.
“What are you doing here?” a rider demanded.
Another rider twisted Mortimer’s arm high behind his back.
“I’ve come to see the Star Maker. I have some confidential papers with me.”
“You’d better, baby. You’d better.”
As Mortimer was hustled off, the Star’s shrieks continued unabated, silence coming only when the heavy studio door slid shut behind him.
“You’d be Griffin, Mortimer Griffin,” the Star Maker said cordially.
Wincing with pain, Mortimer nodded.
“Let him go. Griffin’s got an absolutely marvy lymphatic system. Isn’t that right?”
Mortimer nodded dumbly.
“Did you bring the papers and books?”
“Yes.”
“Good boy! You can leave us alone now, fellas, it’s perfectly all right. Pour yourself a drink, Griffin. Over there,” the Star Maker said, indicating the bar.
Gratefully Mortimer helped himself to a large brandy.
The Star Maker’s handsomely appointed suite was overheated, silk curtains drawn against the sunlight. The desk, the surface covered in tooled green leather, was the work of a seventeenth-century Florentine craftsman. A carved piece of Chinese jade served as a paperweight. The desk-lamp base was carved out of ivory, the work of an Ashanti tribesman. All the other furnishings, at first glance, were also rare and ruggedly masculine, except for a far corner set off by frilly blue curtains. This corner was bare except for a rug made of chinchilla skins, and a frail-looking bassinet hewn of hand-carved oak.
“It was Henry the Third’s of France,” the Star Maker said, and went on to explain that in deference to Henry III, who wished to be a woman, French sovereigns were referred to by the feminine gender: “Sa majesté.”
Mortimer had, until now, avoided looking directly at the Star Maker, who was not seated in the customary wheelchair. Instead, the old thing was lolling on a bed, under an enormous oil painting of Tiresias, on Mount Cyllene, watching two snakes coupling. Crocheted pillows were propped under the Star Maker’s massive head, and a lead taped to an artery in his arm ran to a renal dialyzer, wherein the Star Maker’s blood flowed over one side of a semipermeable membrane of Cuprophane, and was cleansed of undesirable molecules and toxic materials before it ran into the body through another vein. A most efficient-looking nurse attended the dialyzer. “Kidney rinse,” the Star Maker said, nose crinkling. “I’ll only be another minute. Won’t I, dear?”
“Yes, sir.”
Mortimer waited, trying not to stare, while the nurse unstrapped it. The Star Maker smiled back reassuringly and Mortimer noticed, for the first time, that now the right eye was swimming with cataracts. Then, mercifully, the nurse drew a curtain round the Star Maker and Mortimer hastened to pour himself another drink.
Soon the Star Maker emerged in a wheelchair, cheeks pink, legs tucked under a rug, the right leg dangling at least six inches lower than the left, the shoe on the right foot easily two sizes larger than the shoe on the left. “Now then,” the Star Maker asked, “are you comfy?”
“Thank you, nurse,” the Star Maker said, waving the right, absolutely unwrinkled hand. The other hand was wizened. Something else Mortimer found unnerving; the Star Maker’s voice tended to crack in mid-sentence, wavering between soprano and baritone.
“Only a half hour to your next injection,” the nurse said, departing.
The Star Maker nodded, leaning forward for Mortimer to light a cigar. On the Star Maker’s lap there were knitting needles, a ball of blue wool, and the beginnings of a baby’s blue sweater. “You weren’t supposed to enter the studio. It was naughty of you, Griffin. Very. How much did you see?”
Mortimer told him.
“Soon I won’t have any secrets left. And do you enjoy publishing?”
“Yes. That is to say, I did until –”
“You peeked at the Our Living History file?”
“Well, now that you mention it, there is something I’d like to ask you.”
“Good. Very good. You see, Dino Tomasso won’t be with us much longer. He’ll be going into the hospital again soon, poor devil. The other eye. Unsavable.”
“Oh, my God, how awful!”
“You mustn’t worry. I will always take care of Dino. He shall never want for anything.” The Star Maker leaned forward in the wheelchair. “Remember this, Griffin. The revolution eats its own. Capitalism recreates itself.”
Mortimer didn’t comment.
“I want you to take over Oriole. The whole shebang.”
“What?”
“Another drink?”
“If you don’t mind?”
There was a knock at the door. A nurse entered accompanied by a black-suited rider. While the nurse injected an estrogenic preparation – actually I cc. of estradiol undecylate – into the Star Maker’s arm, the Star Maker studied the typewritten sheet the rider had left behind. Once the nurse and rider had departed, the Star Maker, still reading, crossed arms over chest, cupping the breasts, probing gently for renewed gynecomastia. “Oh, well,” the Star Maker muttered consolingly, “can’t rush such a delicate thing as titties, can we?” Then the Star Maker fixed Mortimer with an icy stare. “We can trust you, can’t we, Mortimer? May I call you Mortimer?”
“Yes. Now, there’s the question of the Our Living History series. The file –”
“Of course we can trust you. You’ve got a honey of a lymph system to live up to.”
“You are avoiding my –”
“Hardly. I will keep no secrets from the man who runs Oriole for me. Mortimer, do you realize that in all my years, my considerable years, you are the first man to smoke out why I am really called the Star Maker?”
“Am I?”
“What was it you said to Tomasso?” the Star Maker asked, chuckling. “ ‘He has the emptiest face I’ve ever seen on the screen.’ Harsh words, Mortimer.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Never apologize for brilliance. You could be invaluable to me, Mortimer.”
“Could I?”
“Having guessed so much, Mortimer, I feel I owe it to you to tell you the story from the beginning … Now where to begin, where to begin. Let me put it to you this way.” The Star Maker paused and took a deep breath, finally whispering the name of one of the most celebrated film stars of the 1940s who had, Mortimer recalled, died of a heart attack in 1954. “He isn’t dead.”
“What?”
“He isn’t dead. He was never born. He didn’t exist.”
“You’re making fun of me.”
“No. Not at all. But you’re going to have to be patient. I must begin at the true beginning,” the Star Maker said, taking up the knitting again. “Let me first assure you that there are no Elders of Zion. There never was such a group.”
“But it never occurred to me for a moment,” Mortimer protested.
“I have never favored the conspiracy theory of history. Why, even in the Middle Ages there never were any Jewish ritual murders. It’s a load of crap, Mortimer.”
“I never thought otherwise.”
“Good. Jews, on the other hand –”
“Are you, um, Jewish?”
“Not to begin with. That is to say, I’m Greek-born.”
“I don’t understand.”
The Star Maker chuckled. “Well, what I’m getting at is me -these days, I’m a little bit of everything, you know. Pieces and patches.” The Star Maker’s smile ebbed. “Now, as I was saying, Jews, on the other hand, do tend to be influential beyond their numbers in certain selected spheres. Say, philosophy, medical science, banking, the arts … and, well, obviously Hollywood, the cinema arts … Now, going back to the thirties, the nineteen thirties I mean, those were the days of the colossals, the big studios, and I’m revealing nothing if I say most of these studios were owned and run by non-Americans. The foreign-born. Jews, Greeks, Italians. Now the giants are dead. I, of course, still own and run Star Maker Studios, among other ventures …”
Mortimer, remembering a conversation with Polly Morgan, who knew absolutely everything about the cinema, said, “In those early days, you made the Gasoline Alley films. Rather like the Andy Hardy series.”
“Exactly. It was on our conscience.”
“What was?”
“The WASPs. There we were, you see, a handful of kikes, dagos, and greaseballs, controlling the images Protestant America worshiped. We taught you that to be inarticulate, rather stupid in fact, like Gary Cooper, was manly. It was even manlier to avoid women. Our power was tremendous, you know. Prodigious. When Clark Gable turned up without a vest in It Happened One Night he practically killed the undershirt industry. We set the style in big tits. Etc., etc. But what I’m getting at is power, you know, has its responsibilities. Once a year we met to decide what we could do for the goyim. One year we gave them Andy Hardy and another Alice Faye or John Wayne. Anything to prop up the myths of the American heartland.… Well now, at the same time, to be honest, the stars we had under contract were beginning to give us trouble. This one was a queer, that one a nympho, and the next a shithead. Suddenly names we had made big – former waitresses and ditchdiggers – wanted script approval, if only to show they could read. Things were getting messy, Mortimer.
“I retreated to Las Vegas to ruminate. There was, I decided, nothing more vacuous, no shell emptier, than a movie actor. They speak the words writers put in their mouths. Any writer. If it’s a woman and her legs are bad you shoot somebody else’s legs for her. If she’s got no tits you build her some, borrowing fat from her thighs. If she can’t sing, you hire somebody to dub for her. If it’s a man, somebody does his stunts for him. If he can’t remember his lines you hold up an idiot card out of shot for him and do one line at a time, over and over again, maybe twenty-five times, until he gets it right. If he has no hair you stitch some on to him. If he’s too short, you stretch him. You handle his women and money for him. You rewrite his past life for him.… Was I, the Star Maker, going to be dependent on the whims of such fleas? In a word, no.
“I returned to Hollywood and shared my thoughts with other studio heads and at long last they began to take a positive interest in my nonprofit science foundation. Mortimer, you should have seen my lab in those days! What a bunch of scientists I had! They came to me from the Vienna Radium Institute and Göttingen; from Rutherford’s lab at Cambridge; from the University of Munich and Tokyo; from M.I.T. and Princeton and Breslau. The cream of the cream. I read them Edward Gordon Craig’s piece on the übermarionette. I brought in von Sternberg to tell them what he thought about actors. I told them about the contract troubles we were having with the stars and how we had to suppress the squalid details of their personal lives. Gentlemen, I said, each one of you here is a genius. You can have anything you want. Now get into that lab and don’t come out again until you’ve made me a Star.”
“What?” Mortimer asked.
“Easier said than done, as you can guess. Previously only God … But then with the other studios behind me at last, with a limitless budget, we set to work in earnest. The idea was to kill two birds with one stone. By manufacturing our own stars, no more than one model to a mold, we would be liberated from our contract troubles and so forth. By making our first star the prototype goy, we would be doing something uplifting for America.
“So Operation Goy-Boy began. We were under way. But who, we first had to know, was Goy-Boy, that is to say, the ideal American male? The Motivational Research boys, the pollsters, covered America for us, and came back with twenty thousand completed forms. We fed these forms into the most advanced of computers and finally settled on three body and face possibilities. Goy-Boy I, our first man-made star, was only a partial success. He moved rather well, but had only one expression. He got his lines mixed up. All the same, we put him into a picture. First day on the set the damn thing melts under the hot lights. Before our eyes, Mortimer, eight million dollars leaked through the studio floorboards. Goodbye, Goy-Boy I.
“Goy-Boy II cost us twelve million dollars, but was an enormous improvement. Two complete expressions and memory perfect. Van Thaelman, the comic on our research team (there’s one in every lab, you know), went without sleep a whole weekend just to make Goy-Boy II a cock. Why, it was the cutest little thing you ever saw. If you pulled Goy-Boy II’s earlobe, it stood up just like a real one. What a bunch we had in the lab, what fun we had in those days! Anyway, the big unanswered question about Goy-Boy II was would the public warm to him? Well, Mortimer, let me assure you, without naming names, that the first picture Goy-Boy II made is still on Variety’s list of all-time great grossers. Another generation is learning to love him as his first picture turns up again and again on TV. We still get fan mail for him –”
“What happened?” Mortimer asked.
“What happened?” The Star Maker’s head shook sadly. “For the second picture we pulled the stops out. It was going to be bigger than Gone with the Wind. We went on location in the desert,” the Star Maker said, tears welling in the eyes, “and the second night out, my drunk of a director takes Goy-Boy II out on a binge, showing him off from bar to bar, pulling his earlobe and making his cock stand up for complete strangers. The director bought Goy-Boy II a girl, a call girl with hellishly long nails. A scratcher and a biter.” The Star Maker sighed. “Goy-Boy II didn’t survive his night of love. He never had a chance, poor kid. And of course we couldn’t make another, because we had broken the mold.
“Which brings me to our triumph, Goy-Boy III. The Mini-Goy. What a piece of work! Three expressions, Mortimer. Three. Walked very, very nice. Talked in sentences as long as twelve words each. He couldn’t read actual books or scripts, making him almost human, hah? But he could understand and remember synopses. Mortimer, among actors Mini-Goy passed for an intellectual. Why, women were crazy for him,” the Star Maker said, slapping his knee in fond remembrance. “Anyway, we couldn’t have been more thrilled. We broke open the champagne and we called him, well, you know,” the Star Maker said, whispering the celebrated Star’s name once more.
“You’re mad, Star Maker.”
The Star Maker, lost in a reverie, ignored Mortimer. “Armed with three complete expressions and sentences that ran to twelve words, no single word containing more than three syllables, he went from success to success. How were we to know there would be wear and tear, just like we mortals suffer? Here a rip. There a rub gone too deep. Somewhere else a slow leak. The Star, bless him, never said a word. Never a complaint, Mortimer. Between pictures we let the air out and locked him in a mothproof box. Maybe all that inflating and deflating? Anyway one day, I’ll never forget it if I live another hundred years, one day, I was on the set.… In the middle of a picture, his fiftieth maybe, bang! zam! kazoom! He blew up. Disintegrated. Grips were wiping wet pieces of the Star off their faces. Grown men cried like babies. It was terrible, ghastly.”
The Star Maker’s head hung low.
“Back to the old drawing board, eh?” Mortimer ventured drunkenly, having decided to humor the old lunatic.
“Oh, there were others. We manufactured plenty of stars, some of them still going strong. But there will always be only one Mini-Goy. The others … well, good luck to them, but …”
“Who are they?”
The Star Maker grinned mischievously.
“Roy Rogers maybe?”
The Star Maker made a self-deprecating gesture, the smile noncommittal but self-satisfied.
“How did you get women to play opposite them?”
“What do you mean, how? We made them too.”
“Christ Almighty!”
“Mighty, but not almighty.”
“Give me some names.”
“No.”
“Come on, Star Maker.”
“Can’t.”
“Susan Hayward?”
“God’s, not ours,” the Star Maker said, affronted.
“What about … um … Veronica Lake?”
“Flesh and blood. Would you believe it?”
“Now look here,” the Star Maker said, “our production was small compared to His. But it was all quality stuff. This game is getting us nowhere.”
“You’re mad, Star Maker.”
“Hah hah. After Mini-Goy exploded, we didn’t throw the sponge in, you know. We continued to produce, but it wasn’t the same. Our incomparable group of scientists began to break up. Some of our best geniuses went commercial. They left us for germ warfare or H-bomb production. More money for them and security, but gone forever were the joys of craftsmanship. After all, one H-bomb is very much like another, isn’t it?” the Star Maker asked with a sneer. “Then Hollywood profits shriveled. We no longer had the same kind of money available for research and development. So we had to settle for TV-size models; our most successful TV Goy-Boy so far being the one in the doctor series. He comes in two versions, black-and-white and colored.”
There was a knock at the door and two black-suited riders wheeled in a luncheon tray. Champagne, smoked eel, rump steak and French fried potatoes for Mortimer. Assorted pills and a glass of warm milk for the Star Maker. Afterwards, the nurse came to administer another injection.
“What is it this time, child? Hormones or iron?”
Both. Following the champagne and still more brandies, Mortimer found himself rambling on drunkenly. Confiding in a stranger. A mad stranger.
“It’s been troubling you for years,” the Star Maker asked, tongue clacking incredulously, “is that what you say?”
“Well, Star Maker, how would you like it if you were already convinced you had a small one, and then one day you couldn’t even get that up any more?”
“Yes, yes. I understand. I suppose every young man likes to think he is a stud, as they say.”
“But, my dear boy, do tell me more. You say it’s small … but which one do you mean?”
“Which one?”
“Oh. Oh, I see.”
“WHICH ONE?” Mortimer howled, knocking back his chair. “You only have one, then?”
“Yes. That’s right.”
“Well, then. That is serious. That could be quite a handicap, my boy.”
Hours later, it seemed, Mortimer looked up from under heavy lids to hear a swaying Star Maker say, “So I simply must have an heir. A son.”
“A son! At your age?”
“Yes.”
Mortimer laughed out loud. “You’re not contemplating marriage, you obscene old bastard.”
“Dear me, no.”
“That’s something.”
“I’m told,” the Star Maker said, “that Polly Morgan looks up to you.”
“Really,” Mortimer said, rather pleased.
“I have been given to understand that you are the one man at Oriole whom she respects.”
“What do you want with her?”
“Easy, now. I’m a very rare blood type. Miss Morgan is the same type.”
“And so?”
“In the coming months it seems likely I’m going to need the occasional pint.”
“Star Maker, I’m unwell. Too much to drink. I’ve had enough for one day.”
“You may be excused, then.”
“We still haven’t gone into the question of the Our Living History series.”
“Mortimer, I was as shocked as you were to see the file. Tomasso certainly overreached himself there.”
“Overreached? He’s a murderer!”
“If that’s the case, he must answer for it.”
“What about the efficiency team from Frankfurt?”
“Dismiss them, if you like.”
“Do you expect me to believe you had no idea what was going on?”
“As you well know, I’ve been in and out of hospitals for months. There are so many other companies to look after … When you take over, Mortimer, you can have a free hand. Terminate the Our Living History series, if you like.”
“I haven’t said that I was willing to take over. I want to think about it.”
“Then we must talk again soon. Very soon. You are now a party to more than one of my secrets, Mortimer.”
“We can talk again after the holidays.”
“Yes. Certainly. Meanwhile, however, you must promise not to say a word about what you saw in the studio.”
“I’m not sure what I saw in the studio. I think I’m going out of my mind.”
“There, there now. Promise?”
Anything to get away. “Yes,” Mortimer said.
Mortimer returned to his office at Oriole just in time to find a swollen-eyed Miss Fishman cleaning out her desk.
“What’s going on?”
“After all I’ve suffered, I will not work for a Jew-baiter. Not for one minute more.”
“But my dear Miss Fishman –”
“How you must have hated me all these years.”
“That’s not true. On the contrary. I –”
“You will find,” Miss Fishman said, gathering her things together, “that I’m not the only one here with contempt for you now. There isn’t anybody at Oriole who hasn’t heard about the dreadful things you’ve been saying to that poor Mr. Shalinsky.” She left, slamming the door.
Mortimer dialed the typewriter pool and asked for a new secretary to be sent up.
“Right away, Mr. Griffin.”
The new secretary was refreshingly young and pretty. Deeply suntanned as well. “My name is Gail,” she said sweetly.
“Why, you’re an American.”
“Yes. I hope you don’t mind.”
“On the contrary.”