he: A Novel(42)

Before I die, Ida sometimes says, I wish I could witness that expression on your face just once when I call. If your tone is anything to go by, your face won’t look like it does when you hear from Lois.

He always hushes her. If he is in a bad mood, he tells her that she sounds like Anita Garvin.

Or Vera, although he only thinks this and never utters it aloud.

He will die soon. He knows this on some animal level. He does not mind dying. He is not afraid. He will miss his daughter, and he will miss Ida, but he is now discarding days like small bills until all are spent, disposing of the hours by writing letters and waiting for strangers to call. He is excited by new deliveries of stationery with the Oceana letterhead. In another life, he might have been content to run a stationery store, with ascending grades of material from the cheapest to the finest, and even the poorest stored carefully to preserve it from damp and stains. He retains a small stock of expensive cotton paper, which he uses sparingly. He admires the randomness of the watermark it bears, so that no two sheets are alike.

He has always been ambivalent about unpredictability, about disorder. He tried to impose order upon his life, and failed. He resisted the imposition of order upon his art, and succeeded. In both spheres of his existence, he ultimately embraced chaos.

These are the subjects about which he thinks, when he is alone at the Oceana Apartments.

He is not sad about the imminence of mortality. He feels that the purposeful part of his existence ended many years ago, and the best part of it concluded with Babe’s death. He has never been a particularly religious man. He and Babe had this in common. Reincarnation appeals to him, but only if he can retain some memory of the mistakes that he has made in this life, and therefore only if he can retain some memory of Babe.

He does not trust in reincarnation alone to reunite him with Babe. Fate, perhaps, but not reincarnation, because it was fate that brought them together, these lives entwined like lovers’ limbs.





88


He and Babe work hard. They have always worked hard, but now there is a new impetus.

They are, for the first time in their lives, true stars.

It does not matter that they finish each day tired and bruised (it is no easy thing to fall, and they are no longer such young men), nor does it matter that shooting sometimes goes on into the night, and so they must doze in their dressing rooms between set-ups in order to be able to function. They have achieved a level of fame previously unimaginable to them. They can make $5,000 each for one week at the Fox Theatre in San Francisco, as long as they are willing to smile along at the antics of the host, Rube Wolf, America’s Comic Valentine, a man even his own publicity machine describes as homely.

Rube Wolf can play the clown, and the cornet, and conduct an orchestra.

All at once.

Rube Wolf can be exhausting.

In 1929 they release thirteen pictures, and cameo in The Rogue Song and The Hollywood Revue of 1929. In 1930, they release eight pictures, but mostly longer three-reelers, as they are drawn inexorably toward features.

Although he knows that he is dragging his heels.

Sitting in the commissary, eating soup, Richard Currier tells him that there is more money in features.

More money for Hal, he says.

– If Hal makes it, you’ll see some too.

– How much? I need a nickel for a soda.

Richard Currier laughs and says, Well, maybe not that much.

He tries to keep his head down while he eats. He no longer enjoys coming to the commissary. The lot is too close to the street, and the Audience gathers each day in the hope of catching sight of the stars. The more brazen peer in the windows. Some even knock on the glass. He remains grateful for their support, and always will, but a man has to eat, and it is hard to eat in front of spectators.

Hal Roach is also conflicted. The short pictures work. They make money, although the market has calmed and the exhibitors no longer invite Hal Roach to name his price. Features will make more money, but features require a plot.

Not everyone on Hal Roach’s lot understands plot. The first that most of the gagmen will know of a plot is when they’re buried in one. But the three-reel pictures are also unsatisfactory: too long for the gag structure, too short to allow dialogue to develop enough to help with the lifting. So, whether they wish it or not, Hal Roach’s two biggest stars will have to extend themselves. Hal Roach will talk with them, just as soon as they have finished writing the action script for their next picture, a murder spoof.

Hal Roach is reserved, but not insensitive.

Hal Roach is tight, but not mean.

Hal Roach wishes that his two biggest stars were happier men.





89


He tries to stay away from Alyce Ardell.

Tries, but rarely succeeds.

He is concerned about alerting Lois to Alyce Ardell’s existence, although he believes that Lois already suspects, even if she has not yet guessed the identity of the other party. He picks up the accusatory note in Lois’s voice when she asks how the day’s extended filming has gone, or about the script conference that ran over, or whatever excuse he has lately manufactured to be with his lover. Sometimes Lois flinches at his answer, as though he has raised a hand to her and she is steeling herself for the blow. Only as the situation worsens does he comprehend that she is reacting not to a hurt to come, but to one already inflicted.

Lois knows that he is lying, but wants to believe he is not.