SARAH LEHMAN WAS NOT ordinarily so reserved as she had been on this day. She was acutely conscious of the fact and she resented it; though her resentment was vague and notably groundless. She resented Arthur Fenstemaker for allowing such a spectacle as had developed through the morning; resented Jay for not attempting to avoid it, not making some kind of defiant gesture. And she thought she resented Vicki McGown most of all for the unsettling, graceless effect she had on those around her.
All through that morning Sarah had felt helpless and dumbstruck in the clutch of Vicki McGown’s world. She was nearly inarticulate; she felt dull and witless and absurd, and the admission only confirmed her sense of defeat — leaving her painfully aware of the distance between the drab fact of her present conduct and her normally dazzling potential. That was the frustrating thing. She was a handsome girl, and well educated; she could see for herself that her looks were of a more enduring and flawless quality than the actress’s — and it was obvious that she had better sense. But there was something else that got in the way. Sarah had achieved very early in life a rare combination of beauty and intelligence, and now the intimidation of Vicki McGown’s presence — even the prospect of it — had dulled her head and clouded the glow of her pretty face. She wanted to cut Vicki with a word, bring her down to life size with a turn of crushing phrase, but she could not seem to bring it off against the weight of the woman’s vast and careless self-possession.
She was furious with herself, having finally to admit she was helpless and ineffective in contending with another woman. And worse, the main threat was something ubiquitous and indefinable. What was it? Pride, repose, luxuriant vitality? How could one isolate the elements? Where had it all begun? She thought of Arthur Fenstemaker’s transformation from timorous, picknose politician into … whatever it was that currently passed for greatness. The Presidency makes the man? Perhaps the movie queen story, drummed and repeated, endlessly recited, over and over again, had made its impression on Vicki McGown’s muddled intellect, advancing from some dark tendril of the brain, as in a post-hypnotic suggestion, to a point where Vicki could assure herself that she was a queen.
The charged atmosphere of Vicki’s presence was all round them again, subtle and fantastic. Shavers looked exhausted; Fenstemaker’s eyes were bloodshot; Jay and Hoot Gibson and Sweet Mama seemed collapsed in a heap on the small couch. But they came suddenly awake as Vicki moved across the room, generating her wondrous resilience. She walked to the couch and draped a dark arm over Jay’s shoulder.
“I’ve just talked with Victoria Anne, Jay-Jay,” she said. “They’re flying her out this afternoon …”
“Really?” Jay said. “I wish you’d let me speak with —”
“It shouldn’t be long now,” Vicki said. “They’ll have her here in the morning at the latest …” She turned to Arthur Fenstemaker and went on: “… So now you really should consider spending another day — give Jay a chance to visit Victoria Anne and give yourselves an opportunity to see some of the other stars.”
Fenstemaker spread his hands and said, “Well …” before Vicki broke back in.
“You can spare the time, can’t you? I hope so. Ed told me he wants to get that handsome face of yours in front of a camera. I think that’s wonderful … You could get the shooting done tomorrow, couldn’t you Ed?”
“I think we could,” Shavers said. “Matter of fact, I’ve had a couple of writers working on your scene, Governor. I think we’ve got it worked out. We had a problem at first — most of our tight shots and interiors are filmed at the studio. But I think we can handle it out here in the open.”
“You’ll do it won’t you, Governor?” Vicki said. “You ought to make the most of your visit …”
“Who’re the others coming out?” Sweet Mama said.
“Picture stars,” Hoot Gibson said. “More of ’em.”
“Greg Calhoun is one of them,” Shavers said. “He’s Vicki’s co-star. I think you’ll all like Greg … He’s fine boy.” He looked at Sarah and Sweet Mama as if for confirmation. “You ladies heard of Greg, haven’t you?”
Vicki talked about Greg Calhoun and some of the players who had been cast in character parts. Sweet Mama nodded; Sarah did not comment. Vicki turned back to the Governor.
“It’s such a waste of time to come all the way out here and then just stay a few hours,” she said.
“What about it, Governor?” Shavers said.
Fenstemaker looked at his wife. “How you feel about it, Sweet Mama?”
“It’s up to you, dear,” Sweet Mama said. “You’re exhausted — I’m worried about you … I feel fine.”
Fenstemaker nodded gravely at the suggestion that he might need rest. “Jay?” he said. “… Well I know you’d like to stay … Sarah, how ’bout you, honey?”
“I just work here,” Sarah said hopelessly. “It’s — whatever you think. You’ve got some appointments to —”
“Where’ll you put us up, Ed?” Fenstemaker said.
“No problem at all,” Shavers said, waving his hand, as if inventing solutions. “All we do is bring in two more trailers …”
“I got to make about a hundred phone calls,” Fenstemaker said.
“We’ll have the trailers wired for calls before dark,” Shavers said.
Fenstemaker pulled on his nose. He walked round the room for a moment and then paused to stare out a window, examining the country like a speculator about to buy. “Then I suppose …”
“All settled, then,” Shavers said. “I’ll have everything arranged. Trailers be here before long — you’ll have your own rooms then. We’ll all have a fine time …” He looked at the others, vastly pleased. “You’ll excuse me now … We’re little behind schedule, and we’ll really have to push it if we’re going to get Vicki out of here for the Governor’s party this weekend.”
“By all means then,” Fenstemaker said cordially. “Step it up!”
Shavers spoke to Vicki: “We’ll shoot that scene in just a few minutes. Don’t take any more rides … Please.”
“I’ll be along,” Vicki said, and Shavers left the room.
Vicki stepped between the Governor and Hoot Gibson, touching their arms lightly. “I’ve got to change again,” she said. “It won’t take long. And when I’m through I want you all to come join me for a drink.”
“Ah’d be for that,” Hoot Gibson said immediately.
“Governor?”
“I’m not so sure, Miz Vicki …”
“You ought to take a little nap, Arthur,” Sweet Mama said. “Right over here on Mr. Shavers’ couch.”
“Mebbe so,” Fenstemaker said. “I got a good deal of work waitin’ for me later …”
“Governor, I understand entirely,” Vicki said. She smiled; Hoot Gibson smiled; Fenstemaker bent his head down, took Vicki’s hand and kissed it. “And I thank you, Miz Vicki,” he said.
Vicki clutched Hoot Gibson’s arm. “It’s just the four of us, then,” she said. “Miss Lehman and Hoot Gibson and Jay and myself. I’ll be ready for you in a few minutes. We’ll have that drink. I’ve a maid in there who mixes an exquisite whiskey sour. Uses egg whites. They’re good for you.” She let loose of Hoot Gibson, reached out and tapped the end of his red nose. She waved at the others and walked out of the room, across the reception area and into her own quarters.
“Bourbon!” Hoot Gibson exulted. “Haven’t had bourbon — haven’t had anythang but Scotch whiskey — since th’ goddam ’nauguration …”
His mouth was flapping at the refrigerated air. None of the others was listening. The Governor had already moved away and settled himself on the couch. Sweet Mama was pulling a pillow and blanket down from a storage bin. Jay stared absently in the direction Vicki had gone. He turned finally to Sarah, smiling. “Godalmighty,” he said. “How long does it take to fly here from the coast?” Sarah did not answer him; her mind was plodding ahead in time, attempting to adjust, to equip itself for the drinks they would have presently and the nightmare that was surely due to engulf them before another day was ended. She realized suddenly that it was just as Jay had described it to her, months ago, and at that time she had not believed what he said. He had talked morbidly of his life with Vicki, but it had never seemed altogether real for Sarah. It was as if Jay had taken real situations and people and dramatized them, inflated them all out of proportion, given them such embellishments that the empty episodes he described lost all the breath of life.
But it was true; all of it. It was all true, what he said, and now she could see it for herself. She tried to remember everything Jay had said to her in describing the horror off which he had been feeding. “I liked it,” he had said. “That was the awful part. Maybe I’m still drawn to it. Even now I get a perverse pleasure out of Vicki — all her sexuality. My head tells me one thing, but I can’t really hear it for all the whooping going on back and forth between my balls.” She had been offended by the admission, and he was never so candid with her again. Though now she understood what he had been getting at. She wished that she could tell him now that it was comprehensible, finally; that she had at last come through to visualizing what up to that time had seemed only a sort of imagery, a sleight of hand that Jay made with mirrors. Jay had described Vicki, but in fashioning a picture of his actress wife for Sarah the assembled impressions had amounted to no more than the cracked-glass reflections of Sarah herself and those few women who had ever seized her interest. And Vicki was like nothing in her experience — she was the authentic, the genuine article.
She had been mistaken about Vicki, blundering along on false assumptions, thinking the Vicki that Jay had pieced together in his own imagination was a farce — and she belabored him for not recognizing the fact. But now she could see Vicki was no farce, no sniggering exaggeration, no crude burlesque of the merely carnal. Vicki’s special quality had been communicated to all of them in the room: in a look, in a casual shifting of the limbs, in a movement or a gesture or a rhythm of the pulse. Sarah knew it had been communicated. In the crackling sensuality of Vicki’s presence Sarah herself had felt very like an animal tasting the air.
One weekend, years before, returning from a college party, she had shared a pullman berth with a girl she had known only casually. In the middle of the night she had come awake in the girl’s arms, only half aware that it was the girl, not wanting it to end and wishing she were still asleep. Another time, later on, during Arthur Fenstemaker’s first campaign, she and the Governor had been riding in the backseat of an automobile, returning from a rally in another city. Fenstemaker had begun to slump sideways against her, exhausted. She had held on to him, attempting to make him comfortable, and presently his big arm had come round her middle and his hand moved over her breasts. She had not wanted the drive ever to end or Fenstemaker to shake himself from sleep.
Such episodes were like wild carryings-on in a back room, blinds pulled down against daylight convention. It was horrific, all a darkness, and seemed to have nothing to do with the other, the methodical push-pull of seduction. There had been the business with Jay a few weeks before; that had given her a taste of it. But that had been before she had gasped out the meaning to herself of Jay’s nether world, all the stopping points along the way that Jay had attempted to describe. Now she wanted desperately to tell him that she understood, and more: she wanted to move closer for a better look. There had been the business with Jay, she thought, but even in the darkness of his room there were bright stalks of sunlight that shone through the blinds … I must have acted awful, she thought, I must have —
A Negro maid in a uniform of pale blue polished cotton appeared at the door.
“Miss Vicki say she dressed now and would like ver’ much to have you come join her for a drink.”
The Governor sat on the edge of the couch, poking mercilessly at his swollen eyelids. “I think I’ll have that drink after all,” he said.
Sweet Mama helped him to his feet. There were the five of them then, moving toward Vicki’s room, and Sarah could not do anything about her feeling of their all being borne off to slaughter.