Everything Happened to Susan (10 page)

Susan has always had an abiding faith in the police. She believes that they are fundamental, benevolent extensions of a society which still believes in reason and that they would, if ever faced bluntly with the choice, opt for the right to expurgate the wrong. Part of this faith may have come from her family background in which her mother and father were always threatening to call the police upon her or one another as the answer to misbehavior; part of it may have come from Susan’s experiences in college which had taught her that people who had a contempt of authority were fundamentally uncontrollable. Many times in her relationship with Timothy she had had to resist a childish impulse to call the police, identify herself, and ask for help. “I really can’t take this anymore; you’ve got to show him that he can’t push me around this way. He’s making impossible demands and asking me to perform sexual acts which are illegal in this state,” she had imagined herself saying into the receiver, and a calm voice across the wire would say to her, “I understand perfectly, miss; tell me where you are and we’ll settle everything.” She would hang up and the police would come and deal with Timothy in the way that he deserved, straighten him out, clean up the apartment, tell him the truth about his novel, tell him the facts about Susan’s real needs and then leave them both set on the path to a higher, more reasonable life. The police could do that; they were there to enforce order. Any disorder, any fault of behavior or human suffering was their business; they existed to keep society at the status quo.

Of course her experiences in New York and, most particularly her recent experiences in the film business, have made her belief in the law somewhat shaky — if the cops would stop something like this, why weren’t they here, and, if they weren’t here, did that mean that they approved? But she does not think that this lapse is really a fault in the system. The lawmen are so busy, nowadays, they are attacked by unreason on so many sides that they simply cannot keep tabs on every situation. They need the help of information. If the police truly knew what was going on, they would do their level best to stop it. Susan knows that she is thinking unrealistically, is aware that the pattern of Supreme Court decisions all the way through the 1960s, to say nothing of public desire, makes what is going on in the loft perfectly legal. It is not even worth remarking on any more; but she cannot, with some stubborn pattern of thought somewhere in the center of her head, get over the feeling that if she were to call the local precinct, the police would arrive in droves. If she wants it brought to an end.

In late afternoon, while she is working on a difficult and delicate scene having to do with John F. Kennedy, Timothy arrives at the loft in an unpleasant mood. How he has found her so easily and exactly, how he has actually been able to get into the shooting area with the kind of security Phil must have is beyond her, but there he is, standing in one of the doorways carrying his welfare worker’s attaché case and looking at the situation in utter amazement. The setting is certainly worth regarding by this time of day; the technicians have been smoking cigars and working the lights for eight hours and the loft is full of an acrid bluish haze which smells of sweat and metal; the actors have abandoned even the barest amenities and simply sprawl nakedly on the side while they are not being filmed, some of them inspecting their genitals for the possibility of lice. Susan, who is trying to read a part which she deduces to be that of Jacqueline Kennedy although the script here is so obscure that it is difficult to tell exactly who she is portraying, sees Timothy before he catches sight of her and reacts with a gasp. She backs out of the lighted area where Frank, playing a junior senator from Nevada had been attempting to win her electoral support. She reels through cables and stumbles into a wall. At the same instant Timothy recognizes her and shortly after that everyone notices Timothy. The lights go up to full blaze and the director begins to shout rich curses through the chatter of the technicians. Her view of Timothy is suddenly blocked by a wall of actors rising to snatch their clothes. Timothy has always had such an
official
look about him that they assume he represents the authorities.

Susan who knows better turns to run. That would be the best idea; the technicians will be responsible for getting Timothy out of the place and she will not have to deal with him. Her own way is blocked, however, by actors sprinting to the rear, talking about the cops at the same time she hears Timothy’s roar. She knows that he is about to charge upon her. There is nothing to do then but face him. Then she sees that he is already being held in check by four or five technicians who have literally fallen upon him. His attaché case drops helplessly to the floor. Timothy shrieks with rage. “Susan! What are you doing?”

“Get out of here, Timothy.”

“I’m going to kill you, you son of a bitch. You have no permit,” the lowest technician says with flat seriousness and
trips Timothy by the leg, bringing him to a scrambling heap on the floor. The remainder of the technicians seem about to leap on and devour him when Susan says, “Stop it! I know him! He’s a friend of mine.” Susan looks at Timothy coldly and timelessly. She sees something in his eyes that she has never before suspected. It has nothing to do with her nudity although that spurs him on and he emits a cry of primitive and most un-Timothy like fury. “Get out of here!” he shouts, struggling under the technicians, “Susan, you get out of this place right now or I’ll call the police; you can’t
do
this kind of thing.” Suddenly Phil appears; he comes from the same portion of the set that he always seems to inhabit and faces Susan glaringly, hands on hips, a cigarette held like a cigar between his teeth. Everything stops. The technicians shrug, arise. Timothy staggers to his feet, grabbing hold of
his attaché case, and says with terrible calm, “Susan, it took me all day to find out where you were and I’m not going to give up now. I’m taking you out of here. Right now.”

“No you’re not,” she says. “I’m working.”

“I don’t care what you’re doing. You can’t be in this kind of situation. If you don’t come with me, I’ll call the police.”

“This your boyfriend?” Phil says to her.

“Not really. Not any more.”

“Just shut up, Susan,” Timothy says furiously. “I’m not going to go into our relationship now.”

“Get out of here,” Phil says.

“Who are you? What’s your authority?”

“I think I’m going to waste this guy,” Phil replies earnestly. “I am a temperate man and I do not make waves but this is too much. Get out of here.”

“Tell them, Susan,” Timothy says, a fascinating flush spreading from one cheek to the next. He looks older, grips the attaché case frantically. “Tell them you won’t have any more to do with this obscenity. Get dressed.”

“I’m sorry, Timothy,” she says. “I can’t do a thing for you.”

“I told you, I don’t want to discuss our relationship now. This has nothing to do with our relationship. Just get dressed and get out of here.”

“I hold you responsible,” Phil says to her, “for every second of time that we’re wasting here. For every minute we lose in the shooting I’m going to dock you twenty.” He puts his hands on Timothy with enormous facility, wrenches the attaché case from his grip and hurls it out a doorway. Then he begins skillfully to move Timothy out of the area of the loft. The technicians assist him. Phil with a flourish waves them off and says something about doing the job himself; it is his pleasure. Timothy begins to wail, a high keen wail like the sounds he makes during sex and resists hopelessly. Then he goes limp and allows himself to be pushed off the set. The technicians follow Phil at a distance; Phil seems to be arm-twisting. Susan watches all of this with interest and not without feeling. “He cares,” she finds herself mumbling. “He really cares.”

“Your boyfriend?” one of the girls asks. She does not regard Susan with compassion.

“Not exactly. I was living with him though until yesterday.”

“Oh,” she says. “I understand.”

“Do you?”

“Men can’t be matter of fact about these things. It blows their cool. They take this kind of stuff far more personally than we do. You’ll learn about that.”

“Will I?”

“Of course you will. You’ll learn about a lot of things; you’re pretty young now.”

“Stop patronizing me!” Susan says. “Stop it! Stop it!” She has meant to disagree with the girl quietly and then drift back to the scene but some element of her control seems to have snapped. “You can’t do this to me!” she shrieks, “someone, finally, has got to take me seriously!” And then there are hands on her, soothing hands, and remonstrative voices but they only increase her rage; she begins to struggle against them just as Timothy had been struggling, to fight for some area of quiet in which she can come to terms with herself slowly and with dignity. But they will not listen, none of them will listen, and, the louder she screams, the more unreasonable they become. She throws her script against the wall to quiet them, kicks to quiet them, begins striking out to quiet them but they are simply not reasonable. They throw her to the floor and Susan finds herself buried under a mass of bodies, most of them naked; flesh is to all sides of her and it has no identity other than its own. The bodies are indifferent, expressionless, pressing upon her and Susan wants very much to faint again. Fainting would be fine, fainting would be a great release — it had helped her very much once already and she could look forward to a career of fainting with ease — but she remains very much conscious as the director wrenches her to her feet. Lights cut her right and left. Technicians are pushing her down a hall and she finds herself once again in Phil’s office. Phil is not nearly so pedagogical this time but he is looking at her with hatred bisecting his face in the way that sex had torn her body. As he leaps forward to confront her with terrible accusations, she sees behind his left shoulder a very shrunken, very confused Timothy regarding her from a corner. On his face is a look of mild, bland fright which seems to sum up everything that she has ever thought of him, everything that she has thought of herself.

“I thought we had everything nice and settled,” Phil says, “but we had nothing settled so we’re going to take it from the top. We’re going to set this up once and for all. I want to know what you two are up to.”

“Nothing,” Timothy says. Somehow he has become an agreeable, reasonable Timothy; he hangs on to his attaché case and looks out a window. “I just lost my temper, that’s all. I thought I’d come down and get her out of here. But it’s her life and your film and I’m sorry about the whole thing and just want to leave.”

“In time,” Phil says. He sighs, sits behind the desk, checks Timothy’s location carefully, and looks at Susan. “There’s one thing I don’t like,” he says, “and that’s falling into complicated situations with people who aren’t professionals. I can’t stand that kind of thing and we’re going to settle it once and for all.”

“May I leave?” Timothy says. He looks at Phil imploringly, a beaten expression around his mouth. “Really, I don’t want anything more to do with any of this. If you just let me go, I won’t make trouble again.”

“When I’m ready to let you go, I’ll let you go. Until then you sit. No one asked you to come here, did they?”

“No,” Timothy replies.

“You come busting into a business situation and break up our set and now you want to leave. That isn’t very reasonable, is it?”

“No, I guess it isn’t.”

“We like people to be reasonable. Reasonable people give us our happiest moments. We’re going to make you reasonable by the time you leave. We call it shock therapy.”

“All right,” the new, mild Timothy says. Perhaps this new Timothy is not even a novelist. “I understand that. Okay. I don’t want anything more to do with this.”

“I want to ask you a question,” Phil says, putting his palms flat on the desk and turning to Susan. “Ignore him; he don’t matter. Pretend like he’s not here, which in every sense he isn’t. We’ll take care of him later if we have to. What I want to know is something of you.”

“I don’t want to talk anymore,” Susan says dully. “I’ve been talked at all day.”

“That’s your problem. Remember who set up the situation; it wasn’t me. Remember who wanted to be the actress to begin with. I didn’t clobber you and take you down here.”

“I want to act then. Let me act.”

“When I’m ready. In my time. Let me ask you something and I want it straight. There are no halfway measures here, Susan. Do you want to be in this business or don’t you?”

“I don’t know,” Susan says. She looks for a place to sit, finds no chairs, backs against a wall. Timothy sees her gesture, stumbles to his feet, motioning that his chair is available. She shakes her head; she wants nothing from Timothy and, understanding this, he sits down again and puts his head in his hands as his attaché case drops to the floor. His shoulders seem to shake; he seems to be in even more of an emotional state than she is. “I really don’t know,” she says again. “I wish I could answer that but I don’t think I can. It’s not so easy.”

“Because there are no halfway measures. This is not a job like any other job. That is the mistake a lot of you people make when you get started; you figure that it’s take a couple of sets and do a couple of scenes and pick up your money and go home that it’s just another way of making a little. But it isn’t like that at all. It is a very peculiar, demanding business. I have been in this business for many years and it is not a question of business but of your whole life. This is something that people learn with difficulty.”

“I wanted to be an actress,” Susan says. “That was the thing; I wouldn’t have gone into this just for money.”

“Well that’s not the point,” Phil says. “We can’t talk about your problems and ambitions just now; that’s a lot later. The point is, do you want to make it in this or don’t you? Because if you don’t, you’re going to have to get out now.”

“I told you before I wanted to get out.”

“But it isn’t that simple, sweetheart,” Phil says persuasively, cupping his palms, leaning across the desk, talking to her now confidentially, almost with affection. For the moment it is as if Timothy were not even in the room and the scene is between just the two of them. “You’re already in it. You’ve been in a movie. You’re making another movie. This is not the time to back out. Maybe you should have done this thinking before you got started. But you said you wanted the work and I believed you. So I gave you a chance. Now I am sorry to say that you are beginning to fuck with my business, Susan, and when you fuck with my business, you are screwing around with my life. So certain adjustments must be made. There is no margin for error in this business. All the errors are on the other side, with the people seeing this stuff. They got enough problems; we have to meet them with efficiency. It is very rare that we break someone new into this business. You are under the wrong impression if you think that every person who comes in off the street gets a job in a film. We screen very carefully and we demand more of a person than many find themselves ready to give. We took a chance on you. Twice now within an hour you have been responsible for serious problems. Most of the people who are working with you have been with us for years, do you know that? We trust them. They trust us. But you are making things very difficult.”

“I promise,” Timothy says, “that if you let me go now, I’ll walk straight out of this place and never have anything to do with it again. I won’t even
think
about it, that’s what I promise you. If someone ever asks me what I think of the blue film business, I’ll say that I don’t even go to movies. I give you my word of honor on that. And I won’t even
think
of Susan. She doesn’t mean a thing to me. All that I want to do is to walk out of here and — ”

“Isn’t that disgusting?” Phil says absently, pointing to Timothy with a shrug. “This is a man who is absolutely terrified and he does not even know why. This is a man who thinks that since we make a certain kind of film, we must all be killers. This is not good thinking. This is not reasonable thinking. This is not the kind of thinking which made our country great. Nevertheless, there are more people like him than you might realize. They are responsible for the way that ninety percent of the people in this country look at things. I think that that is very sad.”

“You’re not listening to me,” Timothy says. “I promised — ”

“Shut up. This has nothing to do with you at all; you are just sitting here for safekeeping. In due course we’ll find out what we’re going to do with you. Right now I’m trying to finish things up with your girl friend.”

“She’s not my girl friend.”

“Nevertheless,” Phil says. “Nevertheless. That is your decision to make.” Turning to Susan he goes on, “From the beginning I have noticed a certain ambivalence about you. On the one hand, you wanted to act in this and on the other hand you were not sure how much of you could be given to it without beginning to feel that you were a part of the process. This is very common with you young people just starting out and I take it as a matter of course. Sooner or later you learn that you must give almost everything of yourselves and that nothing can be held back. And you are ready to go along with that. But we can no longer put up with this, Susan.”

“I don’t think I want it any more,” she says, after a pause. “If that’s what you’re asking me. I don’t think that it’s really the kind of thing I want to do. So maybe we’ll just forget the whole thing, after I finish this picture. I’d like to finish this. I mean, I feel responsible — ”

“Now, that’s where I think you’re making a mistake, Susan. Your thinking is not good. It is not thorough. It is not a matter of finishing this film, it involves a lot more than that. Your entire attitude is one of commitment if you are in this business. You cannot take things lightly and you are in it for a long term.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t understand very much, Susan. I hate to say this and I do not want you to take this personally, but you are not a very bright girl. You do not think things through.”

“I’ll go along with that,” Timothy says.

“That’s not necessary,” Phil says quietly. “I told you, we are having a conversation here and it is as if you do not exist. I do not want to hear from you again.”

“All right. I don’t care for her anyway. I just want to get out of here.”

“I have to finish the film,” Susan says. “Can’t I decide after that?”

“No you cannot. You cannot postpone decisions, Susan; you must face them now Your attitude is too casual. This sort of thing must stop.”

“It’s not fair. It just isn’t fair.”

“Nothing is fair,” Phil says gently. “Consider the restraints we have put upon us. Consider what we must go through. We are only trying to give people what they want. We are deeply concerned with the business of appealing to their real desires and what do we get for all our troubles? Contempt and betrayal. Hypocrisy and discontent. Nothing comes easily. Nevertheless, we do the best we can.”

“All right,” Timothy says from the corner. “If you let me go now, I’ll do everything to build you up. I never had anything against this kind of picture. I work with the most dangerous and dislocated segment of the population; I see their pitiful desires and actions before me in cold print every day, mountains of disasters in the case histories recorded in the most horrifying, deadly way. I’m no hypocrite. I’m on your side.”

“All right,” Susan says, feeling that she is passing over an important boundary. “All right, I see what you’re saying and I agree. I’ll stay. I’ll finish the film and I’ll stay.”

“Pornography is for the middle class anyway,” Timothy says. “Don’t you agree? How could a welfare client possibly take this kind of stuff seriously? He has no imaginative power left; it’s all been squeezed out of him.”

“You know what you’re saying?” Phil asks. “Are you aware of what it means?”

“I think so.”

“This is for the long haul. There are serious issues here. You are either with us or against us. We do not want the kind of person who is only interested in giving us a day’s work.”

“All right.”

“And not only has the imaginative power been squeezed out of him,” Timothy says, “but the very belief in alternatives, the very belief in a whole system of operating choices does not exist. The middle class, don’t you agree with this Phil, the middle class believes in choice. They have been educated in the truism that they can do almost anything and that, if they fail, they will be bailed out. That’s why most middle class people go crazy by the time they’re forty.”

“He talks a lot, doesn’t he?” Phil says, shrugging a shoulder toward Timothy. “He just doesn’t get turned off, no matter what. You have that problem with him?”

“Yes,” Susan says. “I did.”

“This kind of thing definitely has to stop. If you listen to too much of that you could go out of your mind.”

“I know what you mean,” Susan says. She feels detached from all of it, even Phil now. She stands, adjusts herself, turns away from Timothy and says, “Can I go back now?”

“I think so,” Phil says. “Wait a minute.” He leans forward slowly, puts a hand to her cheek, with a strange, gentle gesture. He looks at her intently. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, I see. I see now. You can go back.” He drops his hand.

Susan turns, walks to the door, leaves. Phil’s touch burns upon her, burns coldly as she returns to the loft. When she reaches the others she thinks that his touch must have become a stain and that she is glowing for all of them to see, but they drop their eyes. One by one they turn from her and continue their work. What Phil has done to her is invisible. What she has done to herself is invisible. She removes her clothes slowly and carefully, picks up her waiting script, holding for instructions from the director.