Everything Happened to Susan (4 page)

The next morning she sees Phil again. He is very detached; it is as if nothing at all has passed between them. The film, as he explains it to her, is a massive documentary; the most important pornographic film to date, not that it is dirty at all but rather that it will merely use pornography to involve an audience in some very serious insights into the quality of their lives. The film, Phil tells her, will be a sexual history of the world from the time of the Garden of Eden to the present; major and minor historical figures will be portrayed along with hundreds of the common people, people whose names are now unknown, and startling insights will be gained into the present condition of the world through this view. Some of the characters will be as famous as Abraham Lincoln or Saul of Tarsus; others as obscure as the eighteenth-century Italian composer Clementi or the nineteenth-century American poet Brett Harte. The sweep and scope of the film, Phil says, will be enormous; it will encompass some seven thousand years of recorded history within a period of eleven or twelve playing hours. The overall theme of the movie is that sexuality is the driving force of mankind and that all of the disasters and cataclysms of modern day Americans can be seen as the outcome of sexual frustrations. Through a frank look at the sexual lives of these historical figures, Phil says, the film will function as a purgative to the audience which will come to see that if Abraham Lincoln had wanted sex, sex could not have been that bad. “You have a nation that is terrified of sex, terrified of relationships, terrified of human connection,” Phil says, “and the audience that comes to this type of deal is the most terrified of all. Let’s face facts, most of them are using it as a substitute for the prostitutes they don’t even have the guts to get. They come into these theatres and are filled with fear and then their fantasies are exploited in a private way. I’m a very realistic man; I’ve done a lot of thinking about this as you can see and I ain’t got no illusions about the audience, but I do believe that you can do something with them. You can say this about them, at least they’re
there.
They are willing to take a chance on themselves which is more than you can say about the million others who would love to see dirties but don’t have the guts so the dirties got to be dressed up for them. We’re going to do James Knox Polk in this one; we’re going to do Hitler; we’re going to have Napoleon and the three Wise Men and Marie Antoinette and Clara Bow and Amelia Earhart and Jean Harlow and Shakespeare and almost anyone you can think of, as long as they’re dead because there’s no point in crossing with the slander laws. But otherwise there are no holds barred. There’s even going to be some stuff in there about the Kennedys, because you’ve got to lay it on the line, but, of course, you watch your step with those people. The director is a guy from Europe, did a few films over there. This is his first in the States and he’s going to get the biggest budget they ever put up for such a film. If it works out the way we think it’s going, it’s a career break. This isn’t only a sex film, you see, this is a major statement.”

“It seems to me,” Susan says, adjusting her hands over her lap and trying to look sexually inaccessible, “that you’re going to have hundreds of people in this film. How big can any part be? Not that I would mind getting one, of course.” She adds this hastily, with a ragged sense of timing; knowing that an edge of anxiety may be penetrating but unable to catch it. She wants a part in this film desperately; Timothy and she ended the evening with a serious fight in which he accused her of being a dilettante with no serious interest in acting who was perfectly willing to continue calling herself an actress because “it’s a profession where if you’re not
doing
anything, you can just say that you’re out of work. While a serious writer has to keep on working all the time.” She had not liked this at all; it had, in fact been very painful and she had resolved that she was going to be able to go back to him this evening and say that she had a serious role in a big production. A substantial part. Weeks of employment. “But I don’t really know how good the parts can be,” she adds rather lamely and then drops the whole line of approach, seeing the glint recede from Phil’s eyes, his forehead moving parallel now to the floor. He has not really listened to a word she has said.

“You don’t understand,” he says after a pause. “That’s why it’s such a desirable thing to get, that’s why people are begging for a shot in this picture. There’s going to be a lot of doubling up here; only five or six actors are really going to play all the big parts; the same guy playing Beethoven, for instance, is going to be Benjamin Harrison and then William Jennings Bryan; the girl that plays Eve will play all the sensual, seductive parts like Dolly Madison or Tallulah Bankhead and so on. There’s a terrific need for versatility and artistic range if you follow what I mean. And that’s really part of the hidden meaning of the picture too; the point is that people are always the same when you come right down to the sexual basis of reality and all the differences are just external. I’ve done a lot of thinking about this; I think that they’ve got hold of something really important here and personally I’m a little excited to be affiliated with it.” Despite his claims of elation, Phil’s eyes are dull; his gestures seem strangely out of kilter. “Filming is going to begin tomorrow,” he says. “That’s when the whole thing starts.”

“Tomorrow? You’re starting this tomorrow and you’re still interviewing for parts?”

“I’m not starting this tomorrow,” Phil says. “They’re starting it tomorrow; I told you, I just work for them. I’m only an employee; I have nothing to do with the way things go on; I just try to tend shop. The reason that they’re still interviewing is that they want to go right down to the wire and make sure that they have absolutely the right people. They need a strong cast, there’s no question about it. Of course, once they get going, they work pretty fast. It’s all a question of overhead; the business works on a tight margin.”

“Do I get a part?”

“They’re going to shoot it in the same place you were working yesterday. They’re going to clear out all the other productions and just run this one straight through in the whole area. It’ll take about a week to get the whole thing down.”

“Just a week? You said it was a long-term production.”

“You don’t understand,” Phil says, his eyes darkening and his hands coming together in a subtle wringing gesture. “Most of these films are made in a
day.
A week is a terrific project in this business. I never
knew
a film that took a week. Of course there’s never been a production quite like this in the whole history of the business; so that’s an important point too.”

“I’ll take it,” Susan says. “I’d like to go to work.” She has resolved to be businesslike, determined; she will let no personal factors intrude between her and the job and, if this is the way in which Phil wants things to be done, she will cooperate. She looks at him with what she hopes is great positiveness and detachment and says, “You want me to come down tomorrow morning and get started?”

“I’m not sure yet. I don’t want you to take this personally but you showed a certain, uh, reluctance, in the sex scenes. You aren’t really experienced in this kind of thing, I can tell. Of course that isn’t too bad; the less experience you have, the more conviction with which you can play. But you didn’t flow with the action; I heard complaints that you were working against the action and making problems for the others. Of course,” Phil says vaguely, “you got to admit that that’s a point too; an absence of professionalism in this kind of film can sometimes be just the ticket. You got to take all these things into account. I been in the business for them a long time and you learn that there ain’t no easy answers; you got to swing with it and take the long view. They can offer you fifty dollars a day if you want a part in the picture.”

“You’re going to give me a job?”

“For fifty dollars a day.”

“But I thought — ”

“I told you it would be less, sweetheart. It’s nothing personal but when you get away from the one-shot deals and into extended work there’s a tighter budget and you got to bring these things into scale. It’s not that I wouldn’t like to offer you more but they’re businessmen; they got to operate on a margin and anyway you’re dealing with a very ambitious film here. It’s much more expensive than anything they’ve ever done before. And it could be a career break. Let me tell you something if you promise not to get too excited and to keep it a secret; this may break right out of the sex houses. The director has some very exciting ideas and this is a film which might eclipse the circuit altogether and even become a road show. Of course I can’t make no promises but this could be an important step — ”

“All right,” Susan says. “I’ll take the job. I’ll do it.”

“There’s going to be some pretty wild stuff here, you know, the director has ideas about what he wants to put in and altogether you’ll have to keep an, uh, open mind,” Phil says and fades off into inarticulately; at the moment out of words he looks at her bleakly across the expanse of desk, his palms open, his forehead parallel to the surfaces. He seems to have lost his faculty of speech for the time being or maybe it is merely forgetfulness; in any event, a small series of shudders and tremors seem to pass through him and he reassembles himself slowly. Susan wonders if he is a sick man, if it is a characteristic of people in this business to be highly neurotic, or whether he merely feels guilty about the sexual relationship which he has imposed upon her. She feels like reaching out to him, touching him gently, almost maternally, and telling him that it is all right, she expects nothing further from him, there is no reason for him to feel guilty, but then she understands that this would probably be very silly because sex does not seem to be what is on his mind now. “I guess they could make it fifty-five a day,” he says. “But for fifty-five a day you might have to get into some pretty weird stuff. I tell you frankly, this director has a lot of ideas which he wants to try and they may strike you as a little bit strange. Fifty-five would be the top rate and for that they would expect real cooperation. Your back would be to the camera most of the time though. You’ll notice there are very few full faces in this kind of stuff; that’s for the protection of the actors because you never know who’ll end up where in fifty years. Fifty-five a day and that’s the top. You get five days guaranteed at that rate; if there’s any more filming after that, it drops to forty-five. That has to be to protect against a cost-overload but it shouldn’t go more than five days.”

“You said a week.”

“A week, a working week, five days, what’s the difference. Anyway,” Phil says, “anyway, that’s the situation.” He stands ponderously, seems to weave in front of her, then turns and looks out a window. “If you don’t want to take it there are plenty others so you got to tell me now.”

“I’ll take it,” Susan says. “I’ll be down tomorrow morning and start work.”

“All right,” Phil says. “I’ll arrange for you to be on the payroll steady then. You doing anything tonight?”

“What’s that?”

He turns, leans over the desk, puts his palms down flatly and says, “I asked if you’re doing anything tonight, that’s all.”

“Well,” Susan says, feeling her balance beginning to go; she has not figured this man out right at all, she has missed the situation as well. This is the way he conducts his life, his attitude has had nothing at all to do with what happened between them. “Well, I told you, I was living with this man; I mean we had nothing special planned tonight but I have to go
home —
”

“I don’t understand it,” Phil says, shaking his head. “All these fragmentary relationships. Everybody’s always shacked up together; in my time you didn’t have to live with someone to have sex with them. It wasn’t that big a deal. Listen, you don’t have to explain your whole life-style to me, just give me a straight answer. You want to go out tonight and have a few drinks?”

“I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.”

“Because if you can’t, that’s all right too. Business is entirely separate. You don’t have to think that I’m forcing you or anything because I already offered you the job, right? So you know there’s no monkey business. Listen,” Phil says, “I’m a married man, right? You should know that about me right away. I’m a perfectly happy married man but you’ve got no idea of the tensions or pressures which build up in a marriage; sometimes you need a little something else just for a sense of relief. So it doesn’t mean anything serious whether or not you go out with me. I’ll meet you here about five?”

“I told you,” Susan says rather frantically. “I told you, I just can’t have that kind of involvement. It’s nothing personal, I think that you’re very nice but — ”

“All right,” Phil says. His eyes recede, his form seems to diminish subtly, he retracts to an edge of the chair. “It was only an idea. It has nothing to do with you at all.”

“All right,” Susan says.

“Because I know how your whole generation is and you start taking things seriously when it isn’t anything like that at all. I don’t want any messing around on the project. You got a big responsibility there and this thing has got to come off on schedule and on the money.”

“Yes,” Susan says. “Yes.” She has the feeling that, somehow, her life will terminate sitting in front of Phil, that time is overtaking her, that everything is moving away from her slowly and her last moments will be spent in this chair. She forces herself to shift, then gets up; a peculiar disorientation comes over her; she thinks she might faint but she stands in front of him, slightly disconcerted but in control. “I’ll just be going along,” she says. Vaguely, she recalls some phrases from prior unsuccessful job interviews. “I appreciate your time. It’s been very interesting. Thank you very much for talking to me. It’s very nice of you to see me.” Saying this, listening to herself as if from some distance, she moves toward the door, poises against it for a moment trying to frame some line that will enable her to depart from Phil in perfect grace. Then she sees that he is no longer looking at her; that, indeed, his eyes have fastened with a moist glaze to the telephone. It occurs to her that as far as Phil is concerned she has already left the premises. He sits there in stasis, one arm poised toward the phone, his shoulders in mid-shrug, no movements across his face. Susan opens the door and leaves. Halfway down the hall she hears horrid sounds coming from the vicinity of Phil’s office, sounds which seem like metal striking against rotating machinery, high shrieks but at the dead-center of all these sounds she believes that she hears a human voice. It is many octaves higher than Phil’s but then again one never knows. She resolves not to think much more about this and leaves the building hurriedly, moving into the midday crowds that circulate through Times Square. She wonders what any of them might think if they knew what she had been through and what she was going to do but, she decides that they are, in one sense or another, very possibly in the same business and she drops the whole issue, spending the rest of the morning investigating strange stores that sell nothing but ties for a dollar forty-nine, others which are going out of business momentarily and making clearance sales, and book markets where the majority of Timothy’s competitors for the diminishing hardcover market can be observed on sale for a dollar ninety-eight, seventy-nine cents, and thirty-nine flat, depending upon their value and relevance to the current social situation.