Jack and Susan in 1913 (25 page)

Jack bent down and ruefully examined the bloody marks of Tripod's teeth. “Are you really engaged to Hosmer?”

Susan smiled a grim smile. “I am,” she said. “I most definitely am.”

The Cosmic Film Company was booked for the night in a hotel on South Orange Street near the train station. In the morning, they would travel out to the quiet suburb of Hollywood. Jack discovered this from speaking quietly to Miss Nethersole, who had conceived a
tendre
for Jack, and now thought she might have a chance with him if Susan Bright was out of the way.

In a separate taxi Jack followed the company to the hotel and hovered about the entrance till everyone from Cosmic had been inside for a quarter of an hour. Then he went in, approached the desk, glanced at the register, and saw that Susan was in room 506.

“Do you have something on the fifth floor?” Jack asked. The desk clerk looked at Jack suspiciously and shook his head no.

“The fourth floor then?”

Again the clerk shook his head.

“Is room 606 available?” asked Jack, with a sudden thought.

The clerk hesitated. Jack pushed a dollar bill across the desk.

“Yes sir,” said the clerk.

Jack could see no tactical advantage in being in the room directly over Susan's, but he had a sentimental memory of West Sixtieth Street, where Susan's bedroom had been directly over his. Perhaps, he thought with the illogic of a desperate man, she would discover that he had asked particularly for this room, would make that connection herself, would be overcome by her old love for Jack, renounce Hosmer forever, and throw her arms around Jack in the hotel elevator. Jack realized his hope was improbable, but not as improbable as the scenarios Susan wrote for Junius Fane.

Also improbably, Jack was not wholly convinced that Susan was engaged to Hosmer. His only evidence was Hosmer's assertion, Susan's confirmation, and the ring that Susan was now wearing on the fourth finger of her left hand. To Jack, these things did not constitute
total
proof.

At eight o'clock, Jack stood at his window and was astonished by the sunset. He leaned out of the window to gaze over the flatness of Los Angeles, and discovered that a dozen or so other hotel guests were also leaning out of their windows—including, directly below him, Susan Bright. He looked straight down at the top of her head. Apparently sensing his gaze, she craned her head upward. Jack smiled down at her.

“Just as it was in New York,” he called down the few feet separating them. “Except that now I'm on top of you.”

Susan grimaced, and wordlessly pulled her head inside. A moment later, her window slammed shut in its sash.

At dinner that evening, the Cosmic Film Company took over a private room off the main hotel dining room. For another dollar's bribe, Jack secured a table just beside the curtain that separated the two dining rooms. By moving his table a few feet, sitting sideways in his chair, and holding back the edge of the curtain with his foot, Jack was able to hear all and see a little of what was going on inside.

After dessert had been served, Junius Fane stood and made a speech to the company.

“Ladies and gentlemen, tomorrow we will take another train to our new home in Hollywood. A very small, very quiet town, that will not be small and quiet for long. Four years ago, our friendly competitor, the Centaur Company of New Jersey, moved out here to escape the ravages of the Motion Picture Patents Company—that unscrupulous combine that has repeatedly attempted to strangle our livelihoods in total contempt of the Constitution of the United States and the beliefs which we all hold dear, that American men and women were born to compete fairly, and get rich off the sweat of their own brows, and not the brows of others.” Fane, who tended to get hot when he talked of the Patents Trust, paused a moment to recover himself and regain the track of his remarks. “Since the arrival of the Centaur Company, others have followed, and I predict that before long, Hollywood will be a more glamorous name than Fort Lee. We will be happy here. Here we, and our children, and our children's children shall be blessed, and we shall prosper. When God made the earth, he finished his good work, and then tilted the planet a little, so that all the greatest of his splendors spilled down into California. In New York a millionaire's ransom would not pay for the flowers that grow in ditches here. J. P. Morgan has not such a breakfast table as we may have here simply by walking on to the street and plucking oranges off the trees and lemons from the vines. I'm told that every house comes with an avocado patch, so that there will be no danger of starving or freezing to death.”

The members of the company glanced at one another.
Any
talk of freezing or starving was not an encouraging augury of their future success.

Fane went on: “We will be able to shoot entirely out of doors, three hundred days of the year. Clouds, I'm told, are allowed only on the weekend, for the better promotion of the moving-picture industry.

For exteriors, there are city parks in abundance, and bucolia in the form of farms. We have beaches and the sea, we have mountains and snow, we have desert and torrential rivers. And, on top of all this, the Mexican border is only a few hours away, in case the Patents Trust send out any of their hooligans. Ladies and gentlemen,” the director concluded expansively, “we have fallen into a soft crib.”

Jack paid little attention to Fane's speech. He was much more interested in the activities of Susan and Hosmer, who were seated at a table in the corner of the room with Miss Nethersole and Mr. Perks—one of the gentlemen whose teeth Jack had loosened by the side of the railroad track. Several times Susan had inclined her head in Hosmer's direction, and had spoken directly into his ear. Jack's blood boiled up into his face.

As the company party broke up, Jack hurried away to the smoking room and sent an anonymous message to Hosmer that a gentleman wished to speak to him on a matter of some urgency. As he waited for the cameraman's appearance, Jack watched a game of billiards in progress, imagining a Méliès transformation of every billiard ball into Hosmer Collamore's head.

“Just as I thought,” Hosmer said, with a smug smile. “I knew it was going to be you—I don't know anybody else in Los Angeles. I thought you were going to turn right around and go back to New York. But here you are, still bothering me and Suss.”

“I have to ask you a question,” said Jack.

“It's not polite to invite a gentleman into a gentlemen's smoking room without also inviting him to partake of spirits and tobacco,” said Hosmer. “And as you are the politest fellow I know—when you aren't knocking bandits on the chin—I'll have a glass of brandy and a thirty-five-cent Havana.”

Jack went to the bar and brought back two glasses of brandy and a twenty-five-cent cigar for Hosmer.

“I have just one question for you,” Jack repeated.

“‘Fire when ready,' as the conspirator said to the executioner, who turned out to be his brother.”

“Are you really engaged to Susan?”

Hosmer grinned. “Suss is beside herself, contemplating our conjugal felicity. As am I.”

Jack swallowed off his brandy, got up, went to the bar to get another, bought the bottle while he was at it, came back, sat down, poured a glassful, drank it, poured another glassful, refilled Hosmer's glass, and said, “I think you're just saying this because Susan asked you to because she knew it would upset me. Hosmer, you can now tell me the truth.”

“I have told you the truth, and so has Suss. Who will you believe? Will you believe the preacher who marries us? Will you believe the clerk at the honeymoon hotel who watches me sign in as Mr. and Mrs. Hosmer T. Collamore? Will you believe five hundred angels blowing on trumpets and singing, ‘Love, love, love'? Jealousy has blinded your eyes and closed your ears and put a torch to your mind—that's what jealousy has done to you, my friend. I would suggest that you go east again, forget Suss, and marry some real young lady in high society—one who doesn't really care what you tell her your name is.”

Jack filled his glass again. Hosmer held his out, but Jack ignored the gesture. He put the bottle down on the opposite side of the chair.

“I'll tell you what,” said Hosmer. “You can go with me to city hall tomorrow and watch me apply for a license to be married. It's Suss who is pressing for this wedding, by the way,” he added with a leer that made Jack want to smash some heavy object against his yellow teeth. “In fact, she can't wait, and I'm not sure that we will wait.”

“What does
that
mean?” Jack demanded.

“Means she's asked me to her room. Means she wants to plan the honeymoon. You know what I mean, don't you? Plan it out. Set the details.
Rehearse
.”

“Get out,” said Jack quietly, “before I push that empty glass down your throat.”

Smiling, Hosmer rose and sauntered out of the gentlemen's smoking room, leaving Jack alone with his bottle of brandy and the gentlemen playing billiards.

Jack returned to his room with the bottle. He sat down at the window with his glass and stared out at the multitudinous stars of the sky and the lights of Los Angeles, which were few and far between. The air of the sprawling city was fragrant and sweet; Jack's heart was hard and black. He thought of throwing himself out the window just for the satisfaction of knowing that Susan and Hosmer would see him on his way to his death.
That
would spoil their little tryst. He would even leave a note, blaming Susan for everything.
Then
she'd regret terminating the engagement. But what if, as he'd suggested to Hosmer, the whole thing
were
a lie just invented by the two of them to irritate him? The engagement to be married, the illicit meeting in Susan's room? Then suicide was probably not a good idea.

Jack wished he could see through the floor with Roentgen rays, but no machine was at hand to produce them. The thought, however, gave him another idea—simpler and not very scientific, perhaps, but…

He taped his shaving mirror to the handle of his umbrella. He had wondered why he had bothered to bring an umbrella all the way across the continent, since he had been told it never rained in California. Now it seemed like a most provident object to have picked. He leaned out of his window and lowered the umbrella, holding on to its tip so that he might catch a reflected glimpse of the interior of room 506. This operation took a while, for Jack had finished off a bottle and a half of brandy, the mirror was small, and it was difficult to maneuver an umbrella just by its metal tip. Fortunately Susan's curtains had not been drawn and there was a light on in the room. Still, the only thing Jack could see was that the pattern of her carpet was the same as his.

Jack pushed aside the empty bottle of brandy and climbed halfway out the window, straddling the sill and holding on to the frame with the calves of his legs. This allowed him to position the umbrella at a different angle, and he could see more clearly into the room.