Suitors of Spring, The: The Solitary Art of Pitching, from Seaver to Sain to Dalkowski (Summer Game Books Baseball Classics) (15 page)

To Chris’s right, alongside the glass sliding doors that overlook a tear-shaped swimming pool one story below, a skinny little man in a white bathing suit is sleeping on a wall couch. Awake, he is skittish, quick-witted, caustic. His name is Len and he owns this house in which Belinsky is staying. (“Len’s a gas,” says Belinsky. “He’s the unofficial mayor of Los Angeles.”) Len’s presence on the couch is making it difficult for the painter to reach the wall behind him. The painter has been painting that same wall for six days. Every so often he pauses and glances out the glass doors at the swimming pool below. Two girls are sunning themselves beside the pool. They are both lying on their backs, each with the back of a hand flattened across her eyes. Both girls are wearing only the bottoms of their bikinis. (“He went freaky the first time he looked out that window,” says Belinsky of the painter. “He’s been painting that same wall ever since. I think we’ll send
him
a bill!”)

At about noon Belinsky and his friends, some of whom are sleeping in other rooms throughout the house, will join those two girls beside the pool. Belinsky will sit by the pool “taking some color” until one of his friends sneaks up behind him and pushes him into the pool, or until he feels sweat seeping from his body, in which case he will dive in to cool himself, emerging quickly and returning to his deck chair. But noon is still hours away.

Belinsky puts down the picture of himself and sits back in his chair. “What was I thinking then?” he says. “I was thinking, ‘Man, a no-hitter, that’s nice! I wonder what happens next?’ I mean, a no-hitter, it’s nice but it’s no big thing.” He picks up his glass, takes a sip and returns it to the table. “Sure, I would have liked to have had a career after that. But I never thought I would. I knew there’s always someone waiting around the corner to take a shot at you. It’s just a matter of time. Besides, there’s no way I could have done anything different—I mean, lived my life differently. Can a leopard change his spots? You can shave all the fur off the poor bastard and he’s still got his spots, right? Who can explain it? Why does a mad dog howl at the moon? Why did I do the things I did?” He smiles, picks up his glass and drains it. He motions with it toward the tall redhead who has been tidying up. “Heh, Babe, some more Wheaties?”

Linda looks up from her dusting. “Sure, Bo.” She moves to his chair and bends over to take his glass. Her breasts strain against the top of her bikini. Bo looks up, shakes his head once. “All right, Babe! That’s all right!” Linda, poised over him, looks down at her breasts and then to Belinsky. They both smile, that identical, knowing, self-mocking smile. Linda takes his glass and straightens up. She tosses her long red hair from her eyes and laughs a noiseless laugh that comes in spurts, like breaths. “Bo, you’re too much,” she says. She turns her back on him and moves off in a languid, loose-hipped shuffle. Belinsky follows her with his eyes, shaking his head and saying, “So many broads, man, so many broads. It’s a shame . . . heh, what’s that poem, ‘Give me ten stouthearted men, and soon I’ll have ten thousand more.’ Well, make mine chickies. Yes sir, make mine chickies,” and he laughs. He slides down into his chair, only the top of his head visible, and he laughs.

When his laughter fades he is silent for a while, smiling to himself. Absentmindedly he begins curling a lock of hair at the back of his head. Finally he says, “My problem was simple, Babe. I heard music nobody else heard.” As he speaks he is staring straight ahead at the chimney. “I remember once I was playing in the Texas League when the team bus stopped in Veracruz so we could eat. All the players went into the restaurant except me. I thought I heard music down the street so I went looking for it. I found a two-piece jazz band playing on the sidewalk in front of a bar. I listened for a while, and when they went inside I followed them. I had a few drinks and then I left. I had every intention of returning to that bus until I ran into another jazz band down the street. I followed them into a bar too. What I didn’t know was that all these bars hired jazz bands to lure customers inside. Man, after that bar, it seemed like every step I took there were these damned buglers waiting just for me. ‘Here he comes!’ they seemed to be saying. ‘Get ready, here he comes!’ . . . I woke up six days later in a hotel room in Acapulco. I had a sponsor. This blonde Mexican broad—she had to be blonde, right!—was sitting by the bed saying, ‘Belinsky! Belinsky! I make you great Yanqui bullfighter! But first we must change your name.’ I said, ‘Sure, Babe. We’ll change it to Lance. Lance Belinsky, how’s that?’ . . . My team? They were in Mexico City. We passed each other going in opposite directions. It was always like that with me.”

It is 10 o’clock now. The sun has begun to move from behind the chimney into Belinsky’s path. It streams in through the glass doors and momentarily blinds him. He raises one hand to shade his eyes. With the other he searches across the coffee table for his sunglasses. When he finds them he puts them on. “That’s better,” he says. “Too much sun. Too much . . .” Then suddenly he says, “I don’t feel sorry for myself. No way. I knew sooner or later I’d have to pay the piper. You can’t beat the piper, Babe. I never thought I could. But I’ll tell you who I do feel sorry for.” He leans over the arm of his chair, furtively looking left and right as if afraid the others will eavesdrop on this secret he is about to impart. A meaningless gesture. They are oblivious to him. Satisfied no one is listening, he turns and says softly, “I feel sorry for all those poor bastards who never heard music.” He laughs out loud. “Those poor fucking bastards!” and he falls back into his chair laughing.

The doorbell rings. Linda, returning with Bo’s drink, goes to the door. It is the telephone repairman. Linda leads him to the glass doors overlooking the pool. The painter sighs disgustedly, as if severely hampered in his work by this crush of people about him. He begins feverishly slapping the wall with his brush. Linda points down at the swimming pool. The telephone repairman looks down for a very long moment. Then he looks at Linda.

“How did they get in the swimming pool?” he says.

Linda shrugs. “There was a call for Lloyd Bridges,” and she walks over to Belinsky and hands him his drink.

“A call for Lloyd Bridges?” Bo repeats. “That’s trippy, Babe. That’s real trippy.” He takes his glass, raises it before his eyes and says with a smile, “To amnesia.” He sips delicately, then puts the glass on the table. He picks up a book of famous quotations and begins flipping through the pages. He is looking for the source of the quotation, ‘Give me ten stouthearted men. . . .’

Meanwhile, the telephone man has found the sockets out of which the two white telephones had been removed. He looks over his shoulder and says to no one in particular, “The phones were ripped out of the wall.”

Belinsky looks over at him, his eyebrows raised, and says, “Is that a fact, Babe? Ripped out, huh?” He shakes his head in disbelief and goes back to his book. It was Belinsky who had removed the telephones from the wall only hours ago. When he had come home from an all-night party he had been met at the door by Phil, who told him he’d been kept awake all night long answering calls from such friends of Bo’s as Hollywood Mike, Chicago Danny and Red-Headed Mike.

“A new arrangement must be worked out with the telephones,” said Phil.

Belinsky replied, “Sure, Babe,” and walked over to the telephones, ripped them out of the wall and threw them through the sliding glass doors (which, fortunately, were opened) into the deepest part of the swimming pool.

It was not Belinsky’s disagreement with Phil that precipitated his outburst, however. Its seeds had been sown much earlier in the evening when Bo, Len and three male friends had begun their nightly rounds of Sunset Strip nightclubs. They stopped first at a favorite haunt just as three of that club’s exotic dancers, dressed only in their nightgowns, were being ushered into a police car. The girls’ arrest stemmed from an act they had just performed on stage while three crew-cut members of the L.A. vice squad watched from a darkened corner table. The act centered around one girl who took a bath on stage and was soon joined in her tub by the other two who washed her back. “It’s a helluva act,” said Belinsky as the police car drove off.

Disappointed but undaunted, Belinsky and his party went on to The Sportspage, a hangout for professional athletes, and then on to The Candy Store, a Beverly Hills discotheque frequented by Hollywood celebrities. At both places Belinsky’s party was virtually ignored. They were seated at darkened tables far removed from the action. Belinsky himself went essentially unrecognized except for two isolated incidents. At The Sportspage he was approached by a pot-bellied man who wanted him to play on his Sunday morning softball team. “A great way to stay in shape,” said the man. “We have free beer after the game.” At The Candy Store Belinsky was approached by a gray-haired man dressed entirely in white, like Tom Mix, who said he was a movie producer who wanted to make a film of Belinsky’s life.

“I have just the title,” said Belinsky. “We’ll call it, ‘A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to a Career.’”

The man in white said, “That’s good, Bo. That’s very, very good. Maybe you can play yourself. Can you act?”

“Have I got an act!” replied Belinsky.

At about midnight Belinsky and his friends got up to leave The Candy Store. Len pointed to a man leaning against the wall near the doorway. “Catch his act,” said Len. “He’s doing an imitation of Hugh Hefner.” The man had chalky-white skin. He was wearing a purple velvet jumpsuit and smoking a pipe. His arms were folded across his chest as if he were hugging himself. His act turned out not to be an act, however, and after a few words of greeting Hugh Hefner invited Belinsky and as many friends as he could muster to a party at his Beverly Hills mansion.

“I’m bored tonight,” said Hefner as he led Belinsky and Len to his Rolls Royce. “Barbie’s in the hospital and I could use some company.”

By the time Hugh Hefner’s black limousine reached the electronically controlled gate that opened to a winding driveway that led eventually to his $3.5 million Tudor castle, it was being trailed by nearly a dozen Fords, Chevys and Pontiacs of various age and hue. The cars were filled with about 30 casual friends of Belinsky, most of whom were small-time hustlers and gamblers operating along Sunset Strip.

The party at the Elizabethan castle began at 2
a.m
., with Hefner leading his guests on a tour of his possessions. He showed them his gleaming kitchen where his cooks (like all his servants, on 24-hour call) were preparing a snack for them. He showed them his bed, his game room, his projection room, his vast, neatly clipped grounds discriminantly dotted with intimate little lovers’ parks. And finally he showed them his as yet uncompleted swimming pool, which was the size of a small lake. Because the pool was nothing more than a huge dirt- and boulder-strewn ditch, Hefner led his guests back inside where he produced an architect’s drawing of the finished product. The pool would eventually resemble one of those lush jungle hideaways seen so often on men’s after-shave commercials on television. It would be planted with overhanging tropical foliage and tanned, bikini’d bunnies. (The bunnies were shown in various poses—lying on a rock, sunning their already brown bodies, one knee languorously raised.)

When Hefner had shown his guests all the possessions he felt they should see, he led them to the living room, where his servants had spread out a snack of red and black caviar, strawberries and melon, assorted cheeses and bottles of champagne. By then his guests had grown ravenous with hunger—only their hunger was not for the food surrounding them but for the opulent life-style they had just devoured with their eyes. Their quick hustlers’ minds clicked into gear. They searched frantically for a way, as Belinsky put it, “To hitch a ride on that big bunny bird in the sky.” The men began talking loudly about “deals” and “scores” they could make if only they had the proper “backing.” The women, urged on by their boyfriends, passed behind Hefner and stooped to whisper in his ear about “deals” of their own, about “scores” they had in mind—such as being able to stencil across their navals tomorrow morning, “Property of Hugh Hefner Enterprises.”

“It was an orgy,” said Belinsky afterwards. “Everyone was climbing each others’ back to buzz in Hefner’s ear.”

Throughout the frenzy, however, Hefner remained impassive. He sat Indian-style on a velvet pillow on the floor, his guests spread out before him. His arms were folded across his chest; his pipe alternately dangled from one hand or was clenched between his teeth; his small black eyes darted from guest to guest, the eyes reading but unreadable. He did not say more than a dozen words all morning (as if somehow his daily allotment had been exhausted on his guided tour), but instead contented himself with watching the anguished strivings of those about him. Like some voyeur of human anxieties, he seemed to actually take pleasure in the sweaty brows and clenched stomachs of his guests. Throughout the morning his head bobbed forward mechanically, like a string puppet’s, although it bobbed not in approval to the words of his guests (as they mistakenly believed) but in silent affirmation to some private truth he took great pleasure in seeing verified before his eyes.

From a distant corner of the room, seated alone, Belinsky watched the proceedings silently. As the morning wore on he grew sullen. Unsure of the source of his anger, he began to drink heavily. At dawn he saw Hefner stand up suddenly, thank his guests for coming and leave the room. The guests looked dazedly at each other. Then, half-drunk, half-asleep, unsure of what next was expected of them, they rose unsteadily and began to wander out of the house into a chill and foggy morning.

When Belinsky and Len returned to Len’s house in Hollywood Hills, Phil met Bo at the door and complained about the telephones. “What followed,” said Len with a grin, “was a typical Polack rage.”

Belinsky puts down the book of quotations and says, “Going to Hefner’s house was no big thing for me. I’ve known the guy for years. He offered me a job, but I turned it down. I never went much for that Playboy philosophy and stuff. I’m not one for institutionalized sex. I mean, you don’t use women, Babe, you compliment them. They compliment you. How can you use a woman? We all climbed out of a womb, right? But still, Heff’s a gracious host. I wanted my friends to enjoy themselves last night. It was a score for them, something they could talk about for a week. Instead, they tried to hock his silverware. The stupid bastards!”