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By Root 459 0

he hoped to make of himself not simply a writer but an entire studio; to raise, on the patch of vacant scrub that was his life, a teeming city of costumers, soundmen, hoplites, buccaneers, and Kickapoo Indians, where he could be producer and director, screenwriter and gaffer and makeup artist, the walk-on destined for stardom and the leading lady at the peak of her career. I had known plenty of movie lovers in my life, from imaginary drag queens who idolized the great female faces to nostalgia addicts who climbed into a movie as into a time machine or a bottle of whiskey and set the dial for “never come back”; and to one degree or another the obsession, like all obsessions, implied a certain windy emptiness within. For James, I thought, the attraction must be to the fluid identities of the actors and actresses: the press-office biographies, the stage names, the roles and characters constantly adopted and shed. And—it was clear from his novel—he’d been powerfully affected by the image of community, of small-town life, that was fostered in so much classic Hollywood product.

He was intelligent enough to know, however, that this image was an illusion—his ambivalence about that illusion was reflected in The Love Parade—and damaged enough to be fascinated by the dark reverse of the Hollywood medallion, by the starlet in the corner of a party scene in The Bad and the Beautiful who later took ninety-two Nembutals and fell from her veranda, by the sorrow of a blacklisted screenwriter, by the sad pathology of a screen lover’s sex life, by the fate of Sal Mineo, Jayne Mansfield, Thelma Todd. For all of this the perfect figure, I thought, may have been the inscribing of the two words “Frank Capra” into his hand. Capra was always thought of as a great sentimentalist, but the world of his films was filled with shadows—only one man’s life, remember, separated Bedford Falls from the garish nightmare of Pottersville—in which there often lurked the specter of ruin and suicide and shame. In his sorrow over his hero’s death James had taken the whole idea of small-town America implied and romanticized by the name Frank Capra, and carved it with a needle into his flesh.

I sat down on the bed, hugged myself, stood up again. I picked up Lem Walker, Space Surgeon and read that throughout the graduation ceremonies at the Academy of Medicine on Altair IV, the skies were troubled with positron storms. I opened the drawers in Sam’s old desk and found them bare except for a Pez candy and a 1964 penny. I tried to shake the feeling that of all the people I had broken faith with in my life, James Leer was the one least able to withstand the betrayal.

“All right,” I said aloud, looking with regret at James’s knapsack, wishing with my wizened, selfish, black little raisin of a soul that I could just He there in Sam Warshaw’s bed, smoking dope and reading about a nasty little outbreak of Cetusian fever among the Hive People of Betelgeuse V. But my black little heart was trapped in the backseat of a gray Mercedes, making the long, silent trip back to Pittsburgh. “I guess that’s what I’ll do.”

I picked up the manuscript and the knapsack and went downstairs. At the bottom of the staircase I lost my balance and did something bad to my other ankle. I hopped into the kitchen and picked up the phone. I dialed my house. Hannah answered. I told her where I was.

“We miss you,” she said loudly. In the background I could hear Wilson Pickett, Hannibal’s elephants, gunplay, hysterical women, and something that might have been the rattle of dice.

“Crabtree’s there,” I said. It was hard to keep my voice down.

“He’s having a party.”

“Jesus,” I said. “That’s a terrifying thought.” I slid James’s manuscript back into the knapsack, and fastened the clasp. “Try to make sure he doesn’t leave, all right?”

“Uh huh. Listen, Grady!” She was shouting now. “Listen, I have to tell you something. There was a policeman here, Grady. Earlier tonight. Something like Popnik.”

“Pupcik. I know him.” Irene had left the black satin jacket draped over the back of one of the kitchen chairs.