God of Speed Page 11

  I was recovering from the big accident, when I’d broken apart in Beverly Hills. My body ached, even through the morphine. Jean Peters, the first face I had woken to in the hospital, in my suffering, in the glare of bright light, was a balm. There was a fit there, too, of sorts: me in my need, her in her need to be needed. I didn’t get around to marrying her for a decade, Jack! She was the most patient creature. Back then she hadn’t yet started to drive me crazy.

  When she was shooting Captain from Castile in Mexico with Tyrone Power I would often fly down there to be with her. These were the days when leaving was good, flying was good, arriving was good. Not, admittedly, consecutive days; but there were times, there were moments scattered through my life when all was well, when goodness and not anxiety was the defining medium. When even being between Jean’s legs was like a choice I had made and not an accident of compulsion that had befallen me. As if one descended through clouds to love at last, to Guadalajara and something reminiscent of … ease.

  Cary Grant and I took a trip down there once. To talk to a man, intimately, was very different from talking to a woman. If nothing else there was the liberty of being able to be more honest. There was less tension because there was less of a feeling of even having to talk. Less of that sense of an obligation to cram the empty space. I was comfortable in silence with Cary. So I was going to Mexico to see Jean but first of all I had to go to New York for a TWA board meeting. I picked up Cary and we flew out of there and southwest. In Amarillo we refueled. Storms buffeted the DC-3. Cary mixed himself a cocktail at the bar. Myself, I was never a great one for drinking. We skirted the storm front and touched down in El Paso.

  The evening sun beat hard on the steaming runway. Waiting for customs clearance into Mexico, we sat on the tarmac on folding chairs outside the tiny airport building, drinking chilled milk straight from the bottle. In the distant north the purple mass of cloud sparked and bulged with silent lightning. We sat, largely conversationless, largely content. TWA did not exist. All the money, all the women, were far away for just that moment. It was not the case that life was screaming past, not for me, not for Cary, not for anyone. But I drank that milk like it was life itself.

  ONE COULD IMAGINE

  HER WETNESS

  OH THE SIMPLICITY! I kissed Rita Hayworth beside a boatshed once, on the shores of Lake Tahoe. We had flown out there for dinner at McGreary’s. We arrived late afternoon and went for a swim, the sunlight pale and crisp. It was almost unbearably cold. This was the first time between us: this was the delicious anticipation, when the whole world was filled with possibility, when one could imagine her wetness, the mucoid slippings and moorings of the night ahead, and not be far wrong. We were in the water for less than a minute. I was half-erect following her out, focusing on the glisten of the texture of the goose bumps on her thighs. Her bathing suit the color of vanilla ice-cream and maybe even the taste.

  After McGreary’s we went for a walk along the lake, above which hovered a mist. Otherwise the entire sky was clear, and a full moon rained down silver on the pines and the jetty and Rita and me. One expected a coyote to howl. Often with women I had so little to talk about and would find myself yabbering on, or co-yabbering, as the case may be. But on Tahoe it seemed pointless to talk of business or the movies. We stood in silence, me just behind her and to the right, and when I slid my arms around her shoulders from behind, she turned and leaned her face up to mine.

  We took a hotel. She had the sweetest smile. I booked in as Mr. H. Hawks. We never heard the coyotes but the night seemed filled with the hooting of owls. Rita Hayworth was as perfect as a woman comes, and gave and gave until a man felt not a man anymore, but a being brought to sobbing by the simple beneficence of love. She opened her legs and drew me on top of her. She said, First, just the tip. Just the tip at the entrance. Slowly, slowly, as slow as you can. I swear I pulsed and swelled in that ecstatic loading dock. And to push down against her and into her at last: vine of the vine and the grape crushed to spirit and the word made flesh. Time may well have been Nature’s way of making sure not everything happened at once. But sex with Rita Hayworth was Time’s way of excusing itself from duty and the ticking of the clock.

  A DELICATE OPERATION

  I WILL NEED to tell him about tiredness, of course, which eventually becomes a factor. I juggled too many painkillers and women. By the mid-fifties it was not so tiring juggling the drugs. But the women—well, I had a great sadness in my life, I felt very empty. In addition to this I was assailed, rightly or wrongly, by germs, or at least by a sense of the lurking of uncleanliness. Possibly also there was a sexual virus eating at my brain now these last ten or twenty years, a dose of the clap I’d caught from a starlet somewhere along the line, making me a little cranky. There was so much to be annoyed about. I signed up Yvonne Shubert and made Walter Kane, one of my security men, her minder, but at some point she took hold in my mind, also perhaps like a virus, and I became obsessed with the need to win her.

  Would this be the thing? To make time stand still? And me, an old man by now! Fifty. The years had gone by so flippantly. When I looked in the mirror I did not look the same. Thus it was a delicate operation, seducing Yvonne. I was self-conscious about my wrinkles. In the screening room I fed them films, Yvonne and her mother, with Kane chaperoning. I slipped in late and sat in the dark up the back of the room and watched her, night after night. I had not yet met her. Her mother thought she was being “groomed” for a “career” and that this was the education. By day Yvonne took her dance and drama and voice classes, paid for by me. She was buoyed along by my promises of fame, the usual thing. By night I watched the play of light from the projector’s beam on her jet-black hair. I watched her laugh. I took pleasure in imagining her excitement about this world of special treatment. The medicine made me so patient, I could study her for hours. I booked double features. I sensed her mother getting bored. After a few weeks her mother dropped away, feeling her daughter to be in safe hands. Walter Kane was about as unthreatening as a man could be, in that way. (On the other hand, as a Hughes security man, you wouldn’t have wanted to cross him.)

  At last, one night I emerged from the back of the screening room. Walter introduced us and then he too slipped away.

  Her eyes were alert in the darkness, a fawn in the forest. We sat in the same row, several seats away, and watched the movie. It ended. The lights remained down. My jowls were drooping by now. I couldn’t bear my life. I had to have her. I would win her with my voice. We talked and talked. She knew nothing. Her innocence was astonishing. But it was too much effort, my body turned sideways in that seat, the strain of presence, the weight of speech. I needed some distance.

  Now, Miss Shubert, I said. I want to keep talking—do you?

  Oh yes, Mr. Hughes—

  Please call me Howard.

  All right then. Howard.

  And I’m enjoying talking, too. I’m enjoying getting to know you. But I’d feel more comfortable if you’d do this for me. Go into that second office, that second room along the corridor. Close the door. And wait there. And pick up the phone when it rings.

  She acted as if there was nothing strange in my request. She glided down the dimly lit hall. I loved her more that moment. I went into the projection booth and called her extension. She picked up the phone. Now we could talk for hours. Now I could relax. I also found it comfortable to touch my genitals if necessary, but not in a dirty way.

  We talked every night for eleven weeks. I had never experienced such a build-up. I had never taken anything so slowly. We talked of me and her, dreams past and present, and all the great films. I had to make sure that she loved me. I could not imagine a world without love. I could not imagine failure.

  We talked long into the night.

  I am old.

  Oh, but Howard, you are young at heart to me.

  Do you mean that? Do you really mean that?

  We played out the farce, the money of it all, which was all there really was.

&
nbsp; You are like a sister to me. You know, I never had a sister. But then again, you are very beautiful, too, and that is not the way one thinks about one’s sister. Your skin is like … like silk.

  Howard, you’ve hardly even seen my skin!

  I’ve seen your photos. I’ve seen the publicity shots. But I have to admit, I would die happy, were I to see just a little more.

  Oh, Mr. Hughes!

  Because I think, Yvonne, that I am falling in love with you.

  Silence on those sterilized phones.

  Do you think you love me, or might, Yvonne? Do you think you could?

  I think, she said. I think, she paused. I think I have a kind of love.

  Oh, Jack, it is cruel—to think I maneuvered her into saying those words. And to think how the saying of those words must have corroded her, just a little.

  Still, in order to sleep with her I had to promise I’d marry her. After that initial contact it all becomes a matter of stalling and pampering as the months melt and decay. But that first night, when it finally came, when we finally touched, when we finally fucked, when I fought, successfully, the fear of germs, to simply lie with her, that first night was boon and balm. She gave herself to me, or let’s be realistic here, to my imagined millions. For months and months I enjoyed every moment. There was a little shuffling now and then because Jean Peters, silly little Jean, also thought I was going to marry her—and isn’t it funny how she turned out to be the one who was right? For a while also, somewhere around this time, I was plowing fields with Susan Hayward who now, thirty-seven years old and recently divorced, smelled only, in my presence at least, I swear to God, of desire and abandon. It clung to her dress, straining in its disarray, it rose from her pulsing groin till I could lick it, literally, off her neck. She never wanted more than to fuck, quickly and urgently, to fight her way through the drugs she was on. This was a difficult time for her. We never compared notes, but we clarified whatever befuddlement we may have been experiencing, through this burning interlocking of sinew and groin. Everything was all the better because it was going nowhere, nowhere. (Though Susan Hayward, like all the others, no doubt had her secret hopes.) But Yvonne Shubert was more straightforward, because when you add eighteen more years to the initial nineteen, things get a little complex, so Susan had those extra layers of trouble. Very attractive. For a very short while.

  MULBERRY BUSH

  NONETHELESS, ON NEW Year’s Eve in 1955 I couldn’t work out exactly who to please and I went a little strange. I had spread myself too thin with promises. I had overcommitted myself. If you put yourself in my shoes you would understand: not one of us really likes to have others dislike us. I didn’t wish to incur anybody’s wrath. Or disappoint anybody. I was eager to please. I just found it hard to say no sometimes, Jack. I wanted the whole world to be happy. So I said things that sometimes … weren’t true. On an individual level, I was Johnny Appleseed, I had happiness for everyone. And a rather random approach to scattering myself.

  As November bled into December and the New Year loomed, I found that I had made New Year’s Eve commitments to Susan Hayward and Yvonne Shubert and, interestingly enough, to Jean Peters, too, who I’d now been seeing, more or less irregularly, since the crash in ’46. I loved them all in their own way! I had heard there are two types of people, the glass is half-empty or the glass is half-full. So I decided to march into this calamity of overbooking as if all the gods were smiling and the greatest good fortune was raining down. My glorious organizational skills were dusted off, awaiting the parading of their glittering magnificence. The Beverly Hills Hotel was to be their stage.

  I put Silly Jean in the Crystal Room, best table in the house. Gardenias and a diamond brooch. For Susan it was the Polo Lounge, best table in the house. Gardenias and a diamond pendant. Yvonne in one of the bungalows out back, in the tropical garden down the manicured paths winding through lawns and camellia hedges, festooned with Christmas lights, four serving staff and my personal chef and music soft on the gramophone. Gardenias and a diamond necklace. Bottles of Dom for all of them. And lots of my men, on double pay, coordinating my movements, walkie-talkies crackling, their own New Year’s Eves gone missing.

  Jean Peters first, rapturous in a white satin gown (was I supposed to be reading a message into that?), and we popped a bottle and chatted. I could feel the tingle of adrenalin in the back of my throat, the uncertainty about whether or how I could pull this off. I imagine there were beads of sweat across my brow. I felt slightly uncomfortable in my tuxedo. And then a man came with a message for an urgent phone call. And off I raced, attending to “business”. Jean was as meek and forbearing as ever.

  Susan Hayward’s eyes were translucent and radiant with whatever medication she was on that evening. She was happy in her world. We came together so wonderfully and remained so wonderfully separate, so airtight, so watertight. I liked that. I stroked the sleeve of her strapless peach gown. I commented on its … God knows what I said. There are some things dispensed with in the halls of memory. The cleaners got to them years ago. But another man, another telephone call, and I was off again, leaving Happy Susan sipping her champagne and smiling at the cotton napkins and the bright sheen of the silverware.

  In the bungalow Yvonne (gown of cream chiffon and silk brocade) was waiting patiently, her world unsullied as yet by collusion or need. I liked her lips so much, though not disembodied as such. Everything related to everything else. She was so happy there, waiting for me and in love, or pretending with satisfactory enthusiasm. I look back now, Jack, and all I see are all the things I’ve spoiled. It wasn’t that I wasn’t aware that the other humans were real, like me. It’s simply that I wasn’t aware of myself so much as being just another of the humans. We popped a bottle. I managed to stick around for the asparagus starter. (I would have to be careful. I would be eating three times.) There was a telephone call for me.

  One whole circuit—I was off and running! I had no idea who I was even going to end up with that night. In the ultimate sense, I mean. There were times, back then, and even now, when I was confident enough with the workings of the unfolding of all things that I didn’t have to control every single outcome from start to finish, but only the initial parameters. Looking back on New Year’s Eve 1955, I’m not sure just how trapped I was. There are loops as well. Perhaps it was not the behavior of a fifty-year-old man.

  I went through the asparagus facade again, with Jean. Another call. Business never stops, the cogs keep turning, the furnace needs restoking. She was annoyed, but as always did well to hide it. Oysters with Susan, that was more like it, still three mains to go. But after two circuits, doom set in, which is perhaps not unlike the history of the world itself. Not even two circuits: I hadn’t yet got back to Miss Shubert a second time. Because Miss Hayward got smart, or suspicious at least. She went for a wander. I was back with Miss Peters, perusing the menu. Miss Hayward stormed up to us. The other diners were watching already.

  What the hell is going on? said Susan.

  I hadn’t planned for this. What on earth had I imagined? Perhaps only the difficulty of saying goodnight to two out of the three.

  Well I’m in the Polo Lounge, Jean, said Susan, looking down at her. And you’re here in the Dining Room. You work it out. I’d say that makes me date number one.

  Howard? said Jean, looking at me with those hurt eyes. Hurt from Jean beside me, anger from Susan above. I didn’t know which way to look. Certainly not to all the other eyes upon me.

  Well, they both stormed out of there. It was certainly a rapid simplification of the evening’s plans. Yvonne, Yvonne, Yvonne, Yvonne, Yvonne. And I wouldn’t have to eat so much now.

  We didn’t dance alone that night and I didn’t take her dancing across at the Polo Lounge. Wouldn’t look good in the gossip columns, there’d be problems enough in that regard with the Hayward and Peters situation as it was. The table had been cleared, the staff dismissed, I was partaking of a rare third glass of champagne, the candles flickered low
. And Yvonne was none the wiser about the other two. What I suddenly imagined was: going down low, direct route below the table, onto my knees (it was the position of worship in some religions), pushing that chiffon and silk up her breeze-streaked inner thighs (there are breezes everywhere, there are tremors not even a seismograph could trace) as the width of my shoulders forced a minimum spread in her knees. But Yvonne was very young, awash with those romantic dreams, head full of story books and fairytales no doubt. Not good to crush those. No point in scaring the wits out of her. I was fifty years old, very much a dirty old man. What I did instead was: took her hand, and kissed it, and said, To bed, my dear, to bed.

  Or words to that effect.

  I had seen that hand-kissing worked. It had worked for Errol Flynn.

  AS IF FOREVER

  I WONDER HOW Jack’s doing with his sleep? I wish I could sleep. No, I don’t. Not just now. I’m too full of … energy. So much to tell him. Half the night gone and half still to go. Somewhere out there in the distance that tranquil waterway, the Thames, leads of course to the uttermost ends of the earth. In here, nothing changes. Nothing enters from outside. The position of the lamp doesn’t shift. The shadows remain exactly the same. The grainy texture of the light seems to have settled as if forever on the furthest corners of the room, so that the fox-hunting prints remain indistinct and ambiguous, and may in fact, I suddenly realize as I try to focus on them across the vast expanse of the room, be scenes from Greek mythology, Tithonus perhaps in his great agony, long abandoned by Aurora in a back room in Heaven, his useless arms and legs wasting away, his endless complaints endlessly unheard, his body desiccated to its cicada destiny, his beauty gone forever and only forever awaiting him. And Aurora, full of juice and glory, renewed every day at the dawn.