God of Speed Page 8

  And there was nothing I could do. I just thought always that if it’s possible to fuck all these women then how the hell could you not? The simple desire for acquisition: what on earth was wrong with that? There was something fallacious in my logic but I couldn’t quite pinpoint the problem.

  But the timing was awful. The other women had meant nothing. At the moment I lost Ginger, I understood both her magnificence and my stupidity. I wanted her merely to caress me, to make it all better. But that gold band missed my head entirely and pinged off the bedside lamp and disappeared, perhaps forever or into the pocket of a hospital cleaner, beneath the gurney on the other side of the bed. Ginger stormed out of the room and out of my life.

  But think about it, Jack. It was bound to happen. With her “insights” and her mature viewpoint—her dastardly trick of shifting the ground from the pure physicality of bonding to the “where-are-we-going-with-this?”—Ginger was always trying to goad me into thinking. Yet the problem was precisely that I thought too much. When what I needed to do, at any given time, was brace myself. And move forward.

  GORGEOUS GIRLS LOOKING

  FOR SCREEN BREAKS

  AFTER ALL, JACK, there was a war going on by now. Why would I bother myself with this girl or that girl, with the goddamned specifics of it? These were momentous times. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor I knew instantly there would be a lot of business coming the way of Hughes Aircraft. I knew it was my duty to rise to the occasion.

  You have to make your destiny. I promised the government I would build and deliver five hundred cargo airplanes—my illfated flying boat Hercules, or the Spruce Goose as everyone unkindly called it. So I spent a lot of 1942 preoccupied with research. Then it was stressful work all through ’43 and on into ’44 and ’45, trying to develop Hercules at the same time as trying to get Defense to buy the XF-11, a contract worth forty-five million—an awful lot of money back then, Jack. A group of brass came out from Washington, the military board headed by Colonel Elliott Roosevelt, the president’s son, making the decision about which airplane contract to award to whom. I got Johnny Meyer to find starlets to spend time with these guys for the next few days—gorgeous girls looking for screen breaks; we called them the Boob Buffet. The flexibility of morality is truly hilarious when a studio contract looms. Likewise for soldiers, in the face of the flesh, in the juice of the fruit. We kept everyone plied and sated, wined, dined and blow-jobbed. You have to make your destiny. It was not my fault that, in relation to the Hercules, costs blew out and I couldn’t deliver on schedule. I did fly that giant at last, but not until three months after they’d hauled me before the Senate War Investigating Committee for never having got it off the water. It was the largest plane that ever flew, even if only for a few minutes. Sure, I could almost have reached down from the cockpit and scooped up some harbor water with my bare hands. But we flew. I felt I’d proved my point, the point possibly being: better late than never.

  I gave it my best. At the Mocambo on Sunset Strip, on a jasmine-soaked Los Angeles night, as the Gene Krupa Orchestra flailed and pulsed, these men, I tell you, felt, if not like gods, then like kings. Certainly not like soldiers, in any case! And even the kings have a little boy’s fascination for airplanes, and movies, and girls.

  But as for me, nothing was really new; everything was transparent. Late at night I would drive out to Culver City and haunt the huge hangars at Hughes Aircraft. I would stand in the empty blue darkness staring for hours at the XF-11, the pure potentiality of energy, not knowing then how one day that sleek beast would so badly unravel and scorch me. Not knowing anything bad, for just that moment. I would wander through the research divisions, unrolling the beautiful blueprints of the planes, and run my fingers over those surfaces, so flat, so endlessly deep. I thought of my lonely planes, unused, unflown for years, scattered at all the airports as if in waiting and meditation.

  I was so very in love with America!

  THRUMMING

  NOT TO SAY patriotism doesn’t have its costs. One gives up a great deal for one’s country. Everybody was after me. Everybody wanted a piece of me. Not everybody was my friend. Not everybody appreciated what I was doing. There were so many decisions to be made. Everything happened on the run. I was always flailing my arms, keeping the bats at bay. Jack, I’m wearing myself out even thinking about it. Because you see, by now I was very nervous, or exhausted, or suffering perhaps on a regular or semi-regular basis from nervous exhaustion or semi-regular nervous exhaustion.

  And I just wanted a woman, a little girl rather, who wouldn’t answer back. Hepburn and Rogers had taken their toll; the goddamned war was in full swing. So Faith Domergue seemed just the ticket.

  It was all so easy.

  I said: I have big plans for you.

  I said: Let’s forget about the party. Let’s spend some time alone.

  The way even the mothers would collude! One conversation, assuring Mrs. Domergue of my honorable intentions, was all it took to get her, Mrs. Domergue, to allow me, the wolf in sheep’s clothing, to have Faith flown to Palm Springs. And that was all I needed, of course. To have Faith indeed.

  I flew her to the Salton Sea. Is this the greatest day in history? We walked out into the lake, the salt gloop rising to our ankles and shins, then our thighs. Her fifteen-year-old behind so pert in her brand new bathing suit (mauve, with hyacinths), her fifteen-year-old head reeling with erotic anxiety, feeding on those dreams, those desires (not desire for Howard Hughes, not really, not specifically, I know, I know, I’m not a total fool, but the greater, more abstract desire to be the focus of everyone else’s attention, and myself a kind of bridge to that), her fifteen-year-old breasts holding steady, so engaged with the horizon, her fifteen-year-old thighs glimpsed from the corner of my thirty-six-year-old eyes sending my thirty-six-year-old loins beatifically anticipatory with desire. Oh yes, desire. I neglected to mention my own.

  Oh, it is all a thrumming and a throbbing. We lay there suspended on the surface of the water. A world of wetness waiting. Water trickling, the soft murmur of seclusion, sunlight like a balm, Faith so pliant. The Salton Sea was a very still corner of the world; even the ripples were silent. And in the midst of all that salt, Faith Domergue’s lips were like honeysuckle. When life was so liquid it flowed through your fingers, that’s when it mattered the most. It didn’t matter that she was fifteen. One day she’ll be a hundred and fifteen. Like the speed of light, age is relative to the observer. Perhaps the whole world is corrupt. Perhaps no one need take responsibility for anything, really.

  The sun passed high above, beyond desire. Down here the water trickled in our ears.

  It is all about bodies of water, Jack. Our bodies, in fact, are seventy percent water, and one day won’t we all simply evaporate from the earth? One day we will evaporate.

  FORTY FATHOMS DEEP

  EVAPORATE, OR GET sucked under. Ceco Cline, my engineer, never came back up for air. Lake Mead was less than three hundred miles from the Salton Sea and less than six months later. That was where the furies caught up with me and gathered for a picnic on May 17, 1943. When I crashed my S-43 into the cold, cold water. Yes, people died. Yes, I was at the controls. But it was not my fault. I was sleep-deprived. I had been up all night fighting with, and fucking, but mostly fighting with Ava Gardner. I had defense contracts to fulfill and a Senate investigation to navigate. The government was breathing down my neck and over both shoulders—there were G-men in the cockpit, for God’s sake. My supremacy was being challenged on all fronts. I was simply annoyed. Perhaps I brought it in too fast. Okay, I wanted to shake them up, bump them about. Okay. So I came in too fast.

  Too fast onto Lake Mead. What can one do? This happened, that happened. On any given day a lot of things happen. That particular day, I think about it as little as possible. And anyway, I always keep the medicine tin on hand.

  To which I will now turn my attention.

  FAITH HAD THE RANGE

  OF THE PALACE

  SO THEN. WH
ERE was I? We were talking about Faith Domergue, and a time my life was so filled with horizon. Some said she was rather young. She seemed old enough to me. Fifteen? Okay. So what? I would need to see the birth certificate. It certainly wasn’t complication that I was looking for. Our happiness lasted, in its terrible simplicity, for more than eighteen months.

  Hepburn and Rogers and Lombard were long gone by now. Did I say that already, Jack? Loss was never good, of course, but there was always some solace and clarity when things became definitive. During this time with Faith I also saw on the odd occasion, if memory serves … Lana Turner. Rita Hayworth. Ava Gardner. Because it was good to mix some adult company in there with all the schoolgirl fun. But here’s the thing, Jack, man to man. ( I hope I can admit this to him.) By seventeen Faith was already too feisty for my liking! It’s hard to credit. She intimated she was getting sick of things, of being held on a rope, of my absences. So, embracing the symbolism of new beginnings, I finally sold Muirfield and leased a huge house at 619 Sorbonne Road on a hilltop ledge in Bel-Air. And Faith had the range of the palace.

  But even that didn’t satisfy her. She harassed me relentlessly about this role and that role, this screen test and that screen test. Complained about this starlet, that starlet. Said that I kept her out of view and that she was withering, like a flower without adequate sunlight. She had a turn of phrase, that one! But for goodness’ sake, she was barely an appropriate age. The whole thing was a delicate matter. She had so much space up there. She had voice and drama tutors, a dance instructor, a chef. A swimming pool. What she lacked, Jack, was patience. I was grooming her, and grooming was always a very methodical business. She just didn’t see the bigger picture. I was older and wiser. I had access to the bigger picture. I knew when the time would be right to make our run. Her run, I should say. But she merely complained incessantly of feeling trapped up there.

  Well. You’d think a little gratitude would go a long way. But one night in early ’43 I was driving with Ava Gardner. From memory I’d just proposed to her at Caraway’s on Sunset Strip. Ava had said no, good-humoredly of course. Later that night, on Fairfax heading toward Wilshire, Faith Domergue passed us by in the opposite direction, proving that even Los Angeles is not a big enough town. I saw her head jerk around as she passed. Our eyes locked. Almost at the same instant she was pulling a screeching U-turn.

  Oh dear.

  Ava turned and said, And who is this?

  She’s a little angry, I said.

  I had told Faith … I have no idea. Perhaps I had told her I was going to the screening room. Perhaps the airfield. Perhaps we had had a fight earlier. It may have been the night she had almost caught me with Rita Hayworth, with whom I was only very occasionally sleeping, so it would have been unfair to have been caught. Faith had arrived home unexpectedly. Rita had slipped out the back way. Rita was not the point here but Faith was not to know that. Rita was non-committal and, more importantly, non-complex, sex. Faith, that simplest of girls, was becoming anxious, and needy. And complex! When complexity abounded one turned to states of being that were pure, that rang through like a bell pealing across snow, like Rita Hayworth tumbling bedwards with abandon, ding-dong.

  Hard to believe now, but I had quite the energy for all this then. Why so many women? I needed to know that everything was in place. I needed to put things in order. When I was very little, I counted the telegraph poles as they whooshed past, upside down from the back seat of Father’s car on a long drive back to Houston on a distant day when we’d driven to test a new drill in a well. So I had a history of putting things in order. It had been a lovely dinner with Ava. It didn’t even matter she said no. (I proposed to her a few other times over the next few years, but I think we both knew it was a gentle kind of game: the game of Howard trying to paint himself in a good light. She was an awfully hard nut to crack!) What really mattered was the texture of night, the hint of nasturtium on a soft breeze, the hint of pink (the light not the flesh) high in a late spring sky, the hint of pink (the flesh not the light) imagined, there, beside me, in the passenger seat, between Ava’s exquisite legs, beneath the rustling of the crinoline, imagined as a soon-to-be-uncovered event back in the apartment I’d set her up in. What mattered was the Cadillac as a vehicle of ecstasy. Every movement was a movement toward an ultimate peace. The last thing I’d imagined was to see Faith Domergue out driving alone. Compartments, compartments. How did I ever manage?

  She fishtailed out of the U-turn, accelerating to try and catch us.

  Oh dear, I said again.

  Faith in her Roadster, a red convertible, came hurtling closer from behind. I felt suddenly a neutral, alert curiosity. A great acceptance entered my muscles. She rode the horn insistently. Ava kept turning around. I watched in the rear-view mirror as the Roadster loomed too close.

  Goodness! said Ava.

  Then Faith bumped our car, from behind, hard. Ava screamed.

  Faith accelerated and pulled level on the inside lane.

  Faith! I tried to shout. She was glaring at Ava. She was putting the name to the face. She was driving dangerously, veering close to our car. I braked and slowed. She did the same. I accelerated, pulled in front of her, cut her off.

  I swung left, across a gap in the traffic, pulling into the parking lot of the Farmers Market, tires screeching, Faith hard on my tail. I braked hard, as did Faith.

  And there we all were.

  Faith gunning the engine of the car I had bought her. Anger converted to horsepower.

  Howard … I don’t like this, said Ava.

  Then Faith reversed, giving her some maneuvering room. She stepped on it and the Roadster roared toward us. Crashed into us, into the passenger door. Ava screamed again, fumbling away from the impact back toward me. Faith reversed, floored it again. I had a moment of secret admiration but it was effectively overruled by anger. Plus I always felt quite strongly about the wanton destruction of property. She slammed into us three quick times before I managed to jump from my car, run around the other side, reach in and switch off her engine. I shook her and shook her. She was cold with rage. I had never seen such hatred. Ava was screaming. I held Faith tight. Then she began to cry. To blubber, in fact. It was a flood. She looked very unattractive streaked with all those tears.

  But that was it as far as Ava went that night. A bystander drove her home. Placating Faith became the order of the evening. We needed to get out of there before too much attention was attracted. I paraded out the same old promises about making her a star. Her sobbing subsided. Who’s not to say that the whole of life is nothing more than a legalized form of prostitution? She was a sweet, sweet girl. But things were effectively over then. I promised her great fame; I didn’t deliver. Those were momentous times, after all.

  IN-FLIGHT ENTERTAINMENT

  BUT ALL TIMES are momentous times. What you have to remember, Jack, is that I was always one step ahead of the game. I brought to everyone the future on a golden platter. In-flight movies? Oh yes. I invented them, too. I knew that particular war would end, so I saw the future of passenger transport. I invested great faith in TWA. I knew that one day soon we would begin to move the multitudes vast distances. And I know about the multitudes, how no one can sit with themselves, facing forward, for long. So we spooled up films. To cheat the passage of time. Because you can get lost in a good movie. Although sometimes, during turbulence, the film would jump off its sockets—an unwanted interruption to the lostness, of course. There were many problems to iron out. Headphone technology. State screening taxes in relation to North American airspace. I was a world leader!

  And did you know, Jack, that nowadays they’ve taken to projecting the films on something called video? Have you heard about video? It can’t jump off the spools, no matter how big the bumps. And you can rewind it, you can make people reverse, you can make time go backwards. You can look at the bits that you like, again and again. Without having to re-spool. And what you lose in quality, you make up for in accessibility.

 
; IF I TELL YOU I HAD SUCKED ON

  JANE GREER’S DELICATE NIPPLE

  REMEMBER, THERE IS a great problem with the passage of Time, which is supposedly, or on the surface at least, merely the measure of motion with respect to before and after. Our central tragedy lies therefore in the logical outcome of this fact: to wit, that every sexual act (I include here of course the truly marvelous and indeed the transcendent) happens separately and sequentially. When I would want it all at once, eternally. Someone once said Time is merely Nature’s Way Of Making Sure Everything Doesn’t Happen At Once. Yet if you had taken Jane Greer to Ocean Park, the fairgrounds that ran along the Santa Monica Pier, on that summer night, pungent with sea-salt, in 1944, and played the carny games, and shot the ducks, and taken her home and made love, you would want it all to happen, again and again, all the time, forever.

  Mother had not had much time for carnivals, which were, she said, so patently unclean. And so it was astounding to become a child again. After I first contracted Jane to RKO there was a hiccup, a frosty false start, when I heard she’d started seeing Rudy Vallee. (Later she married him, but it didn’t last long.) What right had she to see other men? I made her, I owned her, for now. I found her in Life. I housed her. I would call her when ready. So I was not happy to learn she was impatient, had hit the nightspots without my knowledge, albeit with her mother in tow. I was not happy with her insubordination. I’m sure she married Vallee just to get at me. Luckily she was only one of my many problems; there were always problems, life was always busy. Otherwise I might have caused real havoc.

  In any case the Vallee vector blipped off the radar very quickly. At around the same time, watching Jane Greer in test rushes, I began to realize just how extraordinarily beautiful she was, and I found myself falling in love. Night after night I would watch her on the screen. Her sleepy, puffy eyes seemed haunted with desire. For a time it was clear I had never seen anyone as beautiful as Bettejane Greer. She became a matter of urgency. I sent her vanloads of flowers. In the ghost train on the midway she shrieked, we laughed, she held me tight, while unseen and unheard—the real horror—the sea fog eroded the boardwalk beneath us, patiently, inexorably, with geological cunning.