Lone star

“What you like is having people think you’re Jimmy.” Polly glared at him. She turned to me. “Since Jimmy started wearing that red jacket, people associate it with him. It’s from Rebel Without a Cause, and that’s not even released yet. There were some photos in fan magazines, and that’s all it took. Suddenly, his fans are clamoring for the jacket.” Polly went on, her voice weary. “It’s the way Jimmy dresses off camera. But now and then. Not every day,” she emphasized. “Tommy rarely takes his off.”

Tommy grunted.

Polly stared into my face. “Jimmy has a powerful hold on Tommy.” She looked around the room, then glared at the waiter placing menus before them. She waited until the man left. “Tommy can’t get away from Jimmy’s influence.”

“You’re talking like I’m not even in the room,” Tommy whined.

Polly spat out the words. “It’s hard enough living your own life without copying another person’s.”

“Actually,” I volunteered, “I suppose, it’s easier to copy someone else’s life. Making your own up is hard work.”

“You hear that, Tommy? You’ve taken the easy way out.”

Tommy, sheepish, “I just think that Jimmy is-cool.”

My Lord, I thought. We begin with such anger, without even a pleasant preamble to dinner. “Has anything happened today?” I asked them. “You both seem out of sorts.”

Polly and Tommy looked at each other, and Polly ran her fingers through her hair. “Of course something happened,” she admitted. “It’s Jimmy who always sets us off.”

So I learned that Jimmy had rebuffed Tommy that afternoon, a phone call that left him hurt and angry. Jimmy hung up on him. He’d done that before, but today it particularly rankled. So they’d been arguing about Jimmy since the insult. I was pleased. Keep arguing, please. I sat back and watched.

Tommy defended himself. “Back in Fairmount, he was real together, you know-acting, basketball, motorcycle racing through the farm fields on the cycle he built himself. Everyone talked about him. They knew him. He liked that. I wasn’t following him to New York City, you know. I just wanted to be an actor. But I-we,” he pointed to Polly, “bumped into him one night. He remembered me. He hung out with us. We…”

“Tommy became one more sparkle illuminating Jimmy’s star.”

“So what? He said I got talent.”

“Jimmy tells everyone he has talent. Until he changes his mind.”

“Jimmy said I’d go right to the top.”

“But Jimmy works at it, day and night, despite what he says. You park cars and wait for someone to tap you on the shoulder.”

“Jimmy says…”

“Jimmy says. Jimmy says.” Polly imitated his crackling, flat voice. She stopped, looked at me, red-faced. “My God, I’m sorry, ma’am. This is the conversation-the fight-we always end up having lately, and this time were doing it in front of you.” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

We ordered. Tommy said he wanted red wine. For once, I was indifferent to the menu, quickly ordering the first chicken dish I’d spotted, and recommending sirloin steak, rare, when they hesitated. Tommy’s finger, I noted, had been tapping the steak listing, the priciest item on the menu. He gulped the first glass of wine so quickly the wine steward, taken off guard, had to rush to refill the goblet. Polly eyed Tommy. A warning.

“You’re in Giant and Rebel?” I asked Tommy.

“Not so’s you’d notice me.” He pointed at Polly. “Both of us.” She nodded. He paused. “You know I had the lead in the Fairmount High School production of The Front Page. Got a review in the local paper. I showed Jimmy a copy.”

“Yellowed and worn at the edges,” Polly mocked, cruelly.

“How does it feel to be a part of Jimmy’s world?” I asked, knowing it was an explosive line.

Polly spoke and was furious. I noted a trace of lipstick on her front tooth, a spot of pink that looked like a stain. “If Jimmy has a ‘crowd’ we’re not part of it.”

“Not true, Polly,” Tommy bristled. “We do hang out with him.”

Polly looked at me, breathed in deeply. “We’re on the fringe. Tommy’s the snapshot in the high-school yearbook Jimmy keeps opening to by accident. He’s looking for other people and Tommy’s in the way.”

Tommy shook his head. “For Christ’s sake, Polly.”

“So just who are his friends then?” I asked.

For a moment Polly debated her answer. “Jimmy has circles of friends, some overlapping. Some secret and hidden. Some obvious.

“Meaning?”

“The girls he hangs out with. Dates, maybe. Maybe sleeps with.”

Tommy spoke up. “You see, Jimmy can’t really settle on a girl. I mean, he seemed serious about Pier Angeli, but her mother stopped that. He wanted to marry her.”

Polly smirked. “That was just talk, Miss Ferber. Look, Jimmy’s career is what drives him-not marriage. I think ninety per cent of that was PR. Jimmy the lover of the Italian beauty. Great photo shoot stuff. On the set, at clubs, dancing at Trocadero, late night snacks at Barney’s Beanery.”

Tommy glared at her. “He did care for her.”

“Jimmy doesn’t care for people,” Polly said. “Women-girls-are fodder.”

“What about Carisa’s claims?” I interrupted. “The letters?”

That seemed to stop Polly cold. She looked at Tommy. “Carisa is unstable-was unstable, I mean. Sorry. Jimmy said she was-in his cruel phrase-available for lonely nights in Texas. Frivolous. Nothing more. Marfa was boring, over a hundred degrees in the shade. At night you could play Canasta and drink Canada Dry with Jane Withers. Whoop-di-do. So he’d go off. And waiting there was Carisa, smiling and opening her shirt.”

“And Lydia? How does she fit into all this?”

“You know, just another actress mooning over Jimmy.”

Tommy lowered his voice. “Did you know that Lydia and Carisa were roommates once, a year back, before Carisa had to rent in Skid Row. Lydia moved into the Studio Club to get away from Carisa.”

Polly smirked. “Each one blames-blamed-the other for drug use, Miss Ferber.”

“Lydia is a sad wreck of a girl,” Tommy added.

“And yet Jimmy dated her.”

Another shrug of the shoulders. “Well, again, dating,” Tommy said. “He rebounded from Carisa and Pier. He finds Lydia waiting in the wings. Calling him. They go out, he gets sick of her, he ignores her. She cries. He sees her again. He leaves. He had to. She’s so…clutching. Jimmy doesn’t want to be around drug users, you know. He likes to be the only person acting weird in a crowd. Lydia is too much trouble. He dumped her.”

Polly added, “She had a falling out with Carisa, real nasty, but I know she’d been to Carisa’s apartment lately.”

“How do you know that?” Tommy asked, surprised.

“She mumbled it to me one night.”

“Where was I?”

“Worshipping at Jimmy’s shrine.”

He made a clicking sound with his tongue.

“You both are not painting a pretty picture of Jimmy and women here.”

“Because there’s none to be painted,” Polly said. “Jimmy doesn’t want anyone to say no to him. He’s that insecure. And when anyone likes him-truly likes him-he then has to make them hate him.”

“Do you hate him, Polly?” I asked, bluntly.

A hesitation, a flicker of the eye. “No, I don’t hate him. I’m someone he doesn’t even see. ‘Tommy’s dating a telephone pole with a nest on her head.’ That’s how he once referred to me.”

“I told him that wasn’t nice,” Tommy mumbled.

“Thanks for the support, lover.”