Messiah

beaches and orange groves which circles the city of Los Angeles, an artificial place created from desert and sure to lapse back again into dust the moment some national disaster breaks its line of life and the waters no longer flow, has always fascinated me. I was of course interested in the movies, though they no longer had the same hold over the public imagination that they had had in earlier decades when a process of film before light could project, larger than life, not only on vast screens but also upon the impressionable minds of an enormous audience made homogeneous by a common passion, shadowy figures which, like the filmy envelopes of the stoic deities, floated to earth in public dreams, suggesting a braver more perfect world where love reigned and only the wicked died. But then time passed and the new deities lost their worshipers: there were too many gods and the devotees got too used to them, realizing finally that they were only mortals, involved not in magical rites but in a sordid business. Television (the home altar) succeeded the movies and their once populous and ornate temples, modeled tastefully on baroque and Byzantine themes, fell empty, the old gods moving to join the new hierarchies, becoming the domesticated godlings of television which, although it held the attention of the majority of the population, did not enrapture, did not possess dreams or shape days with longing and with secret imaginings the way the classic figures of an earlier time had. Though I was of an age to recall the gallant days of the movies, the nearly mythical power which they had held for millions of people, not all simple, I was not really interested in that aspect of California. I was more intrigued by the manners, by the cults, by the works of this coastal people so unlike the older world of the East and so antipathetic to our race's first home in Europe. Needless to say, I found them much like everyone else, except for minor differences of no real consequence.

I stayed at a large hotel not too happily balanced in design between the marble-and-potted-palm decor of the Continental Hotel in Paris and the chrome and glass of an observation car on a newer train.

I unpacked, telephoned friends most of whom were not home. The one whom at last I found in was the one I knew the least, a minor film writer who had married money with great success and had, most altruistically, given up the composition of films for which the remaining movie-goers were no doubt thankful. He devoted his time to assisting his wife in becoming the first hostess of Beverly Hills. She had, I recalled from one earlier meeting, the mind of a child of twelve, but an extremely active child and a good one.

Hastings, such was the writer's name (her name was either Ethel or Valerie, two names which I always confuse due to a particularly revolutionary course I once took in mnemonics), invited me immediately to a party. I went.

It seemed like spring though it was autumn, and it seemed like an assortment of guests brought together in a ship's dining room to celebrate New Year's Eve though, in fact, the gathering was largely made up of close acquaintances. Since I knew almost no one, I had a splendid time.

My hostess, beyond a brilliant greeting, a gold figure all in green with gold dust in her hair, left me alone. Hastings was more solicitous, a nervous gray man with a speech impediment which took the form of a rather charming sigh before any word which began with an aspirate.

'We, ah, have a better place coming up. Farther up the mountains with a marvelous view of the, ah, whole city. You will love it, Gene. Ah, haven't signed a lease yet, but soon.' While we talked he steered me through the crowds of handsome and bizarre people (none of them was from California I discovered: most were Central Europeans or British; those who were not pretended to be one or the other; some sounded like both). I was introduced to magnificent girls exactly like their movie selves but since they all tended to look a great deal alike, the effect was somehow spoiled. But I was a tourist and not critical. I told a striking blonde that she would indeed be excellent in a musical extravaganza based upon The Sea Gull. She thought so too and my host and I moved on to the patio.

Beside a jade-green pool illuminated from beneath (and a little dirty, I noticed, with leaves floating upon the water: the decor was becoming tarnished, the sets had been used too long and needed striking. Hollywood was becoming old without distinction), a few of the quieter guests sat in white iron chairs while paper lanterns glowed prettily on the palms and everywhere, untidily, grew roses, jasmine and lilac: it was a fantastic garden, all out of season and out of place. The guests beside the pool were much the same; except for one: Clarissa.

'You know each other?' Hastings' voice, faintly pleased, was drowned by our greetings and I was pulled into a chair by Clarissa who had elected to dress herself like an odalisque which made her look, consequently, more indigenous than any of the other guests; this was perhaps her genius: her marvelous adaptiveness.

'We'll be quite happy here,' said Clarissa, waving our host away. 'Go and abuse your other guests.'

Hastings trotted off; those who had been talking to Clarissa talked to themselves and beneath a flickering lantern the lights of Los Angeles, revealed in a wedge between two hills, added the proper note of lunacy, for at the angle from which I viewed those lights they seemed to form a monster Christmas tree, poised crazily in the darkness.

Clarissa and I exchanged notes on the months that had intervened since our luncheon.

'And you gave up Julian, too?'

'Yes… but why 'too'?' I was irritated by the implication that I gave up all things before they were properly done.

'I feel you don't finish things, Eugene. Not that you should; but I do worry about you.'

'It's good of you,' I said, discovering that at a certain angle the Christmas tree could be made to resemble a rocket's flare arrested in space.

'Now don't take that tone with me. I have your interest at heart.' She expressed herself with every sign of sincerity in that curious flat language which she spoke so fluently yet which struck upon the ear untruly, as though it were, in its homeliness, the highest artifice.

'But I've taken care of everything, you know. Wait and see. If you hadn't come out here on your own I should have sent for you…'

'And I would have come?'

'Naturally.' She smiled.

'But for what?'

'For… she's here. In Los Angeles.'

'You mean that girl who came to lunch?' I disguised my interest, but Clarissa, ignoring me, went on talking as energetically and as obliquely as ever.

'She's asked for you several times, which is a good sign. I told her I suspected you'd be along but that one never could tell, especially if you were still tied up with Julian, unlikely as that prospect was.'

'But I do finish some things.'

'I'm sure you do. In any case, the girl has been here over a month and you must see her as soon as possible.'

'I'd like to.'

'Of course you would. I still have my plot, you know. Oh, you may think I forget things but I don't: my mind is a perfect filing system.'

'Could you tell me just what you are talking about?'

She chuckled and wagged a finger at me. 'Soon you'll know. I know I meddle a good deal, more than I should, but after all this time it would be simply impossible for me not to interfere. I see it coming, one of those really exciting moments and I want just to give it a tickle here, a push there to set it rolling. Oh, what fun it will be!'

Hastings crept back among us, diffidently pushing a star and a producer in our direction. 'I think you all ought to know each other, Clarissa… and, ah, Gene too. This is Miss… and Mr… and here in Hollywood… when you get to New York… house on the river, wonderful, old… new film to cost five million… runner-up for the Academy Award.' He did it all very well, I thought. Smiles gleamed in the patio's half-light. The star's paste jewels, borrowed from her studio, glimmered like an airliner's lighted windows. I moved toward the house, but Clarissa's high voice restrained me at the door: 'You'll call Iris tomorrow, won't you?' and she shouted an exchange and a number. I waved to show that I'd heard her then, vowing I would never telephone Iris, I rejoined the party and watched with fascination as the various performers performed in the living room to the accompaniment of a grand piano just barely out of tune.

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