this town now, why, all the studios together never used or made money like that-they're just a drop in the bucket of capital now, since the aircraft and missile plants moved in, all kinds of business, and since all this irrigation made us, what is it, second highest in agricultural production of the nation? They're just peanuts now, and tell the truth, I figure the people in this town've got fed up with 'em too. It's time. Not surprising. You don't have to know one of 'em personally very long before you find out what they're like-personally-and I guess it just took a little longer for the public to learn, living in proximity as you might say. The gimmick doesn't work any more, not the way it did. The old glamour's dead. They don't get in the headlines-even local-any more, for losing a diamond necklace or marrying a European aristocrat. The gossip columns about the stars are shoved into the second section and a back page at that-there's too much interesting news about Cape Canaveral and the new government contracts at Lockheed and Douglas and what big companies are moving out here with all their personnel, building ten-million-dollar offices and so on. Too many vice-presidents and union officials riding around in Rolls Royces, too many of their wives in sable coats leading French poodles-and losing diamond necklaces at the opera-nothing to exclaim about any more, nothing to mark them as royalty, way they used to be. See? Notice how quiet they act these days, trying to pretend they're just like other people, plain down-to-earth folks. That's one of the symptoms. And, brother, how they hate the whole business! How scared and indignant they are, and how loud they deny it's happened!' Mr. Horwitz retired into his glass.
'They do, hm? I can see how that'd be. Never thought much about it before.'
'You're not in the business-and for that you can thank God. Oh, yes, they're wearing a chip on the shoulder all right-can't do this to us, you know?-and at the same time trying to pretend nothing's happened at all, that it's still their town… But you were asking about Mona. Case in point. One of the worst ones. I don't mind gossiping about Mona Ferne, if you're got time to listen-'
'I've got time.'
'-And I got the feeling,' said Horwitz dreamily, 'I might do just that even if you were somebody from TV thinking of hiring her-because she annoyed the hell out of me just before you came in, and that was just once too often she did. To start with, in case you're curious, her real name was Minnie Lundgren, and she came from some place in South Dakota. Won some sort of piddling beauty contest back there, and right away made tracks for Hollywood-read ‘Mecca'-to join the royal family… You remember any of her pictures?'
'Hardly. I think I was about three when she was in her heyday as a star. I wasn't noticing females much yet. But I've seen her in bit parts, later on, when I was just a kid. Just vaguely remember the name.'
'You didn't miss an awful lot,' said Horwitz. 'She never could act, she took direction, that's all. They built her up, like they built up a lot of others who didn't really have much on the ball. And you've got to remember that comparatively speaking it's a new medium-anyway it still was thirty-five years back-and fashions in these things, they change like other fashions. She was a star, sure, they made her one. And don't you forget either, Sergeant, that's just the end of one long road, and she nor nobody else gets there, usually, without the cold guts to kick anybody in the teeth who gets in their way. You married?… Well, when you come to get married, take my advice and don't pick a beautiful woman or an actress. The two don't always coincide. Point is, anybody naturally good- looking, they're awful apt to be-what's the head doctors' word?-narcissistic. Me, me, me, twenty-four hours a day. And some of it's other people's fault, building 'em up all the time, you what am I doing for her, when can she expect a new contract?-good God in heaven, I've given it to her straight enough times, but it just doesn't penetrate. Hear her talk, you'd think she'd had a couple of pictures gross a million in the last six months, and it's just a little legal fuss with the studio leaves her without a contract. Every once in a while she threatens to get another agent, and I wish to God she'd try, but she never will-she knows damn well, if she'd admit it, nobody else would ever put her on the books.'
'I suppose she's living on what she used to make-investments?'
'Mostly, I think, on Carstairs' money-she spent most of hers as it came in. Maybe he'd begun to see through her at that, he'd tied it up in trust-in two trusts actually, one for the girl. They'd only been married a couple of years, the kid was just a baby, when he crashed. Sure, Mona's got plenty to get along on, but that's not enough for her.'
'She is,' said Hackett, 'a member of a funny cult called the Temple of Mystic Truth. Know anything about that?'
Horwitz shook his head and shrugged. 'Can't say I want to. This town used to have a reputation for that kind of thing too, and when you come to think of it, it's natural. You take these people-they're people without roots, you know?-and most of 'em are suckers for that kind of thing. Especially, you might say, as they get older. They feel a lack somewhere, they look around for something solid, for an answer, and because they're the kind of people they are, the orthodox doesn't attract them.'
'Yes, I can see that. She'd been going around some with this fellow who got knocked off, Brooke Twelvetrees.'
'Oh, that one, was it? And that's why you're interested. I remember him. She brought him in, pestered me to take him on. Well, you never know where you'll find something good, I looked him over. He had looks, the kind a lot of women go for, but don't get me wrong when I say, like I did about Mona, that's the first and only thing. It's important, but you and I could both name a dozen top stars without much in the way of looks. Mona and some like her, both sexes, got to the top on looks alone, but that doesn't hold you there. It's a thing there's no word for- showmanship, I guess that comes closest to it. Nothing to do with talent. I can name you people'-he did so-'who've been on top for years, without having anything but a lot of gall, and showmanship. It was that, even a little bit of it, this Twelvetrees didn't have. The personality didn't project, he couldn't've held an audience with the doors locked and safety belts to fasten 'em down. I said nothing doing, and Mona was mad as hell… No, that was the only time I ever met him, it'd be about two years ago… I heard later Meyer and Hanks took him on, don't know if or where they'd got him anything?
'Well, thanks. Where's that outfit?' Hackett took down the address. 'You don't think there'd have been anything serious about their going around together? Just as an opinion.'
Horwitz laughed. 'Because Twelvetrees was maybe twenty-five years younger? Look, you don't need to be a psychiatrist to read these people. One of the damndest awful things about them is that they never get past a certain stage in life. They're kind of fixed at the mental age where parties and clothes and boy friends and girl friends, and all the-the froth, you know, is all that's important in life. It can have sad results. You take anybody fifty-five, sixty years old, even if he's got good health, nothing chronic, he's glad to let down once in a while, take things easier, stay home Saturday night and read a book. He's got a long way past being interested in kids' things-he's got to other things just as much fun. He's found out he doesn't have to be twenty-five years old and handsome as a movie star to get a kick out of making love to his wife, and she doesn't have to be Marilyn Monroe. He doesn't-you know-have to keep up a front. These people, the front's all they've ever had, and it's the most important thing in the world to them-they can't let themselves let down, ever. The front of perpetual youth. In looks and every other way. I tell you, once in a while I find myself in a night club or somewhere like that, not by choice but on business, and I don't know any sadder sight. These people like Mona, hell-bent on having a good time the same way the twenty-five-year-old kids are having a good time. Out of the fronts of things-good looks and clothes and going to parties.. Mona and this Twelvetrees? She always has a man in tow, to be seen with. Whatever she can pick up. She's got to. By the only rules she knows, if she didn't have something in pants to be seen with at the good-time places, it'd mean she was dead-as a female. And there are, in this town, enough men like her that she can always find one. But of course she'd always prefer one like Twelvetrees, to the ones her own age working just as hard as she is, with their toupees and expensive false teeth and corsets. Shows she's still an attractive, vital female-that's a word they like-to pick up a young man. You want my opinion, well, Twelvetrees was one of these people too, and he probably took up with Mona thinking she could do him some good in the way of contacts. Or just maybe because she paid the bills at the good-time places. I wouldn't say she'd gone down quite as far as that, to pay a fancy man to squire her around, but maybe-and there are nuances in these things, even with people like Mona.'
'So there are,' agreed Hackett. 'Well, thanks very much for your help. Don't know that any of it's much use to us right now, but you never know-and anyway it's interesting to get the inside view on them.'
'You find it interesting?' said Mr. Horwitz sadly. 'Seems funny to think I ever did. These goddamned awful people… like reading the same page in a book over and over. Someday I got to get out of this business… '
