Skin Deep

'Not much of a ring to it. You'd probably have to change it.'

'Othello Schwartz, maybe. That's a joke. Schwartz means black in German.'

'I know. Would you like to fill in the blanks?'

'I was Norman's English teacher. He wasn't Norman then, which is to say that he was Norman, but he wasn't the Norman you've met.'

'And whom we all know and love.'

'Norman's all right. He really likes the shows he makes.'

'He'd have a lot on his conscience if he didn't.'

'Norman needed some polish back then. He's pretty slick now, don't you think?'

'Slicker than an Olympic rink.'

'Well, twelve years ago, he was pure Jersey. That was before it was fashionable to be Jersey, if you're old enough to remember. If asked, he'd have requested a few of dese and a few of dose. He pronounced burger with an o and an i, heavy on the i. He'd just come out to L.A. and he was planning to be a big shot, and he was smart enough to know that he didn't sound smart. Plus you could have floated his frame of reference in a thimble.'

'So he went to school.'

'Cal State University out in Northridge. Far enough from Hollywood that he wouldn't run into anybody he might know or eventually want to know, but closer than, say, Tucson. He walked into my Intro to Lit class and stayed. The next semester he was in all three of my classes. I've never had such an avid student. He listened so hard he made me forget what I was saying. You know, most of the kids are just sitting there letting the teacher provide the background music while they tune up their hormones. The estrogen level in the average undergrad classroom is higher than Alpha Centauri.'

'I remember. I taught too, for about six weeks.'

'Then you know. Well, Norman was different. He was older, of course, but that wasn't it. He sat there and sucked in everything I said. I never saw anybody make so many notes. Later he showed them to me; he'd made up his own form of speedwriting, and he had me practically verbatim. Well, that's flattering to someone who's used to feeling like Muzak. His papers were appalling, but there was so much evident effort that I couldn't flunk him, and so I asked him to come see me during office hours.'

'Office hours,' I said. 'What a quaint concept.'

'Yeah. I remember them fondly. It meant there were hours that weren't office hours. So he came, and we talked, and I asked him what he wanted out of school. He'd never said much in class, and I almost laughed out loud when he told me he was there for 'culchuh.' It took me a minute to realize that he meant culture. Pretty snotty reaction for a kid who grew up in Brooklyn, but I hadn't spent much time in the real world then. It was all college, first learning and then teaching.

'What he wanted was a sort of topographic map of the things a cultured person should know about. A Michelin guide to highbrow cocktail conversation, at least by Hollywood standards. I told him he was wasting his time shoveling through 'Piers Plowman' and the lyric poems of Leigh Hunt. L.A. cocktail glasses don't come that deep. Hell, they don't come that deep at Harvard.'

We were walking toward the front door now, down a high, vaulted entrance hall. To our left a Spanish archway about fourteen feet wide opened into a sunken living room with the most beautifully buffed oak floor I'd ever seen. Everything in the room was seashell pink except for a chest-high vase of birds of paradise, an enormous ersatz Impressionist portrait of Stillman, a matching picture of a smashing blond lady I took to be Mrs. Stillman, and a wall lined from floor to ceiling with books. I had never been in such a silent house.

'Your legacy?' I said, meaning the books.

Dixie eyed them glumly. 'He's read them all, too,' he said. 'He's like a terrier, just never lets go. We made out a list of about one hundred books and plays he had to read, and I loaned him a copy of H. G. Wells's Outline of History because it was short, so he could connect the dots. Norman went out and bought himself a roll of butcher paper, thirty feet long and five feet wide. He made a historical timeline on it as he read the Wells, and then he entered each of the hundred or so books and a few notes on its author. Damnedest thing you ever saw. In fact. .'

He stopped and turned toward the kitchen. 'Vicenta,' he called. 'Vicenta, por favor?'

After a moment the maid emerged. 'Senor Cohen?' She gave him a warmer smile than she'd given Stillman.

'La sala por trabajo,' he said in highly inventive Spanish. 'Es okay?'

'Porqui no?' She shrugged and preceded us up the stairs.

Upstairs the front of the house was standard millionaire's Mediterranean, four doors leading off a central hallway into bedrooms and guest rooms, presumably with connecting bathrooms. Set into the left-hand hallway wall, the one facing the backyard, was a single door, only a few feet from the top of the stairs. Other than that, the wall was blank. Vicenta knocked once and then opened the door.

A single, enormous room ran the entire length of the house. The far wall was all window, looking out onto palm trees and a pale blue pool. Sprinklers spiraled sparkles across the grass.

The other three walls were books from the floor to waist high. Above the books, five feet wide and running the entire length and width of the room, was an unbroken sheet of paper more than sixty feet long. Three broad stripes ran its length, one blue, one red, one black. There was writing everywhere.

'This year's model,' Cohen said. 'He's never stopped. The red is history, the blue is science, and the black is the arts-you know, 'culchuh.' '

'Son of a bitch,' I said.

'Norman's conquest of Western civilization. You've got to give it to him.'

'There should be an award.'

Dixie made a gesture that took in the room, house, yard, everything. 'He hasn't exactly been stiffed.'

'What's that?' I pointed toward a large box about two-thirds of the way down the timeline. The writing was black, and the entry branched off the black line, but the sides of the box were drawn in thick gold lines. It was the only place where a fourth color had been used.

'Take a look,' Cohen said. I did. Othello, it said. 'Tragedy (1603) in five acts by William Shakespeare (see entry). Themes: good, evil, trust, jealousy. Motorcycles.'

'Motorcycles?' I said.

'That was the beginning of Norman Stillman,' Dixie said. 'Othello was the ninth or tenth thing I had him read. He turned it into a motorcycle movie. Black Angel, he called it. About the black leader of a motorcycle gang, his envious white second in command, and his white mama, if you'll excuse the expression. It was probably the last motorcycle movie to make any money, and it made a fortune. Norman never looked back. Three years later he came and offered me four times my teaching salary to work for him.'

'And you took it?'

Cohen looked out the window. 'Teaching is for losers,' he said. 'For losers who don't have to pay alimony and child support.' It sounded like something he'd rehearsed.

'It's a good job for the right person.'

'I was the wrong person.'

'So you've traded in the students for Joanna Link.'

Dixie shuddered and glanced once more around the room. 'At my present rate of pay, if the interview lasts an hour, Joanna Link comes in at about thirty-five dollars a pound. Even veal doesn't cost that much. I can always sneak looks at her and decide how I want the butcher to cut her up.'

He closed the door on the world according to Norman Stillman and went back down the stairs. At the front door, he paused. 'Where will you be tomorrow, if you're not going to be with us?'

'Out and around. I'll come back at three to hand-hold Toby through the Link interview if you think it's a good idea.'

'All the help we can get,' Cohen said. 'And you're going to stay with him for the evening, or will your man do it?'