And nobody spoke to me. Not a soul. I spoke to half a dozen people but they didnt answer. That continued for an hour, two hours then I got up from where I was sitting and ran out at a dog trot like a crazy man. I didnt feel I had any rightful identity until I got back to the hotel and the clerk handed me a letter addressed to me in my name.
Naturally I hadnt ever had such an experience, but looking back on parties Id been to, I realized that such things could happen. We dont go for strangers in Hollywood unless they wear a sign saying that their axe has been thoroughly ground elsewhere, and that in any case its not going to fall on our necks in other words, unless theyre a celebrity. And theyd better look out even then.
You should have risen above it, I said smugly. Its not a slam at you when people are rude its a slam at the people theyve met before.
Such a pretty girl to say such
wise things.
There was an eager to-do in the eastern sky, and Wylie could see me plain thin with good features and lots of style, and the kicking fetus of a mind. I wonder what I looked like in that dawn, five years ago. A little rumpled and pale, I suppose, but at that age, when one has the young illusion that most adventures are good, I needed only a bath and a change to go on for hours.
Wylie stared at me with really flattering appreciation and then suddenly we were not alone. Mr. Schwartz wandered apologetically into the pretty scene.
I fell upon a large metal handle, he said, touching the corner of his eye.
Wylie jumped up.
Just in time, Mr. Schwartz, he said. The tour is just starting. Home of Old Hickory Americas tenth president. The victor of New Orleans, opponent of the National Bank, and inventor of the Spoils System .
Schwartz looked toward me as toward a jury.
Theres a writer for you, he said. Knows everything and at the same time he knows nothing.
Whats that? said Wylie, indignant.
It was my first inkling that he was a writer. And while I like writers because if you ask a writer anything, you usually get an answer still it belittled him in my eyes. Writers arent people exactly. Or, if theyre any good, theyre a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person. Its like actors, who try so pathetically not to look in mirrors. Who lean backward trying only to see their faces in the reflecting chandeliers.
Aint writers like that, Celia? demanded Schwartz. I have no words for them. I only know its true.
Wylie looked at him with slowly gathering indignation. Ive heard that before, he said. Look, Manny, Im a more practical man than you any day! Ive sat in an office and listened to some mystic stalk up and down for hours spouting tripe thatd land him on a nut-farm anywhere outside of California and then at the end tell me how practical he was, and I was a dreamer and would I kindly go away and make sense out of what hed said.
Mr. Schwartzs face fell into its more disintegrated alignments. One eye looked upward through the tall elms. He raised his hand and bit without interest at the cuticle on his second finger. There was a bird flying about the chimney of the house, and his glance followed it. It perched on the chimney pot like a raven, and Mr. Schwartzs eyes remained fixed upon it as he said: We cant get in, and its time for you two to go back to the plane.
It was still not quite dawn. The Hermitage looked like a nice big white box, but a little lonely and vacated still after a hundred years. We walked back to the car. Only after we had gotten in, and Mr. Schwartz had surprisingly shut the taxi door on us, did we realize he didnt intend to come along.
Im not going to the Coast I decided that when I woke up. So Ill stay here, and afterwards the driver could come back for me.
Going back East? said Wylie with surprise. Just because
I have decided, said Schwartz, faintly smiling. Once I used to be a regular man of decision youd be surprised. He felt in his pocket, as the taxi driver warmed up the engine. Will you give this note to Mr. Smith?
Shall I come in two hours? the driver asked Schwartz.
Yes sure. I shall be glad to entertain myself looking around.
I kept thinking of him all the way back to the airport trying to fit him into that early hour and into that landscape. He had come a long way from some ghetto to present himself at that raw shrine. Manny Schwartz and Andrew Jackson it was hard to say them in the same sentence. It was doubtful if he knew who Andrew Jackson was as he wandered around, but perhaps he figured that if people had preserved his house Andrew Jackson must have been someone who was large and merciful, able to understand. At both ends of life man needed nourishment: a breast a shrine. Something to lay himself beside when no one wanted him further, and shoot a bullet into his head.