Genius Page 3

  “Lunch then tomorrow?” I said.

  “My place. Twelve noon, sharp. Synchronize your watches!” Faster than a smartly struck billiard ball, he was already in the hall swirling his scarlet-lined opera cape around his shoulders. “Oh. Oh, damn! Oh, how could I be such a fool? I’ve come off without a penny. Could you let me have fifty?”

  “Cents?”

  “Dollars, dear chap.”

  I had eleven dollars in my pocket and somewhat less in the checking account. My wife, however, who always accuses me of being an easy mark, was positively mesmerized. “I think I have about that much. Just a minute.”

  “Mille grazie!” he said, kissing my wife’s hand. He departed with fifty-five dollars and, as an afterthought, my manuscript.

  It was just noon the next day when I picked up the house telephone at Hampshire House. “Mr. Starr, please,” I said. “It’s Mr. Dennis. He’s expecting me.”

  “He’s not here,” the operator said. The usual cheeriness was missing from her voice.

  “Then may I please speak to Mr. St. Regis?”

  “He’s not here either. They’ve gone.”

  “You mean they’ve checked out?”

  “Not exactly checked out. Just gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “Look, sir, you’d better talk to the assistant manager.”

  I crossed over to the desk, where the clerk was looking unusually ill and shaken. “I’d like to get in touch with Mr. Starr,” I said.

  “You’re not the only one. So would Hampshire House and the U.S. Government—just to name two others this morning.”

  “I don’t understand. We were supposed to . . .”

  “Neither do I, sir. Nothing like this has ever happened at Hampshire House before. He just disappeared—bag and baggage.”

  I didn’t have time for a taxicab. I raced down Fifth Avenue to Starr’s office and took the express elevator up to the sixteenth floor. A big black-and-white sign was tacked on to the walnut double doors of the suite. It read:

  DISTRICT COLLECTOR OF INTERNAL REVENUE

  NOTICE

  This property is subject to liens held by the

  Federal Government for unpaid taxes. . . .

  There was something more about a public auction of property being held on such and such a date, but I couldn’t bring myself to read any more.

  A building employee strode out of the Starr offices and began fixing a padlock to the doors.

  “I beg your pardon,” I said, “but I’m trying to find Mr. Starr.”

  “Who ain’t?”

  “But isn’t there someone on his staff who might know where . . .”

  “Never been a staff. He’s had this big, fancy place six months now. Never hired the first steno or paid the first month’s rent. Night man says this Starr character come in here about three this A.M. all dressed up like a magician, took some papers, and disappeared. Damnedest thing.”

  “But there’s a very important envelope in there that I’ve got to get.” Through the open door I could see file drawers pulled open and papers scattered over the yellow carpet. “It happens to be my property.”

  “Sorry. Not allowed. Every last paper clip an’ Lily cup in there is under the jerstiction of the govermunt. Can’t touch anything.” With that he closed the door and snapped the padlock.

  Too sick to go back to the agency, I walked home. An empty taxi was parked in front of our building, and in the lobby a cab driver was pressing our bell. “Your name Dennis?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “Why?”

  “This envelope was left in my hack out by the airport las’ night. I looked inside an’ seen your name and address. I figured you might want it back. I even read some of it. Some kind of entertainment, ain’t it? The wife an’ I thought it was pretty funny.”

  “Funny,” I said. “It’s a downright scream.” I gave him five dollars and let myself into the apartment. Then I closed the door, hoping I could hold back my tears until I got drunk enough not to care.

  For the next five years there was no direct word from Leander Starr, although each Christmas I was the joyless recipient of a minty greeting card, each expressing wishes of the season in a different language—Buon Natale, Joyeaux Noël, and so on—from a different country, and each signed “Best Xmas Wishes from your friend Alistair St. Regis,” complete with circular i-dots and a scrolled underscoring.

  It was only when my first novel was published to gratifying notices and sales that I heard from Starr. It was a long cable sent the most expensive way.

  DARLING DARLING BOY EXCLAMATION POINT CONGRATULATIONS CONGRATULATIONS CONGRATULATIONS DOUBLE EXCLAMATION POINT DIDNT I ALWAYS SAY YOU HAD THE MASTER TOUCH QUESTION MARK YOU MUST GIVE ME OPTION ON ENGLISH STAGE RIGHTS STOP I HAVE ALREADY SIGNED A STAR SO FABULOUS SO UTTERLY RIGHT FOR YOUR BEAUTIFUL WORK THAT I DARE NOT EVEN BREATHE HER MAGICAL NAME STOP CABLE YOUR REPLY COLLECT CLARIDGES LONDON FASTEST STOP ABIDINGEST LOVE

  LEANDER STARR.

  Oddly enough, I laughed. I found that I felt no rancor, no bitterness, no hatred for Starr. It was like hating my children for the time they broke an irreplaceable old Bunny Berrigan record. I was mad as hell, but I knew that they couldn’t help what they did any more than they could help being children. It was the same with Starr. Happily, my agent had already negotiated for dramatic rights with a producer who, if less colorful, was more reliable than Leander Starr. I picked up the telephone and called the cable office. “I want to send a collect cable to London,” I said, “the fastest, most expensive way. It goes to Leander Starr, Claridge’s Hotel, London, England. And the message is just two words.”

  There was a sharp gasp. “I can’t possibly send a message like that, sir. The cable company would never permit it.”

  “Very well, then,” I said, “let’s just make it one word and that word is no. N-O, no. And sign it Patrick Dennis.”

  “Oh. I’m reading your book. I think it’s real cute.”

  “Thank you. Good-by.”

  “Good-by, Mr. Dennis.” Then she giggled.

  II

  That was seven years ago. When I thought of Starr at all, which wasn’t often, I imagined him up to his old tricks, but at least not near me. I had served my time as his victim, had learned my lesson, and had even had the brief satisfaction of what I considered the last word—No. I am now slowly recovering from the experience of having Starr, until a few days ago, right next door, right down here.

  “Down here” is Mexico City. Now that there is a little money in the bank, now that our children are off at boarding school, my wife and I spend all of our time writing “little things on the side.” It is a precarious but pleasant way to earn a living in that it can be done just about whenever and wherever one feels like doing it. The only trick is feeling like doing it. For the past couple of winters we have been coming to Mexico armed with typewriters, Eaton’s Corrasable Bond paper, and the best intentions in the world. So far we have tried—with signally small success—Acapulco, that “unspoiled little fishing village,” which has become a sort of Mex-Miami; Taxco, which looks suspiciously like a Joseph Urban setting for Rio Rita and is crawling with alcoholic Americans on modest trust funds who are all going to commence that play or novel or picture or tone poem mañana; and Cuernavaca, where the Americans with larger trust funds start the daily cocktail party every morning at eleven and manage to keep it going until eleven that night—at least. They’re all wonderful places to postpone doing any work, but they don’t make it exactly easy to scare up the rent money at the beginning of every month. And after very short visits in each famous community, we got to hate them.

  This year, things are working out far better. My wife and I are really happiest in places of a million population or more, and so we have chosen Mexico City—or at least its outskirts—where we have the advantages of the pastoral life and are yet only fifteen minutes and seventy-five cents by taxicab from the Juarez section (or the East Fifties of the Distrito Federal) with its glossy restaurants
and shops and air of general worldliness. With nearly five million souls in the capital city, we are also a lot freer to pick and choose the people we want to see when we want to see them—and that excludes a great many. A lot of Americans, more or less fluent in Spanish, have tried to crash the Old Mexican Society. They can’t, but it would serve them good and right if they could. The O.M.S. is one of the most inbred, parochial, and dismal flocks ever to be seen. At their parties (we have been to just two—the second because we couldn’t believe that the first one was really real) the men gather at one end of the room and talk about business, while the women at the other end discuss such stimulating subjects as their children, how lazy their maids are, and the high cost of living. After two or three hours of that, the first glass of tequila is brought out, and a good time is had by all.

  Even drearier is that one-hundred-and-ten-per-cent American colony made up of the representatives of such various United States products as refrigerators, calculating machines, farm equipment, soft drinks, and canned goods. What with their D.A.R. and American Legion Post and Rotary Club and P.T.A. and general red, white, and blowsiness, they have always been able to create a miniature Main Street in some of the most unlikely places in the world. Well, they’re welcome to it.

  Still lower are the Americans who are ashamed of being Americans. They are generally given to beards and sandals, arts and crafts, dirndls and dungarees. They are more native than the natives, denying their children (of which there are many, mostly born via variations of natural childbirth that would shock an Aztec) such bourgeois affectations as shoes and the English language. As the Mexicans will have nothing to do with them, they consort exclusively—and in Spanish—with other Americans who are ashamed of being Americans. They deserve each other.

  On the other hand, there is a large and fluid group of perfectly pleasant people who are not much of anything at all. It is a constantly shifting society made up of Americans, English, a few French and Germans, a scattering of South Americans, and a lot of very cheery Mexicans who have lived elsewhere at some time or another and who have more interesting things to talk about than household and finance. They congregate in good, nontouristy restaurants like the Rivoli or the Derby or Ambassadeurs or Bill Shelburne’s El Paseo. They give nice large parties and better small ones. If times ever get dull, there are things like vacationing movie stars or minor nobility or con men or just visiting firemen to jazz things up. This clump of jolly, unclassifiable people is called, with heavy scorn, The International Set by all the locals who aren’t a part of it. The title makes it sound a great deal grander and racier and clique-ier than happens to be the case. What it actually is, is a bunch of fairly attractive people who like to see one another every now and then, and if you don’t take it seriously you can have quite a good time. So much for “down here.”

  “Right next door” is yet another matter. Right next door happens to be the abbess’ suite and refectory of an erstwhile convent. My wife and I are at present rather uncomfortably housed in the vestibule, concierge’s office, visiting parlors, and several cells above. The place is now called Casa Ximinez, and it is owned and mismanaged by none other than Catalina Ximinez, star of Yucatán Girl.

  Señorita Ximinez, or Madame X, as she is unaffectionately known by her tenants, is one of those rare phenomena in the world of movies—the one-picture star. The stories about her are legion and probably libelous. However, from all of the gossip and speculation surrounding Catalina Ximinez, this much is undoubtedly true: In 1930 she was an unknown, unlettered mestizo girl (illegitimate, some say) of seventeen existing as best she could (as a prostitute, some say) in Chichen Itza. Churlish and venal and stupid, she had only one thing to recommend her—she was perfectly beautiful, with strongly chiseled Indian features and masses of blueblack hair streaming down her back. Starr bumped into her (in a brothel, some say), was stunned by the wonder of her face and figure, and that was how Yucatán Girl came into being.

  When you get right down to it, Yucatán Girl is a terribly long and dull picture, notable only for its views of ruins and the fabulous face of Catalina Ximinez, and she had very little to do except to arrange her features into a pattern of imbecility—which was easy for her—and to be photographed running gracefully across the plains—somewhat more difficult. She became Starr’s mistress for the duration of the shooting, and then he left her flat. Legend has it that she was paid exactly two hundred dollars for starring in a film that has since grossed millions, but at least she was paid, which is more than many of Starr’s associates can claim. However, it didn’t much matter. Once her fantastic beauty was exposed to the world, her only problem was one of selection. She became the mistress of an enormously rich Mexican revolutionary general (the mistress of President Plutarco Calles himself, some say) and then set about amassing a fortune of her own.

  She was extremely wise to do so. She had absolutely no talent as an actress, and to hear her shrill, rasping cockatoo’s voice, one can readily understand why Starr cast her as a deaf-mute. As a matter of fact, cockatoo describes her perfectly—voice, face, figure, mode of dress, and disposition. The Indian blood that brought about her amazing beauty has now brought about her ruin. The fine, high-bridged nose has become an imperious beak. The straight black Indian hair has been cut and crimped and dyed an unsuccessful red. And her straight, slim figure has widened and widened until she looks like an old squaw. Having been told so often—some years back—that she is a beauty, Miss Ximinez is now utterly convinced of it. She is very much the film star, enslaved to fringe and sequins, garish colors and bits of fox fur. No dress is too bright or too tight for her to wear. What I mean is, she’s a sight.

  But stupid as she may be, Catalina Ximinez has a cagey shrewdness. When her paramour offered to set her up in housekeeping, she was smart enough not to choose one of those bogus Spanish colonial establishments out in Lomas, where all good revolutionary generals and their mistresses go to retire. Instead, she snapped up this ancient disused nunnery for a song and manages not only to live in it in great style with her nutty old mother, but also to rent out half a dozen apartments at roughly three times the going rate. It is here, in the Casa Ximinez, where we are now living.

  The Casa Ximinez was once the Convent of the Sisters of Chastity, a small, snobbish, and now defunct order for the unclaimed daughters of aristocratic old Spanish families. The Sisters of Chastity apparently gave up very little else, for even today it is obvious that they were cloistered in extreme luxury. The building is enormous, with barred windows looking blindly out onto the street, and built around a huge patio in the traditional colonial fashion. It is said to date from the sixteenth century, and from the way our plumbing behaves, I quite believe it. The rooms are large and lofty with elaborate tile floors, painted beams, and inadequate heating. It is furnished with pseudo-antiques of the Porfirio Diaz period, which la Ximinez undoubtedly picked up on the cheap at the state pawnshop. In the course of remodeling from priory to apartment house, Madame X has achieved some architectural effects that are eccentric to say the least. In our apartment one is always going up a step, down a step, through somebody else’s bedroom, and walking miles to get nowhere at all. The bathroom, for example, opens into the living room on a different floor from the bedrooms. You have to pass through it to get to the kitchen, which is somewhat smaller. Actually, our bathroom is the biggest thing in the whole apartment. On the theory that Americans like a lot of plumbing, Miss Ximinez has gone hog-wild on equipping it. The room contains two washbasins, a tub, a shower, a toilet, a bidet, a standing urinal, and a tooth basin, all in a virulent dental-plate-pink porcelain with tile to match. Further refinements are a Morris chair, a horsehair sofa, and an imitation Baccarat chandelier. The San Ysidro toilet has been inadvertently piped with hot water, and steams ominously. There is no hot water in either washbasin, just a sad little sigh when you turn on the taps. A most ineffectual Calorex heater blows pathetic, periodic gusts of warm, fetid air into the room from time to time, but as the place m
easures thirty by thirty, with a very high ceiling and a large, drafty window (affording the casual passer-by tempting views of us in varying stages of undress), it’s a little like bathing in an ice palace.

  Conveniently adjoining the bathroom is the kitchen on whose renovation Madame X has invested very little time, thought, or money. There is an old zinc sink, a two-burner Acros stove with an oven door that has to be propped shut, and a very small America referigerator with only two ice trays, both of which are permanently frozen into place. As a gay decorative note our landlady has added a bridge table and two little gold ballroom chairs. There is a small amount of native pottery from the Bazaar Sabado, a few mismatched Woolworth cups and plates, and almost no cooking utensils. We used to laugh at our friend Walter Pistole for traveling with his own coffeepot and egg beater. Now I see the wisdom of Walter’s ways.

  Presiding over the kitchen, and presumably included in the rent, is Guadalupe, our cook and maid of all work. She is about sixty and very fat. She is also the worst cook in the Western Hemisphere. It makes little difference. By setting my alarm for five every morning I can usually get to the kitchen and brew up a decent pot of coffee before she comes shambling down from whichever sordid attic she occupies on the bounty of Señorita Ximinez. To Guadalupe’s distress, we lunch on fruit and cheese and Pan Bolillos and Carta Blanca beer, which she can do nothing to ruin. About nine o’clock every evening we put on our city clothes, telephone for a taxi, and go into the heart of the district to some place like El Paseo or La Cava for a decent meal. Yet our grocery bills are staggering.