teaspoon and poured himself some medicine from a  little
bottle.
     "What's a fink?" he asked suddenly.
     "A fink? That's a strike breaker or a Company Tec."
     "I thought so,"  said Stahr. "I've got a fifteen  hundred dollar writer
that every time he walks through the commissary keeps saying 'Fink!'  behind
other writers' chairs. If he didn't scare hell out of them it'd be funny."
     Brimmer laughed.
     "I'd like to see that," he said.
     "You wouldn't like to spend a day with me over there?" suggested Stahr.
     Brimmer laughed with genuine amusement.
     "No, Mr. Stahr. But I don't doubt but that I'd be impressed. I've heard
you're one of the hardest working and most efficient men in the entire West.
It'd be a privilege to watch you but I'm afraid I'll have to deny myself."
     Stahr looked at me.
     "I  like your friend," he said. "He's crazy but I  like him." He looked
closely at Brimmer. "Born on this side?"
     "Oh yes. Several generations."
     "Many of them like you?"
     "My father was a Baptist minister."
     "I mean are many of the Reds. I'd like to  meet this big Jew that tried
to blow over the Ford factory. What's his name-"
     "Frankensteen? "
     "That's the man. I guess some of you believe in it."
     "Quite a few," said Brimmer dryly.
     "Not you," said Stahr.
     A shade of annoyance floated across Brimmer's face.
     "Oh yes," he said.
     "Oh no," said Stahr. "Maybe you did once."
     Brimmer shrugged his shoulders.
     "Perhaps the boot's on the other foot," he said. "At the bottom of your
heart, Mr. Stahr, you know I'm right."
     "No," said Stahr, "I think it's a bunch of tripe."
     "-you think to yourself 'He's right' but you think the system will last
out your time."
     "You don't really think you're going to overthrow the government."
     "No, Mr. Stahr. But we think perhaps you are."
     They  were nicking at each other-little  pricking strokes like  men  do
sometimes. Women do it  too but it is a joined  battle then with no quarter,
but it is  not pleasant  to  watch  men do it  because you never know what's
next.  Certainly it wasn't improving the tonal associations of  the room for
me and I moved them out  the French window into our golden-yellow California
garden.
     It was midsummer but fresh water from the gasping  sprinklers  made the
lawn glitter like spring. I could see Brimmer look at it with a sigh  in his
glance-a  way  they have.  He  opened  up  big outside-inches taller  than I
thought  and broad-shouldered.  He reminded  me a little of Superman when he
takes off his spectacles.  I thought he was as  attractive as men can be who
don't  really  care  about women as such.  We  played a round  robin game of
ping-pong and he handled his bat well. I heard  Father come into  the  house
singing that damn "Little Man, You've Had a Busy Day" and  then breaking off
as if he remembered we weren't speaking  any more.  It was half past  six-my
car  was standing in the drive and I suggested we go  down to the  Trocadero
for dinner.
     Brimmer had that look that  Father O'Ney had that time in New York when
he turned his  collar  around  and  went  with Father and me to  the Russian
Ballet. He hadn't  quite ought to be here. When Bernie the photographer, who
was waiting there for some big game or other, came up to our table he looked
trapped-Stahr made Bernie go away, and I would like to have had the picture.
     Then, to  my  astonishment,  Stahr had three  cocktails  one after  the
other.
     "Now I know you've been disappointed in love," I said.
     "What makes you think that, Cecelia?"
     "Cocktails."
     "Oh, I never drink, Cecelia. I get dyspepsia-I never have been tight."
     I counted them. "-two-three."
     "I didn't realize. I couldn't taste them. I thought there was something
the matter."
     A silly glassy look darted into his eye-then passed away.
     "This is my first drink in a week," said Brimmer. "I did my drinking in
the navy."
     The look was back in Stahr's eye-he winked it fatuously at me and said:
     "This soapbox son-of-a-bitch has been working on the navy."
     Brimmer didn't know  quite how  to take  this. Evidently  he decided to
include it  with  the evening for  he  smiled faintly  and I  saw  Stahr was
smiling too. I was  relieved when I saw it was  safely in the great American
tradition and I tried to  take  hold of the  conversation but  Stahr  seemed
suddenly all right.
     "Here's my typical experience," he  said very succinctly and clearly to
Brimmer.  "The best director  in  Hollywood-a man I never interfere with-has
some  streak  in  him that wants  to  slip  a  pansy into  every  picture or
something on that order. Something  offensive. He stamps it in  deep  like a
watermark so I can't get it out. Every time he does it the Legion of Decency
moves a step forward and something  has  to be sacrificed out of some honest
film."
     "Typical organization trouble," agreed Brimmer.
     "Typical," said  Stahr. "It's an endless battle.  So now  this director
tells me  it's  all right  because he's got a  Directors  Guild  and I can't
oppress the poor. That's how you add to my troubles."
     "It's a  little remote from us,"  said Brimmer  smiling. "I don't think
we'd make much headway with the directors."
     "The directors used to be my pals," said Stahr proudly.
     It  was  like  Edward  the VII's  boast that  he had  moved in the best
society in Europe.
     "But some of them have never forgiven me," he continued, "-for bringing
out  stage directors when sound came  in. It put them on their toes and made
them  learn their jobs all  over but they never did really  forgive me. That
time  we imported a  whole new hogshead full of writers  and  I thought they
were great fellows till they all went Red."
     Gary Cooper  came in and sat down  in a corner with a bunch of men  who
breathed whenever he  did  and looked as if they lived off  him and  weren't
budging an inch. A woman across the room  looked around and turned out to be
Carole Lombard-I was glad that Brimmer was at least getting an eyeful.
     Stahr ordered a  whiskey and soda and, almost immediately,  another. He
ate nothing  but  a few spoonfuls of soup and he  said  all the awful things
about  everybody being lazy  so-and-so's  and  none of it  mattered  to  him
because he  had  lots of  money-it was the kind of talk  you heard  whenever
Father and his friends were together. I think Stahr realized that it sounded
pretty  ugly outside of  the proper company-maybe he had  never heard how it
sounded before. Anyhow  he shut up and drank  off a  cup of  black coffee. I
loved him and what he said didn't change that but  I hated Brimmer  to carry
off this impression. I wanted him  to  see Stahr as a sort  of technological
virtuoso and here Stahr had been playing the wicked overseer to a  point  he
would have called trash if he had watched it on the screen.
     "I'm a production man," he said as if to modify his  previous attitude.
"I  like writers-I think I understand them. I don't want to kick anybody out
if they do their work."
     "We don't want you to," said Brimmer pleasantly. "We'd like to take you
over as a going concern."
     Stahr nodded grimly.
     "I'd like to put you  in a  roomful  of my partners. They've  all got a
dozen reasons for having Fitts run you fellows out of town."
     "We  appreciate  your protection,"  said Brimmer with a certain  irony.
"Frankly we do  find you difficult,  Mr. Stahr-precisely because you  are  a
paternalistic employer and your influence is very great."
     Stahr was only half listening.
     "I never thought," he said, "-that I had more brains than a writer has.
But I always thought  that his brains belonged to me- because I  knew how to
use  them.  Like  the  Romans-I've heard that they never invented things but
they knew what to do with them. Do you see? I don't say it's right. But it's
the way I've always felt-since I was a boy."
     This interested Brimmer-the first thing that had  interested him for an
hour.
     "You know yourself very well, Mr. Stahr," he said.
     I  think he wanted to get away. He had been curious to see what kind of
man  Stahr  was and now he  thought he  knew. Still  hoping things would  be
different I rashly urged him to ride home with us but when Stahr  stopped by
the bar for another drink I knew I'd made a mistake.
     It was a gentle,  harmless, motionless evening with a lot  of  Saturday
cars. Stahr's hand lay along the back of the seat touching my hair. Suddenly
I wished it  had been about ten  years ago. I would have been  nine. Brimmer
about  eighteen  and  working his  way through some  mid-western college and
Stahr twenty-five just having inherited the world and full of confidence and
joy. We would both have looked up to Stahr so, without question. And here we
were  in an adult  conflict  to  which  there  was  no  peaceable  solution,
complicated now with exhaustion and drink.
     We turned in at our drive and I drove around to the garden again.
     "I must go along now," said Brimmer. "I've got to meet some people."
     "No,  stay,"  said  Stahr. "I never have said what I wanted. We'll play
ping-pong and have another drink and then we'll tear into each other."
     Brimmer  hesitated. Stahr  turned on the floodlight  and picked  up his
ping-pong bat and I  went into  the  house  for some whiskey-I wouldn't have
dared disobey him.
     When I came  back they  were not playing but  Stahr was batting a whole
box of new balls across to Brimmer who turned them aside. When I arrived  he
quit and took the bottle and retired to a chair just  out of the floodlight,
watching in dark  dangerous majesty. He was paie-he was so transparent  that
you could almost watch the alcohol mingle with the poison of his exhaustion.
     "Time to relax on Saturday night," he said.
     "You're not relaxing," I said.
     He  was   carrying  on  a  losing  battle  with  his  instinct   toward
schizophrenia.
     "I'm going to beat up Brimmer," he announced after a moment. "I'm going
to handle this thing personally."
     "Can't you pay somebody to do it?" asked Brimmer.
     I signalled him to keep quiet.
     "I do  my own  dirty work," said Stahr. "I'm going to  beat hell out of
you and put you on a train."
     He got up and came forward and I put my arms around him, gripping him.
     "Please stop this!" I said. "Oh, you're being so bad."
     "This  fellow has an influence over you," he said darkly. "Over all you
young people. You don't know what you're doing."
     "Please go home," I said to Brimmer.
     Stahr's  suit was made  of slippery  cloth and suddenly he slipped away
from me and went for  Brimmer. Brimmer retreated  backward around the table.
There was an  odd expression in his  face and afterwards I thought it looked
as if he were saying,  "Is  this all? This frail half sick person holding up
the whole thing."
     Then Stahr came close, his hands going up. It seemed to me that Brimmer
held him off with his  left  arm a minute and then I looked  away-I couldn't
bear to watch.
     When I looked back Stahr was out of sight below the level of  the table
and Brimmer was looking down at him.
     "Please go home," I said to Brimmer.
     "All right." He stood looking down at Stahr as I came around the table.
"I always wanted to hit ten  million dollars but I didn't  know  it would be
like this."
     Stahr lay motionless.
     "Please go," I said.
     "I'm sorry. Can I help-"
     "No. Please go. I understand."
     He looked again, a little awed at the depths of Stahr's repose which he
had created in a split second.  Then he went quickly away over the grass and
I  knelt down and  shook  Stahr. In a moment he came  awake with a  terrific
convulsion and bounced up on his feet.
     "Where is he?" he shouted.
     "Who?" I asked innocently.
     "That American. Why in hell did you have to marry him, you damn fool."
     "Monroe-he's gone. I didn't marry anybody."
     I pushed him down in a chair.
     "He's been gone half an hour," I lied.
     The  ping-pong balls  lay around in the grass  like a constellation  of
stars. I turned on a sprinkler  and came  back with a  wet handkerchief  but
there was no mark on Stahr-he must have been hit in the side of the head. He
went off behind  some trees and was  sick  and  I heard him  kicking up some
earth over it. After that  he seemed all right but  he wouldn't go into  the
house till I got him some  mouthwash so I took back  the whiskey  bottle and
got a mouthwash bottle.  His wretched essay  at getting drunk was over. I've
been out with college freshmen but for  sheer  ineptitude and absence of the
Bacchic  spirit it unquestionably took the cake. Every bad thing happened to
him but that was all.

     We  went  in  the  house;  the  cook  said  Father  and Mr. Marcus  and
Flieshacker  were on the verandah  so we stayed  in the  "processed  leather
room." We both sat down  in a couple  of places  and seemed to slide off and
finally I sat on a fur rug and Stahr on a footstool beside me.
     "Did I hit him?" he asked.
     "Oh, yes," I said. "Quite badly."
     "I don't believe it." After a  minute he added,  "I didn't want to hurt
him. I just wanted to chase him out. I guess he got scared and hit me."
     If this was his interpretation of  what had  happened it was all  right
with me.
     "Do you hold it against him?"
     "Oh no," he  said. "I was drunk." He looked around. "I've never been in
here before-who did this room-somebody from the studio?"
     "Somebody from New York."
     "Well, I'll have to get you out of here,"  he said in his  old pleasant
way. "How would you like to go out to Doug  Fairbanks' ranch  and spend  the
night? He asked me-I know he'd love to have you."
     That's how the two weeks started that he and I went around together. It
only took one of them for Louella to have us married.