– I don’t hate you.
But perhaps he does. He can no longer tell. Ruth has taken his money. She has called him an abuser in the press. She has interfered in his career. He has heard half-truths and untruths spoken in her name, all in an effort to bleed him dry. Perhaps he has set out to hurt her in return, but he does not believe so. Being with her just seemed better than being alone.
– But you could only do this to someone you hate.
Ruth does not cry. He would prefer it if she did. It is her incomprehension that distresses him, her desire to understand what cannot be understood because it cannot be explained.
– You treated me like your whore.
He gazes at the lights of Manhattan. He wishes he could smother them all, one by one.
He should be working. He has not worked in months.
Goddamn Hal Roach and his contracts, and his cheapness, and his fascist friends.
Goddamn Hal Roach and his aspirations to class, his talk of musicals and drawing-room comedies, when the only Academy Awards Hal Roach has won are for short pictures, and the best of those is The Music Box, which he created for the studio – he, and Babe.
Goddamn Hal Roach.
All the sweat and effort, all the compromises, only so that his reputation may be traduced, so that these women can live in the houses he buys and spend the money he earns.
– How many others did you fuck during our marriage?
He cannot remember. None that mattered, he wants to say, except Alyce Ardell, and she matters only because she has no desire to be of consequence to him.
Ruth joins him at the window. His presence in the city is known. Crowds have gathered to catch a glimpse, to seek an autograph. She stares down on the figures below. The waning moon of his features hangs gibbous before her.
– What would they think of you, if they knew the truth: that the man they love is a fornicator, that he does not exist beyond a name on a screen, a name that is not even his own?
Her voice is very small, a bitter whisper.
– Why don’t you tell them?
– I believe you’d almost like that. You’re too much of a coward to destroy yourself. You want someone else to do it for you.
No, he says, that is not true.
She laughs.
– It’s your selfishness that’s so strange to me. I see you hurting me. I see you hurting your daughter. I even see you hurting Babe. What kind of man are you, to inflict such pain on those who care for you?
This he knows: Babe is tiring of the battles with Hal Roach, the incessant squabbles over money and influence, over who made what and who owes whom. Babe has no interest in script credits. Babe does not concern himself with the ownership of ideas. Babe wishes only to work, and then to play.
But he cannot bring himself to be angry with Babe.
Ruth walks to the bed, the bed in which he has so recently fucked her, fucked all the love from her. She rearranges her clothing, and closes the case.
– You want to be rid of me?
– Yes.
– Say it.
– I want you out of my life.
She picks up the case.
– You’re just a child. You have no idea what you really want at all.
149
Hal Roach calls Ben Shipman. Ben Shipman has been anticipating the communication, although with no great enthusiasm. Ben Shipman has even considered asking his secretary to inform Hal Roach that her employer is currently indisposed, or traveling, or dead.
You do know what he’s supposed to be doing right now, don’t you? Hal Roach asks.
Yes, says Ben Shipman, but Hal Roach continues as though Ben Shipman has not spoken.
– He is supposed to be here, on the lot, getting ready to make Swiss Cheese.
Ben Shipman does not tell Hal Roach that Swiss Cheese is a terrible title for a picture. Ben Shipman particularly does not tell Hal Roach that Swiss Cheese is a terrible title for a picture because Ben Shipman is afraid of revealing that it is his missing client who has expressed this opinion, and with some force, even though his missing client has just signed the latest unsatisfactory contract (at least, unsatisfactory to him, each contract by now functioning as a symbol of a greater existential querulousness), of which Swiss Cheese constitutes the first production. What is most peculiar about Swiss Cheese is that Ben Shipman’s missing client is not alone in his dissatisfaction with the picture, for his missing client and Hal Roach have this much in common. Hal Roach would rather be making Rigoletto than Swiss Cheese, but Hal Roach’s hopes of filming operas have died following the implosion of his relationship with Mussolini’s son.
So Hal Roach is unhappy even before Ben Shipman’s client packs a bag for Yuma, Arizona to marry a notorious Russian gold-digger and alcoholic named Vera Ivanova Shuvalova, known by the stage name of Illeana, who travels with a dancing master named Roy Randolph – barely a step advanced from pimp and procurer – and a woman named Sonia, who claims to be a countess and may or may not be Vera Ivanova Shuvalova’s mother.
All this before the ink on his latest divorce papers is even dry.
So why, continues Hal Roach, is he in Yuma, marrying a Russian drunk?
He is in Yuma because Arizona, unlike California, does not have a law requiring one’s name to appear in the local newspapers if one marries, but Ben Shipman recognizes that this is not the right answer to the question. Hal Roach is not concerned about geography beyond its application to the origins of Vera Ivanova Shuvalova. Ben Shipman has no idea why his client has married this woman. He might possibly have stayed out in the sun for too long, with liquor taken to further addle his brain.
I really don’t know, says Ben Shipman.
– And why is his ex-wife – his second ex-wife – telling the newspapers that she’s still married to him?
– I don’t know that either.
– In fact, what is his second ex-wife doing down in Yuma to begin with?
– I believe that she followed him there with the intention of sabotaging the nuptials.
– Does she still love him?
– I think that is unlikely. I am of the opinion that she merely wishes to complicate his life.
Hal Roach considers this possibility.
– Why would someone bother trying to complicate his life when he seems more than capable of doing that for himself?
– Vindictiveness. It’s hard to be vindictive toward oneself.
– Well, if anyone can manage it, he can. Does he even understand the difference between pictures and reality any longer?
– I have my doubts.
Ben Shipman hears the sound of pages being turned at Hal Roach’s end of the line.
Do you know what I’m looking at? says Hal Roach.
I can’t begin to imagine, Ben Shipman lies.
– I’m looking at the morals clause in his contract.
Ben Shipman tries to sound surprised.
Ah, says Ben Shipman.
– Has he lost his reason?
– Possibly.
– Then tell him to find it again, and fast.
150
He marries Vera Ivanova Shuvalova on January 1st, 1938. He drinks a lot, both before and after the ceremony.