Charlie Martz and Other Stories: The Unpublished Stories Read online

  Then (I’m not finished) learning the next morning that along with its atmosphere the Desert Sands was also resting and suntanning headquarters for all the Westway Airlines stewardesses who didn’t have homes of their own. What a coincidence, uh? No, I didn’t plan it that way. Don Franklyn did.

  Don Franklyn, Los Angeles freelance sometime fashion photographer: like two girls out in the middle of a wheat field modeling strapless formals; or up in an apple tree with polka-dot flannel nightgowns on. Next time in Life maybe with a picture story of Sebring or some European Grand Prix, catching the color of all the people and the cars, especially the girls in slacks and sunglasses around the red Ferraris.

  The ad agency I worked for had used Franklyn before. But I was fairly new then on the Sirocco account and this was the first time he and I did anything together. It may seem strange that a thousand-a-day photographer would be taking cues from a thousand-a-month art director (me), but that’s the way it is. The art director designs the ads, in this case a magazine campaign to sell $6,000 Sirocco sports cars, and if picture-taking is involved he’s responsible for that too. In case anyone is wondering why I was there in the first place.

  Franklyn arrived the same evening I did. But evidently while I was taking nose drops he was listening to the cool combo and downing stingers.

  I might as well tell you now, Don Franklyn liked to play any time before or after work, and when Franklyn played he put all of his heart, soul, and credit cards into it. I guess you would classify him as a free thinker; he said and did just about whatever he wanted. Still, he was nice about it.

  That first morning in the Desert Sands coffee shop, for example, we had just met and were talking over the job and what we expected to get, Franklyn fortifying himself with a large tomato juice and black coffee while I tried not to blow my nose. He nodded to a table where four girls were sitting, brown and poised and very Westway Airlines-looking, and said, “What do you think of that one?”

  He didn’t say which one; you just knew he meant the dark-haired girl in the white jersey turtleneck who was facing our way.

  “How would you like her?” Franklyn said.

  “Man.”

  Franklyn went over to their table. He stood talking to the dark-haired girl and to her only, one hand on the table, the other on the back of her chair, the girl staring up at him, nodding carefully, studying and judging this big, calm, confident guy with the gray crew cut.

  An hour and a half later Terry McLean was out on location with us. Franklyn had rented a station wagon for his equipment. I drove the white top-down Sirocco we borrowed from the local dealer. Terry McLean took one look at it and rode with me.

  Nothing happened on the way out; I would just like everyone to realize that driving ten miles out into the desert with a girl like Terry McLean—now in a straw sailor, tan-and-blue-striped Italian sweater and white shorts—a guy is not likely to be thinking about home fires or car payments or even the mortgage. All that is off somewhere beyond a distant shore. The here and now is an ultraresponsive motorcar doing seventy through high-desert country and an extremely handsome dark-haired girl in the next bucket seat, no more than the width of a gearbox away.

  For ten minutes the guy can be an international something or other streaking across southern Spain with the “papers” and the girl. That is, if the guy doesn’t have a runny nose. I’ll tell you it is very hard to play Cary Grant when you’re blowing your nose.

  Our location was an empty one-street movie set that was used by a number of television westerns. There we shot Terry McLean in, on, and around the white Sirocco against a backdrop of crumbling adobe.

  We had all day to get what we wanted. Franklyn wandered around setting up likely shots, asking me what I thought, and eventually getting around to taking pictures. He photographed Terry sitting cross-legged on the car’s rear deck, her head lowered, but her eyes looking right at you over the top of her sunglasses, the straw sailor straight on her head.

  He took pictures of Terry taking pictures, Terry standing in the Sirocco and aiming at the saloon and sheriff’s office, Franklyn shooting the car from all angles, but almost always getting an interesting profile of Terry McLean’s white shorts.

  He would shoot with his eight-by-ten view camera on a tripod and then click some with the 35 mm that hung from his neck, getting black and white as well as color, then ambling over to the station wagon and taking his time to load the cameras again.

  I felt obliged to keep Miss McLean company when Franklyn wasn’t shooting. Really—I mean it about feeling obliged. We’d walk over to the ramada shade and stand in front of one of the stores while I—the great conversationalist—blew my nose and tried to keep things humming with questions like Where are you from? How long have you been with Westway? And how do you like it?

  Dallas. Two years. And just fine. While she watched Franklyn across the street at the station wagon.

  “Maybe you should be a model,” I said, which sounded at the time like “How would you like to be in the movies?”

  She looked at me, taking off her sunglasses. “Do you think I’m all right?”

  “Like a pro.”

  “There’s not much to it, is there?”

  “Not when you have what’s needed to start with.”

  “Thank you.” She put her sunglasses back on. “You should do something for that cold.”

  “I’m taking nose drops.”

  She was watching Franklyn again. “Is he satisfied? I told him I’d never modeled before or anything.”

  “I think he’d tell you if he wasn’t.”

  “I’ve been trying to decide if he’s married, but I can’t tell.” Terry McLean had a way of changing conversation courses abruptly.

  “Can you ordinarily tell?” I asked.

  “Most of the time.”

  “Am I?”

  “Definitely. With kiddies.”

  “Oh . . .”

  “You don’t have to wear a ring,” Terry McLean said. “It’s just a look.”

  “Good or bad?”

  She shrugged. “Not bad . . . just a look.”

  “Definitely for me,” I said, “but you don’t know about him.”

  “He may have been married once,” she said, watching Franklyn. “But that doesn’t mean still.”

  “I think he is.” I said it and I was glad.

  That brought her around again. “You think he is.”

  “I’m pretty sure then.”

  It was her turn to say, “Oh . . .”

  We had lunch on the board sidewalk at the edge of the shade. Franklyn, the arranger, had brought Desert Sands field rations: chicken sandwiches, celery, olives and stuff, apples, cheese, and a bottle of Johannesburger Riesling in a scotch cooler. He did forget wineglasses, but it didn’t bother anyone but me. Because of my cold I felt obliged to use a thermos cup, while Franklyn and Terry McLean passed the bottle back and forth taking swigs.

  She loved it. “Who’d ever have thought,” she said, “that I would someday be a girl model seen in millions of magazines.”

  “If the client buys the ad,” I said.

  She ignored this. “Suddenly the most sought-after girl-model in New York.”

  “Rocketed to fame,” Franklyn said, “in a three-liter flat-six Sirocco. Why not?”

  She looked at him. “This is kind of fun, isn’t it?”

  Franklyn took the wine bottle from her. “We call it our champagne flight.”

  “Westway doesn’t have one,” Terry McLean murmured. “We serve coffee to Salt Lake City. Coffee and sandwiches to Seattle.”

  “A job can be its own reward,” Franklyn said. “If you remember to bring the booze.”

  By that time I think she was more than ready to chuck her two years with Westway and go full-time into modeling. She asked Franklyn a lot of leading questions about the business, getting around to the kind of jobs he did and the places they took him.

  Franklyn never once really encouraged her; he let Terry draw her
own pictures and conclusions, carefully playing out line, and never giving a hint about his marital status.

  We worked some more that afternoon, getting the gimmicky along with the straight, and finally knocked off about five.

  Back at the Desert Sands, Franklyn and I had a couple of bourbons together in his room with our shoes off and I learned a little more about him. He lived in Pallas Verdes with a view of Catalina on a clear day, bought a new station wagon every year, owned a forty-two-foot cruiser, was married to a girl who had once been a movie extra, the father of a seven-year-old daughter called Pammy and was not forty-five as I had suspected. Don Franklyn was thirty-four. Three years older than I was.

  He liked his work. He liked staying at the Desert Sands (this was his fourth time). He liked working for my agency because their art directors knew what they were doing. He liked bourbon before a shower. He liked four-to-one martinis and stingers and some classical music, two or three of the TV westerns, San Francisco, Cal Tjader, Julie Harris, Shane, Key Clubs, credit cards, and evenings away from home after a full day of shooting.

  By then it was about that time. We got cleaned up and met Terry McLean, in a yellow sunback and earrings and pumps and looking even better than she did in the sweater and shorts, for dinner. Candlelight, martinis, turtle soup, rare filets, a very good salad and Stingers after.

  And through all the courses and all the bright conversation, I kept hoping I wouldn’t have to blow my nose, tried to sniffle without anyone hearing, but blew regularly, resignedly, as gentlemanly as I could about every five minutes. Which even done softly is not sweet music at the table.

  As we were getting ready to leave, Franklyn said, “You ought to do something for that cold.”

  “I’m taking nose drops,” I said.

  “Rest is the best thing. Remember you’re flying home.”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  He looked at Terry. “I’ve heard flying can do something to a cold. Produce complications.”

  She nodded doubtfully, then seemed to catch on and said, “It’s the altitude.”

  “Not the coffee and sandwiches, uh?”

  She kept her expression neutral. “I think the pressure and all.”

  “So,” I said to Franklyn, “you think I should go to bed.”

  “Buddy—” Like I’d wounded him. “You’re coming with us. I insist.”

  He insisted for all of fifteen seconds. I told him I was going to bed anyway—bought a paperback, went up to C-36 overlooking the lit-up pool and the palms and layin bed wide awake for the next three hours wondering all the things you wonder in a situation like that.

  Can a guy with a wife and three children back home be jealous of another guy who runs off in a $6,000 sports car with a slick babe and unlimited credit?

  Yes.

  Yes. Whether it makes sense or he has a right to or what. Yes.

  Especially with Don Franklyn doing the running off. He made it look so effortless, and at the same time made you feel so square.

  I remember wondering how I would feel being with the two of them again the next day. Would they have private jokes? Words with secret meanings?

  That turned out to be a waste of anguish. Don Franklyn appeared the next morning in the coffee shop with a ponytailed ash blonde by the name of Nancy Hayes. Also a Westway girl. Also a dish. Also everything you would expect Franklyn to pick. She was to be our model.

  But what about Terry? I asked him that the first chance I had.

  “Terry McLean?” Franklyn said, as if he and I knew all kinds of Terrys. “Oh, she had a hop to Salt Lake City today. Didn’t I tell you?” Like who needs her?

  Well, out we went into the desert again, this time with Nancy Hayes in pale blue Capri pants and a black sweater, eager to please and with a special smile that said she too, already, would rather be a girl-model than anything else in the world.

  We got action shots that day, working mostly during the late afternoon when the light did good things to the saguaro cactus and brought out the shadowed contours of the mountains.

  We moved around quite a bit to vary the background and when Franklyn and I weren’t with Nancy Hayes, he was up on some ridge setting up a shot. That’s why I had trouble finding out what happened the night before. Naturally I was curious. I mean did they go to a show or what?

  I’d say, “Did you have fun?”

  “When?”

  “Last night.”

  “Oh . . . yeah.”

  Then he’d be looking through the view camera and the next minute the white Sirocco would come slicing through a curve, its dust rising into the high-desert background.

  “She told you last night she had this flight today?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’ll bet it’s her last one. I think she’s going to quit.”

  Franklyn glanced over. “Why?”

  “Take up modeling.”

  He shrugged. “They get married.”

  “Her? I mean is she going with someone?”

  “A Westway pilot.”

  “She didn’t mention him to me.”

  “Their flight plans only cross about once a week.”

  “They’re not too serious then.”

  “You’re never sure,” Franklyn said. “Only careful.”

  The Sirocco came flat out from the other direction, Nancy Hayes smiling and her ponytail blowing in the windstream.

  “Tell her to slow down,” Franklyn said, “and to follow me.”

  By the time I got back he had moved to get the car coming straight up a steep grade.

  “You go to a show?”

  “What?”

  “Last night.”

  “No, we just fooled around.”

  “Watched haircuts?”

  The Sirocco was climbing straight on with the road S-ing down below it.

  “That was good,” Franklyn said.

  So the Sirocco went back and came up again, roared past and left its dust hanging in stillness.

  “I don’t know if I’d want to drive these roads at night.”

  Franklyn, loading his camera, didn’t react.

  “What’d you do, stay right at the Sands?”

  “We drove to a place in town for a couple.”

  “That’s not too far. Then came back, uh?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I suppose you were pretty tired by then.”

  “Kinda. We took a swim.”

  “You went for a swim?”

  “Just in and out. You know.”

  “At the Sands?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It wasn’t too cold?”

  “Fine.”

  “Not many girls’d go swimming that time of night.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “You think?”

  “I don’t know. It was her idea.”

  “Really?”

  He kept looking at me. “Talk again.”

  “What do you mean talk again?”

  “I think you got rid of your cold,” Franklyn said. “I don’t hear it anymore.”

  It was gone, or practically gone; probably dried out by the thin desert air the day before. The strange thing was, I hadn’t noticed it. I’d gone all day without blowing my nose more than four times and I didn’t even realize it until just then.

  “The rest did it,” Franklyn said. He probably believed it too.

  The action shots wrapped it up. The work was over, and right away, putting his equipment in the station wagon, Franklyn started making plans for the evening. Cocktails, dinner—maybe Nancy even knew another girl who wasn’t busy. Huh?

  Nancy Hayes’s ponytail bobbed up and down. She knew loads.

  Except, I told them, I was planning on getting an evening flight out if we finished early enough.

  This news, I’m sure, didn’t affect Franklyn’s plans one way or the other. But it did postpone them and keep him hopping for a time.

  While I changed and packed Franklyn took care of th
e flight reservation and also checked me out of the Desert Sands. We got to the airport with about fifteen minutes to spare. Franklyn said I’ll come in with you. I said no need to. He said well, it was a pleasure working with you. I said let’s do it again sometime. He said you name it. I said well, thanks for the ride and all. He said you better step on it.

  Franklyn took off like an A-class dragster. I ran into the terminal, got in line at the ticket desk, kept watching the clock and the reservation clerk on the telephone, finally, finally getting to the desk—to find out that flight 457 would be delayed at least an hour.

  But I’d miss my connection in Denver.

  Let’s see what we can do, the clerk said, and started leafing through schedules. Anyway—there wasn’t one combination of flights that would get me to Detroit before the next day, and all included a few hours layover somewhere. So why not stay and take the through flight in the morning?

  Why not.

  I had a bourbon in the terminal bar deciding whether or not to call Franklyn. Tell him what happened. There’d be a pause and he’d say gee, that’s great. Another pause. You want me to pick you up? With half a bourbon on the dresser, lather on his face, and the ponytail over in some other unit at that moment being combed into a neat slick shining bun.

  I couldn’t do it.

  I had another bourbon and relaxed, the whole evening, the whole night before me; already it was dark and the bar was about three-quarters filled, with the sound of people together and ice in glasses and soft Cole Porter–type music in the background. One more bourbon. A Westway girl I recognized from the Sands walked by with some guy; she smiled and I nodded, wondering if the smile meant anything more than a smile.

  I got a cab and went back to the Sands.

  Probably I should have checked in first, but I didn’t; I had a steak and more soft music and another bourbon—no sign of Franklyn or his new friend—so by the time I went to the desk to register it was about ten o’clock. And there wasn’t a vacancy in the place.