This Time We Love Read online

  Max closed his eyes and winced. It didn’t look as though introductions were going to be forthcoming for a time, so he looked at the more mature of the girls and said, “Two of them, and it was in the Via Margutta, which isn’t exactly a tough section.”

  Bert ignored him. “They had me crowded into this corner, see? I was doing the best I could, but I was stymied, couldn’t get a good swing, see? So here comes Max. What a pal. Remember that fight scene in Trail of the Lonesome Pine? Fred MacMurray, and all? Well, maybe that was before your time. Anyway, Max hit them like … Listen, did you see that one where Marlon Brando takes on the three guys at once, one of ’em has this broken bottle? Anyway, Max comes in, see? Scatters ’em right and left, see?”

  Max said painfully, “Any similarity to this scene and actuality is strictly coincidental.” He sat down, next to the redhead, freeing his hand from Bert’s pumping grasp. “Where,” he said, to shut the other up, “is that drink you were promising me last night?”

  Bert Fix, still beaming fondly at him, broke off immediately and summoned a waiter. “Anything, pal. Just order anything at all. Champagne, stone age cognac, Scotch. Order it, man, and tell them to bring it by the bottle.”

  The waiter was as greasily subservient as if the movie flack had been the Emperor Caligula. The girls reordered. Max asked for a Scotch.

  Bert Fix said belligerently, “Listen, Luigi, no crap for my pal. You got any Glenfiddich Pot Still Malt, or Glen-livet? The twenty-five-year stuff, mind.”

  “I will check immediately, Signore Meex,” Luigi darted away.

  “Black and White would have done fine,” Max said mildly.

  “Never you mind, pal,” Bert told him. He looked at the girls. “Oh, yeah. This is Clara Lucciola. Beautiful, eh? Bello the Eyetalians say. You just watch Clara, Max, old pal. In a year or so, particularly if she sleeps around with the right people, she’ll be up there with Gina and Sophia.

  Clara Lucciola smiled as though over secret thoughts.

  “Piacere,” Max said, his face registering awe at her beauty. “Come sta?”

  “Benissimo, grazie. E Lei?” She looked at him appraisingly from the side of her eyes.

  “Come on, come on,” Bert Fix said. “Let’s talk English. You girls need the practice. This is Andreae Latini, Max. Look at those knockers, eh? What’s Monroe got this girl hasn’t? Andreae studies over at the Centro Sperimentale de Cinematografia. Be a big name someday.”

  Max registered awe at her beauty, duplicating to an iota his introduction to Clara Lucciola. Andreae, in spite of possibly the most lavish bust Max had ever seen, was evidently on the adolescent side. She seemed taken aback, impressed, by the reverence in his expression. She shifted her shoulders, to re-emphasize that which nature had granted her to such abundance that they needed no emphasis.

  Clara Lucciola laughed her appreciation. She said, in adequate English, “You have been long in our country, Mr …” She hesitated.

  “Yeah, what’s your last name, pal?” Bert Fix said, scratching his little beard. “Where the hell’s those drinks? I’m dying on the vine.”

  “Fielding,” Max said. “But always Max to you, bello.” He turned from one of the girls to the other, even as he spoke, so that he could have been addressing either of them with the endearment.

  The redheaded Clara Lucciola blurted amusement again. “You have been in our country before, Max. One must be Italian trained to be so — how do you say — blatantly flattering.”

  Both of these girls were of surpassing pulchritude in the sex symbol tradition of the film world. Clara Lucciola, the Roman redhead, Max would have guessed, was already on the rungs upward. She had the poise, the obvious experience. The younger girl, Andreae Latini, still had the patina of youth. Brunette, utterly creamy of skin, and with the unbelievable bust from which it was all but impossible to remove your eyes, she was going to boast this youthful beauty for perhaps another half-dozen years. Then we’ll see, Max decided sadly. Meanwhile, had it not been for the fact that he was surfeited with women for the time being, he might have considered a roll in the hay with the child if only for a closer reconnaissance of those breastworks.

  Clara Lucciola was another type. Her womanness reached across the table and shook you. She had the ability to project sex as top politicians project personality. Max already suspected that Clara Lucciola, once aroused, was no small matter to have on your hands. If you were the easygoing type yourself, she was exactly what the doctor had not ordered. Where the Clara Lucciolas of this life tread, there are broken hearts, broken heads and broken property strewn behind.

  The drinks came and Max blinked at the label of his whiskey bottle. He pursed his lips. “Bert,” he said. “What kind of money do you earn in this publicity racket?”

  Bert was drinking Asti Spumante with the girls, a sparkling wine too sweet for Max Fielding’s taste. He grinned, looking for a moment like an Irish pixie. It occurred to Max that he’d never seen a smile on the small man’s face before, and that it did him good.

  “A fortune,” Bert was saying. “I earn a fortune, but they pay me peanuts.”

  Max gestured with his glass at the Scotch bottle. “I know people who couldn’t buy a bottle of that with a week’s wages.”

  Bert was expansive. “Pal, don’t even think about it. That’s on Horatius.”

  “Horatius?”

  Bert said, “Like I said, the pay is peanuts but the expense account is unlimited.” He leaned forward, impressively. “You know what we’re spending on publicity and exploitation on Horatius? Four million bucks. The budget is eight million. Four for production, four for exploitation and publicity. Sky’s the limit. You know who I’ve been working with all day? Three Swedes. Journalists. Flew ’em all the way down from Stockholm. Put ’em up at the Hassler, best hotel in town. Feed ’em at the Hostaria dell’Orso, best restaurant. Got ’em swacked, thank God, or I would’ve had to take ’em out tonight and get ’em laid. You know what the company will get out of it? Maybe two or three lines of publicity in each of their papers.” Bert beamed at him. “That’s the way we’re spending money on this one, pal.”

  Max was impressed. “Four million on publicity!”

  “Not just publicity,” Bert said, his face registering modesty, and as though it all flowed from his own pocket. “Exploitation in general.” He waved across the room. “You know Manny?”

  “Let’s don’t start this dropping first names bit,” Max said. “There’s no end to it. Somebody finally mentions Jack, and you don’t know if he means the President or the Pope.”

  Clara Lucciola laughed, looked over her glass of wine at Max. “You are striking at Bert’s most vulnerable — what do you say …?”

  Max grinned back. “That’s okay, as is. Bert’s most vulnerable.”

  Her eyes thinned a little and she looked from the side of them, as though sizing him up all over again, and liking what she saw.

  Oh, oh, Max thought. He just wasn’t up to firing this bundle of twigs right now, too much heat potential. He turned his eyes to the younger girl. “Caro,” he told her, “not to change the subject, but you have the most delightful, ah, profile, of all time.”

  Bert was not to be put off. “Manny,” he said. “Manfred King. Greatest epic director in the world. Did you see The Great Wall? That Chinese one? See who that is with him? How’d you like to meet her?”

  Max looked across the room to where the aging director and his most recent star sat. There were three at the table in all. Max recognized only the girl, Marcia McEvoy. Marcy, they called her. All in the tradition of Jean Harlow, Rita Hayworth, Ava Gardner, Gina Lollabrigida, Brigitte Bardot — the ultra-glamour girl, the sex symbol, the impossibly beautiful and desirable.

  Marcy McEvoy might not have been, on public view, quite the ultimate of loveliness that the art of cinema was able to present her as, but she had plenty. Plenty, Max decided.

  “Who’s the other man?” he said idly.

  Andreae made a moue.

 
“Bastardo,” Clara muttered in earthy displeasure and taking a sip of her wine as though washing out her mouth.

  Bert scratched his inadequate beard and looked from one of the girls to the other. “That’s my pal, Filippo Giotto,” he said. “One of the best Italian producers …”

  “Perhaps you have never heard of such as Cesare Zavattini and Dino de Laurentiis,” Clara murmured, drily. With nonchalance and as though it was the most natural gesture in the world, she took Max’s hand in her own beneath the table. For a moment, he thought she was going to hold it inconspicuously. Instead, she placed it, palm flat, against her lower belly and held it there.

  Bert was saying, “… in the country and Marcy’s husband.”

  So Marcy McEvoy’s current husband was an Italian producer. Max hadn’t known that. He remembered vaguely that the girl had been going through spouses at a clip since the age of seventeen, but he hadn’t known of this most recent one. But for that matter he didn’t follow the film world beyond taking in the better shows and reading screen confession magazines in dentists’ offices.

  His hand was pleasantly warm. Max wondered if Clara wore anithing beneath her evening dress. All over again, he decided he didn’t want to find out. Not tonight. He felt beat. Possibly it was the proximity of his return to the States and to a job.

  Bert Fix, seeing that Max and Clara had evidently paired off, moved closer to the brunette cinema student and muttered something to her.

  Andreae murmured something in return that involved “… but Jeanette …” Max got a faint impression that the girl wasn’t really particularly fond of the flack, and was being as pleasant as possible, under pressure.

  Bert, impatient, began explaining sotto voce why they didn’t have to worry about Jeanette.

  Max cleared his throat and said, “Bert, we got off the subject. What’s all this expense account spending for publicity got to do with me? All I am is an unemployed toy salesman.”

  He’d got that out just in time. Clara, still as though it was the most natural thing in the world, and able to look directly into his eyes as she did it, had pressed his hand lower still. If she wore anything beneath that dress it must have been made of cobweb. At his words, the pressure on his hand relaxed somewhat and her eyebrows went up.

  Bert Fix pretended moderate surprise. “Salesman? I thought you told me last night you were a free-lance writer, Max old pal.”

  Max said drily, “About the only writing I ever do is to sign my name to traveler’s checks when I need cash, and I won’t be doing that much longer.” Clara’s pressure slackened still more.

  Bert seemed honestly distressed. “Vacation about over, Max? You have to get back to the job?”

  Max shrugged, took another swallow of his nectar Scotch. “No job. I’ll have to go on home and locate one. It’s not important. I won’t have any trouble.”

  “Shucks, pal. You want a job? Come on around to the office tomorrow. We’ll locate one. Give you a chance to take a look at the sets. We’re currently shooting the Bacchanalia scene. Man, that’s gonna have the censors screaming.”

  Max had to laugh at the other’s nonchalance. “Hell, Bert, I’m no actor.”

  The small man poured more wine. “Neither am I, and I work on Horatius at the Bridge harder than anybody in the company.”

  Clara snorted. Her hand, pressing Max’s against her, hadn’t released him, but matters seemed less urgent.

  Bert glared at her. “Hardest job in the world,” he growled. “Entertaining visiting firemen, editors, publishers, writers, journalists, TV and radio comentators. Anybody who might drop one word of publicity into the pot can free-load in Rome at the Horatius trough. And I’ve got to MC it all. You know how many times I was in brothels last week? Eight. I hate whorehouses. I wouldn’t pay for a piece of Cleopatra. Know how many times I had to get swacked last week? Every afternoon and every night.”

  He grunted his displeasure at her and swung his eyes back to Max. “Drop around in the morning. We’re over at Cinecittà. Ask for me at the gate.”

  Chapter Three

  MORE FROM PURE CURIOSITY than anything else, in the morning Max Fielding drove out to Cinecittà about five or six miles from town on the Via Tuscolana which runs south and east from the center of Rome. The term Cinema City was well taken. Max had read somewhere that the king-size establishment was the largest complex of movie sets and administration buildings in the world. It looked it. To get there, he passed the Centro Sperimentale de Cinematografia which Andreae Latini attended and at first confused that place with his destination; the film school was as large as studios he had seen elsewhere.

  Cinecittà itself was monstrous when he finally got to it. Built during that period when the Italian film industry was attempting to sweep the world and take over the domination that had since the beginning been the prerogative of Hollywood, it had now fallen on scavenger days. TV and the competition of national cinema industries in all major countries had hit the Italians at least as hard as the Americans. When even such lands as Japan and India began turning out their assembly line productions at the rate of hundreds a year, the foreign market fell away and with it the top cream of movie profits.

  So Cinecittà, to pay its way, was now depending on leasing its facilities to all comers. Largely, all comers turned out to be American producers making epics abroad to avoid taxes and union pay scales in the United States. Two or three American top stars, a dozen or so administrative personnel from Hollywood, were all you needed. Secondary parts, extras, cameramen, grips and all others could be hired on the spot at wage rates a fraction of California’s.

  The night before had actually ended on the quiet side. After an hour or two of moderate drinking, Bert Fix had disappeared with Andreae, she with her eyes cast down all but demurely, he leering, making it obvious to the whole lounge that they were heading for the nearest available bed.

  Bert had clapped Max on the back, winked broadly, not bothering to hide his expression from an impatient Clara Lucciola, and said, “Have a good time, pal. A real good time. It’s available. Stay as late as you want here — if you can wait — I already told Luigi the tab was on the Horatius account. Don’t even worry about the tip, Maxie boy.”

  Max looked after them, as they walked across the night club floor. Bert showed little indication of drinking, his walk was a swagger behind the pulchritudinous Italian girl, rather than the stumbling gait of the night before. Max wondered aloud, “How does he do it? He drank as much tonight as the rest of us put together.”

  Clara curled the right side of her mouth, to accompany a shrug. “It’s the job, as he says. They must find someone who can do it each night of the week — drink, I mean. And partly it is practice. Bert Fix has little to do except show the journalists a good time. It — how do you say — pays off. How can you pan a man’s product if you were drunk with him the night before, eh?”

  “He was really swacked last night. Tonight he’s carrying it like a Russian commissar.”

  Clara wasn’t interested. She swizzled bubbles from her Spumante. “I understand he had three sets of visitors yesterday — morning, afternoon and evening — and had to drink with all of them. Bert is very nasty when he has had so very much.” She raised highly plucked eyebrows at him. “I am surprised he made a friend while in that condition.”

  Max shrugged. “I gave him a helping hand. We aren’t exactly friends.”

  “Eh, yes. The hoodlums. I didn’t know whether to believe Bert or not, he is a terrible liar.”

  Max said, “You don’t like him, do you?”

  “Nobody likes Bert Fix. Well,” she hedged that statement, “nobody except that poor little Jeanette.”

  Max had been watching the table where Marcy McEvoy and her two companions were sitting. Heat seemed to be generating at that point. But now he looked back at the Italian starlet. “Jeanette? I keep hearing her name.”

  “His mistress. The reverse of the coin, you say? Very sweet and very — ”

  There wa
s a crash from the Marcy McEvoy table and the dynamic, albeit plumpish Italian Bert had pointed out as Filippo Giotto was on his feet glaring homicide. The two Americans sat in their places, looking up at him more wearily than anything else. He spun and tramped out, his face furious.

  Clara was only moderately interested. “Wherever are Marcy and Filippo, there is emotion,” she said. “For an American who looks so cool, so aristocratic, there is nobody so tempestoso as our Marcy. However, she underestimates that Siciliano. One day when he catches her in bed with some musclebound extra and he feels he can get away with it, he will kill her.” Clara didn’t seem to think it would make much difference.

  Looking back at the evening, Max had decided that Clara Lucciola had wound up with the opinion that he was either an unbelievably stupid clod or a homo. Obviously, Bert Fix had brought the two girls along for the evening with the intention of having Max wind up in bed with whichever one appealed to him. Obviously, the girls had come knowing what was expected of them. Obviously, there was something Bert could give them in return for the favor, or at least they thought he could.

  Then why hadn’t Max taken Clara home with him, or to a hotel, or her own apartment? She must have wondered if she was slipping.

  The fact was, he was simply beat. The Italian starlet was one of the most attractive women he had ever met, but when you’re beat, you’re beat. He had no lust remaining within him and he had a well-founded suspicion that with Clara he’d need plenty. He didn’t want to start something he couldn’t finish, and it’d take quite a bit of sex-hungry man to finish Clara Lucciola.

  He’d felt this way before, and more than once. It came upon him at the end of one of his hedonistic, live-it-up splurges, when funds began to run out and the need to return to the States was upon him. At such a time, no woman was desirable, no drink appealing, no food, even French, succulent.

  Now, before Cinecittà, he wondered why he’d come. Bert Fix had suggested that his getting a job here would be a cinch. What kind of a job? And did he really want it? A job he needed if he was going to prolong his European stay — but did he want to prolong it?