taught me that rule, Billy—that we must work with what we have. What did you always tell me, when we were on the road? You’d say, ‘If all we’ve got is a fat lady and a stepladder, I’ll write a play called The Fat Lady and the Stepladder.’”
“I can’t believe you still remember that!” said Billy. “And The Fat Lady and the Stepladder is not such a bad title for a play, if I do say so myself.”
“You do say so yourself. You always do.”
Billy reached over and laid his hand on top of hers. She let him do it.
“Pegsy,” he said, and that one word—the way he said it—seemed to contain decades of love.
“William,” she said, and that one word—the way she said it—also seemed to contain decades of love. But also decades of exasperation.
“Olive’s not too upset that I’m here?” he asked.
She took back her hand.
“Do us a favor, Billy? Don’t pretend to care. I love you, but I hate it when you pretend to care.”
“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I care a lot more than people think I care.”
TWELVE
Within a week of his arrival, Billy Buell had written a script for City of Girls.
A week is an awfully short time in which to write a script, or so I’ve been told, but Billy worked nonstop on it, sitting at our kitchen table in a cloud of pipe smoke, clattering away steadily at his typewriter till the thing was done. Say what you want about Billy Buell, but the man knew how to bang out words. Moreover, he didn’t seem to suffer at all during his creative burst—no crises of confidence, no tearing at the hair. He hardly paused to think, or so it appeared. He just sat there in his fine doeskin trousers, and his bright white cashmere sweater, and his spotless ecru Maxwell’s of London custom-made shoes, calmly typing away as though taking dictation from some invisible and divine source.
“He’s monstrously talented, you know,” Peg said to me, as we sat in the living room one afternoon, making sketches for costumes and listening to Billy’s typing in the kitchen. “He’s the kind of man who makes everything look easy. Hell, he even makes it look easy to make things easy. He produces ideas in torrents. The problem is, you can usually only get Billy to work when his Rolls-Royce needs a new engine, or when he gets back from vacationing in Italy and notices that his bank account is down a few bucks. Monstrously talented, but also monstrously inclined toward laziness. That’s what you get for coming from the lolling-about class, I suppose.”
“So why is he working so hard now?” I asked.
“I’m not able to say,” said Peg. “Could be because he loves Edna. Could be because he loves me. Could be because he needs something from me and we just don’t know what it is yet. Could be because he’s gotten bored out there in California, or even lonely. I’m not going to examine his motives too fiercely. I’m glad he’s doing the job, in any case. But the important thing is not to count on him for anything in the future. By future, I mean ‘tomorrow’ or ‘in the next hour’—because you never know when he’s going to lose interest and vanish. Billy doesn’t like it when you count on him. If I ever want privacy from Billy, I’ll just tell him that I desperately need him for something, and then he’ll run straight out the door and I won’t see him for another four years.”
The script was intact on the day Billy typed the last word. I don’t recall him editing any of it. And his script didn’t just have dialogue and stage directions; it also included lyrics of the songs that Billy wanted Benjamin to write.
And it was a good script—or at least I thought so, based on my limited experience. But even I could understand that Billy’s writing was bright and funny, fast-paced and upbeat. I could see why 20th Century Fox kept him on payroll, and why Louella Parsons had once written in her column: “Everything Billy Buell touches is box office! Even in Europe!”
Billy’s version of City of Girls was still the tale of one Mrs. Elenora Alabaster—a wealthy widow who loses all her money in the crash of 1929 and transforms her mansion into a casino and bordello in order to keep herself afloat.
But Billy added some interesting new characters, as well. Now the play also included