Girl of My Dreams by Peter Davis

Author:Peter Davis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Distribution

17

Mossy Swims

His first day out of the hospital, Mossy, ever wily, invited Nils Maynard to his home for a swim after the day’s shooting was over. He still wanted Nils to use Pammy in the picture they had argued about. Nils didn’t want to swim, didn’t want to go up Coldwater Canyon to the Zangwill manse, didn’t want to discuss the Pammy issue any more. But he also didn’t want to be unfriendly to the presumably convalescent Mossy. He had never been at Mossy’s home as the only guest. The lavish garden itself intimidated Nils, a feast of nature, overdone, aspiring to encompass the entire plant kingdom, defying compliment. Mossy greeted Nils at the door and shrugged off solicitude about his health. “Damned painful at first,” he said, “but in the end it was all precautionary.”

Mossy told Nils he thought the script for his next picture needed tightening and he wanted the two of them to agree on changes before bringing back the screenwriter. Relieved not to be talking about Pammy, who he still firmly thought would be miscast in his film, Nils said sure. Maybe he wouldn’t have to swim and could simply leave when they finished a brief talk about the screenplay. He was still suspicious.

They agreed to remove a talky scene between the husband and an old doctor who treats what he refers to as the wife’s vapors. A description of the wife’s behavior was far less dramatic than the behavior itself. Mossy said, “As Shakespeare put it, show don’t tell.” “By all means,” Nils agreed. They cut an ugly scene where the wife coldly sends her stepdaughter off to boarding school. The scene is a good one, Nils thought, but he’s still trying to make the wife more palatable so I’ll agree to take Millevoix, who’s exactly wrong for this. All right, for the sake of getting out of here. He told Mossy cutting the scene was fine, expecting the boss to bring up Pammy again.

“Fine yourself,” said Mossy. “Let’s refresh ourselves with a dip.”

“Are you sure the doctors want you to exert yourself this much?” Nils asked.

“Absolutely. Exercise is the best thing for what ailed me.”

Nils remembered he hadn’t brought a bathing suit. Freudian slip, he told himself.

“Doesn’t matter,” Mossy said. “Gable left his a couple of Sundays ago.”

As he related this to Tutor Beedleman and me later, Nils put on Clark Gable’s suit, a very slight piece of material, and prepared to swim. Mossy emerged from the bathhouse in a bright zebra-striped suit. This was silly, embarrassing. Nils felt exposed in Gable’s fig-leaf suit, but they plunged in. The water was bracing and Nils enjoyed himself at first. He swam up and down, a little breaststroke, a little Australian crawl. Nils had always been an excellent swimmer, swimming being one of the few vigorous activities that his mother had allowed her hemophiliac son. Perhaps, Nils thought, he could impress the boss with his physical prowess, so he swam faster and faster. But he was wondering why Gable had been there.

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