Chapter Eight. Don Juan Fights a Duel

“Is there anything lovelier than wind-blown sage?" Johnny said. "I thought I’d seen lovelier things, but the more hours I have to glim the wind-blown sage, the lovelier it gets.”




As Ed lifted the hood the rain started. "Fan belt," he said.




Then the Rolls was screeching to a halt and a door swung invitingly open.




“And you’ve just got to do something about the blandishments," he said. "My God, not even Errol Flynn could get laid with lines like these."




Johnny was shocked to discover that such a strange sight could be found in California, for they looked just like the hills in Gunga Din, and he’d always thought he’d have to travel to India to see anything so exotic.




Errol regaled them with tales of his wicked ways until they pulled into Lone Pine, a little town at the foot of the mountains.




There wasn't much to it. A hotel. A greasy spoon. A train station. Lots and lots of rocks.




“Man, oh man,” he heard Alan Hale yelling behind him. “Just think how good it’ll be when Johnny gets all the kinks worked out!”




Their room was on the top floor of the hotel.




The only local who took an interest in them was a bearded desert rat who kept winking and asking if it was true what they said about Mary Astor.




Ed tried to look the other way, but every way he looked he found himself eye-to-glass-eye with another of the animal heads that festooned the walls.




Above them, the sky was a leaden sheet, pressing them all to the earth. And all around were those weird hills. "Like standing on the surface of Jupiter,” Ed said.




At the outskirts of the shoot sat Viveca Lindfors, the high-class Swedish import who played the main dame, and one frumpy hair stylist, and that was it for women on the set.




Unless you counted Percy the make-up man, which neither Ed nor Johnny did.




Johnny heard a car engine purring to a stop and the crunch of tires on the sand behind him. He turned to see the giant chrome face of a Lincoln Zephyr rolling up behind him.




Leona was transformed. What had been ice in her eyes melted instantly to dew.




“When’s this minute going to be up?” Johnny said, keeping his eye on Leona, who was checking in with Vin Sherman, the director.




She was finished with Sherman, but she wasn’t exactly free. Errol Flynn was talking to her, and he was giving her the works. Teeth, eyebrows, dimples, the whole ball of wax.




“Say, buddy,” said Johnny to the desk clerk. "What’s the best place to take a girl in Lone Pine? Someplace nice. With milieu.”
“If the lady likes steak," he said, "the Railway Grille usually won’t burn ‘em.”




Johnny hadn’t brought clothes for a date, but he was able to bum a magenta silk tie off Ray Burr.




"My friend Bob Mitchum's shooting a crime picture in Bridgeport," Flynn said. "Apparently that's some sort of town."




"Wardrobe keeps insisting I wear one of those ridiculous collars just because we’re set in old Spain."
"A golilla?" Leona asked with a thrill.




He wished he had somewhere more romantic to bring her, or warmer at least, but the only place he could think of to get any privacy was outside on the empty main street.





The shadow of a scudding cloud hid her face as he finished speaking. Then the moonlight broke through and lit her with a diamond light, and she was glowing. “Oh, Johnny!” she breathed. “That was magnificent!”





"Imagine Henry Fonda delivering those lines!” Leona said. “You have greatness in you, Johnny. You could be the Byron of the masses."





“You have stained the alabaster hand of maidenhood!” the man thundered, and he tossed one of the swords to Flynn.





Johnny parked right in front of the hospital. That was one nice thing about the boondocks. Lots of parking.




“I had a bet going with the desk clerk at the hotel,” Johnny said. “Whether you or the Nash would be fixed first. I guess stab wounds take longer than a fan belt.”