"A what?"
"Animal-horror man. That's what the studio boss called me. In fact, he said I was pretty young to be an animal-horror man, the first time we met."
She drank some of her brandy and then did a disturbing thing.
She took her pale, wavy hair in both hands and bent it back up over her head so that the curly ends fell everywhere around her face. When she did it, she looked at me in a certain way. We were both supposed to understand the gesture perfectly—and not to notice it at all. Wild horses weren't supposed to be able to drag out of us an admission of what it meant.
"Those were not only the beryllium days, but the days of animal pictures and horror pictures. Frank Buck and Osa Johnson and Tarzan. Frankenstein. Paramount was trying to combine the grisliest features of all of them. They were making Wells's Island of Dr. Moreau—for instance. And I was doing some of the writing. Hence I was an animal-horror man—and young for it, too. Precociously animalistic and horrible. Remember? Cobras fought mongooses? Tigers fought pythons and other unnatural antagonists? Zebus fought gnus? My producer wanted to throw a half dozen lions into a school of big sharks—and get some red-hot close shots of the fights that would then ensue. That—I stopped. Even we ogres draw the line somewhere—and I know a good deal about sharks. The lions, if you once got the sharks hitting them, would not be fighting, as my producer imagined, but dying by mouthfuls."
"How awful!"
"Pasadena, it was," I reminded her. "Another conference at that big house amongst the thorns. I know the place like a book. I know the spirit of the place. You lived there?"
She stared at the room, empty now of all but waiters and two or three pairs of murmuring people. Full, however, of Musak. Light operettas.
"Somehow it's easier to talk to strangers," she said, "than to people you've known all your life."
"Of course!" I replied in sober agreement—although I thought the idea was rubbish.