Why Not You and I?

OLD LOVES

He had loved her for twenty years, and today he would meet her for the first time. Her name was Elisabeth Kent, but to him she would always be Stacey Steele.

Alex Webley had been an undergraduate in the mid-1960s when The Agency premiered on Saturday night television. This had been at the height of the fad for spy shows — James Bond and imitations beyond counting, then countermoves toward either extreme of realism or parody. Upon such a full sea The Agency almost certainly would have sunk unnoticed, had it not been for the series two stars — or more particularly, had it not been for Elisabeth Kent.

In the role of Stacey Steele she played the delightfully eccentric— “kooky” was the expression of the times — partner of secret agent Harrison Dane, portrayed by actor Garrett Channing — an aging matinee idol, to use the expression of an earlier time. The two were employed by an enigmatic organization referred to simply as The Agency, which dispatched Dane and Miss Steele off upon dangerous assignments throughout the world. Again, nothing in the formula to distinguish The Agency from the rest of the pack — except for the charisma of its co-stars and for a certain stylish audacity to its scripts that became more outrageous as the series progressed.

Initially it was to have been a straight secret agent series: strong male lead assisted by curvaceous ingenue whose scatterbrained exploits would provide at least one good capture and rescue per episode. The role of Harrison Dane went to Garrett Channing — a fortuitous piece of contrary-to-type casting of an actor best remembered as the suave villain or debonair hero of various forgettable 1950s programmers. Channing had once been labeled “the poor man’s James Mason,” and perhaps the casting director had recalled that James Mason had been an early choice to portray James Bond. The son of a Bloomsbury greengrocer, Channing’s Hollywood-nurtured sophistication and charm seemed ideal for the role of American super-spy, Harrison Dane.

Then, through a casting miracle that could only have been through chance and not genius, the role of Stacey Steele went to Elisabeth Kent. Miss Kent was a tall, leggy dancer whose acting experience consisted of several on-and-off-Broadway plays and a brief role in the most recent James Bond film. Playboy, as was its custom, ran a pictorial feature on the lovelies of the latest Bond film and devoted two full pages to the blonde Miss Kent — revealing rather more of her than was permitted in the movies of the day. It brought her to the attention of the casting director, and Elisabeth Kent became Stacey Steele.

Became Stacey Steele, almost literally.

Later they would say that the role destroyed Elisabeth Kent. Her career dwindled miserably afterward. Some critics suggested that Miss Kent had been blackballed by the industry after her unexpected departure from the series resulted in The Agency’s plummeting in the ratings and merciful cancellation after a partial season with a forgettable DD-cup Malibu blonde stuffed into the role of female lead. The consensus, however, pointed out that after her role in The Agency it was Stacey Steele who was in demand, and not Elisabeth Kent. Once the fad for secret agent films passed, there were no more roles for Stacy Steele. Nor for Elisabeth Kent. A situation-comedy series flopped after three episodes. Two films with her in straight dramatic roles were noteworthy bombs, and a third was never released. Even if Elisabeth Kent succeeded in convincing some producer or director that she was not Stacey Steele, her public remained adamant.

Her only film appearance within the past decade had been as the villainess in a Hong Kong chop-fooey opus, Tiger Fists Against the Dragon. Perhaps it lost some little in translation.

Inevitably, The Agency attracted a dedicated fan following, and Stacy Steele became a cult figure. The same was true to a lesser extent for Garrett Channing, although that actor’s death not long after the series’ cancellation spared him both the benefits and the hazards of such a status. The note he left upon his desk: “Goodbye, World — I can no longer accept your tedium” was considered an enviable exit line.

The Agency premiered in the mid-1960s, just catching the crest of the Carnaby Street mod-look craze. Harrison Dane, suave superspy and mature man of the world though he was, was decidedly hip to today’s swinging beat, and the promos boldly characterized him as a “mod James Bond.” No business suits and narrow ties for Harrison Dane: “We want to take the stuffiness out of secret agenting,” to quote one producer. As the sophisticated counterpart to the irrepressible Miss Steele, Dane saved the day once a week attired in various outfits consisting of bell-bottom trousers, paisley shirts, Nehru jackets, and lots of beads and badges. If one critic described Harrison Dane as “a middle-aged Beatle,” the public applauded this “anti-establishment super-spy.”

No such criticism touched the image of Stacey Steele. Stacey Steele was the American viewing public’s ideal of the Swinging London Bird-her long-legged physique perfectly suited to vinyl mini-dresses and thigh-high boots. Each episode became a showcase for her daring fashions — briefest of miniskirts, hip-hugging leather bell-bottoms, see-through (as much as the censors would permit) blouses, cut-out dresses, patent boots, psychedelic jewelry, groovy hats, all that was marvy, fab and gear. There was talk of opening a franchise of Stacey Steele Boutiques, and Miss Steele became a featured model in various popular magazines seeking to portray the latest fashions for the Liberated Lady of the Sixties. By this time Elisabeth Kent’s carefully modulated BBC accent would never betray her Long Island birthright to the unstudied ear.

Stacey Steele was instant pin-up material, and stills of the miniskirted secret agent covered many a dorm wall beside blowups of Bogie and black-light posters. Later detractors argued that The Agency would never have lasted its first season without Stacey Steeles legs, and that the series was little more than an American version of one of the imported British spy shows. Fans rebutted such charges with the assertion that it had all started with James Bond anyway, and The Agency proved that the Americans could do it best. Pin-up photos of Stacey Steele continue to sell well twenty years after.

While The Agency may have been plainly derivative of a popular British series, American viewers made it their favorite show against formidable prime-time competition from the other two networks. For three glorious seasons The Agency ruled Saturday nights. Then, Elisabeth Kent’s sudden departure from the series: catastrophe, mediocrity, cancellation. But not oblivion. The series passed into syndication and thus into the twilight zone of odd-hour reruns on local channels and independent networks. Old fans remembered, new fans were born. The Agency developed a cult following, and Stacey Steele became its goddess.

In that sense, among its priesthood was Alex Webley. He had begun his worship two decades ago in the TV lounge of a college dorm, amidst the incense of spilled beer and tobacco smoke and an inspired choir of whistles and guffaws. The first night he watched The Agency Webley had been blowing some tangerine with an old high school buddy who had brought a little down from Antioch. Webley didn’t think he’d gotten off, but when the miniskirted Miss Steele used dazzling karate chops to dispatch two baddies, he knew he was having a religious experience. After that, he watched The Agency every Saturday night, without fail. It would have put a crimp in his dating if Webley had been one who dated. His greatest moment in college was the night when he stood off two drunken jocks, either of whom could have folded Webley in half, who wanted to switch channels from The Agency to watch a basketball game. They might have stuffed Webley into a wastebasket had not other Agency fans added their voices to his protest. Thus did Alex Webley learn the power of fans united.

It was a power he experienced again with news of Elisabeth Kent’s departure from the series, and later when The Agency was cancelled. Webley was one of the thousands of fans who wrote to the network demanding that Stacey Steele be brought back to the show (never mind how). With the show’s cancellation, Webley helped circulate a petition that The Agency be continued, with or without Stacey Steele. The producers were impressed by such show of support, but the network pointed out that 10,000 signatures from the lunatic fringe do not cause a flicker on the Nielsen ratings. Without Stacey Steele, The Agency was out of business, and that was that. Besides, the fad for overdone spy shows was over and done.

Alex Webley kept a file of clippings and stills, promotional items, comic books and paperbacks, anything at all pertaining to The Agency and to the great love of his life, Elisabeth Kent. From the beginning there were fanzines — crudely printed amateur publications devoted to The Agency—and one or two unofficial fan clubs. Webley joined and subscribed to them all. Undergraduate enthusiasms developed into a lifelong hobby. Corresponding with other diehard fans and collecting Agency memorabilia became his preoccupying outside interest in the course of taking a doctorate in neurobiology. He was spared from Viet Nam by high blood pressure, and from any long-term romantic involvement by a highly introverted nature. Following his doctorate, Webley landed a research position at one of the pharmaceutical laboratories, where he performed his duties efficiently and maintained an attitude of polite aloofness toward his coworkers. Someone there dubbed him “the Invisible Man,” but there was no malice to the mot juste.

At his condo, the door to the spare bedroom bore a brass-on-walnut plaque that read HQ. Webley had made it himself. Inside were filing cabinets, bookshelves, and his desk. The walls were papered with posters and stills, most of them photos of Stacey Steele. A glass-fronted cabinet held videocassettes of all The Agency episodes, painstakingly acquired through trades with other fans. The day he completed the set, Webley drank most of a bottle of Glenfiddich — Dane and Miss Steele’s favorite potation-and afterward became quite ill.

By now Webley’s enthusiasm had expanded to all of the spy shows and films of the period, but old loves die hard, and The Agency remained his chief interest. Webley was editor/publisher of Special Assignment, a quarterly amateur magazine devoted to the spy craze of the ’60s. Special Assignment was more than a cut above the mimeographed fanzines that Webley had first begun to collect; his magazine was computer-typeset and boasted slick paper and color covers. By its tenth issue, Special Assignment had a circulation of several thousand, with distribution through specialty bookshops here and abroad. It was a hobby project that took up all ofWebley’s free time and much of his living space, and Webley was content.

Almost content. Special Assignment carried photographs and articles on every aspect of the old spy shows, along with interviews of many of the actors and actresses. Webley, of course, devoted a good many pages each issue to The Agency and to Stacey Steele — but to his chagrin he was unable to obtain an interview with Elisabeth Kent. Since her one disastrous comeback attempt, Miss Kent preferred the life of a recluse. There was some dignity to be salvaged in anonymity. Miss Kent did not grant interviews, she did not make public appearances, she did not answer fan mail. After ten years the world forgot Elisabeth Kent, but her fans still remembered Stacey Steele.

Webley had several years prior managed to secure Elisabeth Kent’s address — no mean accomplishment in itself — but his rather gushing fan letters had not elicited any sort of reply. Not easily daunted, Webley faithfully sent Miss Kent each new issue of Special Assignment (personally inscribed to her), and with each issue he included a long letter of praise for her deathless characterization of Stacey Steele, along with a plea to be granted an interview. Webley never gave up hope, despite Miss Kent’s unbroken silence.

When he at last did receive a letter from Miss Kent graciously granting him the long-sought interview, Webley knew that life is just and that the faithful shall be rewarded.

He caught one of those red-eye-special flights out to Los Angeles, but was too excited to catch any sleep on the way. Instead he reread a well-worn paperback novelization of one of his favorite Agency episodes, The Chained Lightning Caper, and mentally reviewed the questions he would ask Miss Kent still not quite able to believe that he would be talking with her in another few hours.

Webley checked into a Thrifti-Family Motel near the airport, unpacked, tried without success to sleep, got up, showered and shaved. The economy flight he had taken hadn’t served a meal, but then it had been all Webley could manage just to finish his complimentary soft beverage. The three-hour time change left his system rather disordered in any event, so that he wasn’t certain whether he actually should feel tired or hungry were it not for his anxiousness over the coming interview. He pulled out his notes and looked over them again, managing to catch a fitful nap just before dawn. At daylight he made himself eat a dismal breakfast in the motel restaurant, then returned to his room to shave again and to put on the clothes he had brought along for the interview.

It was the best of Webley’s several Harrison Dane costumes, carefully salvaged from various Thrift Shops and yard sales. Webley maintained a wardrobe of vintage mod clothing, and he had twice won prizes at convention masquerades.The pointed-toe Italian boots were original to the period — a lovingly maintained treasure discovered ten years before at Goodwill Industries. The suede bell-bottoms were custom-made by an aging hippie at an aging leather crafts shop that still had a few psychedelic posters tacked to its walls. Webley tried them on at least once a month and adjusted his diet according to snugness of fit. The jacket, a sort of lavender thing that lacked collar or lapels, was found at a vintage clothing store and altered to his measurements. The paisley shirt, mostly purples and greens, had been discovered at a yard sale, and the beads and medallions had come from here and there.

Webley was particularly proud of his Dane Cane, which he himself had constructed after the secret agent’s famous weapon. It appeared to be a normal walking stick, but it contained Dane’s arsenal of secret weapons and paraphernalia including a radio transmitter, recording device, tear gas, and laser. Harrison Dane was never without his marvelous cane, and good thing, too. Alex Webley had caused rather a stir at the airport check-in, before airline officials finally permitted him to transport his Dane Cane via baggage.

Webley still clung to the modified Beatles haircut that Harrison Dane affected. He combed it now carefully and he studied his reflection in the room’s ripply mirror. The very image of Harrison Dane. Stacey Steele Miss Kent — would no doubt be impressed by the pains he had taken. It would have been great to drive out in a Shelby Cobra like Dane’s, but instead he called for a cab.

Not a Beverly Hills address, Webley sadly noted, as the taxi drove him to one of those innumerable canyon neighborhoods tottering on steep hillsides and the brink of shabbiness. Her house was small and featureless, a little box propped up on the hillside beside a jagged row of others like it — distinguishable one from another chiefly by the degree of seediness and the cars parked in front. Some cheap development from the 1950s, Webley judged, and another ten years likely would see the ones still standing bought up and the land used for some cheap condo development. He felt increasingly sad about it all; he had been prepared to announce his arrival to some uniformed guard at the subdivision’s entrance gate.

Well, if it were within his power to do so, Webley intended to bring to bear the might and majesty of Special Assignment to pressure these stupid producers into casting Elisabeth Kent in new and important roles. That made this interview more important than ever to Webley — and to Miss Kent.

He paid off the cab — tipping generously, as Harrison Dane would have done. This was perhaps fortuitous, as the driver shouted after him that he had forgotten his attache case. Webley wondered how Dane would have handled such an embarrassing lapse — of course, Dane would never have committed such a blunder. Webley’s case — also modelled after Dane’s secret agent attache case, although Webley’s lacked the built-in machine gun — contained a bottle of Glenfiddich, his notes, cassette recorder, and camera. It was essential that he obtained some photographs of Miss Kent at home: since her appearance in the unfortunate Tiger Fists film, current photos of Elisabeth Kent were not made available. Webley had heard vicious rumors that the actress had lost her looks, but he put these down to typical show biz back-stabbing, and he prayed it wasn’t so.

He rang the doorbell, using the tip of his cane, just as Dane always did, and waited — posing jauntily against his cane, just as Dane always did. The seconds dragged on eternally, and there was no response. He rang again, and waited. Webley looked for a car in the driveway; saw none, but the carport was closed. He rang a third time.

This time the door opened.

And Alex Webley knew his worship had not been in vain.

“Hullo, Dane,” she said. “I’ve been expecting you.”

“How very good to see you, Miss Steele,” said Webley. “I hope I haven’t kept you waiting.”

And she was Stacey Steele. Just like in The Agency. And Webley felt a thrill at knowing she had dressed the part just for the interview — just for him.

The Hollywood gossip had been all lies, because she hardly looked a day older — although part of that was no doubt due to her appearance today as Stacey Steele. It was perfect. It was all there, as it should be: the thigh-length boots of black patent leather, the red leather minidress with LOVE emblazoned across the breastline (the center of the O was cut out, revealing a daring glimpse of braless cleavage), the blonde bangs and ironed-straight Mary Travers hair, the beads and bells. Time had rolled back, and she was Stacey Steele.

“Come on in, luv,” Miss Steele invited, in her so-familiar throaty purr.

Aerobics really can do wonders, Webley thought as he followed her into her living room. Twenty years may have gone by, but if The Agency were to be revived today, Miss Kent could step right into her old role as the mod madcap Miss Steele. Exercise and diet, probably — he must find some discreet way of asking her how she kept her youthful figure.

The living room was a close replica of Stacey Steele’s swinging London flat, enough so that Webley guessed she had removed much of the set from the Hollywood soundstage where the series was actually shot. He sat down, not without difficulty, on the inflatable day-glo orange chair — Dane’s favorite — and opened his attache case.

“I brought along a little libation,” he said, presenting her with the Glenfiddich.

Miss Steele gladly accepted the dark-green triangular bottle. “Ah, luv! You always remember, don’t you!”

She quickly poured a generous level of the pale amber whisky into a pair of stemmed glasses and offered one to Webley. Webley wanted to protest that it was too early in the day for him to tackle straight Scotch, but he decided he’d rather die than break the spell of this moment.

Instead, he said: “Cheers.” And drank.

The whisky went down his throat smoothly and soared straight to his head. Webley blinked and set down his glass in order to paw through the contents of his case. Miss Steele had recharged his glass before he could protest, but already Webley was thinking how perfect this all was. This would be one to tell to those scoffers who had advised him against wearing his Harrison Dane costume to the interview.

“Here’s a copy of our latest issue…” Webley hesitated only slightly “…Miss Steele.”

She took the magazine from him. The cover was a still of Stacey Steele karate-chopping a heavy in a pink foil spacesuit. “Why, that’s me! How groovy!”

“Yes. From ‘The Mod Martian Caper,’ of course. And naturally you’ll be featured on our next cover, along with the interview and all.” The our was an editorial plural, inasmuch as Webley was the entire staff of Special Assignment.

“Fab!” said Miss Steele, paging through the magazine in search of more photos of herself.

Webley risked another sip of Glenfiddich while he glanced around the room. However the house might appear from the outside, inside Miss Kent had lovingly maintained the ambiance of The Agency. The black lights and pop-art posters, the psychedelic color schemes, the beaded curtains, the oriental rugs. Indian music was playing, and strewn beside the vintage KLH stereo Webley recognized early albums from the Beatles and the Stones, from the Who and the Yardbirds, from Ultimate Spinach and Thirteenth Floor Elevator. He drew in a deep breath; yes, that was incense burning on the mantelpiece — cinnamon, Miss Steele’s favorite.

“That’s the platinum bird you used in The Malted Falcon Caper,’ isn’t it?”

Miss Steele touched the silver falcon statuette Webley had spotted. “The very bird. Not really made of platinum, sorry to report.”

“And that must be the chastity belt they locked you into in The Medieval Mistress Caper.” Again Webley pointed.

“One and the same. And not very comfy on a cold day, I assure you.”

Webley decided he was about to sound gushy, so he finished his second whisky. It didn’t help collect his thoughts, but it did restore a little calmness. He decided not to argue when Miss Steele refreshed their drinks. His fingers itched for his camera, but his hands were trembling too much.

“You seem to have kept quite a few props from The Agencyhe suggested. “Isn’t that the steel mask they put over your head in The Silent Cyborg Caper’? Not very comfortable either, I should imagine.”

“At times I did find my part a trifle confining,” Miss Steele admitted. “All those captures by the villains.”

“With Harrison Dane always there in the nick of time,” Webley said, raising his glass to her. If Miss Steele was in no hurry to get through the interview, then neither was he.

“It wasn’t all that much fun waiting to be rescued every time,” Miss Steele confided. “Tied out in the hot sun across a railroad track, or stretched out on a rack in a moldy old dungeon.”

“‘The Uncivil Engineer Caper,’” Webley remembered, “and The Dungeon To Let Caper.’”

“Or being strapped to a log in a sawmill.”

“The Silver Scream Caper.’”

“I was brushing sawdust out of my hair for a week.”

“And in ‘The Missing Mermaid Caper’ they handcuffed you to an anchor and tossed you overboard.”

“Yes, and I still have my rubber fishtail from that one.”

“Here?”

“Certainly. I’ve held on to a museum’s worth of costumes and props. Would you like to see the lot of it?”

“Would I ever!” Webley prayed he had brought enough film. “Then I’ll just give us a refill.”

“I really think I’ve had enough just now,” Webley begged.

“Why, Dane! I never knew you to say no.”

“But one more to top things off,” agreed Webley, unable to tarnish the image of Harrison Dane.

Miss Steele poured. “Most of it’s kept downstairs.”

“After all, Miss Steele, this is a special occasion.” Webley drank. He had a little difficulty with the stairs — he vaguely felt he was floating downward, and the Dane Cane kept tripping him— but he made it to the lower level without disgracing himself. Once there, all he could manage was a breathless: “Out of sight!”

Presumably the downstairs had been designed as a sort of large family room, complete with fireplace, cozy chairs, and at one time probably a ping pong table or such. Miss Kent had refurnished the room with enough props and sets to reshoot the entire series. Webley could only stand and stare. It was as if an entire file of Agency stills had been scattered about and transformed into three-dimensional reality.

There was the stake the natives had tied her to in “The No Atoll At All Caper,” and there was the man-eating plant that had menaced her in “The Venusian Vegetarian Caper.” In one corner stood — surely a replica — Stacey Steele’s marvelous VW Beetle, sporting its wild psychedelic paint scheme and harboring a Porsche engine and drivetrain. There was the E.V.O.L. interrogation chair from “The Earth’s End Caper,” and behind it one of the murderous robots from “The Angry Android Caper.” Harrison Dane’s circular bed, complete with television, stereo, bar, machine guns, and countless other built-in devices, was crowded beside the very same torture rack from “The Dungeon To Let Caper.” Cataloging just the major pieces would be an hour’s work, even for Webley, and a full inventory of all the memorabilia would take at least a couple days.

“Impressed, luv?”

Webley closed his mouth. “It’s like the entire Agency series come to life in one house,” he finally said.

“Do browse about all you like, luv.”

Webley stumbled across the room, trying not to touch any of the sacred relics, scarcely able to concentrate upon any one object for longer than its moment of recognition. It was all too overpowering an assault upon his sensory mechanisms.

“A toast to us, luv.”

Webley didn’t remember whether Miss Steele had brought along their glasses or poured fresh drinks from Harrison Dane’s art nouveau bar, shoved against one wall next to the mind transfer machine from “The Wild, Wild Bunch Caper.” He gulped his drink without thinking and moments later regretted it.

“I think I’d like to sit down for a minute,” Webley apologized.

“Drugged drinks!” Miss Steele said brightly. “Just like in The Earth’s End Caper.’ Quick, Dane! Sit down here!”

Webley collapsed into the interrogation chair as directed — it was closest, and he was about to make a scene if he didn’t recover his balance. Automatic cuffs instantly secured his arms, legs, and body to the chair.

“Only in The Earth’s End Caper,”’ said Miss Steele, “I was the one they drugged and fastened into this chair. There to be horribly tortured, unless Harrison Dane came to the rescue.”

Webley turned his head as much as the neck restraints would permit. Miss Steele was laying out an assortment of scalpels and less obvious instruments, recognized by Webley as props from the episode.

“Groovy,” he managed to say.

Miss Steele was assembling some sort of dental drill. “I was always the victim.” She smiled at him with that delightful madcap smile. “I was always the one being captured, humiliated, helplessly awaiting your last-minute mock heroics.”

“Well, not all the time,” Webley protested, going along with the joke. He hoped he wasn’t going to be ill.

“Are these clamps very tight?”

“Yes. Very. The prop seems in perfect working order. I think I really ought to stretch out for a while. Most embarrassing, but I’m afraid that drinking this early…”

“It wasn’t enough that you seduced me and insisted on the abortion for the sake of our careers. It was your egotistical jealousy that finally destroyed me. You couldn’t stand the fact that Stacey Steele was the real star of The Agency, and not Harrison Dane. So you pulled strings until you got me written out of the series. Then you did your best to ruin my career afterward.”

“I don’t feel very good,” Webley muttered. “I think I might be getting sick.”

“Hoping for a last-second rescue?” Stacey Steele selected a scalpel from the tray, and bent over him. Webley had a breathtaking glimpse through the cut-out of LOVE, and then the blade touched his eye.

The police were already there by the time Elisabeth Kent got home. Neighbors’ dogs were barking at something in the brush below her house; some kids went to see what they were after, and then the police were called.

“Did you know the man, Miss Kent?”

Miss Kent nodded her double chins. She was concentrating on stocking her liquor cabinet with the case of generic gin she’d gone out to buy with the advance check Webley had mailed her. She’d planned on fortifying herself for the interview that might mean her comeback, but her aging Nova had refused to start in the parking lot, and the road call had eaten up the remainder of the check that she’d hoped would go toward overdue rent for the one-storey frame dump. She sat down heavily on the best chair of her sparsely furnished living room.

“He was some fan from back east,” she told the investigating officer. “Wanted to interview me for some fan magazine. I’ve got his letter here somewhere. I used to be in films a few years back — maybe you remember.”

“We’ll need to get in touch with next of kin,” the detective said. “Already found the cabbie who let him out here while you were off getting towed.” He was wondering if he had ever seen her in anything. “At a guess, he waited around on your deck, probably leaned against the railing — got a little dizzy, and went over. Might have had a heart attack or something.”

Elisabeth Kent was looking at the empty Glenfiddich bottle and the two glasses.

“Damn you, Stacey Steele,” she whispered. “Goddamn you.”