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Issue Number 6
Dinner with Dick Salamander?, by Barry Boone
A firm, dry handshake and steady grey-blue eyes. That's what I remember most about my first meeting with one of the Marches most recognized men. I was enjoying the bougainvillea scent in the air at the exclusive golf course on Regina down when I heard the elegant voice that we all imitate in front of the mirror when we struggle into a tuxedo. Much to my amazement interviewing Dirk Savage really was just like a favorite old shirt, comfortable and at ease from the moment you start. In no time at all I was slowly draining a chilled carafe of vodka martinis as we watched the sun drop into an azure sea. Dirk Savage smiled and asked if I needed the quick interview for a deadline or would I like to take a while and work over a dinner of lobster Emil Sanvorchi was making from the eight pound crustacean Dirk had caught off the club's beach that morning. The things a writer has to go through for his craft.
Dirk started the conversation as Regina Prime fell under the horizon. "I'm just the luckiest guy in the Marches," he said as we slipped into the dance of interviewer and star.
Nearly everyone knows the basic story of Dirk's rise to stardom. The last child of a Navy family, his father was killed in action when Dirk was just four years old. What you never hear about is how poor the family was after the death of Commander Savage. "We were so happy as children on Traekener," Dirk remembered, "horses, fishing and hunting were our life. The big garden my mother, Celeste, grew was so full of color it was like tending a painting. It wasn't until I was in the Navy that I realized how hard my mother had worked to keep us fed and clothed."
Dirk seemed destined for the Navy. "I can't remember wanting to do anything else" Dirk remembers. On his seventeenth birthday he was eager to be off to the stars, but the treasured hours afield had kept Dirk from getting the grades needed for the Naval Academy. "So I figured I'd just join, go to OCS and be on the border all the quicker. All I had to do was the impossible, convince my mother to let her youngest sign on a year early."
How he did it showed the Savage style. "I forged my mother's signature and lied about how close I was to eighteen anyway. They signed me and I presented it to her as a fait accompli. She accepted I would be happier following my dream. She hid her tears and sent me off to the boot bus with an enormous ham sandwich and enough cookies for a dozen teenaged boys. I was the most popular recruit for a couple of days"
Dirk loved the Navy and threw himself into the endeavor with such enthusiasm that he did get selected for OCS. By the time he was twenty one he was a Lieutenant (J.G.) and commanding a destroyer escort. "My father was the true Navy officer," Dirk maintains, "I just kept the chair warm on the Smitty for a great crew." I found out later that while warming that chair, Dirk Savage earned a Purple Heart, a MCUF and the following mention in dispatches from then Rear Admiral Gray:
"Mr. Savage and his crew fought the Robert Smith with élan."
If there had been a war brewing perhaps I'd be interviewing Captain Savage, but when peace came a young Dirk Savage was assigned to Rhylanor for shore duty while the Navy drew down. The peacetime naval life chaffed Dirk's "live in the moment" approach. "I wanted a spacing assignment, a challenge or a party," Dirk says with a rueful shake of his head. "Mostly I found too many parties." Dirk was separated from the service he had dreamed of after just four years.
The wind had picked up in the last moments of our conversation. "The doctor wind the locals call it," Dirk said with a wry grin, "because it blows all the bad humors away. Just when my strumpet muse comes into the story." He laughed unselfconsciously. "Of all the writers I've been lucky enough to know, fate is the best."
How much of the legend is true I asked hesitantly over the last of the lobster. Dirk shook his head with a merry smile. "You're going to let daylight in upon the magic with this one Barry. Lets get comfortable."
Comfort with Dirk Savage takes on a sybaritic edge made all the more decadent with the ease in which he draws you into the exotic world of the star. In moments I had a cup of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee and a Vegan cigar in my hands and the biggest star in a hundred parsecs was showing me the proper way to indulge both to wring the most pleasure out of them. We returned to the question so seamlessly I missed the moment I returned to work.
"I suppose the legend may even be true," Dirk said with a chuckle, "but not all the truth." His description of those years was as mesmerizing as all spacing tales, for after the Navy Dirk shipped throughout the Spinward Marches on a series of small traders. "Whatever was going someplace new was the one I signed on with until I came to LaBelle."
It was on LaBelle Dirk met a young actress named Jade Moran. "She was beautiful and struggling with a mountain of luggage," Dirk said wistfully. "She asked me for help getting it all to the TriD site. The ship left without me next day. I needed a job and they asked if I could stay on a horse."
Not only could the young pilot stay on his horse but he could keep them calm and get them to stay in frame for the shot. "When they asked me to fall off I did it as carefully as I could. Alberto looked at me and said 'Dramatically fall off the horse!'" Dirk shrugged and smiled "The next take I hit the ground, scooped up a handful of dust in both hands and tossed it up as I rolled with the fall. Alberto ran out sure I had broken my neck. I looked up and asked if he was body doubling for Jade. It brought the crew down for a moment and we all went back to our jobs. Then Marcus Huntingdon decided Bernie Leibowitz and Alberto Carrotte weren't ever going to be up to his level of movie making and didn't come back after lunch that day."
Dirk Savage looked his name as he mentioned the long immortalized day he stepped into stardom. "He walked away after giving his word to his producer," Dirk snarled softly. "He said later his character wasn't developed properly. I'm a TriD guy. We take the money, say the lines and give the TriD audience what they want to see". The driving professionalism and fierce loyalty to the people that he works with, that same drive that rankles so many Method actors uncomfortable around this bootstrapped star, flared through in the warm, scented night.
After a moment Dirk shrugged and leaned back into the chair, draining his martini. "Well, I have to admit that Marcus did me the favor of a lifetime. Sands of San Marco made Alberto enough money to buy the rights to a book by a then little known author and landed me the role of Rick in Three Moons Over Mora."
I knew I had to ask the question, I'm a professional and without questions this would just be a piece of fluff, publicity instead of journalism. "What about Jade Moran?" I asked levelly. Dirk Savage stood up, his face unreadable in the shadows. I saw his hand move swiftly to the inside of his coat. My first reflex made him pause and slowly remove his wallet. A picture sailed across the table to stop just in front of me. Jade Moran looked radiant, a young Dirk smiled proudly and Jessica Savage, caught in mid yawn, was every new child in every father's wallet.
"My marriage to Jade was a mistake," Dirk said softly, "and the best thing I've ever done. All the rest of it, Dr. X, Spider Island, Moons: even the real stuff, the charities and the people I help make a little happier pale next to my little girl."
Then I knew I had seen the man behind the glamour and the publicity shills. Here in the night with the sounds of the sea and the scent of bougainvillea in the air I had truly seen Dirk Savage, the man. He isn't Dick Salamander, he's Dirk Savage, and that is more than I could hope to capture in words.