Death Was in the Picture (15 page)

“A club?”

“No. The Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, like I tol’ you.” He looked at me closely then, like he thought I might be a little slow. I got up and retrieved a bottle of scotch, filled his glass, banked on the fact that he wouldn’t remember I was drinking gin and made a show of filling mine, then sat back down.

“So that worked out then? That fixed everyone’s concerns?”

“Not even close. See, we made some rules about what could and couldn’t be showed. But no one listened. What do you do when no one listens?”

“Um,” I fumbled, “say it louder?”

“That’s kinda what we did, I guess. But they still don’t listen.”

“Who? Who doesn’t listen?”

“The studios. Yeah, they pay their dues. They come to meetings. But then they just send whatever pictures they want out into the world like nobody’s business.” He sounded injured as he said this last. He said it as though it rankled.

“So then what do you do?”

“Well, that’s it, ain’t it? Something had to be done.” He said this with the air of someone set to justify himself. Sometimes that’s the only way that we survive all that needs to be gotten through: by believing whatever actions we performed were right and justified and the only way to proceed. “‘Cause now the League is at us about it and our hands? They’re tied!”

“The League?”

“… of Decency. Lookit, I don’t know why I’m talking to you like this. If it’s boring you so much you don’t wanna hear it, just say and I’ll shut up.”

“No, no. That’s not it. It’s just… well, it’s complicated, isn’t it? It’s an easy story for you to follow. You know all the ups and downs. This is the first time I’m hearing any of it.” Then, as an afterthought, because it was and because I wanted him to keep talking, I said, “And it’s fascinating.”

“Well, all right then,” he said, sounding slightly mollified, but like it was still gonna take some work for him to be completely over the personal injury he’d seen looming. And he moved a bit closer to me on the sofa. At least, it seemed to me that he did. I wasn’t quite sure.

“So this League,” I said, prompting, “I don’t really get their place in all this.”

“Well that’s ‘cause, officially, I guess they don’t have one. But here’s the thing: they’re mad as hell. They say—all hoity-toity like—that we’d better do something or they’ll pull their support. That’s just how they said it.”

“Would that matter?”

“It matters! Jeepers creepers. It matters. Times is tough, girlie, or haven’t you noticed? People ain’t going to the movies anymore like they used to. Oh, they wanna. But they don’t always got the nickel for it. And the studios? Their revenues is down. But the League? They say they’re gonna make things worse. Preach it from the pulpits: Hollywood is evil. Don’t go to the movies.”

“I can’t imagine that would make a difference.”

“What? Preachers telling their flocks not to give us their nickels? Not to give us their nickels or they’ll go to hell? Sure. That would make a difference.”

“You think people would listen?”

“Sure, sure they would. It’s already started. Oh, not in places like L.A. Not here. Not in New York, either. But in other places. Sure. People there will listen.
Are
listening. And we see it in the receipts: fewer people going to see the movies we make out here. An’ that’s bad for everyone.”

As he said this last, he moved still closer to me. I was sure of it this time. And he let his hand rest in the small amount of space left between us. I ignored this slow advance, for the moment. But I kept an eye on him.

“So what do you do?”

“Well, we gotta make it right, don’ we? And that’s happening now. I mean, it’s the Depression what’s doing it. But those religious types have the keys to the tower. We give ‘em their way, they’ll see to it that things go back the way they were.”

I heard the words but I doubted them even while he said them. You can’t really ever go back, no matter how much you
might want to and how much you put into getting there. I said none of this. What I did say: “But how do you do that?”

“Well, the Production Code is a start. We’ve got that now. So it’s just a matter of getting everyone to toe the line and obey it. So all
we
have to do is keep convincing the industry it’s in their best interest to show a sunnier face to Chicago.”

“Chicago,” I said. “What’s in Chicago?”

“Why the League of Decency for crying out loud. Haven’t you heard anything I said?”

Chicago. “And this Production Code? What’s that?”

“Jay-sus, girlie, but you ask a lot of goddamned questions.” With that he got his hand in motion. I saw it but it happened so quickly, it was in my hair before I even knew what he had in mind. By the time he pressed his sausage-y lips to mine, I had my wits back about me.

It was easy to shake him off. He was drunk enough that I wondered if he would even have tried it sober. If he had, he would have been stronger, though. As it was, the drink had sapped both his brains and his strength.

I moved as far away from him as I could, a little dismayed because he was now between me and the door. I worried mildly that he’d try something again, but I was more repulsed than frightened. The door was open and people were nearby. It seemed likely to me that someone would hear me scream. If it even came to that. As drunk as he was, I somehow doubted that it would.

I was right. Within seconds of my revolted rejection he pulled himself to his feet and started shuffling for the door. The remorse and despair I’d felt on him earlier had gone as though they’d never been. I’d felt sorry for him then. It was why I’d stopped and talked to him in first place, before I’d even known he’d have anything of interest to say.

“If I wanted rejection,” he said as he moved through the
doorway, “I could have got it at home from my wife.” With that he was gone.

I carried my drink over to the makeshift bar and left it there, grabbing a clean glass and filling it with tonic, straight, which I carried back to the sofa. I sat there for a while, just letting my revulsion pass and everything the man had told me swirl through my head.

I felt as though I needed a scorecard, or at least a pen and paper to help make sense of it all. I didn’t know how it all fit together, but I had a feeling that a connection was there. Somewhere. It just had to be found.

I FOUND DEX in the arms of another woman. This was not a problem for me. After all, turnabout is fair play and I had no claim on him. In fact, I didn’t even feel a twinge seeing the voluptuous redhead wrapping herself around my boss like a serpent feasting on a rat in the very corner of the garden where Baron had kissed me not two hours before.

Well, I
did
feel a twinge, but it was one of impatience. It had been a long night and I’d had enough. I poked around at the buffet table but even that could no longer hold my interest. And not because I wasn’t hungry. I was. But all the food on offer was either very rich or very empty and pretentious. Excepting, of course, the foods that were both rich
and
pretentious. And despite all I’d eaten that evening, I found I was slightly hungry. But I wasn’t hungry for any of this.

“It’s starting to look a bit tired, isn’t it?” The speaker was a woman, perhaps five years older than I chronologically, but a lifetime older in sophistication. She was hovering near the Minis and caviar, elegantly putting them together then delicately packing them away. The hunger combined with a light sheen of sweat on her skin made me think she’d been dancing.

I could see her sophistication in the way she dressed—as though everything she wore had been made for her in Europe—and in how she wore it. Her lips were carefully rouged and her eyes were artfully kohled and every bit of what she wore bespoke care and money as well as the knowledge of what to do with them.

“It
is
looking tired,” I replied. “But then, to be honest, I’m tired as well.”

She smiled a bit at that, liking the words or their honesty, I couldn’t be sure which.

“These parties: they bore after a while, don’t you think?” She’d said it out loud, but she needn’t have; boredom was in the delicate slouch of her shoulders, the moue of her beautiful lips. Even in the way she sprinkled a bit of crumbled hard-boiled egg atop the caviar on her latest blini and then nibbled at it absently, as though she was only doing it because no better idea had struck her yet. She embodied boredom, though somehow it looked good on her.

“I don’t come to enough of these things to be bored,” I said truthfully. “I’ve had an exciting evening. Though I could see how it could become tiresome if one went to a great many events like this.” I could, too. The empty—bored—people all as concerned with how others saw them as with whom they saw. The empty rich food. The endless rivers of booze. All exciting to me who had never experienced an occasion like it. But now I’d done it, I wasn’t sure I’d want to do it again.

“How charmingly candid,” she said, sounding like she meant it when she could as easily have just made fun. “I’m Rosalyn Steele.”

“Really?” I said, still more candidly. “What a wonderful name! How lucky you are.”

“Luck had nothing to do with it. This is
Hollywood.”
She leaned in close to me and stage whispered, “And, anyway, ‘Rosie Stein’ would have an entirely different wardrobe, don’t you think?”

“Rosie Stein would have a different
everything.
You’re an actress then?”

“I am. It doesn’t seem to come overnight though. At least, not for everyone. You didn’t say your name.”

“Katherine,” I said. “Katherine Pangborn.”

She raised her eyebrows, looking impressed. “Little Miss
Coy,” she said, though there was laughter in her voice. “You’ve hit on a pretty good one yourself.”

I laughed. “I’m no actress: I come by that one naturally.”

“Really? Wow. No Stein for you?”

I shook my head.

“So, you’re not an actress. What are you doing here then?”

I actually thought about telling her, but knew Dex would have quashed the idea. We were meant to be under cover, as dramatic as that sounded to me. But we were meant to be here on the QT, even if the truth, in this case, felt as though it would have been easier than lying. I settled for a partial truth by omission.

“It’s too complicated to get into. But my boss … my boss has done some work for Laird Wyndham.”

I had anticipated that this small piece of truth would provide an ice-breaker. After all, Rosalyn had said she was an actress, Wyndham was an actor and a well-connected one at that. If nothing else, it would give us something to discuss, or so I thought. As soon as I said his name, though, I was surprised to see a change wash right over Rosalyn’s face. It was like a curtain fell over my new friend’s eyes. Her expression was unchanged and a smile still lingered on her features. But it was not the same. I could see she was acting.

“Ah,” she said, pushing her current blini and caviar into her mouth and masticating gently, “well,” she said. And then, “well,” again. She moved toward the place on the table where a new molded fish salad glittered in place. This one was rose-colored and a beet sauce completed the visual ensemble. Rosalyn focused all her attention on removing her slice of molded fish salad, drizzling sauce over it artfully and ignoring me altogether.

“Excuse me? Rosalyn? Miss Steele? I… I don’t know what I said, but I do apologize if I said it badly. It… well, it wasn’t meant.”

“It’s just… well, I didn’t realize you were friends with Laird.”

“Oh, no, hardly friends,” I said. “I’ve only met the man once myself.” I watched her for a moment while she continued to ignore me, then decided I had nothing to lose and plunged right in. “You don’t like him,” I said.

“That’s not possible, is it?” she said sarcastically. “Everyone
loves
Laird Wyndham.”

“Not now,” I said. “Not anymore. And, apparently, not you.”

Rosalyn kind of snorted and dumped another hefty spoonful of beet sauce on her fish. It occurred to me that, though she was playing coy, she clearly had something to say. In the same moment I recognized that, if this were the case, I was going to need to be the one who got her to say it. A table near us opened up and I grabbed a couple glasses of champagne and steered Rosalyn and her fish plate toward it.

“Now tell me,” I said when she was sitting, “what did he do to you?”

“Do? Ha!” she said, eating a forkful of fish and sauce with more relish than was strictly called for. “It should be so simple.”

“I don’t understand,” I prompted.

She sighed, then sat up straighter and looked around. We were in a crowded room, but no one was paying us the smallest amount of attention. We were hidden in plain sight. Seeing this, she seemed to relax slightly. She grabbed a corner of the table in each hand and straightened her back. As she did this, all that hair seemed to collect in a honey-colored flame. Her eyes simmered with a pale blue intensity. Had all that intensity been directed at me, I would have been frightened.

“We were … we were lovers. I thought we were in love. Though that turned out to be wrong.”

“When?” I asked.

“A year ago? Perhaps a bit more. He told me …” I could
hear her voice move toward breaking. She stopped. Collected herself. In that pause, I wondered why she would continue. What would possess her? I was a stranger, after all. I realized that was probably the why of the thing. Sometimes you can tell things to a stranger that you wouldn’t want your best friend to hear. No attachments, no judgments.

“What?” I said gently. “What did he tell you?”

“He told me he was going to leave his wife for me. That we’d be together. Always.”

“And you believed him?”

She looked at me fully then. Perhaps for the first time. “Of
course
I did. How could I not?”

She was right, of course. There was a reason Laird Wynd-ham was one of the leading actors of his generation. You believe a man like that when he tells you a thing.

“And that’s why you hate him?”

“Well, that would be enough, wouldn’t it? But, no: that’s not it. It’s for what happened when we broke up.” She lowered her voice still further. Leaned closer to me. “He hurt me.”