Crowned Heads (44 page)

Bill laughed heartily; that was a good one. “Oh, I get it,” the girl said finally, melting into giggles. Then, “Who’s Kay Francis?”

“She was a movie actress. Very famous. Dead, alas. Now, this room wasn’t part of the original house,” he said, guiding them to a position where they might have a general view. “We added it on after we bought the place. But it’s really the best room—woom?—in the place.” The “woom” was wide and spacious, with a high vaulted ceiling from whose central beam hung the large crystal chandelier, dripping prisms. The wide expanse of floor was laid in black and white checkerboard. It was many things, this room. It was rather like a garden, rather like a zoo, rather like a jewel box, rather like a mirror maze. And best of all, when it grew dark, rather like a grotto—a fantasy of gleaming glittering glass and crystal. Mirrors were everywhere—on the walls, on hinged screens behind the two carved religious figures flanking the fireplace, on the column facings which supported the rafters—all cleverly arranged so that the city panorama was distantly reflected, creating a brilliant confusion of images and endlessly repeating figures like a line of Radio City Rockettes.

Willie led them around to view the many collections housed in the room. There was the glass and crystal collection, scores of ornaments grouped on tabletops—obelisks, cubes, eggs, pyramids, animal shapes. There was the monkey collection, white ceramic figures, some with black faces and red noses, some hung on silk tasseled cords from the corner beams, others providing bases for end tables, or half hidden in the profusion of indoor plants. This jungle scheme was further carried out in a large mural on the wall beside the bar, where lions, tigers, and leopards peered from behind green foliage, and a dozen more monkeys gamboled.

“Rather
Douanier
Rousseau, we thought,” Willie said, then had to explain who the
Douanier
Rousseau was; one of Bee’s clever painter friends had copied the originals, but Rousseau went down the drain as far as the pair were concerned.

Then there was the collection of paintings, “the rare and valuable Marsh collection,” as the magazine layout had described it; these were hung along those wall spaces not embellished by mirror. The couple ummed and ohed at the landscapes and still lifes, other modern things which obviously neither of them got the point of. But the richness, the expense, the variety of clever detail in the handsome surroundings were not lost on them.

The slow path of their movements, guided by Willie himself, brought them in a deliberate progression to what he called his “museum,” and what the two younger people most particularly had come to view. Here were the sentimental objects of memory that were concrete testaments to that long and illustrious career: a well-worn pair of patent leather tap shoes; a top hat and cane, which had seen service during the long run of
In Old Montmartre
; crossed on a wall two sabers he had swashed and buckled with in
The Scarlet Galleon
and
Quentin Durward
; theater programs; sheet music from his numerous musical pictures, Willie’s smiling photograph on each; costume designs. On a specially built stand rested an enormous dollhouse, with miniature furniture scaled to the rooms: the famous Bobbitt house, with authentically costumed figures of the principal characters in the series: Bobby Ransome as Bobbitt, Nellie Bannister as Missy Priss, Mary Astor, Dicky Haydn, and Willie Marsh as Alfie, the butler. In one corner a headless mannequin was garbed in the costume—purple cassock, surplice, stole, and pectoral cross—that Willie had worn in
The Miracle of Santa Cristi.
The prelate’s biretta, the square purple hat, was exhibited on a Styrofoam block under a glass bell, while another glass case contained the jeweled crown Fedora had worn as the Holy Virgin in the same film.

While Willie proudly pointed out the various items, the girl said little, trailing along in her floor-length flower-dotted skirt, the ruffled hem dragging on the black and white squares, and peering at the various objects through a pair of granny glasses she had fixed on the end of her nose. The young man, on the other hand, talked and talked. His smile blinked on and off like a neon sign; his teeth, Willie thought, were rather unfortunate; he needed a dentist. His large hands appeared used to hard work; they were dry and calloused like a laborer’s, even an old man’s.

“You know,” Willie observed as they moved along, “you don’t look like the same person. The other night I could’ve sworn you had short hair.”

“That’s a trick of mine. Sometimes I pull it back and put a rubber band on. Most of the time people don’t notice the diff’rence.”

“I certainly didn’t. What a clever trick.”

He took them to view the aquariums, one of the room’s dramatic focal points, ten illuminated glass tanks ranged on glass shelves, creating the illusion of a wall of undersea life where colorful tropical fish eyed their reflections in the mirrors behind.

“Fish,” said the girl redundantly.

“Ye-e-s-s,” said Willie brightly, “lots of fish. Fun, aren’t they?”

And on the piano, lots of photographs, another collection, silver-framed, an imposing array of Catholic prelates. Two popes, Pius XI and Pius XII, Cardinal Spellman, the Los Angeles diocesan archbishop, and the local bishop, all autographed to Willie and Bee, Bee and Willie. In the center of the wall beyond the piano were a pair of tall carved doors with ornate brass knobs. The doors were closed, and Willie passed them by, neither opening them nor making mention of what lay behind them, but instead directing his visitors back to the center of the room, where they stood awkwardly regarding one another, until the girl suddenly turned with a dismayed expression and asked to use the john.

“Certainly, my dear.” Willie showed her to the jungle mural beside the bar. He pressed the nose of one of the painted monkeys and a small door sprang open on a touch latch. She gave him a surprised look, went in, and closed the door. Bill, meanwhile, had returned to the bar and was seated on a stool.

“Shore is a swell spread, pardner,” he said as Willie joined him.

“Thank you, Bob.”

“It’s—uh—Bill.”

“Oh—Bill, of course, sorry, same name and I can’t even remember it Bill—Bowman, is it?”

“Bowie. Like in the knife? Bill Bowie.”

“That’s certainly a Western-sounding name, Bill. Where’re you from?”

“Montana.”

“Ah, yes, Montana. Gary Cooper came from there, and Myrna Loy, I believe. What’s it like, Montana?”

“Big.”

“Oh yes. To be sure. Montana’s certainly that.”

Bill leaned across the black Formica counter to survey the collection of framed photographs over the back bar.

“That’s sure a lot of famous people you got there.”

“Famous and fleeting, alas. Most of them are dead.” It was true: Charles Laughton, Humphrey Bogart, Maurice Chevalier, Linda Darnell, Basil Rathbone, Carmen Miranda, W. C. Fields, the Barrymores; all dead. But, Willie pointed out, many of them had at one time or another been in this very room, sat at this very bar. The cream of the cream of Hollywood had in the old days flocked to the Marshes’ game room, where any excuse had been an excuse for a party. Jewels and furs and immodestly exhibited breasts, famous faces, famous names. Here men had traded wives on the spot, women had switched lovers between the canapés and the baked Alaska.

Willie stole a moment to check his appearance in one of the mirrors, and was satisfied. Because his silver-blond toupee was expensive and sat well, it didn’t reveal the haste with which it had been attached. He looked dapper and spruce; even though his once-flat stomach was now betrayed by a melonlike paunch, the cowboy outfit gave him a youthful, jaunty air. His eyes were still clear, a gentle but keen gray, with a quizzical, amused air, and his nose was long and authentic-looking. A year-round iodine-colored tan did much to give the impression of health and vigor.

Daintily, gingerly, the dogs had come, their nails clicking on the tiles, to sniff around at Bill’s pointed boots. He leaned to pet one of them. “Hey, they’re about the teeniest dogs I ever saw.” Willie could tell that he was nervous; his pale eyes were restless, they darted away from Willie’s, from object to object, space to space, then returned again to confront his host with apologetic mildness. To put him at ease, Willie trotted out the insouciance and stylish wit he was famous for—for years he had been the delight of hostesses for his talents as a raconteur.

The girl was still in the bathroom. Bill leaned back on his stool and called down along the wall to the door in the mural. “Hey, Jude, didja fall in?” There was a mumble and a murmur from within; he sauntered to the door to see what the trouble was. Willie watched him go, the sleeves and shoulders of his buckskin jacket bulging, the fringe bobbing, his legs swinging with an easy cowboy gait. The door opened a crack, there was a brief exchange, and Bill returned to report that Judee needed a hand towel.

From behind the bar Willie took some of the expensive guest towels Bee had ordered at Francis-Orr. Embossed in the corners was the well-known
New York Times
Hirschfeld caricature. Bill handed the towels through the door and returned to his stool.

“Havin’ some trouble in there,” he confided. “It’s her time of the month.”

Willie colored in embarrassment; in his day people didn’t discuss such personal matters so casually. Badly wanting a drink, he was in a quandary; if he had one himself, he had to offer them one, too. No mention had been made again about their leaving—Willie had already noted the dark marks Bill’s boot heels left on the white tiles; they would be difficult to clean up. He was reminded of lately occurring events which would have made Bee blush, had she known, other boots and other marks, the results of scuffles and fracases. Since Bee’s death he had, out of loneliness, on occasion entertained some vaguely Hollywood types, hardly savory ones, and there had been several “incidents.” One morning the cleaning woman had arrived to discover one of the mirrored screens smashed, and there was blood, too. Willie had a black eye and a swollen lip, and he doubted she believed the story that he had walked into the screen by mistake. But those were the sort of things that happened since Bee was gone.

Still, he prided himself on being a hospitable host, no matter the circumstances, and all at once he heard himself asking, “Would you care for a drink, Bill, while we’re waiting?”

“Ah’m not much of a drinker, Mr. Marsh—”

“Willie. Call me Willie.” He disliked being called Mister by younger people.

“Uh—Willie,” repeated the young man, though the name did not come easily to him.

“Perhaps a little wine?”

Wine would be fine, he said. Willie opened the bar refrigerator and brought out a half-gallon jug of Gallo Chablis.

“Hey, look at all the champagne,” Bill said. The top shelf held nearly a dozen bottles, Cordon Rouge, of which Willie usually kept a large supply on hand, but not for casual drop-ins. He shut the door quickly and poured the Chablis into a goblet, one of Bee’s good Baccarat. He snicked the rim with his fingernail as he handed it over; the ring held, then died in the room.

“Hey,” said Bill.

Willie took one of the Baccarat double-old-fashioned glasses and mixed himself a large Scotch and soda, then filled the ice bucket from the refrigerator. He closed the door quickly again, set the bucket on the bar, and added cubes to his drink.

“Say”—Bill was peering across the bar at the pictures again—“is that Fred Astaire?” Willie nodded, and pointed out several others: Jean Cocteau, Jack Dempsey, Edna Ferber, Cecil Beaton, each signed: “To Bee and Willie” or “To Willie and Bee.” There was a photograph of Willie side by side with Serge Lifar on a piano top, another with Helen Morgan on a sound stage, another with Somerset Maugham, standing on the terrace of a villa. “South of France,” Willie explained. Bill nodded. One with Carl Van Vechten, with Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, with Fiorello La Guardia, Coco Chanel. Bill nodded and nodded.

The girl finally came out. She clopped across the floor on her wooden platforms and stood dolefully beside Bill, blinking shyly at Willie behind her granny glasses. She looked shabby and bruised and a little tender; Willie felt sorry for her as he would for a cat kept out in the rain. He finished his drink quickly and made himself another, and Bill rang the rim of his glass for the girl—Willie had forgotten her name again—and held it against her ear. She had obviously burned her bra or didn’t own one; her breasts sagged under the print halter whose knot she kept tugging at nervously behind her mop of hair.

“How come everyone calls you ‘Little Willie’?” Bill asked, smiling crookedly at him across the bar. Willie swirled the cubes in his glass, drank, then smiled modestly.

“That’s an old, old story,” he began expansively. “Goes back to before I was an actor. A recitation I used to do when I was a boy. I—hem—became kind of famous for it, and the name stuck, so on so forth.”

“Recitation?”

“We used to do what they called parlor pieces in those days.” He set his glass down and stepped out on the checkered floor to offer his famous impression of a small boy coming onto a stage before an audience of which he is terrified. With appropriate gestures he recited:

“Little Willie in the best of sashes

Fell in the fire and was burnt to ashes.

Later on the room grew chilly,

But nobody thought to poke up Willie.”

Bill slammed his large hand on the black Formica counter.

“Hey, that’s darn funny, y’know?”

Willie went behind the bar again. “It was just this little thing I learned for company. People were always saying, ‘Do Little Willie,’ and after a while the name stuck.”

“Darn funny,” Bill repeated. He seemed to respond to each of these anecdotes in precisely the same way, a quick bright laugh that grew slightly hollow; he would nod and sometimes crack his knuckles, and the eyes continually swerved. The girl, who had perched herself on another stool, said nothing. Her lips were full and ripe and the top one overhung the lower with a curl that could be taken for either cuteness or petulance.