Glitter Baby (2 page)

Tallulah Bankhead cavorted naked around the pool, which was shaped like Nazimova’s Black Sea. Scott Fitzgerald met Sheilah Graham in one of the bungalows. The men lived there between marriages: Ronald Reagan when it was over with Jane Wyman, Fernando Lamas after Arlene Dahl. During the Golden Age, they could all be found at the Garden: Bogart and his Baby, Ty Power, Ava Gardner. Sinatra was there, and Ginger Rogers. Screenwrit
ers sat on white slat chairs by their front doors and typed during the day. Rachmaninoff rehearsed in one bungalow, Benny Goodman in another. And always, there was a party.

By that September night in 1955, the Garden was in its death throes. Dirt and rust streaked the white stucco walls, the furniture in the bungalows was shabby, and just the day before, a dead mouse had been found floating in the pool. Ironically, it still cost the same to rent a bungalow there as it did at the Beverly Hills, although within four years the place would fall to the wrecker’s ball. But on that September night, the Garden was still the Garden, and some of the stars were still around.

Billy opened the car door for Belinda. “Come on, babe. The party will cheer you up. A few of the guys from Paramount will be here. I’ll introduce you around. You’ll knock ’em dead yet.”

Her hands curled into fists on the paper in her lap. “Leave me alone for a little bit, will you? I’ll meet you inside.”

“Okay, babe.” His footsteps crunched in the gravel as he moved away. She wadded the memo into a ball, then sagged against the seat. What if it was true that she had no talent? When she’d dreamed about being a movie star she’d never thought much about acting. She’d imagined they would give her lessons or something.

A car pulled into the space next to her with the radio blaring. The couple didn’t bother to turn off the engine before they started necking. High school kids, hiding out in the parking lot at the Garden of Allah.

And then the music was over and the news came on.

It was the first story.

The announcer repeated the information calmly, as if it were an everyday occurrence, as if it were not an outrage, not the end of Belinda’s life, not the end of everything. She screamed, a terrible, long cry, all the more horrible because it happened inside her head.

James Dean was dead.

She threw open the door and stumbled across the parking lot, not looking where she was going, not caring. She tore through the shrubbery and down one of the paths, trying to outrace her suffocating anguish. She ran past the swimming pool shaped like Azimova’s Black Sea, past a big oak at the end of the pool that held a telephone box with a sign,
FOR CENTRAL CASTING ONLY
. She ran until she came to a long stucco wall beside one of the bungalows. In the dark, she sagged against the wall and cried over the death of her dreams.

Jimmy was from Indiana, just like her, and now he was dead. Killed on the road to Salinas driving a silver Porsche he called “Little Bastard.” He’d said anything was possible. A man was his own man; a woman her own woman. Without Jimmy, her dreams seemed childish and impossible.

“My dear, you’re making a frightful noise. Would you mind terribly taking your troubles somewhere else? Unless, of course, you’re very pretty, in which case you’re invited to come through the gate and have a drink with me.” The voice, deep and faintly British, drifted over the top of the stucco wall.

Belinda’s head jerked up. “Who are you?”

“An interesting question.” There was a short silence, punctuated by the distant sound of music from the party. “Let’s say I’m a man of contradictions. A lover of adventure, women, and vodka. Not necessarily in that order.”

There was something about the voice…Belinda wiped her tears with the back of her hand and looked for the gate. When she found it, she stepped inside, drawn by his voice and the possibility of distraction from her awful pain.

A pool of pale yellow light washed the center of the patio. She gazed toward the dark figure of a man sitting in the night shadows just beyond. “James Dean is dead,” she said. “He was killed in a car accident.”

“Dean?” Ice cubes clicked against his glass. “Ah, yes. Undisciplined sort of chap. Always raising a ruckus. Not
that I hold that against him, mind you. I’ve raised a few in my time. Sit down, my dear, and have a drink.”

She didn’t move. “I loved him.”

“Love, I’ve discovered, is a transient emotion best satisfied by a good fuck.”

She was deeply shocked. No one had ever used that word in her presence, and she said the first thing that came to mind. “I didn’t even get that.”

He laughed. “Now there, my dear, is the real tragedy.” She heard a soft creak, and then he stood and walked toward her. He was tall, probably over six feet, a little thick around the middle, with wide shoulders and a straight carriage. He wore white duck trousers and a pale yellow shirt filled in at the neck with a loosely knotted ascot. She took in the small details—a pair of canvas deck shoes, a watch with a leather band, a webbed khaki belt. And then her gaze lifted, and she found herself looking into the world-weary eyes of Errol Flynn.

By the time
Belinda met him, Flynn had gone through three wives and several fortunes. He was forty-six but looked twenty years older. The famous mustache was grizzled; the handsome face, with its chiseled bones and sculpted nose, had grown jowly and lined from vodka, drugs, and cynicism. His face formed a road map of his life. In four years he’d be dead, falling victim to a long list of ailments that would have killed other men much earlier. But most men weren’t Flynn.

He’d swashbuckled his way across the screen for two decades, fighting villains, winning wars, and saving damsels. Captain Blood, Robin Hood, Don Juan—Flynn had played them all. Sometimes, if the mood struck him, he’d even played them well.

Long before he came to Hollywood, Errol Flynn had taken part in adventures every bit as dangerous as those he’d played on screen. He’d been an explorer, a sailor, a gold prospector. He’d traded for slaves in New Guinea. The scar on his heel came from a shot fired by a party of headhunters, another scar on his abdomen from a scuffle with a rickshaw driver in India. At least that’s what he said. With Flynn, no one could ever be sure.

Always, there were women. They couldn’t get enough of him, and Flynn felt the same about them. He especially liked them young. The younger the better. Looking into a fresh young face and plunging into a fresh young body gave him the illusion of recovering his lost innocence. It also brought him trouble.

In 1942 he was put on trial for statutory rape. Although the girls were willing, California law made it illegal to have sexual intercourse with anyone under the age of eighteen, willing or not. Nine women served on the jury, however, and Flynn was acquitted. Afterward, he perpetuated the myth of his prowess even as he hated becoming a phallic joke.

The trial didn’t end his fascination with young girls, and even though he was forty-six, alcoholic, and dissipated, they still found him irresistible.

“Come over here, my dear, and sit next to me.”

He touched her arm, and Belinda felt as if the earth had spun out of its orbit. She sank into the chair he led her to just as she thought her knees would give out. Her hand shook as she took the glass he pressed toward her. This wasn’t a dream. It was real. She and Errol Flynn were alone together. He smiled at her, a crooked smile, roguish, urbane, the famous left eyebrow slightly higher than the right. “How old are you, my dear?”

It took her a moment to find her voice. “Eighteen.”

“Eighteen…” His left eyebrow rose a little higher. “I don’t suppose—no, of course not.” He tugged on the corner of his mustache and gave her an apologetic chuckle, both charming and disarming. “You wouldn’t happen to have your birth certificate on you?”

“My birth certificate?” She looked at him quizzically. Such a strange question. And then the old stories about the trial clicked into place, and she laughed. “I’m not carrying my birth certificate, Mr. Flynn, but I truly am eighteen.” Her laughter turned daringly mischievous. “Would it make any difference if I weren’t?”

His response was vintage Flynn. “Of course not.”

For the next hour they observed the amenities. Flynn told her a story about John Barrymore and gossiped about his leading ladies. She confided what had happened with Paramount. He asked her to call him “Baron,” his favorite nickname. She said she would, but she called him “Mr. Flynn” just the same. At the end of the hour, he took her by the hand and led her inside.

With some embarrassment, she asked to use the bathroom. After she had flushed the toilet and washed her hands, she sneaked a peak at the contents of his medicine cabinet. Errol Flynn’s toothbrush. Errol Flynn’s razor. Her eyes skipped over the pills and Errol Flynn’s suppositories. When she shut the cabinet, her face in the mirror was flushed and her eyes bright with excitement. She’d wandered into the presence of a great star.

He waited for her in the bedroom. He wore a burgundy-colored dressing gown and smoked a cigarette in a short amber holder. A fresh bottle of vodka sat on the table at his side. She smiled tentatively, not sure what she should do next. He seemed both amused and pleased. “Contrary to what you may have read, my dear, I am not a ravisher of young women.”

“I didn’t think you were, Mr. Flynn…Baron.”

“Are you absolutely certain you know what you’re doing here?”

“Oh yes.”

“Good.” He took a last drag on the cigarette, then set the holder in the ashtray. “Perhaps you’d like to undress for me.”

She swallowed hard. She’d never been completely naked with a man. She’d had her panties off or her dress unbuttoned, like tonight with Billy, but the boys had always done that. She’d never personally gotten undressed for anybody. Of course, Errol Flynn wasn’t just anybody.

Reaching behind her, she fumbled with the buttons. When she finally had them unfastened, she slipped the
dress over her hips. She didn’t dare look at him, so she thought of his wonderful movies:
The Dawn Patrol, Objective, Burma!, The Charge of the Light Brigade
. She’d seen that one on television. She looked nervously for someplace to put her dress and spotted a closet on the far side of the room. After she’d hung it up, she stepped out of her shoes, then tried to think what she should take off next.

Darting a quick glance at him, she felt a little shiver of pleasure. Her eyes lovingly erased his wrinkles and jowls until he looked the same as he did on-screen. She remembered how handsome he’d been in
Against All Flags.
He’d played a British naval officer, and Maureen O’Hara had been a pirate named Spitfire. Reaching beneath the lace hem of her slip, Belinda unfastened her garters, drew off her stockings, and folded them neatly. After that, she took off her garter belt.
Santa Fe Trail
had been on television not long ago. He and Olivia de Havilland were wonderful together. He was so masculine, and Olivia was always such a lady.

Belinda wore only a slip, her bra and panties, and her charm bracelet. She unfastened the small gold clasp. Her hands shook, but she finally got it off and set it next to her stockings. She wished he’d get up and do the rest, but he showed no signs of moving. Slowly she pulled her slip over her head.

She remembered he was married. He’d met Patrice Wymore, his current wife, when they were filming
Rocky Mountain
. Patrice was so lucky to be married to a man like Errol Flynn, but the rumors of their breakup must be true, or he’d be with Patrice instead of her. It was hard to make a marriage work in Hollywood.

When she was finally naked, she saw by the direction of Flynn’s gaze that he liked what she’d revealed. “Come here, my dear.”

Embarrassed but excited, she walked toward him. He stood and touched her chin. She nearly fainted from excitement. She waited for him to kiss her. His hands slipped to
her shoulders. She wanted the same kiss he’d given Olivia de Havilland, and Maureen O’Hara, and all the other beautiful women he’d loved on the screen, but he opened his robe instead. He was naked underneath. Her eyes denied the looseness of his suntanned skin.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to give me a bit of help, my dear,” he said. “Vodka and lovemaking aren’t always the best of companions.”

She looked up into his eyes. It would be her privilege to help him, except she wasn’t exactly sure what he wanted her to do.

Not being a stranger to the minds of young girls, he understood her hesitation and offered a specific suggestion. She was shocked, but at the same time fascinated. So this was the way famous men made love. It was strange, but somehow it seemed appropriate.

She lowered herself to her knees.

It took a long time, and she got tired, but eventually he pulled her up and laid her on the bed. The mattress sagged as he rolled on top of her. Surely he’d kiss her now, but to her disappointment, he didn’t.

He nudged her legs, and she quickly parted them for him. His eyes were closed, but she kept hers open so she could treasure every moment. Errol Flynn was going to do it to her. Errol Flynn. A chorus sang in her heart. She felt a probe. A push. It was really Errol Flynn!

Her body exploded.

Later that night he asked her what her name was and offered her a cigarette. She didn’t really smoke, so she took short drags. Leaning next to him against the headboard with a cigarette thrilled her. For the first time in hours she remembered about Jimmy. Poor Jimmy, to have died so young. Life could be cruel. How lucky she was to be here alive and happy.

Flynn told her about his yacht, the
Zaca
, and about his
recent travels. Belinda didn’t want to pry, but she was curious about his wife. “Patrice is very beautiful.”

“A wonderful woman. I’ve treated her badly.” He drained his glass, then reached across her for a refill from the bottle on the nightstand. As he poured, his shoulder dug into her breast. “It’s a habit I have with women. I don’t mean to hurt them, but I wasn’t made for marriage.”

“Will you get a divorce?” She self-consciously tapped the ash from her cigarette.

“Probably. Although, God knows, I can’t afford it. The IRS wants me for almost a million, and I’m so far behind on alimony I’ve lost track.”

Belinda’s eyes filled with sympathetic tears. “It doesn’t seem fair that a man like you should have to worry about such things. Not with all the pleasure you’ve given so many people.”

Flynn patted her knee. “You’re a sweet girl, Belinda. And a beautiful one. There’s something in your eyes that makes me forget how old I’m getting to be.”

She took the liberty of resting her cheek against his shoulder. “You mustn’t talk that way. You’re not old.”

He smiled and kissed the top of her head. “Sweet girl.”

By the end of the week Belinda had moved into Flynn’s bungalow at the Garden of Allah. A month flew by. At the end of October, he gave her a gold charm, a small disk suspended from a wishbone frame with “LUV” engraved in the center of one side and the letters “I” and “U” on the other. When she flicked the charm with the tip of her finger, it spun and the message “I LUV U” came together. She knew he didn’t mean it, but she treasured the charm and wore it with pride as a symbol to the world that she belonged to Errol Flynn.

In the reflected glow of his fame, her old feelings of invisibility vanished. Never had she felt so pretty, so smart, so important. They slept late and spent their days either on
the
Zaca
or alongside the pool. They marked their nights in clubs and restaurants. She learned to smoke and drink, she learned not to stare when she met famous people, no matter how excited she felt inside, and she learned that famous people seemed to like her. An actor who was a friend of Flynn’s told her it was because she offered no judgment, only adoration. The remark puzzled her. How could she judge? It wasn’t up to ordinary people to pass judgment on the stars.

Sometimes at night she and Flynn made love, but more often they talked. It hurt her to see how sad and troubled he was beneath his devil-may-care facade. She devoted herself to making him happy.

She saw
Rebel Without a Cause
and thought that maybe her dream hadn’t died after all. She was meeting studio executives now instead of lowly assistant casting directors. She needed to take advantage of those contacts and prepare for the inevitable time when Flynn moved on to another woman. She had no delusions about that. She wasn’t important enough to hold him for long.

Flynn bought her a daring lipstick-red French bikini and sat by the side of the pool sipping his vodka while he watched her play. No one else at the Garden was adventurous enough to wear one of the new bikinis, but Belinda didn’t feel embarrassed. She loved watching Flynn watch her. She loved emerging from the water to be wrapped in the towel he held for her. She felt sheltered, protected, and adored.

Late one morning while Flynn was still sleeping, Belinda donned the red bikini and dived into the deserted pool. She swam several easy laps, opening her eyes under water to look at the initials of Alla Nazimova carved into the concrete just below the water line. When she came to the surface, she found herself staring at a pair of highly polished leather shoes.

“
Tiens!
A mermaid has taken over the pool at the Garden of Allah. A mermaid with eyes bluer than the sky.”

Treading water, Belinda squinted against the morning sun to see the man standing over her. He was distinctly European. His oyster-white suit had the sheen of silk and the immaculate press of a man who kept a valet. He was of medium height, slim and aristocratic, with dark hair that had been skillfully cut to disguise its thinning. Small, slanted eyes sat above a broad nose with a slight hook at the end. He wasn’t handsome, but he was imposing. The smell of money and power clung to him as tenaciously as his expensive cologne. She judged him to be in his mid-to-late thirties, French by his accent, although his features were more exotic. Maybe he was a European filmmaker.

She gave him a saucy grin. “No mermaid, monsieur. Just a very ordinary girl.”

“
Ordinaire?
I would hardly say so.
Três extraordinaire
, in fact.”

She accepted his compliment graciously, and in her best accented high school French replied, “
Merci beaucoup, monsieur. Vous êtes trop gentil
.”

“Tell me,
ma petite
mermaid. Is there a tail beneath that
charmant
red bikini?”

Amusement glinted in his eyes, but Belinda sensed something calculated about his audaciousness. This man did nothing, said nothing, by accident. “
Mais non, monsieur
,” she replied evenly. “Only two ordinary legs.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps, mademoiselle, you will let me be the judge?”

She gazed at him for a moment, then dived under and swam in long, clean strokes for the ladder at the opposite end of the pool. But when she climbed out, he’d disappeared. Half an hour later, she walked into the bungalow and found him talking to Flynn over Bloody Marys.

Mornings weren’t Flynn’s best time, and next to the immaculately groomed stranger he looked rumpled and old. Still, he was by far the more handsome. She sat on the arm of his chair and placed her hand on his shoulder. She wished she had the courage to plant a casual good-morn
ing kiss on his cheek, but the sporadic nighttime intimacies that passed between them didn’t make her feel entitled to that kind of informality. He looped his arm around her waist. “Good morning, my dear. I understand the two of you met by the pool.”