Lone Star (7 page)
Clearing her throat, Tansi yelled across the tables: “Jimmy, here.”
He shook his head. No.
Jimmy’s presence compelled the eatery into an awkward paralysis. People stopped talking and watched him. Looking up, Jimmy caught my eye. Sheepishly, I smiled. Jimmy narrowed his eyes, tucked his head into his chest like a bantam cock, and turned away. I felt foolish, rebuffed, the slight acknowledgement I’d offered rejected. For a second, I was furious. How dare he? I was
Giant
; I was
Show Boat
; I was—I stopped. I had no idea
what
I was to boys of his generation. I wrote words down and sometimes actors read them into cameras. Suddenly, I felt ancient—an attitude I never allowed myself. The dowager in the diner. The waitress had placed two sodas on the table, and I pushed mine to the side. Tansi, I noted, quickly drained her glass and was now munching on an ice cube.
Tansi looked flustered. “It isn’t personal, Edna. He’s moody sometimes.”
“He’s downright rude.”
“Oh, Edna, no.”
“He’s a brat.” I paused. “And stop defending him, Tansi.”
“I’m not…”
“He’s allowed to get away with boorish behavior because you
let
him.”
“Talent has its entitlements.”
“Nonsense. I’ve been talented all my life, and I…”
Tansi cut me off. “And you’ve been known to be imperious. Even rude sometimes. I mean no offense, I…”
I pulled back, smiled. Good for you, Tansi, I thought. “None taken. But I’m that way with fools. Jimmy has to learn to sort out his rudeness.”
Tansi shook her head. “Maybe you should give him lessons.” She meant it humorously—even her eyes got bright—but the line came out too quickly, too strident.
I glared.
When I turned to look at Jimmy, he was gone. I hadn’t even heard the chimes over the door ring. Maybe he
was
an apparition.
***
Late that night, in my hotel suite, settling into my pillows with tea and a Mary Roberts Rinehart mystery I had trouble following, my phone rang.
“I’m in the lobby,” Jimmy said.
“And?”
“Invite me up.”
I glanced at the clock. “Jimmy, it’s after ten.”
“So?”
“For a minute.”
Within seconds he was there, slumped into a chair by the window, his leather jacket still zipped up, looking around the room. “They’re really scared of you, Miss Edna, if you get all these rooms for yourself.”
“I’m famous.”
“So am I.”
“What do you want, Jimmy?”
He shrugged his shoulders and mumbled.
“You’re going to have to be more articulate with me. I’m old, hard of hearing, and I value oratory as a lost art.”
“You know, in high school I won the Indiana state competition for oratory.”
“And as a prize, they took away your need for future clarity?”
He laughed. “I love it. You won’t let me win.”
“I didn’t know we were in a contest.”
“Everything is a contest in life.”
“And you have to win?”
“Of course. I always do.”
“And you need to do battle with old ladies in sensible shoes and beauty-parlor perms?”
His eyes widened. “Everybody lets me win these days. It ain’t fun.”
“Maybe you need new combatants.”
“That may be so. I got no one to fight with.”
“You seem to have your crew—Tommy, Polly, Lydia, Nell…”
He cut me off. “Miss Edna, I’ve come here to beg and plead.”
“I don’t know you, Jimmy.”
“Yes, you do.” He looked toward the window, out into the black night. “I got famous too fast.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. “I heard about your
Hill Number One
TV show.”
He shook his head. “Oh,
that
. The Strand twins. They’ll disappear.”
“Like Carisa Krausse?” I wanted to challenge him.
Jimmy slumped back, folded and unfolded his arms. He started to speak, then stopped, stammered. Grunted. “What?” I asked.
“Sort of why I’m here.”
“Jimmy, you were rude to us at Googie’s.”
He looked surprised. “How so?”
“You enter, I assume through the front door, although legions of fans may ascribe other powers to you, and you ignore civilized nods of hello.”
He didn’t answer.
“I don’t like rudeness.” My voice was a little too strident. I was surprised that I was nervous.
“I wasn’t being rude.”
“Perhaps we’d both better consult the same dictionary then.”
“You do got a way about you, Miss Edna.” He sat up, grinning. “I wanna be like you when I grow up.” He tilted his head and looked at me, as though expecting a laugh. But I sat there, lips pursed. “Look,” he said, “rude is not ignoring you in a dumb diner. That’s just—just, well, nothing. It’s, it’s, like, well, nothing. Rudeness, if you think about it, is barging in here late at night, uninvited, and jostling with you, working myself up to asking a favor of you. That’s the real rudeness.”
I fell under his spell, a little intoxicated by his hazy, narcotic drawl. I sat back, relaxed. “Tell me about Carisa Krausse.”
“Hey, we had an idle fling in Marfa. I was bored, there was nothing to do. She was pretty, she was always around me, Pier Angeli had just left me, and, well, nothing happened. A couple late-night rides in a car I borrowed from Mercy. They took my car away so I wouldn’t kill myself. Suddenly, I see she’s falling for me. Before Marfa, back here, in rehearsals, she was around, and I’d sensed her…well…instability. But sometimes I lack common sense. I swear we never…we…there is no way any baby is mine, Miss Edna. Not with her.”
“What about other women?” He was sitting up now, the sober schoolboy before the demanding teacher.
“That’s mostly PR. Like Terry White, that pretty vacuum. You know, the studio had me and Terry go to a movie. So the limo pulls up, she says not one damn word to me, not one, but the minute we get out of the limo and the reporters are there, the big smile comes on, she grabs my arm, and acts like we’re lovey-dovey boyfriend-girlfriend. Not a word the whole time.” He sighed. “Sometimes I actually like the girls they hand me. Most times I don’t.”
“But your reputation?”
His eyebrows raised, the eyes unblinking. “I don’t know what reputation I have.”
“Mercy says you ‘sort of’ go through women.”
Jimmy looked at the ceiling, then burst into laughter. “Love that Madama. So…so…”
“Truthful?”
“Maybe so.” He crossed and uncrossed his denim-clad legs, stared at his boots. “I’m not sure what to do around women,” he said, suddenly.
“What does that mean?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I just got some questions I gotta answer.”
Now I was confused. “About what? Marriage?”
He opened and closed his eyes, blinking wildly. “Well, sex, frankly.”
Not a subject I was comfortable with, truly. I winced. Birds and bees may indeed do it, but not on my watch. I’m almost seventy, and I stare like a deer in the headlights at the mention of that monumental and ferocious three-letter word.
“I’m not following you.” And I wasn’t.
“Forget it.” He stood up and walked to the window, looking down into the street. “You got some good view of an empty city here.” He pointed. “Somewhere over there is Chinatown. The street of the Golden Palace. You can get your fortune told there.” He looked back at me. “You know, L.A. has a real different energy than New York. New York is pulsating and real nervous-like. It’s jumpy and feverish. It’s all throb and burst. That’s where artists can
grow
. You know that. You
live
there. L.A. is emptiness. So much room to wait things out, to dream and not to do. People, you know, float from one exhibitionist outpost to another, grasping for ideas that are best left untouched.” Most of what he’d just said was mumbled, and he seemed to laugh at the end of each line, as though embarrassed by the sentiment.
“What are you talking about?”
“I want you to talk to Mercy. That’s why I’m here. Convince her to talk to Carisa. Mercy was the
only
person Carisa liked. She told me that. She said Mercy reminded her of an older sister who died of some disease or something. And that fool Jake Geyser called me again tonight, and asked me if I had any idea how to shut Carisa up. This is all beyond him, though he won’t admit it. He’s panicking. Unwed mothers, Jimmy Dean’s love child, forbidden passion, God know what other lies. They’re pressuring
me
. What am I supposed to do?”
I nodded. And then kept nodding. Even after he left, backing his way out like a servant in some costume drama, bowing and shuffling, I sat there nodding. Then I got angry with myself. I felt, suddenly, that he’d charmed me, wooed me, reeled me in like an available (and not very challenging) fish. I glanced at the clock. After eleven. I didn’t care. I dialed Mercy’s number, knowing she’d be up. I apologized, but Mercy was delighted to hear my voice. I filled her in on Jimmy’s visit, even the earlier encounter at Googie’s, and Mercy chortled. “Did he tell you about his mother?”
“No.”
“He’s saving that story for you. It starts out, ‘I was nine when my mother died.’” She stopped, and seemed sorry she was making light of his story. “But it’s real. His pain is worn like a coat he can’t take off. But let me guess. He wants you as intercessor with me.”
“Yes, he wants you to talk to Carisa.”
“I’ve already told him no.”
“Why not, Mercy? I don’t understand.”
“I don’t know, really. Like Tansi, I just assumed it would go away. I don’t believe Carisa is pregnant. She’s just a melodramatic and misguided girl…”
I closed my eyes. “I promised him I’d convince you otherwise.”
Mercy laughed. “I knew it.” Then I heard her sigh. “You know, after that last letter to Warner, I’ve been thinking maybe I should step in.” A pause. “If I go there, you have to go with me.”
“I don’t think…”
“I’m not giving you a choice. Good night, Edna.”
That night I dreamed of towering, pitch-black oil rigs, a line of them punctuating the parched yellow land, strung out like telephone poles. Rhythmic drilling in the arid Texas landscape, monotonous and steady and thunderous. All night long the clamorous cacophony of cold steel and taut wire and oily rod against caked, clay-packed dirt—pounding, pounding, pounding. I woke with a headache.
Los Angeles lay, at midafternoon, under a heavy sun, like a blister erupting on the skin. A film of dry heat covered the sidewalks and buildings, and everything struck me as sere or lemon yellow; dried skin, flaking, dissolving into dust. I’d spent late morning and early afternoon in meetings with studio execs. Stevens, rushing in from shooting for five minutes of comment, made an off-hand remark about Jimmy’s annoying tardiness, but then qualified it—after all, he was talking to the money men—remarking that Jimmy’s performance was nothing short of glorious. I nodded. I’d seen an hour of dailies that morning and was pleased. When the meeting finally broke, I went for a walk. But not very far. Under a nickel-gray sky with that lazy sun behind wispy clouds, the heat exhausted me. And besides, people in L.A. didn’t walk. They only moved on wheels. My beloved Manhattan pastime was taboo here. An old lady tottering along hot sidewalks in expensive shoes, I fully expected a benevolent passerby to offer smelling salts or a free ride to a mental ward.
Back at the hotel, I napped, a brief uncomfortable sleep, fraught with Gothic visions of screaming children impaled on wrought-iron fences. It startled me awake, that ugly nightmare. Children? Fences? Impalement? I lay there, a bead of sweat on my brow, and suddenly remembered last night’s equally disturbing dream—all those oil rigs on endless Texas plains, pounding, pounding. L.A., I told myself, sitting up and preparing to put a cold compress on my forehead, was a place conducive to jolting nightmare. Only in murderous and serendipitous New York City could a soul find comfort—so long as you were fifteen floors above the city, tucked into an Upper East Side doorman building, away from the slapdash West Side and cacophonous Lower Manhattan. Frontier lands, both places, wild west shows, noisy and grimy.
Promptly at five I left my suite, headed downstairs to the Cocoanut Grove, where Warner was hosting a cocktail party. The one formal-attire event of my visit. Posh, posh. Men in rented tuxedos and women in ostrich plumes, doubtless. I was guest of honor, the invitation said, but so was producer Henry Ginsburg and director George Stevens. So, I joked, were Liz and Rock and Jimmy. And Chill Wills and Jane Withers. Maybe even Lydia Plummer with her two-word moment. Oh well. Five to seven. Two hours of stilted chatter, indigestible food, and expensive but warm champagne. I’d dressed appropriately, as indicated by the invitation. The creamy off-white silk flared dress with swirls of silver piping around the clinched belted waist, a lace bodice (a nod to my Victorian birth, I told myself), the rope of cultured pearls I felt naked without, and the black patent-leather clutch containing nothing but a hairbrush, faint red lipstick, perfume, and a mirror. This was as regal as I’d ever look: the novelist dowager, the first lady of American literature, taking on Hollywood.
Closing the door behind me, I paused, and remembered the elbow-length white gloves I’d specifically bought, obligatory at such formal occasions. A woman without gloves is a social misfit, I knew, recalling my forgetting to wear gloves to the Hoover White House and the looks I’d garnered, my escort into the room taking my bare forearm as though touching poison ivy.
I met Mercy in the hallway outside the Cocoanut Grove and apologized for last night’s telephone call. She shrugged it off. “Actually, you got me to agree to something I was trying to convince myself to do anyway. I was able to sleep well.”
And I dreamed of grimy oil wells and disemboweled, impaled children.
Mercy was in a shimmering blue cocktail dress with a band of rainbow-tinted sequins accenting the scalloped neckline, very nice, indeed. And a single gold heart around her neck. Simple, but elegant. A rhinestone clip in her hair, almost lost in the curls. I suddenly thought myself dowdy, drab, the old prune with the pearls.
She nudged me, pointing. “Sal Mineo.”
I turned to see a slight, dark boy passing by, looking straight ahead, dressed in a grownup tuxedo. “He looks like he’s twelve.”
Mercy leaned in. “He’s part of Jimmy’s fan club. Ever since
Rebel
. By the way, did they screen the movie for you? You have to see that red jacket you’ve come to love. Anyway, Sal’s been emulating Jimmy, the preening walk, the insolent glare, the clothing, even the haircut. In Marfa, he stared at Jimmy all the time.”
Tansi joined us. “My, my, Tansi,” I said. “You really do go all out for cocktail hour.”
For a second Tansi looked unsure of herself, but she noticed I was smiling, my eyes appreciative. “I try.”
“Very…fetching.” And, I told myself, it was, this metamorphosis in Tansi. The awkward angular figure with the unruly hair was transformed by a pencil-shaped velvet dress, teal blue, with black satin stripes running down the sides, up around the high collar, lace trimmed. Very proper, yet oddly sensual. She’d had her hair done, not the usual assembly of bobby pins and helter-skelter baubles, with vagrant wisps of runaway hair escaping. No. Tansi had spent time at a salon—“The one on Rodeo Drive,” she informed, “you know, Duarte’s”—and the effect was, indeed, arresting. The pointed plain face was softened by cascading curls, and she wore a pillbox hat, with pinned-back veil. Unlike mine, her gloves were wrist length, and looked more appropriate. Mercy, too, wore such gloves. As did all the women walking by, I noticed. Only I wore gloves that encased my arms to the elbow. But I didn’t care for Tansi’s makeup—shrill whore’s lipstick, fire-alarm red. She did love that red. She saw me looking. “It’s called Ever-So-Red,” she said. “From Pond’s. All the starlets wear it.” She twirled around, happy, and the satin stripes caught the overhead light, spotlighting her. She whispered to me, “Maybe this will get me married.”
Tansi’s remark surprised me. So she still entertained the idea of marriage, this middle-aged woman? Good God. Why? The maiden lady as temptress; the hideaway virgin as vamp; oxymorons for the dreaded cocktail hour. Why would she
want
to be married? She’d made it forty-five years without male interruption. Frankly, I cherished my own much-touted spinsterhood, embraced it like an anthem, a badge of arrival.
Inside, I let myself be squired to this gaggle of important souls, then to that one. The mayor. The lieutenant governor. Betty Grable. Lex Baxter. Ricardo Montaban. I drank champagne, only one; just one. My habit, for many years now. Souls nodded at me, some virtually genuflected so I assumed I was somehow their paycheck, and I smiled and resisted the urge to hiccough. Photographers circled, bumping and questioning, following Rock or Liz or Mercy or Sal. But not Jimmy, who hadn’t arrived. “He
told
me he’d be here,” Tansi pouted. “I
begged
him.”
And then he was there. A group of men moved, and there was Jimmy, sitting on a side chair, a drink in his hand. No tuxedo on him, to be sure, but a black turtleneck, very tight, and he’d shaved. Creased blue linen slacks, falling just right over black penny loafers. I thought he looked collegiate, a little East Coast preppie, a runaway from Phillips Exeter.
But he also looked tired, droopy. Perhaps the need to select appropriate clothing for the formal affair had exhausted him, I mused. I headed over, but found it difficult to maneuver my tiny self through well-wishers and progressively drunker and drunker guests. Japanese waiters floated by with huge trays of drinks and platters of
hors d’oeuvres
. I glimpsed assortments of caviar, shrimp, wedges of cheese, shimmering yellow and white under the lights; diced avocados on bits of toast slivers; even a cascade of white-hazed deep purple grapes, looking individually polished. I wondered why it all looked so unappetizing, this cornucopia of spoils. And then it hit me. It looked like a movie set prop, a plaster of Paris construction, fake food arranged and painted and shellacked. Nothing looked savory, tempting—a culinary landscape that seemed paste and sawdust and sprayed-on enamel. You weren’t supposed to eat it—just admire.
I spotted Lydia, standing nearby, watching Jimmy but not approaching him. She looked pale and shaky, and at one point Jimmy glanced her way, frowned, and Lydia, panicking, rushed out of the room.
A photographer asked Jimmy to stand for a photo; he didn’t answer. The man, his burdensome camera pressed against his chest, repeated the request, probably believing Jimmy didn’t hear him over the din. A chamber ensemble to his left was playing Chopin, and not very well. No response. Jimmy stared at the floor, his fingers drumming the arm of the chair. But he did extract a Chesterfield from a pack, flipped open a matchbook, and lit it. He expelled smoke into the air, in the direction of the photographer. I realized he
had
heard the request. The photographer, unhappy, was already moving away.
“Jimmy,” I said, approaching. “You were rude to him.”
He smiled thinly. “I guess I’m rude a lot lately.”
“Why?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I’ve made three movies in about a year. I’m losing my energy.”
I tried unsuccessfully to avoid the obsequious Jake, who more than once sidled up to me, smiling, asking irksome questions: “Can I do anything for you?” “Is Tansi taking good care of you?” “Do you know you can call me?” “You’re not using the car the studio has made available to you?” Then, finally, “You haven’t spoken to anyone in New York about the…the Jimmy matter?” Everything seemed to lead up to that last question, and he waited, pensive as a schoolboy caught cheating at multiplication tables.
“Well,” I said to him, “I did speak to a close friend at
The
New York Times
.”
A gasp, a bubble forming at the corner of the mouth. “Miss Ferber.”
“Mr. Geyser, I’m jesting. My lips are sealed.” Nodding, he hurried away.
Then Tansi was at my side, bustling, nervous. Unfortunately a few strands of her careful coiffure were breaking free, and I realized Tansi, antsy as a barnyard hen, couldn’t help picking at her hairdo. “Edna, come with me.” I followed. In the hallway we spotted Mercy, who was sneaking out, a sheepish grin on her face, and Tansi fumbled for her cigarettes. She had trouble striking a match. “You’re not going to believe this,” she said to both of us, “but Jack Warner just told me he got a second letter from Carisa this afternoon.” She paused, inhaled, coughed, and waited.
“What did the new letter say?” Mercy asked.
“Just one line.” Tansi took a deep breath. “It said, ‘Tomorrow nothing will be confidential—or will it?’”
“What?” I asked.
“The scandal magazine. She’s definitely going to that slime bag Robert Harrison of
Confidential
to expose Jimmy.”
“Expose what?” I asked, exasperated.
“Does it matter? Lies, innuendo, misconceptions. Once rumor is out there the damage is done.”
I was naïve. “Just how important is this
Confidential
? I’ve never read it.”
Tansi started to explain, but was a little frenzied, and she sputtered to a stop. Mercy, coolly, “It’s a sleazy pulp that thrives on gossip and sin, appealing to America’s prurient interests. I’ve read some copies left in dressing rooms. Titillation, suggestion. Cruel and deliberate. Big-bosomed girls like Jayne Mansfield. Adultery among the stars, unwed mothers, fornication; you name it. Their current crusade is the lavender crowd.”
“The what?”
“Homosexuals. Like ‘The Lavender Closet,’ that sort of thing.” She paused. “They call them the hands-on-hips boys. Girly men. It’s gutter stuff.”
Tansi found her voice. “They don’t like Liberace with his red-ruffled shirts and all that gold and black brocade he sports.”
I smiled. “Well, then they have a modicum of taste, despite their scandal-mongering. But is there more to the Jimmy story than the allegation of an unwed baby with Carisa?”
Silence. Tansi and Mercy looked at each other. Mercy cleared her throat. “Jimmy has done some indiscreet things.”
“Like what?”
Mercy sideswiped the question, lowering her voice as some people passed by, leaving the party. “America is a scary place these days. Hollywood is a whipping boy for old-style Aimee Semple McPherson evangelists—den of iniquity, sin city, you name it. Eisenhower blandness covers us. McCarthy and his witch hunt. The infernal black list.”
“And,” said Tansi, “it’s like everyone is waiting for the next explosive scandal.”
“And that might be Jimmy,” I said, flat out.
A bustle behind us, as Jimmy flew out of the room. He said nothing, though we stared, expectant. His face was scarlet, and from where I stood, I could see the veins in his neck, swollen and purple.
“Warner must have told him about the new letter,” Tansi said, scared.
“Party’s over,” Mercy said.
“Jimmy,” I called out to him.
He bumped into some men smoking cigarettes, and then, almost blindly, he rushed out of the hallway, headed to the street.
“My God,” Tansi said, edgy. “I’ve never seen him like this.” She turned. “I need to get inside. I have to powwow with Warner and Jake.” She hurried away.
Mercy’s eyes followed Tansi. “Edna, I’m worried about Jimmy.” I shook my head. I was thinking about
Confidential
, and the vague, amorphous accusations. What was I missing here? “I don’t want to go back in there,” Mercy added. “Not now. Jimmy took the party with him. What do you say you and I grab a bite at Jack’s Drive-in on the Strip? The food is wonderful and we’re way overdressed, although on occasion I’ve seen some Beverly Hills matrons there in mink coats ordering hot dogs with chili sauce.” She hesitated. “Unless you have obligations in there.”
“No, I’m ready. But I sense you have an agenda, Mercy.”
“Of course. You and I, I’ve decided, need to plan our visit to Carisa. That new letter is too scary.”
***
I returned to the party to say my goodbyes, but I couldn’t locate Stevens or Warner. Even Henry Ginsburg, I discovered, had left. Tansi was walking in circles. When I saw Jake approaching me, I fled, but I realized he was also sneaking out, maneuvering himself toward a side door. That made me smile. Mercy waited in the lobby, and then, with me as a passenger, we drove to the eatery to plan our assault on the hapless Carisa Krausse. “Our commando raid,” Mercy termed it.
“More like,” I countered, wryly, “the charge of the frightened brigade.”
