Make Believe (6 page)

“We’ve been dying to meet you,” Tony/Tiny said.

I said nothing.

Ava made no attempt to hide her distaste. “Francis,” she began, her words low and angry, “what are they doing here?”

He didn’t look at her. “They were at my place in Palm Springs when I got back.” He smiled. ”You said it was a party. I brought a party with me.”

Ava glanced at Alice and Max, both sitting on the sofa, looking uncomfortable. “Damn you.”

Tony seemed to be happy anywhere that would allow in a man who happened to be wearing a dynamited clown tuxedo covered with green and red and silver buckshot sequins. Tony, I guessed, now spent most of his offstage time as…Tiny. A Hippodrome elephant in a Groucho Marx fright wig.

Ethan looked as though he wanted to be home adding up a column of figures, far from the maddening brother, though, as his brother’s resident sheriff, he immediately frowned as Tony walked to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a martini from the pitcher resting there.

“Christ, Tony,” he muttered. He nodded at me. “A pleasure to meet you, Miss Ferber.”

He nodded at his former wife when she glanced his way, and for a moment they both smiled at each other, though Ethan’s quickly disappeared. Lorena, I noticed, seemed to be waiting for something. Ethan stepped closer, and the hard, set face relaxed, became almost boyish.

Oddly, he spoke now in a stilted Elizabethan voice, so lilting it compelled us all to pay attention. “‘How now! What do you here alone?’”

Lorena, obviously settling into an old and familiar playfulness, became a fluttering heroine, her voice equally Elizabethan. “‘Do not chide; I have a thing for you.’” She winked.

He grinned. “‘A thing for me? It is a common thing—to have a foolish wife.’”

She bowed.

For some reason Ethan addressed me, and his severity had returned—that rigid jaw, those unblinking eyes. “And Hollywood said I couldn’t write dialogue.” He glared at Max, who was ignoring him.

“Well,” I countered, “if you’re going to plagiarize, you might as well go for the best.”

He grumbled. “Shakespeare is over-rated.”

A stupid remark, best ignored. Said by the court jester who never learned to jest.

Ethan turned away, a little flustered, but what caught my eye—and sadly so—was the look in Lorena’s eyes: a lingering affection there, perhaps unwanted but unavoidable, a bond she’d refused to relinquish. It saddened me, then. I realized that Lorena, despite her feisty, tough-as-nails demeanor, that hard-bitten exterior, might be a foolish woman.

“Ethan,” she announced. “You’ve brought the circus.”

“Be nice, Lorena,” he pleaded.

“Why would I go out of character?”

He laughed, a dry, brittle laugh that seemed more sardonic than celebratory. Immediately he disappeared into a corner of the sofa, and began picking a trace of Rags’ generous dog hair off a pants leg. “In Arabian countries,” he told no one in particular, “it’s considered unclean to have dogs inside a house.”

“I’m a hard-shell Baptist,” Ava told him.

“Christ,” he mumbled.

Ava looked toward Max and Alice, shrugged her shoulders, and mouthed the words:
I’m sorry
. Max waved back, a thin smile on his face.

Reenie circulated with more appetizers, but deliberately rolled her eyes when she approached Tony, who was mixing his drink with his index finger. For a few minutes I talked quietly with Lorena about her life in the script department of Paramount, but it was a strained conversation. Everyone seemed to be keeping a deliberate, if tense, distance from one another, the two hostile factions content to drink in corners and eye the others over the rims of their whiskey glasses. No one was happy, but maybe Tony/Tiny.

Lorena told me, “As you can tell from our opening skit, Ethan used to be a scriptwriter.”

From across the room Ethan shook his head. “For God’s sake, Lorena. Not really. One measly script doesn’t count. I’m a numbers guy.”

“You mean a racketeer,” Frank joked. He was pouring himself a drink.

“Yeah, sure thing.” Ethan didn’t look happy.

Ethan, I noted, drank spring water, refusing liquor. And he eyed Tony who got drunker and drunker, at one point spilling his drink on his sleeve. Now and then Ethan put out his hand, protectively, admonishingly, warning in his eye. When Tony turned away, Ethan slid Tony’s glass to the side, the older brother as desperate protector. He saw me looking. “I am my brother’s keeper, Miss Ferber. A lot of good it does me.”

Tony looked at his brother, squinted. “You won’t let me have fun.”

“That’s because one of us goes to work in the morning, the one who pays your bills.”

Tony narrowed his eyes, a trace of resentment there. “I make money at the club.”

“Which you toss away.”

“Now, boys,” Frank began, “remember your old mama in Hoboken.”

Ava spoke up. “Francis is loyal to old friends to the point of downright suffocation. Get him talking about playing kick ball with Lenny in the street and he’ll get weepy on you.”

Frank ignored her. He raised his glass. “To the memory of Lenny, my old boyhood friend.”

I toasted someone I didn’t know, but I noted that neither Max nor Alice raised their glasses. At the mention of her dead husband—I flashed to that clipping of Alice in a police station—Alice looked down into her lap. Lorena was shaking her head, unhappy. Ava sat with her arms folded, her lips drawn into a straight line.

Tony leaned into me. “Frank takes care of us. Got me the job in the valley. He
knows
people.”

Ava spoke over his words. “Max used to be Tony’s agent, but Tony deserted Max when…” She stopped, flustered.

Downing his drink and swaying back and forth, Tony bellowed, “When Alice murdered my brother.”

The words sailed across the room. Time stopped.

Lorena had been lighting a cigarette but froze, the match burning.

Looking up, Alice gasped.

“Cool it, Tony.” Frank spoke through clenched teeth.

“Don’t be an idiot, Tony.” Ava punched his sleeve. “Not here tonight.”

Ethan was frowning. “Tony, shut up.”

But Tony couldn’t be stopped. “I gotta say it again. She pushed him off that balcony. She got all the money. His money.
Our
money. Lenny
promised
us, remember? She married that…that fool Max.
Him
.” He pointed at the ashen man. “He was just…waiting.”

Ava spoke to me sarcastically. “The legendary Lenny Pannis had lots of money, pots of it at the end of the Hollywood rainbow, at least his brothers believe he did. He ran shadowy businesses and played with the big boys. He was a big shot in this town. Supposedly he made a fortune.”

“He did,” Tony went on, his words biting. “He
did
. Alice killed him. He was gonna divorce her. The money…” He glared at Alice, who was staring down into her lap again. Max was making rumbling noises, fidgeting in his seat.

I stared at them all, stupefied by this raw and public scene.

“Stop it now,” Ethan whispered.

Ava was trying to end the conversation and looked at me. Perhaps she saw disgust on my face, tempered by a little wonder. “The neighbors heard them arguing on the balcony. Lenny, agitated, toppled over. Alice was inside…”

Tony yelled, “That’s the phony story the police bought.”

Ethan stood abruptly and looked shame-faced. “We shouldn’t have come. Tony, get up.”

But there was no stopping the drunk man. “I
fired
Max. He was an accomplice to murder.”

Ava sneered. “And look at the jobs you’ve been getting ever since.”

“Hey, I’m doing all right.” He pointed at Max. “You ruined all our careers, Max.”

Max started to say something, but Alice put her hand on his knee. He blinked wildly at her.

“Say good night, Tony.” Ethan prodded him.

I turned to Ethan. “And what do you think of Max?”

Ethan deliberated, cool, quiet, steely-eyed, turning from me to glare directly at Alice. He spoke to her. “He married the woman who murdered my brother, Miss Ferber. We just can’t prove it. And on top of everything else, now we learn he’s a Commie. Max is filled with surprises.”

Silence. An awful silence.

Ava sidled up to Frank and watched as he poured himself a drink at the sideboard. I didn’t hear what she whispered to him, though Frank, gulping down a drink, spoke loud enough for all of us to share the moment. “Hey, I got friends, too. You did say party. I only party with friends.”

Ava whispered something else, but he turned away. He caught my censorious eye—a look I’d perfected and executed on even more annoying members of the lesser species—but he simply smiled that charming witchcraft smile. A hard nut to crack, this Sinatra boy, a crooner confident in his power to attract. I figured it was time he met his match.

The two Pannis brothers huddled in a corner, Ethan whispering in Tony’s ear. The woman who’d followed them in—she’d stood in a corner the whole time—now tucked her arm around Tony’s waist.

I sat back as Max nudged me.

“Edna.” Max tried to make a joke. “You don’t look like you’re having fun.”

“I didn’t expect to.” I sipped my drink. “I’m too old for these shenanigans.” I pointed a narrow finger around the room. “This tinseltown soap opera.”

“I expect you never liked cocktail parties…ever,” Alice added.

“Like New Year’s Eve parties, which I avoid like the plague, cocktail parties thrive on forced hilarity and futile dreams of new and unexpected pleasure.”

“Good God,” Lorena howled.

“Then what do you do for entertainment?” Alice asked.

“Well, I go to cocktail parties and New Year’s parties. I like to watch people fail at their dreams.”

Max shook his head during the abrupt pause that followed my comments. “Don’t believe her, Alice. The people Edna watches will end up in one of her novels. She’s memorizing our scintillating dialogue right now.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Max,” I chided. “George Kaufman you’re not.”

The woman who was hanging onto Tony’s sequined sleeve squealed at something he said, and then apologized. She clung to Tony, sipping the drink he’d handed her, but she looked frightened, as though she couldn’t understand what had just happened in the room. Now she was whispering in Tony’s ear, and he didn’t look happy.

“Is that Tony’s keeper?” I asked Alice.

Max, listening, answered. “Liz Grable.”

“Tell me about her.”

Max brushed an affectionate hand across Alice’s face. “See, what did I tell you? The novelist.”

“Is she Betty Grable’s misguided sister?” I wondered aloud.

Alice smiled as Max spoke in a soft voice. “Her name is Liz Carnecki. A fledgling actress, at least a decade ago. She thought a name change would usher her into stardom.”

“Did it work?”

“She’s still trying, God knows where. I was her agent for a split second, a favor to Tony way back when, but I could rarely place her. Nowadays she works in a hair salon on Hollywood Boulevard. Hair Today. Can you imagine? She’s got an efficiency that’s way, way out by the Hollywood Cemetery on Santa Monica Boulevard, where Tony squats these days.”

Liz Grable/Carnecki was now staring at me, mouth agape, showing too many capped teeth. Had she heard us chatting about her? An impossible woman, I realized, all bamboozle and peroxide, hair so teased and puffed and platinum she looked like cotton candy at a fair. A woman in her forties—those lines could no longer be disguised by all that pancake makeup—she attempted a sweet twenty-something starlet look with that round bright red blotch on each cheek, that Clara Bow cupid’s mouth, that tight cobalt-blue fringed cocktail dress slit up one leg, and a stenciled leopard pattern scarf around her shoulders. A shock of seashells—yes, they had to be seashells gathered on some California strand—circled her powdered neck. She was, I suppose, perfect for Tony/Tiny, though I hereby confess a definite orneriness in my description of the bodacious lass.

“Miss Ferber!” She came sailing across the room, and I feared a catastrophic collision. “I was telling Tony last night that I would make a
perfect
Sabra Cravat in any remake of
Cimarron
. I was
born
in Oklahoma. And I hear you’re finishing your book on Texas. I
know
oil wells. My papa…”

Tony/Tiny, her sequined conquering hero, dragged her away.

Lorena leaned into me. “Are you ready to leave yet?”

“I’m always ready to leave a party.”

Lorena lowered her voice. “I can’t believe they all showed up here, Edna. Everyone has been so careful to…to
avoid
these encounters. And that drunken attack by Tony—well, we’ve heard it before.”

“Is Tony always like this?”

Lorena glanced at Tony. “He’s often the one everyone likes—when he’s sober. He can be sweet—used to be sweet. But when he drinks…”

“Why are they here?”

“Frank brought them here on purpose—to rile Ava. He had to know. Ethan and Tony refuse to be in the same room as Alice. Frank
knows
that. And Frank can’t stand Liz. To bring
her
here…”

“She’s not a favorite of yours?”

Lorena shrugged her shoulders. “I’m too unglamorous for her. And of no importance. She tends to ignore the other women in the room. Liz spends her days clipping hair and waiting to be discovered like Lana Turner at the Tip Top Café on Highland Avenue.”

“It’s not going to happen?” I injected wonder into my words.

“Not in this lifetime, even out here in fantasy land.” But Lorena seemed to regret her words. “I shouldn’t mock her. She is who she is. It’s the boys I should be angry with.”

The two hostile camps settled into different corners of the living room, though every so often Tony hurled hostile looks at Alice. Max was mumbling about leaving, repeatedly checking his wristwatch. Alice whispered, “A little longer, Max. Just for Ava’s sake.”

But Ava wasn’t happy. Her strides across the room were abrupt, jerky. Frank stood next to the liquor cabinet, his tongue rolled into his cheek, the wary battler, eyeing her, waiting, waiting. Lorena and I made small talk about Agnes Moorhead who played Parthy in
Show Boat
, an actress we both knew slightly and who now, Lorena informed me, was unhappy with the way her lines were cut in the movie, making her a one-dimensional harpy. We watched Liz Grable, lipstick smeared on one side of her mouth, pick her nervous path across the floor to Frank’s side, where she proceeded to vamp and titter like a schoolgirl flirtation. From where I sat I could pick out her coy flattery, as her fingers grazed his sleeve. Nodding silently, Frank leaned into her, made a loud, cruel observation about cheap Woolworth’s perfume and looked ready to shove her away. Hurt flooded Liz’s face, her eyes blinking wildly. Any moment she’d burst into tears.