The Five Acts of Diego Leon (17 page)

“Why sure,” he said, reaching into his pocket. He counted the money, looked over to a pastry case at the edge of the counter. Glazed donuts filled with cream and jam, slices of apple pie and chocolate cake on glass shelves twirled around inside. “And a donut. Cream filled,” he said.

Jean brought it to him and poured Diego another cup of coffee. “You, I like,” she said, setting the pot down. “You, I can tell, would never stiff a person. You got a heart. A big heart, son. Keep it that way.”

He had been sitting there all morning, flirting with Jean, telling her just how much he liked her new hairdo, cracking jokes, making her laugh.

“Forty-two?” he asked, astonished, when she admitted her age. “I would have guessed thirty.”

“Oh, stop,” she said, removing her thick bifocals and cleaning the lenses with the edge of her apron. “You’re kind.”

A diner paying his ticket looked at Diego and rolled his eyes.

“Get lost,” he said to the man, remembering the expression when someone else used it that morning.

“Dirty foreign punk,” the man muttered and stormed off.

She poured him cup after cup of coffee as long as he kept the
compliments coming, as long as he engaged her in conversation. “You really got a way of making a girl feel special,” Jean said to him. All the booths, their blue vinyl glossy and bright, were empty, their speckled Formica tops clean. Each salt and pepper shaker, each sugar jar and napkin dispenser, was full. It was just before noon, and Jean told him it always quieted down right around that time.

“Everyone’s at work,” she said.

Jean walked around the counter and took a seat on the stool beside Diego. She sighed loudly when she sat. He saw her pale legs, a series of thick green and blue veins threading like spiderwebs just beneath her skin. “Oh, Lord. I’m tired.”

He sipped his coffee. “I bet.”

She rubbed her temples then stopped and regarded him. “Child,” she said. “You look terrible.”

“What are you talking about?”

She reached a hand out, the skin around her fingernails rough and dry. Jean touched his forehead, his cheeks. “You’re pale. Thin. You been eating all right?”

“Why sure.” He chuckled. “I have.”

“Hum,” she said. “I raised eight children, all of them ungrateful savages, but I raised them. I know the look of hunger in a face.” Jean rose, shouted to the cook, “Hey, Fred. Get your hide off that stool and make me a plate of eggs and bacon, will you?”

Fred muttered something, and soon Diego heard the sound of eggs frying, caught the familiar scent of bacon, of toast. The plate was big, the eggs fluffy and yellow, the bacon thick and salty. He devoured it, eating so fast he nearly choked a few times.

“Easy there,” Jean said. “Easy.” She stood behind the counter again, her arms crossed, a sweater draped over her shoulders. “Where’d you come from?” she asked.

He didn’t want her to know. He continued eating, ignoring her question.

“Fine. You don’t have to tell me.” She reached for the pot of hot coffee and poured him more. “You got any money?”

“Some.”

“A job?”

He shook his head.

She sighed. “You come empty-handed, right?”

“Yes,” he said, finished up the last of the eggs.

“You expecting to live off of charity?”

“No,” he said. “Certainly not.”

She was quiet for a long time. “I might be able to help you.”

“How so?”

Joe, the owner, had been thinking about hiring someone to come in every day to mop and clean up the place. It wouldn’t be a lot, Jean said. But it would be something. “What do you say?” she asked. “I think it’d be perfect for someone like you. A lot of people would kill for anything these days. But I like you. I’m gonna give you the first crack at it.”

His situation was bad, and it would only get worse if he ran out of money. It was this or he would have to wire his grandfather, ask him for money for a ticket back.
No
, he told himself.
Not that. Not yet
.

“Sure,” he said to Jean. “Fine.”

April–October 1927

H
E WAS PAID IN TIPS
. M
EASLY TIPS
. C
HUMP CHANGE
. I
F HE WAS
lucky, a crumpled dollar bill. Whatever Jean saw fit to give him. For this, he had to sweep and mop. He had to pour coffee and get shouted at by the diners. He was cursed at, ridiculed, never acknowledged, never looked in the eye. He cleaned up spilled milk and water. He gathered dirty dishes and washed them in the large sink in the back kitchen, the hot water scalding his skin, his face moist from the steam. The cooks made fun of him, and there were days when Jean came to work in a foul mood and hardly spoke to Diego, never called him sweetie or honey or doll the way she did to the diners, the way she used to with him. Over one month with the job, and Diego was starting to feel it affect him. Though he was grateful for Jean, for the opportunity to make some money, for her feeding him when he complained about being hungry, he was always tired now, frustrated, and the pay was very little.

“Could be worse,” Jean said on one of her good days, laughing, as she carried out plates of eggs and pancakes, and ham and cheese sandwiches. “Never forget that. Could be a hell of a lot worse, kid.”

Diego sighed, took his broom handle, and continued sweeping. “I guess you’re right.”

“It ain’t that bad, angel,” Jean said, pushing the swivel door open with her hip. “Trust Jean.”

Rose flirted with Diego whenever she saw him. Once, when he bent down to pick up a handkerchief she had dropped, she pinched his behind. Rose was always charming and warm to him and most of the other clients. Ruby, however, was usually in a bad mood. Where Rose greeted him with a smile and a compliment, Ruby was reticent. She never seemed to smile. The afternoon he received the telegram, Ruby greeted him without looking up to Diego.

“Good afternoon, Ruby,” he said.

“Afternoon.” She sat on a wooden stool behind the front desk, smoking a cigarette and jotting down figures in a leather-bound book. She reached for the slots behind her, found 202, and plucked a yellow telegram envelope out. “This came for you.” She slid it across the desk to him.

He took it, then regarded her. He watched as she added more numbers to a long column, a lit cigarette dangling from her lips.

“Are you all right?” he asked

She shrugged her shoulders. “I’m fine.” She looked exhausted.

Back in his room, he removed his apron, smeared with grease, and threw it on the floor. He knew the telegram could only be from his grandparents. He took a deep breath, opened it, and read:

That night he tossed and turned in his bed, unable to sleep, his grandmother’s words seared into the backs of his eyelids. He tried to push the guilt aside as he thought about his grandfather, who, despite everything, had given Diego so much. How could he return now, though? He didn’t want them to know he had little money; they would likely offer to wire him some or to pay for his ticket back.
No, they couldn’t find out
. He rose early the next morning and
went down to the Western Union office on Hollywood Boulevard. He wrote:

In Hollywood, average people were transformed into movie stars overnight. They were discovered on trains pulling in from Omaha, Tulsa, Billings. They were discovered painting houses, playing tennis, sunning on the beach, pumping gas, on walks, sitting on bus benches, at intersections, and even waiting tables. He wondered about this as he watched the men in suits and ties parade in and out of the diner. Were there directors and producers among them? Would he be discovered there? He imagined being interviewed, telling the reporter that yes, he had indeed been found at Joe’s, mopping floors, washing dirty dishes, running around with a coffeepot, filling cups, working for a few tips when there he was, the director who saw “star quality” in him and discovered Diego León. Can you imagine it?

He was nice to any man in a tie, just in case. Diego poured the coffee slowly, engaged them in idle chitchat. How about the weather, huh? How’s the family? You should try the special today. He made sure to smile a lot, to look them in the eye when he spoke, to always be kind and courteous no matter how rude they were.

“What’s gotten into you?” Jean said to Diego one day, a hand on her hip. “You stand around talking to everyone like you’re the mayor or something.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I just feel like talking. That’s all.”

“Well, take the molasses out of your ass and get going,” she said, snapping her fingers. “Pronto!” She pointed with a dripping rag across the diner to a table. “Clean up table eight before the lunch crowd comes.”

He loaded the tray and scooped up the remainder of the tip she had left for him.

He saved it all. Little by little. After paying rent and buying a few necessities, there wasn’t much left.
Maybe coming was a mistake
, he thought. If he went back, would they forgive him? Would they take him in again? And what about Paloma?

“You look like you lost a friend,” Charlie told him that morning. He sat at the counter sipping black coffee. It was still too early, so the diner was empty. It was one of those rare days in the city when the sky was gray and overcast. Outside, a thin fog clung to the trolley car wires and veiled the trees and grass.

Diego sighed and leaned on the counter, his elbows resting on the Formica. “I shouldn’t have come. I was dumb to think I could break into films. A few months ago I arrived, and I’m still here, still just mopping floors. Boy, was I stupid.”

Charlie took a sip of his coffee and shook his head. “Not stupid. A bit naïve, maybe. Like all of us. But not stupid.”

“What do you mean?” Diego asked. He removed his elbows from the counter, straightened his back, and folded his arms.

“Well, where most go wrong isn’t in coming here. It’s in not educating themselves about the way the show’s run.” He pointed to his temple. “It’s all about having the smarts. About knowing what to do once you’re here. How to see and be seen.” The first thing Charlie said he had to do was to go down and register with Central Casting.

“Come again?” Diego asked.

“Register,” Charlie said.

“Register?”

“Yeah,” he said, taking a sip of coffee. “That’s where you gotta start.”

All the big studios hired extras through Central Casting, Charlie said.

“Go on,” Diego urged. How could he have not known this before? In all his reading, Diego had never heard anything about Central Casting. How could he have missed it?

He said, “Each studio hires through the office. You walk in there, and they have you fill out forms, have you tell them your height, your weight, just all the basic stuff. You give them a photo, and they give you a number to call if you wanna check in and see if there’s anything.” He talked about a large switchboard with lights that blinked off and on, manned by operators whose only job it was to answer. “ ‘Try again,’ ” he explained. “That’s what they say. Over and over. ‘Try again.’ ‘Try again.’ ”

“And what if you get something?”

“Jackpot!” Charlie shouted. “Operator tells you to report to a certain studio stage at a certain time.”

“What if there’s nothing?” Diego asked.

“Then it’s back to the same old thing,” Charlie said, pointing to Diego’s mop. “But every now and again you’ll get lucky. Get called out of the blue if you’re what a casting director needs and such. They’ll tell you where to be and you go.”

It’s the only way to do it, Charlie explained. You register with Central Casting. Then you call, you hope and pray. If your number doesn’t come, you try again the next day, or the next, or the next. In the meantime, Charlie said, you read
Cast Call
. You look for open calls for auditions. You try out for everything no matter how serious or outlandish, how vague or how specific. You call, you hope, you audition, he said. Over and over.

“Wow,” Diego said. “You sure know a thing or two about this game.”

“I do,” he said. “Did my time. Hoped to make it into films, but at this point I don’t think it’s going to happen. I’m still looking, though. For a chance to work somehow in the business.” Charlie looked at Diego. “You look a bit bewildered, kid. Why don’t I give you a hand?”

“How?” Diego asked.

“Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll take you down to the Central Casting office. It’s a zoo, but I think I can get you through the front door. The gals down there know me very well.”

“You’d really do that for me?” Diego asked.

“Why sure. Afterward, I can take you to Frontier Pictures. I can
get us through the front gate on account of I worked there designing props. I can show you how the operation works. All that. What do you say, pal?”