The Five Acts of Diego Leon (29 page)

“Careful,” Bill whispered, glancing around.

“Why?” Diego asked. “I thought you said—”

“You know why.”

Diego stood now, swaying, his head swirling. “I’m going to find that girl of yours and tell her.”

“Tell her what?” Bill rose, trying to get him to sit back down.

“About—” And as he walked away, Bill reached out, took Diego in his arms, and hugged him.

“Stop it. Come now,” Bill pleaded. “Get ahold of yourself.”

Diego collapsed, gripping his shoulders, sobbing. “I’ll tell them. Please let me tell them,” he said. “I can’t stand it. I want to tell them who we really are.”

“What’s happening?” Fiona stood near the hedges, holding Georgie’s bouquet, the flowers still fresh and fragrant. “What’s going on?” She looked at him then at Bill. “Mister Cage?”

“Your friend here’s had a little too much,” he said. Bill removed Diego’s arms from around his neck.

“I’ll tell her,” Diego said. “I’ll tell them all.”

“Tell them all what?” Fiona asked.

Diego collapsed on the bench.

“I should run along,” Bill said. “Toni must be wondering what happened to me.” He said good-bye to Fiona, turned, and left without saying a word to Diego.

“Hey,” Fiona said, sitting down now, holding him up. “What’s going on here? Tell me, please. What’s happening?”

He took a deep breath and stood now. He cleared his head and focused. “Nothing,” he told her.

The moon was full that night, the blue light eerie and incandescent. It bathed her face in a sickly pallor. She sat there, beautiful, lonely, her bare shoulders slender and elegant. No strand of her hair
was unraveled, her makeup was still perfect, her dress just as smooth and pristine as it had been at the wedding ceremony. He repeated these words to Fiona again and again. There was nothing going on. Nothing. But he could see, even in that weak moonlight, the look of worry and doubt that he had cast upon her knowing face.

April 1932

F
OR TWO MONTHS AFTER THE WEDDING, HE TRIED CALLING
Fiona but was met with only silence. He didn’t run into her around the studio, and when he asked any of the other makeup girls, they would shrug their shoulders and say they hadn’t seen or heard from her. Georgie was gone, so he couldn’t ask her.

“Where’s your little gal?” Rose asked one day while he passed the front desk. “On you like glue then she’s gone. What gives?”

“I think she’s mad at me,” he said, but he knew it was more than that. He remembered his behavior at the wedding and shuddered.

“Send her flowers,” said Rose. “Chocolate. Give her some tickle.” She winked. “That always cheers a girl up.”

He sent her a box of chocolates and a bouquet of roses with a note that read: “My dearest Fi, I miss you.” Near the end of April, Rose handed him a note.

“Guess it worked,” she said and giggled.

It read:

We need to talk
.
Fi

She showed up and was calm and polite when he answered the door. He led her in, and when he tried to kiss her, Fiona gave him a slight
push and shook her head. She looked flushed and sat down, explaining that she was feeling ill.

“I’ve been a tad queasy and have had slight headaches,” she said.

“Anything to drink?” he asked. “I could run down to the drugstore for some Bromo-Seltzer. I’m fresh out but could always use more.” He pointed to the empty blue glass bottle on the table.

“No, thank you,” she said. Fiona sat, removed her hat, and placed her hands in her lap.

“Look,” he said. “I haven’t been entirely honest about my feelings and—”

“I talked to Mister Cage the other day,” she interrupted.

“Oh?” He tried containing the nervous tone in his voice. “Why?”

“I’m leaving Frontier. He didn’t tell you?”

He paused, took a deep breath. “Why would he tell me, of all people?”

She remained quiet.

He cleared his throat. “What will you do?”

“I’m going to Sunrise Pictures. They’ve offered me a position as head of makeup. A step up.”

Fiona would work on a series of high-budget films Sunrise would be shooting over the next few years. The first was to be called
Columbus
, about the famous explorer who found the New World. Much of the filming would be done overseas, in Italy and Spain. She would have to agree to be gone for at least six months. She said it was a great chance, and that she would be getting paid almost twice as much as she was making now.

“You didn’t know?” she asked again. “He never mentioned any of this to you?”

“No,” he insisted. “Why in the world would he have?”

“I just thought that the two of you were—you know?—close. You’re his protégé. All that. Then at the wedding I found you two—”

He interjected. “I was drunk. I didn’t know what I was saying.”

She looked up at him now, and there was a deep sympathy in her eyes, a pain, an anguish he had never known before. “I think you knew.”

“So you’re taking it?” he asked.

“Of course. I’d be a fool not to,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “It’s good money. A chance to spread my wings.”

“Fi,” he said. “What about us?” He reached out and took her hand.

“Don’t,” she said, removing his hand. “It was fun. But there’s nothing between us. I should’ve realized that a long time ago. A guy like you has other interests.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your career. Your ambitions. Your hopes. They aren’t mine. And you still have to figure out who you are. I can’t help you with that. I thought I could.”

“But—”

“Good-bye. I’ll see you around.”

She walked out the door, and he didn’t try to stop her.

Her departure left him reeling. Diego hadn’t known just how much he needed Fiona—her company, her love for him. And now that she was gone, he came to realize that she was the only person who knew who Diego really was. He longed for home, for Mexico, even his grandparents. But he found now that his memories came in weak, sporadic fragments: wide green fields, the smell of loamy earth in the countryside, the sound of cornstalks rustling in the breeze. He thought about his mother and father, wondered about Javier, Carolina. His teacher, the only mother he had ever known. Their faces were obscured when he tried conjuring them up, as if he were seeing them through gauze. In his dreams, when he tried to reach out, to touch them, they would evaporate or turn to ash, which would frighten him, and he’d wake up panting, sweating, terrified, alone in his bed.

Bill kept busy around the clock, dealing with a series of pressing issues around the studio—threats of strike, financial strife, disagreements with R. J., temperamental actors—and canceled several outings and dates with Diego. When he did finally call and invite him out, it was business. They met at a crowded restaurant off Wilshire Boulevard, and he found Bill sitting at a booth with a stack of papers before him. He looked tired and disheveled.

“We’ve got a picture for you,” he said. He pushed the forms aside and rubbed his eyes. He took a sip from his drink then continued: “A real unique opportunity to help launch you.” He slid a script across the table.

Diego took it and read the title. It was in Spanish.
La novia de sangre
, it read. He was confused. “What’s this?”

“A script.” Bill chuckled.

“But it’s in Spanish. I thought I’d do English-language movies. Like I have been.”

Bill said the talkies made selling films to foreign audiences who didn’t speak English a little trickier. They had to now worry about words, about actual dialogues. Many studios had taken to filming two versions of films they hoped to pitch to international audiences or immigrants residing in the United States. In this case, they would be filming two versions of the film, one called
The Bride of Blood
for American audiences with an English-speaking director and actors; the other would have a Spanish-speaking director and actors.

“And the English version?” Diego asked him. “Why can’t I do that one?”

“Not yet,” he said. “Not quite yet. We have to work up to that. Be patient.”

“But—”

“Trust me,” he said. “I know what I’m doing. Do you accept the part or not? I need to know in the next twenty-four hours.”

Diego took the script. “I’ll tell you tomorrow then.”

“Very well.” Bill gathered his things and rose. “I’m sorry. I have to go. Please order whatever you like and put it on my account.”

“You’re not staying?”

“I’m afraid I can’t,” he said. “I’ll make it up to you. I promise. All of it. I know we haven’t spent much time together, but things have been stressful. Order anything you like on me.” Bill grabbed his coat and hat and left.

Diego was angry so he ordered the most expensive thing on the menu: filet mignon in red wine sauce, and a bottle of merlot. After his meal, he read the script. The movie was about a blood-sucking female vampire terrorizing a remote town high in the Hungarian
mountains. Diego knew he had little choice in the matter, and realized he didn’t want to wait until tomorrow to decide. He asked the waiter to bring him a telephone.

He dialed Bill’s number. Lawrence answered. “Please tell Bill I said I’ll take the part,” he said.

“Very well,” Lawrence responded.

He hung up then finished the wine and ordered another bottle and a crème brûlée for dessert.

He couldn’t remember the last time he had been as nervous as he was before this screen test. It would be in Spanish. The last few years had required him to speak more and more English so that, by the time the script for
La novia de sangre
came his way, Diego felt unsure about his ability to deliver the lines, to pronounce the words properly, to carry the language. He felt like an outsider, a stranger, as he flipped through the sheets, breaking down the scene he was to perform for the test. That morning, he found it hard to focus. He forgot his lines. His hands trembled, and he felt his heartbeat quicken. Nevertheless, when time came for him to leave for the studio, he put his jacket and hat on, took a deep breath, and marched toward the trolley stop, focusing, rehearsing his lines over and over.

At the test, he met his costar. Alicia Prado came from a line of impressive stock. Her father was a nationally recognized stage actor who toured throughout Argentina, Latin America, and Europe. Now an acting coach with his own theater troupe in Buenos Aires, where Alicia first got her start, he had been singlehandedly responsible for producing some of the country’s most regarded actors and actresses, such as Olga Bermundes and Fernando Alaniz. Alicia had gone on to star in a number of successful films back in Argentina. She was in Hollywood now, she said, hoping to “make it big.”

Alicia was young and radiant, with bobbed hair and an animated way about her. “I’ve heard so much about you,” Alicia said when he walked up and introduced himself. She sat in front of a large mirror
with lights running along its edges and was adjusting her outfit, a long blue and yellow dress.

“It’s a pleasure,” he said.

She smiled and rose. “My, but you are so tall.” Her English, despite a strong accent, was understandable, her voice beautiful and melodious, and she immediately put him at ease with her affection, her kind face and jovial attitude. “I’ll need lifts to reach you,” she said, chuckling.

“They do that to some actors or actresses,” he responded. “You know? Lifts.”

“Oh, I don’t mind if I have to,” she said. “I’m just so excited to be here on the Frontier lot working on a movie. You know, the director is such a veteran of the film scene in Latin America. I do hope it’s a fun experience.”

“Have you worked with him?”

“No,” she said. “But plenty of my friends have.”

They watched the film crew get the lights and microphones in position. They darted around, back and forth, moving cameras into position, adjusting lenses, marking the slates with chalk. Alicia nodded to the director, who sat off to one side, flipping through the script, muttering to himself.

Alicia turned to him and asked, her tone serious, heavy, “Tell me, are you nervous? Are you scared?”

“No,” he said, feigning confidence. Bill once told him that a leading man would never show his insecurities.

“Where did you study? What school?”

“None,” he told her. “I have no formal training.”

“Well,” she said. “That’s quite all right. I’m not a snob.”

She said everything she learned about acting she got from her father. He trained her to perform from the time she was old enough to stand. And, when she officially joined his theater troupe at the age of ten, she had already accumulated an impressive amount of experience playing in the most prestigious and impressive theater houses in Argentina. It’s been a lot of hard work, Alicia explained, and from the theater there eventually came offers from the film studios that were starting to emerge around Buenos Aires and throughout the
rest of the country. They stood behind the cameras watching the crew prepare the set. He was in a version of one of the costumes his character was required to wear—a basic suit and tie—and the director had instructed the makeup people and stylists to do what they could to make Diego appear a few years older. But not too old, he had stressed. So they combed his hair to the side, put him in a different set of clothes, and gave him sideburns. They called him forward then, and Alicia stayed behind. He stood on the set, which was the interior of a courtyard where he and Mary, his character’s young wife in the film, would meet and talk. The courtyard consisted of flower beds, a stone bench, and a gurgling fountain.

“We’ll do some very basic poses, okay, son?” said the director. Then he asked him to stand by the fountain. “Here.” He pointed to the small X on the floor, and Diego was annoyed; he knew where his mark was.

Carolina had sent him a few letters over the years. She had gotten his address from his grandparents and wrote him from time to time, filling Diego in on all that was going on in Morelia and her life. And, though he had rarely written her over the years, her correspondence had remained consistent. She had written at least once a month. He had told her, early on, about the rift between himself and his grandparents, his breakup with Paloma, his intention of someday returning but not until he had acquired at least a semblance of success. “So that years from now, my children could have real proof that I had lived,” he wrote once.