West of Paradise (5 page)

He wept openly now, his thin shoulders wracked with sobs. She embraced him.

“I didn't realize you were so close to Drayco.”

“I couldn't stand the son of a bitch. I only came as a favor to Darcy. I knew she'd have trouble pulling a crowd.”

“Then why are you crying?”

“Dead, he has a better chance of making a deal than I do.”

*   *   *

“Why is Algernon Reddy here?” Kate asked Wilton. Among her other reading materials to acquaint herself with the culture of the city, sub- in certain cases, was the
L.A. Weekly,
an underground publication that had profiled him. He was no less vocal about the fact that he was grievously ill than he'd been about his drug usage, except that in this case there was no chance of going to jail. “Was he friendly with Larry?”

“He's friendly with Death,” Wilton said. “Maybe he's here to remind us that the Reaper isn't that Grim. Or maybe he's reminding himself.”

“He's still very handsome.” Kate noted the fine jut of jaw, starkly angular cheeks beneath piercing blue eyes.

“In the sixties he was known as Ever Reddy,” Wilton said. “He had this legendary cock that hung to his knee, and the word was he could do it for days. Longer than Rubirosa. Such things are not listed in the
Guinness Book of Records,
but they have been chronicled by Harold Robbins, under fictional names of course. Then Algernon found God and this heiress who subsidized him.”

“Are you Kate Donnelly?” a husky voice said behind her.

The hairs on the back of Kate's neck stood on end at the sound as she recognized the voice. “I'm Jake Alonzo,” he said as she turned. A genial smile softened the slightly battered face, the jagged nose that had once been part of a profile that made him too handsome for anything but romantic leads, the dark eyes set on reconstructed cheekbones. Somehow, the spectacle of that shattered face, no matter how cleverly put back together, rendered him even more appealing, evincing as it did that male beauty could be just as fragile and evanescent as a woman's, especially when coupled with character flaws. The tree he had slammed into at the base of the Hollywood Hills had a plaque on it now, part of a prepaid pilgrimage for fans who couldn't afford to go to Paris to visit Jim Morrison's grave and weren't quite sure where Kurt Cobain was buried. They celebrated Jake's being alive, the fact that drugs had nearly killed him but missed. The darkness that had obviously been inside him was now evident in his face, getting him better, more shadowy roles. He held out his hand.

She took it. It was warm.

“I heard you were here,” he said.

“Me?
You
heard
I
was here?”

“F. Scott Fitzgerald's granddaughter,” he said. “The greatest regret of my whole career is that Redford made
Gatsby.
”

She felt touched by the fact that even with the heavy turn his career had taken because of the transformation in his face, Jake imagined he could play an innocent. He never stopped making movies now. But if he essayed being a hero, it was always one who was slightly askew, scarred by circumstances as his skin would be if the town wasn't crowded with plastic surgeons. Skilled as they were, they hadn't been able to bring back the perfection. “You could make it again,” she said.

“What was he like, old Scott?”

“I never knew him,” she said, grateful for being able to speak that truth, at least.

“I'm a little too beefy for the part, even if they would consider doing it over. I always imagined Gatsby like Fitzgerald himself. Slender. That lost, blond, glazed blue-eyed look. Dark men can't do that.”

“You could do anything,” she said, believing it, accepting along with him that he could seem as ingenuous as before.

“Maybe I could thin down like De Niro fatted up for
Raging Bull.
Wear contacts. Become an alcoholic.” He looked at the mineral water in his hand. “You could disappoint me, and then I could blame you.”

“Disappoint you how?”

“Turn out to be an airhead. No substance.”

“I'll try not to do that,” she said.

“I bet you couldn't even if you wanted to.”

“But I could disappoint you in other ways,” she said, wondering why she felt on the verge of tears. She had not realized that a man like Jake Alonzo could be vulnerable in other than physical ways, open to disillusion, or that someone like Kate herself—or what he thought Kate was—was capable of doing him in. Just being there had taken a gouge out of her emotionally, frazzled her with the unreality of the situation. What seemed like only a moment before she had been the Little Match Girl, nose pressed against the bakery window. Now she'd been shot through the glass, straight into the cakes and breads, the fragrance of freshly baked dough in her nose. It would have been overwhelming even without this, this actor admired by everyone, including her. This man who had publicly denounced his own weakness, healing on the inside while his face did, looking at her like something might really be possible between them.

She wanted desperately to set him straight, clear the air, dispense with the lie, and have him admire her for her honesty. Her hands clenched into fists. She felt something cutting softly into her palm. She looked down and saw the card from the woman from
East
magazine, looked up and saw Jake Alonzo's eyes. Really interested. How perceptive was he? With all the women in the world who were throwing themselves at him, would he bother to take the time, have the curiosity to find out who she was, if he didn't already think she was somebody?

“What other ways?” he asked.

The question hung on the air, unanswered. She couldn't risk it.

“Hey,” Linus Archer said, bobbing up to them, a Coke in his hand, conspicuously nonalcoholic, still in its bottle. “What are you doing moving in on my territory, Jake?”

“Your territory?”

“She's my ex-wife.”

“Is that true?” Jake asked.

“I never met him before today.”

“My next wife then.”

“She's too young for you.”

“No one's too young for me. I'm in my prime. They celebrate me in Paris.”

“No one said the French were smart about everything,” Jake said.

“I hear you're Hemingway's granddaughter,” Linus said.

“You hear wrong.”

“He was my hero.” He set down his Coke, took the scarf from his neck, and making it into a miniature cape, did a miniature veronica. “Toro! Toro!”

“Takes one to know one,” Jake said.

“Are you interested in this putz?” Linus asked Kate.

She could feel herself blushing.

“Well?” Jake said.

A moment passed. “Who wouldn't be?” she said. An honest answer.

“Okay,” said Linus. “You've made your choice. But you'll be sorry.” He whispered in her ear, as he went by her, quoting. “‘It was a hell of a way to be wounded.'”

*   *   *

There was a commotion by the doorway. “Don't give me that shit,” a raucous woman's voice yelled out. “I'm the only one who really belongs here.” Lila Darshowitz pushed her way past security, and burst into the room. “Who do you have to double-cross to get a drink around here?”

A waiter came over with champagne and chardonnay. “I like red,” she said churlishly.

“I'll get it for you,” he said, and backed away.

“Doesn't this place have a bouncer?” Wilton came over to Jake and Kate, taking the two of them in. His eyes sparkled, avuncular, pleased.

“You can't keep Drayco's own mother out of his funeral,” said Kate.

“Larry would have. The only reason she got in is that he's dead,” said Wilton.

“I'll be right back.” Jake indicated his empty glass. “Can I get you something, Kate?”

“I'm fine,” she said.

“You certainly are,” beamed Wilton, as soon as Jake was gone. He started singing, like Ethel Merman, the introduction to a Sondheim-Styne song. “I had a dream…” He stopped. “But it wasn't
this
good. This
fast.
” He hugged her around the neck. “I'm so proud of you!”

“Why?”

“You're going to find out for sure what everyone only speculates about.”

It took her a minute to understand he was saying that Jake Alonzo wanted to take her to bed. Did he? Could she risk disappointment with him if the rumors were true? Could she put aside her own duplicity, which she found to her chagrin she was starting to do? “He heard the Fitzgerald thing. I have to tell him.”

“You tell him
nothing,
” Wilton said. “He's obviously taken with you.”

“Not who and what I really am.”

“So what? We're all just the shadows on the wall of Plato's cave. People don't want to know the truth: it's the illusion that captures them. The illusion that they think is the truth. Illusion
is
truth in Hollywood.”

“What are you two buzzing about?” Perry Zemmis came back over to them.

“Plato's cave,” said Wilton.

“I remember that place,” said Perry. “It was where everybody went to fuck.”

“That was Plato's Retreat,” said Wilton, disgusted.

Perry waved the correction away. “It's not like we can risk going anymore, whatever it's called. It's the same reason they had to close the bathhouses.”

Lila Darshowitz walked past them, a glass of red wine in both hands. A little of it had already spilled down the front of her dress, which was not exactly funereal, black being only a part of the print. The rest was white and a fuchsia that nearly blended with the wine spill, but not quite. The print seemed to exaggerate her already enormous form: breasts the size of pumpkins and a stomach that was girdled to no effect, other than to push a roll of fat above her waist. She was a two-fisted drinker, finishing the glass in her right hand and heading for the buffet table.

“What a slob,” said Wilton.

“I feel sorry for her,” said Kate.

“How long have you been in Los Angeles?” asked Perry.

“Two months.”

“You'll get over it,” he said.

Lila took a plate. People made a wider circle around her than they seemed to be making around Arthur Finster. Only Sarah Nash, piling her plate high with salad and pasta, seemed unperturbed at standing next to him. “So much for the rumor that you're anorexic,” said Arthur.

“So much for the rumor that you can't pronounce words of more than one syllable,” Sarah said. “I heard you followed Brandy into the ladies' room and offered her a contract on a book exposing Charley Best.”

“Actually, it was the men's room,” he said, biting into a miniature pizza. A string of the cheese hung between his teeth and the crust in his hand. “I think she's a transvestite.”

“Are there no depths to which you won't sink?”

“At least I don't betray my friends,” he said.

“That's because you don't have any.”

There was a huge tray of guacamole molded into the shape of a Mexican hat, a bowl at its base filled with blue corn chips. “Is it all right to eat this?” Lila Darshowitz asked no one in particular.

“Only if you're not kosher,” said Arthur.

“Where's that guy with the wine,” Lila said, loading her plate, spooning the chunky green paste into her mouth in what would have been fistfuls, had she used her hands.

“Garçon!” Arthur snapped his fingers in the air. A waiter headed for them, bringing a tray with wine.

“You're being pretty solicitous…” Sarah murmured under her breath, “… for a guy who murdered her son.”

“He OD'd, and the whole town knows it.”

“He was clean,” Sarah said.

“He was a driven man with compulsive habits.” Arthur ate another pizza, licked his fingers, took another. “Materialistic and greedy.”

“And you're here to make the world a better place. A safe haven for literacy.”

“At least I didn't publish O.J. books. Or juror books. Or Faye Resnick books.”

“Only because Michael Viner got there first.”

He drew himself up to his full height, which was still eight inches shorter than Sarah's. “I am in competition with no one.”

“You're forgetting Sleepy, Dopey, Grumpy, and Sleazy.”

“I like red,” Lila said to the waiter. “Save yourself a trip. Bring two.” She handed him her empty glass, then wolfed a calzone. A piece of the spinach fell on her dress.

“That poor woman,” Kate observed from where she was standing. “She's spilling things all over her dress.”

“How can you tell?” asked Wilton.

“I really have to talk to her.”

“What for?” asked Perry.

“I have a project. An idea.”

“What about the unpublished Fitzgerald?” Perry said. “When can I get a look at that?”

“Never,” Kate said.

“Aw, come on. You're just playing hardball. Trying to make me more interested. Well, it's working.” He put his hand on her shoulder.

She took it off.

“Okay,” he said. “What's your price?”

“There is no price,” she said.

“How about if I optioned both of them. Grandpa's and yours.”

“You don't even know what mine is.”

“So tell me.”

“She's going to examine the life of Larry Drayco,” Wilton said. “Search it out for meaning.”

“Forget it,” said Zemmis, and went to get a drink.

*   *   *

Mortimer Schein, who was shortly to produce the duchess's clothing line, felt awkward at parties, especially this one. There was no question it was a party.
Entertainment Tonight
and the E cable channel were both covering it, even though someone was screaming at their minicams that they had no respect.

Mortimer, or Mort, as he was called by his friends, who were mostly still in New York and East Hampton, had come to the funeral because he'd played cards with the dead man. That was a kind of bond, even though Mort suspected he'd cheated. Larry Drayco couldn't help stealing: it was in his character, or lack of same, as Mort's mother might have said. Once one of the men in the regular game, a producer, had come in raving about a new book he'd read in galleys and announced that he was going to buy the rights. Drayco excused himself to go to the toilet, called the agent who represented the author, and made a deal from the bathroom.