Cheat and Charmer (11 page)

He bends over to kiss her. “Oh, Dinah sweetie, not you, too?”

She turns aside, so that the kiss lands on her jawline, and looks unsmilingly into his anxious face. “Don’t go in there, Artie. Just turn around and get in the elevator and go home. Right now.”

“That bad, huh?” He shrugs and throws an arm around her shoulders. “Come on,” he whispers, and again she feels that heat. “Didja name me?”

The elevator doors open and she slips out from under him and gives him a bitter smile. “No, not you, Artie. Not you.”

H
oney, pull yourself together.”

“I just need a few minutes.” Her voice quavered and her legs sagged, and she sat down on the hard phone-booth seat and leaned against the wall.

“Are you there? Dinah?”

“Yeah, I’m here. Jesus Christ, Jake.”

“It’s over. Finished. Come home.”

“You sound impatient.”

“Honey, please. I’m concerned about you. Do you want me to come and get you?”

“No. I have the car. What would we do with the other one?”

Suddenly they were talking car talk, L.A. two-car talk, and it was an ordinary day once again, except that she felt as if all the blood had drained out of her.

“I can drive you back there tomorrow on my way to the studio.”

“Forget it. I’ll drive home.”

“Good. I’ll just call Irv and fill him in, and then I’m on my way. I’ll take Melrose. You take Sunset. You might even get home before me.”

Moments later, as Dinah stood waiting for the valet to drive her old Pontiac station wagon up to the hotel entrance, an uninvited image of Kingman’s clotted handkerchief flashed across her mind and she gagged. Her sweat-stained dress was cold and clammy against her skin, and there was a foul taste in her mouth. It was about three-thirty, and the sky was a poisonous gray-orange haze. The decaying boulevard seemed like a bad imitation of the place that had once enchanted her. As a nine-year-old girl,
newly arrived in Los Angeles, she had roller-skated past Grauman’s Egyptian every day to watch it being built. She’d stared at Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford through the windows of Armstrong-Schroeder’s, hoping they would notice her and make her a child star.

She tipped the valet and, pulling out to the edge of the road, squeezed her way into the caravan of automobiles filing westward into the malignant afternoon sun. Reaching Sunset Strip, she found the traffic heavy and slow, and though she knew where she was going, it seemed to her that she was no longer in a familiar place. She despised everything she saw—the hideous billboards, the endless interior design shops with fancy white wrought-iron garden furniture placed out on the sidewalk, the view south into the city’s sprawling anonymous flatlands, where, because of what she’d done today, she reminded herself, she and Jake would never have to live.

She pressed hard on the accelerator, hugged the long curves out of Beverly Hills, and soon turned right off Sunset onto Delfern, where suddenly all was silence and calm. There were no sidewalks, and not a single moving car, only an occasional gardener’s truck parked by the curb. Late-afternoon sprinklers whipped iridescent sprays of water over flower beds and lawns. The sweet smell of freshly cut grass hung in the air. Pampered wives, back from lunch and shopping, took dreamless naps in bedrooms hung with heavy silk drapes. Children gathered in front of the TV set, their fingers pruny from swimming. It was the hour when the maid, working without hurry, set the table with the good silver and the laundress checked her watch. Another hour and she would shut down the presser and begin the slow walk to the bus stop and the long ride home with her friends to the Crenshaw, where her employers have never been.

Shame shot through Dinah like a hot dye in her veins, and she clutched the wheel at the sight of every imperturbable mansion. She passed the house, as she did every day, where Bugsy Siegel had been murdered and thought, Somebody caught him off guard, too, and she remembered the newspaper photo of him wearing a dark suit, slumped against a sofa, blood pouring out of what had been his eye.

Turning into her own driveway, she saw the green Caddy in the garage. Thank God he’s home, she thought, and began to shake with dread and relief. She hadn’t wanted to come home and not find him there. The two trucks parked in front of the house meant the pool guys were still at work.
They had been set to pour the cement into the huge excavated hole in the backyard today, and by now it had probably been done. Jake was probably in the backyard watching and exulting.

She turned off the ignition and rested her head on the steering wheel, preparing herself for the next wave of shame. But it didn’t come, and, gathering her purse and keys, she got out of the car. In another moment she was opening the screen door and stepping into the laundry porch, where she was met by the blissful aromas of freshly washed and ironed clothes and the roast slowly cooking in the oven.

J
ake had imagined and even blocked the scene, and he therefore knew exactly what to do. He had raced home, taking the shortcut he had discovered in the forested hills behind Sunset, sensing that if she got home before he did she would simply fall apart. Kibitzing with the pool crew, he watched for her arrival, and the moment he saw her silhouette in the breakfast room he broke away and came into the house. Wordlessly, he steered her upstairs and into their room, locking the door. He drew her over to his bed, not hers, and pulled her down beside him and held her, kissing her gently all over her face—something he ordinarily never did. He lifted her chin and looked into her eyes, and she saw his drawn and worried expression, his cheeks dark and rough with five o’clock shadow. Then he held her again. Was now the right time? No, not yet. He would wait till later. Though limp beside him, she tried to turn her face away. “Ugh,” she said. “My breath must be awful.” He took her face in both his hands. “That doesn’t matter. There isn’t anything about you I don’t adore.”

Without letting go of her, he turned slightly and lay back. Her head rested on his shoulder, her face in his neck. “Did I ever tell my wife I love her?” he said. This had become a special line between them after they had heard it addressed to Rose Lasker by Jake’s father, Eli Lasker, as he lay dying in an oxygen tent in Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, in November 1946, after a thirty-five-year marriage in which he had shown his wife almost no affection whatsoever.

“I went to see Irv,” Jake began. “I told him it was over. He said he was ‘pleased and sad.’ Pleased because of your courage, he said, and sad that you’d had to do it at all. ‘Marathon Pictures is forever in Dinah’s debt,’ he
said. I’m supposed to tell you that. And he sent his love. Don’t be surprised if a million roses arrive sometime in the next twenty-four hours. And don’t be surprised if they don’t.”

“A m-m-m-million roses? He’s out of his mind. Tell him I want fifteen full-length s-s-s-sable coats, a lifetime charge account at Bergdorf’s, and my name over the studio gate,” she said, her voice cracking from fatigue. She liked his attentions but wasn’t fooled for a minute; she knew they were rehearsed. “Did you tell him about the Veevi part?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And?”

“All he said was ‘It’s a rotten business.’ ”

“I wish you hadn’t told him. It’ll get around.”

“Of course it’ll get around—the Committee will let it out! Everyone will know—everyone from Hollywood to New York to London to Paris. Don’t let it get to you,” he said lightly. “Your job is done, we’re safe and sound, and you don’t have to explain yourself to anyone ever again.”

He wanted her to unburden herself so that he could pick up the muddy handfuls of doubt and remorse and squeeze them into firm, smooth equivocations. Since by her silence she wasn’t allowing him to do that, he decided to try anyway. “You have to remember they have all the names they want. It’s a degradation ritual, nothing more. And if it’s hurting Veevi you’re worried about, forget it. Nothing whatsoever is ever going to hurt Genevieve Milligan Ventura Albrecht, and you know that better than anyone.” He slowly drew his arm out from under her shoulders, where it had gone to sleep. “She’s blissfully married to one of the most important American writers of our time, and since he happens to loathe America and everything about it,
and
since they
both
hate Hollywood and have no intention of ever coming back, nothing you said today will have the slightest effect on him or her, now or in the foreseeable future.”

“What about the unforeseeable f-f-f-future?”

“That’s not going to happen. But if for some strange reason they do go after her, it won’t be because of you. You can’t be the first person who ever named her. They already
knew
her name, because they
asked
you about her. You simply confirmed information they already had. Someone else gave them her name.”

“But, Jake, you don’t get it. I
named
her.”

“So what? You’ve got to be absolutely clear about this or you’ll drive yourself crazy over it, and that means trouble for us. You and me.”

She seemed not to hear what he said. “I don’t know. I have a b-b-b-bad feeling about it. I feel guilty as all hell.”

“I’m telling you, darling, your sister’s never coming back here again, and it has nothing to do with HUAC. Mike’s not gonna let her out of his sight for a second. Didn’t you tell me he has to have her in the room when he’s writing? She sits there reading or knitting afghans, for Christ’s sake, while he hunts and punches at the typewriter. Mommy stays while baby plays ‘the lonely writer facing the naked page’ and all that horseshit.”

She sat bolt upright. She was still wearing her silk dress, and it was wrinkled and disheveled. Her expression frightened him: she was staring past him, reminding him of the mental patients whose photographs he often saw in
U.S. Camera
. It was a look of abstraction and inwardness, as if she were listening to a voice that only she could hear. She turned away, lit a cigarette, and looked out the window. “Jake? What would we have done if I had walked out of there today, like I almost did? Like I should have.”

Bingo
. Now he could finally get to work on her. “Well, for one thing, I wouldn’t have had to finish this goddamn screenplay.”

She laughed, not wanting to, and he saw that he had her back. She had lost that crazy pensive look of a moment ago. “Listen,” he went on, “we would have done whatever we had to, darling, whatever would have been necessary. I sold newspaper advertising in college, and shoes, and I worked in a butcher shop. I pulled a rickshaw at the World’s Fair. I could do any of those things again. If it weren’t for my bursitis, I’d make a hell of a caddy over at the club.”

He drew her back down beside him, enfolding her again in his arms. “But the point is, sweetheart, you didn’t walk out. You stuck it out, and Christ knows you must have hated every minute of it. I understand that, darling, and I know the only reason you did it is because of me and the kids. So be very clear about this: I would have loved you just as much and just as forever as I love you now if you had walked out of there. And I would have admired you and been amazed at your courage. As I am now. And we would have made it somehow. I’m a reasonably healthy man in the prime of life, and I would have done what I’ve always done—namely, provide for you and the kids. We would have made it. But because you went through that ring of fire today, we
do
have a choice. And if you think you can’t stand the thought of living in this town and in this industry another minute, I’ll quit. I’ll walk away. We’ll move to Europe. Or Mexico. Or—”

“Jake, you’re so full of sh-sh-sh-shit,” she said.

He laughed, and then fell silent, waiting for a sign that would tell him whether he was succeeding. Tears wouldn’t have surprised him, but she didn’t cry. Was it over yet, or was she going to put on a hair shirt for the rest of her life? He had to cauterize her misgivings and doubts—and
right now
—or they would infect everything.

He reached over, stroking her arm lightly. “Maybe we are being a little selfish about this, but we have kids to raise—and we’re not escaping to Europe and pretending we’re too good for this town. So you went in there and named names. So what? You didn’t do it because you wanted to, honey. You did what you had to do, hating it, as any decent person would, but now it’s over, and I can make pictures and give you and the kids everything you need. We’re not going to pretend you didn’t testify, but we’re not going to hang a scarlet
T
around your neck, either. You had a chance to fuck it all up, everything we have together, the kids’ futures, my work, and all in the name of a bunch of abstractions you don’t believe in anymore, but you didn’t. So don’t fuck it up with endless guilt, darling, please.”