Mrs. Houdini (31 page)

“Yes, but Harry deals in secrets, not in words. That's much more fascinating. I imagine you know many of them. His secrets, I mean.”

For a moment Bess saw herself as she imagined others must see her—glamorous and full of mystery. She wanted to be those things in California. She didn't just want to be, for all her first-class travel and royal introductions, a middle-aged woman who'd loved the right man. As she discovered, people liked her in Hollywood. From the moment they'd arrived, several years before, the invitations had come to their house in her name, too, not just in Harry's. And she felt useful; she enjoyed sweeping about the parties, negotiating Harry's contracts and soliciting others. Since Harry had begun his own production company, putting him in charge of his scripts and casts, there was more than enough work to keep her in the office all afternoon.

And Harry had been infinitely more romantic since they had come to Los Angeles. On occasion he seemed so full of energy that she could see a glimmer of the old Harry. He liked to play little tricks on her. Once she had come home from a luncheon to find a note in her bathroom.
Mrs. Houdini,
it began,
you are a modern woman of liberal ideas. You will not be angry if I keep a date this evening. I expect to meet the most beautiful lady in the world at the corner of Hollywood and Sunset Boulevards at 6:30. I shall be home very late.
She had dressed herself in a blue dress and found Harry waiting where he said he'd be, with a car ready to take them to a jazz club. That night he planned their anniversary party at the Hotel Alexandria, and the long, crystal-bedecked tables they would have, filled with food and orange blossoms and hundreds of people.

“Yes,” Bess told Charmian. “I am privy to many of his secrets. But many of them are frightfully mundane.”

“Oh, I doubt that.”

Bess felt a drop of water on her cheek and looked up to see Harry standing over her, soaking wet. She squealed and threw him a towel. “You devil, don't get me wet!”

Jack had taken a seat behind Charmian and was cradling her head in his lap, massaging her scalp. It was clear he adored her.

“Come on, Bess.” Harry held out his hand. “We should get home and dress.”

In 1919, at the premiere of
The Master Mystery,
Bess had stepped out of the car in front of Harry to a dizzying lineup of flashbulbs. The theater had fit only three hundred but there were five times as many as that in the crowd, pushing their way toward the red ropes in front of the entrance. Harry was used to attention, but he wasn't used to the blinding Hollywood fame. Hands had reached out to grab him. He'd turned and looked uncomfortably at Bess.

“It's just like your magic shows,” she'd told him, grasping his elbow. “Just hold up your head and smile.”

Harry's producer, Rolfe, had swept them through the doors and ushered them into the lobby, where reporters peppered Harry with questions about the logistics of his escape scenes. The movie was a smash. In one scene Harry, hanging by his thumbs, managed to get the antagonist into a chokehold using only his legs. Reaching into the man's pocket with his toes, he extracted a key that freed him from his restraints. The audience had gone wild for it.

Now they stepped out of their car, Bess swathed in white silk, to see a paltry crowd of a hundred or so waiting for autographs. Bess glanced over at Harry, who looked stricken. “There's—there's no one here,” he muttered.

“
Don't
let on that you're disappointed,” Bess said.

Harry set his jaw and tried to smile. Inside, their friends were waiting to celebrate—Gloria Swanson and the Londons and Sargent and Vickery drinking champagne in the carpeted lobby.

“It's too late,” Harry said, his face darkening. “It's failed. I can tell.”

“You can't tell a damn thing.”

“Well, it's not the
weather
that's keeping them home.”

Harry spent the screening slouched in his seat, glancing surreptitiously at the audience for their reactions as they watched him rescue Gladys Leslie from a vile gang of counterfeiters. He'd put his best work into this picture, his most daring escapes, even going so far as to stage an elaborate heist on a Hollywood street to promote the movie, leading to the unveiling of an enormous movie banner.

The screening received polite applause. Afterward, anticipating Harry's dark mood, Bess stood up in his place and invited everyone to join them at Sunset Inn in Santa Monica.

Managed by the famous restaurateur Eddie Brandstatter, Sunset Inn was the place where many of the movie actors spent their evenings, because it was elegant but cheap, and there really wasn't as much money in movies as everyone thought. The restaurant featured a hot and cold buffet and a dizzying rotation of cocktails on illicit menus; California was far from the grips of Prohibition, and everyone knew it. Actors and singers of all levels of fame were encouraged to give impromptu performances. By the time they arrived, Al Jolson was lounging at the bar, and Charles Harrison was on the stage crooning “I'm Always Chasing Rainbows.” Bess was quietly awed by these guests. Sometimes it seemed she had invented them, and the whole life she'd stepped into here—the perfume of the women's corsages, the lights glittering at the bottoms of the hills—was just smoke.

Clara Bow hadn't been at the screening, but she was at the restaurant, nursing a glass of red wine. She had Hollywood in a tailspin, claiming engagements with everyone from Gary Cooper to Victor Fleming. Now she came sauntering up to Harry, batting her little-girl eyelashes, and set her glass of wine down on the table beside him. “Well if it isn't the great Harry Houdini,” she said in her tiny voice. “I'll tell you. I've been dying to see you do your needle trick.”

She blinked at Bess with a small smile. Bess laughed and picked up her own glass. “Go on, Harry,” she said, refusing to be baited. “Do a few tricks.”

The night before the filming of his first love scene with Marguerite Marsh for
The Master Mystery,
Bess had woken up to find Harry pacing the hallway, unable to sleep. Bess had led him back to bed. “Oh, go ahead and love her, for God's sake,” she'd told him. “Customers don't pay to see their leading men be faithful to their off-screen wives.” And she had kept her word; she wasn't angry. Flirtations by other women only served to make Harry more appealing as a star.

Now she saw Harry brighten at Clara's invitation to perform. Live magic was his forte; he carried a deck of cards and little tokens of magic in his pocket at all times. “If I can rustle together some needles, I'll swallow them for you,” he told the actress.

A crowd had gathered around them. Bess went into the kitchen and came back with an orange. “Forget needles,” she told Harry, tossing him the orange. “You know he can swallow this?” she asked the onlookers.

“Oh, do tell me you're kidding,” Clara said.

Jack London clapped Harry on the back. “Oh, I've seen it,” he said. “I'm not sure whether it's illusion or some kind of grotesque reality.”

Bess retreated toward the bar in search of Gloria Swanson; she wanted to talk to the actress about convincing Paramount to allow her a role in Harry's next picture. When she couldn't find her, Bess circled back toward Harry on the other side of the room.

As she approached, Harry stepped out of the crowd. “Mrs. Houdini,” he said, holding out his hand. “Would you care to have dinner with me?”

“Harry, no,” she said. “We can't go off by ourselves at your party.”

“I've already reserved us a table.” He gestured toward one of the many open tables at the back of the room. He led her to her seat and pulled in a nearby server. Bess ordered an Aviation cocktail.

“I do wish you wouldn't have liquor tonight,” he said, frowning. “I wanted to talk to you.”

Bess pressed her lips together. “Don't lecture me, Harry. It's supposed to be a celebratory night.”

His face softened. He reached across the table and took her hand. “You know, when I first came in here, I didn't recognize you. You looked just like a young girl.”

“You charmer.” Bess smiled. “You know you received another bag of mail today. The old ladies love you.”

Between films Harry would occasionally perform in venues around Los Angeles. Since his mother's death, he would bring bouquets of roses with him and incorporate the flowers into his act, tossing them into the lap of any gray-haired lady in the audience. One of his most cherished letters had arrived shortly after the release of his first picture. Among the letters from enthralled moviegoers was one from a frail old woman who had attended one of his shows.
How did you know I needed a rose?
she asked in delicate script.
I am very lonely. I came to your performance to see the crowds, to know there were others on earth. A lonely, lonely woman, and you threw me a rose.
Harry had clutched the letter to his chest, his eyes tearing, as if it were his own mother who had written him.

The waiter came to their table with two menus pasted onto white cardboard. When he left, Harry put down the menu and said, “We can't stay.”

Bess looked up. “Why? We have nothing to do tomorrow.”

“No. I mean we can't stay here. In California.”

Bess laughed. “Of course we can.”

Harry cleared his throat. “The picture's a flop.”

“How could you know that? It's only just premiered.”

“Oh, come on, Bess. You saw the crowd tonight. I may get fan letters, but people have tired of my movies.” He rubbed his hand across his face. “I'm not an actor. I'm a magician. I've put everything into the film company when I should have been working on my magic. And the money's nearly gone.”

Bess shook her head. “Don't talk to me like a child, Harry. I've seen the books. I know exactly how much money we've spent. There may not be enough to live lavishly, but we're not done—” She stopped as she saw his face darken. Her whole world seemed to be collapsing around her—all the easy simplicity of their new life out West, the dreams she had of their retiring there, adopting children . . . He was taking it all away from her.

Harry slammed his fist on the table. “We are done if I say we're done.”

“No, Harry.” Bess stiffened. “You don't get to take this away from me. We have a
home
here. You can go crawling back to New York if you'd like. But I'm staying.”

“And do what? Everything you have to do here is because of me.”

“Oh, you're cruel,” she said.

Harry didn't answer. Across the room, Al Jolson had taken the stage and was singing,
There's a lump of sugar down in Dixie and it's all my own, she's the sweetest little bunch of sweetness I have ever known.

“Mr. Harry Houdini!” A red-cheeked young waiter rushed over to their table and pumped Harry's hand. “Congratulations on your new picture.” He hunched toward Bess in an awkward bow. “I didn't get to meet you last night, Mrs. Houdini. But it's a pleasure.”

Bess smiled. “You must be mistaken. Harry and I weren't here last night.”

The boy looked confused. “But you were sitting at this same table. I nearly spoke to you then, but I couldn't get up the courage.”

Harry scribbled an autograph on a napkin and gave it to the boy. “Wonderful to meet you,” he said.

The waiter's face turned red. “I'm—I'm sorry for the interruption.” He rushed away, clutching the napkin in his hand.

Bess looked at Harry, confused. “You weren't here last night, were you? You said you had a meeting at the studio.”

Harry's face grew dark. “It was nothing to mention.”

“What was nothing?”

“I had dinner with Charmian.”

His voice sounded very far away to her.

“Charmian?” she repeated.

“Please don't be dramatic. I wish you hadn't drunk so much tonight.”

“Don't you dare try to turn this back on me!” She couldn't believe what he was telling her. “Are you—are you having an affair with her?”

Harry waved his hand. “No! Nothing like that.”

“How could you do this?” Her voice broke. She stood up, knocking the silverware to the floor. “And with Jack being sick—”

“I know Jack's sick, damn it!” Harry banged his fist on the table. He lowered his voice. “Would you sit the hell down? You're making a scene.”

“Oh, God forbid I make a scene at
your
party.” The room seemed to spin around her. Bess sat down and folded her trembling hands in her lap. “Tell me it's not true, Ehrich.”

Harry winced.

“I'm the only one who knew you when you were him. Did you forget that?”

“Damn it, Bess,” Harry said. “I'm not sleeping with her. It's not about Charmian anyway. It's about Jack.”

“What about Jack?”

“The man's dying, for Christ's sake.”