The Song Is You (9 page)

Not much to go on, Hop.

He could recite the names and numbers of every gossip columnist and movie-magazine writer and Hollywood-beat reporter in town and across the coast, but this…

Love Is a Memory

As he drove to Musso’s, Hop tried to think of a way to get Jerry’s counsel without telling him everything, without having to tell his friend the whole sordid story and his own role in it. With Jerry, there was nothing behind what you saw, nothing waiting to reveal itself. This was something Hop could count on. Maybe the only thing. Hop wondered how it happened. He wondered if that was a quality he’d ever had and, if so, when he’d lost it.

Pulling into the back lot, he could hear Jerry’s old refrain from back in his Cinestar days buzzing in his head: Why don’t you leave that tinhorn newsletter and get back to the what’s what. He was always trying to talk Hop into returning to the Examiner, where Hop had worked for his first months in New York, the pay so bad he couldn’t get off Jerry’s couch and into his own place.

‘You moved out here for what,” Jerry would always ask. “Not for this.”

“What else I got up my sleeve?” Hop would say, shrugging. He wouldn’t say as much to Jerry, but he could admit it to himself: he liked shiny shirts, good gin, and the occasional entree to Giro’s. Was that so wrong? The only price he’d paid so far was picking up some bad habits. “Jerry, I run with the tide. Can’t fight gravity. Can’t—”

“Say no?” Jerry would say, smiling almost wistfully. “Just keep moving, Hop. The minute you let your feet hit the ground, you’re doomed.”

“I know it,” he’d respond quickly—so quickly he’d surprise himself.

Just after seven o’clock, Hop and Jerry were leaning against the mahogany bar at Musso’s.

“Remember that girl I told you about?” Hop said, sliding Jerry’s drink toward him on the bar. “The one who came to see me about the Spangler thing?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve been thinking about it a little. Funny, huh?”

Jerry lit a cigarette and looked at Hop in the mirror behind the bar.

“Not so funny. Happens a lot to me. You run down those stories and a lot of ‘em stick in your head, knock around there a little, sneak up and say boo when you least expect it. Happens even more with cops, but with cops it’s about saving them. I think it’s different with reporters, but I’m not sure how. Wanting to know, needing to know everything.”

Hop nodded vaguely.

Five years ago,” Jerry said, “I chased a story—just a one-day ditty— an actress, hair like buttercream, found facedown on the kitchen floor. I heard the call and was at the scene with the PD. There was something sad about the way her face was, her body, her waist turned and her legs bent almost like she was running. She was wearing this dress with a red check, like some farm girl. When they flipped her over, her eyes were wide open big green beauties staring up at me, like they could still ask me something. Kind of like they

were asking me something.”

“So what gives?” Hop asked. “How’d she go?”

“Accidental overdose of diet pills—trying to win a spot as one of the Babylovelies in Ken Murray’s Blackouts.” Jerry shrugged rubbing his stubble. “Funny, now that I tell it… if it happened today, doubt I’d blink twice.”

“Eh, you’re not so hard,” Hop said.

“So this Spangler girl. How do you think she bought it?”

“She had the longest legs you ever saw,” Hop said out of nowhere, the fizzy haze of the gimlet now descending. “And that sharp, dark-eyed face they look for, or used to. She’d been through some things. Maybe been knocked around a little by life. You could see something in her face. A look.” Hop’s eyes unfocused.

“I know that look,” Jerry said.

Hop turned and looked at him. “Right. That’s right.”

As he drove down Hollywood Boulevard with Jean Spangler’s face looming in his head, Hop thought again about Jean Spangler herself. Jerry always clarified things like that, blew off the dust. Hop had been so absorbed in everything else, but now there she was. Maybe, he thought, she could tell him things. And she was beginning to take on a quality he must have missed when he actually met her. She’d seemed flimsy then, a paper doll. Now there was something behind her, something roiling away.

How does a girl like that, a girl who’d been around the business, hoofer, showgirl, extra, bit player for a few years or more, get into a room with two fellas like that, fellas with such awful, awful looks in their eyes, like he’d seen many times in men at the top, high on their own glamour and glory and with an open door into every dark urge they’d ever had? They were bad guys and you could see it. He saw it, Iolene could see it, Miss Hotcha—why not Jean Spangler, or didn’t she care? Could she just not care?

He remembered her at the Eight Ball. Sutton or Merrel—he couldn’t remember which one—patted his lap, gestured for her to sit on it, and when she did, the other lifted her legs off the floor until they were stretched out across his lap, those legs encased in red stockings with red lace high heels. Her head struck back, laughing. Didn’t she have dimples as deep and tempting as he’d ever seen? Why hadn’t he paid her more attention that night? He could have pulled her aside, tilted his head and let it fall on top of her dark hair, and whispered to her, “Stick with me, sweetheart. Those guys are bad news, anyway.”

Instead, he goes for the two-bit burlesque dancer, and one apparently not lucky enough to have her own place, or even her own bedroom.

Hop, you hit it. Where did she work … ?

That was the idea.

Hop pulled up at the new Tiny Naylor’s on Sunset, got change for his dollar, and ducked into a phone booth, nearly jerking the directory from its chain.

He called the Follies Theatre, where he was sure she’d said she performed, the Burbank Burlesque Theater, the Cha-Cha Parlor, the Curly-Q on Sunset, the Girly-Q in the Valley, and a half dozen other places.

Does Miss Hotcha still perform there? Did she ever?”

Finally, “Have you ever heard of a performer called Miss Hotcha?”

No dice.

Was he remembering wrong?

He drove home, not sure what to do next. He had some idea of dropping it all, cuddling up to a nice warm bottle and taking his chances.

The elevator doors opened to his floor.

He saw the shock of bright hair first and the long silver rain-coat. In a heartbeat, something surged hot and prickly in his gut. But he

recovered.

“You threw away your key?”

Midge turned and looked at him, one hand clutching her coat

collar, the other pressed on the apartment door.

“I don’t live here anymore. I don’t let myself in places I’m not invited.”

“You and Count Dracula. Well, you always were a talented little bloodsucker.” He pushed past her and unlocked the door.

‘You’ve got a lot of nerve after what you’ve just put me through,” she said, her voice low and stretched out. About three vodka sours, Hop guessed.

“So I came by last night for a friendly visit,” he said, walking in ahead of her, leaving her to dart in behind him before the door swung shut.

“That was rotten enough, but par for the course with you,” she murmured.

And he flipped on a light and finally turned, looking at her full on, finally hitched up his shoulders and looked at her face-to-face, looked at her tiny little face. As ever, god-awful pretty and full of contempt.

“After all,” she continued, untying the sash on her coat, “you can’t surprise me on those counts anymore.”

With slightly shaking hands, she patted the soft edges of that short haircut, that violation, Hop thought to himself, of all that is lovely in this world.

“So how could I surprise you?” Hop asked. “With flowers and bon

bons? Vows of fidelity?”

“That would surprise me only if I believed you.

“You believing me—that would surprise me.”

She ignored him and looked around the apartment, at the not-so

fine layer of dust coating her meticulously planned decor.

“Couldn’t spring for a cleaning lady?”

Before he could snap back an insult, he felt himself struck by the sight of her standing in their home. Standing there, touching the edge of a Wedgwood ashtray brimming over with stubs. It had been barely a month but truthfully it was much, much longer. Had they ever really lived here together, like a married couple, reading the

newspaper and eating toast and jelly, doing what married couples do, like … What do married couples do?

She kept hovering on the other side of the sofa, running her fingertips along the edge of the narrow table behind it.

Hop, for his part, stood in front of the sofa, hat still in hand. Watching her, he’d forgotten how small she was. She never seemed that way when she was coming at him, fists balled.

She blew dust from her fingers and met his gaze. “So what kind of mess are you trying to drag me into now?”

“What do you mean, Midge?” He dropped his hat on the coffee table and folded his arms. “Why don’t you just spit it out?”

“I mean this reporter calling me.”

There it was. The punch in the stomach. And he had no one to blame but himself for this one.

“Reporter?” He tucked a finger under his collar, which felt close against his neck.

“A Miss Dare,” she said, watching him closely. Must be sensing fresh blood, he thought.

“Only you,” she added, “would have a girl reporter on your tail.”

“What did she want? Other than my tail.”

“She was asking me about this night way back two years ago I told her I’d blacked out everything from my wedding day until last week.”

“What happened last week?” he said, straining for a joke.

“I threw my wedding ring off the Santa Monica Pier,” she shot back stingingly.

“You’re a cold little piece of work, aren’t you?”

“You drained all the warmth from me the last time I found you rolling around with the elevator girl at the Roosevelt Hotel.”

“That was the one that did it, huh?” he said, the sound of his own cool voice making him sick.

Midge walked around the sofa and took a tentative seat on the wing chair.

“I couldn’t begin to pinpoint which one did it,” she said, crossing her legs tightly.

“You’re not so innocent,” he started, then stopped. He shifted uncomfortably. Were they really going to go through all this again? There was nothing more unpleasant to him than seeing the version of himself she brought out in him.

Needing to do something with his hands, he began emptying his pockets and tossing the change, matchbooks, paper, and keys onto the coffee table.

“So what did she say when you pleaded marital amnesia?” He sat down on the coffee table, facing her.

“She asked if I remembered about a girl who disappeared that fall —fall of ‘49.”

“What a funny kind of question.”

She leaned forward, eyeing the matchbooks. “Same old haunts,” she said, fingering the one from Villa Capri. “Guess you’re on a real spree now.” Before he could respond, she continued, “So I told her I didn’t remember anything like that and what did it have to do with me. Or you.”

“And?”

“She said you told her you were with the girl the night she went missing.” Her eyes looked up to meet his. “And I said oh, so did he

murder her, too? Because I’m damn sure he took her to bed.”

“Thanks, dear. Thanks a lot.”

“My pleasure.”

“And I didn’t. Either one. I’d just met her. It was right before I met the fellas at the studio who helped me get my job. Which is why I remember it so well.”

She sighed deeply, wringing her coat sash in her hand. “I don’t care. I don’t care. Just spill it, for God’s sake. Why’s this number calling me?”

“Just chasing an old story. She called me. I told her all I knew. I don’t know why she’s bothering with you.” He thought quickly, maybe too quickly. “She works with your boyfriend, Jerry. Maybe she thinks you’ll be more agreeable, shacking up with a fellow scribe and all.”

She looked at him with that prison-yard stare of hers.

“You’re a lousy bastard,” she said, shaking her golden, shining head.

Looking at her, feeling very much the lousy bastard, Hop surprised himself with the urge to reach out and cup that hateful,

heartbreaking face in his hands.

But he didn’t do anything. Really, how could he?

“Gil, I don’t know what kind of game you were playing to get the girl, this Miss Dare, in bed. Seems kind of sick to me. I asked her if, when you told her this tall tale, you’d been drinking. She said yes. So I asked her if, when you told her this tall tale, you were at her place, and she said yes. And I asked her if it was the wee small hours of the morning. And she said yes. So I told her that, under those circumstances, she shouldn’t believe a goddamned word you said.”

Hop smiled to himself. For once, Midge’s bottomless disgust for him paid off. Even if Adair didn’t buy it wholesale, she’d have to think twice about it, or at least about the part he’d played. Sweet mother, he only wished he had made a play for the girl reporter that night to complete Midge’s portrait of a lying lout.

“I’m sure she won’t bother you again, Midge.”

“We’ll see. You’ve got an awful lot of tricks up your sleeve.” She rose, refastening her coat and running a set of silver-edged fingertips through her hair.

“Going home already?” He stood, too, looking her in the eye, trying to read something in her. She came here in person for this? She couldn’t want a toss for old time’s sake, could she?

“Of course I’m going home.” She began walking toward the door. He followed her.

“So things are pretty cozy with you and Jerry.”

“Funny how it can be with a real man.”

“I can’t imagine.”

“Gil.” She looked at him as they stood at the door. “Don’t get yourself in any messes, okay?” she said, almost softly, an old voice he knew from long ago—maybe a thousand years ago.

Then, recoiling, she blurted, “And leave me out of it,” slamming the door behind her.

He opened it again and stood in the doorway, watching her walk down the long corridor, silver coat swaying, one cool bird, that one. Wow. If only she’d been so interesting when they were married.

When he met her, Midge seemed a beautiful 180 degrees from his old Syracuse fiancee, Bernice, with her long, plaintive letters asking when Hop was going to send her the money to come West and join him so they could get hitched. Bernie and her upturned eyes, freckles like pale confetti over her nose, across the slightly chunky spread of her girlish back. And Midge, well … she may have come from a small Ohio town, but there was nary one hint of Main Street, county fairs, pearls-to-church-on-Sunday about her. By the time he met her, she was a premium, hard-cut Hollywood diamond, gleaming and icy with a hundred sharp edges and a hundred mirrored faces.