West of Paradise (18 page)

So informal at Cosmos, owned as the studio now was by Victor Lippton, whose family could be traced back to the tobacco fields adjacent to Thomas Jefferson's, and whose wife was a symbol of chic, meant that everybody could overdo. Several of the women present wore cocktail dresses with jewel necklines, officially allowing them to wear necklaces, Indian pearls and cabochon rubies, carved emeralds and hammered gold, nothing as flashy as Oscar-time diamonds, but elegant past what they could have sported even had the Bistro Gardens not closed.

Chen Lippton, Victor's fragilely beautiful Chinese wife, her tiny hand threaded through his arm, made her entrance in a gold lace Lauren that looked like a slip, her breasts barely making a curve in the cup. Over her arm she carried a gold brocade jacket, which came at that exact moment, like a dual vision in a fashion show, through the other door, worn over the bony shoulders of a white-skinned redhead, clad in the same lacy dress, but with the cups rounded out by impressive breasts. There was an audible gasp as both women reached the center aisle at exactly the same moment, Victor Lippton not even raising his eyes to take in the measure of the usurper, but hurrying his wife to the taped section of the auditorium.

Kate Donnelly was so concerned with her own place in what she now recognized as a minor spectacle that she hardly picked up on their embarrassing moment. “Where are we supposed to sit?” she asked Wilton.

“Well, the cordoned-off rows are for the people directly involved with the picture, or the studio,” Wilton said.

“Did you hear the one about the three-thousand-pound gorilla?” Mel asked, moving eagerly towards Kate, his back to his wife.

“You mean where does he sit? Answer: anyplace he wants to?” asked Wilton.

“That used to be the joke,” Mel said. “Now they say it about Michael Crichton.”

“Ha ha,” said Wilton.

“There don't seem to be any fours,” said Kate. “We'd better split up.”

“Would you like to sit with my wife?” asked Mel.

“No. I never even wanted one of my own.”

“Oh. Well, see you after,” Mel said, sorrowfully.

They moved into one of the rows. Wilton shook hands with the bespectacled man sitting next to him. “How are you, Asher?”

“On page two hundred,” Asher said. “Just at the point where the boys mulcted Warners.”

“Mulcted,” Wilton said, sitting down on the aisle seat. “Such a literary word, and so ugly. Why don't you just say ‘fucked'? Everybody knows that's what the two of them did.”

“We don't all have your gift for street language,” Asher said. “Especially in front of those who look like ladies.”

“Kate Donnelly,” Wilton said, “Asher Pfaltz. The literary critic and Hollywood historian.”

“Oh, yes,” Asher said, and took her in. “You're the girl who claims to be Fitzgerald's granddaughter.”

“She
claims
nothing,” said Wilton.

“That's absolutely true,” said Kate.

“One of the best-documented lives in modern literary history. My closest friend wrote the definitive biography.”

“Are you and Herb still together?” asked Wilton.

“He's moved to Vegas,” said Asher.

“For the waters?” asked Wilton.

Asher fixed Kate with his lashless black eyes. “How could you imagine you would get away with it?”

“Get away with what?” asked Wilton.

Asher's look turned to glower. “You should have picked someone more obscure. Nathanael West. You might've put that one over.”

“What are you saying, you ponce?” said Wilton.

“She's no more his granddaughter than I am.”

“Actually…” He looked at him carefully. “There
is
a resemblance. But you're a little too butch. Not
much,
but…”

“Very funny,” said Asher.

“Look, Asher,” said Wilton, expansively. “They don't document the illegitimate side. Nobody was more carefully watched than Clark Gable, and what about his child with Loretta Young? By the time that came out, no one even remembered who Clark Gable was.”

“What are we saying here?” Asher asked. “Are we saying someone popped unrecorded?”

“Sheilah Graham,” said Wilton.

“There
was
always that whisper,” Asher conceded, and then inhaled deeply. “Well, it's nice to meet you.”

“Thank you,” said Kate. “It's nice to meet you, too.”

“Don't go overboard,” said Wilton, as the lights went down.

*   *   *

Afterwards, a little feast was laid, as elaborate as at most weddings. Kate still had a knot in her belly from the encounter with Asher, so she didn't take a plate. “Come. You'll need your strength,” said Wilton, fixing one for her.

“Why haven't you taken my calls?” the redheaded woman wearing the same outfit as Lippton's wife said, furiously.

“Life is too short,” said Wilton, turning his back to her, guiding Kate away through the crowd. “Excuse me.”

“What do I need my strength for?” Kate asked. “The comedown that's inevitable? The humiliation? In my whole life I've never been a phony.”

“You're young,” Wilton said. “You have plenty of time.”

“If this Asher was suspicious…”

“He's a pompous asshole,” said Wilton.

“Who are we talking about?” asked Mel, elbowing his way towards them.

“Asher Pfaltz.”

“Nobody listens to a word he says,” said Wilton.

“That's true,” said Mel. “He reads.”

“And knows his literary history,” said Kate.

Wilton made his way towards the beluga. The caviar was set in the middle of a great iced bowl, the label still on the outside of the jar. “He's the literate local version of the foreign press. You can lead him around by the hors d'oeuvres.”

“Let's just forget the whole story,” Kate said.

“Ah, there you are,” said Victor Lippton. “I've been looking for you.” He handed her a glass of champagne. “How did you like the movie?”

“It's fun,” Kate said.

“Arnold doesn't take himself seriously,” said Victor. “That's what makes it work.”

“I don't take myself seriously either,” said Jake Alonzo, coming into their circle. “But some things hurt me to the quick.”

“I've never really figured out where my quick was,” Wilton said.

“Like what?” Kate asked Jake, smiling.

“Like when someone doesn't call me back. I don't make that many phone calls.”

“You called me?” Kate asked.

“Don't you pick up your messages?”

“Well things have been happening so fast, I haven't had time to call my service.” True, they'd been happening fast, but only in the past forty-eight hours. Before that she had been so dispirited by the lack of messages, she'd gotten out of the habit of checking.

“Services are
old,
” Jake said. “Why don't you get a machine?”

“Something going on here?” Mel asked, looking back and forth between the two of them.

“Not yet,” said Jake.

“Have you read that script I sent you?” Victor asked him.

“It isn't for me,” said Jake.

“We could make the guy more sensitive,” said Victor.

“He's still a hired killer.”

“Well, we could change that.”

“Then you'd lose the plot,” said Jake.

“The plot isn't that important,” said Victor. “Maybe you should take a look at it,” he said to Kate.

“Me?”

“You want to do something with her, don't you?” Victor asked Jake.

“Well, yes, but…”

“As I begin to understand this town, I see where it's often about the pressures of time.” Victor smiled. “You know, Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. To the Virgins, to make much of time.”

“I didn't realize there were any left in Hollywood,” Wilton said. “Rosebuds I mean.”

Victor continued, unheeding. “If people are going to spend six months, a year, working on a project, it might as well be in the company of people they like.”

“Amen to that one,” said Jake.

“I'll send you the script in the morning,” said Victor.

“How do you even know I can write?” Kate said.

“It's like me and business,” said Victor. “It's in the genes.”

“Just smile and say thank you,” said Wilton, pinching.

*   *   *

Lila Darshowitz woke grieving. Larry had not been a physical presence beside her for a lot of years. But she came up from dreaming with his breath on her cheek, and it was sweet, and they were young again. When she suddenly remembered he was dead, the absence made her truly bereft. That he was not in bed with her was something she had long ago gotten used to, stopped even thinking about. But now that she knew he could never be there again, the pillow seemed to have a hole in it, like the world did.

There were two open bottles of wine on the floor, the smell of it in the air, a small red stain on the carpet where she had probably tipped it, set it down sloppily. It was cheap wine, so she didn't think of reaching for it, starting her day with a hair of the dog. It was probably already slightly vinegary. “We have to let this breathe,” Larry had said to her the first time he came back from Hollywood, where he had been to dinner parties. She could sort of hear him now, telling her about the breathing, one of a thousand affectations he had paraded in front of her, as though he needed to impress her, as though his merely being alive hadn't been enough.

“You elegant fuck,” she said to his ghost, easing her swollen feet out of the bed. “I remember the time with the hamburger.”

She went to the bathroom and more or less performed what Larry would have labeled her “ablutions.” Then she dialed the phone, called the only person she sort of knew, who wanted to talk about him, or wanted her to. “Kate?” she said. “I remembered the time with the hamburger.”

*   *   *

They were in the coffee shop now, Lila and the girl who wanted to be a scribe, having breakfast. Lila had her hair in a bandanna, a babushka her grandma would have called it, a little cream foundation on so the broken blood vessels on her nose and cheeks showed less.

“It just seemed like a really good story for your book,” Lila said. “You still want to do that book?”

“Sure,” Kate said, like she wasn't.

“Well, it's a good story with or without a book,” Lila said, because all she really wanted was a chance to talk about him. There was no one left alive who really knew him, except some failing friends from the young days whose feelings towards him were completely negative, who always gave Lila flack about the fact that she still cared. After all he had done to her, or failed to do.

“So we were in this diner in Brooklyn. He was maybe sixteen, and already he had this piss-elegance, you know. Like he studied people with manners who came from good families, read books about their lives, went to plays. Stood in the back of the theater because he couldn't afford to sit. Noël Coward. Somerset what's-his-name.”

“Maugham,” Kate said.

“So there we were in this diner, him and me and some of his friends, and he said in his veddy king's English, ‘I'll have a hahmburger, rare.' So they brought the burger, and he took a bite and looked at it and snapped his fingers for the waiter. ‘I said “rare,”' he said. ‘This is medium.'

“So the waiter shrugged his shoulders and took it. In a couple of minutes he was back. And he set the burger in front of Larry. The bun still had the bite in it.” Lila laughed, until tears were streaming down her face. “This big bite.” She wiped her cheeks. “A diner in Brooklyn, and he sends it back. And it comes with the bite out of the bun.”

“Did he know it was funny?” Kate asked.

“He always knew what was funny,” Lila said. “He just couldn't see it about himself.”

“So he took himself seriously?”

“Well, how else could he become what he became?” Lila asked.

Kate was half looking around, as though she, too, were clinging to another time, hoping her friend from Stanford might show up in the coffee shop again. But there were only the three girls from Kansas or Missouri or Iowa or wherever it was, the bleached, ebullient trio, bused in on a Greyhound and a fantasy, giggling and studying their
TV Guide,
a casting directory, a map of L.A., a prayer book to set the whole thing in motion.

“Did he leave you any money?” Kate asked.

“I don't know.” Lila looked miffed, suddenly. “Why would you ask such a question?”

“I'm concerned,” Kate said. “I wondered if you had enough to get back home.”

“You're tired of me,” Lila whined, like she was talking to someone else.

“It's just the practical realities,” Kate said.

“You're tired of Larry, too.” Lila's tone was accusatory. “You're just like the rest of the phonies in this town. You lose interest in something the minute you're not sure if it will do you any good.”

“That isn't true.”

“Don't tell me what's true. I know what's true. That's why he always came back to me. He said I was … what's that paper that changes color?”

“Litmus.”

“Right. A litmus test for bullshit. I can see into you, little girl, and I see where you're not exactly the sweet person you pretended.”

“Really?” Kate asked with honest interest, and some alarm. Maybe this blowsy, sad woman saw with her milky eyes what Kate could not quite look at.

“You're in it for yourself,” Lila censured.

“Who isn't?” Kate said defensively. She opened her purse, reached for her wallet. “Maybe we should continue this another time, when you're feeling less…” She hesitated.

“Honest?” Lila said.

“Self-pitying,” she said unkindly. “I don't owe you anything.” Kate put a bill on the table and stood.