The Lady Upstairs

by Halley Sutton

It was a kind turn of phrase. He hadn’t had hair in my lifetime. In the booth directly across the restaurant, nothing between us but miles of black and white tile, a lone man was reading a newspaper but really watching us. I’d noticed him when we’d arrived. A thick paunch rode over his waistband. If he’d been much sadder, he’d be flat on a pavement somewhere. He made me cross my legs, and not in a pleasant way.

  I told her I did. “He’s been looking over here pretty regularly.”

  “Very good,” she said, pleased. “I have this idea he might be lonely. I bet he’d love to buy a girl like you a nice breakfast. Maybe you walk those 34Ds over there and see what he says.”

  But my face—I’d been crying, I hadn’t slept, I wasn’t wearing any makeup.

  “You’ve probably looked better,” Lou said. Another thing to like about her: kind honesty. “But so what? He’s no prize himself.”

  It was true, but I’d thought only of the way he’d see me, not how he’d want me to see him. As my savior. My hero. And then Lou said something that stuck with me, even years later when I’d developed my own style, so separate from hers you’d never guess Lou trained me, that she taught me everything I knew—I was that good; I took to it that completely. Three years before all that, Lou said to me:

  “You’d be shocked how many men want to save a wounded woman. For a certain kind of man, the worse you can make that pretty face look, the better.”

  I made my way over to him, trying to channel the hypnotic way Lou had walked through the parking lot. I forced myself to think of figure eights and the dance of Salome and the push and pull of the tide until I had a handle on the rhythm. Everything was manufactured and self-conscious then.

  For so long, I’d tried to be the woman my lover wanted me to be. I did it quietly, taking down notes in my head of what he liked, what he didn’t. If he smiled when I cooked, I Betty Crockered him with mountains of muffins until he couldn’t button his pants. If I held on to him too hard and he became allergic to my touch, I backed away for weeks, pretending that my every surface was made of ice and one hot touch would melt me dead. It didn’t matter if this was my death by a thousand paper cuts. I could be better. I could be perfect. If I noticed the right things, I could learn to be exactly who he wanted.

  I tried to notice things about this stranger. He was eating eggs, no pepper, no ketchup. Nothing else on his plate. Coffee, black. I’d seen the waitress refill it at least twice while Lou and I were eating. So maybe he was stalling. Maybe he didn’t want to leave the diner and go back to whatever waited for him outside.

  He buried his face in his eggs when I reached him. A man like that, a man who doesn’t even pepper his eggs, has no business trying to play it cool. He did try, though. Even though he might as well have been a billboard advertising loneliness, he did his best not to notice me for a good twenty seconds.

  I didn’t say anything. I waited until he looked up. When he did, I smiled at him. I traced a figure on my collarbone with one fingertip. I pressed my measurements together and tilted forward a little. I figured he liked a direct woman.

  “What’s your name, handsome?”

  He shriveled into the eggs. A miscalculation. It was all a lie; I’d never been good at reading men. No wonder he left me. I couldn’t unsay what I’d said, and the words got bigger and bigger and I saw myself as Plain Eggs must’ve seen me—some blowsy burnout, messy hair and loose hips, trying too hard to be sexy. Panicked, I looked for Lou, who was watching me, thumbing that cigarette, her face a big blank.

  Of the three of us, I was probably the most surprised when I burst into tears.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, sobbing. “I don’t know what I was trying to—You seem like a nice man, God, what am I doing? I’ve been driving for days and I don’t—I can’t—”

  “Jesus Christ,” he said, his voice rising high on an alarmed note. His eyes were watery and the color of weak tea. They say you never forget your first. “Jesus Christ, sit down.”

  It was more surprising than the tears. I sat. I let him feel useful and hand me some napkins to use as tissues. I told him a story, but not the same one I’d told Lou. A breakup, a broken heart, an empty checking account. I thanked him profusely. I told him I was there with my sister, and she said I should go talk to him—didn’t he look handsome in that silk shirt?—but I didn’t know what I was doing anymore, and he seemed like such a nice man, I needed a nice man, so—

  In the end, he threw a bill down on the table. I told him I couldn’t possibly take it, but he insisted. I think he wanted me to leave him alone. I pressed a hug on him, lingering with a swipe of the 34Ds, and hoped that’d be enough of a cheap thrill that I wouldn’t feel guilty about taking his money.

  But to be honest: I didn’t feel guilty at all. All I felt was relief—it hadn’t been pretty, but it had worked and now I could save the cash. I wobbled back to Lou, trying not to swagger, swiping at my eyes and feeling, for the first time in a long time, the freshness of being somebody I liked.

  When I got back to the table, Lou was chewing on the end of her unlit cigarette. I plunked the money down as I scooted into the booth.

  “Not great,” she said.

  “It worked.”

  Lou nodded. “You think on your feet pretty well.”

  “I didn’t plan that!”

  “Then you have good instincts. Or you got lucky. Either way, I think you’ve got some sort of potential.”

  Later, she’d take me shopping. She’d buy me red lipstick and six thousand pairs of stockings and pumps and handbags and filmy little undernothings. Later, she’d explain the importance of style, that I was selling a desire made flesh, and that it was our job to figure out the marks once we got them. The Lady Upstairs gave us the orders, and it was the better part of our job to learn to not ask questions. Later, she’d give me cases and walk me through them. The first step: tailing the mark, figuring out all his likes and dislikes, followed by the meet-up, something so manufactured it was able to appear totally serendipitous. The last stage: the sting. Learning to shake off the end like water off a dog. It was a three-act play, she told me, except we were also the playwrights and the director and even our own audience.

  But she didn’t tell me any of that over the sticky pie plates and the sweaty crumpled twenty-dollar bill I’d pried out of the man who took his eggs plain.

  Instead, she plucked the drooping cigarette out of her mouth, smiled at me, and said: “I think I have a job you’d be perfect for. But first, I’ve got an idea for how we can make him pay, this asshole who hurt you.”

  Chapter 11

  Ellen didn’t leave her house until late the next afternoon, when the sky was already inching to purple. I was getting itchy—I’d been there for hours, and I’d promised to meet Lou at Olvera Street for dinner, scope out the location for Carrigan’s upcoming fund-raiser. I told myself that if Ellen didn’t budge soon, then I’d been wrong, at least for today—that she was planning on staying put or going to see her mother or a friend or something. Anyone else except Klein.

  I told myself that I was chasing her for nothing, and I kept telling myself that right up until a pearly black Jaguar pulled up across from her complex and purred for a full two minutes before Ellen bounded out to meet it, practically bouncing in her stilettos. She clicked into the car, not even pausing to look around to see if anyone was watching. That made me angrier than anything. It was one thing to flout my rules, another to do it so blatantly, without any discretion or fear of being caught.

  The driver of the Jag turned his head so she could kiss him, full lip smack, a lover’s kiss, and my blood ran cold. Ears like a jug. A jowly face that had always had enough money that he’d never needed to work hard at being handsome. Joel Klein, Hiram’s loathsome creep of a son, peeled away from the curb with Ellen’s hand down his pants, tires squealing.

  I waited thirty seconds, long enough to put inconspicuous distance
between us, and then followed. At the first stoplight, heading west along Sunset Boulevard, I could see her tilt down the driver’s side mirror, tip her head, practice smiling. Gave the mirror her best bedroom eyes and checked her teeth for lipstick. Furry pink fronds poked up from the bodice of her dress and turned the underside of her chin fuchsia. Klein Jr. goosed her under her armpit and she jumped. The light turned, and she went back to practicing seductive expressions.

  I guessed where we were headed before we got there. Paramount Studios sat between a country club and a cemetery. Most other studios had moved out of Hollywood years before, finding cheaper or chicer digs in other parts of the city. But Paramount held on, locked away like a castle from the small-time wannabes a few blocks over who cruised Hollywood and Vine dressed as Marilyn or Elvis or King Kong.

  An industry party, I guessed. The film Ellen had been working on—although that was a strong term; she’d been about as involved as background scenery—was a Paramount picture. I thought of her face in the cramped room at the St. Leo—she really did feel something for Klein; I knew I was right. You couldn’t hide an eyelash in those big eyes. But maybe she thought it would make Klein jealous, seeing her with his son. Maybe she imagined he’d realize how special she was. His dream girl. Or, worse, maybe she was trying to transfer those feelings to Joel. Neither option was good business for me.

  As I looked for street parking, I was already imagining a cover story to bluff my way into the party—I did not have it in me to pretend to be a lost tourist, starstruck and wide-eyed by the memorabilia of Tinseltown—when the Jag turned away from the gates, circling the block. I was surprised enough that I let another car maneuver in between us and then rode their tail until they blinkered and jerked into the other lane, sending a one-finger salute after me as I followed Ellen into the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

  I idled behind the Jaguar, not caring now if she could tell that someone was following her, and watched Junior half lift a hand to a security guard, interrupting an argument with a billboard-handsome man in a rumpled silk suit. The security guard waved them through, continued his argument.

  I took a glance at the guard and weighed my odds. He seemed preoccupied enough that maybe I could squeak by without a story. I rolled down the window, not stopping the car.

  “Here for the party,” I called, catching a glimpse of the two men in the dying glow of the afternoon. They didn’t stop their argument—the guest (an actor, no doubt) wanted to liberate the caged peacocks for the festivities, and the rent-a-cop wasn’t having it. They both seemed occupied and I was counting on it. I kept driving until I heard the shout behind me.

  “Hey! Come back here!”

  I checked in my rearview. Both men were staring at my car now, and the security guard had a hand on his two-way radio. That stopped me. I backed the car up.

  “Cake delivery,” I said, adding, “special for Mr. Klein.” I patted a hand at my back seat, then gave them both a full smile. None of us liked the smile much.

  “Name?”

  The security guard was not having a good night. He clutched a clipboard that looked ready to snap at any second. He was red-faced, angry or ashamed, while the man in the silk suit had that above-it-all actor’s gaze, the nothing can ruffle me, sweet stuff billing that had gone out decades ago, once men on celluloid had to pretend to act human. I didn’t like him on sight. But then, I wouldn’t have liked anyone at that party very much—including Ellen.

  “Karen,” I said, “with catering.”

  “Company name?” He glared at the keyboard. In the distance, Junior’s taillights rounded a corner and disappeared. I cursed under my breath.

  “Look,” I said, “if you want to explain to Mr. Klein why the specialty cake he ordered—”

  The actor stepped forward and peered at my face in the car. “Oh, Karen, I didn’t recognize you!”

  The security guard looked over, skeptical. I matched his expression. “You know her, Mr. Wexler?”

  “Sure do,” Wexler said, leaning an arm on my car window. He leaned forward and grinned into my face, showing all his teeth. Wexler wasn’t particularly tall—actors never are—and his face was very handsome, every feature a hair too large, including his oversized upper body and rib cage. But never quite handsome enough to be the lead—even among Hollywood, that sort of handsome was rare, and it made me wonder, for a moment, if Jackal had missed his calling. “Good to see you, Karen. Say, can I catch a ride up?”

  “Sure,” I said, looking from him to the security guard, whose face wasn’t so much incredulous as pitying: You sure you want this asshole in your car?

  I peered into the half-darkness. Through the carefully tangled ivy and rotting silvery palms, I could see the red glow of taillights and, far ahead, sweeping purple and gold spotlights. Far off, I could hear a woman shriek with glee. I waited until Wexler had walked around to the passenger-side door of my car, and then I gunned it, shooting straight past them both and lurching forward into the boneyard. Behind me, I thought I heard the security guard laughing.

  * * *

  Hollywood Forever Cemetery shared a plot of land with the studio, a shortsighted mistake by the undertakers of the early 1900s, who’d assumed the newfangled movie biz would fold in months. It didn’t take long before the stars hadn’t been content with their half of the land: they’d taken Hollywood, and then started to overtake the cemetery, too. A century later, the two still rubbed shoulders, two ghouls locked together in eternity. It was fitting: you couldn’t see the celestial stars in Los Angeles anymore, but you could find the earthly ones spackling the sidewalks or bricked up in marble.

  You could step off the studio lot, walk across the street, and find yourself in the Garden of Legends, treading on the final resting places of residents with names almost as well-known as Carrigan, dozing off a lifetime of largesse.

  Hollywood Forever wasn’t home to all the departed luminaries of Old Hollywood, but it had more than its share. Jayne Mansfield and her head rested near the lake, richly fertilized by duck shit and pond scum. Virginia Rappe and her cosmically cruel last name nestled underneath a tiny tree that had never taken root. Marion Davies had been entombed in an enormous mausoleum, as befitting the mistress of one of the wealthiest men in the city’s history. The dowager empress of kept women, an inspiration to us all.

  I parked near the peacock cages, winding my way through the clutter of graves carved with curvy Armenian glyphs. Out of the car, I could see that many of the headstones featured carved black-and-white photographs of the long-lost departed in their prime. I imagined an old Armenian grandmother flipping through her photo books, picking out the one that would represent her face for eternity. If it were me, I’d have picked a nude. But maybe that task went to the survived-by. It was unnerving, knowing exactly what the pile of dirt and bones underneath my feet looked like.

  I crept toward the front of the cemetery, the big eternity pool where mean-as-fuck swans sipped chlorine-green water in front of the everlasting tomb of Douglases Senior and Junior, patron saints of celluloid. My shoes were sticky with champagne and clung to the pebbles underfoot. I stopped every so often to shake one loose, squinting into the darkness for a sign of Ellen and Junior.

  Klein Sr. would send her packing as soon as he figured out she was fucking his son—maybe it would even be an easy out for him, a way to rid himself of an annoying mistress without any nasty recriminations. I couldn’t let that happen. I needed to get her out of there before she could make a fool of herself in front of Klein, ruin any chance that he’d speak to her, let alone fuck her, on Thursday.

  Far off, voices hooted in harmony, and I wondered if this was what the party was meant to be, a sprawling bacchanal over the bones of Old Hollywood. I followed the screeching until I reached an enormous black valentine that held the framed face of a golden goddess, one I recognized from magazine covers but more specifically as the lead of Ellen’s film, wit
h the words Rest in peace, Tati’s youth! emblazoned across it in silver-tinselly glitter. Beneath that, the dates November 6, 1984—November 6, 2012.

  Someone had driven a plastic butter knife through the center of the valentine, spearing the ski slope of the birthday girl’s nose.

  An altar was set up before the valentine, littered with Veuve Clicquot carcasses and champagne flutes abandoned half full or never used. Little lights had been strung up across the Douglases and the celebratory spotlights swayed over the lawn. I swiped one of the half-finished glasses in passing and downed it, then came up sputtering. Not champagne. Vodka, warm.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a quick flare of fuchsia, a tittering giggle—“Oh, Joel, you’re incorrigible!”—and I couldn’t help myself. I turned and barked, “Ellen!”

  Something pink and fluttering cackled off into the dusk.

  I jogged after her until I caught sight of warm light spilling out of the wall of mausoleums lining the perimeter of the cemetery. That’d be Ellen, all right. Looking to make a scene.

  Inside the opened tomb, a woman plunked at an old wood baby grand that hadn’t been tuned in fifty years, and a man leaned heavily against the side of the piano, trying to explain something to her. Behind them, two stupefied revelers swigged straight from their own bottles of vodka. I recognized one, glazed expression and gold sequins, as the birthday girl, although she looked different without a knife for a nose. As I passed by, I heard the man against the piano say, “You’re flat, Cara, if I’ve told you once, then I’ve told you—”

  All around us, enmarbled bodies. The acoustics in the place were perfect. The audience was even better. I shivered.

  “A twenty-eighth birthday party in a cemetery,” I said to no one in particular. “What a world you people live in.”

  No one said anything—I didn’t think they’d even heard me—until the birthday girl said, voice slow as molasses, “As above, so below.”