Windhall

by Ava Barry

  A man with thick silver hair climbed out, adjusted his jacket, then glanced over at us. He looked like an age-progressed Bruce Wayne. The man raised an eyebrow, then walked toward the door. Before he could knock, the door opened, and he vanished inside.

  “I know him,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “That guy,” I said. “I’ve seen him somewhere.”

  “Been attending a lot of black-tie orgies lately?”

  “His name is on the tip of my tongue,” I said. “Oh my God, it’s going to drive me crazy.”

  “Whatever,” Madeleine said. “Let’s go. I’d like to get away from here.”

  We drove back into Los Angeles, and the car was silent all the way to Madeleine’s house. When I finally reached Los Feliz and pulled up in front of her house, she turned to me.

  “You’re one of my best friends,” she said. “But honestly, Hail, fuck you. Don’t drag me into your schemes anymore.”

  * * *

  It wasn’t until almost an hour later, when I had pulled up in front of my own house, that I realized who the man at Heather’s house was. I had seen pictures of them talking at Heather’s fundraising gala, and when I remembered that, the man’s name came back to me.

  Linus Warren. Billionaire developer and notorious capitalist. His name was attached to half the new developments in Santa Monica and Malibu. I dug into my memory to see what else I could recollect about him, but the worst thing that came to mind was the fact that he had ousted a colony of pied-billed grebes. The reason that he had looked familiar to me was that even in a photograph, he looked like a gay, off-duty superhero.

  I had more important things to think about, namely Theo’s journals, and I put Linus Warren out of my mind.

  I didn’t bother going into my house; I went straight to the backyard and set myself up inside my office. After carefully unpacking all six notebooks from the box, I reached in and pulled out the collection of photographs that had sifted to the bottom.

  The photos showed the other side of a life lived in public. These were the private moments that had managed to stay encapsulated in film but protected from the outside world, rare moments of solace in a world of chaos.

  I stopped when I found a photo of Eleanor leaning against the shoulder of a handsome young man with dark hair. Neither one of them was looking at the camera, and they weren’t looking at each other, but their heads were bent toward each other in the suggestion of intimacy. I tucked the photo aside and made a mental note to find out the young man’s identity later.

  Another photo of Eleanor caught my eye, but this one was familiar. I had seen copies of it in the newspaper and, more recently, on Google Image searches. It was a photo of Eleanor and a young man bending to tie his shoe while Eleanor rolled her eyes. The young man had always been identified as “Eleanor’s friend,” but I flipped the picture over to see if there was a caption. Written in an unidentified hand was Eleanor and Theo pause between games of tennis. I turned the picture over and marveled at this younger Theo and wondered what this version of Eleanor would have said if I had revealed the outcome of her life to her.

  I finally turned my attention to Theo’s journals. I spent a good ten minutes flipping through the pages, admiring Theo’s consistent, dreamy script. I was almost too excited to begin reading, but I finally sorted back to the beginning and found what seemed to be the first journal. The date was in 1944, which was right around the time that Theo had started working on his first film, She’s Got Moxie!

  I began to read.

  * * *

  May 12, 1944: Hollywood, California—

  It’s a dim little place, but it’s cheap. Stanley in the art department gave me the address on a recommendation, and I moved in two weeks later. Only half the doors lock properly, the walls are thin enough to hear your neighbors breathing, and you can count yourself lucky if you don’t wake up to find strangers waltzing in your living room. On at least two occasions I’ve come home to someone sleeping in my bed, and last Wednesday I went into my bathroom to find a well-dressed stranger enthusiastically cleaning his teeth with my toothbrush.

  The bungalows look like they might have been taken from a movie set, because they’re flimsy and romantic. The owner of the complex is an old movie star from the twenties, who hasn’t made a film since movies switched to sound. She’s got a thick accent—maybe Russian, I’m not sure—and you never see her without an elaborate getup, complete with makeup and jewelry.

  I can’ t get a fix on my neighbors. Most of them seem to be creative—actors and clowns, some dancing girls and theater types. On a few occasions I’ve caught glimpses of some boarders who seem rather out of place, including morose businessmen and sleepy doctors, and once, a young priest.

  And then there are the stars. I’ve been in Los Angeles for a month now and I can’t help staring when I catch sight of them around the studio, but Stan tells me this excitement will pass. It’s one thing to see them moving about the studio in costume, walking between their dressing room and the sets, but I don’t think I’ll ever grow accustomed to the sight of them lounging around the swimming pool of my apartment complex.

  Stan told me about this when he gave me the recommendation. He told me that the Garden of Alla was a bit seedy, but it had its own reputation around Hollywood. Everyone’s lived here at some point, apparently, for a few months while they find their feet.

  The arrival of even the most famous faces from the silver screen—Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Gloria Swanson—is never met with cheers or fanfare. When they come to the Garden, they’re just like the rest of us, and more often than not, people fail to notice their presence. Some of them seem to be more like obnoxious house pets than guests, asking to borrow tweezers or pens, bending to sniff our drinks, falling asleep poolside for the entire world to see.

  The pool seems to be the social center of the whole complex. It’s a kidney¯shaped pit in the middle of the bungalows, and a magnet for everything: celebrities, tourists, lost crazies, drunken revelers, late¯night stargazers. It also seems to draw in lost items, from diamond earrings to gold bracelets to pairs of shoes, all of which can be seen winking up from the depths of the pool like some strange breed of fish.

  When work settles down a bit, I’ll go for a swim.

  August 2, 1944—

  I’ve fallen head over heels in love with Hollywood. In some ways it feels like the whole town was built yesterday. It’s not so much a place as a state of mind, and it changes every single day.

  I can be a cynical person, but I still can’t help admiring the geraniums and date palms on every street, the pepper trees on Hollywood Boulevard and the smell of oranges on the breeze. The world is seeping in around the edges of Hollywood, and all we have to do is catch it on camera.

  When we need cowboys for a shoot, we drive over to Gower and Sunset, where all the unemployed cowboys hang out, waiting for work. They drift in from the desert between jobs wrangling cattle, because they know that film people pay a lot more money for a lot less work. The same goes for Indians and churchgoers, cops and priests—if you can’t find an actor to suit your needs, you drive around town looking for the real thing. He’ll turn up, sooner or later.

  I’ve been working under Walter Thomas, one of the best producers Hollywood has to offer. He’s a generous man and everyone seems to love him—actresses, stagehands, even the studio heads. I keep pinching myself and wondering how I got to be such a lucky son of a bitch.

  I love the way that actors can sink into a script and warp the characters in ways that I haven’t even considered. Inspiration is everywhere if you have the presence of mind to capture it. Sometimes people outside the film industry have trouble distinguishing between reality and fiction, and I can’t blame them, because the film industry can hardly be contained within the walls of the studios. We’re a restless, wild bunch, sometimes with no more discretion than children. Traffic gets frequently interrupted throughout town by floods, fires, fireworks, exploding buildings, men ru
nning around waving swords and daggers, damsels caught high up in the branches of trees—all of which disappears as soon as the cameras stop rolling, of course.

  Characters and stories come leaking out of the studio walls faster than the residents of Hollywood can slap down new laws, but they put up a valiant fight, all the same. Life explodes in every direction, and it’s hard to determine what’s real. You might go to buy milk from your corner drugstore and find Lon Chaney trying horror makeup on in the mirror, or else you might stand in line behind a family in Tyrolean garb, waiting for the pharmacist. You might go to the park on your lunch break and see a British nobleman wandering lost beneath a canopy of palm trees, only to look again and see that he has disappeared.

  We design life the way we want to see it. We have the best wardrobe designers, diction coaches, language consultants, dance teachers; the best screenwriters and storytellers. If we want you to believe something, you’ll believe it. We could dress your mother up in men’s clothing and send her round, and you’d be convinced that your father had come back from the dead.

  Our talents are wasted on the original residents of Los Angeles, however, who seem hell-bent on getting rid of us. There are protests every day, as the citizens of Old Hollywood try to reclaim their quiet town. Cecil DeMille, one of the top directors around, carries a gun to work, because someone once shot at him on his way home.

  They call us charlatans and heathens, claiming that we’ve warped God’s creation to suit our fancy. The original residents are a dying breed, however, and they’re slowly being edged out by Hollywood’s next chapter. Even the loudest voices quickly fade into echoes, no louder than mumbled recitations as they tell us that we’ve created our own, sinful religion, and that one day, we’ll pay for it.

  August 18, 1944—

  This was meant to be a straightforward account of my days in Los Angeles, but even a few months in, I can see more potential here. Whenever I get a spare moment I write down everything—the snatches of conversation, the weather (report: unchanging), and even the goddamn outfits of the people walking by.

  I never meant to be a novelist, per se—but is there potential for a film here? Could this be the beginning of a scenario? Either way, I want it all on record.

  September 2, 1944—

  I thought I was going to die last night.

  The evening began like any other. I came home late from work, exhausted, prepared to drop into bed. As soon as I walked into my bedroom, however, I realized that the bed was already occupied by a young couple who proved impossible to wake up.

  Frustrated, I wandered outside and headed toward the pool, hoping that someone could tell me the identity of the people in my bed, or else help to wake them up.

  Someone was playing piano; I could hear them as I walked down the path. It wasn’t unusual to hear music at all times of day in the Garden. People frequently played accordions, horns, trumpets, harmonicas, sometimes banjos. All the music contributed to a strange cacophony that wasn’t altogether unpleasant, though it did make it difficult to get work done.

  When I reached the pool, I saw that the piano music was actually coming from a piano that had been moved next to the pool. A young man sat on the bench, almost jumping up and down at the keys, trying to keep up with his own fingers. My attention was drawn to the young woman beside him, however, who was managing to match his tempo.

  Her dark hair was loosely pinned at the base of her neck, and a few damp strands stuck to her skin. She smiled as she played, as the music climbed and tumbled over itself, stirring the energy into a near frenzy. A small crowd pressed in around the two players, but their concentration remained fixed, their melodies winding in and out of each other. The music was so beautiful and effortless that they might have been performing on a stage.

  When the music was over, the crowd stomped and cheered, then pressed in to congratulate the musicians. I waited until the commotion had settled a bit before going over to introduce myself to the young woman. She smiled as though we had met before, and I couldn’t help feeling that she looked familiar.

  I introduced myself and asked her if we had met.

  “Don’t think so,” she replied. She had green eyes and a very pretty smile, with a slight overbite. A pair of emerald earrings winked from beneath the strands of hair that fell down to frame her face. Elegant and understated; most people wouldn’t have noticed the jewelry. The thing that really caught my attention was the fact that she wasn’t wearing any shoes.

  “Are you an actress?”

  “Well, mostly theater,” she said. “I’ve done a movie or two.”

  “I’m Theo,” I repeated. “I live here…”

  But just at that moment, a young man came over and put a hand on her shoulder.

  “We’re about to hit Mulholland,” he said. “You still want to come? Oh, hullo,” he said, turning to me and offering me his hand. “I’m Jules.”

  “Theo,” I said. “Pleasure.”

  “You know, I have no idea where I left my shoes,” the girl said, glancing around. “I shouldn’t have taken them off!”

  “Might be dangerous to go without,” Jules said.

  “Maybe I’ll find some along the way. Token.”

  “Tokens are small, you’re not supposed to wear them.”

  I tried to follow their conversation, but I had no idea what they were talking about. They squabbled for a while, and then the girl turned to look at me. “You coming?”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Jules said. “No newcomers. Sorry, pal.”

  “Errol was new.”

  “Yes, but we know him. You think he’s trustworthy?” He motioned me with a jerk of his head.

  “Who’s he going to tell?”

  They both turned to look at me.

  “Right,” Jules said to me. “You’re riding in the trunk.”

  We walked toward the street. I had a hundred questions, but I had the feeling that if I seemed to inquisitive, my invitation might be revoked.

  “Are you a good climber?” Jules asked.

  “Moderate to decent.”

  “Are you afraid of dogs? Are you a fast runner?”

  “I can run if I have to.”

  We reached Sunset. Ahead of us, on the sidewalk, two men shared a flask of something. They both wore expensive suits, and when they turned to look at us, I saw that one of them was Errol Flynn, Hollywood’s most famous pirate. I did a double take to make sure that I could trust my eyes.

  The other man was diminutive, with close-cropped gray hair and a black mustache. A bloody gash stood out on his forehead, and I tried not to stare at it, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away. Even more remarkable than the bloody scrape was the fact that nobody else seemed to notice it. The man’s eyes flickered up to meet mine, and he gave me a slight nod.

  “Hello, hello,” Errol said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Whose turn is it?”

  “Mine,” said the young woman. I still hadn’t caught her name, but I felt like it was too late in the conversation to ask; I would have to wait until someone addressed her. “There’s a place on Benedict Canyon.”

  “Ah, Benedict’s boring,” Errol said. “Just a bunch of paranoid housewives.”

  “Low risk is good for you, since you’re clearly drunk.”

  Errol winked at her, then turned his attention to me. “Who’s this? I thought guests weren’t allowed.”

  “This is Theo,” Jules said. “Nora’s friend.”

  Nora. I made a mental note.

  Errol fixed his eyes on me for a moment, then passed me his flask. “Take a drink,” he said. “Mandatory rite of initiation.”

  I accepted the flask and took a swig.

  “Okay,” Errol said. “Into the trunk with you. We’ll let you out when we get there.”

  Before I could ask where we were going, I was ushered into the trunk and boxed up in the complete darkness. The car started, and I grasped about wildly for something to hold on to. I didn’t know who was driving, but by the bumps
and swerves, it must have been Errol. Something kept hitting me in the head, and there was nothing to hold on to, so I held my hands over my head and hoped that it would be over as soon as possible. There were a few stops, some longer than others, which I guessed to be traffic lights. After an eternity and no small amount of quiet praying, the car stopped and the trunk popped open. Four faces peered down at me.

  “There he is, still in one piece,” Errol said. “Come on, out with you. We’ve only got a few hours.”

  I climbed out to find myself standing outside of a sprawling Victorian mansion. The upper gables and spires rose against the blue-gray sky, watchful and austere. A single light burned in one of the lower windows, but other than that, there were no signs of life.

  The neighborhood around us was sparse and populated with the heathen scrubs that I had already come to associate with wild California. A few skeleton forms of houses yet unfinished stood on the lower reaches of the mountain, eerie in the night stillness.

  I turned to find Jules arguing with Errol, who was taking another swig from his flask. The third man stood away from everyone else, and when he noticed me, he ambled over.

  “It’s strange, isn’t it?” he said.

  “What is?”

  “All of it. This town. This world of images. We’re adults playing make believe.”

  “Yes,” I said vaguely. “Are you an actor?”

  “He’s Bill,” said Nora, who had come up to join us. “Bill, meet Theo.”

  “Pleasure.”

  “Count No-Count!” Errol called, and Bill turned to look at him.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “Will you be in charge of time?”

  “Oh, I suppose.”

  Errol handed him a pocket watch, then clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Pal,” he said. “Which studio do you work for?”

  “MGM.”