by Adam Braver
“I would certainly take a pitchfork in the eyes before having to set sight on that pretense.”
She rose from the bed and stepped behind Max, looking away from her reflection in the mirror. She placed her hands on his shoulders and squeezed tenderly. “I love my Molly. I truly do. But I need you to help me through how I see Marguerite.”
“We will get through this,” he said. “We get through it all.”
She squeezed his shoulders again. “You know that I love you, don’t you?”
He reached back and took her hands. His grip was confident. His hands warm and manicured. “You know Marguerite better than you know yourself.” He laughed. “Again, you find yourself distracted by loudmouth fanatics that are angry at their God for putting them in a world they detest. The only way they can maintain their faith is to find someone else to blame. There is no justice here. Only ignorance. And we are professionals at dealing with ignorance, we have managed it with every American tour…And, yes, I do know how much you love me. I tell myself every day.”
She didn’t move her hands. She wished he could hold them forever. She swallowed and fought back a tear. Her eyes could have exploded. “All right then,” she said, wanting to tell him that yes they may have been through this time after time on their American tours, but now she was wearied by it, and it suddenly felt like anything but routine, and even at that this chaos had nothing to do with not being able to see Marguerite anymore. She loosened her grip and gave Max a pat on the shoulders that seemed suddenly chummy. “You sit tight, dear. I’ll change in the bathroom. Don’t want pitchforks in your eyes.”
“You don’t have to—”
“The beige blouse, or the puritanical white?” She pointed to the open closet.
“Sarah, I can wait outside.”
“Beige or white?”
“White. But don’t wear puritanical white. Wear angelic white.”
“Better for the Catholics, I suppose.”
“They’ll see your shoulder blades as wings.”
“And you’ll be my guardian angel.”
“Can an angel have a penis?”
“If they can have wings, I don’t see why not.”
“Well.” Max smiled. “We’ll just have to ask Bishop What’s-His-Name when we see him. Penises and wings…What’s the answer, Mr. Bishop?…Penises and wings. Penises and wings. How Greek of us.”
“My Molly.” Sarah walked into the bathroom despite Max’s final protests. The lavatory had a sterile sheen. The floor laid out in glossy black and white tiles positioned as connecting diamonds. The freestanding porcelain sink blended into the floor, and behind a milky bath curtain the tile pattern repeated itself in an ivy climb up the wall before stopping abruptly at the plaster. She draped her clothes over the curtain rod and sat down on the toilet. The seat, crisp from the partially open window, almost stung her bare bottom. The trickling of pee into the water was almost silent. And through the window shone only a slip of natural light, the rest clouded and blurred through the leafy pattern of the beveled glass. Almost as artificial and contrived as sunrise appearing through the glass panes on the set of Marguerite’s traveling 9, rue d’Antin flat. Swear to god, if it weren’t for the crack of natural light Sarah wouldn’t know the difference between the stage and reality.
AL LEVY’S ON THIRD AND MAIN was a trendy type of restaurant that had made oyster cocktails highbrow, just the type where a concierge would undoubtedly send a guest. It reeked of kickbacks and questionable funding, but where an assumed pact was made with the patrons to become coconspirators in the illusion of East Coast sophistication. The lighting was sparkly silver, set by a row of Italian imported chandeliers that hung in two straight lines along the almost impossible length of the vaulted ceilings. Each tinsel of glass was no doubt cleaned daily by an underpaid Mexican duped into believing that he had been immaculately chosen to apprentice for a dignified trade critical to keeping the American dream moving—making sure the diamonds sparkled. A grand elegant staircase rose from the center of the dining floor, with mahogany steps at least eight feet in length, made royal by a red woolen runner that draped the middle, balanced by a matching banister with carved lions’ heads at both top and bottom. The ascent up the stairs led to the balcony, and in the balcony was the bar, where a pianist in tails intermingled Mozart and Joplin.
Vince Baker sat at the end of the bar. Gone upscale for an evening. Maybe half a chance at meeting a sophisticated puss who would be seduced by his combination of rough edges and power. No promises. No odds. No hard feelings if he walked away alone. As with most nights he was content with avoiding his lonely box of an apartment, which, despite being new and in a more desirable location, felt just as empty and terrifying as every other place where he had lived. The only times he ever felt a connection to the outside world from his quarters were the occasions when the woman four times his age in the apartment across the street would stare vacantly out the window behind a single candle, a sad expression, wearing only a gigantic bra that looked more akin to a Visigoth’s armor. He held his place quietly at the end of the bar, wearing a rumpled dress coat pulled from a pile in his closet (his most suitable attire), looking out over the dining room at the patrons in their quest for Los Angeles culture. He’d give it twenty minutes or three more drinks, whichever came first, and then it was the next cab down to Willie’s for a nightcap and a shot at the last-chance dolls.
He hadn’t caught any rest at all today. Hadn’t done much of anything other than contribute to a follow-up on some City Hall scandal by getting a quote from a chirpy clerk hoping to make his mark through squawking. Baker probably wouldn’t even get a credit on the byline for that, but who really cared. He had spent the better part of the day trying to sniff out something good, a hot tip on some action that was going down, anything that he could take back to Scott to get him off the Bernhardt story.
By his third rusty nail he was beginning to consider the idea of just quitting. He lit up another cigarette, feeling the breeze of cool smoke calm his chest.
By the fourth rusty nail he kept a hawkish vigilance over the room.
He moved seats until he was tucked into the corner, camouflaged by a potted palm tree and the jacked-up hood of the grand piano. His own voyeur’s nest, where he could watch up close without being seen, not as a reporter, but as a person fascinated by the quirks of his own species. Still he took care to keep himself hidden. This was the kind of place where the power brokers that he covered would seek refuge. They loved joints like this; made them feel like the wild Spanish-American west had been made submissive through opulent grace. Baker scooted his stool deeper into the corner. He didn’t want any of these somebodys to look up from their sparkling tables, champagne toasts in hand, and see him looking down on them, mistaking him for one of those F. T. Seabright types, covertly eavesdropping to get their story and make news.
MAX HELD THE GRAND DOOR of Al Levy’s for Sarah. She graced in, immediately intrigued by the restaurant’s dark elegance yet disappointed by the obviousness of its idea, and that it lacked the informality that she had been hoping for. It was masterfully contrived, designed with the same artisanship of a master set builder, but still she felt the thinness of the walls, like a stretched canvas framed with boards, with the scene painted on the facing sides. It would not take more than a convergence of errant sneezes to accidentally blow the whole place down. It was as though she had entered stage left into a generic Europe from backstage Los Angeles.
She and Max waited at the door near the host’s podium. She had eschewed the idea of wearing a blouse but did stick with the idea of white in the form of a long, elegant dress whose hem gracefully dragged the floor. The material, thin batiste cotton (a fabric chosen for most of her California wardrobe, all tailored by Laferriére), flowed with a ghostly elegance. She looked to be in motion even when standing still. The greeting area was dark, lit only by two candelabras, clearly affected to further the drama of walking into the sparkling dining room. To an unsuspecting
diner who happened to glance toward the front entrance, Sarah must have looked like a passing apparition in that hollow.
“Are you sure about this, Molly?” she asked, taking a short step backward.
“What I know is that the concierge recommended it.” He leaned into the empty host’s stand and drummed his finger against the hard wood.
“Maybe that’s it. It seems like a place that people think we would like.”
Max shook his head. He had been through this too many times to remember. Her first instinct was always to find the faults. Once she could identify everything wrong or suspect about where they were, then she could settle in to enjoy herself. “We don’t have to stay,” he said in an almost rehearsed fashion.
“Maybe if we could just be seated.”
“I don’t see the host.”
“Being seated would make it better.”
Max looked out into the dining room for someone who could assist them to their table.
“We have a reservation for sure?” Sarah asked.
“Concierge said he made it.”
“And you tipped him, I assume. You know they expect that here, don’t you?”
“Sarah, please.”
She threw her arms around his neck, adopting the role of the old lush. “Oh Molly,” she whispered, childlike. “Relax your ass cheeks. If we could just sit down is all that I’m saying. I’m so fatigued.”
They waited for five impossible minutes. Max began shifting foot to foot while his breathing hardened. It was difficult to know whether he was truly annoyed with the lack of service, or if he was anticipating his employer’s reaction.
Sarah finally fulfilled Max’s prophecy. “This seems an unusual amount of time to wait,” she said.
“I am doing my best.”
“The rest of our crew will reach Los Angeles before we get a table.”
“Sarah.”
“I am only joking, Molly. Please. Personal is not becoming on you…Maybe the host is upstairs by the bar. Perhaps we should check.”
“Maybe,” Max said, then suggested that Sarah should wait in the foyer in case the host did in fact arrive. He would go upstairs and check around. But she insisted on going with him, that she didn’t want to be left alone. All it would take would be one crazy Catholic to notice her, and then Sarah wasn’t sure that she could be responsible for how she might handle the situation.
They made a child’s pact. They would walk halfway up the stairs and then stop. Sarah would look up. Max would look down. If there was not a host to greet them by that point then they would descend the stairs, head straight out the door into a waiting cab with a directive to get to the nearest diner.
By the second step Sarah knew that she had been seen. There is a certain shift in the dynamic of the room whenever someone has made her—a pocket of silence followed by a downshift in volume, throwing off the balance of the room. Then it starts to spread. Sometimes a cancer. Sometimes dominoes. Until the entire space has adopted a new personality fueled by fascination and intrigue. It is at that precise moment, the one where the last voice has hushed, and a temporary silence stands, that she always knows when she has diseased the entire room, infected everyone there with her presence until they are consumed by her. On some level it does not really affect her, because it is intrinsic to her being; at the very least, it is the oxygen that keeps the being of Sarah Bernhardt the Stage Star breathing. Her dirty little secret is that the rest of the world doesn’t know how critical they are to keeping that Sarah Bernhardt alive. The moment when that room doesn’t take notice is the moment when Sarah Bernhardt wilts and withers away.
At the agreed upon halfway point, Sarah and Max stopped. She felt reinvigorated. Puffed with life. Her veins pure and free from the opium. She didn’t acknowledge the spectators. That was part of the game. The distance was the fascination. She thought about her agenda to quit that she had concocted while back at the hotel, and smiled to herself. In a million years, Max would never believe her if she was to turn to him and say that she wanted out of the business. He would probably give her one of those Molly kisses, stretching on his tiptoes for no real reason and grasping both her shoulders while gracing her cheek with stiff lips. He would be right. Sort of. There were two things she did refuse to do: fade away or be shoved away.
Sarah looked up at the bar, letting her gaze follow the piano’s melodic breeze along an empty dance floor big enough for two, then over to the bar where a slouch-shouldered bartender in a false black vest and white bow tie made time with a resentful cocktail waitress. Otherwise she didn’t see anybody else up there, least of all the gentleman host. “And do you see anything?” she asked Max.
“Not even an empty table.”
“We must remember to ask that concierge for your tip back.”
They turned in choreographed precision. Max took her arm as a gentleman escort, and they descended the stairs as the genuine article, misplaced in this faux proscenium summer stock one-act of a restaurant. Shoulders back. Chins arched slightly. Eyes above the crowd. “I really did just feel like having a croque monsieur,” she whispered, frowning in mock royalty to ensure a sense of mystery for all watchful eyes.
“The closest they have in America is a grilled cheese sandwich.”
“That will do.”
They walked down to the main floor and through the foyer without acknowledging or honoring any part of the surroundings. They didn’t even notice the sound of the potted palm falling over upstairs. Or the spray of coins hastily tossed on the bar. Nor the awkward stumbling behind them on the stairs they had just left. Or even the slamming door of the cab behind them as Vince Baker directed the driver to “catch that cab.”
MOST REPORTERS only get one chance. They get a single shot to pose their questions and establish their rapport. Unpreparedness. Boredom. Ignorance. Aloofness. Any combination of these integers will not only kill a story, but will also kill a reputation. There are no apologies. No second chances. Editors lose faith. The cubs on the dog watch start picking up the assignments, and you spend most of your days looking for some kind of dope that will lead you into the good fortune of a story that will reestablish your credibility on the street and in the newsroom. The bottom line, the lesson: Be prepared. Otherwise the business will eat you alive from the inside out.
VINCE BAKER HADN’T CONSIDERED IT irony but rather coincidence that Bernhardt’s cab turned down Broadway and stopped in front of Ralph’s—just around the corner from the Cathedral of our Lady of Angels—the very diner where he had drafted the beginning of the League of Decency boycott piece. He told the driver to keep the motor running as he watched Bernhardt get out of her car. She stood on the curb, looking into the Ralph’s window while her slightly younger companion fumbled through his wallet, no doubt calculating the worth of his bills and exchanging the rates in his head. It was clear to Baker that Bernhardt’s escort served in a professional capacity. He had a look of servitude in his posture. Confident and sure of himself. Poised to accommodate her in a way that only a smitten man who rarely saw night except for outside his window would behave given his one shot with a beautiful woman. But this man was no smitten agoraphobic. He stood a head taller than his mistress did, with a jacket cut so splendidly to his physique that neither he nor the jacket could be from anywhere else but the most sophisticated metropolises of Europe. His hair was dark, combed back slick and dapper. And he moved with a sophistication that seemed to transcend grace to the degree that Baker immediately pegged the man as being as queer as any of the swishy downtown types. Bernhardt and her escort were obviously familiar with each other. It was clear through the comforts of their smiles and their relaxed shoulders. They touched each other like it was common, unlike the consciously perpetrated brushing of potential lovers. Baker watched the man hold the door for her as she walked into that greasy dive with the same elegance and sophistication that she had just conferred on Al Levy’s.
They disappeared into the back (though they were certainly not seeking
an out-of-the-way table for clandestine purposes, rather from celebrity habit). Once their cab drove off, the street scene in front of Ralph’s looked as lonely and desolate as the rest of the post-nine-o’clock downtown, where only a few windows were made alive by sickly yellow bulbs, and a wind that didn’t seem to be there in daylight wound the streets like a scrounging snake kicking up stray sheets of paper that whipped through two or three violent somersaults before settling somewhere else up the sidewalk; where the scraping of trash and a whistling wind that was paradoxically silent were the only sounds other than that of a bum’s cough or sneeze that echoed through the concrete canyon in such randomly acute angles that it was nearly impossible to pinpoint its origin; and where the purity of a desolate temperate night smelled both pungent and fragrant.
The cabbie said, “I don’t meant to…” He looked straight ahead. Didn’t bother to crane his neck.
Baker was still staring out his window. The rumbling of the cab vibrated his hands. “Don’t mean to what?”
“You know.”
“I’m not sure I do.”
The cabbie paused. Then spoke as though he had carefully chosen his next word. “Meddle.” His pronunciation divided the word by its two syllables.
“Meddle?”
“You know, get involved. Tell you what to do.”
“I know the meaning of the word.”
“Then why ask?”
“I didn’t mean to imply that I didn’t know the word meddle. It was more of what you meant by it.” Jesus, his head was too bloated by scotch for this. And just the realization of that sent a fierce wave of nausea tiding up his throat.
“You know,” the cabbie said, “the Chinese do crazy things in this kind of situation. I lived up in San Francisco—let’s just say that I’m glad that I got out before the quake. But I know the Chinese. I know the crazy things they will do.”
Baker was barely listening.
“They’re very private people, they are. Very private.”