by Gwen Davis
“Yes, we were lovers,” he said, suddenly old. His hair was thinning and grayish blond, the high forehead that in his youth had been taken quite correctly as indicating intelligence expanded now almost to brilliance. He had prominent cheekbones, slightly caved in underneath, and dark eyes that scanned her for danger, found it. He shifted in the chair. “Why don’t you just talk to Paulo?”
“I’d be happy to, if I could find out where he was.”
“He isn’t in California?”
“No. One of the dancers said he stayed in New York. Weren’t you guys in touch?”
“We had a falling out.”
“Over Norman Jessup?”
“It doesn’t matter what it was over,” said Winsett. “We stopped being associates and friends.”
“But the dance world is supposed to be pretty small and incestuous. You must have heard something about what happened to him.”
“Not a word.”
“And that doesn’t strike you as odd?”
“Only if I was interested.”
“Well, I’m really interested, and it strikes me as more than odd. It strikes me as highly peculiar that a man could disappear and no one has a clue where he went. Does he have a family?”
“They’re all dead.”
“Of natural causes?” Sarah grinned. “Only kidding. It just makes it so convenient, you know, nobody who might care about him being around to ask questions.”
“Like you, you mean. Do you care about him?”
“I don’t know him.”
“Then why do you care?”
“I’m interested in Norman Jessup. Paulo left you for Norman, didn’t he?”
“Will you ask her to please stop hogging the stage!” a young man in leotards called out to Winsett. “We know how earnest they are in Michigan, but she’s not the only one who wants to practice.”
“You’ll all have the stage in a moment,” Winsett said. “The break is almost over.” He turned to Sarah. “As is the interview.”
“He did leave you for Norman,” Sarah said.
“I’m in the middle of a real crisis here. I don’t know if you’ve been following what’s going on with this theater…”
“Theater and ballet aren’t it for me,” Sarah said. “That’s nothing against you. I have nothing against you. I’d just like to know … the reason he left you.”
“If you don’t care to understand the feelings of theater people and dancers, you can’t possibly understand Paulo. We all have dreams. Paulo’s were bigger than mine. He’d been a dance sensation when he was a child in Brazil. There was major play about him when he first got to the States. But it never really happened as big as he thought it would. And then he met Norman. I guess … well, to be the love of a great man is the next best thing.”
“You consider Norman Jessup a great man?”
“Paulo did,” said Winsett. “I have to get back to work.”
“When he left you, they took a place together. Here in New York, wasn’t it?”
“I have to go,” said Winsett. “All right, boys and girls,” he said and clapped his hands. “Hit your marks.”
* * *
“Some choreographer named Winsett,” Tyler said into the pay phone backstage. “She recorded whatever they were talking about. She’s leaving the theater now.”
“Follow her,” Norman Jessup said.
“Follow her yourself,” said Tyler. “This is not my style. I’ve had enough of this secret agent shit.” He hung up the phone.
* * *
When Tyler reached the waning daylight, Helen Manning was standing outside the theater. She was by the box office, her purse in her hand, as though she were in the process of buying tickets. Tyler sort of pursed his mouth, a residual expression from before he had become totally openhearted, and cleansed, and still disbelieved people, sometimes actually looked doubtful, maybe even cynical.
“What a coincidence!” she said.
“Oh, come on,” said Tyler. “Like you’re not staying in the same hotel.”
“You’re at the Carlyle? Imagine that!” When she was cornered, Helen spoke in exclamation points, as though scriptwriters of quality had never made their way into her awareness, and she was caught in the comic books of her childhood, no option ahead of her but a Batman sequel.
“I don’t have to,” he said. “It’s the reality.”
He was clearly making fun of her. Even if he hadn’t been clear about it, if he were being subtle or enigmatic, she would have picked up on it. She had never been stupid, and was rarely foolish, as she was being now. Her own behavior shamed her, but not enough to make her walk away from him. “Is there a reason you’re giving me such a hard time?”
“I’m flattered that you’re interested,” he said. “But it can’t go anywhere.”
Ordinarily she would have brazened it out, in the best tradition of brazening, calling him presumptuous. “Presumptuous pup!” would have had a nice Bette Davis ring to it. But he seemed so honest, in addition to the rest of it, a kind of melancholy around the edges of his observation, that she had no choice but to be sincere. “Why does it have to? Aren’t you one of those ‘in the moment’ people? That’s what Bunyan Reis said. That you’re very ‘be here now.’ Can’t we just be here now?”
He looked at her, with her sleek white-gold chignon, and her sleeker body, draped now almost loosely with a pale blue fabric that made her less intimidating than the black she usually wore, but still showed her body off to advantage. As if anything would not show it off to advantage, lush as it was, overwhelming.
Tyler had few doubts about himself as a man. But as a young man who didn’t know exactly where he was going, and had just blown off what little security he had, he had no wish to vanish into this gorgeous woman who ate tycoons for breakfast. Still, he could afford to be generous.
“Okay, we’re here now,” he said.
“My name is Helen Manning.” She held out her hand.
“Like you had to tell me.” He shook it. “Tyler Hayden.”
“That wasn’t so bad now, was it?”
He could still feel her palm in his hand. To his surprise, it had been a little clammy. As though she might be as uneasy, as unsure about all this as he was. “Not bad at all,” he admitted.
“The best Italian restaurant in New York is just a quick cab ride away,” she said. “May I invite you to dinner?”
“I’m not hungry,” Tyler said.
“Of course you are,” she said. “You’re a growing boy.”
* * *
The manager of Felidia’s considered himself fairly centered. Julie Andrews ate there all the time and Al Pacino came in for pasta and roasted fish whenever he was in New York, so John knew better than to be impressed by stars. Stars were just like other people, except other people were inordinately fascinated by them. So stars had more reason both to feel important and to feel insecure, since at any moment it might be taken away. John’s pulse never raced at the sight of a celebrity, nor did his breath stop, only occasionally quicken. Still, when he saw Helen Manning, and she actually threw her arms around him, it did make him break into an adrenaline sweat.
“I didn’t know you were in town,” he said, leading her to the table she preferred, which he remembered well, as he knew most of the dialogue she’d spoken on screen by heart. He pulled the chair out for her, seating her facing the front of the restaurant, so everyone else, as they came in during the dinner hour which it was still a little early for, could see what no cat had dragged in. “Are you in New York to talk about a play?”
“Oh, once on Broadway was enough,” she said, smiling up at him as she sat. “I was grateful to get out with my skin still on.”
“What are you saying?” said John as he subtly signaled for the wine list. “The critics absolutely adored you.”
“They were kind,” she said.
“And you were great,” he said. “You look fabulous. Champagne or something delicious and Italian? On me.”
&n
bsp; “How thoughtful,” she said. “Tyler? You prefer champagne or wine?”
“I’ll have a beer,” Tyler said.
“I didn’t know you had a son,” said the manager.
She took a moment to answer. “Well, it was either that, or save France.”
Tyler studied her face, digested the comment, and laughed.
“Dom Perignon,” said the manager to the waiter, and, smiling, left their table.
“That was really cool,” Tyler said. “I imagined you took yourself a lot more seriously.”
“Imagined?” she said. “You’ve thought about me?”
“Of course.”
“Then why so elusive?”
“Do you read many fairy tales?” Tyler asked.
“I did. Do you?”
“Well, I studied Jung, and he totally believed in mythologizing, you know, man’s need to relate to bigger pictures than himself. Fairy tales are a way of mythologizing, that’s why they’ve lasted so long.”
“Your champagne,” the waiter said, and popping the cork, poured for her, eyes fixed on her glass, intently, demonstrating that who she was would not distract him. “And what kind of beer did you want?” he asked Tyler.
“Anything that isn’t filtered through carbon,” Tyler said.
“They don’t tell us that on the bottle,” said the waiter.
“You have draft beer?” Tyler asked. The waiter nodded. “That’ll be fine.”
“Fairy tales,” Helen prompted as the waiter moved away.
“Well, there’s this one about the Golden Princess, who’s slept with demons. So every time she makes love to a man, she cuts off his head. She can’t help herself. And I can’t afford to lose my head.”
Helen covered her anguish with a sip of champagne. “I haven’t slept with demons,” she said. “The worst they were was not as great as they seemed. And of course Ricky drank and became physically abusive, but—”
“Ambition, that’s the demon,” Tyler interrupted. “Life, like fairy tales, is all about good and evil. Light and darkness. A constant struggle to avoid the shadow side.”
“You don’t have any ambition?”
“Not for things you’d understand.”
“Try me.”
Tyler took a breath, closed his eyes. She was moved to see he was even more beautiful with them shut, his lashes golden, sweeping down to his lightly tanned cheeks, like painted angel’s wings on the overdone ceilings of Venice.
“I’d like to give them some visionary information,” he said, “those morons you run with.” He opened his eyes. They looked angry now, a deeper blue, storm clouds gathering over a turbulent sea. “They’re blind. No spirit, no insight, no compassion. It’s fucking gross.
“No sense of God, or their obligation to that awareness. No perception of what they owe other people. None of them taking the time to learn about life, or purpose, their metaphysical responsibility to what they put out. Lost adolescents whose biggest accomplishment is not being on drugs.” His words were coming in a rush now, blazing, tempered only by the softness of his voice, which had a slightly grated edge to it.
“It’s not okay that lightweights are running the world. Steven Seagal. Quentin Tarantino. Undeveloped, unintelligent, racist, sexist, homophobic—but in a hip way—a moron who thinks he’s smart. Oliver Stone. Knowing nothing of beauty, nothing about real inspiration, with no real enthusiasm. You know where the word enthusiasm comes from?”
“Not really.”
“Entheos,” he said, as the waiter set his beer down. “To be infused with God.”
“You want to make movies?” she asked, bottom-lining his quiet railing, seeing only his passion. She was even now picturing his ferocity unleashed in bed. She would have liked very much to be infused with God, if it came in that package.
“There are only two great rituals left on this planet that bring people together. Rock and roll, and the movies. Those people are telling people how to live, when they don’t know what life is about. All of them morons except Spielberg and Tim Robbins. They should give someone access who cares about what really matters, and you’ll see what happens.”
“I’d be glad to try and get you access,” she said, and meant it, suddenly seeing herself as that Joan of Arc who might have given birth at fifteen, had she not instead chosen to save Hollywood. Through this boy, this beautiful, charismatic boy, who cast spells even in a restaurant on East Fifty-eighth Street, radiating something otherworldly, a world she longed to join.
The waiter was setting something in front of them that he said was a special offering from the chef. Ravenous as she had been a few moments before, she was now completely without appetite. Except for Tyler’s face, his eyes, his words, the ardor pouring from the mouth she kept seeing on hers. Because she wasn’t like the rest of them, empty, never seeking. She read books all the time.
“I’d be glad to help you,” Helen said.
“They wouldn’t take me seriously if you did,” he said. “They’d think it was because you wanted me.”
“Anyone would want you,” she said, and looked at him the way she’d only been able to look at men onscreen.
“And anyone would want you,” he said, gently. “If they didn’t mind losing their head.”
* * *
Norman Jessup’s private plane left Burbank a little after seven. He tried never to be angry when he flew, since in spite of the luxury of having his own aircraft, the experience always provoked a little anxiety. So he tried to feel loving and calm, for balance. But besides the inconvenience of having to make an unscheduled trip to New York, there was also his deep disappointment with Tyler.
In fact, he loved the boy on a level he hadn’t felt since he was a boy himself and wished he had a brother. Now, as a man, he had found through Tyler the never-acknowledged, even to himself, wish to have a son. He’d discussed it at length with Carina, who’d responded with a sympathy that bordered on relief. And she’d been staunch in her support of Norman’s feelings, sharing, for the moment, at least, his outrage at Tyler’s having hung up on him, forcing him to make the trip to New York.
It was, of course, a different kind of betrayal from Sarah’s. But it seemed to Norman betrayal nonetheless. He called Carina once the plane was sufficiently on course so the pilot wouldn’t crash from the electronic interference.
“I hate it that I have to make this trip,” Norman said.
“I know,” she sort of whispered.
“I can’t get over Tyler’s being so disloyal.”
“It isn’t disloyalty, darling. It’s not like he’s telling Sarah she’s being watched. He just doesn’t want to do it anymore.”
“You’re such a calming influence,” he said. “No wonder I love you. Besides how beautiful you are.”
“Why don’t you just hire a private detective?”
“I couldn’t trust them not to blow the whistle on me if anything happened to Sarah. I’d be opening myself up to extortion.”
“Is something going to happen to Sarah?”
“I don’t know yet,” Norman said.
“Are you going to talk to Winsett, and find out how much he told her?”
“Probably.”
“What will you do if she finds out?”
“She won’t find out. She can’t find out.”
“But what if she did?”
“That’s easy,” he said, and sort of laughed. “The same thing’ll happen to her that happened to Paulo.”
* * *
When he and Helen got back to the Carlyle, the desk clerk informed Tyler that regrettably, he said, they had received a phone call from Los Angeles canceling his credit, and so, also, the room. “I believe this is yours,” the desk clerk said, handing him his rucksack, and his book.
“Stay with me,” Helen whispered, pulling him back into what privacy could be found in that well-lit lobby, what shelter the pillars provided, the clever little niches where nothing was but huge urns filled with flowers, gloriously arranged.
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“No, thanks,” Tyler said. “I’ll find someplace to sleep.”
“Sleep with me,” she murmured. “Sleep with me.”
“Potiphar,” he said. “Song of Solomon.”
“Pardon?”
“You’re quoting the Bible,” he said.
“There’s one next to the bed,” she said. “We could read it together. You could infuse me with God.”
“I have to go,” he said, and stooped to kiss her, lightly, just on the surface of her mouth. But it seared her soul, and apparently, her skin. When she awoke in the morning, her lips were blistered.
Special Occasions
In spite of the fact that the evening had been designated informal, nearly all the women present at the screening were dressed, if not to the teeth, at least to the collarbone. The outside world saw Hollywood as an unending black-tie occasion, premiere after premiere, dinner party after concert after museum opening. In fact, for a group called The Blue Ribbon, women from old Los Angeles society, grown up around Hancock Park, life was a lot like that, since they were able to support many charities, and charity events almost always came in black tie. But for the ordinary citizen, or even the extraordinary one who had made it into the insider realms, there were not that many chances to dress up, it being the season of spare and bare, crocheted halters for those who were lean and high-breasted enough, suede hip-huggers and designer jeans, slender bandeaus and low-waisted white pants from Armani.
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.