The Garden on Sunset

by Martin Turnbull

  When a barrel-shaped man vacated his seat at Novarro’s blackjack table, Marcus sat down. By the time he heard the second whoop from one of the roulette tables, Marcus was ahead sixty dollars. In half an hour, he was up three hundred. A little voice that sounded suspiciously like Kathryn’s nagged at him to pick up one of those hundreds and shove it into the tux he’d borrowed from Ronald Colman, his newest neighbor at the Garden of Allah. But his lucky streak had attracted Ramon’s attention. They had exchanged a number of ‘Well played!’ looks.

  When the man between them slapped his cards down, Ramon moved into his seat. Marcus’ arm now lay parallel to Ramon’s; it tingled from his shoulder to his wrist.

  “You are an excellent player of blackjack,” Ramon said. “Perhaps some of your skill will rub off onto me.”

  All Marcus could manage was a smile and a tiny nod. Fuzzy clouds drifted through his mind.

  The dealer called for bets and Marcus flung out a hundred and seventy-five dollars. It was more money than he made in six months and if he lost it, he couldn’t pay Hugo back. Marcus was horrified at himself, but was helpless to stop.

  “You have stronger nerves than I,” Ramon said. He raised his right hand and extended it toward Marcus. “Allow me to congratulate you on your courage.”

  Marcus took Ramon’s hand and forgot how to breathe.

  Kathryn had never seen anyone gamble the way Billy Wilkerson did. Stacks of cash flowed in and out of his hands like tissue paper. His winning streak was long, but when he lost a thousand dollars in one hand, he pushed away from the table.

  Kathryn followed him through a morass of fur coats and opera capes, and saw him escape through an exit at the end of the hall. She yanked the heavy wooden door open and peered into the cool night. Wilkerson was standing under a string of orange Japanese lanterns that went a long way to pretty up the old tub. He gazed across the sea at the lights dotting the Santa Monica shore and breathed out a plume of cigarette smoke. He was pensive and–more importantly–alone.

  Kathryn stepped onto the deck and the door slammed closed behind her. Wilkerson looked in her direction, but couldn’t see her smile in the dim light. She waved hesitantly and tried to compose a pithy line about roulette being a fickle mistress. All of a sudden, they were plunged into darkness and a woman screamed, “FIRE! FIRE!” A siren blared and everyone ran for the decks.

  Marcus wondered if he was nuts. He couldn’t afford to gamble like this. He looked down at the last hundred dollars on the table, thinking that if he had any sense, he’d scoop it up and walk away. He’d made his impression.

  “All or nothing!” he said, and pushed his chips next to Novarro’s last fifty.

  The dealer revealed a pair of queens, beating Novarro’s ten and nine of clubs and Marcus’ Jack and eight of hearts.

  “Oh well,” Novarro shrugged. “This is why they call it gambling.” He looked down at the five-dollar chip in front of him. “It is nights like this that remind me I ought to save my money for my Valentino collection.”

  “Your what?”

  “I collect Rudolph Valentino’s belongings,” Ramon confided. “His autographs, letters, costumes. I have his headdress from The Sheik, the one he wears in the poster.” He winked. “I stole it from the costume department at MGM. Tell no one!”

  “My lips are sealed. Did you know him?”

  Novarro nodded. “Slightly. I was an extra in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and we met one day when there was a problem with the camera. He was a good man, a gentleman. I was heartbroken when he died. I started to collect his things soon afterwards.”

  Novarro stood and swiped the chip off the table. Say something, you dolt! Marcus told himself. Something! Anything! “Do you have very many of his things?”

  Novarro smiled. “It’s okay but nothing like the collector I know in New York. She’s a wealthy widow, Fifth Avenue society, his number one fan. Her collection takes up most of her apartment. Someone told her about my Sheik headdress, and she’s been after me to sell it to her. I am not that desperate, but a few more nights here, and maybe I will be forced to reconsider.” He extended his hand toward Marcus. “Friend,” he said, “it has been a pleasure playing with you.”

  Marcus went to take Novarro’s smooth, gentle hand again, but suddenly the room was plunged into darkness. A woman screamed, “FIRE! FIRE!” and a glare of orange light flared at the far end of the boat. Fire tore up the wall and everyone started shoving toward the exits. A woman with an enormous bosom knocked him out of her way and he fell to his knees. By the time he was back on his feet, Ramon was nowhere in sight. Nor was Kathryn.

  Panicked gamblers surged toward the closest door, but nobody was going to get out any time soon. He made for the far door and broke into the frosty night air.

  “The fore lifeboats are full,” he heard someone say. “Let’s head aft.”

  He followed them down the side of the boat, looking for Kathryn. She was a sensible girl, he told himself. Surely she’d already headed for the lifeboats. An explosion under the water rocked the Montfalcone from side to side. He spotted a lifeboat already off its hinges and filling up with tuxedos and furs. He ran over and was reaching out for it when he felt a light touch on his wrist. He spun around. “Ramon?” It was a woman with an enormous fur collar.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed, “did you get here first? I didn’t mean to push in.”

  As she gestured for him to get in, a sailor lit a hurricane lantern and Marcus met Greta Garbo’s eyes. She smiled at him. “Your friend with the dark hair. I saw her on a lifeboat on the other side. Alas, it was full, and so I came here.”

  Marcus was at home the day Kathryn came back from stalking Billy Wilkerson at Bullock’s Wilshire. Kathryn wasn’t kidding, he thought. Your face is hypnotic.

  “We only have one seat left,” the sailor said. “Lady? Are you coming?”

  Garbo shook her head. “You got here first,” she told Marcus.

  “But I am a Pennsylvania state long distance champion,” Marcus said. It was a half-truth. He’d been a state champion in high school, in the four and eight hundred yard races. He could already see the headlines: “ASPIRING SCREENWRITER SAVES GARBO AS FLOATING CASINO BURNS.”

  Kathryn lost Wilkerson when the underwater explosion knocked her off her feet. She saw a lifeboat filling up at the far end of the ship and dashed toward it, looking for Marcus. Last time she’d seen him, he was playing blackjack next to a Latino guy in an expensive tux. So much for their pact.

  A weather-beaten sailor helped her into the lifeboat and pushed off from the ship as bright flames engulfed the Montfalcone. There was another explosion and the barkentine started to slip beneath the horizon. Kathryn scanned the other lifeboats hoping to see Marcus’ face but the gloom of the night had all but swallowed them whole. A wind blew up, damp and chilly. She pulled her jacket tighter and realized for the first time that Gwendolyn’s diamond brooch was missing.

  CHAPTER 23

  Gwendolyn stared at the bartender. “A birthday party? For a mouse?”

  “You’d better not have that look on your face when you go out there,” Chuck said, smoothing the sash on her cigarette tray. “This mouse has fan clubs.”

  Gwendolyn shook her head. “We are talking about grown men, aren’t we?”

  Chuck nodded. “Tonight’s party is a very big deal. All the biggies will be here, so unless you want to sling tobacco for the rest of your life, you need to charm like you’ve never charmed before.”

  Hauling around the Cocoanut Grove’s cigarette tray was easy work. The surroundings were plush — at least in the dark — and the clientele was good-looking, glamorous, and rich. Every now and then there a guy who felt entitled to a handful, or who suffered from matrimonial amnesia, but her reputation took care of things: Don’t mess with the cigarette girl. One funny move and she’ll deck you right in the rubber parts. Thank God she’d never seen that schmuck again; she could lose her job for accepting that brooch. The only people she’d told wer
e Marcus and Kathryn.

  Poor Kathryn. So pale, so stricken with guilt as she burst through their door the night the Montfalcone sank. And how shocked she’d looked when Gwendolyn’s only reaction was to laugh. Gwendolyn had never told her roommate she’d had the piece valued at three thousand dollars by a jeweler who made her an excellent copy for twenty bucks. It was the copy that she lent Kathryn and it was the real version that she later pulled out of the secret hidey-hole in their bedroom ceiling.

  Gwendolyn hefted her cigarette tray and set out for the big kahunas gathering under a billboard-sized Happy Birthday banner emblazoned with Mickey Mouse’s beaming face. She thought about the soup kitchen lines she passed on the way to work. It seemed like every day they grew a little bit longer and the people standing in them a little bit more disheveled. She was lucky she’d been able to hold onto her job, but surely the pile of dough they had splurged on this party could be better spent helping out the homeless and unemployed? Maybe these big kahunas know something I don’t, she decided. Perhaps all this was going to turn around real soon.

  She hit the MGM table first, headed up by Louis B. Mayer and his right-hand man, Irving Thalberg. Memorizing faces was the most important job of an aspiring actress, and Gwendolyn had done her homework. David O. Selznick, head of RKO, towered over a tableful of yes men. Mack Sennett arrived with Charlie Chaplin and a flock of feathered beauties. Jack Warner was flanked by assistants, each with a starlet on his arm. And every one of them smoked.

  Someone lifted his hand to beckon her over but Gwendolyn didn’t recognize him. He was handsome; not silver-screen handsome — his chin was too weak and ears stuck out, and he was prematurely gray — but he was striking enough. As soon as he caught her attention, Gwendolyn knew he was going to pop The Question: Are you, by any chance, an actress? Gwendolyn wasn’t as impressed with high-paid studio brass as she’d been a year before. She was still flattered, even hopeful, but they always acted like they were the first studio executive in the world to play the game.

  Gwendolyn nodded and smiled her way to his tiny cocktail table. She pulled out pouches of tobacco when she spotted the pipe in his glass ashtray, but he waved them away. I see, Gwendolyn thought, you’re just going to cut straight to The Question.

  He pointed to the Cocoanut Grove’s newest crooner who was singing a lovely new tune called “You Came to Me out of Nowhere” that Gwendolyn was growing to love. “I’ve been enjoying this singer immensely,” the customer said, “but I didn’t catch his name. I was hoping you could tell me what it is.”

  What? Gwendolyn thought. No popping of The Question? A miracle just happened at the Cocoanut Grove. Get Louella Parsons on the line. “His name is Bing Crosby,” she replied.

  She took a step backwards and hesitated before turning to go. That’s when they usually popped The Question. Oh, and, um, by the way . . . But the man in the striped cravat and the nautical jacket was engrossed in the music, so she withdrew.

  At exactly eight o’clock, Walt Disney made his entrance. Everyone rose and applauded. He waved happily and led his party to the table of honor on the far side of the dance floor. That meant the speeches would come later, when they were all a bit drunk. If Gwendolyn was going to make any sort of impression, she had to do it now.

  David Selznick and Mack Sennett both took a second look when she thanked them for their tips, and Charlie Chaplin practically devoured her with his eyes, but he seemed incapable of resisting a skirt with a pulse so that didn’t strike Gwendolyn as being much of an accomplishment. The MGM table must have come fully stocked with smokes; not one of them beckoned her over, no matter how she strolled and superdazzled past them. But she didn’t worry — they were smoking like the Great Chicago Fire and were bound to run out sooner or later.

  However, when she heard a familiar growl, her heart sank. She ducked behind a palm tree but knew the dodge wouldn’t work. Everyone knew that cigarette girls had the keenest ears in the city.

  “Hey! Cigettes!” he slurred. When Gwendolyn didn’t respond, he yelled it. “Cigettes! You. Girl. I need cigettes.”

  Gwendolyn scanned a table of four for sympathy and found it in Marlene Dietrich, a German actress everyone had been talking about lately. Gwendolyn could see why; bathed in the glow of the table lamp, the woman’s face was positively luminescent. The actress looked from Gwendolyn to the gorilla then back at Gwendolyn. Her eyes widened as Gwendolyn smelled whiskey.

  “I give you a brooch worth a coupla G’s, and now you’re too good to talk to me?”

  Gwendolyn steadied herself and turned around. “Oh, come now, don’t be silly! It’s a busy night. You can see for yourself that you’re not the only smoker in the room.”

  He sneered and vacillated under the fake trees. He put up a hand against one of them for support, and it started to topple towards Marlene Dietrich’s table. A guy who could very well have been William Haines stood up and raised his arms, but Broochie — that’s what Kathryn and Gwendolyn had taken to calling him — caught it in time and righted the tree again.

  Gwendolyn ventured a step closer and whispered, “Hey, you want to get me fired? Taking that brooch from you was a big no-no. If anyone hears you and reports it to the boss, I’ll be out on my ever-lovin’ hiney.” She looked away and caught the eye of the question popper in the striped cravat, but he didn’t look like he was about to rush gallantly to her rescue.

  “I’ve thought about you every day since that night.” The words dribbled out of Broochie’s mouth and he reached for her hair, but she pulled away. He made another grab, but her tray was in the way. He almost fell sideways but somehow managed to right himself. The stink of liquor clung to him in a sour fog.

  “I never got a chance to tell you. My brother-in-law. Do you know who he is?” Gwendolyn cast a quick glance around her; their little scene was attracting attention. Were they waiting to witness another one of her famous kicks to the groin? “He’s the head of P.R. over at Paramount. One word from me and —” he botched an attempt to click his fingers, “you’ll be in. Christ, you’re gorgeous.”

  Gwendolyn tried to sidestep the drunken oaf but he caught her by the wrist. He towered over her and bent her arm behind her until it hurt. Any further and he might break it.

  “I thought after I gave you that diamond brooch you’d be open to . . . you know.”

  “You haven’t even been around here,” Gwendolyn countered.

  “Well, I’m here now.” His breath sat hot in her ear. “And if you don’t say yes, I’m going straight to your —”

  Like a paper bag in a rain storm, Broochie crumpled to the floor. Gwendolyn looked up to see the question popper. “Did you do that?” she asked, pointing to the scruffy pile of expensive suit on the floor.

  He smiled. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Are you kidding?” Gwendolyn replied. “Thank you. I fear he was about to get —”

  “Awkward . . . ?”

  She nodded, embarrassed but relieved. He stepped over Broochie, took her gently by the arm and led her toward the safety of the bar, where he began to study the contents of her tray.

  “Pipe tobacco, wasn’t it?” she said, picking out pouches. “I have Prince Albert, Raleigh, and St. Bruno.”

  He smiled the serious smile of a man with something on his mind. He plucked a business card from his breast pocket and dropped it into her tray. “I’d like you to call me. Whenever it’s convenient for you. Give your name as Corinne Grimes.”

  Gwendolyn looked at his card, then back at Anderson McRae, Head of Casting, RKO, as he headed for the door. Her head felt like the radio transmitter shooting lightning bolts on his card. She tucked it into her cleavage. I knew you were a question popper, she thought.

  “Are you sleeping with him?” Chuck was suddenly behind her.

  “Anderson McRae?” Gwendolyn asked. “I only just met him.”

  “I’m talking about that big oaf who just bit the deck.”

  “That guy? Please, Chuck, give me some credit.�
��

  “I’m glad to hear it. What did he offer you? Was it jewelry?” Hell’s bells, he’s onto me! Gwendolyn pleaded silently with Chuck to leave it alone. “That chump has some relative at Paramount. His M.O. is to use jewelry as a lure and the promise of a screen test to reel ‘em in. Don’t lie to me, Gwen. I saw the look on your face. I’ve seen it before on one or two of your predecessors.”

  Gwendolyn looked around; nobody appeared to be listening. “It was a diamond brooch. Oh my lord in heaven, Chuck, it was only the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen in my life!”

  “Thank you for telling me the truth.”

  “You won’t tell Grainger?”

  Chuck took a drag on his cigarette and shook his head. “Of course not. We’re pals, aren’t we? But no more jewelry.” A lady in green satin waved for cigarettes and Gwendolyn started off, but Chuck stopped her. “The guy next to Mayer and Thalberg is Eddie Mannix, the general manager. Third in line for the throne.” He gave her a discreet swat. “Go get ‘em.”

  As Gwendolyn made change for the lady in satin, Walt Disney took the stage. He delivered a humble and articulate speech about animation’s important role in cinema, during which she rested her feet and waited for the MGM table to smoke its way through every cigarette and cigar they came in with.

  It took several more swoops, but eventually Irving Thalberg waved her over. For someone with a reputation for being one of the industry’s heavyweights, Gwendolyn found MGM’s production chief surprisingly slight and pale, and extremely soft-spoken. She didn’t mind leaning in to hear his request; it gave the other flunkies a chance to look her over.

  Thalberg wanted a brand of French cigarette that Gwendolyn didn’t have, but she assured him the Ambassador’s tobacconist would. As she hurried off to see Bobo, she suddenly thought of her mother. Mama didn’t come into her thoughts much these days but when she did, she left a tender spot of regret. Can you believe it, Mama? I’m fetching cigarettes for Mr. Irving Thalberg of MGM. She could hear Mama’s voice now. Be sure to smile for the man. Nobody enjoys the company of a sourpuss.