Marcus looked up at Bub. The guy had a cigarette drooping from his mouth, another in a conch shell ashtray, and a bottle of pills as large as his coffee cup. Marcus picked up “Ursula Goes Underground” and approached Bub’s desk. “I know you’re busy, but I need to have a word with you about this story.”
Bub yanked a sheet of paper from his typewriter and studied it. “Which name sounds better for a wise-cracking sidekick: Rhonda or Rosemarie?”
“Rhonda. Look, about this story —”
“You’re right. Rosemaries bake cakes, but Rhondas chew gum.”
“This “Ursula Goes Underground” story. It was originally —”
Bub’s chair scraped over the mottled linoleum as he stood up. “I’ve got to get this over for approval, but pronto. This Ursula thing, I know it’s a piece of shit.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“I just need you to turn it into a script. Can you do that?” Bub looked at him with eyes bleary from fatigue.
“Yes, sure, but this is my story.”
Bub was halfway to the door. “Absolutely. All yours. I’m more than happy to give you credit for it. By the way, the coffee is probably old by now; you might want to make a fresh pot.” The door slammed behind him, leaving Marcus alone in an empty room.
CHAPTER 42
Gwendolyn’s eyes widened in the flickering torchlight. Enormous red and black zombie masks gaped at her. “Where in heaven’s name are we?”
“It’s called the Zulu Hut,” Kathryn replied.
“They don’t actually serve Zulu food here, do they?” Gwendolyn asked. “If the menu is all fried bugs and goat gizzard stew, then I vote we give Tallulah one hour or three drinks, whichever comes first. If she doesn’t show, let’s go to the Tick Tock Tea Room for meat loaf.”
Kathryn laughed and shook her head. “Don’t worry. It’ll be fine.”
The Zulu Hut’s bar ran the length of the place, ending at a small stage where a dusky-skinned man quietly played Polynesian music in a jazz style on a ukulele. The floor under the tables was a layer of sand. Gwendolyn regretted her spiked heels.
The hostess seated them in the middle of the room and a Negro waiter handed them menus and recommended the Zulu Warrior. As he leaned in to confide that it was just rum punch with extra coconut, Gwendolyn saw a bead of perspiration running a white line in front of his ears. He was a white guy in blackface.
“What are the chances Tallulah will actually show?” Gwendolyn asked. “She’s a hootful of fun, but punctuality isn’t exactly her strong suit.”
“Mercedes said Tallulah was our best chance of tracking down Alla,” Marcus insisted. “I know she’s not reliable, but let’s give her a chance. If there’s no sign of her, you can take off. I don’t mind waiting around, fried bugs or no fried bugs.”
Poor Marcus, Gwendolyn thought. He still seemed so lost without Alla around. She once spotted him through Madame’s window while the two of them were having one of their Saturday afternoon visits; it looked for all the world like a doting mother taking tea with her favorite son.
A rowdy just-a-coupla-drinkies-before-dinner foursome burst through the door and headed for the bar. They took up residence next to a fair-haired guy in a navy blue pinstripe who was drinking alone. The guy took a sip of his drink and swung his bamboo seat around to survey his new neighbors. Gwendolyn let out a sudden “Oh!” It was one of her new regulars. Or, more accurately, one of her new non-regulars.
He’d been hanging around since the Cocoanut Grove’s Fourth of July party. Even in a room full of people born with a congenital case of the charms, this guy stood out. He was imposingly tall, with thick, wavy fair hair and broad shoulders that needed no padding in his expensive suits. His movie star teeth suggested that he took the practice of dentistry very seriously. Not only did he have movie star teeth, but he had movie star everything, except perhaps the overweening urge toward self-promotion. He chose the booths which favored seeing over being seen; more often than not the same one Anderson McRae used to occupy.
Whenever Gwendolyn walked past this new guy, he’d flash her a knowing smile, but he never beckoned her over. Not once, not ever, and that made him stand out more conspicuously than a roll of hundred dollar bills and a statuesque blonde with a forty-inch bust. And now here he was in a Valley joint called the Zulu Hut?
The waiter with the dissolving blackface returned with their drinks. “The specialty of the house is squab,” he announced, “It comes fried with a spicy black bean sauce, potatoes, zucchini and corn pone.”
Gwendolyn pointed toward the bar. “That guy in the blue suit — who is he?”
“Mr. Laird? He’s one of the owners.”
“Is he a good boss?”
The waiter shrugged. “He’s pretty hands-off. You want I should send him over?”
“That won’t be necessary,” Gwendolyn replied.
They told the waiter they were waiting for a fourth. As he walked away, Gwendolyn commented, “He’s a new face at the Grove. I thought he was one of those fat cat studio types.” She took a long sip of her virgin Zulu Warrior. They made it with lots of coconut and pineapple. Boy, it was good.
“Well now, there’s a funny coincidence,” Marcus said.
“I’ll say,” Gwendolyn said. “I never figured he’d go to a joint like this, let alone own it.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Marcus said with a lopsided smile. “Look who just met him at the bar.”
Gwendolyn looked over to see a barrel-chested hunk of a man in shirt sleeves approach Laird. They shook hands coolly.
“I don’t believe it,” Kathryn whispered hoarsely.
“That’s Mr. Long Beach, isn’t it?” Marcus asked. Kathryn nodded silently. “They’re not happy. Look at all that finger pointing.”
Gwendolyn watched Kathryn go pale. A few weeks after Kathryn’s appointment, Gwendolyn had found a telegram in the kitchen trash can. It had been from Roy asking why she wasn’t returning his calls. The following week she’d found two more. Different wording, same desperate tone. Gwendolyn didn’t blame Kathryn for avoiding him. He sounded like a great guy, and all, but he was married. Married. With her column in the Hollywood Reporter, Kathryn was becoming a public figure; she had a reputation to think of. No, it was better she ended it. The sensible thing to do. But Gwendolyn knew the look lingering in Kathryn’s eyes now. She missed Roy something fierce.
“Pity we weren’t seated nearer the bar,” Marcus said.
“This is near enough, thank you very much,” Kathryn muttered. “In fact, this is about seventeen miles too close.”
“Still, you have to wonder what they’re talking about,” Marcus said.
“Christ almighty! Where the hell am I?”
Tallulah Bankhead appeared at the table wearing a sleek dark orange satin suit and a huge onyx scarab brooch. She raked her eyes over the restaurant, looking bewildered.
“This is the Zulu Hut,” Kathryn replied. “It’s where you asked us to meet you.”
“I thought this was the Hula Hut. With the barbequed pig and the ham steaks and the grilled pineapple.” She flopped into a bamboo chair and threw her patent leather handbag onto the table. “How disappointing.” Her face lit up when she spotted their drinks. She called the waiter over to order a Zulu Warrior–“Heavy on the rum, darling, and light on the coconut.”–and lit up a long pink cigarette.
Gwendolyn couldn’t keep her eyes off Laird. He and Roy were deep in conversation and it didn’t look like they got on well. There was lots of finger pointing and chin jutting. She had to get closer. “Excuse me,” she said, “I’ll be right back.”
She took the long way around to the bar, making sure not to catch Laird’s eye. She and Roy never actually met that night of the End-of-Prohibition party at the Garden. The party was over for her the moment she threw up on that good looking actor’s shoes. As long as Laird didn’t turn around she was just some girl waiting to catch the bartender’s attention.
“Yes, but yo
u told me you’d help me make the move from stunt man to actor,” Roy said to Laird. “You promised we could do it by the end of last year. It’s September now, and all I’ve got from you is a great big pile of bupkis.”
Laird scoffed. “I’m an agent, not Mandrake the Magician.”
“Dammit!” Roy said, hitting the bar with his fist. “I gave up that cowboy picture because you led me to believe you had something better lined up.”
The bartender approached Gwendolyn. “What can I get you?”
“A book of matches, thanks.”
He grabbed one from a bowl sitting on the bar not two feet from where she stood and dropped them into her hand. “Your waiter would have been more than happy to get you all the matches you need. Is he not providing you with excellent service?”
“Oh no, nothing like that. It’s just that he’s very busy and I didn’t want to —”
“Don’t even —!” Roy was on his feet now. “You’re fired, you miserable, deceitful bastard.” He picked up his Bloody Mary and threw it into Laird’s face. He was out the door by the time Laird could open his eyes.
Gwendolyn teetered on sand and stilettos back to the table. Mr. Mystery was a talent agent! The words were music to Gwendolyn’s ears. The Anderson McCrae connection was dead in the water. She could tell that when he next came into the Cocoanut Grove, his face a frozen mask. “You’ll be pleased to know that Hank only spent four days recovering in the hospital.” She’d seen neither Broochie nor McRae since. So, no murder wrap, but no screen test at RKO. However, this Mr. Laird was something better: a talent agent!
Tallulah had worked her way into a melodramatic fever. “You should have heard their tale of woe. It was positively endless. First the famine, then some plague that killed what was left of their crops, then they had a fire that burned down the barn, then the sister-in-law needed some sort of women’s operation. I swear on a bowl of cocaine, compared to them, Anna Karenina had it easy.”
“So did Madame send them any money?” Marcus asked.
“I really have no idea. Remember, this was all told to me third-hand at some cocktail party. DeMille’s, I think. I remember him being there. At least, I think I do. At any rate, for what it’s worth, whoever it was who told me all this seemed to think she’d returned to Russia.”
Gwendolyn looked at Marcus. His sweet, round face was deflated.
“Well, my darlings, I’m off.” Tallulah sprang to her feet. “I had my heart set on roasted pig, so squabs just aren’t going to do for me. If you do track down Madame, please give her my love. Ta-ta!”
The three of them watched her dodder across the sand toward the door. Marcus cleared his throat. “She was sort of my last hope.”
Gwendolyn reached out and laid her hand on top of his. “We’ll track her down,” she told him, although she really didn’t know how.
“So?” Kathryn nodded toward Laird, who was starting his third Zulu Warrior. “Did you find anything out?”
“Oh, yes,” Gwendolyn said. “I most certainly did.”
CHAPTER 43
Warner Brothers’ press release announced their new motion picture, Captain Blood, in the usual hyperbole. The name of their magnificent new action hero, the dashing Mr. Errol Flynn, rang a bell. Where had she heard that name before?
This was the life of a gossip columnist. Sort through an endless cavalcade of words like “heroic” and “magnificent” and overworked turns of phrase like “capture the hearts of audiences everywhere” and “unforgettable performance,” and turn them into news fit for consumption on a more human scale. She was still puzzling over that Errol Flynn name when her boss approached her desk.
“Praise from Caesar is praise indeed,” he said. “I just got off the telephone with Louella. She tells me I’ve got a sharp knife in that Kathryn Massey girl.”
“She actually got my name right?”
Thank God for George Cukor, or she’d still be on the dark side of Louella Parsons. Since that awful luncheon there had been rumors that Clark Gable got Loretta Young pregnant on the set of their latest movie, The Call of the Wild, and MGM was killing itself to squash the news until after the premiere. Louella hadn’t made any sensational announcements about the Gable divorce, so Kathryn had assumed her gesture was for nothing.
“What else did she have to say?”
“Isn’t that enough? It’s not often that Parsons goes out of her way to praise the competition. So, I’d like you to write a movie review for me, please.”
Write something that wasn’t a regurgitation of some PR hack job? Kathryn marveled. Well now, that was more like it.
“Do you have a particular movie in mind?” Kathryn asked.
“What was the last one you saw?”
She thought for a moment. “Last weekend I went to see Stranded.”
“Kay Francis? Great. Write me a review of that. Three hundred words. You’ve got one hour.”
Stranded. What a woeful pile of trash. Writing a review wouldn’t take an hour. She wound a sheet of paper into her typewriter and began.
STRANDED, starring Kay Francis and George Brent
Warner’s latest Kay Francis offering is perfectly titled — it leaves any moviegoer expecting a coherent plot utterly stranded by the ten minute mark. A San Francisco Traveler’s Aid Society do-gooder meets up with a Golden Gate Bridge builder —
Her telephone jangled. After that luncheon at the Brown Derby, Kathryn had got to thinking. If George overheard what Clark Gable’s agent was cooking up, surely waiters and waitresses did, too. And if they did, then so did hotel bell boys, bootblacks, shop girls, elevator operators, porters, valets, and maids. If these people knew they could get a silver dollar for calling Kathryn Massey about who’d checked in to which hotels and with whom, who was shopping where and what they were buying, who was seen getting into whose car, that would put her smack dab in the middle of the gossip game. Her telephone hadn’t stopped ringing since. “This is Kathryn Massey.”
“Katey-Potatey.”
It was Roy. She used to like the way he said that, especially after making love to her.
“Hello, Roy.”
“I need to see you. Today.” His words came out slurry. Not counting that night at the Zulu Hut, they hadn’t seen each other since before her appointment three months ago. She’d been half-expecting this call and half-hoping it’d never come.
“Perhaps I can meet you for a drink after work.”
“No. I need to see you now. Right now.”
“Roy, I’m working. I’m in the middle of something important and I’m battling a deadline. My time isn’t my own like when I worked for Tallulah.”
“I’m at the Top Hat. If you don’t come down, I’m coming up.”
“Don’t do that. I won’t have you making a scene. The best I can do is meet you in an hour.”
There was some heavy breathing at the other end of the line. “Fine. One hour. If you don’t show, I’m coming for you.” He hung up.
Kathryn returned to her typewriter and read over what she had written. She poised her fingers over the keys but her scorn hung in the air like a parachute caught in the trees. She stared at the telephone. She’d seen him drunk before, but he was a happy drunk, a tender one. He’d never sounded like this.
She hacked her way through a draft, using every synonym for trash she could muster, but she could’ve worked until midnight and it wouldn’t have made one bit of difference. Until she saw Roy, nothing coherent was coming out of her. At 12:45, she grabbed her hat, handbag, and gloves and went to Wilkerson.
“This is the first review I’ve ever written. You only gave me an hour, so there wasn’t much time to polish.”
“This business is all about deadlines, Miss Massey,” Wilkerson said, scanning the headline. “And sometimes they’re impossible.”
Roy sat alone in a booth along the eastern wall of the Top Hat. Kathryn slid in across from him. “Have you ordered anything to eat yet?”
His eyes were as blurry as his
words. “Not really in the eating mood.”
Kathryn realized she wasn’t either. “Just a cup of coffee, thanks,” she told the waitress. She was going to ask him how he’d been, but his stained shirt and greasy hair pretty much answered that question.
“I saw you, you know,” he said, abruptly.
“Where?”
“I got this buddy, he owns a warehouse where they’re moving Chinatown to. He’s got this new tenant, some sort of Chinese herbalist. They needed an extra pair of arms to help move them. Anyways, I saw you standing on a corner with a real good-looking girl, bit of a knockout. That’s your roommate, isn’t it? I started to go over to say hi but the closer I got, the more upset you looked. Then you both turned and walked into a building so I followed you. Dr. Harrison, right?”
Kathryn stirred her coffee without looking at it, and maintained her famous poker face. Oh Jesus, she thought, he even knows the doctor’s name. She nodded but said nothing.
“So here’s my question: What kind of gynecologist keeps an office in Chinatown?”
Kathryn felt a deep breath leave her body. Thank you, kind Nurse Brykk. “When a woman finds the right gynecologist,” she said, “she’ll go wherever his office is. Dr. Harrison is wonderful. He . . . he . . .”
They stared into each other’s eyes. Roy’s were bleary with hurt. He crumpled a napkin in his fist until the skin across the back of his hand stretched tight. “Are you going to keep it?”
A part of Kathryn breathed a tiny sigh of relief. She’d had the abortion for practical reasons–this simply wasn’t the right time to have a child–but she hadn’t told Roy for selfish ones: it was easier to leave him out of the decision process. But the guy deserved to know. And now he did. The silence was heavier than a bag of boulders.
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