Dear Cary

by Dyan Cannon

  Sounded plausible to me.

  When they wrapped the scene, Cary asked me to join him in his trailer, and for a moment I envisioned it as a harem full of concubines doing the dance of the seven veils. A harem into which he would rapidly try to induct me! Relax, I told myself. What if he really was a masher artfully disguised as the most elegant and chivalrous gentleman since Sir Lancelot? Well, someone would hear my screams.

  Not surprisingly, the trailer was as tastefully appointed as Cary’s bungalow—it felt more like a home than a trailer. But as soon as we sat down, we were interrupted by a knock at the door. It was one of the crew members. Cary thanked him for coming and then handed him a small gift, and for the next hour our conversation was interrupted every few minutes as more crew members appeared at the door to say their good-byes and to accept their gifts. We managed to chat between visitors.

  “Do you like horses?” he asked.

  “I do. I love horses.” (From a distance, I might have added, but didn’t.)

  “Do you like to ride?”

  “Oh, very much,” I said. (In cars, that is.)

  “Would you like to go riding with me in Palm Springs this weekend?”

  “In . . . Palm Springs?” I said, making it sound like he’d invited me to Patagonia.

  “Yes,” Cary said. “I’ve got a house down there. I’d love for you to come down with me.”

  “My girlfriend and I would love to!” I exclaimed without missing a beat. Where that came from, I had no idea. Nor did I know who this girlfriend whose social calendar I clearly had complete control of might be. I just knew that I did want to go to Palm Springs with Cary Grant but that I didn’t want to go alone.

  “Well then, it’s settled. Bring a girlfriend if that’s what makes you comfortable.”

  “Thank you.”

  “What’s her name?”

  I had to think fast. “Darlene,” I said. Please, God, let her be free this weekend.

  “I can’t wait to meet her,” Cary said pleasantly, if not exactly inflamed with enthusiasm.

  “You’ll like her!”

  It was time for him to return to the set and he began walking me across the lot to my car. Then, very offhandedly, he asked, “Are you in a relationship now?”

  “Not at the moment,” I replied.

  We’d reached my car by this point and I fumbled in my purse for my keys. “I don’t know if I’m very good at relationships,” he went on. He seemed to be talking to himself as much as to me. “In fact, I don’t believe I am very good at them. I think I’m too afraid I’ll be hurt.” Now he was smiling. He had a twinkle in his eye. It was hard to tell if he meant this as a jest.

  Then he looked at me with mock earnestness. “But you’d never hurt me, would you, Dyan?”

  “Of course I would!” I shot back.

  He threw his head back and laughed. It delighted me. I had made Cary Grant laugh. He took my hand in both of his and gave it a little squeeze. “Thank you for having lunch with me today,” he said. “I enjoyed it immensely. I enjoy you.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Grant—”

  “Cary.”

  “It was an amazing afternoon.” Then I repossessed my hand, climbed behind the wheel of my rental, and—with a little wave—backed out and drove away.

  I looked in the rearview mirror and there he was, hands stuffed in his khakis, watching me drive off with his head cocked to the side a little. He waved. I put my hand up and acknowledged his wave.

  Cary Grant was in my rearview mirror, waving at me.

  I must be dreaming, I thought.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Have Girlfriend, Will Travel

  I called Darlene the moment I got back to Addie’s place and invited her to Palm Springs.

  “In this heat? Are you crazy?”

  “Too bad you feel that way. Guess I’ll have to find someone else to go down with me . . . and Cary Grant.”

  “What time do we leave?”

  The next morning, like clockwork, Cary phoned. He suggested we leave Saturday morning at ten. “I’ll drive us down, and of course, there’s plenty of room in the house for you and your friend,” he said.

  “Oh, thanks, but I think we’ll take my car and stay in a hotel,” I said.

  “You’ll find out sooner or later that I don’t bite, at least not unless I’ve missed a meal,” he said, laughing. He recommended a hotel that I knew we couldn’t afford and suggested we rendezvous at the Directors Guild parking lot, off Sunset Boulevard, and follow him to his desert hideaway.

  The day before our trip, I got up early and went out to get a wide-brimmed hat, suntan lotion, and a few other desert survival items. When I left the store, my rental wouldn’t start, so I called Nate, who owned the car rental agency. He sent a tow truck and I rode to the lot with the driver.

  “I’m sorry, Dyan,” he said. “Maybe this’ll make up for the inconvenience.” He gestured to a gorgeous, cherry-red MG convertible. I was delighted. I could see myself barreling through the desert with my long tresses blowing in the wind behind me.

  “It’s the car Jimmy Darren rents from me whenever he’s in town,” Nate said. “He won’t drive anything else. I tell ya, if that car was a girl, he’d marry her.”

  Jimmy Darren was the hot teen idol of the moment. He’d made it big playing Moondoggie in the movie Gidget a couple of years earlier; now he was making a huge splash as a singer. His hit “Goodbye Cruel World” was in constant rotation on the radio. If that snazzy little MG was good enough for a firecracker like Jimmy Darren, it was good enough for me.

  That night I didn’t want to go to sleep. My mind was like a broken record. I am going to Palm Springs with Cary Grant . . . Cary Grant has invited me to Palm Springs . . . Cary Grant . . . Cary . . . Cary . . . Cary Gr-rant-rant-rant . . .

  “He’s even more good-looking in person, Addie.”

  “Lucky girl.” She had made mint tea for me and was sitting at the foot of the bed.

  “Why did I tell him I like horseback riding?” I asked, nervous about it.

  “Because you were just going along.”

  “Oh, Addie,” I said. “What would I do without you?”

  Addie agreed to look after Bangs while I was gone. I left on Saturday just after nine in my gorgeous little rented MG and drove over to Darlene’s house. She was waiting with her nose pressed against the window—like a child on the lookout for Santa Claus. Darlene ran to the car with her overnight bag, as giddy as if she’d been inhaling laughing gas.

  “What are you grinning about?” I asked, knowing darn well what she was grinning about.

  “I’m spending the weekend with Cary Grant!” she singsonged, and let out an unabashedly girly squeal.

  “Yes you are, my friend, who didn’t want to go to Palm Springs in the first place!” I giggled and then we hugged each other like a couple of teenagers.

  She went on. “Isn’t it wonderful? For the rest of my life I’ll be able to say”—and here she became very theatrical—“ ‘I’ll never forget the weekend Cary Grant invited me to his desert hideaway in Palm Springs! I really didn’t mind taking Dyan Cannon along, poor thing. Cary was such a sport about it! Obviously, he felt rather sorry for her.’ ”

  “Oh yes, Darlene. You are so kind!” I was so glad I’d brought her along.

  We pulled into the Directors Guild parking lot at precisely one minute before ten, and there was no sign of Cary. “It was all a dream,” Darlene said in the voice of a fairy godmother. “All a dream . . . You never even met Cary Grant.”

  “Sometimes I wonder,” I said.

  “And that silver Rolls-Royce sliding down the street on air, right toward us—all a dream!”

  “Hello, Dyan!” Cary called from the car. He cut the engine, climbed out, went to the passenger side of the MG, and offered his hand to Darlene, who was quickly melting into a sloppy puddle of adoration.

  “You must be Darlene,” he said.

  “You m-m-must be . . . Cary Grant!” Darlene stuttered.<
br />
  “Darlene, I’ve brought directions to my place just in case we get separated on the highway,” Cary said, handing her a piece of paper. Darlene clutched it to her chest like it was a love letter. Then he turned to me and smiled that irresistible smile. “Ready?”

  “But I can’t drive a stick shift!” Darlene cried as I gave her the evil eye. She was feigning helplessness à la Scarlett O’Hara and I would’ve happily fed her to the Yankees. The truth was, Darlene loved sports cars and had even driven in road rallies. She was hell on wheels.

  “That settles it, then,” Cary said, never one to waste energy on a pointless kerfuffle. That was part of his grace. “Darlene will ride with me.”

  Darlene popped out of the MG like it had an ejector seat and made a beeline for the Rolls. Cary turned to look at me with that now-familiar twinkle in his eye. “Stay close,” he said. “How are you on gas?”

  “Low.”

  “Me too. Follow me. There’s a station just down the block.”

  Darlene had pulled quite a number. Maybe I wasn’t so glad I brought her. On the other hand, what woman wouldn’t go to extravagant measures to ride in a Rolls with Cary Grant as her chauffeur? It was all a little surreal. I was actually glad to have a little time to collect my thoughts. Throughout our volley of mutual self-disclosure, I’d swung at so many of Cary’s serves that I felt like I’d told him everything there was to tell about myself. He, on the other hand, was resolutely oblique when I tried to draw him out about himself.

  After we’d filled our tanks, Cary pulled onto Sunset Boulevard with me following just behind. Then tires squealed behind me and someone shouted my name. It was Nate, from the car rental agency, with Jimmy Darren in the passenger seat. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere!” he said. “Jimmy just got into town!”

  Jimmy sprang out of the car and walked around the MG as if surveying it for damage.

  “I don’t have time for this,” I protested, but Nate just yanked my bags out of the trunk, plunked Jimmy’s in, gave me a perfunctory peck on the cheek by way of apology, and the two of them sped off. Fuming, I lugged my bags into the new car, got in, and immediately saw that the gas gauge was on empty. I smacked the steering wheel with both hands so hard it hurt. Great, I thought. Jimmy Darren just drove off with my car, Darlene just drove off with my movie star, and I’m left here with an empty gas tank.

  By the time I’d filled up and cruised onto the freeway, the Rolls-Royce was long gone. I floored it and drove like I was late for the reading of a rich uncle’s will—until I saw a state trooper lying in wait by an exit up ahead. I slowed and resigned myself to driving to the desert alone.

  Darlene was capable of some seriously loopy behavior, but this took the prize. It was hard to imagine that she had any serious designs on Cary Grant; Darlene was an honorable friend and wouldn’t think of trying to swipe anybody’s boyfriend, whoever he was. But she did like to fling herself into the middle of things. It was very possible that she wanted to get a read on him, figure out how deep his feelings ran, see for herself whether I was being led down a rocky road. Or she might have just figured it was her only chance to see what it was like being alone with Cary—which made more sense than anything. I wondered what direction their conversation had taken.

  I hoped they didn’t talk too much about riding. If they did, it would inevitably come up that Darlene and I had gone riding just a year ago in Palm Springs. And she might let it slip that I barely knew a horse’s head from its backside.

  Darlene and I had gone for a leisurely ride on a mountain trail. On our way back to the stables, we had to cross a highway. When a motorcycle buzzed past, my horse got spooked. It reared and flung me into the air, and I fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes. By an odd coincidence, one of Darlene’s friends happened to be driving by just then. He saw me get thrown, pulled over, and watched as I picked myself up. We weren’t introduced right then, though, because Darlene was on me like a drill sergeant, yelling for me to get back on my horse, now! I was only partially aware that her friend, Michael, was standing by in case I needed to go to the emergency room.

  But Darlene gave me no quarter. “Get back up! Now! Now, Dyan! Every second you wait, you’re doubling your fear! Now!” She was right. If I’d had another ten seconds to think about it, I’d never have gotten on another horse again.

  Michael had noticed me, though. He was interested, and Darlene called me later to relay the message. “I think you should meet this guy. You fell off that horse for a reason,” she said.

  “Yeah. The reason was I don’t know how to ride horses.”

  “No, seriously. He’s a good guy, great fun, and good-looking. And he’s Jewish. Make your mother happy for once.”

  Darlene was right on all counts. Michael was as advertised and we immediately hit it off—as friends. That was my verdict, anyway. But honestly, he was crazier about me than I was about him. He was sweet and funny and I felt safe in his company. But he didn’t feel like the one.

  BEEP! BEEP! BEEP-BEEP-BEEP!

  I looked up and found myself speeding past the Rolls. I looked down and saw that I was doing eighty. Lost in my thoughts, and clear of state troopers, I’d put the pedal to the metal. Cary gestured frantically for me to pull over and we all got out of the cars. I noticed Cary staring at the powder-blue Plymouth roadster that had replaced the MG—I’d completely spaced out on the fact that I was in a different car than the one he last saw me in.

  “What happened to the—”

  “I’ll tell you later!” I said.

  “We were keeping an eye out for you but we were looking for the wrong car!”

  “Hey, guess what?” I announced. “This one’s an automatic, so Darlene and I can trade places!” Darlene tossed her head back in feigned indignation, but I knew this unexpected switcheroo made the game even more of a lark for her.

  “How on earth did you end up in a different car?” Cary asked when we were back on the road.

  “It’s a long story,” I said. “Maybe this time we should talk about you.”

  Cary groaned. “I’m tired of talking about me. I told Darlene everything about me, and I’m sure she’s going straight to the police.” We laughed. “So before they put me away, I want to hear more about you. What kind of education did you have? Did you go to college?”

  “University of Washington. For two years.”

  “Theater major?”

  “Yeah, but it was boring. Too much theory and history. So I went down to Phoenix with my girlfriend Barbara. Her boyfriend was there already, so we went down to work for the summer.”

  “How’d that work out?”

  “Well, Barbara broke up with her boyfriend, but in a short time we worked our way up to being caretakers for an elderly gentleman who was confined to a wheelchair.”

  “You were a professional angel of mercy!”

  “He was kind of a challenge.”

  “How so?”

  “He was in a wheelchair because he was paralyzed from the waist down, and he tried to make up for it from the waist up. Put it this way: we called him Mr. Happy Hands. But I loved Barbara’s name for him: Sir Gropie Grope.”

  “How long did you last?”

  “We warned him again and again that if he didn’t keep his hands off us, he was going to regret it. So one day, as usual, I was driving him on his errands, and he was just pinching his claws all over me like a giant king crab. With both hands on the wheel, I was defenseless. When we got back to the inn, he was at it again. I’d had enough. So I pushed his wheelchair into the deep end of the pool.”

  Cary flashed me a strangely familiar quizzical reaction shot. Spontaneous, not affected. Cary Grant was Cary Grant, on-screen or off.

  “I’m afraid to ask if—”

  “Yep, he was in it. But then I felt sorry for him and I fished him out.”

  “Very mannerly of you!” Cary said, playing along with me. “And how did you wind up in California? Did Mr. Happy Hands chase you all the way here in h
is wheelchair?”

  “No, I . . . I just . . . decided to give L.A. a try.” True enough, but the reason I really came to L.A., in the telling of it, would have sounded completely loony—because it was completely loony.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Riding High

  An hour later, we pulled up to Cary’s house in the desert. At the end of a long driveway, surrounded by beautifully manicured grounds, rested a magnificent Spanish hacienda. The living room was spacious but cozy, with a floor of burnished red clay tile and a cavernous fireplace with big white couches artfully arranged in front of it. Solid wooden beams ran the entire length of the high ceiling and wooden stairs led to a book-lined reading loft. In the rear shimmered a swimming pool surrounded by a flagstone patio. The water sparkled and the garden was ablaze with red and pink bougainvillea, while in the distance the San Jacinto mountains bolted to the sky in camel-colored majesty.

  “It’s gorgeous,” I said.

  Cary placed his hand ever so lightly on my shoulder. “You know I’d be delighted for you to stay here.” He gestured to the guest rooms. They were on the other side of the living room from his own master bedroom. “There’s plenty of privacy. You wouldn’t even have to see me, though that would be a pity.” A hand on the shoulder, a brush against the cheek: he had an almost preternatural ability to connect with you physically in a way that communicated the message perfectly. This seemingly reflexive gesture said volumes: I want you under my roof, under my protection, and I will make you safe and happy.

  “Cary, I think it’s better if we stay in town.”

  “I am dismayed by your decision but heartened by your firmness of character!” he said, laughing. “Okay, why don’t you check into your hotel and unpack and hurry back for drinks?”

  As we pulled away from the property, Darlene said, “Dyan! We just passed up the opportunity to tell the world that we stayed at Cary Grant’s place! You’ve ruined this story for our grandchildren!”

  “You could’ve fainted and declared that you couldn’t be moved under any circumstances—while I went to the hotel!” I said. We laughed. “ ‘Oh, Mr. Grant,’ ” I said, mimicking Darlene, “ ‘I am just a delicate flower, as fine as a bee’s wing, and I will never be able to manage anything so rugged as a stick shift!’ ”