The Five Acts of Diego Leon

by Alex Espinoza

  “I think your friend wants to go home,” Diego told Bill.

  “I’m not ready yet,” Bill said, finishing his cocktail. “I want to dance.”

  “Then dance,” Nick shouted and Georgie squealed then Fiona did too.

  Bill rose, cleared his throat, and said to Diego, “May I?” He reached his hand out.

  Fiona was laughing at something Georgie was saying then stopped, her expression crestfallen, as she watched Diego rise and take Bill’s hand. “Come again?” she asked.

  “Just one dance,” he said to her as Bill led him through the crowd of bodies pressed together, the beautiful young men parting to let them pass.

  Bill was drunk and stumbled as they began to dance. Strands of his blond hair fell forward, covering his eyes, and Diego reached out to brush them aside.

  “I’m gone,” he said, leaning in and whispering in Diego’s ear. “Quite drunk indeed.”

  “I can tell.” He held him tight, arms wrapped around his waist. “Don’t you worry, Mister Cage. I got you. I got you.”

  He laughed. “You know me?” he slurred. “Who I am?”

  “Of course. I’ve seen your picture in the magazines. I work for you, sir.”

  “Everyone does. In one form or another. Works for me.”

  “I’m an actor,” Diego said.

  Bill tickled the tip of his nose. “And a gorgeous one at that.”

  Back at the table, Nick and Georgie had vanished, and Fiona sat with Stephen, both of them watching Bill and Diego intently, angry and troubled looks on their faces.

  “Your friend’s mad,” Diego said.

  Bill laughed and strands of his hair tumbled forward again. “Your girl’s none too happy with you either, my boy. What a pair we make.” Bill looked into Diego’s face; his green eyes were bright and so beautiful and warm and alive that it terrified him. They danced through the rest of the song and the beginning of the next before Bill spoke again.

  “Am I your type?” he asked, stroking Diego’s cheek.

  “I’m rather new at this. I don’t think I have a type.”

  “I do,” he said. “And you’re it.” And with these words, he leaned in and kissed him on the lips. It felt as though they were like that for an eternity, but it was only a few seconds, when he suddenly heard shouts and felt someone grab him by the lapels of his shirt and shove him to the ground. Diego fell back, crashing into Starla, who had finished his routine some time ago, and was now dancing with a woman in a man’s tuxedo. Starla’s red wig flew off as he was knocked over by the blow of Diego’s body. There was a sound like glass breaking and a scream and curses.

  “Starla!” shouted someone.

  “You son of a bitch!” the queen yelled, rolling on the ground.

  Stephen turned around now and attacked Bill. “You filthy bastard,” he shouted. “I loved you. I loved you.”

  The doorman and a waiter rushed through the crowd and tackled Stephen as the rest of the people on the dance floor separated to watch the spectacle.

  “Let’s take you outside, sonny,” said the doorman. “You’re boozed. Fresh air’ll do you good.”

  Bill rose now, his lip cracked and bleeding. Diego turned and helped the queen get up. He adjusted his green dress as Diego reached down and grabbed his wig.

  “He came after me,” said Diego, handing him his wig, which was now a nest of tangled red hair with broken shards of glass that glinted as Starla placed it back on. “I’m sorry.”

  “No worries,” said Starla. “I saw the whole thing. That little twerp came after you and your honey there. I saw the whole thing.” Starla adjusted himself and the woman in the black tuxedo asked if everything was fine. “I am, baby. Thanks to this gracious gentleman here.”

  Bill reached for a handkerchief in his pocket and used it to staunch his bleeding lip. “Sorry,” he said, as they made their way back. “Looks like Stephen’s not the only one who’s had a bit too much.”

  Fiona was asleep at the table, her head resting between half-empty cocktail glasses. Diego couldn’t tell how long she’d been out. Nick and Georgie were nowhere to be found.

  “I better go find Stephen,” Bill said, still holding the handkerchief up to his lip. He winced when he removed it. “It’s bad, ain’t it?”

  Diego leaned in to examine the cut. He took a piece of ice out of one of the glasses and rubbed it over the abrasion. “You’ll survive,” he said. “Though I recommend immediate attention and care.”

  Bill took the piece of ice from him and wrapped it in the handkerchief then pressed it to his lip again. “Are you offering your services?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “You act. You dance. You dress wounds. You’re full of surprises.”

  Diego smiled. “I am.”

  Before he turned to leave, Diego grabbed him by the wrist, removed the handkerchief, and leaned in to kiss him. He felt the coldness from the ice cube and tasted the faint tang of Bill’s blood. Then, just like that, William Cage walked through the crowd and out of the club. Would Diego ever see him again? Did he even want to? What had come over him? Back at the table, Fiona was still passed out. Nick and Georgie came out of the men’s bathroom a few minutes later, while Diego was trying to revive Fiona. Georgie’s lipstick was smeared, and Nick’s shirt was unbuttoned.

  “We miss any of the show?” he asked.

  Georgie giggled and wrapped her arms around his neck.

  Luckily, Fiona didn’t remember much of what happened that night. Everything after the moment when they joined Bill and his friend was a blur, she said.

  “What a nice guy, that Bill Cage,” she said. “Treating us like honest to goodness celebrities. Then I go and get sauced and black out. What an embarrassment.”

  “He didn’t seem to mind, darling,” Diego told her. “We all had a real swell time.”

  “That’s a relief,” Fiona said.

  “I’m sure he doesn’t even remember any of it.”

  Diego, meanwhile, couldn’t get Bill Cage out of his mind. At night, he lay in bed, smoking cigarette after cigarette, imagining him, trying to recall the sensation of his lips pressed against Diego’s own. He remembered the taste of his blood, the cool sensation from the ice when he rubbed and kissed Bill’s cut. In the days that followed, when he was in between takes or running from set to set, he had taken to sitting on the benches outside the Frontier executive office building, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. Several times—one day dressed as an Indian brave, the next a bank robber, the next an Italian gondolier—he watched Bill come and go, his pearl blue Cadillac with its white-walled tires and shiny chrome bumpers speeding off or arriving. Bill in a suit and tie and hat, a stern look on his face as he stood at the curb waiting for the valet to pull his car around, never noticed Diego, disguised as he was. It was those moments, just a few, when Bill was alone—uninterrupted, with no frazzled secretary trailing behind him, no studio executives with nervous and panicked looks on their faces—that Diego relished the most. Diego sensed Bill’s loneliness, his isolation, and he told himself that they were similar in that way, both of them in need of one another.

  A week after the incident at the Babylon, he and Fiona went to the park with a basket packed with sandwiches and sliced fruit. Fiona wanted to spend a lazy afternoon under a big tree watching the clouds roll by, she insisted.

  “But there aren’t any,” he said when they arrived. Diego spread a blanket out on the grass, removed his cap, and looked up toward the sky. “It’s clear blue, Fi.”

  “Oh, well.” She removed her bonnet and sat down on the blanket. Fiona shook her head as she watched Diego remove the latest issue of Photoplay from a small leather satchel he had recently purchased from a shop next to the Western Union office where he went to wire his grandparents. His grandmother’s last telegram to him had read: When are you coming back? He didn’t have the courage to respond yet—he didn’t know what he would say.

  “Boy,” Fiona said, “you and those magazines.”

 
; “Whatever do you mean?” he asked, trying to push Mexico and his grandparents out of his thoughts.

  Fiona laughed. “It’s become something of an obsession.”

  “Passion,” he said, rolling down on the blanket and staring up at the thick branches of the oak they lay under. “I want stardom more than anything. I’m passionate.”

  “Is there a difference between passion and obsession?” she asked, breaking off pieces of bread and throwing them on the concrete path a few feet away for the birds to pick at. “It’s all you read.”

  “Why read anything else? Why read the newspapers? They’re full of bad news these days. Joblessness. Poverty. People going hungry.”

  “That’s life,” said Fiona.

  “It doesn’t have to be. It isn’t,” he said. Diego propped himself up on his elbows, felt the soft earth beneath him break and give. “Not for us.”

  “It can blind you,” she said. Her tone was serious now. “The business. The fame. People die for it.” Fiona pointed across the wide green park toward the Hollywoodland sign in the distant hills.

  “It won’t blind me. Won’t kill me. I believe in this. In myself. It’s all I have left. I will not live for nothing. I want to be famous. Remembered. Loved. Not unknown and disrespected, like my father or mother. I will do whatever it takes to achieve this.”

  “No matter the cost?” she asked.

  “No matter the cost,” he said.

  “Very well,” she told him. “Then, if you’re serious, there are a few things you should know.” Fiona stood now and spoke to him, pointing a finger accusingly. “If I say this to you it’s because I want to help.”

  “Very well. Tell me.”

  “The truth,” she said.

  “The truth,” he repeated.

  “Your acting stinks.” She paused here. “There. I said it.”

  Diego rose now and crossed his arms. He scowled at her. “I’ll have you know that I studied with a very prominent performer when I was a boy. What do you know about acting? You’re just a makeup girl.”

  “I know a thing or two,” Fiona said. “When you’ve spent enough time on the set as I have, you pick up some know-how.”

  “Ah, baloney!”

  “Don’t be sore. I’m only trying to help you out. If you’re as determined as you say, then I’d like to lend my services.”

  “Why?” He uncrossed his arms and sat back down, slouching his shoulders.

  “Because I care about you. Because I want you to succeed.”

  “Honestly?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “But how can you help me?”

  Fiona placed the palm of her hand against his lower back. “First, you’ll have to learn posture. Now sit properly,” she said.

  He remembered his grandfather, how obsessed with etiquette the old man had been. Diego sat straight up, smiled a congenial smile, and said, “How’s this?”

  “Very good,” Fiona said. “That’s a start.”

  Over the next few weeks, Fiona had him practice walking around with a book balanced on his head, urging him to focus, to concentrate.

  “Head up,” she clapped. “Shoulders back. Eyes forward. If you want to be a leading man, you need to move like one.”

  He dedicated an hour a day to climbing up and down the four flights of stairs at the Ruby Rose. He gave himself a full eight hours of sleep each night, began eating more greens and vegetables, and took daily vitamins with minerals that Fiona said helped with his concentration and focus. She told him it was important to take care of his skin, so she made him use face masks that hardened into clay over his nose and cheeks and mouth. He was to exercise three times a day with weights and dumbbells and go on runs.

  “I have to do all the exercising and running and eating right, and you get to just sit there enjoying the sun,” he said to Fiona one day at the beach. Diego had stopped his run to rest and towel his face off. Fiona was under a striped umbrella, reading a romance novel. She wore a whistle around her neck that she would use from time to time on Diego.

  “I’m not the one wanting to be a picture star,” Fiona said, looking up from her book.

  “Oh, baloney.” When he finished wiping his face with his towel, he tossed it on the sand and collapsed next to her. “I feel like a fool. Running around in circles. Walking with a book on my head. Just look at me,” he said. Diego wore athletic shorts, a white undershirt, and a pair of sneakers. “A person shouldn’t be allowed out of the house with such little on.”

  Fiona rolled her eyes and shook her head.

  “Stop that,” he said, picking up a handful of sand and tossing it at her feet.

  “Oh, now you’ve done it.” Fiona removed her shoes and socks and shook the sand away. “I don’t know why I bother.”

  “Because you love me,” he said.

  Fiona’s smile faded. She looked at him with a serious face. “Perhaps. But I also happen to think you’re very talented. And rather dashing. But you need to still learn a thing or two about acting.”

  “Then teach me what you know.”

  “Very well.” She put her shoes and socks back on and stood. She placed her hands on her hips. “I heard a director once tell Margaret Dillon—”

  “The Margaret Dillon,” Diego interjected. “Star of—”

  “Well, she wasn’t quite there yet,” Fiona said. “This was in the early days of her career. I had just started at Frontier. Anyway, he says to always be aware of your body. Hands, feet, eyes, everything. Always remain in control of it, of its limits and capabilities.”

  She said he needed to use everything—shoulders and hair, mouth and nose—to convey feeling. “There’s a difference between picking something up”—and she bent down and plucked a small shell rather gingerly from the sand—“and lifting something up.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Lifting it and treating it as though it is the single most important, most cherished thing in the world.”

  She set the shell back down, took a deep breath, and then did the most extraordinary thing. Her movements were different the second time, not casual and glib, but they were artful and fluid, as though they’d been choreographed. Fiona started first by tucking back a fragile curl of hair behind her ear, letting her hand linger on her neck. Then, with so much care and attention, she reached out, picked the shell back up and, cradling it in her hands, brought it close to her face, which wore a look of soft concern, her eyes sorrowful, as if she were about to burst into tears. The gesture was heart-wrenching but also very lovely, for she had made him believe that that seashell was no longer simply an insignificant object but something rare and cherished.

  When she broke character, he applauded. “Fi,” he said. “I didn’t know you had it in you!”

  She bowed. “But don’t overdo it,” she told him. “Don’t overact, don’t overemphasize. Otherwise all meaning gets lost, and the danger is that it comes out looking absurd and comical.”

  “How do you know all of this?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Watching people. The strangest things are revealed when you’re just a spectator in all of this. People forget you’re there. Until you blow the whistle on them. Speaking of—” Here, she grabbed hers and blew. “Up. One more lap then we can go home.”

  Diego sighed and rose.

  “Catch me if you can,” she shouted, running off fast, her small feet kicking up grains of sand.

  Diego ran, almost certain that he would never catch her.

  2.

  March 1931

  STUDIO 8 HAD BEEN CONVERTED INTO A LAVISH ROMAN TEMPLE honoring Bacchus. The round pool lay in the middle of the set, the water bright blue and shimmering. Wide imitation marble columns supported large and elegant arches stretching around the pool. Fake plaster statues of Roman gods—Jupiter, Mars, Saturn—were perched on pedestals standing more than ten feet high. The walls were covered in decorative mosaic tiles of bright crimson, deep blue, and pastel green and lit by torches and sconces that gave
off a dim glow.

  The film told the story of Bacchus, the god of wine, debauchery, and excess, who falls in love with a mortal girl. Diego and a number of other young men had been cast as Roman subjects whose job it was to entertain the god, while he sat atop a gold throne, eating grapes, surrounded by a group of beautiful maidens. Diego and other young men all wore the same costume—a black wig with a crown of artificial laurel leaves painted gold, and a skimpy loincloth—and they huddled together around the small pool, dipping their feet in the water. The director was milling around, shouting something to technicians high above on the scaffolds, positioning the actor playing Bacchus. Diego glanced around, the light low, the faces of the others obscured by shadows.

  “I hope the water isn’t too cold,” said someone.

  Diego said, “Yes. I hope not either.” His face was only dimly lit, and Diego squinted, tried making the features out. “Javier?” he asked, his heart pounding. “Is that you, hermano?”

  But the young man didn’t hear him. There was too much shouting, and the director was barking out orders. Then the lights faded even more and the cameras started up. The group of men migrated toward the pool.

  “I guess there’s no other way than to just plunge right in,” the young man said and he gripped Diego’s arm and pulled him in. Once in the water, Diego looked around, watching the others surrounding the perimeter of the pool step inside, one after the other. The director yelled action and shouted commands, and there was music, and the maidens at the foot of Bacchus’ throne danced, while the god ate grapes and drank from a large silver goblet. The director barked out orders through his bullhorn, as the camera turned from one end of the set to the other, and Diego stretched his neck, trying to find the figure he thought was Javier.