The Five Acts of Diego Leon

by Alex Espinoza

  “What do you say?” Javier told him. “We could move to Mexico City. Start a newspaper or something. Just the two of us. Like we used to talk about.”

  “Javier, I can’t just—”

  “Come on, hermano,” he pleaded. “I need you. I need your help.”

  Diego stood and took a few steps forward, startling the pigeons. They fluttered away in a panic, and he watched them fly off, past the branches and telephone poles, their wings beating fast.

  “No,” he said. “I can’t.”

  Javier only wanted Diego to help him further the cause. That wasn’t friendship or loyalty or love, he understood. It was to keep the cause alive, to keep the fight going, to simply survive.

  Javier sighed. “There’s nothing here for you, Diego. Anyone can see that. You’re alone. In exile. No one respects you or your work. Back there, you’re known. You’re loved and you’re missed in Mexico.”

  “I’m not missed.” Diego laughed.

  “Oh, but you are,” Javier urged him, his eyes moist. “You are, Diego.”

  “No one misses me.”

  “They do,” he said. “My mother, your grandparents, even I—”

  “Enough,” Diego told him. “I’m not going back, Javier. I’m simply not.”

  “Very well,” he said. “I’m disappointed. I guess I should go then. The rally’s about to start.” Javier stood and gave Diego a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “I admire you,” he said. “Your conviction. Your belief in yourself.”

  “It’s all I have left,” Diego said. “It’s all that I am now.”

  “It’s all any of us are,” Javier said.

  Diego wanted to be with him, but he knew such a thing was impossible now, more so than it had been years before. He watched his old friend walk past the street vendors and stalls to the rally, a group of people shouting and chanting, their fists puncturing the sky above them.

  4.

  March 1936

  THERE WERE SEVERAL DELAYS—THREATS OF STRIKE, INJURIES, disagreements—so filming on The Revolutionists dragged into the following year. One day, a girl in a gray tweed skirt came to the set and handed Diego a slip of paper.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “Message from Mister Cage,” she said, then turned and left.

  He opened it and read:

  Please come and see me this afternoon.

  Three PM.

  WC

  He found him in his office, rifling through a stack of papers. Sit, he urged, and didn’t look up as he pointed to the chair across from his desk.

  “You wanted to see me?” Diego asked.

  “I did,” he said.

  “What about?”

  Bill leaned back in his chair, and sighed. He stared intently at Diego, removed his glasses and scratched the bridge of his nose. “Your contract’s up,” he said. “After you finish this project. I’m sorry to tell you that we won’t be renewing it.”

  “Come again?” Diego asked, stunned.

  Bill shook his head. “I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can do. Frontier’s having to make a lot of tough calls right now and, to put it bluntly, you’re no longer considered a viable commodity.”

  “What do you mean I’m not viable? What about this film I’m about to finish up? I thought you said it was big, that it would save the studio?”

  “That may be, but polls show your popularity slipping, and your other projects haven’t made us much money, and we, the studio, just don’t feel it’s fiscally sound to be investing in you anymore.”

  Diego stopped listening. He felt his skin grow hot, his limbs tingle. He rose and walked over to the window and loosened his tie. Everything spun, and he gripped the wall to keep from losing his balance. Bill went on, explaining the details of what releasing him from his contract would mean in a noncommittal tone, as if he were rattling off a list of instructions.

  “The Latin thing’s over,” he said. “It’s no longer exotic, it doesn’t sell.” Trends changed, he went on. Tastes were different now. “Audiences are fickle. They want a fresh face. The ‘boy-next-door’ type.”

  “Like Tod Duren?” Diego asked. He walked over to a cart in the corner of the office where Bill kept his liquor and poured himself some whiskey. He reached for the cigar box and plucked one out.

  “Excuse me, but those are …” Bill started to say.

  Diego ignored him and lit it anyway.

  “Yes. Tod Duren. We feel—”

  “And who is ‘we’?”

  The investors, Bill explained. The new investors who had their eyes on different faces, he told Diego. “Their approach is different from R. J.’s, and I welcome it.”

  “And what about R. J.?” he asked.

  Bill sighed and shook his head. “R. J. He didn’t see things the way we did.”

  “You sold him out, you mean,” Diego said.

  “We had a difference of opinion, and he was a gentleman about it.” R. J. understood, Bill claimed, that this was business, and that this was how things went sometimes. “Diego,” Bill said now, his voice softening, “I wish to God it were different, but it’s not. You’re not what we’re looking for anymore. You’re not what anybody wants.”

  “Is that meant to make me feel better?”

  “What do you want me to say?” He tapped his palm against his desk; a set of pens and an ink bottle trembled. “This isn’t easy for me.”

  “What now?” Diego asked himself, asked Bill, puffing on the cigar, taking a drink of whiskey, and pouring himself more.

  “That’s very expensive whiskey. I would really appreciate it if you didn’t—”

  Diego ignored him, drank, and poured himself another glass.

  Bill sighed. “Very well,” he said. “If it’ll make you feel better, finish it all.”

  Cage told him that he would fulfill the rest of his contract by completing his work on The Revolutionists, by performing any publicity associated with the picture, and attending the premiere. After that point, he would be released.

  “Released?” Diego asked. “What a beautiful word for such a horrible thing.”

  He slammed his drink down and headed for the door, but Bill stopped him.

  “You may find this hard to believe,” he said, “but I did care for you. Very much. And I’ll continue to. In a different life, you and me would be together. We’d be happy.”

  Through the opened windows there came the sound of shouts and car horns honking, of ringing bells and whistles. All the work at the studio continued, moved forward, but there, in William Cage’s office, the air and everything around it remained still, suspended in time.

  “I have to go now, Bill,” Diego said. “Thank you for the opportunity.”

  “Diego, I’m really sorr …” Bill started to say, but Diego didn’t let him finish. He opened the door and walked out. He didn’t want to hear it.

  He took a long drive up the highway skirting the ocean. He watched the tan cliffs unfold, the water lapping the edge of the shore, the seagulls drifting on currents of air. Diego pulled the car off the main road and followed a narrow trail up a winding bluff. He parked and got out. He couldn’t feel anything but light passing through him, not through his physical body, but his soul, his being. He felt alert, cognizant yet without any real physical form, without any physical features. That wonderful sensation of warmth, of serenity, of at long last being at peace, was all he knew he had ever wanted. He stood at the edge of the earth, overlooking that vast and ever present ocean. Behind him, in the far distance, was a chain of green hills. Beneath the chain of hills, he imagined a fertile valley filled with fruit trees which people picked, tossing the harvest into large wicker baskets. The men sported strong arms that worked to lift children up to the trees to pick apples and oranges that tumbled down onto the ground when the slightest gust of ocean breeze fanned the branches. He felt the breeze, smelled the salt and brine. Below, the waves crashed against the rocks along the seashore. Far off, toward the horizon, the sun floated there, suspe
nded, refusing to set, lighting everything up at once, and the land was golden and peaceful and the people were happy.

  He wanted to sprout wings and fly off and away. Maybe he should have listened to Javier. Maybe he should have followed him back to Mexico. Things might have been different. They might have had a life together. What would he do now? he wondered. Who would he become?

  As filming on The Revolutionists neared completion, along with his contract with Frontier, Diego was finding it harder and harder to summon up the energy to be there. It was exhausting, having to pretend, and he wanted to sleep more than anything in the world. To close his eyes for a good, long time and shut all the voices out until … until what? He went from days where he was hopeful, reminding himself that it wasn’t the end, that Frontier wasn’t the only studio in the business, to moments of fear and regret, moments when he looked back at the decisions he had made that led him here to this, this lonely life, this life where he truly had nothing at all left. It made him sick, this back-and-forth, this constant tugging and pulling. When would it end? How had he arrived here?

  He was dressed in costume—frayed cotton trousers, a heavy wool jacket adorned with embroidered galloons, boots, a large sombrero, and a fake mustache—when he arrived. He grabbed a pistol and placed it in his leather holster. The set designers had arranged several props—a fiberglass horse, a whiskey barrel, a pitaya cactus—and they would be shooting a series of movie stills, he was told, by a group of fidgety photographers, then some headshots.

  “The studio hired a new photographer,” one of the casting assistants told Diego while they watched the set designers arrange the props. A piece of the wooden barrel had been chipped, a large hunk of wood missing from one side when it was dropped while it was being moved, and they had to call in a carpenter.

  The casting assistant told Diego, “Why don’t you go inside the trailer.” She pointed to a white Airstream parked behind the stage. “Mister Apple can take your headshots, and when he’s done we should be ready out here.”

  “Very well,” he said, and walked to the camper.

  He opened the door and stepped inside. A chair was positioned in front of a black velvet curtain. In front of the chair was a camera on a tripod, the wooden stilts gleaming new and smooth. A large lamp sat atop a stack of crates, the light pointing directly at the chair.

  “Hello?” he said. “Anyone here?”

  “Coming,” said a voice from behind a narrow door. Soon it opened and the photographer stepped from behind the trailer’s kitchenette that seemed to double as the dark room. He wore a white apron and thick, black glasses.

  “Why, hello!”

  The man’s voice was familiar, but from where? “Hello,” Diego said, feeling uneasy.

  The photographer came closer and removed his glasses. “Don’t you recognize me?”

  Diego continued to stare. It was none other than Charlie Applebaum. “Charlie?” he asked, stunned.

  “It’s me,” he said, laughing, slapping his knee. “What a surprise. I knew you worked here. But I didn’t know you were on this picture.” He laughed and gave Diego a quick pat on the back. “Why, it’s been a while since I saw you. Thought you were sore at me.”

  “Sore? Why would I be sore, Charlie?” Diego smiled.

  He placed his hands in his pockets and shrugged. “I dunno. After I was evicted from the Ruby Rose, I never saw you around the diner.”

  “I got busy. My life,” he stammered, “became a little occupied.” He looked around, said, “Wow. You’re a photographer now?”

  “Can you believe it?” Charlie said. “Been enjoying my work. Better than I could have ever imagined.” Charlie walked over and handed Diego a book. Inside, the pages were filled with headshots of faces he recognized—Lester Frank, Ada Daniels, Margaret Dillon, Clark Gable, Greta Garbo—each personally autographed by the actors themselves to Charlie.

  “You took all of these?” Diego asked, thumbing through the book. The pages went on and on. “Every single actor in Hollywood must be here.”

  “They are,” he said. Charlie said it took him spending a few weeks thinking about his life, about the choices he’d made, about his career in pictures. He was taken in by a preacher, he said, right after he left the Ruby Rose. This preacher was a great man named Brother Earl. He preached the word of God with his daughter, Rebecca. They made me see, Charlie said, that a career in pictures wasn’t for me. So, he said, he started attending services more and more, grew closer to Brother Earl and Rebecca.

  “They made me see the error of my ways. Now, I’m much happier. Changed my name. I’m Charlie Apple. I attend services regularly, and I just bought a studio. I’m still getting settled, but I already got customers flocking there. Girls wanting their headshots, guys like you, like I once was, needing their photos to pass around at the studios.” He folded his arms and leaned up against a chair.

  “That’s great,” said Diego. There was an awkward pause, and they stood there, quietly, Charlie playing with his glasses and Diego jiggling his hands in his pockets. “Well,” Diego said. “Where shall I sit?”

  “Here,” he said, pointing to a chair.

  “Very well.” Diego sat.

  Charlie positioned himself behind the camera, fiddled with different glass plates, adjusting the lens and the lamp. He covered his head under the camera’s cloth and held the flashbulb up. “Good,” he said, his voice muffled. “Stay there. Just like that. Don’t move. Stay quiet and still.”

  He snapped several pictures, the flashbulbs exploding, the black smoke dissolving into the hot air. Charlie said nothing for a while then spoke again. “I know what you did. I know it was you who took my spot.”

  “What are you talking about?” Diego asked. He felt Charlie’s eye on him, magnified, behind the large glass plate of the camera. “Spot? What spot?”

  “When the studio called that morning. It was you. You intercepted the message.”

  “What are you talking about? I … that’s absurd.” The lamp’s light glared in his face. He squinted and began to sweat.

  “I had a friend who worked on that picture. I ran into her a few days after I was evicted. She told me a guy showed up claiming to be me. Only it wasn’t me. She recognized you from a photo in the paper.”

  “Charlie, look—”

  “The thing is that I’m not sore,” he said. “I really and truly am not sore at you. Because if you hadn’t done that, who knows where I’d be right now, who I’d be. The whole show business stuff. Why, I never had the chops for it.”

  “Hey,” Diego said. “Look, I’m sorry. I needed a break. I needed to make it here. I was desperate.”

  “I was too,” Charlie explained. He stopped now, removed the cloth, and stood straight. “I too was once lost, but now I’m found.” He approached and placed his hand on Diego’s shoulder. He looked into his eyes, and Charlie’s gaze was penetrating, sharp and frigid as ice. “I know you. The real you. What you’re capable of. Why you do what you do. What you’re running from. I know who you truly are.”

  “You don’t,” Diego said, standing now. “You don’t know anything about me.”

  He turned toward the door, trying to erase Charlie’s words from his memory, trying to erase his own guilt that felt heavier now more than ever before.

  He didn’t need prayers from the likes of Charlie Applebaum, or Apple, to help him gain clarity. What he needed were the things he had depended on that got him this far: determination, opportunities, luck, and talent. Yes, sir, he told himself. I’ll be fine and dandy. Something will give. It’s not the end of me. A minor setback. A small wrinkle in an otherwise smooth plan. Diego had read a few days before an article about Thomas Edison and how many times he had to redesign, redraft, and reimagine all of his inventions before getting them just right. He admired the man’s tenacity and told himself he would go forth from that day forward and try to emulate it. Diego would allow himself to think only successful thoughts. He would forget the past. He would work harder. He
would eventually triumph.

  Diego was feeling chipper for the first time in weeks. Though apprehensive about his next move once work on the picture was over, he walked around that day—the sun shining brightly, a cool breeze blowing in from the coast—at Frontier and reminded himself that, though he would miss it, there were other games in town. Another studio will pick him up. He walked with a slight skip in his step, whistling, as he strolled around the studio, killing time between takes, when he ran into Georgie Wexler. She was coming out of the studio diner with a group of girls, all of them seamstresses in the costume department.

  “Well, look at you!” she said, running up to give him a hug.

  “Georgie?” He hugged her back and said, “What a surprise. How’s tricks?”

  She waved good-bye to her friends. “It’s good to see another familiar face. I was just having coffee with the girls. How I miss them.”

  “Are you visiting?”

  “For a few days,” she said, leaning up against the diner’s wall.

  Georgie unbuttoned her coat, and he looked down and saw her belly.

  “You’re pregnant?” he asked.

  “Four months,” she said, out of breath, fanning herself with her hand. “My, but the little bugger tuckers me out.”

  “What have you and Nick been up to these last few years?”

  She told him how, after their honeymoon, they moved to Connecticut where Nick attended law school at Yale, how he finished up the year before and was now working in Manhattan for a friend of his father’s. They bought a house in the suburbs and Nick commutes into the city.

  “Just like we planned it,” she said, smiling and pointing to her belly. “Now, all we have to do is wait for the little one to pop out, and we’ll be complete. I’ve seen your movies,” she told Diego now. “My, how you’ve changed.”

  “Yes, well,” he said. “It’s show business.”

  She looked at her wristwatch now and buttoned her jacket up. “I have to meet my mother for tea,” she said. “Dear, look at the time.” Georgie leaned in and kissed Diego. “Did you know Fiona’s back? Living in Pasadena.”