The Last Embrace

by Denise Hamilton

  Most of the other workmen had drifted away. But several drew closer at hearing the name of the missing actress. The set painter hauled buckets of paint into a cart and rolled it to a new backdrop.

  Max Vranizan picked a daub of cadmium paint from his wrist. “If you’re a friend of Kitty’s, why haven’t I met you?”

  “Because I’ve been living abroad. Just got back to the good old U.S. of A.”

  “The police were here yesterday.” Max frowned. “I haven’t seen her for a month, if that’s what you want to know.”

  Lily found it interesting that he’d jumped the gun.

  “It was Labor Day,” he said. “We drove to Santa Monica Beach and she brought a picnic lunch. We swam in the ocean. At dusk, I drove her home.”

  “Did you know she’d gone missing?”

  “One of the gals from the rooming house called to ask if I’d seen her.” Vranizan strode to the wooden table and adjusted the wing of a pterodactyl. He lifted it up and swooshed it through the air like a kid.

  Lily followed him. “Had you?”

  “I told her I hadn’t. We had words out on the beach, that last time,” he said mournfully. “I didn’t like some of the people she spent time with. She said it was none of my business.”

  Max Vranizan reached out a hand and touched the fur collar of Lily’s coat.

  “Sable,” he said absentmindedly.

  “How did you know?” Lily asked, surprised.

  He shrugged. “You get a feel for the fur after a while.”

  “Interesting. So, who was Kitty spending time with?”

  “People she thought could help her get places. People she’d met at nightclubs.”

  “Like Mickey Cohen? The gangster?”

  Max smirked. “Hollywood considers him more of a businessman these days. Lots of respectable people go to Slapsie Maxie’s. Movie people. Businesspeople. Politicians. Judges. Out here, we like to mix it up.”

  The gaiety in his voice didn’t reach his eyes. The only thing this guy mixes up, thought Lily, is paint.

  Max Vranizan slipped his fingers under his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Sometimes I thought she just kept me around like a sad clown to prop up her ego.”

  “How long have you been friends?”

  Max told her they’d met late last year when he was at RKO making a movie about giant bats. He often had to wait to screen the daily rushes until David O. Selznick finished watching footage that had been flown in from Havana, where the producer’s inamorata, Jennifer Jones, was filming We Were Strangers with John Garfield. As Max hung around, he noticed a girl, a brunette with long filly legs and full lips, kibitzing with the projectionist. Max coveted her from afar the way a starving man stares through the window at a feast he’ll never be invited to. There was always someone at Kitty’s elbow, young men with money and pizzazz who wore two-tone shoes and cashmere sweaters and silk scarves and roared off the lot with her in convertible roadsters.

  Max probably wouldn’t have spoken to her that December night at the Pig ’n Whistle either, he told Lily, but he’d pulled off a particularly tricky action shot that day and emerged from the studio exhilarated and filled with uncharacteristic bravado.

  She’d walked into the Pig ’n Whistle just ahead of him, ignoring the hunched row of backs at the lunch counter and couples in the wooden booths up front. Her destination was the back room, where a large and boisterous crowd gathered each night to be serenaded by the best pipes in Hollywood—studio musicians and singers who could play what they wanted once they punched off the industry clock.

  Located across from Grauman’s Chinese and next door to the Egyptian, the Pig ’n Whistle was a popular watering hole with a majestic organ. The farther you walked into the Pig, the more elegant it felt thanks to the beamed ceilings, stained-glass windows, and hand-carved wood. Max watched Kitty sit down at the bar, turn to the bartender, and announce more loudly than necessary, “Somebody ought to buy me a drink, don’t you think?”

  “Why is that, Kitty?” the bartender asked, playing the straight guy.

  Kitty looked around and gave a tight nod as Max made his way toward her, wallet in hand.

  “Because I deserve it. Because I’m a poor girl in a hard town. Because all my money goes to acting classes.”

  The bartender snorted. “You’re already the best actress in town, Kitty.”

  Then Max was at her side.

  “Why, hello.” Kitty gave him a demure smile.

  “Could I buy you a drink, miss?”

  “That would be lovely. I’ll have a glass of champagne.”

  Max leaned against the polished wood bar. “Would you like white or pink?”

  Kitty’s smile grew pained and she fiddled with the brooch at her lapel.

  “She always has white,” the bartender said, already pouring the pale effervescing liquid into a long-stemmed flute.

  “It’s going to be quite a night,” Max said. “Mr. DeMille’s coming in.”

  “Here?” Kitty squeaked.

  “I have it on good word from his secretary. He loves to play the organ, and he’s quite talented.”

  Kitty gave Max her full attention.

  “You know him?”

  “You think I’m blowing smoke. But I’ve done pictures for him.”

  “Have you? What’s your name?”

  “Max Vranizan.”

  “Kitty Hayden. I’m an actress.” She gave him the full-on face now, lips pouting into a red rosebud.

  I know, he wanted to say. I’ve seen you at RKO.

  He felt a flicker of sadness that she hadn’t noticed him, the long hours he’d mooned over her as he glued fur onto his creations, caressing the glossy pelt and imagining it was her. She was so close that he could smell her violet scent. Still flying high from the day’s shoot, Max didn’t see the usual intimidating creature in a dress, but rather a girl with whom he had a natural affinity, a girl who toiled in the same world of illusion as he.

  “You’re awfully good-looking,” he said, giving her a loopy grin.

  Kitty got out a cigarette and Max pulled out a pack of matches and lit it.

  Kitty sipped her champagne. “And what do you do for the studios, Mr. Vranizan?”

  He rolled onto the balls of his feet, grinning. “I’m in Special Effects.”

  “Does that mean you hold the hose when the script calls for rain?”

  “Nope, I’m an animator. The man I work for, Willis O’Brien, he’s a genius. Why, the movie we’re working on now, it’s going to rev—”

  “Is that like puppets?”

  Max winced. “Not exactly. See, a movie camera, it shoots twenty-four frames per—”

  But Kitty had only heard one word.

  “Cameras? You take photos?”

  “I suppose I could.”

  “Would you take photos of me? The head shots I have are ancient.”

  It would give him an excuse to see her again. They could do the shots at night, after everyone left. He’d be alone with her. He’d show her some of his creations, play her the animated sequences he and Obie had devised. She’d be so impressed that she’d throw her arms around him. Oh, Max, she’d whisper. You’re incredible. She’d bring her face close, parting those amazing full lips. And then…No. He couldn’t allow himself to think that way about such a nice young lady.

  “It would be an honor,” Max said.

  “Max. Hey, Max,” his friends called from across the crowded room. “Stop being so selfish. Bring her back so we can all see.”

  Kitty looked over. One had jug ears and a bow tie. Another’s pants were too short. A third had a cowlick and thick glasses.

  “Let me guess. They work in Special Effects too.”

  Max gave her a big grin. “How’d you know?”

  “Just a lucky guess.”

  Max’s heart swelled with rapture. He couldn’t believe his luck. He was talking to a pretty girl with wavy chestnut hair and golden skin. For a moment he saw himself as that noble grotesque Kin
g Kong, Kitty as Fay Wray. With a whoop he grabbed the girl and swung her off the stool.

  “Now, wait a minute, there, fella.”

  “You looked like you were waiting to be swept off your feet,” Max said. Vivid fantasies flooded his mind of another misunderstood hero, Mighty Joe Young, climbing up a burning building to rescue an orphaned girl. How the giant ape would bellow as the flames singed his fur. Yes! He’d storyboard it tonight.

  “You think you’re man enough?” Kitty teased.

  The magic flared and spluttered. The gorilla fled back into the jungle, leaving him paralyzed with awkwardness, just a tall stooped young man with an obsessive hobby that only those similarly afflicted could understand.

  “Are you under contract?” she asked coyly.

  Max gulped and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. He tried to explain how the special effects boys moved from studio to studio like gypsies but choked on his saliva and doubled over, red-faced with shame at the disgusting spectacle he was making. Any second now, she’d walk away.

  Instead, a small hand patted his back. “Hey,” Kitty said. “Take it easy, big boy. It isn’t a trick question. Why don’t we go meet your friends?”

  And so their teasing dance had begun. Kitty liked him like a kid brother, while he burned with hidden lusts that made him blush and whinny with loud equine laughter whenever she was around. At night he bucked against his pillow and caressed the imaginary shape of her, dreaming of their future. She’d have dinner ready when he came home. When he crawled into bed, sore from stooping over a model, high from the glue fumes, he’d bury his long face in her bosom and they’d make love until dawn.

  He had to be patient, win her over slowly, seduce her with his art. Max had never known a starlet before. They’d always been inaccessible ice goddesses. He felt like an insect in their world, bulbous and alien, sharpening his mandibles in confusion. He wanted to devour Kitty, build an altar to her. He didn’t know where to begin.

  Now he stood amid the tricks of his trade, reminiscing about Kitty to another pretty young woman.

  “You loved her, didn’t you?” Lily said.

  “We had fun together. She was my date for the Mighty Joe Young premiere and we had dinner at Ciro’s afterwards. It was the most wonderful night of my life.”

  His hand slid into his pocket, his fingers closing around something. His eyes grew thoughtful and far away. Then, plucking a pencil from behind his ear, he began to sketch. Within thirty seconds the lines had nuance and movement. Thirty more and they had personality. It was Kitty as a barely clad cavewoman, astride a soaring pterodactyl. Below them stood a T. Rex, toothy jaw gaping open, ready to devour both bird and girl.

  Max crumpled the paper and tossed it into a wastebasket.

  “Don’t! You’re really…talented,” Lily said, disturbed by the symbolism but seeing a way to keep him talking. “Will you show me more of your work?”

  Nodding brusquely, he led her past props draped with white cloth. The set painter who’d gazed at Lily earlier stood at a sink, cleaning his brushes. Now he turned and watched them stroll off, unaware of how their voices carried in the acoustics of the big hangar. The set painter waited until they entered Max’s office. Then he put away his last brush and hurried out of the building.

  Max’s office was lined with comic books, zoology texts, taxidermy manuals, and fantastic fiction by Lord Dunsany, Mervyn Peake, H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, and Hope Mirrlees. He pulled out a volume called Dark Carnival.

  “It’s a collection of short stories by a friend of mine. He’s got a novel about Mars coming out next year.”

  Lily checked the spine. “Ray Bradbury. He any good?”

  “I sure think so. He and I and another of our pals, Forrie Ackerman, are in a science club that meets at Clifton’s Cafeteria downtown every Thursday at six p.m., you ever want to drop by. We talk about dinosaurs, moon rockets, time travel. It would be nice if a girl joined.”

  “Thanks for the invitation,” Lily said politely.

  She walked over to the wall, where a series of sketches showed Vikings astride giant prehistoric eagles fighting air battles with dinosaurs.

  Max gave a rueful laugh. “Obie worked on War Eagles for two years, made the models, did two hundred sketches and oil paintings, shot a test reel. Then the director killed the film.”

  Lily moved on to sketches of a giant gorilla.

  “Those are preproduction sketches we do to block out the action. They’re like a storyboard for how the director’ll shoot each scene.”

  “I know that gorilla,” Lily said. “Mighty Joe Young. You gave him to Kitty, and I found it in her…” She stopped.

  “That’s right. We made five models because they get banged up, the fur wears down in filming, so one’s always in the repair shop. Kitty’s got one, I’ve got three, and one’s lost. My favorite one was named Jennifer.”

  “A girl’s name?”

  Max Vranizan smiled. “You work with these models every day, you get a sense of their personalities, what they’re thinking and feeling.”

  “And you’re feeling like Gepetto?”

  She saw the intelligence that burned behind his eyes, a mind honeycombed with strange pathways. If only we all got to build the world we want to live in, she thought.

  “I’m just doing everyday magic,” Max said. “Sleight of hand. We don’t broadcast what we do, because the mystique is part of the illusion itself.”

  “But you’ll tell me, won’t you?”

  He studied the floor. “Most girls find it boring. What Obie and Ray and I do takes a tremendous amount of dedication. Obsession, even.”

  Lily shifted uneasily. She imagined him fixating on Kitty. Wanting to play God, control her every movement, like he did his creations. But Kitty wasn’t a doll.

  “After sketches, we move to clay models. Then we build an articulated skeleton out of metal, using custom-made parts we stamp out on lathes. That’s called the armature.”

  He fetched a metal dinosaur skeleton from the cupboard.

  “Pretty nifty,” she said, moving the long neck.

  “That’s first-generation. Primitive,” Max said dismissively. “Nothing like Jennifer.”

  He snapped on thin white gloves—skin oils from his fingers would turn the fur greasy, he explained—and removed a gorilla model from his desk. It was the twin of the one in Kitty’s room. Carefully, Max manipulated its limbs.

  “We even build sponge rubber muscles onto the armature, so the skin’ll ripple. See? And there’s an inflatable bladder inside the chest to make Joe breathe. Each finger has movable joints so he can pick things up. He’s got ball-and-socket joints at the elbow. Marcel, he’s our model builder, he ran wires through the eyelids so they’d open and close. The lips are rubber, modified with clay. Sometimes we use plasticine. Each of these babies costs twelve hundred dollars.”

  “What goes over the armature?” Lily asked.

  “Cotton batting. Then foam rubber, then latex over that. We’ve even got a taxidermist working for us, George Lofgren, a very talented man, who embeds the fur into the rubber.”

  Lily ran her hand along the fur. It didn’t feel like mink. Or rabbit. Or lamb or sable or any coat she knew. She raised one eyebrow quizzically.

  “Fur of unborn calf,” Max said. “We went down to the Vernon slaughterhouse to buy it. Farmer John thought we were nut jobs.”

  “Ugh.” Lily pulled her hand away. “That’s disgusting.”

  Max hadn’t noticed her distaste. In his element, he was relaxed and confident, his earlier awkwardness gone.

  “Joe moves like a gorilla but emotes like a human. His mouth turns down when he’s sad, his eyes squint up when he’s angry. When Joe throws a rock, we move it with nylon wires—monofilaments—that are almost invisible. We build him with sponge rubber, cotton batting, metal hinges, and fur. Then I wave my magic wand and bring him to life.”

  “How?” They were getting far afield of Kitty, but she had to know.

 
“It’s a process we call stop-motion animation. The cinematic art of moving models meticulously, frame by frame, to create the illusion of motion.”

  “You’ll have to explain in English.”

  “Well, a thirty-five-millimeter movie camera shoots twenty-four frames per second. So I position Joe, then shoot a frame of film. Then I move him a tiny bit, shoot another frame. Then repeat. All day long. Any more than one frame and it looks jerky instead of fluid and natural.”

  Lily pictured bored cameramen smoking cigarettes while the special effects wizard set up shot after shot.

  “It can take twelve hours of shooting to do a few seconds of screen time. More if it’s really tricky.”

  “You must go stir crazy.”

  Max looked insulted. “I’m never bored. I play each scene in my head, figuring out what I need for the next frame. At night I can’t wait for the rushes, to see if I’ve caught it on film. It’s thrilling when that happens. You could say I have a Zeus complex. I want to control all the little creatures in my world.”

  There it was again, Lily thought. Had Max Vranizan tried to control Kitty, then killed her when that proved impossible?

  She looked down so he wouldn’t guess her thoughts and her gaze fell on a movie still of Mighty Joe Young, looking morose as he accepted a bottle of booze through the bars of a jail cell from three jeering men in suits.

  “That jail cell is twenty-four-inches tall,” Max said, mistaking her interest. “All Joe’s sets are miniature, built to scale. The African scenes? We had matte artists paint the jungle landscape on glass, to give it depth. We’ve got one painter, he’s a Chouinard Art Institute dropout, and he’s fantastic, when he stays off the dope and bothers to come in. But his dad’s a mucky-muck here so no one can force him to do anything.”

  Lily noticed a publicity photo of Joe and some lions running amok inside a nightclub as people ran away shrieking.

  “How do you insert actors?”

  “In layers. We shot the big cats out at the RKO ranch in Tarzana. Then we projected that footage behind the actors and shot the human scenes. Then we projected the new footage one frame at a time onto a rear projection screen on a miniature set while we animated Joe’s scenes. You have to synchronize the movements for all three to give the illusion it’s happening on the same plane.”