Lone Star

by Ed Ifkovic

  “So you have a speaking line?” My words seemed to startle her. She actually jumped.

  Lydia ran her tongue over her lips, moistening them. “One line in Giant, tomorrow a leading role. Look how fast it happened to Jimmy.” The words stretched out, labored over. But she said Jimmy’s name with an icy sarcasm, spitting out the word, and the name hung in the air like a black mark.

  Mercy shook her head. “Edna, Jimmy is not one of Lydia’s favorite people these days.”

  Lydia grunted. “Swine.” She tossed back her head, and the light caught the gold necklace around her neck. Then, in a quiet confessional tone, the voice now soft and fuzzy, “I just don’t understand why he stopped caring.” Again, she stared at the far wall. Following her gaze, I was intrigued by the sight of the cheesecake.

  Nell spoke for the first time. “Lydia, you know how things are.”

  A flash of anger. “No, I don’t. Not actually. Only someone who’s never been in love can say that.”

  Nell turned red. The two women, I noticed, were a contrast: Lydia, fleshy, grossly sensual, perhaps; a little raw at the edges; a strawberry blonde; and Nell, short, squat really, round like a fur ball, a roly-poly frame that seemed, somehow, block-like, stolid. Perhaps it was the look in her eyes that suggested immobility, a marble glare, humorless. And yet she seemed to be smiling, like she was constantly telling herself a joke she expected no one else to get. A girl perhaps twenty, unpretty in a land where beauty was the name of the game. So she slapped on makeup, heavily so, a feeble attempt to enliven that dull face with powder and eyeliner. The general effect was of a chestnut burr slathered in confectionary sugar. You saw a girl all in black, a beret on her head—eyes darkened with kohl-chalk. She was very Greenwich Village transported to California, land of sunshine. A girl dropped into the wrong geography. No—some ersatz replica of Greta Garbo, an exaggerated approximation of the mysterious Swedish actress. Nell Meyers, script girl as seductress, playing an exotic chanteuse, maybe, waiting to be famously alone. If Lydia seemed garish and effusive, a pretty woman spilling out of her sexuality, then the younger Nell was a shadow, a hidden corner. Lydia was a bar girl with too many drunken nights at gin mills under her girdle. Lydia at middle age would be a Botticelli slattern, all rolling bulge and generous lipstick and five-and-dime perfume. Nell at forty would be a rotund sorcerer with a mosquito-thin voice, sitting on a bar stool saying, “Don’t come near me.”

  “What exactly do you do?” I asked her, ignoring Lydia who suddenly seemed lost in her own thoughts.

  Nell sighed, “I file scripts.” But she said it with a Garboesque flurry, the lacquered nails fluttering around her face, like wild birds.

  Tansi spoke up. “I got Nell the job.”

  Nell looked at her, still smiling. “Yeah,” she admitted, “I never ever wanted to work for a studio. My mom and I lived next door to Tansi, before Mom moved back home. I was taking classes at UCLA, aimless, you know. Tansi and Mom played—what?—bridge? Canasta? I never paid attention. So here I am.”

  “Nell’s mother is so sweet,” Tansi said. “I miss her.”

  “Well, I don’t.”

  Lydia looked bored and stood up. “Let’s go.” She turned, forgot to say goodbye.

  Tansi spoke up. “Stay a bit, Nell.”

  “Love to, but I’m on the clock, you know.” She caught up with Lydia, who was already heading toward the door.

  Mercy said to me, “You’ll find this interesting, Edna. Lydia was Carisa Krausse’s roommate a while back, before she moved to her new place. They had a falling out.”

  “Over Jimmy?”

  “Who knows?”

  “And how does Nell fit into all this?”

  Mercy shrugged. “Acolytes at Jimmy’s shrine, all of them.”

  Tansi interrupted. “Nell met Lydia and Jimmy at a party, and that was the beginning.”

  “You don’t sound glad,” I said.

  “I don’t like Lydia.”

  “Why?”

  “There are rumors of drug use, Edna. Her and Carisa, in fact.”

  “Tansi, don’t tell tales out of school,” Mercy sharply replied.

  “I don’t care. A drinker, too.”

  “Stop it, Tansi.” Mercy looked peeved. “You’re not being very nice.”

  “I just don’t like her friendship with Nell. Nell is, well, an innocent. I know she’s playing some role in her head. Look at the dumb makeup. But she’s a child. I told her mother I’d look out for her. You know, I got her into the Studio Club on Lodi Street, near Sunset. Edna, it’s a hotel for young girls in entertainment, very safe and protected. One hundred girls, with references. Men can’t get past the lobby. But would you believe dumb fate—her roommate is Lydia, of all people. I want her to move out of the place.”

  “That’s her choice,” Mercy insisted, pushing her coffee cup away from her.

  Tansi’s voice was too loud. “Lydia is not a good role model.”

  Mercy frowned. “Let Nell make her own choices, Tansi.”

  “I know. But I promised her mother…”

  “I had a mother who tried to run my life for decades,” I declared.

  “And what did you do?” Mercy asked.

  “Rattled my chains.”

  Tansi spoke up. “Okay, okay, I won’t gossip, but I know things. I know that Carisa and Lydia had a fight, and Nell told me she herself was afraid of Carisa’s mouth.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Carisa took a dislike to Nell.”

  “Because of Jimmy?”

  “According to Nell, yes.”

  “You don’t believe her?”

  Tansi breathed in. “Jimmy doesn’t chase every girl. He’s not interested in Nell. Men don’t notice Nell, you know. She’s, well, short and…” She stopped.

  I sipped cold coffee, placed the cup on the saucer. “Why did Jimmy break up with Lydia?”

  Mercy answered quickly. “I’ll tell you what I think. The studio thought he’d look better with Ursula Andress, her in a gown, him in a tuxedo. The two of them having dinner with Bogart and Bacall up in their Benedict Canyon home, Jimmy petting their two boxer dogs. Good camera shot. It’s all publicity.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means a lot of Jimmy’s dating is programmed by the studio. Jimmy also likes to keep his real life private, do things his own way. He seems to have overnight infatuations with each new girl, and sort of sees her for a while.”

  “Sort of?” I asked.

  “Yes, exactly. Sort of. Once or twice. Lydia for a week or two. Pier a lot longer—and more heartfelt, that one. Maybe a real love there. Maybe not. But yes, sort of. When they call him back, hungry for his love, he’s never home. Out on his infernal bike in the hills. Jimmy is a little confused about things.” She shrugged her shoulders.

  “I’m not following this.” I found it difficult to understand the dating patterns of these odd young folks. It was all a tedious muddle to me. But I asked Mercy, “Is Tansi right? Is Lydia on drugs?”

  Mercy pursed her lips into a thin line. “Probably.”

  “But this is not the reason he left her?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Then why?” I begged.

  Mercy shrugged her shoulders again.

  Tansi was frowning. “And you call me a gossip?”

  Mercy spoke coolly. “I don’t gossip, Tansi. I just insinuate facts.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Tansi insisted on driving me back to the Ambassador and seemed thrilled with me as her sole passenger. Her car, she said, was brand-new. Look, look at it, she insisted. What do you think? Bored, I looked. A spotless Chevy Bel Air, sparkling and shiny. “Everyone in L.A. has a new car,” I said, joking.

  Tansi nodded. “Well, you have to.”

  “How sad!”

  “Why?” Tansi asked.

  I chose not to answer, finding the subject tedious, but finally said, “I felt Mercy was being evasive. She was holding something back.”

  Tan
si pulled out into traffic. “You mean about his going out with Lydia?”

  “And others. How he treats the girls he sees.”

  A stretched out response. “Noooo…not really.”

  “And now you’re doing it, too. Mercy strikes me as a forthright woman, and you’re an old friend, but everyone seems to deal with Jimmy gingerly, only comfortable on the fringes. No one wants to get to the heart of him.”

  “Maybe because we don’t know how to talk about him.”

  “Or,” I said, “maybe everyone is nervous about actually getting to the heart of him.”

  “No, Jimmy is just a sweet guy who…”

  That surprised me. “I’d never call him sweet, Tansi. Brooding, rude, sullen, yes. At times happy, joking, frivolous, funny. Sweet, no.”

  “Charming, then.”

  “All right, charming, if you will.”

  But the conversation made Tansi uncomfortable. She started pointing out local landmarks to me, like a guide, cutting across boulevards, weaving her way through the city. Pershing Square, where soapbox orators declaimed their madness all hours of the night. Grauman’s Chinese Theater. The Moulin Rouge. The Egyptian Theater, where East of Eden was still playing. “Jimmy comes to stare at the marquee,” Tansi told me.

  I kept repeating, “I’ve been here before, Tansi. Before you were born, in fact. The palm trees were smaller, but looked about the same. The buildings were still ugly and on the verge of being replaced with newer, uglier, shinier ones. And the stars were too clear in the sky, with too much space below. The mountains were still over there.” I pointed, dramatically.

  Tansi laughed. “I’m sorry.” She turned onto Sunset Boulevard.

  I pointed. “And that’s Schwab’s. We can sit at the counter and be discovered like Lana Turner.”

  “They say that never happened.” Tansi pointed at a building and grinned. “But you don’t know about Googie’s.”

  I eyed the eatery next to Schwab’s. “And I choose not to.” An odd-looking restaurant, with its grotesque architecture: upswept roof, diagonal glass panels, zigzag markings on the boomerang-looking signs, a nightmare clash of blue and orange, a matchbox construction, pieces of building dropped willy-nilly and then glued together.

  “That’s a Jimmy hangout, a coffee shop. He used to live nearby.”

  “Let’s stop in,” I said suddenly.

  Tansi kept driving. “Oh no. I’ve never been there.”

  “Come on, Tansi, let’s stop. I want to get a feel of the place. When I come to L.A., I’m squired to the Cocoanut Grove for drinks, to Don Roper’s on Rodeo Drive for fittings to make me look like Ginger Rogers, to the Mocambo to see Theresa Brewer or some other screeching singer I can’t stand. No one ever thinks to take me to a coffee shop.”

  “There must be a reason for that. Googie’s is for young people.”

  “Good. Then we’ll fit right in.”

  Tansi swung her car around, a little too dramatically, so that I slid in my seat, held onto the dashboard. “I learned my driving maneuvers trying to follow Jimmy to events. He doesn’t believe in speed limits.”

  “But I do, Tansi. My remaining hair is white. Please don’t make it fall out.” I patted my careful perm. “More than it already does.”

  Standing in the doorway, a tiny woman dwarfed by the soaring archway, I waited and considered the place no country for me. Tansi, uncomfortable, hovered behind me. I surveyed the sleek, polished eatery, as crisp inside as a deco highway diner: the stark, high-backed booths and the chrome-and-glass tables, the cluttered geometric glass tiers suspended behind the counter, jam-packed with cobalt-blue soda glasses and rose-colored plates. Diagonal floor tiles, alternating black and white, gave the floor a dizzy, schizoid feel. The whole place seemed taken with itself, smart and trendy, and I thought of the hipster word I never employed—cool. But what made the small place bounce, even hum, was the energy, the sense that something was happening, something contagious and electric. Late afternoon in L.A.: freeways cluttered with honking, desperate cars, but, inside, a cavern of muted voices. Not quiet—there was too much talk going on, but it was like an interplay of piano notes, the one echoing off the other. Half of the tables were filled, perhaps. But the occupants sailed back and forth, young men and women, talking, laughing, backslapping, confiding. Everyone seemed to know everyone, and everyone seemed, to my jaundiced eye, eighteen years old.

  “Tommy and Polly are here,” Tansi whispered.

  I looked. Tommy and Polly stood near a booth, chatting with friends, watching Tansi and me settle into our chairs. I muttered under my breath, “Does he ever take off the red jacket?”

  Tansi grinned. “Then he wouldn’t be James Dean.”

  “But he’s not Jimmy.”

  “And then his girlfriend Polly would leave him.”

  I stared at the young woman I’d seen on Tommy’s arm. “What’s her story?’’

  “Polly Dunne?” Tansi glanced back at the couple, both of whom had stopped talking, simply watching us. I saw a willowy girl, tall and slender—a sapling leaning back to earth. I supposed it had to do with her being a half-foot taller than her boyfriend, some way of making them seem more a couple. Tommy, on the other hand, seemed to be craning his neck upward, arching back, reminding me of a baby bird stretching for nourishment. An odd couple, really. Yet they touched a lot, seemed to bump into each other, as though to make sure the other was still there. I thought Polly’s look bizarre. For such a tall girl, she was almost all bone and no flesh, with a shock of brilliant auburn hair on her head—a crown of sudden sunset. She wore clothes I considered the stuff of thrift store backrooms: a lacy crinoline skirt that flared out, way below the knee, a puffy lace blouse that I thought had disappeared with Lillian Gish silents. A modern girl clothed in some ensemble more applicable to a barn dance in rural Kansas, circa 1900. Rebecca of Sunnybrook farm with garden spade, stopping for an egg cream in an American café.

  “Well,” Tansi said, “she’s sort of hard to get to know. She clings to Tommy like he’s the last piece of floating driftwood. She spends much of the time berating him for his lack of ambition. Tommy believes fate will pluck him from the dailies and make him the next Brando. But Tommy’s lazy. Jimmy got him a bit part in Giant, as you know. Before that, he had an audition for a speaking role in Rebel, but he came late. Polly almost killed him.”

  “Why doesn’t she leave him?” I eyed the staring couple, watching Polly fluff her head of red curls and Tommy pull on the cuffs of the jacket.

  “I think she believes his friendship with Jimmy will get her a place in Hollywood.”

  “Another ambitious actress?”

  “They all are, his crew. She’s in Giant in a dinner scene. Stevens needed what he called a ‘statuesque beauty.’ Nell Meyers is the only one not infected with the acting bug—just yet. Though I’m afraid Lydia has put ideas in her head, too.”

  I nodded. “Jimmy’s assembly of bit players.”

  “Exactly. And the only one with any talent, clearly, is Jimmy.”

  “Mercy says he’s trying to distance himself from them.”

  “He already has. Lydia Plummer got on his nerves right away. We all saw it, but not her. Jimmy told me, I guess confidentially, that she wanted him to get her a juicy part in his next picture.”

  “Rather brazen, no?”

  “I suppose so, but not surprising. Very Hollywood, once you’ve been here for a while. Hollywood is the land of make-believe. Everyone makes believe they’re talented. At parties, the only refrain you hear over and over is, ‘I’m waiting for my break.’”

  I bit my lip. “Most probably don’t realize the word ‘break’ should be used in the past tense. Polly doesn’t look very happy. And for some reason they’re still staring at us.”

  “I hope you don’t get to know her, Edna. Despite her weird look, she’s known for her rude mouth. She can be harsh with folks.”

  I was curious. “How does Jimmy deal with her?”

  She shrugged. “
You know Jimmy. He flirts with her, he ignores her, he makes fun of her—he can be a deadly mimic. When he knew you were coming west, he did one of you…”

  “Me!”

  “Of course, he didn’t know you, but he knew we were friends. So he’d arch his voice, piercing Margaret Dumont falsetto out of some Marx Brothers routine—with you wanting to rename the movie Gigantic because it made you rich.”

  I grinned. “I love it. I do.” I glanced at the frozen, staring couple. “But Tommy Dwyer intrigues me, a boy who unashamedly takes his coloration from another, and isn’t afraid to be mocked. By God, he even does his hair like Jimmy’s.”

  “What else does he have? Parking cars? Weekend auditions at the Beverly Hills Playhouse? He wants to stay in the sunshiny world of L.A., and, if he can be Jimmy’s occasional understudy or stand-in, so be it. It buys cheap red wine and Mexican food and New Year’s Eve, maybe, at LaRue’s on the Strip.”

  “And they all know this femme fatale Carisa Krausse?”

  Tansi glanced at the couple, then back at me. “I don’t think she was ever close to Tommy or Polly. More Lydia’s friend. Polly is close to no one. The girls don’t like her. But I’m invisible to her. Too old. I’m not a rival.”

  I made a face. “One thing I’ve learned is that women become invisible quicker than men.”

  “Some women are born invisible.”

  I recalled Tansi’s lonely, solitary childhood under the care of this nanny or that one, sent to a Swiss boarding school where no one liked her, dragged from one New York apartment to another by an effervescent, much-marrying famous mother.

  We ordered sodas from a waitress who never looked at us.

  Then Tansi nudged me, and I jumped. I found myself staring at a couple of gangly teenagers, perhaps eighteen or nineteen. The boy and girl were identical twins, with small mooncalf eyes set too far apart in round, expansive faces, with stringy arms out of place on such rotund frames, with corn-fed, slapdash grins on splotchy, acned faces. A strange couple, the two, standing there, shoulders touching, blocking the doorway, and vacantly grinning like gassed fugitives from a dentist’s chair. Worse, both were dressed identically in T-shirts, penny loafers, and red nylon jackets.