Happy Little Bluebirds

by Louise Levene

  ‘I mean, I hate to pry, Mrs Murdoch, but what is it you actually do?’

  ‘I was originally hired to assist Mr Peyton …’

  ‘Oh yeah? Like we don’t have assistants in California? He didn’t look like he needed a whole lot of help and, besides, nobody’s seen him since Labor Day. You aren’t invited to script meetings any more. You don’t even type. And yet here you are: house, auto, model gowns. For what? You’re not Kiss’s mistress, are you? That’s what Connie thinks. Or his long-lost daughter?’

  Evelyn played for time.

  ‘I think War of the Worlds is being put on hold for the moment,’ she said, ‘but Mr Kiss still wants me to keep up the voice coaching for Rindy in case they have a change of heart.’

  ‘They shelved the air-force movie too. Nine of the guys in the squadron they had lined up didn’t make it back to base and another four wouldn’t screen test too well. I don’t think the Senate Committee would have worn it anyhow. Kiss is already having to answer charges of incitement. I don’t think anyone’s going to let him near a war movie – not unless Hitler bombs Bel Air. Then we might be in business. Yes?’

  Evelyn shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘All right, Mrs Murdoch, if you want to be an international woman of mystery, that is fine by me.’ He put her evening wrap around her and touched her neck with his lips. ‘You certainly look the part.’

  *

  Otto Von Blick lived in a long, narrow house clad in aluminium-coated steel and surrounded by a very large, very shallow puddle of water that gave it the unnerving look of a U-boat surfacing from a loch. There was a large Ford headlight set into the sheer side wall facing the road, an architectural joke which gave the stark metallic house the air of a prison block (and gave its owner nightmares).

  Felix had not been on Von Blick’s guest list but his new, supercharged personality made short work of the butler and he stormed past him into the hallway. A chatty gang of latecomers were still kissing one another hello and Felix joined them with wife Bernice on his arm, leaving Evelyn a few paces behind. The invisible Mrs Kay was on particularly irritating form.

  ‘Why do you do this to me, Bernice?’ Felix’s accent, sharpened by the time spent with his brother in Forest Hills, had risen to a querulous whine. ‘Every time we go out you do this to me, Bernice. Every goddamn time. Yes, I know we always stand with a crowd of bums under the staircase. Yes, dear, I know that dress makes her look like a dolphin on a diet but that’s no reason to say so. The woman can’t help her looks, Bernice.’

  In a darkened room at the far end of the hall a large cinema screen was showing the final cut of Knights of Love. The closing moments had Guinevere alone in her turret room waiting for her cruelly forgiving husband to climb the stairs. Magda Malo’s expression was unreadable as she made love to her reflection in the camera-side looking glass but she registered a whole screen test of emotions thanks to a dozen violins and the unheard shouts and whispers of Von Blick (‘No passivity in scenes!’).

  The lights came up and the movie screen glided away behind a wall of burnished copper. The guests drifted out to the main salon, congratulating their host en route. PZ’s Miss Hansen probably dreamed of preview cards like this: a triumph; one of your best; spell-binding; socko stuff, Otto baby.

  Otto baby made his escape into the hallway, lit a cigar and smiled a hello to Evelyn, putting an arm around her waist. His fingers lingered – was that why so many starlets wore satin and velvet? – and he steered her back to the main room which was empty apart from a few waiters collecting abandoned champagne glasses.

  The walls were of palest grey with carpets the colour of ice cream. A trio of spotlights had been mounted at strategic points (fireplace, piano, sofa) waiting for faces. There were three, large, museum-worthy paintings. The largest canvas hung opposite the wall of glass doors that ran the length of the terrace and looked at first glance like another window: a Rousseau of tree ferns and lotus blossoms that mirrored the garden outside. The other two pictures had obviously been selected to match it: a Picasso in the correct shade of viridian and a large, bluish canvas showing a trio of nymphs surprised while bathing. Still surprised? You’d think they’d be used to it by now.

  They weren’t his favourite paintings, Von Blick confessed, but they were the only things that didn’t look out of place in the new house. His two Renoirs had been relegated to the bedroom (and then only after the architect had signed off the building).

  ‘But my favourite is through here.’

  The study walls were lined with leather the colour of his cigar and the only painting was an Annunciation, portrayed by the artist with a Peeping Tom intensity. Mary was discovered in long shot as the mysterious winged messenger brought the news to her gold and crimson boudoir, the Holy Spirit shining down on her face like a follow spot. The shutters behind the Virgin were open and through the window shimmered the landscape beyond: an umbrella pine and a lapis-blue California sky: the reminder of a world elsewhere.

  Von Blick thumbed a speck of dust from the frame.

  ‘So. You want the full tour?’

  On their way to the terrace he paused to slap a passing actor on the back.

  ‘Bennett! Good to see you.’ Then, more softly, ‘Everything OK between you and Jeanette?’

  ‘Sure …’ The man hesitated. ‘Sure it is. Why?’

  ‘Glad to hear it.’ The director held on to the actor’s hand and bashed his biceps some more. ‘You’re like a son to me, Bennett baby.

  ‘Gets ’em every time.’ Von Blick chuckled and put his arm around Evelyn as they crossed the steel bridge over the moat-like swimming pool.

  ‘So, Mrs Murdoch, how do you like my house?’

  ‘I’ve – never seen anything quite like it.’

  ‘Ah! A diplomat. I like that.’

  The outbuildings, screened by a cypress hedge, included stabling for half a dozen horses and an entire separate annexe of kennels for his Afghan hounds. Their full-time veterinary nurse (they were all martyrs to mange) shared the servants’ wing with a French chef, a pair of Filipina housemaids and the butler. The dogs’ nurse had a crush on the butler but was barking up the wrong tree in Von Blick’s considered opinion.

  It had all been featured in the House Beautifuls that Evelyn had flicked through at the Chicago beauty parlour which said that despite the extensive staff quarters, a three-car garage, four sitting rooms and three bathrooms there was only one bedroom. ‘A bachelor’s house’, the magazine called it, but one might just as well say ‘an orphan’s house’ or ‘a misanthrope’s house’. Even Evelyn’s mother-in-law had a spare bedroom.

  Mrs Murdoch’s spare bedroom was a north-facing box with ugly yellow chintz curtains and ugly brown furniture. The top drawer of the tallboy was kept bare for the imaginary clothes of the imaginary guest but the rest were filled with a mad memory game of haphazard items: a manicure set, corn plasters, a tin opener, a pot of fish food, a patent enema and a cut-glass powder bowl with a swansdown puff whose porcelain handle was shaped like a ballerina’s legs and feet as if a tipsy Markova had fallen in head first. A surprisingly frivolous and lovely thing for her mother-in-law to have bought. It was still in its cellophane box.

  The bottom drawer of the tallboy housed a large collection of widowed gloves, far, far more than the always very particular and parsimonious Mrs Murdoch could ever personally have lost. It dawned on Evelyn that she must have found them in the street, in railway carriages, beneath pews, and had been stockpiling them in hopes of a usable pair. All but three were right hands.

  Evelyn’s reverie was interrupted by another friendly pinch.

  ‘I like you, Mrs Englishlady. You know when not to talk: the perfect house guest – except I never have house guests.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘My flat in Berlin always had six schnorrer cousins saving on hotel bills. When we’re doing the plans here I figure with one bedroom I stop them coming but my cousins won’t be coming. Not ever. I could have all the bedrooms I want.’

  E
ven twelve violins would have struggled to fill that silence. Evelyn kissed his damp cheek and the two of them walked back to the house where they were met by Paula Silverman, furs in hand.

  ‘It’s hello and goodbye, I’m afraid. I need to get back. Dad hasn’t been well. They got a nurse but you know how Mamie likes to fuss.’

  ‘Fuss?’ Von Blick shook his head. ‘If a man has a stroke I think his wife can fuss a little, no? Fuss. Tell Mamie I’ll call.

  ‘They say he won’t last the week,’ he murmured as they returned to the drawing room where Queen Guinevere was busy fascinating a silver-haired man with diamond shirt studs.

  ‘I want to hear all about it,’ she said, collapsing sideways on to a sofa, stage-managing her descent so that her gown fanned prettily around her. She draped a forearm across the back of the seat, flawless face troping to the kindly light, staring up at her prey, eyes on full power. The man took her hand in his, utterly mesmerised.

  ‘You must promise me you’ll give the stage another try: you’re wasted out here. It isn’t worthy of you. I’d love to see you play Hedda Gabler. Saint Joan maybe?’

  ‘You read my mind.’

  Felix was in the far corner of the room in the angle of an L-shaped couch amid a halo of laughing faces. He was offering to recite Paul Revere’s Ride. What style did they want this time? A voice cried ‘Cagney!’ and Felix launched into a hilarious, pitch-perfect impersonation.

  He spotted Evelyn as he finished and rose to greet her with a guilty smile.

  ‘You all know the lovely Mrs Murdoch?’ A black barathea arm curled around her and undecided fingers tickled her midriff. He pulled her round to face him and gave her a kiss on (or very near) the lips.

  ‘I’m supposed to be your date and I’m neglecting you. You free for lunch tomorrow? Terrific. And I’ve got some tickets for a concert later if you like? Yes? I’ll pick you up around two – give you a chance for some beauty sleep – not that you need it.’

  ‘So you do own a lipstick.’

  Rindy McGee was drinking pink lemonade from a champagne saucer. She was wearing ruffles.

  ‘What happened to the soignée midnight blue?’

  ‘Mother said I looked too old in it. She was right but it still sucks.’

  She swapped her glass for Evelyn’s champagne.

  ‘I finally got around to reading that Martian book. No wonder PZ got cold feet …’

  Rindy had been trained to keep her face bright (a photograph could happen at any moment at this sort of gathering) but gave a genuine smile at the sight of someone behind Evelyn. Warm fingers were walking up the white satin buttons on the back of her dress.

  ‘So, you finally found the zipper?’ said a voice in her ear. ‘And how’s kitty? You got a name yet?’

  Evelyn span round into her key light to answer him.

  ‘Happy.’

  She wished there was a mirror taped somewhere so that she could see what had made him look at her that way.

  ‘Dance?’

  His shirt front smelled of starch and cedarwood (‘His cheeks are as a bed of spices, as sweet flowers: his lips like lilies, dropping sweet-smelling myrrh’). Von Blick’s ingenious marquetry dance floor had been cut to look like the view from a skyscraper, the flat roofs of tall buildings looming vertiginously beneath their feet. They danced across the rooftops past Magda Malo who was now dancing with her Broadway producer. The actress moved with a dutiful, almost listless ease, like a rag doll nailed to his shoes. Monroe set a course for the open windows then rumba’d Evelyn into the lee of a yew hedge and took her breath away with a long passionate kiss, his body keeping the rhythm of the dance band. She put up a hand to stroke his just-razored cheek. As she arched her back she felt his arm tighten around her another notch.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said – just like a movie.

  It crossed her mind that she ought to let Felix drive her home but Felix had already motored off to join a bottle party with his new friends and so the two of them walked down the drive, climbed into Ted Monroe’s big blue car and drove into the night.

  It was gone twelve but the air was still warm in West Hollywood. A door opened and a woman in an art-silk kimono ran out from the porch of her bungalow.

  ‘Heathcliff! Heathcliff, where are you, you bad, bad little man?’

  A viciously clipped French poodle ran out from beneath an oleander bush and yapped past her into the hall.

  ‘I guess that’s Heathcliff,’ said Monroe.

  He led Evelyn giggling through an archway, along a cobbled path and up a winding staircase to a loft-like studio lit by the lanterns that hung from the trees outside. He switched on the radiogram – ‘Stardust’ in A flat – carried her to the bed, kissing her skin as he bared it, mapping her contours with his lips, whispering how he’d been waiting to take her in his arms since he first buttoned her into that sexy white dress. Then the kissing stopped. Relax baby; beautiful, beautiful baby.

  The radio was still playing softly when she woke next morning: a dance tune this time.

  ‘Morning, beautiful. Sweet dreams? You were smiling in your sleep.’

  He was standing by the bed wrapped in a bath towel.

  ‘You want breakfast?’ He sat down beside her and pulled back the covers. ‘Or maybe it’s too early for breakfast …’

  More kisses, more shockwaves of pleasure. Another dance tune on the wireless to put them both back in an unmade movie, except that these were the scenes that the camera never showed. The director might take you as far as the altar, or even the bridal suite, but he relied on the idea that the audience knew or could imagine what followed and Evelyn didn’t know and had never imagined. When Rhett Butler carried his prize upstairs, Evelyn knew there must be more for Scarlett O’Hara than a hard hand pinching her breast, an unshaven chin scouring her face, the jerking grunt that let her know it was over. There had to be and there was. Much more. ‘Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.’

  She was woken by the brush of his lips on her neck. The music had stopped.

  ‘OK, let’s try again: eggs for Madame? Coffee? Orange juice?’

  ‘Tea?’

  He flicked her teasingly with the corner of the bath towel then wrapped himself in it and sauntered handsomely into the kitchenette to brew coffee and scramble eggs and grill bacon while Evelyn took a quick shower and wriggled nakedly back into her chilly satin gown. She stood at his side by the stove, unzipped and minus her underwear. How was a guy supposed to cook eggs with her standing there like Harlow in heat?

  Only now, in the daylight, could she see the apartment properly. The vaulted wooden ceiling was like the interior of a galleon – or Mr Peggotty’s upturned boat house. Looking out through the dormer window over his desk she could see a maze of winding paths and fantastical turrets and unexpected windows like an Oxford college built for munchkins. There were cats everywhere, camouflaged by the undergrowth like a puzzle picture in a children’s comic (how many cats can you spot?).

  The apartment was furnished like a set-dresser’s idea of a writer’s room. The bookshelves were bent under the weight of a hundred screenplays and the desk was sandbagged with folders and reference books, every one thickly bookmarked with scribbled notes.

  There were copies of his novels on the mantelpiece together with a set of baseball directories, a Bible and the manuscript of The Magic Mink.

  ‘Rindy couldn’t understand why you didn’t publish it,’ said Evelyn as he served her breakfast.

  ‘Rindy liked it well enough but Bitsy had it sat on. I’m surprised she hasn’t burned Rindy’s copy by now. She took it very personally – you ever see that dame without her furs? It spooked her, the thought of them all watching her every move, how gauche she was, how lowbrow, how five and dime.’

  He rubbed the back of his finger against the silk of her bodice.

  ‘You could wear furs: white fox. You should always wear white.’

  She pulled a face.

&nb
sp; ‘And have you put me in a book? Besides, I’m hardly the type.’

  ‘Phooey. You look like a goddess.’

  Breakfast was cold by the time they ate it. He took the second pot of coffee over to his desk and began whittling pencils with his pocket knife. Evelyn looked at her watch; Felix was picking her up at two.

  ‘I should go. Could you possibly give me a lift?’

  ‘Nothing would give me greater pleasure but, sadly, Sunday is mending day.’ He gestured to the pile of red folders. ‘There’s a cab number on the wall.’

  ‘A cab? In this?’

  She pulled at the creased white satin. Ted Monroe said she would find something in the closet. It was an unexpectedly tidy closet with shirts, jackets and suits ordered in rows on the long rail. Beside them at the far end hung a pair of shirtwaist dresses with white pilgrim collars. Evelyn suddenly felt very cold. Monroe was way ahead of her.

  ‘My sister left them.’

  It was far too small, she said. No it wasn’t, he said, and zipped her into it with a far-too-practised hand. There were women’s shoes on the closet floor.

  ‘Your sister has very large feet.’

  ‘Don’t let’s play games,’ he crooked a finger under her chin, ‘and no one’s going to notice your feet – not with that figure.’

  As she waited by the gate for the taxi she had ordered, a sleepy redhead in evening dress was parking her car. A ghastly glance of sisterhood at Evelyn’s silver lamé slippers. Not notice? In this town? They could probably tell you the brand.

  The cab sped through the sleepy Sunday streets and up on to Sunset Boulevard past limousines heading from brunch to lunch. The driver left her at the entrance to the main house (no, she didn’t work here, it was her home, and no, she wasn’t free that evening). She tripped through the yew archway to the cinder path. Mr Hashimoto had been busy and the garden was very nearly shipshape. The grapevine had been clipped back and tied to its trellis with neat knots of green twine. The ground beneath it was carpeted with winter pansies. The dead hibiscus flowers had all been swept away and the fallen leaves had been cleared from the pond which was newly stocked with goldfish. As she rounded the hedge that screened the pool house she stopped short. Mr Hashimoto had cemented over all the cracks in the paving and the terrace was lined with pot after pot of flowering standard rose trees, half red, half white, exactly like the Alice in Wonderland bushes in front of PZ’s office (‘The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose’).