by Guy Adams
‘I don’t like that kind of picture.’
‘Who cares? I’m not asking you to watch the fucking thing, I’m asking you to be in it. Take the cheque, damn you – they’re few and far between these days.’
‘What happened to all the romantic leads?’
‘They went to the younger and brighter guys. Come on, Frankie, you know this – don’t make me go through it with you.’
‘I’m not old.’
‘In Hollywood terms you are, Frankie. Besides, you know it’s not just about your age. Your name isn’t what it once was.’
‘Because of Elizabeth.’
‘Because of Elizabeth, and if you insist on staying here …’
‘You’re the one that said we should be married in the first place.’
‘That was then. Years ago. Aeons. Whole generations have passed. Back then it was the thing to do, then she began having her … problems.’ Brutal as Fabio could be, he knew better than to be too blunt in front of Nayland. ‘At which point she became poison. You should have been out of this marriage three years ago. Nobody would have cared. If you’d done that …’
‘I’d still have a career?’
‘Oh hell, Frankie, you still have a career now if you want it. But you’re not making it easy for me, you know? You’re being obstructive, being …’
‘Faithful?’
‘Don’t give me that!’ Fabio seemed genuinely angry now, leaning back in his chair and fixing his client with a puffy-faced stare. ‘You’re supposed to be an actor, damn it, so learn when to maintain character and when not. Back then it made sense for the two of you to get together. Christ, it’s tried and tested … the people love a romantic story. You gave her legitimacy, she gave you a profile. You had a couple of years of box-office gold. But then …’
‘Everything changed.’
‘What doesn’t, Frankie? Life is one big change and you have to ride it. Elizabeth was great when all she had to do was make love to the camera. But you know as well as I do that it’s hard to maintain the pretence of a poor girl made good from Connecticut …’
‘Wisconsin.’
‘Wherever. The point is, audiences liked that story, they bought into it. What are they going to think when this all-American beauty opens her mouth and they can’t understand a word she says?’
‘Her accent’s not that strong.’
‘Frankie, she sounds like she’s chewing the words up and spitting them out. Nobody cares with the likes of Lugosi, they love it, they make him even more horrible … but Elizabeth? Who wants to fall in love with someone who sounds like she milks yaks for her morning coffee?’
Nayland might have admitted that he had.
‘She’s taking lessons.’
‘I know, with Cecil Lundy. He’s good. Hell, he’s the best. But he tells me it’s like trying to push soup uphill. She ain’t going to be Fay Wray any time soon. Besides …’ Fabio sighed and lowered his voice. ‘I hate to say this, you know I do, but she’s losing her looks, she’s getting old. If she still had the magic she had ten years ago, then, screw it, I could have sold her into anything, whatever she sounds like. But now?
‘Hollywood is a heartless bitch, Frankie: it doesn’t give two fucks about your feelings. Elizabeth has had her day. Short of a miracle she’s not going to be working again soon and unless you jump ship she’s going to end up taking you down with her.’
Elizabeth lay back in her bed and let the breeze of the fan dry the sweat of sex from her. Just for a moment, the briefest of seconds, she was happy.
It never lasted.
‘I don’t pay you to sleep,’ she told the Puerto Rican, pushing him with her foot. He sat up, bleary-eyed. What was he on? He was nineteen or twenty but his pretty face was hanging from the bones in a way that spoke of strong dope.
‘You want go again?’ he asked, showing some of the stamina of his age. A listless hand grabbed at her thigh.
‘No, I want you gone. Both of you.’
She slapped at her other paid lover, an Eastern European who had tanned his skin to a perfect bronze that must have taken almost constant effort to maintain. He was a beautiful little bastard, she thought, and he knew it.
They slid off the bed and Elizabeth sighed as she watched them shuffling around the room in search of their clothes. Two perfect statues. The Puerto Rican sneaked a quick glance in the mirror, checking himself out. And why not? She remembered a time when the mirror had been a good friend to her rather than an embarrassing relative she tried to avoid. She avoided it now as she got up and moved over to her dressing table, picking up an envelope of cash and flinging it to the Eastern European. He made to open the envelope and check its contents but then thought better of it. There’s a little brain in there, she decided: he knew well enough not to risk angering her by implying that he didn’t trust her.
In silence they filed out, the Puerto Rican offering a half-hearted wave as he left the room.
Alone, Elizabeth gave it a couple of minutes and then got up. She took a cigarette from a box on the dresser and stood smoking it in front of the mirror. She analysed what she saw: her whole body appeared to hang an inch or so lower than it should have. She experimented by cupping her breasts higher and pulling the loose skin over her belly towards her hips so that her abdomen was taut again. But sooner or later you had to let go. She turned to her side, scowling at her ever-increasing buttocks, pouring themselves across the back of her cellulite-pocked thighs. It was as though her perfect body was becoming hidden inside an ill-fitting bag of skin and fat.
Her face was the worst: deep lines around her eyes and lips, the constantly reappearing grey roots in her hairline, the puffy bags beneath her eyes. Her face showed every year and more – she had lived hard here in America and, for all the effort that had gone into hiding that fact from the general public, her skin knew.
Elizabeth stubbed the cigarette out against her reflection and went to the window. She could hear the voices of Fabio and Nayland filtering up from the garden so she opened the window and leaned out, trying to hear what they were discussing. It took no time at all for her to wish she couldn’t. It seemed that she was fated to have her fading powers pointed out to her from all sides.
She felt the increasingly frequent sensation of panic building up in her chest and had to sit down on the bed before she fell over. Usually the tremors faded quickly but this time her whole body felt as if it had tensed, her lungs short of air, her heart beating away like a studio fanfare.
She struggled to her feet and ran into the en-suite bathroom, convinced she was having a heart attack, quite sure that she was going to collapse at any moment. Catching sight of her panicked face in the bathroom mirror, all gritted teeth and red, blotchy skin, she might almost have wished it. Almost. She opened the bathroom cabinet and hunted through the pills, sending bottles flying as she found her downers. She popped the lid and took two, sitting down on the lid of the toilet to try and get her breathing back under control. Eventually the panic subsided, leaving her feeling drained and spent – and every single one of her forty-four years.
Nayland was doing his best to let Fabio’s words bounce off him like droplets of rain. If he sheltered from their impact they couldn’t soak him and chill his bones.
‘I think it’s best if we stop talking about this,’ he said, ‘I’m not leaving Elizabeth and so the conversation’s pointless.’
Fabio sighed and shook his head. ‘God knows what she’s done to inspire such loyalty. Any wife of mine acted like she did …’
‘But she’s not your wife,’ Nayland said, digging his nails into the surface of the table. ‘So just drop the subject.’
Fabio held up his hands in surrender. ‘Fine, fine … So, what about the horror picture? Can I tell Chester you’ll see him?’
Nayland started to shake his head. ‘It’s not my kind of movie.’
‘It’s the only kind of movie you’re getting offered,’ Fabio shouted, finally losing his temper all the way. ‘What the
hell point is there in my representing you if you don’t ever take a goddamn job? Nothing lasts for ever, Frank, not even money. You’ve got to start working again or soon there’ll be nothing left for any of us.’ He leaned over. ‘And what do you think the “Countess” upstairs will do then, huh? You think she’s going to hang around once the cash has dried up?’
‘All right,’ Nayland said. ‘I’ll see Chester.’
Fabio was instantly all smiles again, ‘There we go – finally he sees sense. Money in the bank and my boy’s face back up on the screen where it belongs. You won’t regret it. Chester makes good movies, it’ll be great. This is a whole new audience for you.’
‘A screaming one.’
‘Screams, laughter, tears … who cares as long as they’re making a fucking noise, right?’
‘You always were in tune with the art of this business.’
‘Art? I tell you what art I like, Frankie boy: pictures of dead presidents. Those portraits are food for the soul.’
Elizabeth appeared at the top of the steps leading down to the pool. She was still dressed only in her silk robe, her hair vaguely brushed. She wouldn’t dream of making an effort for Fabio – he wasn’t important enough to her – though she kissed both his cheeks with such enthusiasm that a casual observer might have thought otherwise.
‘Darling Fabio,’ she said. Was she trying to mask her accent a little? Nayland thought she was. ‘How lovely to see you, as always.’
‘And you, sweetie,’ he replied, ‘and as beautiful as ever.’
She gave him a scathing look which he had the common sense to ignore.
‘So what brings you here?’ she asked. ‘Countless offers of work, no doubt?’
‘A movie role for Frankie, yeah,’ Fabio replied. ‘A great opportunity to bring him in front of a whole new audience.’
‘It’s a horror picture,’ Nayland muttered.
Elizabeth wrinkled her nose. ‘I can’t abide them.’
‘Thankfully the great American public doesn’t agree with you. It’s all they want these days,’ Fabio retorted.
‘And nothing for me?’ she asked, knowing the answer but wanting to goad him.
‘I thought we agreed that we would hold off on staging your comeback until you’d completed your sessions with Lundy?’
‘Oh, but I grow impatient.’
‘Timing is everything, dear heart – unless you would be happy to let the studio redub your voice?’
‘Any director who tried that with me …’ She smiled. ‘Well, I doubt I’d ever talk to him again.’
Nayland could see that Fabio was considering making a joke of that but thankfully the manager decided against it at the last moment. Instead he just shrugged. ‘Then I guess we just have to bide our time –’ he couldn’t resist a final dig, ‘– and hope that people don’t forget you. Hollywood has a short memory.’
‘They won’t forget,’ she replied, ‘as you’ll see at our party at the end of the month. Anyone who’s anyone will be there.’
‘A party, is it?’ Fabio rubbed his hands together. ‘If there’s one thing nobody could forget it’s the sort of shindig you guys used to throw.’ He looked at Nayland. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘Did I forget to mention it?’ Elizabeth smiled and offered her best attempt at ‘coy’. It made Nayland think of a panther eyeing up the grisly remains of a gazelle. ‘I’m such a scatterbrain.’
In fact, she had only just decided on the idea. As Fabio had rightly pointed out, their parties had been legendary in the business and if there was a better way of making herself feel important again she didn’t know of it.
‘Well, you know I like a good party,’ said Fabio, ‘so at least one important mover and shaker will be there!’ Neither Elizabeth or Nayland deemed that worth a reply. ‘I might bring a new client of mine. Lovely boy.’ He glanced at Elizabeth. ‘You’d like him, I’m sure. He’s going to be huge …’
‘I hate him already,’ Nayland replied, not altogether joking.
‘The world will always be full of bright young things,’ Fabio said. ‘You can’t put your foot down on Wilshire Boulevard without stepping on a beautiful face.’
‘All the more reason to wear heels.’ Elizabeth smiled around the filter of a cigarette and both men wondered whether she meant to eat it or smoke it.
‘Those things will kill you, so I hear,’ said Fabio, who smoked like a chimney himself.
‘Darling,’ Elizabeth said, smiling, ‘nothing could kill me.’
Fabio left finally, after he’d persuaded Patience to provide them with a couple of jugs of fruit punch and bored both Nayland and Elizabeth to distraction with his pompous tales of life at the cutting edge of Hollywood business. Most of his stories were bullshit – actors knew that easily enough when they heard it (after all, they produced enough of it themselves) – but they let him talk. For all Elizabeth and Nayland’s apparent indifference, the idea that the agent or manager was king was something still bred into them. You got nowhere in this business if the suits took a dislike to you. Hollywood was a puppet show, with people like Fabio holding the strings.
‘I’ll see you at the party,’ he called, marching back through the house and towards the front door, a strutting walk that indicated he had things to do, business deals to strike. ‘Let me know the date and time and I’ll help spread the word.’
His driver, a long-suffering Pole called Teodor, snapped to attention when he saw his boss appear. He dashed around to open the passenger door, managing just in time as Fabio’s pace didn’t slow from doorway to steps to the inside of the big black Daimler: it was all the same world to him.
He gave one last wave before telling Teodor to take him back into town.
‘Look at them,’ he said to himself, watching Elizabeth and Nayland step back inside their house, ‘wanting the whole world on a plate but never willing to put themselves out.’ This wasn’t altogether charitable, of course, especially since they had played host to him for the last hour or so, but if there was one thing managers hated it was their clients: life would go so much easier without them. ‘Fucking vampires,’ he muttered and turned back to watch the road ahead.
With the enforced conviviality gone from the house, Elizabeth and Nayland were left in the cold silence of the hall. Nayland tried to think of something to say that didn’t have a barb in it but the words wouldn’t come. Eventually Elizabeth just walked back out to the patio and he followed, cursing himself for falling into the role of the faithful hound, trotting along behind her.
‘A party, then?’ he asked, phrasing the words as non-judgementally as he could.
‘A party,’ she agreed, pouring the last of the fruit punch into her glass. ‘You don’t mind?’
Nayland shrugged. He did mind: he knew what happened at her parties and he had long ago tired of them.
‘Oh, don’t be such an old prude,’ Elizabeth sighed, knowing full well – indeed, relishing – the fact that he disapproved. She fixed a venomous smile on her face, having decided that it might amuse her to goad him a little. ‘Why do you always try and get in the way of me enjoying myself?’
‘I hardly do that,’ he replied, ‘as you proved earlier.’
She feigned confusion for a moment. ‘You mean the boys? We were just having a little fun.’
‘Is that what you call it?’
‘Yes, that is what I call it. So would you if you learned to unwind a little rather than walk around with that stiff British stick up your ass.’ She paused. ‘There was a time when you used to enjoy it yourself. Not with me, obviously, but you had friends of your own.’
‘I just wish you could be a little more …’ The words failed him.
‘A little more what? Discreet? Or virginal? I’ll never be either.’
‘That much is clear.’
‘Perhaps you would like it if we shared my little adventures.’ Elizabeth leaned back, parting her legs a little, trying intentionally to anger hi
m. ‘Would that make it easier for you to stomach? I don’t mind sharing, you know. I might even let you have a taste of what it is that you’re so hungry for.’
Nayland’s mouth curled into a scowl and she laughed.
‘Perhaps not, then. I don’t think I could sleep with someone who was disgusted with me.’
He clenched his fists, tired of being toyed with. ‘If that were true, darling,’ he said, getting to his feet, ‘I doubt you’d ever find anyone to share your bed.’
He walked away from the table, reassuring himself that, whatever backbone he might have lacked, he still knew how to make a strong exit.
‘You little shit!’ Elizabeth roared, not even for one moment willing to let him have the last word. ‘Not everyone looks at me like you do! They adore me, you stuck-up little fool! They’re lucky to be able to touch me!’
‘Then why do you need to pay them?’ Nayland asked, stepping back inside the house just as she threw her glass at him. A shower of glass fragments ricocheted off the door frame and the punch splashed against the panes of the French windows, exploding out into a Modernist painting done in blood-red.
‘Bastard!’ she screamed after him. But he kept walking.
Patience heard the sound of breaking glass and resigned herself to ‘another one of those days’. Working for Elizabeth and Nayland was like being a governess for a pair of unruly children, trying to deal with the mood swings of one and the constant sulking of the other.
She beckoned over one of the maids, taking her away from where she was vacantly sweeping around the corners of the dining room. ‘Outside, dear,’ she said. ‘Dustpan and brush. Get in and out as quickly as you can and do try to avoid getting under the mistress’s feet. When she’s in one of her tempers she’s likely to tread on you.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ the maid replied, making no further comment nor even expressing any sign of an opinion. This was good in Patience’s book: as far as she was concerned, maids should be nothing more than ambulatory brooms, tools deployed silently and practically to perform a task. Still, this girl was more mindless than most. Patience tried to remember where she had come from. Not in the least bit interested in the lives of her staff outside their duties, the information was slow to surface. She had a vague memory of a poor family, a Catholic father who didn’t altogether approve of his daughter working in such surroundings. Patience could understand that: Hollywood was peopled entirely with egos and sinners, which was what made it such a fertile feeding ground for the dreams of those who made their business there. If she had a daughter – which she didn’t and never would have – then she was by no means sure she would allow her to be in service in such a home.