I got off the boat and walked up the narrow path that led to the shore. I was still rocking. I was wasted and I felt a terrible pain in my shoulder, like I’d been over exercising. Michel’s boat was left in the bay, the sea had calmed and they didn’t discover his body until the next morning.
When I woke up, when my morning arrived, the sun was shining on my self-portrait and for the first time, I saw a deceptive smile. The man in the painting was glad for what I thought I had done. And he was already in prison; those strokes of paint crisscrossing his face were bars.
MALIGNING MEMORY
I was traveling in the cinematographer’s car the next night, taking long shot stills of Norma and Joe as they stopped at Schwab’s Pharmacy. This little side trip gave me an opportunity to dwell in somebody else’s predicament. Joe Gillis stopped in the drug store to buy cigarettes for Norma but ran into his assistant director friend, Artie Green, and his girlfriend, Betty Schaefer, someone still involved in the ambitious days and nights of trying to close in on a modern Hollywood deal. Betty, beautiful Betty with a wonderful guy for a boyfriend, had some interest in Gillis’s writing. She saw herself writing with him, little creepy lizard claws of desire clung to Joe from Betty’s voice as she said she wanted to work with him on a script, that she didn’t want to stay a reader, that she wanted to write.
I remembered the feeling but for me it was wanting to paint, not write. I was a very good talent agent for other painters’ gifts but my talent seemed to be overlooked when someone considered one of my canvases. I always ended up alone with my growing collection of artworks that served no one but the swelling head that I had about myself.
The following morning, I arrived at my psychiatrist’s office inebriated, not fall down drunk by any means but with the loose consciousness that turns up dark truths, the memory charger was fully loaded. I sat down and, right away, I began to tell Alice about the day on the boat, Michel’s last day on this earth.
My psychoanalyst’s wind chimes were active again that day. They lulled me into a kind of trance. I didn’t need any hypnotism to remember what happened on that windy afternoon in Bora Bora. I was down in the cabin, for certain, and the voices I heard weren’t from my imagination. And one of the voices was from a man who had all the right ingredients for my hatred and my jealousy.
As I spoke to Alice, visual memories crept into my mind. I didn’t stay, drunk, in the cabin below when I heard a struggle. I poked my head above the deck and saw two men arguing.
“I told you never to do that,” a big strong man of around forty-five said to Michel. “Where are they?”
This was the man that Katharine had an adventure with so many years before – Hitu. He was the leader of the Toomatakuls, that culture that lived on the opposite side of Bora Bora. Their bodies were otherworldly. Men of Hitu’s stature embodied the earth they walked on. They had the power of mountains in their huge arms and legs, the strength of trees in their torsos. The power to easily put away a man who had treated them the wrong way.
Hitu picked up my iron edged umbrella
“Hitu,” Michel said, “what do you want? Money?”
“Alexander,” I heard Michel yell out. But I didn’t respond. I didn’t move from my hiding place. I seemed incapable of exerting a muscle.
The bludgeoning of Michel’s skull was horrifying to hear but not because I was sickened by Michel’s painful death, it’s because I enjoyed hearing Michel’s painful death. Thump, thump, thump. Michel stopped making a sound but the beating continued until I could see blood oozing down the deck. After the body fell, I heard Hitu’s feet squealing around, uncertain of where to go or what to do. For a moment, I thought that I’d be his next victim, that I’d have to give up my life for being a witness. But Hitu was aware of only one thing, that he’d taken a life with his passionate hatred, that he had to get away at once.
Then I heard a splash. Hitu went overboard and by the time I looked out of the cabin, I could see his muscular arms slashing through the water and propelling him forward to the shore.
Hitu killed Michel.
“And you relishing it made you take responsibility for the murder,” Alice said.
I leaned back on my psychiatrist’s couch, sighed deeply like a man who had just discovered the blackest truth about himself. And then, all my dreams of having committed a murder came rushing back to me, the feeling of guilt was still there but it was for doing nothing to save Michel. I remembered picking up my umbrella, examining the fresh blood that stuck to the iron handle, then looking around and discovering that I was alone in that bay. I steered the boat into shallow waters and jumped off, taking the murder weapon with me, taking the next boat out of Bora Bora and then the next flight out of Papeete.
I lay on Alice’s couch after those memories. I felt like I was back home at my mother’s house and more recollections popped up. A whole series of darkly dressed men had emerged from my mother’s bedroom when I was sitting in the kitchen trying to play with my toys. And each time, after they’d gone, I’d walk into my mother’s room and was injured by the sight of her sweat matting the hair on her head, the legs that had been splayed open on the bed, then her casual lifting herself up to get a cigarette.
I picked up a cigarette myself, lit it at the end of my session. I was freer now, a heaviness had been lifted, but there was still the reality of my being investigated.
I left Alice’s office and returned to the set. It was a cheery place; at least Norma Desmond was cheery. She was reliving her days as a Mac Sennet bathing beauty, twirling her parasol, then flopping on the couch next to Gillis. He was smoking like me, preoccupied to the point of exhaustion, short tempered while he was taking in Norma’s entertainments. I felt we had something in common as he lay on the couch. He was distracted by the thought of his culpability in the false hopes that could lead Norma to madness just as I was distracted by the thought of my culpability in my brother’s death.
I couldn’t concentrate on my job; thoughts of Katharine’s howling misery when she discovered Michel’s death were rattling my nervous system. Then Norma Desmond made a mockery of my pain when she dressed up as Charlie Chaplin and started performing. For a moment, then, I could see myself back on the set of City Lights; I was at the start of a career that was now coming to an end. I thought of Katharine when I first met her, when I was finishing up my job on City Lights, when we were starting a passion that had ended in murder and suicide.
Norma’s Chaplin ended her iconic shuffling feet when Max interrupted her. There was a call from Paramount and Norma was convinced it was because of her script. She thought it was Cecil B. DeMille. Instead, it was someone else. She was furious. She was a star. She wanted to talk to DeMille personally. She refused the call. She wouldn’t respond to these calls until she was good and ready.
“She was good and ready three days later,” Gillis would narrate. They drove on to the Paramount lot, went straight to De Mille’s shooting stage and that’s where we ended for the day.
Billy was in good spirits. He was on time and on budget and the buzz around town was that he was making a little masterpiece that would rock his Hollywood elders. Billy enjoyed the feeling of being a pain in the side of the industry. I was enjoying his good mood, a little bit of it rubbed off on me, despite my breakthrough about Michel’s death that morning. I even thought about going home and finishing the canvas on my easel, maybe taking off the prison bars. But Billy had another plan in his mind.
“Hey, Alex,” Billy said, “Why don’t we have some dinner; then, I’ll take you back to the cutting room and show you how the picture’s turning out.”
Who could refuse this? We had dinner at Musso & Frank’s. Billy was talking up the old days, remembering names and stories that I’d long forgotten. He was animated as we drank but a little disappointed that I couldn’t match his enthusiasm.
“Is it Katharine?” Billy asked.
“Not exactly.”
“Then, what exactly.”
I laughed a l
ittle, and then dropped my bomb. “Ever been a murder suspect, Billy?”
“Not since I was Walter Neff.” His smile vanished. “Now look here, Alex, what have you gotten yourself into? I feel like I fell into one of my own scripts.”
“You didn’t, Billy. I did.”
Then I told Billy about the murder, about my memory coming back, about being relieved that I didn’t do the killing myself, and about the little Tahitian man that didn’t agree with me.
“Crap,” Billy said, “Look, you’ve got nothing to worry about. Remember John Angler?”
I had to think for a minute.
“Double Indemnity?”
I remembered.
John Angler was the legal advisor on Double Indemnity. He was a big criminal lawyer and helped Billy solve some of his script problems on the film.
“The day after tomorrow,” he said, “When we shoot the De Mille scene, I’ll invite him by if he’s available. You can tell him your story and see what he can do about it.”
I thanked my Zechkumpan. For a minute, I was back at UFA with him, helping him work on his crazy plots, only this time he was helping me work out my own.
THE OPENING
It was a strange mixture of young blood and geriatric money on display at Potala Gallery’s rechristening. All of Margaret’s vintage Hollywood world had come out of their plush caves to enjoy this evening, cavorting with the young elite, mostly blood sucking studio executives who wanted to improve their images, who put deep stock in this private gathering of the cognoscenti. A painting might be purchased but, most importantly, just to be seen at this exhibit of old Hollywood fulfilled their publicists’ red carpet dreams.
Most of the cast and crew of Sunset Boulevard were in attendance, clamoring around Margaret Wilcox, even her screen image, Gloria Swanson. Margaret was in the best of moods, gracious and coy, allowing the crowd an opportunity to be part of the fantastic fantasy that was her life.
“Thank you,” Margaret said to James Stewart as he complimented her on the magnificent offering of treasures that she had arranged to be put up for sale. Margaret’s intimate friends were there – Renoir, Degas, Matisse, Van Gogh, even a Velasquez that she convinced MGM’s Arthur Freed to part with. Sales went fast, egos were polished with each deposit placed on a work.
Potala had never looked so opulent and it certainly never took in this much money. I was counting my share of the take in my ever pleasant mind, shaking hands with the fortunate winners of rarely sold art, paintings and drawings mysteriously surfacing from the bottomless pit of money that had bought them in Margaret’s limelight. Those were the years when silent pictures gained a voice and untaxed incomes were being exchanged to anoint another era of money and the peculiar ostentatiousness that came with it.
Potala was basking in a light that resurrected Margaret’s pride of ownership and elegance.
“All this gathered loot makes me feel like I’m in the opening of a new bank,” Billy Wilder said. “Are you giving out original sketches as door prizes?”
Margaret laughed with a careful preservation of dignity as she reached out her hand. She allowed her old paramour to kiss it like a gentleman. Margaret was at the center of her hype; she put Sabrina at the door to greet the elite associates as they came back into her life. I stood in the reception line in the center of the show, next to Margaret. I could hear all the congratulations for Margaret and the polite acknowledgements made to me. The time was perfect for a hallucination as the walls throbbed with the pain that had been put into the production of this great art.
I saw a Monet pond come to life just for me. The water in it glittered in the hint of sun that managed to pierce the artist’s collective impressions of an age when art was as alive as my imagination.
An hour into the opening, after most of the guests had arrived, Margaret took Billy aside. She was speaking through the many martinis that had supported her when she asked him about Sabrina, what Billy thought was going on between her and me.
“It’s a perpetual art opening, Margaret, only it’s done with a bit more subtlety. Alex is trying to win one heart not a crowd of fans.”
“What was that?” Margaret said.
“I said that the recipient of your generosity isn’t worshipping the ground you walk on, that Alex is only at peace when he’s around your assistant femme fatale. He’s taken the fatality out of her and is enjoying the woman.”
Margaret gave Billy a grotesque grin, denying the words that he spoke and looking over at me as I took Sabrina in a corner of the gallery to see if the evening wasn’t capsizing her. I should have been more concerned about my own sinking, though, because the art on the walls had begun to sprout in my mind. Flora grew from them, a series of vines that encircled the throats of the guests and strangled them. I turned away from my vision and focused on Sabrina’s soft face. She was free from the attack of the art because she wasn’t there to use it as a backdrop. Sabrina didn’t need it like Margaret did. She had all the divine attributes of a painting’s beauty without any of its demonic sensitivities, for the art on my gallery walls were demonic that night. They became that way because Margaret infused them with her take on glamour. The exhibit was not a display of art; it was a display of Margaret’s qualities of vengeful despair.
Sabrina and I watched as Margaret and Billy stood in front of a Degas, apparently discussing its artistic characteristics but really talking about Sabrina’s fate. Billy saw her future as full of promise and happiness while Margaret, drunk enough, confessed that she would poison her if she had the chance. Despite his past with her, Billy maintained his sense of humor. He enjoyed the irony of Margaret announcing her desire to do the same damage to her current competition as she had almost done to Billy’s first wife.
“But the poison might get you before it gets anyone else,” Billy warned Margaret as she stood in superiority over Billy and all the other guests.
“I will do what must be done. I’m a preserver of fine things.”
“An embalmer maybe,” Billy retorted before walking away from the grand dame.
“Enjoying the circus, are you,” Billy asked as he stood by me while Sabrina wandered off. “She’s completely off her rocker now. She sees Sabrina like my first wife, bragging that she’s going to do away with her.”
I turned to Margaret at Billy’s warning and saw the self-satisfied would-be murderer as she was sidling up to her admirers, filled with an advanced case of immodesty. Margaret eyed Sabrina as an omniscient mortician might. She could see her on display like one of her darker works of art.
SAMSON AND DELILAH
I had had my return to glory and now it was Norma Desmond’s turn. When I arrived on the lot that day, we were shooting the scene where Norma goes to visit DeMille, to seal the deal on her movie.
DeMille was on Stage Eighteen, directing his version of the Samson and Delilah story. After all these years of success, the old man was a priceless relic from the silent days. He could get anything he wanted. He could have brought back Norma Desmond but he was still under the command of the studio heads and if he green lighted Desmond’s grotesque plan of playing the teenage Salome, he would go down with her. Still, his heart was with Norma as she visited him on the set of Samson and Delilah and soaked in the adulation that she had been missing all those years that she had been away from the screen. As she sat in DeMille’s chair, a microphone slowly swung by and collided with the feather in her hat. She pushed it away with disdain.
Those calls from Paramount, Max the servant had discovered, were about her car, the antique Isotta-Fraschini. Like Norma, the antiquity of its beauty had a certain sentimental charm but not one to be taken seriously. They wanted it for a Bing Crosby comedy. As she sat on the stage, impervious to the way that Hollywood had changed and the way in which it cast out Norma Desmond as though she were a Philistine, property men were checking out her car.
When DeMille discovered the reason for all the calls the studio had made to Norma, he was about to tell her but bef
ore he could, she broke down in tears, so happy to be back at the studio, “to make pictures again.” Making pictures were also in the younger and more ambitious hearts of Betty Schaefer and Joe Gillis. Joe visited Betty in her cubbyhole readers’ office, the kind later used for sound editors and other insignificant providers of the technical prowess that pictures now demanded.
Joe and Betty had a brief meeting. She wanted to write a script with him from his original story. She had the interest of the producer but she needed his talent just as much as DeMille no longer needed the passed over talents of Norma. Gillis was on his way up if he could get there. Norma was already down but she didn’t know it.
“And remember, darling, I don’t work before 10:00 in the morning and never after 4:30 in the afternoon.” DeMille guided her out of the studio and back to her car, a car that would never be used for the Crosby picture. DeMille, too concerned for Norma to give her the news about those Paramount calls, told his assistant to forget about the Isotta-Fraschini, that he’d buy the studio five old cars if they needed them. Then, he returned to the sound stage and Norma returned to her preparation for the cameras that would never roll again.
Was Gillis Norma’s Samson? Was she preparing herself to take away his gigolo powers if he tampered any further with the ego of a woman that was woven into the light of fame? If so, the light might go out suddenly and permanently leave her in the darkness that she’d been living in for twenty-five years without realizing it.
On the way back to Billy’s office, he introduced me to John Angler, the criminal defense lawyer. I discussed my situation with Angler and he promised me that I’d be kept safe, not to worry about anything. He left me with enough inspiration to believe in myself again, at least for a while.
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