“Yes,” I said. “It’s late.”
“I do hope you’ll both be at my party tomorrow night?”
“Oh?”
“Yes, Emily’s mother is coming down, and I want to give a big party to celebrate our engagement. I do hope you’ll come.”
“Well, we’d . . .”
“I’m going to rent all of El Paseo. That’s sort of a special spot for us. We first fell in love there while Willy was playing our song.”
“Who’s Willy?” I asked.
“Why, the owner. I thought you knew him well.”
“Oh, you mean Mr. Shelburne.”
“Yes, I thought I’d go in and have a talk with him tomorrow morning and then drive out to the airport to meet Emily’s mother and stepfather. Shall we say nineish?”
“Let’s say nine.”
“Good night.”
“Good night.”
XIV
My wife and I had foolishly expected that things would get back to normal at last, without taking into consideration the obvious fact that when Leander Starr is in the vicinity things are never normal.
Dressed in my most casual, I was having a second cup of coffee in the patio and considering inviting myself for a dip in the Maitland-Grims’ pool when Starr appeared in one of his dandiest London-dandy outfits—gray worsted, bishop’s cuffs, hacking pleats, double-breasted waistcoat and all.
“The bridegroom cometh,” I said.
Starr looked a little startled, but he said, without too much conviction, “Clarice has many sterling qualities.”
“Sterling and gold and diamonds and oil and . . .”
“Shut up and give me a cup of coffee. Emily has convinced me that it would be the part of wisdom to go out to the airport with her and Bruce to meet Caroline and that man they insist upon calling Bunny. I don’t mind telling you that I’d far rather be at the lab cutting my film. Howsomever . . .” His conversation trailed off, but I was beginning to get the picture. Now that he was back on his feet again, had made a picture, had every expectation of getting out of debt and into the chips, wild horses wouldn’t have prevented him from turning up at the airport just to show Caroline that he was still a man of parts.
I yelled for Guadalupe to bring out an extra cup, and she shuffled onto the scene with her usual gloom. But when she saw Starr she brightened. “Ah, Señor Starr, buenos días! We make peecture—me, mai dotter, mai sohn, mai oncle, mai cozeen. You pay now. All come to . . .”
“Ah, yes, yes. But I’m not the one to pay you. Señor Aristido González is the producer. He has the money and, of course, he will be around this morning to pay the extras—as well as everyone else.”
I said, “He even owes me a day’s pay as an extra—fifty pesos. My wife, too.”
“Sixty, dear boy. Dress extras are paid more. For ton, you know.”
“Well, I plan to collect every centavo of it—even if we give it to the Red Cross. Anything is better than letting that hog get his fat hands on it.”
“Ah, poor dear Dennis. Thank God I haven’t your small, narrow, suspicious mind. We did a superb picture together, did we not?”
“You did. Lopez did. The actors did. But I don’t know what González did except make trouble and one thousand U.S. dollars a day.”
“You simply do not understand Aristido.”
“I’m afraid I do and what I also understand is . . .”
Emily came out looking as though she were about to meet weekend guests at the Paoli station. “Good morning, Mr. Dennis,” she said. She seemed rather nervous—and who could blame her, what with a meeting between her father and Caroline in the immediate future. “I wish Bruce would get here. Their plane is due at . . .”
“Don’t worry, my dear. We’ve plenty of time. Remember, they have to go through the aduana and all that business about tourist cards and health certificates. We have hours.”
“I still don’t like to keep Mummy waiting.” I didn’t blame her.
The conversation dwindled to spiritless questions and answers about more coffee, where I thought Caroline and Bunny would like to have lunch, whether the Bamer was a suitable hotel for the Strawbridges or whether the Maria Cristina would have been more their speed.
Eventually Bruce arrived, all slicked up for meeting still more future in-laws. He greeted Emily with a kiss that made me think more of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation than betrothal. I had to look away, and I noticed that even Starr, as the proud father of the bride, seemed uneasy.
“Well,” Bruce said, coming up for air. “I’ve arranged everything with Willy.”
“Willy?” I asked again, knowing perfectly well what he was talking about.
“Shelburne. I’ve taken all of El Paseo for tonight. Now I’ll have to round up some guests. Just a sort of spur-of-the-moment party. You’re coming, of course?”
“Oh, of course. I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”
“I shall have to leave on the early side,” Starr said. “I actually shouldn’t be wasting the whole day when there’s my film to cut. But anything for you, my dear,” he said, patting Emily’s hand.
“Daddy, Bruce, I think we really ought to be going. Mummy hates to be kept waiting.”
“Don’t I know,” Starr said, wearily rising to his feet. “Well, dear boy, until tonight.” They all piled into Bruce’s glorious car, and then they were off.
I busied myself doing such important things as reading the Mexico City News and the morning mail. My wife breezed past, dressed for town, and departed in a taxicab with the information that she was going to patronize such fine old Mexican establishments as Richard Hudnut and I. Miller in preparation for Bruce’s party. I was in the midst of an elderly issue of The New Yorker when I noticed a respectful delegation of some twenty-odd people standing around me. They were Guadalupe’s many relatives, servants from the other apartments in Casa Ximinez, and various people from the barrio. All of them had been extras in Valley of the Vultures. Abelardo, who knew the most English and who was the most politically advanced, served as spokesman.
“Señor Dennis, sir, please, sir.”
“Yes, Abelardo?”
“Señor Dennis, sir, all of us have served as supernumeraries in Señor Starr’s film, as have you yourself, along with Señora Dennis.”
“That’s right,” I said to him as though he weren’t quite all there.
“Señor González, the impresario, has promised us all that we would be paid our fifty pesos for each day of working on the film. I realize that it does not seem very much money to a wealthy Americano such as yourself, sir, but to all of these people in the barrio fifty pesos is a large sum, and some of them have worked for two days, even three days.”
“Mm-hmmm.” I wondered just what he was trying to get at.
“But as of yet Señor González has not paid any of us.”
“I know where he lives,” I said, hoping that they might just string the old crook up. “It’s out in the Pedregal.”
“Ah, yes, Señor Dennis. We know also. A very grand establishment. We have tried very many times to reach him on the telephone. Impossible.”
“Yes?” I said almost eagerly. “I believe that he said his telephone was broken.”
“No, sir, I am sorry, sir, but the telephone of Señor González is not in a state of disrepair. It has been unconnected for many, many months by the company. My cousin Rosario works for the company—a junior executive, sir—and I have it on his own vow that Señor González has not paid. It is for that reason that the telephone in his fine house is no longer functioning.”
Guadalupe sputtered something in Spanish.
“Also, sir, Guadalupe says that a cousin of hers was employed for many years by Señor González and was dismissed without the salary of her ten terminal weeks. He has not a good reputation, and all of these people worry because he say that he pay and yet he don’t pay. We know that you are his friend. . . .”
“His friend? I hardly know the man, and what I do know I don’t like.”
This was translated, and there was a feverish jabbering. “In that situation, then señor, the supernumerarios of the film have elected you as delegado—delegate for negotiations—to see Señor González. You are to be head of the Men’s Committee while Guadalupe will be leader of the Women’s Committee.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We have chosen you, señor, to visit the home of Señor González to collect the money that has been promised to us. Here is the list of names and amounts.”
“But I . . .”
“Were you not also in the picture, señor?”
“Well, yes, but . . .”
“Have you been paid, señor?”
“Well, no, but it’s only . . .”
“Then we have correctly done you the honor to elect you as the most diplomatic of us to represent the barrio in its disputation with Señor . . .”
“Diplomatic? I can’t speak Spanish worth a damn, and González can’t . . .”
“I will accompany you as interpreter, señor.”
“And then his place in Pedregal is a long way from here. I don’t even know exactly where . . .”
“I will act as guide and chauffeur with Señorita Ximinez’s automobile. Señorita is occupied with my cousins from the Vog Salón de Belleza. She will not need the Hispano-Suiza—or know that our delegation is employing it.”
I didn’t want to get mixed up in this thing, which seemed strictly a localized fracas, but looking at the eager faces of the rest of Starr’s extras, I knew that I’d hate myself forever if I said no. “All right,” I said. “When?”
“As soon as señor changes his clothing?”
“Change my . . . What’s the matter with what I’ve got on now?”
“Oh, no, señor, this must be a formal delegation. You have perhaps an evening suit?”
“No, I don’t! Not down here. Would black tie do?” In the end we settled for an earnest navy blue with hat and tie to match. Guadalupe was dressed in her best black silk and some elaborate earrings. A white carnation was hastily tucked into my buttonhole, and we were ceremoniously helped into the back of Madame X’s Hispano-Suiza. A meticulous list of the names of the extras—including Dr. and Miz Priddy, Major Maitland-Grim, Mrs. Worthington Pomeroy, Mr. Guber, the Texas honeymooners, and us—was placed in my hands. It contained names, addresses, and number of days worked. The total was a bit over five thousand pesos—not quite four hundred dollars—but I knew how much it meant to the people in the barrio. There was a resounding cheer as we set off.
The only time I had ever visited the González place before, it was locked up tighter than Paradise. This time the gates were wide open, and Abelardo drove right up to the front door, which was also standing agape. Guadalupe and I politely rang the bell. No sound could be heard. Then I pounded at the open door. Still no reply. I walked into the house. All of the old Riveras and other pictures were gone. The living room still had its furniture, its stumps of candles. The fireplace was overflowing with papers. It reminded me of the last time I had visited Starr’s grand offices above Fifth Avenue. I had a sinking feeling that all of this had happened before and that our producer had flown the coop, but with the eager, trusting faces of Guadalupe and Abelardo gazing hopefully into mine, I had to make some pretense of putting up a search. I lifted the telephone receiver and jiggled the cradle. It was still dead. There were still no lights. On the terrace down below, the swimming pool had been drained and nothing but a couple of puddles of stagnant water and some nasty sort of submarine growth remained.
“We try upstairs?” Abelardo said. “Sleeping quarters?”
There were only two rooms above. A very small one, obviously belonging to Heff as it contained books and magazines in English. A hopeful sign was that the drawers contained a few—not many but a few—things like shirts and socks and underwear. The other room was enormous. It held a vast canopied bed with a nest of stinking, tumbled sheets that couldn’t have been washed less than a year ago. There was some ponderous baronial-looking furniture and a tremendous oil painting of a fat nude of the sort that used to hang over bars in the gay nineties. But everything that was portable had gone. Dresser drawers gaped emptily. The wardrobe had been stripped of everything except an old, sprung, elastic garter. By now it was obvious to Abelardo and Guadalupe—González had simply decamped, taking with him whatever was portable, including, I knew, the money Starr had given him to pay for all of the expenses connected with the picture.
“It looks,” I said inanely, “as though no one is at home.”
“I understand, señor,” Abelardo said. “We thank you very much all the same. You would like to drive back now to Casa Ximinez?”
“First, let’s go to the police,” I said.
“Señor Dennis, that would be an impossibility.”
“Why? The man’s a thief. He’s promised you money for work you did, and now he’s gone. You know he’s gone, don’t you Abelardo—not a shirt, a suit, a tie left. The house wide open. The pictures missing. No sign of his car . . .”
“Yes, señor, I understand well. But I also know, señor, that no person in the barrio is a member of the union of cinematic performers. If we were to go to the police, they would only laugh at us and then be angry because we had appeared in Señor Starr’s picture. It is hopeless, señor. Please to get in. I will drive you back to Casa Ximinez. And thank you again, Señor Dennis. It is a very handsome suit.”
“Tonk you, señor,” Guadalupe said, looking at me with welling eyes. “You vairy good.”
Back home I shut myself into our apartment and tried to think—and also tried not to think—about Starr. It was one thing for thirty people in the barrio to be out a few pesos each, but if González had actually done what he so obviously had done, poor old Starr would be out every penny he had been able to raise toward producing his film. Nor had anyone involved with the picture a leg to stand on. Like the extras, everyone had gone into it without the comforting advantages of contracts or union protection. González had arranged it that way, and now there was no one to turn to. I placed a number of expensive and fruitless long-distance calls to New York. My agent was sympathetic but not very helpful. Yes, John Steinbeck and Bertita Harding had both had unsavory things to say about González, but unless contracts were available for examination . . . Using a lot of words I didn’t understand, my lawyer said things about extortion being proved, peculation, and absconding with funds. He also mentioned examining the contracts—if any—and suggested calling in the police and a Mexican-American law firm of his recommendation. A friend in the film business said that it was all a crying shame and that Starr was—or at least had been—a great director, but anyone who was fool enough to get involved with a thief like González deserved anything that happened. A harsh judgment, perhaps, but one that coincided exactly with my own. More discouraged than ever, I rapped on Starr’s door. No one was there but St. Regis, who was setting a bowl of caviar into ice and squeezing little rosettes and curlicues of some repulsive goo onto rounds of melba toast.
“Heavins, Mr. Dennis, just the very one I wantid to see.”
“I’d like to see Mr. Starr too. It’s very important.”
“And Mr. Starr would like to see you. He tellyphoned this very minit and says that you and Mrs. Dennis must come for cocktails. He says it’s urjint.”
“Well, tell him that what I have to say to him is urgent too.”
I went home and systematically telephoned all of the Lopezes in the Mexico City telephone directory. None of them was the correct Lopez. There being nothing else to do until I could see Starr alone, I did nothing.
How urgently Starr needed the backing of his friends was immediately evident at his cocktail gathering held in honor, more or less, of his third wife, Caroline Drexel Morris Starr Strawbridge, and her second husband. The guest list was small and strangely selective. The second Mrs. Starr, now Lady Joyce, was present along with her hosts Bunty and Henry Maitland-Grim. The prospective fifth Mrs. Starr, now Mrs
. Worthington Pomeroy, had not been invited. Emily Starr, the only spawn of four marriages and now the future Mrs. van Damm, was on hand, of course, with her fiancé. My wife and I had been rung in, and that seemed to close Starr’s book of “respectable people.”
Caroline had aged gracefully, as the saying goes. She looked like an idealized advertisement for Bradford Bachrach Photographer of Women or one of the many Mrs. Exeters who model dresses for those no longer young in the pages of Vogue. Her hair had gone gray early, and she had wisely made the most of it. Her figure was still good, and she had what is known in the trade as a “beautiful carriage.” To look at her summoned up all the visual clichés of snob advertising. You could almost see her pouring tea from a seven-piece International Sterling silver set while discreetly and expensively clad in a dress from Rosette Pennington, the skirt lifted just high enough to reveal McCallum stockings and long, narrow pumps from Frank Brothers. She would be saying to a man along the lines of Baron Wrangel or Commander Whitehead that she never worried about money because the Guaranty Trust did all that for her. She would be surrounded by Williamsburg reproductions from Kittinger. In the background one would surely see a stock maid hefting a pile of Wamsutta sheets and a lovable old retainer bearing a tray filled with Calvert, Justerini & Brooks, Black and White, and House of Lords whiskies. Through a window draped in Scalamandre silks, a terrace furnished in Woodward wrought iron would be visible; beyond that a Rolls-Royce, a Lincoln Continental, and a Chrysler Imperial in the driveway; and beyond that the Davey tree-surgery-ed verdure of the stately estate hastily mocked up by the studio assistants. Seeing Caroline toying with a canapé and a Martini, the discreet glitter of diamonds from Caldwell, the sober elegance of her Nan Duskin dress gave me a twinge of nostalgia for the old Wonderlax “class” ads. I almost wished that the future Mrs. Starr could be there to take a few lessons from her predecessors.
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