“So, boys,” Farrow called to them, leaning over the aisle and grinning in his tuxedo, “whaddaya say I take you fellas out for a late supper and we talk about your future?”
“I dunno . . . you better ask our manager,” Harry replied.
Louis elbowed him, but Ava only gazed at Harry, rolling her eyes. It was a different kind of eye roll than the one she’d given Farrow earlier. Harry could be cocky and ridiculous sometimes, and for that she was grateful.
44
The city of Los Angeles projected a rare combination of enervation and harmony that night. The sun had long since set, but the evening was warm and balmy, laced with only the slightest hint of Pacific chill. The wildfires that usually haunted the mountains during that time of year were dormant, the Santa Ana winds at peace.
Buster Farrow decided to take the two prospective stuntmen he hoped to sign—along with the red-haired girl who called herself their “manager”—to the Cocoanut Grove, the popular nightclub in the Ambassador Hotel. He could see they were impressed from the moment the car pulled up to the stately hotel. Inside, what looked like a cavernous Moroccan palace was filled with tall palm trees, nightclub tables dimly lit with red lamps, glamorously dressed patrons, and cigarette smoke. A man in a tuxedo and a woman in a slinky gown were performing a duet onstage, dancing and singing as an impressive twenty-piece orchestra played in the background.
The maître d’ recognized Farrow immediately and ushered him to a prime table near the stage, lifting away a sign that read RESERVED with a discreet, white-gloved hand. It was immediately clear to Louis and Harry that Buster Farrow was a habitué, an important man who had waiters and maître d’s all over town “hold a regular table” for him at all the most fashionable establishments.
They sat for a while making small talk. The waiter who had showed them to their seats returned and poured them all a round of champagne without Farrow saying a word. For Farrow himself, the waiter set out a snifter of brandy and a fresh cigar. Onstage, various performers came and went. Every so often a showgirl finished her act and passed through the sea of tables. Farrow pulled an occasional blonde or brunette into his lap. Even sitting down, he was a bear of a man, and the girls got lost in his lap. He teased them and they swatted playfully and pretended to laugh with gay glee until they could wriggle free.
Finally, after at least thirty or forty minutes of Louis and Harry biting their nails while Farrow misbehaved as though all of Los Angeles were his fraternity and he was the president, it seemed the producer was ready to get down to business.
“So here’s the thing, boys—are you listening?” Farrow said, jabbing a heavy finger against the white tablecloth with surprising force and an imperious air, as though he were banging a gavel. “I can make you both stars. You heard me right: not just ‘stuntmen’—stars! Headliners! The two of you: the main attraction! That is, I can make Eagle & Crane a star act!”
“With all due respect, Eagle & Crane already is a star act,” Ava reminded him in a friendly voice. “If they weren’t, why else would they be sitting here with you?”
“No.” Farrow shook his head at Ava and turned back to Louis and Harry. His pale, almost colorless eyes flashed. “See, now, there’s the rub: You fellas don’t know what you have. What you have is local celebrity. Don’t go confusing local celebrity with true stardom. That’s a rookie mistake when it comes to Hollywood. A girl wins the local beauty pageant back home in Nowheresville, Iowa, and thinks naturally someone will give a hoot about her title here in Los Angeles, only to find out how little it means. No; I’m offering you something on a far grander scale than you can probably even imagine right now.”
Farrow’s words hit their mark. “Small fry”—that was the phrase Louis had used while worrying aloud. Buster Farrow had just confirmed it in no uncertain terms.
“All right. I guess I’d say we’re pretty interested,” Louis admitted.
“What do you propose?” Harry asked.
“I propose a feature film,” Farrow said. “We’ll use the characters you’ve created to tell a fresh story, and we’ll pack it with action, of course, to make use of your talents! Picture your names up in lights!”
“That sounds good to me,” Louis said, the grin on his face turning outright goofy with enthusiasm.
“Of course, we will have to rework the act a bit, fix a few of the major problems . . .”
“What problems?” Ava asked.
Farrow looked at her, acknowledging her question, but stubbornly directed his answer back to Louis and Harry.
“Well, right now, as it stands . . . it’s all out of whack. I mean, you have the villain doing all the best stunts! The audience wants to root for the Eagle character—the wholesome, all-American one, you know? He needs to show he is more powerful than Crane. There’s a reason most villains are portrayed as cowards, ya understand? If you keep on the way you are, I shouldn’t be surprised if your audience decided to root for the villain instead; the way you fellas have it, he comes out looking like the brave one! You’re sending the audience a mixed message . . .”
“Okay, sure,” Harry said. “So you want Louis to do more of the showstopper stunts?”
“Not necessarily, kid,” Farrow said, snapping his fingers. “We just need to have Eagle doing all the fancy stunts—ya got me?”
Louis, Harry, and Ava stared at the producer, puzzled. But before any of them had the opportunity to speak, Buster Farrow cut back in.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “I get it: The Jap loves doing the reckless bits. Okay, sure—that’s all fine and well. I don’t need Louis to do the risky stuff . . . We just need to be strategic about things.”
“Strategic?” Ava asked, her eyes narrowed.
“Yeah, sure. If you fellas like to keep your arrangement how it is, we just need to shoot plenty of shots of Louis’s face, and then put Harry here in the Eagle costume to get the actual stunts on film.”
“But . . . but . . . isn’t that . . .” Louis stuttered and blinked.
“A lie?” Harry finished the question for his friend.
Buster Farrow eyed Harry with surprise, looking him over from head to toe. The kid was handsome, Farrow observed; it was a shame the kid was an Oriental, otherwise Farrow could ditch the freckle-faced kid and make this one his only star. But Farrow read the newspapers. Invading China, shaking hands with Hitler—Japs weren’t exactly popular nowadays.
A lie, the kid had said. Farrow erupted with a soft belly laugh.
“That’s Hollywood, son,” he replied. Amused, he regarded both young men, so somber, so serious. Were they serious with this earnest Boy Scout business? “The magic is in the story, my friends,” he continued. “That’s how Hollywood works, that’s what we sell, that’s what we do!”
He set about toasting a fresh cigar the waiter had set out for him, clipping it and holding it steady as the flame licked the edges.
“Look, I’ve seen you fellas perform. It’s clear we’ll need Harry to pull off certain stunts,” Farrow said. “I’ve watched the film closely; he makes it look better anyway. My assistants have written up a list of who’ll do what, and that’ll go into the contract.”
Farrow continued. He decided to come out with it and be direct with the boys, but at the same time he knew enough to switch to an easier, more casual voice.
“It’s clear that we can’t very well have a Jap parading around as the front man, eh? He’s very talented, but you, Louis, are obviously much better suited to be the face of this hero act. You get it, right? The audience wants Eagle to triumph; they want Eagle to be an all-American sort of hero, ya see? What I’m saying here, now—tonight—is that I’m offering you fellas a joint contract. Work it out however you want. But Eagle needs to rule the show when it comes to stunt work, and when he takes his mask off, he needs to look like that.” He pointed to Louis’s freckled face.
“The writers, well, they
’ll refine your script, and it’ll still be a battle between Eagle & Crane, good and evil, blah-blah-blah. But the stunts—my point is, nobody has to know which one of you is in the Eagle costume—not from far away, at least.”
He paused and extracted a business card and a fountain pen from his inside jacket pocket.
“And,” he said, arching an eyebrow at the two young men sitting before him, “as far as compensation, this is what I’m prepared to offer you.”
He wrote a number on the back of the card and slid it across the table. Neither moved to pick it up. Finally, Ava reached her hand out and lifted the card so all three of them could read it. She struggled to hide her surprise but found her eyes widening in spite of herself.
“Each,” Farrow added.
Now it was Louis and Harry’s turn to stare at the number goggle-eyed.
Buster Farrow lit his perfectly toasted cigar and puffed at it, getting it to draw. Silence greeted him from all sides of the table.
“Look,” he said, “maybe you want this Hollywood contract, and maybe you don’t. You’d be a pair of fools not to, but I’ve seen plenty of fools in my day.”
Ava cleared her throat.
“If we understand you correctly, Mr. Farrow,” she said, “the contract you’re offering is a joint one: They both have to sign for it to be valid, and it specifies that in certain instances Louis is to play the face of Eagle while Harry performs Eagle’s stunts?”
“Precisely,” Farrow said, pulling his cigar out of his mouth to point at Ava directly. “She gets it,” he said in an approving tone.
“Indeed,” Ava murmured. She peered at Louis and Harry, wondering which was likely more deeply insulted. No one spoke for several minutes. Onstage, the orchestra boomed and wailed with the happy, frenetic sounds of a big-band number.
“Look, boys,” Farrow said with an air of finality, “I don’t need you to gimme an answer right away. While you make up your minds, we’ll put you up in style and I’ll have my people keep you entertained!”
He snapped his fingers again.
“As a matter of fact, I’d like to have you up to my house in Santa Barbara this weekend. I’m throwing a little party and I’d like to introduce you fellas to some other folks in the movie business.”
“A party?” Louis echoed, a little dazed by the barrage of information Farrow had just dumped on all of them.
“Yes! A party! You’ll stay the weekend! Bring your little manager along.” He sent a condescending wink in Ava’s direction. “You’ll all have a grand time!” He hit Louis on the shoulder, and the mood shifted yet again. Buster Farrow was done with them, for now.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me . . .” Farrow stood up from the table and, leaning over with his big bear posture, shook Louis’s and Harry’s hands in turn. “It’s been a pleasure, fellas. Think about everything I said. One of my assistants will send a car for you to bring you up to Santa Barbara.” As his lips continued to shape the last of his words, his eyes were already wandering from the table. It was clear he intended to chase showgirls for the remainder of the evening.
“Oh!” Ava called after the producer, remembering. “Mr. Farrow?”
He stopped and turned around.
“What about Buzz and Hutch?”
“Who?” Mr. Farrow asked. “Oh—those your pilots?”
“Yes,” Ava replied. “About the contract: Does the contract you mentioned include provisions for them as well?”
“We can use ’em and pay ’em by the day, if it makes you fellas more comfortable, but I got plenty of pilots just as good. It’s unique stuntmen I need! That’s who the contract is for.”
With that, Buster Farrow strode away, his cigar gripped between yellow teeth.
“We were offered a Hollywood contract—that’s something,” Louis said as they watched Farrow walk away.
“Or half of one,” Harry grunted.
“That was a little insulting, I guess,” Louis admitted. Being told that one of them was cut out to play only the body of Eagle, and the other cut out to play only the face . . . Ava glanced between them and inferred the answer to her earlier unasked question: Harry seemed to be the one taking it more personally.
Louis shrugged. “I could maybe see past that if you can, Harry. I mean, it’s a Hollywood contract, and worth an awful lot of money.”
Harry didn’t say anything.
“But Buzz and Hutch,” Ava reminded Louis. “They aren’t part of the official contract. They might feel a little left out in the cold.”
“Farrow said he’d hire them if we wanted,” Louis replied.
“He said ‘pay them by the day,’” Ava countered, shaking her head. “Doesn’t sound too good.”
“We don’t know that for certain,” Louis insisted. He hooked a finger under the bow tie around his neck and tugged. It was obvious how badly he wanted the contract, and the awkwardness of his desire was thickening the air around them all. Ava suspected it had something to do with the multi-digit number Buster Farrow had scribbled on that slip of paper moments earlier.
“What do you think about all this, Harry?” Ava asked. In truth, she couldn’t completely blame Louis. Now she looked to Harry.
“I don’t know,” Harry murmured softly, shaking his head. “Tonight reminded me a little of that first dinner we had with Earl.”
“Well, see? That turned out all right . . .” Louis said.
Ava snorted. “That depends an awful lot on your definition of ‘all right.’”
“It brought us all together.”
Ava looked at Harry. He shrugged.
“That part’s true enough,” Harry said.
“Let’s think about it,” Louis said. “Like we promised.”
Harry nodded.
45
The next day, Louis, Harry, and Ava were chauffeured from Los Angeles north to Santa Barbara. They rode along the coastal route the whole way up. The drive took hours, but the ride was scenic.
Ava noticed straightaway: Their new Hollywood prospects had put the three of them in very different moods. Louis was over the moon, drunk with happiness, and ready to sign on the dotted line. Ava was cautious, leery. She wanted to know more about Farrow’s terms and get him to include Buzz and Hutch in the contract. Harry was quiet as a stone, a stoic yet thoughtful expression on his face.
They reached Buster Farrow’s weekend house a little past three. But here the word “house” was not quite adequate, for the structure they encountered as they pulled into the long private drive revealed itself to be an enormous Italianate mansion with a plunging cliff-side view of the Pacific Ocean. The lawns leading up to the stone veranda that encircled the entrance were vast and emerald green. A narrow, rectangular, and vaguely Arabic-looking fountain ran the length of it all, a stripe of watery oasis that started from a tall scalloped stone dish on the veranda and flowed in terraced steps down the sloping hill, cutting through the lawn like a long turquoise tongue unfurling. Italian cypresses stood at attention, and the topiary struck such perfect, tidy poses it looked as though every shrub was trimmed by a gardener on the hour. Bougainvillea climbed the mansion’s ochre-colored walls, a riotous fuchsia flame that snaked around the countless arches and porticos.
Louis, Harry, and Ava stepped from their car and blinked in the glaring brilliance of it all. The day was balmy and mild; the ocean beyond twinkled as though someone had spilled a thousand golden coins upon its blue, blue surface. The air was scented with jasmine and orange blossoms.
Inside the marble foyer, a butler brought them a tray of drinks and directed them each to a room for changing and freshening up. Ava allowed herself to be escorted away by a maid. She gave Louis and Harry a little wave as the staircase branched in opposite directions.
“Early festivities begin at five o’clock,” the butler informed them. “Mr. Farrow asks that you wear evening attire.”<
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In each of their rooms, Farrow had arranged for a set of new clothes to be laid out on the bed: a pair of white summer suits for Louis and Harry, a silvery slip of a dress for Ava.
“Well, you two sure look like a pair of leading men,” Ava commented when they reconvened downstairs at five o’clock. It was meant as both a joke and a compliment, but as soon as the remark was out of Ava’s mouth, it reminded them all of Farrow’s complicated movie offer.
“I suppose that was his point in picking those suits out,” she added more soberly. They hadn’t decided if they would accept the offer—they had hardly discussed it—but Ava realized that just by being in Farrow’s house, they were inching closer and closer to acceptance, whether they liked it or not.
Farrow’s party guests had already begun to arrive. Glamorous, swan-necked women drifted in through the front door, were each handed a coupe of champagne, and floated through the house and out to the garden. Elegant white-haired men mingled in clusters, laughing and trading stock tips, their voices echoing against the marble walls of the mansion’s hallways. Here and there a famous leading man or silky-haired starlet arrived with much to-do, air-kissing and introducing the grim-faced guardians at their elbows. Louis recognized a few of them from last night at Farrow’s red-carpet screening.
“There you are!” boomed a familiar voice. The three young friends turned and saw the tall, broad-shouldered figure of Buster Farrow approaching. “Come, come!” he commanded. “I’d like for you to meet some folks,” he said, ushering them toward a pair of open French doors. “Out in the garden.”
The back garden was even more impressive than the front. Another impossibly green lawn sloped toward the horizon, whereupon it plunged dramatically downward to reveal a beach just below. The shallows glowed turquoise. Colorful flowers burst into the air from every angle: from pots and urns, from trellis arches and romantic gazebos. Somewhere a live band was playing jazz. Louis turned his head to locate the source and saw that a pair of tennis courts had been outfitted with a polished wooden dance floor, a sea of tables covered in elegant white silk tablecloths bordered the outskirts.
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