Looking for Garbo

by Jon James Miller

  Rumors out of Hollywood said that Garbo was retiring from films for good and that she’d secretly joined the ship the night before so as not to deal with the likes of us newshounds. Some jag-off paparazzi were even saying she was headed off to live in a castle on an island she’d purchased off Stockholm. I didn’t pay no mind. I didn’t care. I was just relieved to be away from Toes.

  Captain James Cook, master of the Athenia, a large man with a blonde beard and bushy eyebrows, had his first officers herd us up to the port bow. He emerged from the bridge and made his way down the external steps. And before he even stepped on the deck, the reporters assailed him with questions. He shut us down but quick.

  “I will not,” he said in a loud voice with pitch-perfect English, “confirm or deny that anyone by the name of Greta Garbo is listed in our manifest.” The captain then stared at us, daring us to question his authority. Which, of course, all of us did. And I knew how to talk to these Brits. Knew they liked to tell the truth. Ask them a direct question, and they most often answered truthfully out of reflex.

  “Captain,” I said, “Seth Moseley from The Journal here. Sir, has anyone joined the ship after leaving her berth in Montreal and before we came aboard this morning?”

  Everyone turned. The captain stared at me, knitting his bushy eyebrows as he blinked.

  “Affirmative,” he said.

  That got the crowd going. Confirming someone influential enough to organize a secret boarding after departure meant someone special aboard. A dignitary, for instance. Or a movie star, someone the caliber of Garbo. The newshounds could practically smell her.

  “Garbo’s been sighted in the salon,” a reporter from The Graphic said, and a feeding frenzy immediately erupted.

  We all broke ranks and ran down the Promenade, not a one of us sure where we were headed but determined nonetheless. We came en masse to open double doors with a gilded sign that read Grand Salon. The lot of us stormed inside without breaking stride.

  Sure enough, we found ourselves in a nicely appointed, art-deco-designed watering hole. And, like many of the ravenous dog packs that ran free throughout the city in those days, we sniffed out our prey. A single girl sitting at the bar. She was the right age and at the right angle, had more than a passing resemblance to Garbo, the movie queen.

  I could have told them she wasn’t Garbo, even before I laid eyes on her. Garbo wouldn’t be caught dead in such a public place. No, the girl was just another look-alike, one of thousands at the time. We almost scared the poor thing to death, all rushing her at once and popping flashbulbs in her pretty young face.

  Her screams brought our shenanigans to an end. The captain took no time in issuing the order. His first officers, more now than I’d counted before, rushed into the salon and pushed us back out onto the Promenade Deck. We’d had our fun. Now all of us were to be booted from the ship as soon as Athenia docked in port.

  Lady Luck looked like she’d run out on me for good. I stared over the railing to the portion of the deck I and my fellow hacks had been relegated to for the duration of the short trip into port. I eyeballed the waterline below. Must have been forty feet if it was an inch.

  I hadn’t lied to Toes. I didn’t swim. So, I’d either have to learn fast or come up with another land-based solution to keeping my toes attached to the rest of me. They’d come with me this far, and I wasn’t about to let them down. But short of Garbo miraculously materializing in front of my camera lens in the next couple of minutes, I’d have to come up with a plan of action. From here on in, my toes and I were on the run.

  “As I live and breathe,” a female voice said. I looked up into the eyes of Sylvia, a sob sister from The Graphic, a rival news rag that employed mostly female reporters. Sylvia eyeballed me while she smoked a cigarette at the railing.

  “Funny meeting you here,” I said with a nod.

  “Yeah, real laughs.” She blew out a trail of smoke. “What happened to you, Seth? You said you were going to call two weeks ago.”

  My mind raced for an answer. Sylvia was one in a long line of sob sisters, women who wrote the gossip columns, that I had loved and left hanging. My past was catching up with me in more ways than one today. I forced an easy smile while she stared, stone-faced, back at me.

  “Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “I was about to when something came up.”

  Sylvia took a deep drag off her cig then dropped it and crushed it under her heel. She walked from the railing to stand right in front of me, exhaled smoke straight into my face. I blinked and coughed while she leaned in to whisper in my ear.

  “You’ll never change, Seth Moseley,” she said. Then she kissed me, long and hard, smack on the lips.

  The newswoman pulled away, lifted her right hand to my face. For a second, I thought she was going to slap me, not that I didn’t deserve it. Instead, she wiped lipstick—“Cherries-in-snow,” her signature color—from the corner of my mouth.

  “Take care of yourself, Seth.” She tapped the end of my nose. “The next woman you love may not be quite so forgiving.”

  Then Sylvia turned and walked down the Promenade Deck away from the dog pack of reporters. A shiver ran up and down my spine as if someone had just walked across my grave. Sylvia had rattled my cage more with that kiss than if she’d smacked me upside the head.

  That was the power of women. Just when you thought you knew what they were going to do, they’d surprise you and do something completely unexpected. She reminded me of my one golden rule when it came to women: falling head over heels in love with a dame will only get you hurt, so love them and leave them as quick as you can.

  Too bad I didn’t heed Sylvia’s warning until it was too late. Until I was in way over my head with the most beautiful and powerful woman on the planet.

  2. ROPE-A-DOPE JAMES

  February 14, 2000—2:26 EST

  Seth Moseley Interview

  “Cut!”

  My boss, documentary film producer Martin Hinkle, simmered in the chair opposite Seth, the ancient reporter. Tom, aka Video Guy of Norfolk, switched off his video camera mounted on a tripod in front of the two men. Two practicals—halogen lights affixed to six-foot metal stands placed on either corner of the tiny room—kept the room cooking.

  “What,” Martin demanded, “does any of this have to do with an exclusive on Greta Garbo?”

  Seth put a hand up to cover his eyes from the glare. His nearly bald head gave off a faint blue hue, like a robin’s egg, under the hot lights. His red-and-green plaid shirt hung loosely on his skeletal frame. His body was literally wasting away from its battle with emphysema. For the first time since we’d arrived, I could see in detail the frail old reporter I had talked to over the phone from across the country.

  “If you’ll indulge me,” Seth said, enunciating each word. “It has everything to do with Garbo.”

  Seth lowered a thickly veined hand, index and forefinger stained brown from decades of handling nicotine, to once again reveal his wrinkled face under the stark incandescence. A plastic tube ran from his nose to a green oxygen tank behind his chair. He rotated his head to assess each one of us in turn. I wasn’t prepared for the penetrating gaze of his deep-set brown eyes as he scrutinized me.

  Seth Moseley had called me in response to an ad I’d blanketed in the classified section of numerous East Coast newspapers, searching for anyone still above ground with firsthand knowledge of Greta Garbo. I had an idea for a documentary on the movie star and talked Martin, my boss of five long years, into giving me a co-producer credit if I could get an exclusive.

  “Get me something fresh and dirty on the dead star,” Martin had said. He knew the old man had seen things that staggered the imagination. Seth Moseley had scooped the Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping, covered the Hindenburg Disaster and was on hand to witness burned bodies washing up on the Jersey Shore from the Morro Castle ocean liner fire. I couldn’t get him to shut up over the phone. And his biggest story was what we had come all the way to Norfolk to hear—a Garbo story no o
ne ever heard before.

  My empty stomach shifted as I looked on in uncomfortable silence. I hadn’t slept in over thirty-six hours. Hadn’t eaten in over eight, and that meal had consisted of a bag of overly salty pretzels and a Diet Coke on the plane ride I couldn’t afford. I glanced at the camera’s eyepiece over Video Guy’s shoulder and noticed how small Seth appeared. The old man smiled and licked his thin, cracked lips.

  “All right,” Martin barked. “Let’s get to Garbo, shall we, Seth? And … action!”

  But Seth just stared at Martin in silence. Martin looked back at Seth, incredulous. Video Guy turned and looked at me. We all shared a moment of suffocating silence. The room felt pressurized as I glanced wide-eyed over at the oxygen tank. I didn’t dare move for fear of setting off a spark that would blow us all to kingdom come.

  “Well?” Martin asked.

  “Well what?” Seth said.

  “What about Garbo?”

  “Garbo?” Seth asked, apparently in full-on senior moment.

  “Yeah,” Martin goaded. “Garbo.”

  “But I already told you,” Seth said, then laughed. “Garbo’s the reason I went on the Athenia in the first place. That is my Garbo story.”

  Oh. Oh no. Tell me the old man didn’t just say that. Video Guy stifled a laugh. I wanted to cry. Somebody needed to call the bomb squad. The only job I’d had since graduating film school was about to blow up in my face. All on account of an old man’s shaggy-dog story.

  “You,” Martin said through gritted teeth, “we were under the distinct impression you were going to tell us an exclusive about Greta Garbo. The movie star? I’m doing a special on her. Remember?”

  “Right,” Seth said. “Right. Garbo.”

  “So,” Martin said to himself, fighting to process the information, “Garbo was never on the ship? Just the look-a-like?”

  “Yup,” Seth said with a smile, then looked over and gave me a wink. “The hot tip we all got about Garbo being on the Athenia turned out to be just a bum steer.”

  “Oh, what fresh hell is this?” Martin groaned. Then his face turned bright red. “CUT!”

  I watched intently while both men sat scrutinizing one another. One old and dying, the other growing more furious by the second. Seth had rope-a-doped Martin, and I had been his idiot accomplice. I had taken it on faith that he had a story, a Garbo exclusive. In my desperation to secure a co-producer credit, I’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book: the bait and switch. I burst out in a cold sweat while both men sat frozen in place. Video Guy turned off the lights.

  I considered Seth’s silhouette, backlit by the whiteout outside his little studio apartment’s bay window. Squinted at him while he sat in his now shadowed throne. What in hell was going through his mind? What could possibly be his motive? Was he the type that reveled in wasting other people’s valuable time? Happy to just not be alone?

  I turned to Martin with morbid fascination. Waited for his tiny brain to assimilate this new information. So wildly out of his element now, there was no telling what he’d do next. Then Martin’s body shook with rage. I checked the exit behind me. If needed, I could use Video Guy as a human shield.

  The memory of the next half hour of my life remains a blur. I remember seeing Martin erupt out of his seat, the rest of us frozen in place. I remember glancing at Seth as he stared up from his chair with unabashed glee at Martin boiling over in front of him with a toxic mixture of anger and vitriol. I remember Video Guy, nimbly packing up his video equipment while navigating around Martin’s flailing and convulsing body in the confined space.

  The next thing I knew I was outside, snow falling horizontally as I watched Martin in the driver’s seat of the rental car, warming it up. I could barely make out his face behind the icy, fogged windshield. But I could hear him just fine as he screamed, “You fuck!” over and over.

  Video Guy finished loading his van, the engine idling, and came to stand beside me. To look at us, we could have been Laurel & Hardy in a previous life. I had spent countless childhood hours admiring their violent yet loving relationship on TV. Now I wanted to jump into the big guy’s arms and have him hold me. Better yet, I looked up into the white heavens and prayed for a piano to materialize out of nowhere and drop on me. Put me out of my misery.

  “Your boss,” he said and watched Martin, “is pissed.”

  Martin beat his fists against the steering wheel, then the dash of the rental car. Video Guy stifled laughter.

  “Yeah,” I said and wished I could join in his amusement.

  “I’ll only charge you for a half day,” he offered.

  “Nah,” I said. “Martin will pay for the full day.”

  We stood in quiet contemplation for another moment as the snow fell harder and Martin’s blows softened in exhaustion. I shifted my weight in the snow, producing the sound a leather chair made when you shifted your buttocks. Like I’d farted. Video Guy turned to me and smiled. He lifted a massive arm and rested it on my shoulders. I sank lower in the snow.

  “It’s none of my business,” he said, “but your boss is a real horse’s ass. I like the old man better. Even if he is nuts.”

  “Yeah, thanks for the input.”

  Video Guy reached in his jacket with his other hand and extended me his card. I took it.

  “If you’re ever in the area again,” he said, “give me a call.”

  Then Video Guy departed to the warmth of his van. A moment later, he and his vehicle were gone. I approached the passenger door of the rental car and opened it with caution. A rogue wave of snow entered the car and covered Martin.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked, looking over at me like a crazed snowman.

  “Going back with you?”

  “Get. Out,” Martin said calmly.

  “Martin, come on,” I said in a sycophantic squeak.

  “No,” he screamed. “You’re fired. Get the fuck out.”

  Martin threw the car into reverse. The vehicle pulled away from the assisted-living home, snow flying forward from under the front tires. I barely had time to get out of the way of the open passenger door. Martin gunned the engine again. The lumbering automobile squealed in protest as he threw the Taurus into Drive. The back wheels spun wildly and sent rooster tails of snow in odd directions until the snow tires gained enough traction to propel the car onto the main road.

  I stood alone in the tranquility of the snowstorm, then turned back to the assisted-living facility. A wrinkled mass of faces stared at me from behind the large windows of the lobby, some confused, yet most happy not to have missed the afternoon matinee I had produced for them. Finally, I had attracted an appreciative audience.

  The onlookers scattered as I took a step back toward the door. Then the entire facility disappeared behind a wall of snow brought on by a violent gust. I stopped, frozen in place in the whiteout.

  The realization that I’d just allowed myself to be stranded on this strange planet was accompanied by a blur of bright red out of the corner of my eye. I turned and saw a cardinal take flight in the driving snow. Watched his crimson wings fight silently to ascend, disappear into the blank canvas sky. There and then gone like the last five years of my life.

  I had to go back in to the assisted-living facility. Reenter the old man’s world, now invisible behind the curtain of snow, long enough to arrange my own flight. Unable to see what lay ahead, I had to pick a direction and start over. So, I took a blind step forward and everything went from white to black.

  3. SETH ON THE S.S. ATHENIA JAMES

  I woke up in a hospital bed with a headache and a hard-on. To my left was a window, frosted in the corners with snow crystals that glistened under an unseen sun. To my right was Seth, lying in his own bed not six feet away. He stared at me, the corners of his cracked lips turned upward.

  “Good dream?” he asked and nodded his head to my waist. Thank god I was under a blanket.

  As if this wasn’t humiliation enough, a young, attractive nurse carrying a clip
board entered our room. The closer she got, the more attractive she was, and the more mortified I became. Seth laughed out loud while he watched as I tried to turn away from her, conceal the tent I was making out of my blanket. That’s when I first noticed my right arm had an IV line attached to it. My nervous jerk resulted in a jolt of pain from pulling the line taut. I reacted by emitting a girlish scream.

  “That’s what you get for fidgeting,” the nurse said and came around my bed.

  She leaned in to inspect my arm. I watched the sunlight glow deep blue on contact with her long black hair. A dark wave cascaded down her face in slow motion as she leaned down. She parted the wave with both hands and put the black silk behind her ears. I felt the incredible urge to run my fingers through her hair. Drown myself in it. In this perfect stranger.

  “No permanent damage,” she said and gave me a jolt of electricity when her fingertips made contact with my forearm. I needed to make the moment last. Keep her near to gaze at her face. Smell her scent. Touch creamy white skin. Behold red ruby lips. A crimson pout beneath the brightest hazel-colored eyes.

  “What happened?” I looked up at her like a drunken man.

  “You slipped and hit a patch of black ice,” she said, then looked up and caught me gawking at her. She didn’t pull back or run away. “With your head.”

  “Cracked your noggin pretty good, too, from what the paramedics tell,” Seth chimed in. “Good thing head wounds produce so much blood, or they wouldn’t have found you.”

  “Found me?” I said, disturbed by the image he conjured.

  “You were stumbling your way into the woods,” she said.

  “Like a wounded animal,” Seth ad-libbed. “Headed off to a secret burial ground to die.”

  I didn’t have to wonder why. The old man had driven me crazy. I remembered that much. Getting fired from my job, then stranded. The insult that led to my injury. I had been headed back into his apartment to make plans for going God-knows-where. After that, nothing. Just darkness. Darkness until now with this raven-haired angel staring down at me.