Looking for Garbo

by Jon James Miller

  “I should inform the doctor you’re conscious,” she said and began to pull away.

  “Wait.” I reached a hand up to hold her wrist. To get her to stay. Please stay. “How did the medics get there so fast?”

  “Every time we get a Nor’easter,” she said, “they’re dispatched to the assisted-living facility. Good thing too, or we might not have found you ’til spring thaw.”

  Good thing was right. But that didn’t explain why the old man was there. In my room. Making my head throb harder.

  “Allow me to introduce you two,” Seth interjected. “Sarah, this is Jimmy.”

  “James,” I corrected him and kept my eyes on her. “What’s he here for?”

  Seth laughed. I was pretty sure he was the architect of us landing in the same room together. Hell, why not? He had his L.A. audience back. And then some. If only Sarah and I could be alone. What, James? Then what would you do?

  “Mr. Moseley’s medical condition,” she said, “is confidential.”

  “They say I’ve got pneumonia,” he blurted. “Lucky for you, huh, kid?”

  Lucky? Not quite. Lucky would’ve been never having heard of Seth Moseley at all. Never come all this way only to end up with a big fat goose egg. Less than zero except for the beautiful woman now standing in front of me. I hoped Nurse Sarah was the silver lining to my very dark cloud.

  “Jim-boy came all the way from Hollywood to get my story,” Seth bragged. The smug bastard. The old man didn’t have a problem talking to women. He didn’t have a problem talking, period.

  “Is that so?” Sarah said, then reached up to my IV stand, slowed down my saline drip by depressing the thingamajig on the clear, plastic tubing. She tapped the base of the bag with her finger. My heart beat a little faster.

  “I’m going to make him famous,” Seth gushed. “That is, if you think he’ll live.”

  Make him go away, Lord. Don’t kill him, just make him go away. I lifted my unencumbered left hand, felt my bandaged and throbbing head. I had to believe Seth was the real pain in my neck that was making my head throb.

  I looked up at Sarah and smiled. She leaned in again to inspect my head bandage. In my imagination, she was moving in slow motion again. Like Grace Kelly leaning into a kiss with injured Jimmy Stewart in Hitchcock’s Rear Window. As her face approached mine, a band of tiny freckles bridging her nose came into sharp focus.

  I started to count them, when I realized she was looking straight into me. Her retinas were bottomless pools of black, surrounded by the purest hazel striations I’d ever seen. Her eyes looked like two massive storm systems you’d see on Jupiter.

  They were beautiful and ferocious at the same time. Then I caught the reflection of myself staring at Sarah in the eye of each storm. I was tiny. Insignificant. I looked like a field mouse that’d come in from the cold and found himself sniffing her intoxicating scent. Getting warm and high on a mixture of soap, moisturizer and sweet, sweet sweat. Maybe a little lavender water, too? I had to get to know this woman.

  “He’ll live,” Sarah said. The words smacked me back into reality, as I blinked my reflection away. She reached out and caught the tip of my chin between her thumb and forefinger. Lavender fingernails with little white flowers painted on them. Then gently, playfully she pulled my lower lip out and waggled it in her grip. “But only if he watches where he’s going from now on.”

  She let go and leaned back to look at me. Was that a wink? My resolve to be in her world stiffened anew.

  “I need to get an emergency contact number for you,” she said, brandished her clip chart and clicked her pen. “Mother, father, next of kin?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Wife?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “No one?” she asked. “No one we should contact?”

  “Nope,” I said.

  Sarah shrugged and checked a box with the flick of a pen. Then she put her hand back down on my forearm. A gesture she probably made with a thousand patients before, but to me felt special. Little white flowers stared up at me from her lavender fingernails.

  “Well, you have me now,” she said. “And I know this old guy here is awful fond of you.”

  I turned to Seth. He beamed a toothy smile at me.

  “How long do I have to be in here?” I said, staring at him.

  “You’ve suffered a concussion,” she said, all business now. “We’ll need to observe you for at least twenty-four hours. So, I suggest you sit back, relax and enjoy our Norfolk hospitality.”

  Sarah came around my bed to stand between the two of us.

  “Can I get either of you gentlemen anything?” she said, looking at both of us in turn, “before I go fetch the doctor?”

  “Codeine and bourbon,” Seth said.

  Sarah smiled at Seth. I could tell she’d dealt with his kind before. Maybe a lot before. Maybe him before. Made sense this wasn’t Sarah’s first rodeo with the old reporter. Made sense and made me nervous. What had he told her while I was out?

  “Sorry, Seth,” she said. She didn’t bat an eye or miss a beat. “But we want to keep you sharp and lucid so you can tell young James here your story.”

  With a quick smile and lovely turn of her powder-blue scrubs, Sarah was out the door and gone. Seth gave a gratified chuckle, obviously happy with himself. I looked over at him.

  “Codeine and bourbon?” I said. “Those were Talullah Bankhead’s final words.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “She was a great gal.”

  “You met her?”

  “Yup,” he said and raised an eyebrow. “She was a wild one, all right.”

  The image of Talullah flashing her crotch on a small boat came to mind. I’d read that on the set of Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat, she’d refused to wear underwear. Hitchcock had been noted as saying he didn’t know whether it was a problem for the makeup or hairdressing department. Tallulah and Seth. Of course, they had known each other.

  “I wish I was dead,” I said to the open doorway.

  “Why on earth would you say that?” Seth asked.

  “I had a hard-on with a girl in the room.” My head was throbbing harder by the minute.

  Seth shook his head. “Better than having a hard-on without a girl in the room.”

  “Don’t you ever get embarrassed?”

  “What’s to get embarrassed about?” he said. “I’d give anything for some lead in my pencil.”

  “It’s graphite.”

  “What?” Seth looked at me, perplexed.

  “Pencils are filled with graphite, not lead.”

  “Jesus, kid,” he said with an exasperated sigh. “You really do need to get laid, don’t you?”

  “Please,” I begged, “can we stop talking about boners?”

  Seth’s laughter whacked me in the skull like a baseball bat. I feared the next curveball might do me in for good. Thankfully, his laughter quickly subsided.

  “You really don’t have anyone in your life?”

  “You make me sound pathetic.”

  “No,” he said. “Sad, maybe.”

  “Do you mind?” I shot back. “I’ve got more pressing matters right now.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, for starters.” I raised my free arm up to grasp the hospital bed railing. The cold metal felt soothing. “I’m confined to a hospital room with you.”

  “Here we go again,” he said with a snort.

  “Frankly”—I scooted up on the bed a little—“I thought I was done with you.”

  “Hey, no one asked you to take a header out my front door. Okay?”

  Silence passed between us. A steely, cold silence. I looked up at my IV drip and watched the droplets of saline form slowly, then fall the tiny distance from the mouth of the bag into the line. God, what I wouldn’t do for a drink of something hard.

  “Well,” Seth said finally, “aren’t you going to ask me?”

  “Ask you what?” I stuck my hands under my damp armpits. I was sweating and freezing all at
the same time.

  “About Garbo,” he said.

  “We tried that once.” I sat ramrod straight in my bed. “It didn’t turn out so good, remember?”

  “I didn’t tell your hack boss,” he said, “because he didn’t deserve to hear it. The story I have to tell I’ve never told anyone before. Not even family.”

  “Why pick on me, then? A total stranger?”

  Seth hesitated, cast his head down and plunged his skeletal facial features into shadow. Then he opened his eyes and looked over at me.

  “Because—”

  “Because what?”

  “My story,” he said, “it … it’s special.”

  I heard a drum roll in my eardrums. The blood in my veins ran cold until I felt frozen solid from the inside. He had used the dreaded “S” word. I could have told him how many quacks and psychos had professed how special their story was, only to prove in the end to be complete bullshit. I could have told him. But I didn’t care to.

  He shifted in his bed and looked over at me. “Did you read the official record?”

  “What?”

  “The sinking of the S.S. Athenia? The one I sent you. Tell me you at least read it.”

  I had. Great Britain declared war on Germany at 11:15 a.m. EST on Sunday, September 3, 1939. Eight hours later, Nazi U-boat U-30 Commander Lieutenant Fritz-Julius Lemp sighted the Athenia off the Hebrides archipelago. She was running without lights. And against the Prize Rules, the Hague Convention and Der Führer’s own rules of engagement, Lemp opened fire. The Athenia was torpedoed three times before Lemp fled the scene, taking the lives of one-hundred and twelve men, women and children, twenty-eight American. It was the shot heard round the world.

  “Sure,” I said. “So what?”

  “So don’t you think it’s funny that a seasoned U-Boat Commander would open fire on a merchant vessel carrying civilians mere hours after war had been declared?” he said.

  “There’s nothing funny about it.” I was serious as a heart attack. I set my jaw and registered my impatience.

  “You know what I mean. Did you read the eye-witness accounts of the survivors?”

  “Look, Seth—”

  “They all said the Athenia had been fired upon, before the torpedoes even hit.”

  “I don’t—”

  “For a submarine, stealth is its most effective weapon.” he yammered on. “Lemp wouldn’t surface and give away his location just to fire his deck guns. Use your head, James.”

  “I thought I had,” I said. “And instead I ended up in here with you.”

  “Mr. John Cudahy, the American Minister to Ireland, said that witnesses stated the Athenia had been struck amidships and was shortly afterwards struck again ‘by a projectile shot through the air.’ What does that tell you?”

  “You’re saying there was another ship present?” I said.

  “Yes.” Seth said. “Another enemy ship.”

  “Yet no evidence of another ship exists?”

  “Right.”

  “Wrong,” I said. “Nazis kept exact records of everything. How many ships they sank. How many bullets they used. How many Jews they incinerated. Why would the sinking of the Athenia be any different? Why a conspiracy?”

  “Because,” he said, “of her secret cargo.”

  A shot of anger flushed my cheeks, lit my face from within. Seth sat up in silence. Obviously, it was my call. Ante up or fold. I called.

  “Okay, I give. What cargo?”

  “Garbo.”

  “That’s the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yeah, it is.” I said. “What the hell would Nazis want with a movie star? They only had a world war on their hands. If I’d known that was the story you were going to tell Martin, I never would have come here in the first place.”

  “I told you it was a good story.”

  “You did,” I said. “But you didn’t mention it would cost me my job and the only contact I have in Hollywood.”

  “So why not let me make amends?” he said. “You heard the nurse. You’re stuck here.”

  “Maybe so,” I said. “But it doesn’t mean I have to listen to your tall tales.”

  The old man’s cheeks now flushed with anger. That made two of us. But instead of fanning the flames of contempt, I turned away. Stared off at a far wall rather than incite him or myself further.

  “I see,” he said. “Still thinking if you can just catch up to that boss of yours, he’ll make it all better.”

  “How did we get back to Martin?” I motioned to throw up my arms in disgust but knew from previous experience the IV line would not approve.

  “His type will always be searching,” Seth said. “He’ll never find what he’s looking for because it’s not there. Because he doesn’t have it in him.”

  “How the hell would you know?” I said. “You barely laid eyes on him.”

  “Trust me,” he said. “I know a bad apple when I see one.”

  “Drop it, okay?” I said. “I’m done with all of it anyway. I quit.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t give up so easily,” Seth said.

  He sounded demoralized. I couldn’t imagine why. If anyone should have been upset, it was me. But I was calm. For the first time in a long time, I felt centered.

  “Maybe,” I said, “you should mind your own damn business.”

  God, I was finally able to say what I needed to, in the moment. And it felt great. And whatever the reason the old man picked me to mess with before he dropped dead no longer mattered. I decided in that moment Seth Moseley was going to rattle my cage no more. No matter how hard he tried. No matter what.

  “Maybe so,” Seth said and didn’t say another word.

  That afternoon, Sarah came back with the doctor in tow and drew the curtain between Seth’s bed and mine. Seth and I weren’t on speaking terms, so I enjoyed the privacy. After the most cursory of examinations, the doctor prescribed a painkiller for my head and told Sarah that I should only have ice chips to quench my thirst for now. I didn’t care. I had her watching over me.

  Then Sarah brought both Seth and me dinner. He had an ice cream scoop of powdered mashed potatoes, several strips of turkey and peas. Mine consisted of a bowl of chicken broth (complete with crazy-straw) and blood red Jell-O cubes. I looked over at Seth and longed for his untouched, off-yellow potato snowball. He avoided all of it and quietly sipped a cup of tea Sarah had made especially for him.

  The silent treatment between Seth and me continued on into the early evening. Seth had not spoken to me since I had told him to mind his own beeswax. Sarah must have sensed the rift between us. She came to our room at the end of her shift and turned on the TV, mounted between our two beds above the door. She sat down quietly at the bottom of my bed with the remote and channel-surfed, hunting and pecking until she came to the Turner Classic Movie Channel.

  I looked up at the screen to see the word Garbo flash in bold black and white letters. Then the title Queen Christina came on, accompanied by the tinny sound of melody. I looked down and watched Sarah look up at the monitor. Her body literally perked up and came to attention. Why on earth would a young woman like her be interested in a movie that had been made some fifty years before she’d been born?

  We all watched in silence as Garbo made her entrance. She was twenty-nine when the movie had been released in 1934. The same age I was now. Garbo’s physical beauty was in full blossom, radiating out from the shitty little monitor demanding my attention. I glanced over and saw it had the same effect on old Seth.

  We were all Garbo’s subjects as she held court in the movie. Garbo as Queen Christina of Sweden addressed us with an unwavering gaze. She slammed her fist down on her throne:

  “We have been fighting since I was in the cradle and many years before. There must be an end.”

  I had seen the movie before but felt I was hearing these words for the very first time. A gear in my head I never knew was there snapped into place. I looked at Sa
rah, then Seth. Surely they had heard the rattling machine-sound my skull had made? But they were still watching the screen. Enraptured with Garbo’s presence.

  I looked at Seth’s profile as he stared proudly up at Garbo on the monitor. It reminded me of one of those early war posters, where Uncle Sam stood, shirtsleeves rolled up, gaze fixed on the stars. The posters that asked young men to come forward and fight for freedom and the American way of life. Except in my version, Uncle Sam was bed-ridden, weighed all of ninety-five pounds, and dying of emphysema.

  “How did you know Garbo was on the Athenia,” I heard myself ask, “when by all accounts she never left America from 1939 to 1945?”

  “Simple,” he said, without looking away from Garbo on the television. “I was on it with her.”

  “That was two days before France and England declared war on Germany,” I said. “After Hitler invaded Poland.”

  “Yeah,” he said, still attuned to the screen.

  “The Athenia never made it to Europe,” I said. “It was lost at sea. You’re telling me that you and Greta Garbo were aboard when the ship was sunk, though no records exist of either of you being rescued. How is that possible?”

  Seth finally looked down. The television played in the background. Garbo herself now looked down on our little group, considered us in quiet contemplation from her private black-and-white bed chamber in ancient Sweden.

  “That’s because we weren’t on the ship when she was hit.” Seth had a distinct look of sadness in his eyes as the movie goddess watched from above.

  “Where were you?” I said quietly.

  “In the air overhead,” he said, distracted.

  Sarah turned to look at Seth. Her beautiful brow now crinkled in curiosity. He had hooked us both. I leaned over my hospital bed side rail. Stared straight at Seth, riveted, while beautiful young Sarah and Queen Garbo above her on the television looked on.

  “Your story,” I said, “does it have a wow finish?”