My eyes slowly adapted to the darkness, and I discerned the outline of a writing table in the corner of the room, opposite a bed. I continued twenty paces to the table and put the tray down without too much fuss. Several empty bottles of Champagne cluttered the corner of the table. I busied myself with untwisting the wire cage that surrounded the cork of the unopened bottle of bubbly I’d brought. The vintage was extra dry, as was my mouth.
I felt a presence on the bed beside the table but dared not look in that direction. Instead, I kept my back to the bed, lifted the chafing dish cover off my camera, then grabbed it from the platter as quietly as possible. I popped the lens cap off and turned toward the bed, pivoting on one heel and soft-shoeing the thin carpet with the other. The outline of a woman’s naked figure in repose filled my vision. I took a step closer. I lifted the camera up and prepared myself for taking one shot, maybe two, before all hell broke loose.
Then the cloud cover broke. The full moon shone through the porthole, a beacon of brilliant light. The spotlight it created cast a heavenly glow upon the goddess’s nude form atop billowy clouds of silk. Her skin literally shimmered. Garbo herself seemed to be made of light.
She lifted her eyelids, lashes parted like Venus flytraps about to feed. My heart pounded as if someone had trained a gun sight on my skull. I raised my camera slowly in time with Garbo’s breasts rising as she inhaled. Then she locked steel blue eyes the size of twin crescent moons upon the camera lens. I lifted my finger and took aim. Her lips parted ever so slightly in the viewfinder.
I’d heard the legend. Garbo’s power to enchant a movie audience paled in comparison to the spell cast upon anyone in her living presence. I’d chalked it up to Hollywood hyperbole. A myth manufactured to reinforce her onscreen persona of the ultimate vamp. I knew the supernatural seductress no one could resist didn’t really exist. There was only one problem. Try as I might to click the shutter and capture the image that ensured my future, I found I couldn’t move a muscle.
“Come,” she commanded an octave barely above the sea waves heard crashing outside, yet loud and clear as a siren’s song in my head.
My camera fell out of my hands and hit the floor with a thud. I stood at the foot of the bed, bewitched. Garbo lifted outstretched arms slowly off the bed, open palms and delicate fingers beckoned me to her bosom. I felt my heels then my toes lift off the carpet as I was drawn into her. I entered the silvery light and fell into a dream.
All thought of Ingrid deserted me. Time ceased and the past was forgotten. The face before me was the sole focus of life now. To drink from those lips and drown in those eyes was all I ever hoped for. Nothing else mattered. The “Dream Princess of Eternity,” the press had dubbed her. Now I knew why.
11. GORILLA OF MY DREAMS SETH
I gained consciousness in the dark. The heady, sweet scent of sex and vapors of Chanel perfume were all that covered my nakedness. My body still burned with the heat of our encounter, ears still buzzed with the fading echo of windblown whispers. I felt my way across the bed, ran my fingers over cool silken sheets up to the indent in her pillow where she had rested her head. Garbo was gone, and she had taken the moon with her.
I fought to crawl out from under her influence, but she had left me weak and dim-witted. My mind circled back to suicide cases I had covered in NYC. They tended to strip butt-naked before they jumped to their deaths. I felt literally stuck to the bed like I’d splattered there from a great height.
Garbo had transfixed my entire being. I crawled out of my torpor with the queerest notion that her legs, hips, breasts and lips weren’t bathed in moonlight when I’d found her, but emitting starlight. Garbo wasn’t of this world. And, in colliding with mine, she’d altered the course of my life forever.
I reached out into the pitch. My hand found the contours of a face waiting in the dark. I jumped and grabbed for the light switch. The stark light illuminated a fat-cheeked, naked cherub glaring at me in mawkish delight, depicted in bronze on the lamp’s base. Cupid admiring his aim.
I surveyed the room and saw my porter’s costume crumpled in a heap in the corner. But what wasn’t visible concerned me most. My camera, my all-important camera was nowhere in sight. I reached a hand under the bed and searched. Maybe the camera had rolled there after being thoughtlessly dropped. I stretched my entire arm beneath her bed but came up empty. Without my camera, I was naked and unarmed. Worse, the love scene of my life was over, and not a single frame of it had been captured on film. No one would believe me that it had ever happened. Ever.
The truth was I had never felt totally alone like I did in that moment. My run-in with The Divine One had done a pretty damn good job of short-circuiting my brain. I couldn’t trust my own instincts. I needed time and space to get my head straight. Unscramble my thoughts. I needed a place to hide out and collect myself, away from those incendiary blue eyes of hers.
For the second time in my career, I had broken my own cardinal rule. I had stepped from behind the camera and gotten directly involved with the subject matter. The first time, my actions had led to Lindbergh leaving the country. His faith in me had cost him dearly, and he would never be seen or heard from in the same light again. But this time was different. This time I was the one in over my head. But one thing was clear. I was no match for Garbo head-on and never would be. No man was.
I felt crazed and in no condition to think for myself. Well, I’d been shot at point-blank range with a most potent and primal alchemy. What the hell was I going to say to Ingrid, anyway? Sorry, darling, I got no pictures, but Garbo was one hell of a lay. Shit, I had betrayed the woman who had found Garbo for me in the first place. Sacrificed any future we might have had for one night of unforgettable, carnal ecstasy. But it was more than that, wasn’t it? How could I explain to one woman the irresistibility of another one without breaking her heart?
How embarrassing was this? God knows where Garbo had gone, but I had to imagine she was giving me a wide enough berth to scram before she came back. I thought to wait until her return, then do what I’d set out to do in the first place and snap her picture. What did I care if she didn’t like it? What was good for the goose, right?
But where to go? The only other person I knew on board beside Ingrid was Nick, who I owed a couple hundred dollars to. Or did I? The bar bet was that I couldn’t find Garbo. But find her I did. Hell, I fell into her. Now all I needed was proof. An article of clothing, maybe? Or better yet, something with her name on it. Yes, she owed me that. No woman was going to use and abuse ole Seth Moseley and not pay for the pleasure.
With my head finally clearing, it was time to screw it back on straight, cinch up my trousers, pocket a letter addressed to Garbo on her writing table blotter as proof I’d been with the movie star, then get the hell out of her lair while I still could. And that’s exactly what I was doing when a loud banging came at her door.
Then I remembered Lars, the Super-Porter whose place I had taken at the front of the line. He’d probably tried to deliver his order when Garbo and I had been indisposed. I was probably messing up his perfect track record when it came to customer service, not to mention a healthy tip from the mega star. Too bad, kid. I got to her first.
I didn’t open the door. I wasn’t that thick-headed. If they—Lars or whoever the hell they were—wanted me, they could damn well come in and get me. Which is exactly what they did. No sooner had I stuffed the folded letter in my pocket, then the door burst inward, and I was surrounded. Surrounded by the largest single creature on two feet I had ever witnessed with my own eyes.
He grabbed me about the neck and shoulders. My first thought was that a gorilla had somehow gotten loose aboard the ocean liner. My next thought was that I was about to be ripped limb from limb. Instead, the thing headlocked me in its mighty left arm, about-faced in one lumbering motion and headed for the hallway.
I squirmed to free my nose and mouth from my captor’s smelly, dank leather-clad armpit. I hungrily breathed in its stink through my mouth as I at
tempted to wriggle free. My heels dragged on the carpet as my fists hammered against a massive torso encased in oily black cowhide.
“Let me go,” I said and pounded hard on its back.
No response. Just my luck, it was the strong, silent type. Well, if the monstrosity wasn’t going to listen to reason, then I’d have to fight fire with fire.
“Tough guy, huh?” I wheezed and kicked my feet helplessly into the air. “Two can play at that game.”
Then King Kong flexed a mighty bicep and squeezed my skull so tight I thought my eyeballs were going to pop out of my head. My mind became thick and sluggish. The onset of unconsciousness grasped me once again. I’d become so strangely accustomed to this feeling in the last forty-eight hours that passing out threatened to become my new vocation. But I decided then and there that there was very little future in it. The pay sucked and the hours were lousy. Normally, such a thought would have made me laugh, if I wasn’t so preoccupied with trying to breathe. Breathe and claw my way into a station higher than that of Kong’s Raggedy Andy doll.
My heels got some momentary traction on the floor, and I forced my head through the tight hole of my assailant’s grip. He sensed my struggle and applied more pressure, like a constrictor. This time around my neck. I was about to mouth my dissent, when he closed off my air passageway. Not good, Moseley.
My eyes closed, and I found myself back in bed with Garbo. She stared up at me, the full moon’s reflection echoed in her eyes, her body glowing in my shadow. Several strands of her silvery hair flowed in the electrically charged empty space between us. Floated down and formed cross hairs in front of Garbo’s gun sights. And as I lost consciousness, I prayed for my beautiful executioner to put me out of my misery. For good.
My mind connected to reality with an audible snap, or was that my neck? I awoke to see King Kong hovering over me and felt metal grating underneath me. He had deposited me on the floor of some storage hold above the engine room. A single bulb above him illuminated the hulk in a silhouette I didn’t care to remember. He must have seen that I was conscious, because he kicked me in the ribs. The loud sucking sound of my burning lungs gasping for air through my mouth confirmed I was back in the real world.
I called him a gorilla for more than his sparkling personality. This guy had a heavily muscled chest and broad shoulders. And with his muscles flexed, the dorsals forced the arms out from his sides and his huge, half-open hands swung out from his body. Add to this a semi-automatic tucked under his left armpit in a shoulder holster and the simian-like stance was complete and I knew I was screwed.
He kicked me in the ribs again, and I knew I had to work up a new angle. I considered my options. Playing dead and wishing the giant would just go away and pick on someone else wasn’t going to do the trick.
I had the sudden fear that maybe Kong had mistaken Garbo for Fay Wray and carried her off somewhere as well. But then if he had, why the hell would he be wasting his time with me? Maybe a modicum of cooperation on my part would help keep me intact long enough to find out what in the hell was going on.
“You are an American spy,” Kong said with a deep, guttural German accent.
Knowing the current German reputation for intolerance, I decided it prudent to give him the right answer, and knew if I waited too long another kick from the jackboot would be forthcoming. I didn’t know spy etiquette, but wasn’t there some kind of universal handshake to make sure they only killed their own and not an innocent bystander? Namely, me.
“I’m American, but not a spy,” I said with as much equanimity as I could muster. But another swift kick in my ribs left me doubting my own veracity again. Christ, what a week I was having.
Big Monkey reached a paw into his overcoat. Having seen one too many Edward G. Robinson gangster movies, my mind jumped to the inevitable conclusion that the “jig was up.” It was curtains for me. I was as sure of my own imminent demise as I was of the sensation of warmth spreading in my porter’s pants. Yep, I’d peed myself, all right. The cleaning bill on this get-up was going to be outrageous. Good thing I wasn’t going to be around for anyone to collect.
The gorilla pulled out the letter I had snatched from Garbo’s suite. He unfolded it and held it out to me in the quasi-darkness of the room. The incandescent bulb from behind him shone through the parchment, and I could make out the letterhead. A stylized eagle with a swastika at the center. Nazis, all right. The body of the letter itself was in German, which I unfortunately hadn’t studied in school. But I knew enough to discern that it had been addressed to Garbo and signed A. H. Adolf Hitler?
“If not a spy,” he said, “then why were you in Fräulein Garbo’s room, stealing this?”
Good question. For a Neanderthal, Big Nazi Monkey had put two and two together. And most likely the truth was going to get me killed. Instead, I’d do what came natural. I’d lie. My time was short anyway. God would surely forgive me one last little lie when I saw him.
“Souvenir,” I said and forced the corners of my mouth into a tepid smile. “I’m a big fan.”
Another kick in my ribs. Only this time much harder. I writhed in pain as he considered me with a dispassionate stare. He refolded the letter carefully and put it back in his inner breast pocket. Him being a Nazi, I had a feeling I didn’t want to see what else he had in his pockets or up his sleeves. And judging from how the conversation had gone so far, I assumed the next thing he pulled out wasn’t going to be a lollipop.
“You will tell us the truth,” he said and lorded over me in the dark shadows. “Before you die.”
And the evening had begun so well. How had sleeping with the girl of my dreams become dying in a storeroom with the gorilla of my nightmares?
Wait a minute. Did he just say “us”?
Of course, he wasn’t working alone. Someone had to be behind the scenes, pulling the strings on this oversized puppet. I had known thugs like him before. They never worked alone. Take Toes and Bernie, for instance. They didn’t move a muscle unless Johnnie Roses told them to. Someone was in the wings giving the orders to this mug, all right. I could feel them lurking there, just offstage, watching for my next move. Directing the show under a cloak of darkness.
I stared up at the large Nazi and smiled at him. He looked at me and must have thought the tiny American bleeding at his feet had gone stark, raving mad. And then I realized he wasn’t so big after all. Physical strength only carried you so far.
Size didn’t matter when it came to real power. Prophets, poets, and wise men had known this, and now so did I. Thanks to Garbo. My short time with her had been an education. All of human history in one delectable bite. Or in this case, a kiss and a nibble. What the hell was the line in that Rimbaud poem? The one on childhood? “It can only be the end of the world ahead.”
Garbo loomed larger in my mind’s eye by the second. She was the real gorilla in my dreams. And what she had in store for us all, I imagined, was no monkeyshine. But I had to dispense with Big Nazi Monkey above me before I could catch the rest of her show. Him and his master, that is.
I looked up at the silverback and smiled broadly. Someone had been taking old Moseley for a ride. And I was sick of sitting by and letting them drive unseen. Letting them play me to get whatever the hell they wanted with Garbo. However Garbo figured in this scheme, I had to believe she was innocent. Needed to believe she only used her incredible powers for good. Otherwise, it really could only be the end of the world. Any world I wanted to be part of, anyway.
But why had Garbo chosen me? I’d likely never know the answer to that question. Maybe she didn’t either. When she clubbed me over the head in the men’s room, I had been a stranger. Then, when she made love to me, I had been a porter. In both instances, it seemed random that I, Seth Moseley, was the recipient of such pain and pleasure. Little reason to believe otherwise. Yet I began to wake up to an awareness that I may not have been chosen at random after all. No, not at random but by design.
When it came to beautiful women, I was a slow l
earner. But in those quiet, intimate moments with my Big Nazi Monkey, I realized that I had been auditioned, then chosen for a specific role. I had played a part in something much larger and complex than getting a candid snap of a movie star or winning a bar bet. And though I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, I knew if I lived long enough, the puzzle pieces would come together, form a pattern and take shape. The better the story, the more the pieces. And this one promised to be a doozy. But why me? What had brought me aboard to connect the dots?
I had to be careful. I had to keep in the forefront of my mind that it wasn’t just me anymore. There was Garbo to consider. No, I wasn’t a fool. I knew I could never possess the goddess. That would be like trying to possess a moonbeam. Me, I only wanted to preserve that light.
Once I knew what life looked like by the light of the silvery Garbo, I needed to keep it from going out. Because once it was gone, then I knew I really would be alone.
12. STORMING THE CASTLE JAMES
I sat bolt upright in bed. I’d been listening to Seth talk passionately amidst the beep and wheeze of life-support machines brought in as a precautionary measure. The old man had been animated, filling my head with Garbo and starlight even though he was now surrounded by a mess of tubes and wires. And then, he’d gone quiet.
I turned to see his eyes glaze over as his voice trailed off like some automated fortune teller unplugged mid reading. He’d stopped with Garbo in danger, but from what? My mind raced back to a Garbo biography I’d read, one which had contained a specific quote uttered by the movie star herself about World War II. One that suddenly made all the sense in the world.
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