Three Strange Angels

by Kalpakian, Laura;

  ‘Was Frank doing it?’

  ‘Not with cavalry or the Indians. Though don’t get me wrong, baby,’ she added quickly. ‘I personally don’t care who you go to bed with. I’m very broad-minded, but not everyone is. Just so you know.’

  Her meaning clarified slowly in his sleep-deprived brain. ‘Are you asking if I am homosexual? In Britain that’s a criminal offence.’

  ‘Really? Here it could ruin you, but probably not jail unless they catch you with your pants down on Wilshire. Of course, you could be ruined with Roy for a lot less. You could be ruined with Roy Rosenbaum for adultery or drugs, or orgies, falling down drunk at the Cocoanut Grove, talking to Louella Parsons. Roy’s strait-laced. Caesar’s wife all over again. He drinks, sure, but you’ll never see him get fuzzy. Lose control? Never. And any of that other stuff, the powdery stuff or the weed, or any of that, the weird sex stuff? Not on your life. Tsk tsk. He’s been married to Doris for twelve years and I bet they still do it in the missionary position. But you – not meaning you – but anyone under contract to Regent in any capacity, you better watch yourself! He hears about anything scandalous, and Roy’ll put your tit in the wringer, if you have one – a tit, not a wringer – and if you don’t, well, he’ll put that—’ She pointed to Quentin’s penis ‘—in the wringer too. No joke, and they all know it. Everyone knows there’s stuff goes on at the Vernons’ parties that would curl your hair. All your hairs, the short and the long. I’m Roy’s stepdaughter so I don’t get invited. I’ll always be an outsider while Roy’s in power. And then,’ she sighed deeply, dramatically, ‘when Roy’s not in power, I’ll be a nobody.’

  ‘You could be a somebody in your own right, couldn’t you?’

  Gigi’s laughter pealed behind her like a banner. ‘You slay me. What could I ever do?’

  ‘By the way, I’m not.’

  ‘Not what?’

  ‘Homosexual. Just so you know. I’m a married man.’

  The wind blew over them and the February sun pinked his pale, gaunt face. He clung to the side of the car as she drove recklessly along palm-lined Sunset Boulevard, the small, swift MG darting among the massive American autos like a bluebottle fly navigating through a herd of hippos in the zoo.

  At last she came to the Garden of Allah. Quentin knew this because of the sign. He sighed with relief as she parked the car. As he stepped from the MG he saw a large central building, white stucco, red tiled roof, fronted with a flagpole, a fountain, tall shrubs and the street flanked by other buildings, also white and roofed with cinnamon-coloured tiles. No muted greys, or the grubby ecru of London, but as though everything had been dusted in the last hour and would be dusted again shortly. The shapes were all rounded: rounded doors, rounded arches, rounded red tiles overlying one another sloping down the roofs. The very shrubs were rounded; pale, fat hydrangeas drooped drily. Only the palms stood tall, feathery at the top, and the grass under his feet seemed brushy, stiff, as though it might exhale rather than collapse under his weight. The greenery was dazzling. The light was golden.

  ‘Come on, I’ll take you to Frank’s villa.’ She reached behind the driver’s seat and lifted out a shopping bag, took his one suitcase off the luggage rack and handed it to him.

  Carrying his Burberry, his suitcase and the heavy leather case with the four manuscripts, he followed her, struggling to keep up. They walked down uneven flagstone paths flanked by exotic plants and slender grey trees with tiny hard fists of yellow blooms. Mimosa: the word came to him from a long-ago, pre-war Provence holiday with his parents. Robert had come down from Paris to meet them at the home of who was it? Some author or another.

  ‘Are you listening to me?’

  ‘Yes. Sorry. Carry on.’

  She nattered on how no one stayed in the main hotel at the Garden of Allah. The service was terrible, and the food – she turned to him and made a face, and a retching noise, turned back around and kept walking. However, Schwab’s was a five-minute walk, and there was a deli, and a grocery store nearby too; you could do your own cooking if you had a mind to. Gigi personally had given up cooking. Gigi liked to drive, to play tennis, to swim, to dance. She wasn’t good at anything else. He followed her past woody hedges that bloomed with red and yellow flowers like velvet stars with tiny black hearts.

  ‘Hibiscus,’ she told him, ‘and don’t eat the oleanders.’ She waved towards pink and white flowering shrubs. ‘They’re poisonous. Here’s the pool,’ she said, as they came upon a jewel-like expanse, a blue-sculpted gem twinkling in front of a rounded arcade with white pillars and cool, darkened recesses, surrounded by banana trees with elephantine leaves. ‘They say it was designed in the shape of the Black Sea,’ Gigi offered, ‘but I don’t know what that means.’

  ‘Is this the pool where …’

  ‘Yes. Follow me.’ The path led between small separate buildings with the windows open, and from some there came the sound of tinkling pianos, or radios, or voices, a few raised, laughter; the screens over the windows were dark and the sounds free-floating. She put her key in the lock of a rounded door and stepped in.

  ‘You say this was Frank Carson’s flat?’

  ‘Villa, Quentin! The Garden of Allah has villas!’ She put down her shopping bag, and went about opening the windows so the breeze obligingly stirred the long gauzy curtains. ‘Just in case Frank’s ghost …’

  Quentin could not imagine any self-respecting ghost lingering in this threadbare, dispirited place. It was compact and cool, and shabby. The smell of tired cigarettes, like mourning, clung to everything, despite the open windows. The carpet was stained, the colour sun-bleached in patches near the windows, perhaps once burgundy, now faded to a shade of rust. The furniture was dark, heavy wood, mahogany, or oak, and everything had burns around the edges where cigarettes had been left too long. The cushions were a sallow olive colour, also stained; even the plein air paintings on the walls were yellowish with old cigarette smoke.

  Gigi threw the keys on the desk that fronted the window. On the desk sat a large Royal typewriter, a stack of plain white paper, a brass paperweight holding it down. A pen-and-ink set sat off to the side. ‘Sorry there’s no television, but Roy never lets any of his writers have a television. Roy likes his writers to write. So they always have a typewriter.’

  ‘Frank couldn’t type.’ Quentin laid his leather case beside the typewriter.

  ‘Well, who cares?’ She stopped in front of a heavy-framed mirror, reached into her pocket and pulled out a tube of lipstick, applied it with a flourish, puckered up.

  ‘I won’t miss the television,’ he confessed. ‘I’ve only ever seen television once.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, at Selwyn and Archer’s Christmas party last year at Bernard’s home. He had one. We all stood and watched, at least while there was anything to watch. It was rather dull.’

  ‘Good. Tell Roy that. Roy loves to hear people say that television is dull. He’s afraid television will kill off the movies.’ She took her bag into the kitchen, painted a pale cabbage-green and the walls and counters stained and blotched. She turned on the tap and advised letting it run before he actually drank the water. She opened the fridge, which seemed to Quentin enormous. ‘If you run out of ice, just call the bar. They’ll send it over. I’ll be back around seven and get you for drinks and dinner with Roy and Aaron and Mother, and the Lotus.’

  ‘The Lotus?’

  ‘Aaron’s wife. Roy’s daughter from his other marriage. She’s insufferable, but men seem to like her. Be careful. She bites. You need to be nice to her because she tells old Aaron what to do. Make no mistake of that. Not Roy. No one tells Roy what to do.’

  ‘Will you be there?’ he asked.

  ‘Nope! After I deliver you, my job is over for the evening. I have a date with a beautiful, brainless boy. We’re going dancing. Roy’s driver will bring you back here tonight, but after that, whatever else you have to do, or go while you’re here, I’m your driver, baby, your guide, your all-round Girl Friday. Your
s to command.’

  ‘Did Francis, Frank, have a car when he was here?’

  ‘He did, but he wrecked it. Really, totalled it, even though he walked away. He was drunk, of course, and driving on the wrong side of the road. So after that, they just sent one of the fleet for him when he needed to be somewhere.’

  ‘One of the fleet?’

  ‘Oh, you know, the studio has a fleet of cars.’ From the bag she carried she spilled out a dozen oranges onto the table. She paused, looked up. ‘I wonder why they didn’t send a studio car for you. They’re mostly all big Packards, and the drivers are all silver-haired gents. Roy thinks silver-haired gents inspire confidence. I think they’re boring as hell. Lucky you, baby, you got me.’

  ‘Lucky you,’ he corrected her. ‘You got the MG.’

  She laughed and put half a dozen beer bottles into the fridge, which, as though made suddenly happy, burped and buzzed to life. ‘There’s a bottle of gin here. I specially asked the Garden to have a bottle of gin for you. Brits like gin. I learned that from Eddie.’ She took from the fridge a plate with a sandwich and a scoop of something nubbly. ‘A ham sandwich, and potato salad, courtesy Schwab’s famous soda fountain.’ Her face fell momentarily. ‘We were assuming you’re not Jewish. You can eat ham, can’t you?’

  ‘I’m not Jewish.’

  ‘You’re not Jewish and you’re not homosexual. How will you get along here in Hollywood?’ She batted her eyelashes at him, and laughed. Her mirth bubbled from some unseen opulent well. ‘Adios,’ she said on her way out.

  Quentin walked round the flat, eating the ham sandwich and drinking the beer from the bottle, listening as the sound of a trumpet from the next bungalow free-floated in, scales. Other than the typewriter, and the blank paper beside it, nothing suggested that Francis Carson had lived here for months; no books, no notes, no photographs or letters lying about, only endemic smoke caught forever in the voile curtains. He rested his hand on the typewriter, wincing to remember his lie about Frank falling face forward into the typewriter. Quentin would not lie to Claire again. Not ever if he could help it. He rummaged through the drawers. They were empty save for some stationery emblazoned with Garden of Allah at the top. Where were all the letters that Claire had written her husband? Or the letters from Albert at Castle Literary Ltd, for that matter? Where was the cheque book or matchbooks, or receipts, the pencil stubs and postage stamps, the ordinary detritus of any life, especially the life of a writer far from home?

  In the bedroom he stripped off his wintry clothes, and hung them in the closet. He noticed a dark suitcase at the back. He opened his own suitcase atop the lumpy bed, and smiled to see Florence’s ornate Valentine.

  The bathroom was lavish, tiled in bright blues with painted peacocks. He turned on the hot water (there was no meter) and stayed in the tub for what seemed like hours, refilling it happily whenever the water cooled down. Towelling off, he cranked open the bathroom window, and again the unfamiliar air wafted in along with the trumpet player, in full swing now. Quentin shaved, again with as much hot water as he wanted, but he was so exhausted his vision blurred. He half feared going to sleep; perhaps he would wake in London. Perhaps he was truly at Number 11 reading some tremendously compelling novel that had brought this place alive.

  He opened his eyes to darkness, and a banging on the door. Electric light flashed overhead and he beheld in his bedroom a girl wearing a strapless, clinging gown of sea-foam green, a lovely light silvery shawl around her shoulders, and long white gloves over brown arms. Now he knew he was dreaming.

  ‘Why aren’t you ready?’

  ‘What time is it? I fell asleep.’ He raised himself on his elbows.

  ‘Well, you better chop-chop because Roy’s a great stickler for on time. You know what they say in the picture business?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t.’

  ‘Time is money, baby. They say money talks and every-thing else walks, and if you’re not young and beautiful, baby, you better be rich. Get dressed, and let’s get going. I have a date, and you have Roy waiting.’

  ‘Does one wear evening clothes here?’

  ‘Who do I look like? Edith Head?’ She went to his closet and ruffled through the clothes he had so carefully hung. ‘Is this all you’ve got? This stuffy old tux and that awful morgue suit you were wearing today? Let me tell you the truth, Quentin, you don’t want to be meeting Roy and Aaron in any of that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you’ll look like the poor old grasshopper in The Grasshopper and the Ant, all gaunt and tattered, legs and elbows. Style, Quentin. It matters here.’

  ‘I’ll have you know my father and I get our suits from Savile Row.’

  She gave him a withering stare.

  ‘You look stunning, by the way.’

  Pleased, she offered him a wry smile she had learned from Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not. She turned back to the closet and her eye fell on the suitcase, which she hauled out and opened. Everything was perfectly packed as for a journey. Shirts pressed, suit jackets of a fine, lightweight material, trousers, socks folded neatly, and a gaudy tie. In the little pockets lining the divider, a straight razor, toothbrush and comb. ‘Frank’s clothes.’

  ‘Is that all that’s there? There ought to be a second suitcase. He always travelled with it, and he would have received a lot of letters and … that sort of thing.’

  ‘Don’t ask me. I’m the driver, nothing more.’ She shook out one of the shirts. ‘Oh, good, this is all cleaned. Frank could get kind of ripe, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘I hope you’re not suggesting that I wear Francis Carson’s clothes.’

  ‘Just for tonight. We’ll go shopping tomorrow and get you something decent.’

  ‘My own clothes are quite decent.’

  ‘Decent here equals dreary, the kiss of death. Please don’t make me explain everything. We don’t have time.’ She pulled out the trousers and a light suit coat. ‘Get out of bed and put these on.’

  ‘I don’t think my wife would approve of my being in my underwear with a strange woman.’

  ‘I’m no stranger than most women, and your wife isn’t here, so get out of bed.’

  He got out of bed, but he said, ‘I can’t wear Francis Carson’s clothes. It’s disrespectful, as though I were trying to impersonate him.’

  Gigi looked studious. ‘Let’s see … are you going to tell the world what a genius you are, one of the greats, and shouldn’t we all kiss your rosy red ass? Does that sound like you?’

  ‘Don’t be daft.’

  ‘Well then, you’re not impersonating Frank. Look, I know he was your friend, and he might have been brilliant on the page – I don’t know, I never read his books – but in person? He was somewhere just west of awful. I mean, he wasn’t even that good-looking, kind of bug-eyed and pale and a little bloated from all that drinking, but the women here fell for him like flies. Like flies!’

  ‘How could he?’ said Quentin. ‘He has a beautiful wife.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. What’s he going to do? Play with Little Mary Five Fingers for months? He must have slept with dozens of women.’

  Hollywood tarts. Quentin winced on Claire’s behalf.

  ‘And that was before Linda.’

  ‘Linda?’

  ‘Linda St John, the star of Some of These Days. She and Frank were hot and heavy, and everyone knew it because after he took up with Linda, he quit propositioning other women. Linda wouldn’t stand for it. He was her slave. No joke. She would have cut off his prick, pardon my Française-touché, if she caught him looking at another woman. She put Frank in his place. It was actually pretty comic. He was abject with love for her, and she was agog for him.’

  ‘But doesn’t she have a husband?’

  ‘Gilbert Vernon. Yes. Doesn’t Frank have a wife? What of it?’

  ‘Didn’t the husband … Surely he …’

  ‘You don’t get it, baby. She’s Linda St John! What Linda wants, Linda gets. Only, really, she
’s not. She’s really Mavis Ryan. All that crap you hear about her, that story of how she was discovered in a ballet studio, it’s all a great big glittering lie. The studio created her, Roy, Roy actually created her! But Linda doesn’t have a speck of gratitude. Oh no, she thinks she is Regent Films. Linda gets what she wants, even if it means the whole world, including her husband, looks the other way. Besides, Frank certainly wasn’t her first. But Linda and Frank forgot … oh, what’s the word I want? Decency? I don’t know.’

  ‘What are you trying to say? An extramarital affair is itself indecent.’

  She gave him a look of consummate pity. ‘Don’t be silly. But Frank and Linda were so hot for each other, they’d chase her maid out of her dressing room, and lock the door on set, between takes! Of course if Gil was around, they couldn’t do that, but what they had going on between them, you could feel it in the air. Like a thunderstorm.’

  Quentin’s mind returned to Claire. Lightning to his thunder.

  Gigi held the shirt up to his back, and the pants from his waist to his ankles. ‘You’re a lot thinner than Frank, but it’ll just have to do, for tonight anyway. Wear the pants low on your hips, and wear your own tie,’ she called out as she left the room. ‘Frank’s was godawful. And hurry up. I’ll call the house and let them know we’ll be late.’

  As he dressed, Quentin’s heart was filled with rancour. Frank Carson, you bloody fool, he thought as he slid his legs into Frank’s pants and buttoned Frank’s shirt, you ought to have begged Claire’s forgiveness and come home, and stayed home. The clothes lay loose upon Quentin and he buckled the belt as tightly as he could. The lapels of the jacket were wide, flash unto garish. You stupid, conceited ass, Frank. You fool.

  ‘Hurry the hell up, will you?’ Gigi yelled. ‘You’re late. Roy won’t like it.’

  As he followed Gigi outside into the night air, he was accosted by a fleshy, tipsy girl who clapped her arm around his shoulders and said they were all bastards, and he shouldn’t take it personally. Gigi told the girl to scram, and she disappeared into the darkness like a perfumed ghost.