Goldenboy

by Michael Nava

  *****

  There was a black Mercedes parked in front of Larry’s house. The plate read gldnboy. I pulled into the driveway and went into the house. Tom Zane, Irene Gentry, and Sandy Blenheim were sitting in the big front room with Larry. The coffee table was littered with papers, coffee cups, and empty glasses. A half- empty bottle of Old Bushmill’s sat near an ashtray filled with cigarette butts.

  “Excuse me,” I said.

  Larry gave me a look that made me acutely aware that I was in the same clothes I had worn the night before. “I think you know everyone,” he said.

  “Looks like someone got lucky last night,” Zane said.

  “I don’t mean to interrupt,” I said, and headed up the stairs without looking back. I changed clothes and called Freeman Vidor. He was surprised to hear from me.

  “Read about you in the paper today,” he said. “D.A. dumped the Pears case.”

  “Justice triumphs again,” I replied. Downstairs someone burst into loud laughter.

  “You don’t sound like a happy man.”

  From the window I watched shadows of clouds gather on the surface of Silver Lake. “It wasn’t exactly an acquittal.”

  “He wasn’t exactly innocent.”

  “There’s something I’d like you to look into.”

  “We still talking about Pears?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t do pro bono,” he said.

  “I’ll pay you the same rate we originally agreed on.”

  “Go ahead.”

  I told him about the missing bar key.

  “That’s it?” His voice was incredulous. “You think someone broke in, slashed the Fox kid and left the knife in Pears’s hand?”

  “I’m less interested in the bar key than I am in Josh Mandel,” I replied after a moment’s hesitation.

  “What does that mean?”

  “I think he’s concealing information about the case,” I replied. “I’d like you to find out what it is without approaching him.”

  “I’m an investigator, Henry, not a psychic.”

  There was more laughter from downstairs. “Then do what you have to do,” I replied.

  “What do you think he knows?”

  “I have no idea,” I said, irritably. “That’s what I’m hiring you to find out.”

  “Uh-huh. You don’t want to talk to him because, why? You think he’ll run or ... “ The sentence trailed off.

  “I slept with him last night.”

  Vidor said, “I’m glad I’m not your boyfriend.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “I’ll be in touch,” he replied. I set the phone down with a clang.

  I was lying on the bed flipping through the pages of a mystery called The Vines of Ferrara. As I began the same paragraph for the fifth time, my attention wandered to the wall where, inexplicably, the shadows of the tree outside the window reminded me of Josh Mandel. That and everything else. What was this? Second adolescence? I picked up the book again and examined the cover.

  There was a knock at the door. Expecting Larry, I hollered, “Come in.”

  Irene Gentry stepped in. I hopped off the bed, buttoning my shirt.

  “Sit down, Henry,” she said. She wore a suit in winter whites tailored to her body. It was quite a good body. “Do you mind if we visit for a while?”

  “Of course not. Here,” I said, bringing a chair up to the bed. “Sit down.”

  She arranged herself in the chair and extracted a silver cigarette case from her pocket. “May I?”

  “Let me find you an ashtray.” The best I could do was the soap dish from the bathroom. I held it out to her. She smiled and set it at the edge of the bed.

  She puffed on her cigarette like a stevedore and said, finally, “I hate Sandy Blenheim.”

  “Any reason in particular?”

  “It’s so obvious that Tom’s nothing to him but a meal ticket.” She stubbed out her cigarette. “He pushes Tom to take whatever crap’s offered to him. Anything to bring in money.” She paused and looked at me. “I suppose you wonder what Tom is to me.”

  “It’s not my business to wonder that.”

  She smiled without amusement. “I’ll tell you anyway, Henry, since you’re bound to hear rumors. I love him.”

  In the musty stillness of the room, the words were startlingly clear. Rennie studied my face and said, “You seem surprised.”

  “I’m sorry if I do.”

  “We all love according to our natures,” she continued. “You, of all people, should understand that.”

  “I don’t doubt you,” I replied.

  “Scoot over,” she said, and kicked off her shoes. She climbed up on the bed beside me. “Larry says you’re from San Francisco.”

  “Close enough,” I replied, and explained that I actually lived in a small university town on the peninsula.

  “Linden University? Did you go to school there?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s wonderful,” she replied, shifting her weight so that our bodies touched. “The closest I ever came to higher education was doing summer stock in Ann Arbor.”

  I put my arm around her. Today she smelled faintly of lilac.

  “May I ask you something?” she said, tipping her face toward mine.

  “Sure.”

  “Are you and Larry lovers?”

  “No,” I replied.

  “Oh,” she said perplexed. “I thought that’s why you were here, to take care of him.”

  Since she had told me she knew Larry was sick, it didn’t seem worth being evasive. “Larry’s not the type to allow himself to be taken care of.”

  “You don’t seem the type either,” she said. “Frankly — and I don’t mean this badly — that always surprises me in gay men. They often seem so needy.”

  “Larry and I are just the other extreme,” I replied. “It’s a kind of psychological machismo. Not really much better than being constantly in need, when you get right down to it.”

  “And then there’s Sandy,” she said, her shoulders stiffening. “He defies types. I wish I knew why Tom keeps him around.” She relaxed and said, “Is it really true that you don’t need anyone?”

  Perhaps because I had been thinking of Josh, the question tugged at my guts.

  She must have seen it in my face. “Have I touched a sore spot?” she asked gently.

  “It’s just that I met someone.”

  “Last night?”

  I nodded.

  She closed her hand around mine. “Then shouldn’t you be happy?”

  “I don’t think it’s going to work out.”

  “The unlikeliest matches do, you know,” she murmured.

  Someone shouted her name from downstairs.

  “Time to go,” she said, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed. “Will you come and have lunch with me day after tomorrow?”

  “I’d love to,” I replied.

  She put her shoes on, stood up and staightened her skirt. “Good, make it around noon. Larry can tell you where I live.” She leaned over and kissed my cheek. “He’s a fool if he lets you go,” she said.

  “Larry?”

  “You know who I mean. Goodbye, Henry.”

  “Goodbye, Rennie,” I replied and listened as she made her way down the stairs. I got up and went to the window. The Zanes were getting into the black Mercedes, Tom in front and Rennie in back. Sandy Blenheim got into the driver’s seat. Sandy Blenheim was Gldnboy? Only in Hollywood, I thought, and watched as the car pulled away.

  A few minutes later, Larry came in.

  “They’re gone,” he announced, pacing the room.

  “I heard them leave. I thought you weren’t taking new clients.”

  He sat down. “I’m not. That was just a little consulting.”

  “It looked like the IBM litigation to me.”

  He picked up the soap dish that Rennie had used as an ashtray and lifted an eyebrow. “You and Mrs. Zane have a nice chat?”

  “I like her,”
I said, taking exception to his tone.

  “That’s allowed, I suppose.”

  “You don’t?”

  He stood up and paced to the doorway of the study. “In this business it doesn’t pay to like anyone very much.” He ran his hand across a dusty bureau.

  “That’s very cynical,” I said.

  He smiled at me, wiping his dusty fingers on his trousers. “Are you going to tell me where you spent the night?”

  “With Josh Mandel,” I said, amazed at how lightly I was able to speak his name.

  “The waiter-witness?” Larry asked. “That’s a surprise.”

  “To me, too,” I replied, not wanting to pursue it.

  “Doesn’t the canon of ethics proscribe screwing witnesses? Except on the witness stand, I mean.”

  “There is no case,” I snapped.

  ‘‘Sorry,” he said. He looked at me. “Was it that good, Henry?”

  “Can we talk about something else?”

  “Evidently, it was,” he said as if to himself. “Forgive me, I’m just jealous.”

  “You needn’t be,” I replied. “I don’t expect I’ll be seeing him again.”

  He sat at the foot of the bed. “I’m sorry,” he said firmly. “I’m being a bitch.” He held out his hand to me. “Friends?”

  I took his hand and smiled. “Friends.”

  “Let me take you to lunch.”

  “Okay.”

  He stood up and looked around. “I haven’t been up here in a long time,” he said. “Never did like this room. Come get me when you’re ready.”

  Only after he left did I remember that his lover, Ned, had killed himself here.

  17

  It was one of those winter days in Los Angeles when the wind has swept away the smog and the air is clear and the light still and everything has the immediacy of a dream. I parked on a street called Overland in the Hollywood Hills. It was lined with white-skinned birch trees. Their nude branches shimmered against the sky. Tattered yellow leaves clogged the gutters and the air was scented with the rainy smell of eucalyptus. There were no cars on the street and the houses were barely visible behind walls and fences and sweeping lawns that had never been trod upon except by gardeners.

  I pressed the intercom button on a white wall. A moment later Rennie asked, “Henry?”

  “Yes, it’s me.’’

  “You’re on time,’’ she observed.

  “A bad habit of mine.”

  There was a buzz and I pushed a wooden door and found myself in a courtyard paved with cobblestones and lined with pots that bore flowering plants and miniature fruit trees. I crossed to the house, where a door formed of planks opened. Rennie stood in the doorway. Her hair was pulled back from her head. She wore black pants and a loose silk blouse the color of the sky. Three strands of pearls hung around her neck.

  “Come inside,” she said, after kissing me lightly on the lips.

  We entered a long rectangular room. The ceiling was crossed with beams of rough pine. The walls were blindingly white and the tiled floor the color of dried roses. The furniture was Mexican country antiques. Over the fireplace was one of

  Diego Rivera’s lily paintings. Above a long sofa was a tapestry that looked like a Miro. A big round crystal vase on a table held a dozen long-stemmed white roses and stalks of eucalyptus.

  “Lunch is almost ready,” she said. “How about a drink?”

  “Mineral water,” I replied.

  She went to a bar and poured a glass of Perrier and a small sherry and brought them to the sofa where I was sitting. I took the Perrier from her. She settled in beside me.

  “Salud,” she said, and we touched glasses. “I’m glad you came.”

  “So am I,” I said. In the silence she seemed distant. I tried to think of things to say and settled, finally, on admiring her house.

  “Thank you,” Rennie replied. “It’s my weakness. I bought it ten years ago with the only money I ever made in Hollywood.”

  “From movies?”

  She laughed. “Oh, no. Real estate investments. I never made a cent out of the movies.”

  Just then, a squat Mexican woman in a lime-green frock appeared at the archway that led into the dining room and said, “Senora, lunch is ready.”

  “Thank you, Fe,” Rennie said, and turning to me added, “It’s so gorgeous out, I thought we’d eat on the patio.”

  She led me through the dining room onto a patio built around a small pool. The pool was fed by a stream that trickled from a concrete wall set into a hillside garden. Near the pool was a table set for two.

  “Your husband?” I asked.

  “He’s at an interview,” she said nervously. “He may show up later.”

  We sat down and I looked at her. The light picked out the lines that fanned from beneath her eyes. She looked tired.

  “Is everything all right?” I asked.

  “I’m sorry, Henry,” she replied. “It has nothing to do with you. There was a scene with Sandy this morning.”

  “About what?”

  “What else, Tom’s career.” The maid brought out salads and set them before us, a mix of sweet and bitter greens. She lifted her fork, then put it down again. “Tom is an actor who can’t act,” she said. “My solution is for him to learn. Sandy’s solution is for him to make all the money he can before he’s found out.”

  The maid reappeared and poured Rennie a glass of wine. I shook my head as she tipped the bottle toward my glass.

  “What’s Tom’s solution?” I asked, cutting a piece of lettuce.

  “It depends on who talked to him last,” she replied, grimly.

  “Who’s been responsible for his success?”

  “He has,” she said, abandoning any pretense at eating. She produced her cigarette case and lit a cigarette. “Some people are just so beautiful that life seems to speak to us through them — they’re vital, radiant. Tom is like that. It’s more startling in men than women, I think, because we don’t usually let ourselves think of men that way. But Shakespeare knew. Remember the sonnets? ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day,’ was written to another man.”

  “Golden boy?” I offered.

  “Something like that.” The maid removed our salad plates and replaced them with plates of spinach pasta in a cream sauce. “I’m a fool for beautiful men,” she added. “No doubt there are psychological explanations.”

  “To appreciate beauty?”

  “It’s more than that,” she replied, tilting her head back to reveal the pouched skin beneath her chin. “I always wanted to be beautiful.”

  I began to speak but she cut me off.

  “Don’t say it, Henry. I’m not fishing for a compliment.” She crushed her cigarette in a heavy marble ashtray. “I’m forty-seven years old. I look into the mirror and see my mother. When a woman reaches that point, she loses whatever illusions she has about being beautiful.”

  “Is it so important?”

  She finished her wine. “It’s life and death,” she replied, “if you’re not. You, of course, are.”

  I couldn’t think of a reply that didn’t sound wildly immodest or incredibly smug. “Thank you.”

  “You’re embarrassed,” she said, smiling.

  “It’s not something I think about.”

  “I thought homosexuals did,” she said.

  “I suppose that depends on which homosexuals you know,”

  I replied.

  The maid made another pass at the table, pouring more wine, bringing us plates of veal and baby carrots.

  I heard tires squeal and then a door in the house slammed shut. The maid appeared with a frantic look on her face.

  “Señora—” she began.

  Rennie looked at her and then at me. “Henry, Tom’s — “

  Suddenly Tom Zane appeared at the doorway, drinking from a bottle of champagne. His face was flushed beneath his tan and his golden hair was disheveled.

  “It’s the ambassador,” he said, recognizing me. “And, of
course, my lovely wife.”

  He swayed above the table. The maid brought him a chair.

  “Sorry I missed lunch,” he slurred. “How’s about a little après-lunch drinky.” He attempted to pour champagne into Rennie’s wine glass. She moved it away and the champagne sloshed onto the table. He blotted it with the sleeve of his coat.

  “I think you better eat something,” Rennie said mildly and told the maid to bring him a sandwich.

  “It’s all right. I ate breakfast.” He had trouble getting his mouth around the last word. The maid brought him a ham sandwich. He wolfed it down and asked for another.

  “How was the interview?” I asked.

  “The reporter was a dyke,” he said. “She spent the whole goddamn time giving the eye to some broad at the next table.” He looked genuinely injured as he related this. Another sandwich was brought to him.

  “Was Sandy there?” Rennie asked.

  “Hell,” he said, his mouth full. “He was after the busboy. This town’s a regular Sodom ... Sodom and...” He looked at me for help.

  “Gomorrah,” I said.

  “That’s right, gonorrhea. You ever had the clap, Ambassador?”

  I shook my head.

  “Smart man,” he said. “Keep your peter in your pocket. But you’re queer, huh?”

  Rennie said, “Tom, stop that.”

  “It’s okay,” Zane said. “I’m a little queer myself.” He held up his hand and measured an inch between his thumb and forefinger. “Maybe this much.” He shone a beautiful smile on me. “Maybe more.”

  “I think all people are basically bisexual,” Rennie said, irrelevantly.

  “That right?” Zane asked. “You ever made it with a dyke, honey?”

  “You know I haven’t,” she replied.

  “What about you, Ambassador? You fuck girls, too?” He looked at me, smiling. “I bet you’re not even a real queer. I bet it’s just a line. Does it work?”

  “All the time,” I replied.

  He lowered his voice to a stage whisper. “You try it with Rennie?”

  Rennie said, sharply, “You’re drunk, Tom, and you’re embarrassing my guest. Stop it.”

  He attempted a smile that withered under her gaze. To me he said, “Sorry. Too much to drink.” He rose, stumblingly, from the table. “I need some sleep. Excuse me.” He looked at Rennie who was lighting a cigarette. “I’m just tired, honey.”