“Alicia?” Hap said.
She jerked up. She hadn’t locked the door, and Hap was standing in the middle of the room. Snatching the towel, she draped it around her waist—what idiocy to hide herself from Hap, who had kissed every part of her nakedness. “Be with you in a sec,” she said, pushing the bathroom door shut.
She held on to the washbowl, feeling as if her raw flesh were contained only by the thinnest membrane of skin. She resolved to muster all of her strength. It’s breakup time, she thought as she rinsed her face. Do it quickly. Quickly. Quickly.
She emerged from the bathroom with Barry’s terrycloth robe pulled high around her throat and the sash knotted tightly.
“Why’ve you been hiding?” Hap asked. There were bluish smudges under his eyes.
“Hiding?”
“You know what I mean.”
“We had a fling and it’s over. That’s all.” Desmond Cordiner would be proud of her calmly unemotional tone.
“You call what went on between us a fling?”
“For me it was.”
He took a step, grasping her shoulders. “Like hell. I was there, Alicia. You weren’t faking it.” He paused. “What’s happened?”
“Nothing,” she said numbly.
“Don’t you think I’m entitled to the truth?”
“Let’s just say I came to my senses. One person has to first.”
“You damn well weren’t over it the other night.”
Probably because Hap was a large man and apparently self-assured, many people considered him impervious to mental anguish. Alicia knew him better. From his voice and expression she understood how profoundly she had hurt him—and was hurting him now.
“Hap,” she sighed, “sooner or later we have to stop. Sooner’s easier.”
“Why is breaking up inevitable?”
“We both know the reason. I’m married.”
“Barry doesn’t remember it often.”
She went to turn off the potatoes. With her back turned, she said, “Once I suggested to him that we split. He rushed out and got loaded, then came home and cried.” She winced, trying to black out the memory of Barry groveling on the rug, of the slobbery, teary kisses that wet her feet.
“He’ll recover,” Hap said expressionlessly.
“Maybe. But you won’t. He’s your cousin, one of your closest friends. You even felt guilty talking to him on the phone. None of the conversations lasted a full minute.”
He was gazing at her, his lips parted and soft. When she opened the door at the Cahuenga Inn he would look at her like this, as if his eyes were indelibly photographing her. She drew a shaky breath, her body traitor to her resolve. She was ready and Hap must know it—he could see the flush of warmth rising from the collar of Barry’s robe, the moisture in her eyes.
He stared at her another few seconds, then lifted her off her feet, carrying her in two strides to the couch, pushing aside the lower half of her terrycloth robe while unzipping his fly. They were both shaking violently. She flung one slim leg up on the sofa back while dropping the other on the floor, opening herself utterly to him.
This was the truth, the only truth. She belonged to Hap.
It was artless, swift. Afterward, still tingling, she smiled at him. “Is that your caveman act?”
“I didn’t hear any complaints.” He stroked back the mass of moist black hair. “Were those potatoes for your dinner?”
“It was my dinner.”
“I’m taking you to a restaurant. No arguments. And if somebody sees us, good!”
• • •
At the Pacific Diner, they devoured the rolls, laughing at each other’s jokes, falling silent when the waiter brought their steaming slabs of beef and football-shaped baked potatoes. She ate hungrily, but the heroic platter proved too much for her. Hap reached over for the filet she had pushed aside.
“How do you know I’m not going to finish that?” she asked.
“Simple. I am.”
Laughing, she threw the end of a sourdough roll at him. He fielded it. “Nice catch,” she said.
“Hey, who do you think you’re patronizing? Sitting in this booth is a three-year letterman in baseball, a man whose Little League team went to the All Star game.”
“It’s not in the Guinness Book of Records yet,” she said. But his words had struck a slender dart into her unfettered euphoria. What’s Little League? There’s so much in his life that I don’t understand.
“Hap, what time is it?”
He glanced down at his gold watch. “Nine thirty.”
“Barry’ll be home around ten,” she sighed.
“When we get back,” he said, his voice also emptied of buoyancy, “I’ll tell him.”
“You?”
“Who else?”
“Hap, I explained how shook he was when—”
“I can’t keep lying.”
“Neither can I. What I mean is, let me tell him.”
“No way. If you think I’m about to let you do the dirty work—”
“He’s married to me,” she interrupted. “I care for him—not love, like us, but I care.”
“So do I. We’ll tell him together, then.”
She clenched her napkin in her lap, aware of her disloyalty as she explained rapidly, “Barry’s got this real bug about being a lesser Cordiner. He feels he’s not quite up to snuff in the family.” Her final betrayal sickened her, and she mumbled, “When it comes to your branch, he feels a total nothing.”
“Why not? We walk on water.”
Hap’s bitterness was so uncharacteristic that she looked up at him. For the first time she saw a resemblance between him and Maxim, his sarcastic, mercurial brother.
She touched Hap’s large, tensed hand. “It’ll be a low enough blow if I tell him. But at least he won’t need to be ashamed.”
• • •
Nearing the apartment, she could see the cracks of light coming from behind the closed Venetian blinds. Barry’s home, she thought, and a shiver passed through her. Physically braced for the miserably unhappy scene ahead, she opened the door. She was greeted by the thunder of hoof-beats. Ten to eleven Tuesday was the slot for high-rated Apache 45, a Western made by Magnum Television, a series that Barry derisively scorned.
Desmond Cordiner sat watching on the daybed/couch so recently used for love.
“You ought to lock your door,” he said benignly. “If you locked your door, Hap and I couldn’t barge in.”
Instinctively, she lied to protect Hap. “Hap? I went out to Dolores Drive-in for pecan pie. Alone. By myself.”
Desmond Cordiner drew a folded paper from his breast pocket. “Hap arrived at six forty-three and left with you at seven twenty-seven. The two of you drove in his MG to the Pacific Diner. You ate steaks, but no pie—or any other dessert.”
“You’re a spiritual comfort,” she sighed. “Putting detectives on your own son.”
“The man was keeping an eye on you.” Desmond Cordiner rose to turn off the television. In his black silk suit and gleaming white shirt, he made the one-room apartment seem yet shabbier. “Alicia, are you old enough to remember who Collis Brady was?”
Startled by his conversational shift, she said, “Collis Brady? Wasn’t he the drummer who lost his hand in an automobile accident years and years ago? The one who killed himself right after?”
“He killed himself, yes. But losing the hand was no accident. Brady was hanging round Elaine Pope. In fact, he was having a red-hot affair with Elaine Pope.” In the forties and early fifties Elaine Pope had been a star of the first magnitude, her roles were similar to the sweetly feminine parts played by Olivia de Havilland and Greer Garson. “If you’ll remember, Elaine was married to Jack Rexford, so she certainly wasn’t getting any at home. Rexford was one of the boys.” Desmond Cordiner’s unalleviated loathing of homosexuality showed in his unpleasant smirk. “He was Magnum’s virile he-man lover. When Louella put a blind item in her column about Elaine and Collis, Art was beside himself
. He laid down the law to Elaine. The affair got more recklessly open. So then Art warned Brady to quit. Brady pointed out that he was a musician with no ties to Magnum so he could do as he damn chose, and he just might choose to tell the world Rexford loved to get plugged in the ass. Thereby destroying two of Magnum’s biggest box-office stars. It wasn’t many days after this conversation that Brady met with his accident. Not much of a future for a one-handed drummer. He killed himself. There were no more problems with Elaine.”
Alicia managed a smile. “Mr. Cordiner, I do believe you’re threatening me.”
“There’ve been more than a few such maneuvers in the Industry. It’s not unheard of in other businesses either, when people step out of line.”
She swallowed sharply, remembering the dark blood around the crushed corpse of a union organizer run over by a truck. “If something happens to me, Hap would guess.”
“Who said anything about you?”
“But Barry’s your nephew, Hap’s your son . . .” Her voice dropped a horrified decibel. “You wouldn’t.”
Desmond Cordiner scratched the side of his aquiline nose in cryptic silence.
The door opened.
“Hi, hon, I’m—” Barry’s greeting halted abruptly. “Uncle Desmond.”
“You’re home late, Barry,” Desmond Cordiner said.
“I dropped in on Mom, but if I’d known you were here I’d’ve left sooner.”
Smiling at them, Desmond Cordiner said, “I’ve been waiting for you before I told Alicia my big news.”
“News?” Barry asked.
“Philippe Saint-Simon’s a friend. I’d heard that he was looking for a young American girl to play in his new film, so I shot him off a clip of Alicia—Alicia, there’s a close-up of you crying in Marked. Saint-Simon called tonight to say you had precisely the quality he wanted, an exotic innocence, whatever that means.”
Had Saint-Simon called? Would Desmond Cordiner ring him later? Alicia twisted her wedding band.
“It’s not a big part, of course, one line, but Saint-Simon keeps a troupe, so it’s a beginning.”
“I thought he loathes Hollywood,” Barry said.
“He’s shooting in Normandy—he’s begun already.”
“Normandy?” Barry asked.
“Normandy, France.”
“Then Alicia will have to go over there—to France?”
“Naturally.”
Barry was blinking. “Uncle Desmond, you’ve been wonderful to us, and Alicia and I appreciate it,” he said in a stilted tone. “And naturally I’d never stand in her way. But I have the rest of my senior year at UCLA, and then there’s law school.”
“Barry, Barry. Of everyone I know, you’re the least cut out to chase ambulances. You’re too sensitive and creative. Clara showed me those articles you did about Hersey’s Child Buyer for the college newspaper. Topnotch stuff. Tell me, have you ever given serious thought to writing as a career?”
Involuntarily Barry glanced toward the locked drawer containing the scrawled yellow sheets and neatly typed Eaton’s Corrasable Bond. “Well, uhh, vaguely.”
“This would be the perfect opportunity to give it a whirl.”
“The thing is, Mom really counts on me becoming an attorney. She and Dad sacrificed a lot for my education.”
“I grant you Clara’ll be disappointed—until you publish your first book to rave reviews.”
Barry glanced at the drawer again. His novella would outshine the work of Hemingway, Fitzgerald.
“Uncle Desmond, after all this effort on your part, it would be churlish of me to drag my feet. I can certainly go with Alicia for a few months.”
“Attaboy. As I said, Saint-Simon’s already shooting. He wants Alicia the day after tomorrow.”
“I can’t,” she whispered.
“Why not?” asked Desmond Cordiner.
Barry answered for his wife. “She’s nervous,” he said. “But, hon, remember the shambles you were before you started as an extra? And now you know it’s mere idiot work. There’s no reason to be afraid. Saint-Simon’s a genius—he could get a performance out of a circus chimp.”
Desmond Cordiner gave her his most avuncular smile. “Barry’s right, dear. No need for the jitters. My office’ll arrange for the tickets—yes, yes, Saint-Simon’s promised to pay the fares for both you kids.”
Barry gripped his wife’s icy hand. “France, hon. Just think, we’re going to France. . . .”
Alicia understood that the choice was no longer hers. She had been severed from Hap. And now, at the moment of amputation, she was too numb to feel anything except an awful internal draining, as if her lifesblood were oozing away.
BEVERLY HILLS, 1986
Barry turned away from the heart-shaped pool, walking slowly across the sunlit patio to where the other three sat nursing their drinks.
Pushing back his sparse red hair, he said, “I can’t tell you why Alyssia’s asked us here. In fact I’ve been mulling it over and I don’t understand much at all about her. I’m reasonably certain she didn’t want to go to France.”
Maxim laughed. “Oh, Jesus Christ, that is rich! She didn’t want to work with Saint-Simon? Barry, buster, during your marriage didn’t you notice her motivations at all? Your ex is the world’s top-ranked ambitious bitch.”
“Yes, Barry, you’re being dumb,” Beth said. The sisterly warmth of her smile restored her youthful prettiness. Glancing toward the mirrored windows, she lowered her voice. “Whose career was forging ahead when the two of you were in France?”
“Beth and Maxim are right,” PD said. “Speaking as an agent, let me tell you that an extra has one chance in a million of making it to stardom. And who fixed the odds in her favor? You, Barry. You with your Cordiner name. Without that, there’s no way she could’ve maneuvered a job with Saint-Simon.”
“She didn’t maneuver anything,” Barry said sharply. “He was looking for an American girl to play a bit in Bibi and Uncle Desmond sent him a clip of Alicia.”
Maxim’s thin legs, still bent on the chaise, jerked as if a doctor were testing the knee reflexes. “Dad? Why? Oh, God—Hap? That was his way of prying her loose from Hap? Strange, until now I’ve never made the connection.”
“Why would you? I didn’t either—of course I didn’t know about the two of them in those days.” Barry spoke without reproach or jealousy. He added, “All those years I was learning my craft, she supported me without a murmur.”
“We’re all sweating bullets trying to figure out why she’s brought us here,” Maxim said. “So don’t you come down with a terminal case of writer’s nobility.”
Barry rubbed the flesh under his chin. “I’m only pointing out there’s something to be said on her side.”
Maxim’s face exaggerated disbelief. “You want us to start a foundation to aid Mexican domestics who become superstars? Barry, she not only as good as murdered my brother, but can’t you see she used us? And used. And used.”
“She became a disaster area for you, Maxim, I grant that,” Barry said doggedly. “But you’ll have to admit she gave you—and poor Hap—your initial chance to do a film.”
Maxim’s eyes narrowed as he squinted at the ridiculous pool, and he appeared ready to hurl the lightning bolts of his sarcasm at his stout, balding cousin. Then he shook his head, a slight gesture as if clearing his thoughts.
Impossible as it seemed in retrospect, hadn’t he once viewed Alicia—no, by then she was Alyssia—as a symbol of hope professionally? Hadn’t he seen her magnificent body as a feasible way out of his personal hells? But that, of course, was before the tragedy inextricably linked with the production of Wandering On had wiped such dreams and hopes from his mind.
MAXIM
1966
15
On a cold night in late February of 1966, Maxim Cordiner inched forward, part of the long line going into the Bruin Theater in Westwood. Edging into the lobby, he stared at the glassed-in poster:
Saint-Simon presents
&nbs
p; BRAVURA
Claude Tissot—Jacqueline d’Abrantès
Also starring Alyssia del Mar
He could have borrowed a print of Bravura from Magnum’s excellent library, but he had grown up with the knowledge that the paying audience is the final arbiter of a film’s success. He had seen every movie made by Saint-Simon, whom he rated up there with Bergman, and thus had watched Alicia’s growth from that first silent bit in Bibi. Then, her face had been childishly full and her eyebrows plucked into thin, naked curves, yet even amid the sophisticated French actors she had shown a tenuous talent of her own, somehow managing in her brief close-ups to convey musky yet innocent sex. Three films later he raised his opinion of her. She came across as carnal, true, but with a nice comedic flair. Her roles had grown larger. Two years ago, after she did the Fellini film and Saint-Simon gave her also-starring status, the American press had started taking notice.
Maxim took a seat in the rear of the theater, cupping his chin in his hand as the lights dimmed. There were no opening credits. Instead, the camera races up the Champs-Elysées as if attached to Claude Tissot’s Harley Davidson, panning jerkily to a group of hip young Americans, focusing on the back of a shapely girl with long black hair. As she turns, the surroundings veer wildly and there is a skidding crash. The camera cuts to the American brunette—Alyssia—and the audience let out a mass chuckle of lascivious amusement. Her dress has popped a button, and her high, firm breasts are almost exposed, jiggling in an interesting way as she rushes to the aid of the sprawling Tissot. From her concerned expression it is apparent that she’s oblivious to what has caused the accident. The woman in front of Maxim said to her companion, “Oh, don’t you just adore her!”
Unconsciously Maxim leaned forward. Here was the missing ingredient for Wandering On.
Wandering On, the loosely structured, New Wave film that he was planning to produce, seldom strayed from his thoughts.
Dreams Are Not Enough Page 11