Tansi insisted on driving me back to the Ambassador and seemed thrilled with me as her sole passenger. Her car, she said, was brand-new. Look, look at it, she insisted. What do you think? Bored, I looked. A spotless Chevy Bel Air, sparkling and shiny. “Everyone in L.A. has a new car,” I said, joking.
Tansi nodded. “Well, you have to.”
“How sad!”
“Why?” Tansi asked.
I chose not to answer, finding the subject tedious, but finally said, “I felt Mercy was being evasive. She was holding something back.”
Tansi pulled out into traffic. “You mean about his going out with Lydia?”
“And others. How he treats the girls he sees.”
A stretched out response. “Noooo…not really.”
“And now you’re doing it, too. Mercy strikes me as a forthright woman, and you’re an old friend, but everyone seems to deal with Jimmy gingerly, only comfortable on the fringes. No one wants to get to the heart of him.”
“Maybe because we don’t know how to talk about him.”
“Or,” I said, “maybe everyone is nervous about actually getting to the heart of him.”
“No, Jimmy is just a sweet guy who…”
That surprised me. “I’d never call him sweet, Tansi. Brooding, rude, sullen, yes. At times happy, joking, frivolous, funny. Sweet, no.”
“Charming, then.”
“All right, charming, if you will.”
But the conversation made Tansi uncomfortable. She started pointing out local landmarks to me, like a guide, cutting across boulevards, weaving her way through the city. Pershing Square, where soapbox orators declaimed their madness all hours of the night. Grauman’s Chinese Theater. The Moulin Rouge. The Egyptian Theater, where East of Eden was still playing. “Jimmy comes to stare at the marquee,” Tansi told me.
I kept repeating, “I’ve been here before, Tansi. Before you were born, in fact. The palm trees were smaller, but looked about the same. The buildings were still ugly and on the verge of being replaced with newer, uglier, shinier ones. And the stars were too clear in the sky, with too much space below. The mountains were still over there.” I pointed, dramatically.
Tansi laughed. “I’m sorry.” She turned onto Sunset Boulevard.
I pointed. “And that’s Schwab’s. We can sit at the counter and be discovered like Lana Turner.”
“They say that never happened.” Tansi pointed at a building and grinned. “But you don’t know about Googie’s.”
I eyed the eatery next to Schwab’s. “And I choose not to.” An odd-looking restaurant, with its grotesque architecture: upswept roof, diagonal glass panels, zigzag markings on the boomerang-looking signs, a nightmare clash of blue and orange, a matchbox construction, pieces of building dropped willy-nilly and then glued together.
“That’s a Jimmy hangout, a coffee shop. He used to live nearby.”
“Let’s stop in,” I said suddenly.
Tansi kept driving. “Oh no. I’ve never been there.”
“Come on, Tansi, let’s stop. I want to get a feel of the place. When I come to L.A., I’m squired to the Cocoanut Grove for drinks, to Don Roper’s on Rodeo Drive for fittings to make me look like Ginger Rogers, to the Mocambo to see Theresa Brewer or some other screeching singer I can’t stand. No one ever thinks to take me to a coffee shop.”
“There must be a reason for that. Googie’s is for young people.”
“Good. Then we’ll fit right in.”
Tansi swung her car around, a little too dramatically, so that I slid in my seat, held onto the dashboard. “I learned my driving maneuvers trying to follow Jimmy to events. He doesn’t believe in speed limits.”
“But I do, Tansi. My remaining hair is white. Please don’t make it fall out.” I patted my careful perm. “More than it already does.”
Standing in the doorway, a tiny woman dwarfed by the soaring archway, I waited and considered the place no country for me. Tansi, uncomfortable, hovered behind me. I surveyed the sleek, polished eatery, as crisp inside as a deco highway diner: the stark, high-backed booths and the chrome-and-glass tables, the cluttered geometric glass tiers suspended behind the counter, jam-packed with cobalt-blue soda glasses and rose-colored plates. Diagonal floor tiles, alternating black and white, gave the floor a dizzy, schizoid feel. The whole place seemed taken with itself, smart and trendy, and I thought of the hipster word I never employed-cool. But what made the small place bounce, even hum, was the energy, the sense that something was happening, something contagious and electric. Late afternoon in L.A.: freeways cluttered with honking, desperate cars, but, inside, a cavern of muted voices. Not quiet-there was too much talk going on, but it was like an interplay of piano notes, the one echoing off the other. Half of the tables were filled, perhaps. But the occupants sailed back and forth, young men and women, talking, laughing, backslapping, confiding. Everyone seemed to know everyone, and everyone seemed, to my jaundiced eye, eighteen years old.
“Tommy and Polly are here,” Tansi whispered.
I looked. Tommy and Polly stood near a booth, chatting with friends, watching Tansi and me settle into our chairs. I muttered under my breath, “Does he ever take off the red jacket?”
Tansi grinned. “Then he wouldn’t be James Dean.”
“But he’s not Jimmy.”
“And then his girlfriend Polly would leave him.”
I stared at the young woman I’d seen on Tommy’s arm. “What’s her story?’’
“Polly Dunne?” Tansi glanced back at the couple, both of whom had stopped talking, simply watching us. I saw a willowy girl, tall and slender-a sapling leaning back to earth. I supposed it had to do with her being a half-foot taller than her boyfriend, some way of making them seem more a couple. Tommy, on the other hand, seemed to be craning his neck upward, arching back, reminding me of a baby bird stretching for nourishment. An odd couple, really. Yet they touched a lot, seemed to bump into each other, as though to make sure the other was still there. I thought Polly’s look bizarre. For such a tall girl, she was almost all bone and no flesh, with a shock of brilliant auburn hair on her head-a crown of sudden sunset. She wore clothes I considered the stuff of thrift store backrooms: a lacy crinoline skirt that flared out, way below the knee, a puffy lace blouse that I thought had disappeared with Lillian Gish silents. A modern girl clothed in some ensemble more applicable to a barn dance in rural Kansas, circa 1900. Rebecca of Sunnybrook farm with garden spade, stopping for an egg cream in an American cafe.
“Well,” Tansi said, “she’s sort of hard to get to know. She clings to Tommy like he’s the last piece of floating driftwood. She spends much of the time berating him for his lack of ambition. Tommy believes fate will pluck him from the dailies and make him the next Brando. But Tommy’s lazy. Jimmy got him a bit part in Giant, as you know. Before that, he had an audition for a speaking role in Rebel, but he came late. Polly almost killed him.”
“Why doesn’t she leave him?” I eyed the staring couple, watching Polly fluff her head of red curls and Tommy pull on the cuffs of the jacket.
“I think she believes his friendship with Jimmy will get her a place in Hollywood.”
“Another ambitious actress?”
“They all are, his crew. She’s in Giant in a dinner scene. Stevens needed what he called a ‘statuesque beauty.’ Nell Meyers is the only one not infected with the acting bug-just yet. Though I’m afraid Lydia has put ideas in her head, too.”
I nodded. “Jimmy’s assembly of bit players.”
“Exactly. And the only one with any talent, clearly, is Jimmy.”
“Mercy says he’s trying to distance himself from them.”
“He already has. Lydia Plummer got on his nerves right away. We all saw it, but not her. Jimmy told me, I guess confidentially, that she wanted him to get her a juicy part in his next picture.”
“Rather brazen, no?”
“I suppose so, but not surprising. Very Hollywood, once you’ve been here for a while. Hollywood is the land of make-believe. Everyone makes believe they’re talented. At parties, the only refrain you hear over and over is, ‘I’m waiting for my break.’”
I bit my lip. “Most probably don’t realize the word ‘break’ should be used in the past tense. Polly doesn’t look very happy. And for some reason they’re still staring at us.”
“I hope you don’t get to know her, Edna. Despite her weird look, she’s known for her rude mouth. She can be harsh with folks.”
I was curious. “How does Jimmy deal with her?”
She shrugged. “You know Jimmy. He flirts with her, he ignores her, he makes fun of her-he can be a deadly mimic. When he knew you were coming west, he did one of you…”
“Me!”
“Of course, he didn’t know you, but he knew we were friends. So he’d arch his voice, piercing Margaret Dumont falsetto out of some Marx Brothers routine-with you wanting to rename the movie Gigantic because it made you rich.”
I grinned. “I love it. I do.” I glanced at the frozen, staring couple. “But Tommy Dwyer intrigues me, a boy who unashamedly takes his coloration from another, and isn’t afraid to be mocked. By God, he even does his hair like Jimmy’s.”
“What else does he have? Parking cars? Weekend auditions at the Beverly Hills Playhouse? He wants to stay in the sunshiny world of L.A., and, if he can be Jimmy’s occasional understudy or stand-in, so be it. It buys cheap red wine and Mexican food and New Year’s Eve, maybe, at LaRue’s on the Strip.”
“And they all know this femme fatale Carisa Krausse?”
Tansi glanced at the couple, then back at me. “I don’t think she was ever close to Tommy or Polly. More Lydia’s friend. Polly is close to no one. The girls don’t like her. But I’m invisible to her. Too old. I’m not a rival.”
I made a face. “One thing I’ve learned is that women become invisible quicker than men.”
“Some women are born invisible.”
I recalled Tansi’s lonely, solitary childhood under the care of this nanny or that one, sent to a Swiss boarding school where no one liked her, dragged from one New York apartment to another by an effervescent, much-marrying famous mother.
We ordered sodas from a waitress who never looked at us.
Then Tansi nudged me, and I jumped. I found myself staring at a couple of gangly teenagers, perhaps eighteen or nineteen. The boy and girl were identical twins, with small mooncalf eyes set too far apart in round, expansive faces, with stringy arms out of place on such rotund frames, with corn-fed, slapdash grins on splotchy, acned faces. A strange couple, the two, standing there, shoulders touching, blocking the doorway, and vacantly grinning like gassed fugitives from a dentist’s chair. Worse, both were dressed identically in T-shirts, penny loafers, and red nylon jackets.
“Good Lord,” I exclaimed. “The Katzejammer Kids are back in town.”
Tansi laughed. “Welcome to the sideshow. You’re looking at Alyce and Alva Strand.”
Eyes wide. “You know them, Tansi? They look like they’ve toppled from a hay wagon.”
The twins sauntered over, their heads swiveling left and right, as though on ball bearings, looking, looking. They stopped at Tansi’s table, though they first waved to Tommy and Polly, who immediately looked away. “Is he here?” one said, and I wasn’t sure which one spoke. The voice, garbled as though impeded by a mouth of marbles, was neither male nor female.
Tansi said no.
They looked at me, as if they should know me, and then silently turned and found seats on the counter stools, twisting left and right, facing each other, then shifting back and forth, scanning the crowd.
“Jimmy’s fan club,” Tansi remarked.
I raised my eyebrows. “My God.”
“They’re harmless. They follow Jimmy everywhere. He doesn’t know what to make of them.”
“And you do?”
“They’re Jimmy’s oldest fans. We’re talking 1951 now, a lifetime ago, Hollywood years. Jimmy got his first break on TV, playing John the Baptist in Hill Number One, an Easter pageant on Father Peyton’s Family Theater. Jimmy in a white toga and sandals, devastatingly handsome and sexy. The nuns at a California girls’ school assigned it as homework.” She chuckled. “The girls fell in love with Jimmy and formed the Immaculate Heart James Dean Appreciation Society. I’m not making this up, Edna, I swear. They held meetings, wrote letters-all the sheltered Catholic girls going crazy. One of the girls, Alyce Strand,” Tansi pointed to the ditzy girl, then sitting with an index finger tucked into her cheek, “became his devoted fan. And somehow her brother, he of the singular brain cell, became enamored of Jimmy, too. Jimmy has a legion of male fans now, though they’re the tough high-school misfits, the kind with the slicked-back Brylcream hair and the biker boots. Not so Alva. He’s an oddball who…”
“I don’t understand.” I was bewildered. “For what-four years-they follow Jimmy?”
“Yes, and after East of Eden and Jimmy’s spectacular celebrity, they ratcheted up their obsession. They feel they own him. They follow him.”
I was furious. “They are sick.”
“Harmless, Edna.”
“Oh, no, no, Tansi, I don’t think so.”
“Edna, you seem to give them more worth than they deserve. Stars need their fans.”
“Tansi, you seem to believe Hollywood is a land removed from the rest of America.”
“And it isn’t?”
I paused. “They’re like Tommy-living no life but Jimmy’s. They can’t have his life, you know.”
“They don’t work or anything. They live at home, and indulgent parents let them play out their bit parts.”
“I suppose it’s cheaper than the cost of an asylum.”
“Edna!”
Tommy and Polly, unhappy with the sudden proliferation of red-nylon jackets in Googie’s, left, nodding to Tansi and me as they passed. I noticed they purposely avoided looking at the Strand twins, who’d been facing each other, but then swiveled on the seats, facing out, grins plastered on faces. Their eyes never left Tommy. After all, Tommy Dwyer was a James Dean friend.
Tansi was telling me how the Strand twins amused her, but she stopped.
James Dean was standing just inside the front door. Oddly, he just seemed to appear: an apparition materializing from another world. But, of course, he’d strolled in, in a leather jacket and biker boots. He sat across the room, but didn’t acknowledge us, and I watched his profile: rigid, the flexible mouth, the cigarette dangling. He noticed me watching him, but turned away, looking away, too, from Alva and Alyce Strand. I saw him suck in his breath.
Clearing her throat, Tansi yelled across the tables: “Jimmy, here.”
He shook his head. No.
Jimmy’s presence compelled the eatery into an awkward paralysis. People stopped talking and watched him. Looking up, Jimmy caught my eye. Sheepishly, I smiled. Jimmy narrowed his eyes, tucked his head into his chest like a bantam cock, and turned away. I felt foolish, rebuffed, the slight acknowledgement I’d offered rejected. For a second, I was furious. How dare he? I was Giant; I was Show Boat; I was-I stopped. I had no idea what I was to boys of his generation. I wrote words down and sometimes actors read them into cameras. Suddenly, I felt ancient-an attitude I never allowed myself. The dowager in the diner. The waitress had placed two sodas on the table, and I pushed mine to the side. Tansi, I noted, quickly drained her glass and was now munching on an ice cube.
Tansi looked flustered. “It isn’t personal, Edna. He’s moody sometimes.”
“He’s downright rude.”
“Oh, Edna, no.”
“He’s a brat.” I paused. “And stop defending him, Tansi.”
“I’m not…”
“He’s allowed to get away with boorish behavior because you let him.”
“Talent has its entitlements.”
“Nonsense. I’ve been talented all my life, and I…”
Tansi cut me off. “And you’ve been known to be imperious. Even rude sometimes. I mean no offense, I…”
I pulled back, smiled. Good for you, Tansi, I thought. “None taken. But I’m that way with fools. Jimmy has to learn to sort out his rudeness.”
Tansi shook her head. “Maybe you should give him lessons.” She meant it humorously-even her eyes got bright-but the line came out too quickly, too strident.
I glared.
When I turned to look at Jimmy, he was gone. I hadn’t even heard the chimes over the door ring. Maybe he was an apparition.
Late that night, in my hotel suite, settling into my pillows with tea and a Mary Roberts Rinehart mystery I had trouble following, my phone rang.
“I’m in the lobby,” Jimmy said.
“And?”
“Invite me up.”
I glanced at the clock. “Jimmy, it’s after ten.”
“So?”
“For a minute.”
Within seconds he was there, slumped into a chair by the window, his leather jacket still zipped up, looking around the room. “They’re really scared of you, Miss Edna, if you get all these rooms for yourself.”
“I’m famous.”
“So am I.”
“What do you want, Jimmy?”
He shrugged his shoulders and mumbled.
“You’re going to have to be more articulate with me. I’m old, hard of hearing, and I value oratory as a lost art.”
“You know, in high school I won the Indiana state competition for oratory.”
“And as a prize, they took away your need for future clarity?”
He laughed. “I love it. You won’t let me win.”
“I didn’t know we were in a contest.”
“Everything is a contest in life.”
“And you have to win?”
“Of course. I always do.”
“And you need to do battle with old ladies in sensible shoes and beauty-parlor perms?”
His eyes widened. “Everybody lets me win these days. It ain’t fun.”
“Maybe you need new combatants.”
“That may be so. I got no one to fight with.”
“You seem to have your crew-Tommy, Polly, Lydia, Nell…”
He cut me off. “Miss Edna, I’ve come here to beg and plead.”
“I don’t know you, Jimmy.”
“Yes, you do.” He looked toward the window, out into the black night. “I got famous too fast.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. “I heard about your Hill Number One TV show.”
He shook his head. “Oh, that. The Strand twins. They’ll disappear.”
“Like Carisa Krausse?” I wanted to challenge him.
Jimmy slumped back, folded and unfolded his arms. He started to speak, then stopped, stammered. Grunted. “What?” I asked.
“Sort of why I’m here.”
“Jimmy, you were rude to us at Googie’s.”
He looked surprised. “How so?”
“You enter, I assume through the front door, although legions of fans may ascribe other powers to you, and you ignore civilized nods of hello.”
He didn’t answer.
“I don’t like rudeness.” My voice was a little too strident. I was surprised that I was nervous.
“I wasn’t being rude.”
“Perhaps we’d both better consult the same dictionary then.”
“You do got a way about you, Miss Edna.” He sat up, grinning. “I wanna be like you when I grow up.” He tilted his head and looked at me, as though expecting a laugh. But I sat there, lips pursed. “Look,” he said, “rude is not ignoring you in a dumb diner. That’s just-just, well, nothing. It’s, it’s, like, well, nothing. Rudeness, if you think about it, is barging in here late at night, uninvited, and jostling with you, working myself up to asking a favor of you. That’s the real rudeness.”
I fell under his spell, a little intoxicated by his hazy, narcotic drawl. I sat back, relaxed. “Tell me about Carisa Krausse.”
“Hey, we had an idle fling in Marfa. I was bored, there was nothing to do. She was pretty, she was always around me, Pier Angeli had just left me, and, well, nothing happened. A couple late-night rides in a car I borrowed from Mercy. They took my car away so I wouldn’t kill myself. Suddenly, I see she’s falling for me. Before Marfa, back here, in rehearsals, she was around, and I’d sensed her…well…instability. But sometimes I lack common sense. I swear we never…we…there is no way any baby is mine, Miss Edna. Not with her.”
“What about other women?” He was sitting up now, the sober schoolboy before the demanding teacher.
“That’s mostly PR. Like Terry White, that pretty vacuum. You know, the studio had me and Terry go to a movie. So the limo pulls up, she says not one damn word to me, not one, but the minute we get out of the limo and the reporters are there, the big smile comes on, she grabs my arm, and acts like we’re lovey-dovey boyfriend-girlfriend. Not a word the whole time.” He sighed. “Sometimes I actually like the girls they hand me. Most times I don’t.”
“But your reputation?”
His eyebrows raised, the eyes unblinking. “I don’t know what reputation I have.”
“Mercy says you ‘sort of’ go through women.”
Jimmy looked at the ceiling, then burst into laughter. “Love that Madama. So…so…”
“Truthful?”
“Maybe so.” He crossed and uncrossed his denim-clad legs, stared at his boots. “I’m not sure what to do around women,” he said, suddenly.
“What does that mean?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I just got some questions I gotta answer.”
Now I was confused. “About what? Marriage?”
He opened and closed his eyes, blinking wildly. “Well, sex, frankly.”
Not a subject I was comfortable with, truly. I winced. Birds and bees may indeed do it, but not on my watch. I’m almost seventy, and I stare like a deer in the headlights at the mention of that monumental and ferocious three-letter word.
“I’m not following you.” And I wasn’t.
“Forget it.” He stood up and walked to the window, looking down into the street. “You got some good view of an empty city here.” He pointed. “Somewhere over there is Chinatown. The street of the Golden Palace. You can get your fortune told there.” He looked back at me. “You know, L.A. has a real different energy than New York. New York is pulsating and real nervous-like. It’s jumpy and feverish. It’s all throb and burst. That’s where artists can grow. You know that. You live there. L.A. is emptiness. So much room to wait things out, to dream and not to do. People, you know, float from one exhibitionist outpost to another, grasping for ideas that are best left untouched.” Most of what he’d just said was mumbled, and he seemed to laugh at the end of each line, as though embarrassed by the sentiment.
“What are you talking about?”
“I want you to talk to Mercy. That’s why I’m here. Convince her to talk to Carisa. Mercy was the only person Carisa liked. She told me that. She said Mercy reminded her of an older sister who died of some disease or something. And that fool Jake Geyser called me again tonight, and asked me if I had any idea how to shut Carisa up. This is all beyond him, though he won’t admit it. He’s panicking. Unwed mothers, Jimmy Dean’s love child, forbidden passion, God know what other lies. They’re pressuring me. What am I supposed to do?”
I nodded. And then kept nodding. Even after he left, backing his way out like a servant in some costume drama, bowing and shuffling, I sat there nodding. Then I got angry with myself. I felt, suddenly, that he’d charmed me, wooed me, reeled me in like an available (and not very challenging) fish. I glanced at the clock. After eleven. I didn’t care. I dialed Mercy’s number, knowing she’d be up. I apologized, but Mercy was delighted to hear my voice. I filled her in on Jimmy’s visit, even the earlier encounter at Googie’s, and Mercy chortled. “Did he tell you about his mother?”
“No.”
“He’s saving that story for you. It starts out, ‘I was nine when my mother died.’” She stopped, and seemed sorry she was making light of his story. “But it’s real. His pain is worn like a coat he can’t take off. But let me guess. He wants you as intercessor with me.”
“Yes, he wants you to talk to Carisa.”
“I’ve already told him no.”
“Why not, Mercy? I don’t understand.”
“I don’t know, really. Like Tansi, I just assumed it would go away. I don’t believe Carisa is pregnant. She’s just a melodramatic and misguided girl…”
I closed my eyes. “I promised him I’d convince you otherwise.”
Mercy laughed. “I knew it.” Then I heard her sigh. “You know, after that last letter to Warner, I’ve been thinking maybe I should step in.” A pause. “If I go there, you have to go with me.”
“I don’t think…”
“I’m not giving you a choice. Good night, Edna.”
That night I dreamed of towering, pitch-black oil rigs, a line of them punctuating the parched yellow land, strung out like telephone poles. Rhythmic drilling in the arid Texas landscape, monotonous and steady and thunderous. All night long the clamorous cacophony of cold steel and taut wire and oily rod against caked, clay-packed dirt-pounding, pounding, pounding. I woke with a headache.