On the phone later that day Ava insisted drinks that night at her home would be fun. “Just a few friends. Alice and Max, of course.”
“I’m not good at cocktail parties,” I told her.
“I swear I won’t throw anything, Edna. I’ll behave.”
I hesitated, uncertain. I planned a quiet evening in my suite, reading Kathleen Winsor’s Star Money, though I fully planned to despise it. I’d avoided Forever Amber, but I found her newest potboiler at the airport, and for some reason I bought it. I’d already dipped into it and didn’t like it. Sentimental balderdash, overwrought emotions, but, said Kitty Carlyle, a boiling read. I’d see about that. “No, Ava, I’m planning to order a pot of coffee with whipped cream and…”
Someone grabbed the phone from her. “I promise I’ll behave.” Frank Sinatra spoke rapidly. “It’s time we met, Miss Ferber. Don’t believe what the gossip sheets say about me.” Ava said something to him that I couldn’t catch. “I’ll send a car with my personal bodyguard.”
An image of some simian lug head flashed into my mind, some monster with greasy-black hair, his knuckles dragging the ground. A vocabulary of four-letter words grunted at me. A toothpick stuck between his missing front teeth and an odoriferous cigar dancing merrily from his drooling lips.
“Sounds like fun to me.” My voice was a little too sarcastic.
“You will?” Ava was surprised.
A small cocktail party at her Nichols Canyon home, a few friends. Three or four people. George Sidney, the director of Show Boat, promised to attend but I wasn’t to believe that. He always promised and then never showed up. Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson, possibly. “Edna,” Ava said in what sounded like an afterthought, “I live in the country. You have to see my yard.”
“Sounds like fun to me,” I repeated, softening my voice.
“Edna, don’t be mean to me.”
“I’m mean to everyone, especially my friends.” But I was beaming.
“So you’ll come?”
I breathed in, eyed the already dog-eared copy of Star Money lying on the nightstand. “I’ll come.”
Ava’s small house nestled among towering palm trees on a knoll above a wooded canyon beyond Ogden Drive, high up a steep chaparral-banked hillside, a quirky pink stucco house that seemed a prop in a Disney cartoon: a splash of brilliant color against a fantasyland grove of impossibly well-positioned tropical foliage. A white-washed picket fence, incongruous as a frilly bonnet on a streetwalker, surrounded the place, with clumps of brilliant purple and yellow ice plants dotting the landscape. Yellow roses climbed the picket fence, pungent honeysuckle covered a trellis, and beds of petunias lined the driveway.
Odder still, I spied a clothesline behind the small house on which some lace blouses flapped and bellowed in the slight early-evening breeze.
Who was the bizarre woman, Ava Gardner? None of these trappings struck me as femme fatale accoutrements, the battler in the nightclubs. Well…maybe the pink stucco. A Negro maid opened the door, and Ava rushed over and introduced her as Mearene. “My Reenie.” For some reason Ava squeezed her shoulder, an affectionate gesture that brought a smile to the maid’s face, though she scurried away into another room.
“Max and Alice are already here,” Ava told me. “Come in.”
The walls of the front rooms were painted a daffodil yellow, a burst of springtime that jolted, yet oddly soothed. I expected sleek, chrome-studded Italian sofas and polished glass tables with faux Archipenko statues. I discovered overstuffed sofas and armchairs, and stolid wooden tables that I’d expect to find in some old-guard oceanview cottage in Massachusetts. Ava the night owl, always out on the town, doubtless found sanctuary here when she straggled back home, exhausted, at four in the morning.
“I chose everything,” she stressed. And she pointed to a row of exquisite Degas prints gracing the walls, ballerinas silhouetted against pastel backgrounds. I complimented her.
She led me to the hallway in back-I waved at Alice and Max, sitting on the huge charcoal sofa with drinks in hand-where one wall had floor-to-ceiling walnut bookcases filled, most likely, with Thomas Mann and Charles Darwin. My fingertips grazed volumes of Sinclair Lewis and Hemingway. Madame Bovary.
The opposing wall held a succession of black-and-white photographs mounted in simple black frames: stills from earlier productions of Show Boat. There was Helen Morgan sitting atop an upright piano, looking forlorn; a doe-eyed Laura La Plante emoting before a handsome Joseph Schildkraut; Jules Bledsoe on a cotton bale chanting the universal dirge, “Ol’ Man River”; a stern Edna May Oliver admonishing a rapscallion Charles Winninger, the irascible Cap’n Andy. A kaleidoscope of Julie and Joe and Queenie and Magnolia and Gaylord Ravenal and Parthenia Hawks and Cap’n Andy. On and on, an awesome collection.
“A gift from Max,” Ava whispered. Then she winked. “More good omens, Edna.”
By the time I returned to the living room Max and Alice were talking to a newly arrived guest. Max stood. “Edna, this is Lorena Marr.”
The woman rushed over and grasped my hands. “I only came because Ava said you’d be here. Cocktail parties-even Ava’s-made me take to my bed, so much posing and…” She stopped. “Just as I’m doing right now, the first culprit.”
Alice spoke up. “Lorena is a reader at Paramount.”
Ava added, “And the ex of Ethan Pannis. One of Francis’ Hoboken buddies.”
A slender woman in a gold lame cocktail dress and a small sequined hat planted to the side of her close-cropped hairdo, she dropped my hands, half-bowed, and picked up her martini with one hand, a cigarette in the other.
“Shaking hands, Miss Ferber, gets in the way of my cultivating my only two vices.” She bowed deferentially. “I’ve read Show Boat so many times there are nights when I return from Ciro’s after imbibing too much bubbly that I swear I can hear the iron-throated calliope all the way from the mighty Mississippi.”
Ava handed me a martini that I gingerly sipped. Ice cold, perfect.
“That calliope is the sound of coins being deposited in my bank account,” I quipped.
“Lord, Miss Ferber, you searched for a gold mine in the muddy river beds while foolish men hammered at rocks in the Rockies.”
“Pure luck.”
“I doubt that.” She grinned. “You’ve played with the big boys-and won. I admire that.”
I liked her, I decided: sharp, quick, clever, attractive. A slick Hollywood concoction, perhaps, but funny. Something about her words seemed practiced and nervous-a desire for my approval? — but the clipped words couldn’t disguise the warmth in her eyes.
Ava broke in. “Lorena is a strange Hollywood divorcee. She kicked Ethan out, but still goes out to dinner with him. They’re best friends.”
“Who exactly is this Ethan Pannis?” I asked.
“Ethan and Tony Pannis. Brothers,” Lorena told me in a tone that suggested I should know them. “Frank Sinatra’s loyal entourage. Scattering rose petals in his path.”
“I was a Pannis bride, too,” Alice suddenly announced.
“I don’t understand.”
Her voice was hesitant. “I was married to Lenny Pannis, their older brother.”
Max cleared his throat and spoke rapidly, his voice hollow. “Edna, Lenny died from a fall, and his brothers blame Alice to this day. It’s all foolish stuff. Lots of anger there.”
Suddenly I remembered George Kaufman’s description of Alice: the black widow. George had shown me a sensational clipping from a tabloid: a hollow-eyed Alice sitting in a Los Angeles squad room. Those nasty accusations of willful murder. I’d paid so little attention. Rag-tag journalism, yellow at the edges.
“Well,” Lorena confided, “I had to leave darling Ethan. He’s somewhat of a prig, a man who measures life with algebraic equations and a calculus disposition. I found him delightful…for three years. Actually two of those three years. The third was bitter lemon. I liked his drive and ambition-at first. Cutting back the sails on his dreamboat lessened the man, I’m afraid-made him petty. Nasty.” She grinned. “Now that we’re divorced, I find him amusing.”
Ava jumped in, grasped my elbow. “Don’t you love cocktail parties, Edna? We can talk about our exes with abandon. Wait till I get started on Mickey Rooney. My first Hollywood lover. The chipmunk with bedroom eyes. The boy next door as Casanova. Love finds Andy Hardy.”
Lorena raised her eyebrows. “Randy Andy by the picket fence.”
Alice was the only one who didn’t laugh. “Ethan was a mean drunk, Edna.”
Lorena defended him, shaking her head vigorously. “That was then, Alice. A bad time. He’s a teetotaler now. Ethan paints all his pictures inside the lines. A kindergarten teacher would love him.” She sipped her drink, but I noticed she watched Alice over the rim of her glass.
Alice frowned. “It took a slap across your face to crash down your house.”
Lorena looked annoyed. “All right, Alice. All right. I walked out.” She shrugged her shoulders. “So now we’re friends. Dinners, movies. We like each other. We didn’t when we were married.”
Alice was shaking her head. “I’d never be comfortable…”
The two women stared at each other, eyes wary, bodies tense.
“Lenny’s death sobered him up-a dose of cold water in the face. But by then our marriage had crumbled.” She took a drag on her cigarette. “We’re different people, you and me, Alice.” She glanced my way. “You’ll meet Ethan…and his brother Tony.” A little chuckle. “You won’t be happy.”
Alice smiled now. “Lorena and I have become best friends, Edna. Exiles from the Pannis clan.”
Lorena grinned at her.
A yelping dog came barreling in from the kitchen, a pudgy corgi Ava introduced as Rags. The dog yipped and spun around, circling the maid who walked in with a tray of appetizers, passed them around, and then, bizarrely, sat next to Ava, chitchatting and smiling. She munched on a canape. For a second Ava and Reenie giggled about something. Oddly pleasing, that sudden tableau, which told me a lot about Ava.
From across the room Max asked, “And where’s Frank?”
Ava stood and looked out the window. “God knows. He promised to be here early. It’s going to be the few of us. Pop Sidney backed out. So did my manager. So did Howard and Kathryn. Everyone waits for a better invitation.” She bit her lip. “The last time they were here Francis insulted them all.” Ava lit a cigarette and sat back down. “Max, you know you’d like it if Francis didn’t show up.”
Anxious now, Ava kept glancing out the front window, biting her lip, distracted. From where I sat, I could watch the driveway. Finally I heard the prolonged blare of a horn, a teenage boy’s shrill announcement of arrival, and a sleek Cadillac convertible swerved off the street, breakneck speed, and slammed to a stop on the pebbly driveway alongside a privet hedge. The trellis of honeysuckle shook.
I could hear raised voices from inside the car, shrieks of laughter, someone bellowing what sounded like barroom barroom barroom.
Ava, her face pressed against the window, was trembling, her face hard, severe. She sucked in her breath. Her glance took in Max, then Alice, then me, a sweep that communicated apology and sadness.
“Goddamn it.” Under her breath.
Frank trooped in, followed by three other souls lined up behind him. “Guess who was hiding out at mi casa, dipping into my liquor cabinet.” Frank addressed all of us-all, that is, except Ava, who was fuming, arms folded, her back to the window.
So this was the bobby-soxer phenomenon, this crooner of dreamy hit-parade ballads. The Voice smoothing its way through Italian bel canto rhythms. So scrawny and bony, a pencil, emaciated, a protruding Adam’s apple, his body hidden in an oversized black tuxedo jacket, a floppy red bow tie under a hard chin. He flashed an onyx pinky ring. He smiled at me while he was talking to Ava about something I didn’t catch, and those riveting deep-sea blue eyes electrified the otherwise skeletal face. A skinny little man, I realized, with a pronounced receding hairline and ears that reminded me of a New York taxi cab barreling down Broadway with both doors wide open.
Ava gulped down a drink and smiled at me. “Time for the floor show, Edna.”
Frank approached me. “Miss Ferber, we haven’t met. A pleasure.” He shook my hand with a surprisingly weak grip.
Then, betraying nervousness I didn’t expect, he nodded at the two men standing near him. “Edna, my two buddies, Ethan and Tony Pannis.” He didn’t introduce the bizarre woman who’d flounced in behind them, now standing in a corner. Both men abruptly moved too close to me and I tried to shrink my already diminutive self. “From New Jersey. Although I knew their big brother Lenny first. He was my good old buddy from the neighborhood-and got me through some tough jams. He saved my life, really.” He stopped, seemed in awe of his own words. “These two were youngsters then. Ethan”-he indicated the slender, twitchy man in a severely pressed gray linen suit-“is an accountant at Metro, a money man. And this is Tony.” He pointed to a chubby man, his India-ink black hair permed into a Little Orphan Annie bowl of curls, a man dressed in a sequined tuxedo jacket that barely contained his protruding belly. “His younger brother.”
“You probably know me as Tiny Sparks, the, you know, comic.”
“I’ve never heard of you.”
“You got to get out to the valley. I headline at Poncho’s Comedy club.”
Frank sang a line, his voice a little shaky, “Down in the valley, the valley so…so…very, very low…”
Ethan shot Frank a puzzled glance, then leaned into him, motioning toward Alice and Max. “You didn’t tell us they’d be here.” Frank shrugged and chuckled. He’d obviously had a few belts at his…casa.
I didn’t know what to think of this contradictory duo. The slick accountant with the neat haircut and horn-rimmed glasses, the sensible pale-blue necktie, a conservative feathered fedora held discreetly in hand. And the carnival act, all glitter and riotous confection and blubber.
“We’ve been dying to meet you,” Tony/Tiny said.
I said nothing.
Ava made no attempt to hide her distaste. “Francis,” she began, her words low and angry, “what are they doing here?”
He didn’t look at her. “They were at my place in Palm Springs when I got back.” He smiled. ”You said it was a party. I brought a party with me.”
Ava glanced at Alice and Max, both sitting on the sofa, looking uncomfortable. “Damn you.”
Tony seemed to be happy anywhere that would allow in a man who happened to be wearing a dynamited clown tuxedo covered with green and red and silver buckshot sequins. Tony, I guessed, now spent most of his offstage time as…Tiny. A Hippodrome elephant in a Groucho Marx fright wig.
Ethan looked as though he wanted to be home adding up a column of figures, far from the maddening brother, though, as his brother’s resident sheriff, he immediately frowned as Tony walked to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a martini from the pitcher resting there.
“Christ, Tony,” he muttered. He nodded at me. “A pleasure to meet you, Miss Ferber.”
He nodded at his former wife when she glanced his way, and for a moment they both smiled at each other, though Ethan’s quickly disappeared. Lorena, I noticed, seemed to be waiting for something. Ethan stepped closer, and the hard, set face relaxed, became almost boyish.
Oddly, he spoke now in a stilted Elizabethan voice, so lilting it compelled us all to pay attention. “‘How now! What do you here alone?’”
Lorena, obviously settling into an old and familiar playfulness, became a fluttering heroine, her voice equally Elizabethan. “‘Do not chide; I have a thing for you.’” She winked.
He grinned. “‘A thing for me? It is a common thing-to have a foolish wife.’”
She bowed.
For some reason Ethan addressed me, and his severity had returned-that rigid jaw, those unblinking eyes. “And Hollywood said I couldn’t write dialogue.” He glared at Max, who was ignoring him.
“Well,” I countered, “if you’re going to plagiarize, you might as well go for the best.”
He grumbled. “Shakespeare is over-rated.”
A stupid remark, best ignored. Said by the court jester who never learned to jest.
Ethan turned away, a little flustered, but what caught my eye-and sadly so-was the look in Lorena’s eyes: a lingering affection there, perhaps unwanted but unavoidable, a bond she’d refused to relinquish. It saddened me, then. I realized that Lorena, despite her feisty, tough-as-nails demeanor, that hard-bitten exterior, might be a foolish woman.
“Ethan,” she announced. “You’ve brought the circus.”
“Be nice, Lorena,” he pleaded.
“Why would I go out of character?”
He laughed, a dry, brittle laugh that seemed more sardonic than celebratory. Immediately he disappeared into a corner of the sofa, and began picking a trace of Rags’ generous dog hair off a pants leg. “In Arabian countries,” he told no one in particular, “it’s considered unclean to have dogs inside a house.”
“I’m a hard-shell Baptist,” Ava told him.
“Christ,” he mumbled.
Ava looked toward Max and Alice, shrugged her shoulders, and mouthed the words: I’m sorry. Max waved back, a thin smile on his face.
Reenie circulated with more appetizers, but deliberately rolled her eyes when she approached Tony, who was mixing his drink with his index finger. For a few minutes I talked quietly with Lorena about her life in the script department of Paramount, but it was a strained conversation. Everyone seemed to be keeping a deliberate, if tense, distance from one another, the two hostile factions content to drink in corners and eye the others over the rims of their whiskey glasses. No one was happy, but maybe Tony/Tiny.
Lorena told me, “As you can tell from our opening skit, Ethan used to be a scriptwriter.”
From across the room Ethan shook his head. “For God’s sake, Lorena. Not really. One measly script doesn’t count. I’m a numbers guy.”
“You mean a racketeer,” Frank joked. He was pouring himself a drink.
“Yeah, sure thing.” Ethan didn’t look happy.
Ethan, I noted, drank spring water, refusing liquor. And he eyed Tony who got drunker and drunker, at one point spilling his drink on his sleeve. Now and then Ethan put out his hand, protectively, admonishingly, warning in his eye. When Tony turned away, Ethan slid Tony’s glass to the side, the older brother as desperate protector. He saw me looking. “I am my brother’s keeper, Miss Ferber. A lot of good it does me.”
Tony looked at his brother, squinted. “You won’t let me have fun.”
“That’s because one of us goes to work in the morning, the one who pays your bills.”
Tony narrowed his eyes, a trace of resentment there. “I make money at the club.”
“Which you toss away.”
“Now, boys,” Frank began, “remember your old mama in Hoboken.”
Ava spoke up. “Francis is loyal to old friends to the point of downright suffocation. Get him talking about playing kick ball with Lenny in the street and he’ll get weepy on you.”
Frank ignored her. He raised his glass. “To the memory of Lenny, my old boyhood friend.”
I toasted someone I didn’t know, but I noted that neither Max nor Alice raised their glasses. At the mention of her dead husband-I flashed to that clipping of Alice in a police station-Alice looked down into her lap. Lorena was shaking her head, unhappy. Ava sat with her arms folded, her lips drawn into a straight line.
Tony leaned into me. “Frank takes care of us. Got me the job in the valley. He knows people.”
Ava spoke over his words. “Max used to be Tony’s agent, but Tony deserted Max when…” She stopped, flustered.
Downing his drink and swaying back and forth, Tony bellowed, “When Alice murdered my brother.”
The words sailed across the room. Time stopped.
Lorena had been lighting a cigarette but froze, the match burning.
Looking up, Alice gasped.
“Cool it, Tony.” Frank spoke through clenched teeth.
“Don’t be an idiot, Tony.” Ava punched his sleeve. “Not here tonight.”
Ethan was frowning. “Tony, shut up.”
But Tony couldn’t be stopped. “I gotta say it again. She pushed him off that balcony. She got all the money. His money. Our money. Lenny promised us, remember? She married that…that fool Max. Him.” He pointed at the ashen man. “He was just…waiting.”
Ava spoke to me sarcastically. “The legendary Lenny Pannis had lots of money, pots of it at the end of the Hollywood rainbow, at least his brothers believe he did. He ran shadowy businesses and played with the big boys. He was a big shot in this town. Supposedly he made a fortune.”
“He did,” Tony went on, his words biting. “He did. Alice killed him. He was gonna divorce her. The money…” He glared at Alice, who was staring down into her lap again. Max was making rumbling noises, fidgeting in his seat.
I stared at them all, stupefied by this raw and public scene.
“Stop it now,” Ethan whispered.
Ava was trying to end the conversation and looked at me. Perhaps she saw disgust on my face, tempered by a little wonder. “The neighbors heard them arguing on the balcony. Lenny, agitated, toppled over. Alice was inside…”
Tony yelled, “That’s the phony story the police bought.”
Ethan stood abruptly and looked shame-faced. “We shouldn’t have come. Tony, get up.”
But there was no stopping the drunk man. “I fired Max. He was an accomplice to murder.”
Ava sneered. “And look at the jobs you’ve been getting ever since.”
“Hey, I’m doing all right.” He pointed at Max. “You ruined all our careers, Max.”
Max started to say something, but Alice put her hand on his knee. He blinked wildly at her.
“Say good night, Tony.” Ethan prodded him.
I turned to Ethan. “And what do you think of Max?”
Ethan deliberated, cool, quiet, steely-eyed, turning from me to glare directly at Alice. He spoke to her. “He married the woman who murdered my brother, Miss Ferber. We just can’t prove it. And on top of everything else, now we learn he’s a Commie. Max is filled with surprises.”
Silence. An awful silence.
Ava sidled up to Frank and watched as he poured himself a drink at the sideboard. I didn’t hear what she whispered to him, though Frank, gulping down a drink, spoke loud enough for all of us to share the moment. “Hey, I got friends, too. You did say party. I only party with friends.”
Ava whispered something else, but he turned away. He caught my censorious eye-a look I’d perfected and executed on even more annoying members of the lesser species-but he simply smiled that charming witchcraft smile. A hard nut to crack, this Sinatra boy, a crooner confident in his power to attract. I figured it was time he met his match.
The two Pannis brothers huddled in a corner, Ethan whispering in Tony’s ear. The woman who’d followed them in-she’d stood in a corner the whole time-now tucked her arm around Tony’s waist.
I sat back as Max nudged me.
“Edna.” Max tried to make a joke. “You don’t look like you’re having fun.”
“I didn’t expect to.” I sipped my drink. “I’m too old for these shenanigans.” I pointed a narrow finger around the room. “This tinseltown soap opera.”
“I expect you never liked cocktail parties…ever,” Alice added.
“Like New Year’s Eve parties, which I avoid like the plague, cocktail parties thrive on forced hilarity and futile dreams of new and unexpected pleasure.”
“Good God,” Lorena howled.
“Then what do you do for entertainment?” Alice asked.
“Well, I go to cocktail parties and New Year’s parties. I like to watch people fail at their dreams.”
Max shook his head during the abrupt pause that followed my comments. “Don’t believe her, Alice. The people Edna watches will end up in one of her novels. She’s memorizing our scintillating dialogue right now.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, Max,” I chided. “George Kaufman you’re not.”
The woman who was hanging onto Tony’s sequined sleeve squealed at something he said, and then apologized. She clung to Tony, sipping the drink he’d handed her, but she looked frightened, as though she couldn’t understand what had just happened in the room. Now she was whispering in Tony’s ear, and he didn’t look happy.
“Is that Tony’s keeper?” I asked Alice.
Max, listening, answered. “Liz Grable.”
“Tell me about her.”
Max brushed an affectionate hand across Alice’s face. “See, what did I tell you? The novelist.”
“Is she Betty Grable’s misguided sister?” I wondered aloud.
Alice smiled as Max spoke in a soft voice. “Her name is Liz Carnecki. A fledgling actress, at least a decade ago. She thought a name change would usher her into stardom.”
“Did it work?”
“She’s still trying, God knows where. I was her agent for a split second, a favor to Tony way back when, but I could rarely place her. Nowadays she works in a hair salon on Hollywood Boulevard. Hair Today. Can you imagine? She’s got an efficiency that’s way, way out by the Hollywood Cemetery on Santa Monica Boulevard, where Tony squats these days.”
Liz Grable/Carnecki was now staring at me, mouth agape, showing too many capped teeth. Had she heard us chatting about her? An impossible woman, I realized, all bamboozle and peroxide, hair so teased and puffed and platinum she looked like cotton candy at a fair. A woman in her forties-those lines could no longer be disguised by all that pancake makeup-she attempted a sweet twenty-something starlet look with that round bright red blotch on each cheek, that Clara Bow cupid’s mouth, that tight cobalt-blue fringed cocktail dress slit up one leg, and a stenciled leopard pattern scarf around her shoulders. A shock of seashells-yes, they had to be seashells gathered on some California strand-circled her powdered neck. She was, I suppose, perfect for Tony/Tiny, though I hereby confess a definite orneriness in my description of the bodacious lass.
“Miss Ferber!” She came sailing across the room, and I feared a catastrophic collision. “I was telling Tony last night that I would make a perfect Sabra Cravat in any remake of Cimarron. I was born in Oklahoma. And I hear you’re finishing your book on Texas. I know oil wells. My papa…”
Tony/Tiny, her sequined conquering hero, dragged her away.
Lorena leaned into me. “Are you ready to leave yet?”
“I’m always ready to leave a party.”
Lorena lowered her voice. “I can’t believe they all showed up here, Edna. Everyone has been so careful to…to avoid these encounters. And that drunken attack by Tony-well, we’ve heard it before.”
“Is Tony always like this?”
Lorena glanced at Tony. “He’s often the one everyone likes-when he’s sober. He can be sweet-used to be sweet. But when he drinks…”
“Why are they here?”
“Frank brought them here on purpose-to rile Ava. He had to know. Ethan and Tony refuse to be in the same room as Alice. Frank knows that. And Frank can’t stand Liz. To bring her here…”
“She’s not a favorite of yours?”
Lorena shrugged her shoulders. “I’m too unglamorous for her. And of no importance. She tends to ignore the other women in the room. Liz spends her days clipping hair and waiting to be discovered like Lana Turner at the Tip Top Cafe on Highland Avenue.”
“It’s not going to happen?” I injected wonder into my words.
“Not in this lifetime, even out here in fantasy land.” But Lorena seemed to regret her words. “I shouldn’t mock her. She is who she is. It’s the boys I should be angry with.”
The two hostile camps settled into different corners of the living room, though every so often Tony hurled hostile looks at Alice. Max was mumbling about leaving, repeatedly checking his wristwatch. Alice whispered, “A little longer, Max. Just for Ava’s sake.”
But Ava wasn’t happy. Her strides across the room were abrupt, jerky. Frank stood next to the liquor cabinet, his tongue rolled into his cheek, the wary battler, eyeing her, waiting, waiting. Lorena and I made small talk about Agnes Moorhead who played Parthy in Show Boat, an actress we both knew slightly and who now, Lorena informed me, was unhappy with the way her lines were cut in the movie, making her a one-dimensional harpy. We watched Liz Grable, lipstick smeared on one side of her mouth, pick her nervous path across the floor to Frank’s side, where she proceeded to vamp and titter like a schoolgirl flirtation. From where I sat I could pick out her coy flattery, as her fingers grazed his sleeve. Nodding silently, Frank leaned into her, made a loud, cruel observation about cheap Woolworth’s perfume and looked ready to shove her away. Hurt flooded Liz’s face, her eyes blinking wildly. Any moment she’d burst into tears.
Lighting a cigarette, Ava watched the scene carefully. One false move on Frank’s part, I suspected, and she’d tear across that room, nails extended, clawing Liz’s powder-puff face to shreds. But Frank turned away, delicately maneuvering Liz out of his path, and Ava leaned against the wall. Her chest heaved, a spasm of utter sadness escaping her.
The party died. Voices drifted off, eyes closed, weary. Drinks slipped onto the floor, and a funereal pall settled in the room. I’d been chatting to Lorena about something Agnes Moorhead told me during her visit to New York when I became aware that my voice was the only sound in the room. Bothered, I looked up into a sea of blank, accusing faces. Tony, eyes narrowed, was glaring at Max, who stared back, bothered. Alice had leaned into her husband protectively, her fingers gripping his sleeve.
Suddenly I wondered how drunk Tony really was. His look conveyed more sloe-eyed resentment than, say, an inebriate’s sloppy anger. How much of his drunken spiel was a deliberate act? There was caginess in his eyes as he surveyed the room. A sweet man? I wondered at Lorena’s words. A man definitely hard to read. His severe stare moved to Alice, his former sister-in-law, and the rubbery face contorted, tightened. It was, frankly, an awful moment, rank as a battlefield wound. The room shuddered.
Ethan had been sitting next to him, moody, withdrawn, his eyes also on the black widow Alice, but now, jarred by Tony’s grunting and jerky moves, he roused and reached out to grip Tony’s arm. “Stop it, Tony.” Words said softly, but forcefully.
“No, it ain’t right. What she did.”
“Not now. For God’s sake.”
“You take too much crap, Ethan.”
“Look around. People are watching you.”
“Who gives a damn?”
Frank spoke up. “You’re acting like a creep, Tony.” He motioned to Ethan, snapping his fingers. “Okay, take him home, Ethan. He’s too drunk. Get him the hell outta here.”
Liz Grable suddenly got protective, one of her arms cradling Tony’s shoulders, drawing him in. “He’s in a bad way tonight.” She looked at me, apologizing. “Tony’s a…lost boy. I’ll take care of him.”
“Take him home, Ethan. Now! Do you hear me?” Frank’s words thundered in the room.
“Yeah, sure,” Tony sneered. “Let’s leave Adam and Ava in their little paradise.” He brightened. “Isn’t that what you called them, Ethan? Adam and Ava.”
Ethan reddened and shot a nervous glance at Frank.
“Now!” Frank snapped his fingers again. His foot stomped on the floor. “Goddamn it all. Scram!” One of the Degas prints on the wall shifted.
Tony’s voice became a plaintive howl. “She married a goddamn Commie, Ethan.” He swayed, nearly fell. “We’re sitting in a room with a Commie.” He pointed a finger at Max. “You ain’t loyal to America, Max. Ain’t it enough that you ruined all-yeah, all-of our careers. Me and Liz and…and everyone else. But you turn your back on America. Christ Almighty, what a city. You”-he spoke at Alice-“kill my brother and then shack up with a pinko.”
I stood, ready to leave, tired of this maddened scene. Outside Frank’s bodyguard/driver was sitting patiently in a town car-not, I hasten to add, the monosyllabic gorilla I’d anticipated, but, rather, a gentle giant who fussed and salaamed before me, the perfect gentleman. I only saw the gun in his inside pocket when he bent to pick up some dropped car keys. He was out there now, patient, this Sir Galahad, my chariot ride back to my cocoon at the Ambassador.
“Good night.” I raised my voice.
Ava pleaded. “Edna, I’m sorry.”
“Delightful evening.”
“I’ll make it up to you.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“Now!” Frank thundered again. I was the one who jumped and grabbed my throat.
“Commie,” Tony repeated.
Alice had started to sob as Max maneuvered her from the sofa, headed to a side door. As he passed Ava, she reached out and touched his cheek, a quick, reverential gesture that reminded me suddenly of Julie, exiled from the showboat, leaving in darkness and gently touching the swarthy cheek of Joe as he mourned her expulsion. I expected strains of “Ol’ Man River” to swell now, a cliched Hollywood crescendo. But no: silence in the room. Little Rags leapt around, rattled by the tension, his noisy panting and yelping a soundtrack to the evening’s ragged coda.
And then, almost as though a chapter was skipped in a book, the room emptied, everyone gone. Alice and Max left by the kitchen door, quietly. Lorena hastily shooed Ethan, Tony, and Liz into her car, taking them away. I had intended to be the first to leave, so I had no idea why I was still there, standing in the center of the room, the referee announcing the next battle between Ava and Frank. Adam and Ava in paradise my foot!
Outside my charioteer was most likely standing next to the passenger door, fingering the tattoo of MOM he doubtless had on a concealed bicep. He was probably checking his pistol in case I got feisty on the ride back.
“Good night,” I said again.
Ava breathed in. “Edna, Tony isn’t always like he was tonight. He’s a…quiet man. Lately he’s been getting worse-drunk and…” She sighed. “He has bad nights. If you meet him another time…”
“I’d rather not,” I interrupted.
Frank snickered. “His life is going nowhere.”
Ava readied another apology, but Frank looked at me as if I were the tidal wave that had caused such havoc in the room. I sensed he didn’t like me, the old biddy come a-calling. He was looking from me to Ava, a gaze that was both dismissive and furious.
“Good ni-” I stopped. Those were the only two words left in my lexicon, starved as it now seemed to be.
Frank bit his lip and watched Ava through half-shut eyes. “Hedda Hopper called me a Hoboken has-been. On the way out of this miserable town.” He swiveled around to face me. “You’re a savvy old broad, Edna. Tell me, do you think I’m a Hoboken has-been?”
I waited, steamed. He shouldn’t rile this admittedly savvy old broad. “Frank, I didn’t know you were from Hoboken.”
The line hung in the air, bloody, cruel.
Ava burst out laughing. “Edna, I love you.”
“Well, I don’t.” Frank pulled at the goofy red bow tie and backed away. “Good night, Edna.” He sneered my name, drawing it out.
“Francis,” Ava started in. “This is all your fault. You drag these sorry failures to my house.”
“Maybe I’m one, too.”
“Maybe you are,” she stressed. Then she spoke in a hollow, wispy voice. “I don’t know why everybody has to be…enemies.”
Frank turned his baleful eye on her. It was preparatory, I sensed, to an evening of battlers’ rage, broken cocktail glasses, upturned tables, shoving, tears, perhaps even a Degas print smashed to the floor.
“Christ Almighty,” he hissed with a sickening grimace, “You gotta have enemies, Ava. You know that. How the hell else do you know you’re alive?”