Eve in Hollywood (5 page)

Eve took a generous sample.

—Gin, she said like the pleasantly surprised.

But when she held out the flask, she could see that Olivia hesitated to take it.

—Come on, Livvy. Even a churchbell's gotta swing, if it's gonna chime.

Olivia laughed and took the flask. She wasn't used to drinking gin with a mixer, never mind straight from a bottle. The first swallow seared the back of her throat. But the second went down more smoothly and the third was perfectly pleasant. Within minutes she could feel the liquor in her extremities—tingling at the tips of her fingers and toes. Then like tendrils of ivy, it began climbing her arms and legs, presumably en route to her head.

Eve rolled down the window and closed her eyes as the in-rushing air tore at the pages of her pad. Following suit, Olivia opened her window and leaned into the breeze along Sunset as the brightly lit marquees leaned back—boasting of World Premieres and Held Over by Popular Demands.

It was true what Eve had said: Olivia had been busy.

How many roles had she played since she had come to Hollywood? Fourteen? Fifteen? She had lost count. First, there was Dolly Stevens; then the guileless Lucille and innocent Hermia. Arabella, Angela, Elsa, and Cath. Maria, Germain, and Serena. Each one as demure as the last.

—So, of all the men in Los Angeles to dine with, why Wilmot?

Olivia looked back from the window to find Eve holding out the flask. Olivia took another drink.

—It was arranged.

—
Arranged?
What are you, Amish?

Olivia laughed.

—Arranged by the studio.

—Do they normally tell you who to dine with?

—Oh, they'll tell me who to dine with, all right. They'll pick the restaurant. The table. They practically pick my entrée.

Eve looked a little surprised.

—I'm on contract, Olivia explained. When you're on contract the studio doesn't just decide what roles you take; it weighs in on whatever might affect your public image: what you wear, how you spend your weekends, who you spend them with . . .

Eve whistled.

—You should have the world on a string, sister.

—It's the other way around, I'm afraid.

A perfect example sprang to mind, and Olivia almost launched into its petty details. But she regretted having allowed herself to go on at such length already. What a prima donna she must have sounded like. Complaining about the life of a Hollywood star. So she shook her head and said nothing.

But Eve had been watching her closely.

—Speak now, she warned, or forever hold your peace.

Olivia met her gaze.

—All right, she said after a moment. Have you read
Gone with the Wind
?

—I'm not much of a reader.

—Well, it's a bestseller and they're making it into a movie at Selznick. The main character is a spoiled, tempestuous figure—and it seems like every actress in Hollywood is vying to play her except for me. But the second lead, she's a counterweight to Scarlett. She's more upright and sweet, yet every bit as strong. At any rate, the director thinks I'm perfect for the part; and I think he may be right.

—Sounds great.

—But you see, it's a violation of my contract to even
talk
with Cukor. He's gone so far as to suggest that I read for the part covertly. He wants me to put on a scarf and tinted glasses and come up the back drive of his house on a Sunday afternoon—like a thief, or a spy.

—Even better! said Eve.

Olivia laughed, but shook her head.

—Jack Warner, my studio chief, would
never
let me be in that film. He's said as much already. I think he's furious he's not making the movie himself. But you have to understand that this sort of thing goes part and parcel with the rest of it. And it's not like I'll be sitting on my hands. They have me slotted for two other parts at Warner this spring.

As Olivia spoke, she could tell that Eve felt a sense of disappointment. Perhaps to mask it, Eve took a drink from the flask and then turned to the window where the marquees had given way to the grand eucalyptus trees at the edge of the Brentwood cul de sacs. When Eve turned back she said simply:

—Don't be your own worst enemy, Livvy.

Olivia nodded and looked out her own window.

—It's been a long time since someone called me Livvy, she said.

S
TRETCHING A HUNDRED YARDS
into the sea, the Santa Monica piers were crowded with all manner of amusements. There were tin rifle ranges where brand-new recruits in freshly pressed uniforms tested their aim and rainbow-colored wheels of fortune ten feet in diameter surrounded by Mexican grandmothers who crossed themselves at every spin. Polishing off their flask of gin, and ditching their shoes in the sand, Eve and Olivia sallied forth into the carnival, beckoned by the calls of barkers and the rumble of roller coasters and the shouts of children out past their bedtimes.

It didn't take long for them to find the fabled purveyor of donuts—standing proudly under a green-and-white canopy. While Eve paid for their order, Olivia watched the freshly fried donuts riding the small conveyor until they dropped into the sugar pan, one by one—and she was suddenly struck by how hungry she was. It was the hunger of a lifetime of half-finished dinners and prematurely tamped out cigarettes. So, when Eve pulled the first of the donuts from the bag, Olivia grabbed it and took a wolfish bite.

Her mother would have been mortified by her behavior, of course. But what a donut it was! A confection of contrasts, of contradictions. First, came the exterior—hot, crusty, coated with a sugar grit. But then this golden brown sensation was followed almost impossibly by the cool smoothness of the jelly. You could tell it wasn't raspberry or strawberry. And that was the genius of it. It was simply sweet and red. A finer preserve would have ruined the whole sensation.

When Olivia took her second bite, she could feel a glob of the jelly running down her chin.

—That, said Eve, is the first real smile that I've seen on you all night!

As the two of them continued down the pier, the autumn wind seemed to be gaining force, pulling carnations from lapels and ribbons from pigtails. Grabbing Eve's elbow, Olivia pointed as a fine yellow hat blew off the head of a Negress. Her boyfriend gave honorable chase; but when the hat lofted out to sea, he took his own hat from his head and spun it like a discus into the dark.

—The wind, said Eve. It's incredible.

—The Santa Ana, Olivia explained. It comes every autumn.

—From
where
?

—From all the talk.

Eve laughed.

—You mean from all the gossip?

—And the auditions and directions and negotiations . . .

From the heart-crossed promises, thought Olivia, and the heartfelt excuses. All those voices rising from Burbank and Beverly Hills like a tide until they breeched some invisible barrier and flooded toward the sea, threatening to tear up the palm trees and personas and plot twists in their wake.

Now it was Eve who reached for Olivia's elbow.

A few steps away was an elaborate contraption: a machine that looked like a cross between a fire engine and a calliope and half the technological advances of the twentieth century. It had pistons like you'd see on a locomotive, the dials and meters of a furnace, an elaborate system of eggbeaters. There were multicolored pinwheels and whistles and the horn of a gramophone mounted on a pole.

Standing before it was a little man with the beard and pince nez of Toulouse-Lautrec.

Eve popped the last bite of donut into her mouth and wiped the sugar from her hands.

—So what's this all about?

—This? the man repeated. Why, this is the Astrologicon.

The three of them surveyed it together.

—You will note, the little man continued, that I said
the
instead of
an
. For, it is the only one of its kind in the world.

He explained this somewhat sadly, as if he were speaking of the very last of some fantastic species like the unicorn or chimera.

—But what does it do? asked Olivia.

—Ah . . . , he said. What does it do?

With three fingers and a thumb, he sharpened the point of his beard.

—Once in possession of five essential attributes of a Homo sapiens, the Astrologicon will consult the laws of chemistry and the arrangement of the stars in order to provide an unassailable, incontrovertible, and indismissible instruction. For one dollar.

—Let's to it, said Eve.

The proprietor accepted Eve's payment and placed it with ceremony in a small tin box. Then he proceeded to collect the essential attributes of her person and to calibrate the contraption accordingly. He punched the letters of her name into a panel of dislodged typewriter keys. He set three adjacent dials to the year, month, and date of her birth. He took a fingerprint. He turned an arrow embedded in a spectrum of colors to the precise pigmentation of her eyes. And finally, he handed Eve the end of a stethoscope that was cabled back into the inner workings of the machine.

—If you would be so kind, he said, pointing shyly toward her sternum.

Eve slid the stethoscope under the neckline of her dress and you could suddenly hear the beating of her heart broadcast through the gramophone's horn. As Eve and Olivia realized what they were hearing, the tempo of Eve's heartbeat increased. But closing her eyes, Eve exhaled and inhaled and exhaled again, until her heartbeat subsided to the tempo of the waves beneath the pier.

The proprietor nodded in sober appreciation. Then after reclaiming the stethoscope, he reached into his watch pocket and produced a hexagon of brass.

—I caution you, young lady, that the Astrologicon is not to be taken lightly. I suspect the path of your life appears clearly before you—a path that in all probability is popular, convenient, and profitable. But the Astrologicon cares nothing for popularity, convenience, or profit. Rather, like the Oracle at Delphi it will advise you to do what you should regardless of opinion, difficulty, and cost.

He handed the hexagon to Eve and gestured to a slot in the machine marked by four converging arrows. Then he put his hands together and bowed.

Without a moment's hesitation, Eve dropped the token in the slot.

There was a buzz followed by a whir. The needles on the temperature gauges began to climb and after a blast of steam the axles of the engine set in motion the pistons and pinwheels. The proprietor led them down the length of the machine, pointing to each kinetic phase—to the interpolator and the centrifuge and the epistemolog—until with the ring of a desk clerk's bell, an envelope fell into a sterling silver toast caddy.

The envelope was addressed in fine calligraphy to
Evelyn Ross—November 5th, 1938
. Eve thanked the proprietor. Then she led Olivia to an uncrowded spot under a lamppost and placed the envelope in her hand.

—Livvy, whatever this says—I think you should follow it to the letter.

Olivia didn't smile at the suggestion. She only nodded and closed her fingers around the envelope.

Then the two continued their progress past the roller coaster toward the very end of the pier where they could now see the ocean-going casinos bobbing outside the city limits. And it felt to Olivia as if the continent was being tilted and all of California was going to slip into the sea. And though she couldn't remember the exact reference—and whether it was from mythology or the Bible—she knew instinctively as they approached the pier's limit that she mustn't look back.

T
HE GIRLS ON THE
dance floor at El Rey's came in all his favorite colors. There were girls from across the Rio Grande with tequila-colored skin who liked to wag their fingers and shake their heads in coy dissuasion. There were girls from Alabama and New Orleans who had skin the color of bourbon and dispositions twice as sweet. And the girls from the islands came as black as a glass of rum molasses. Ochre, tawny, bronze, beaver, russet, pistol, pitch: Litsky had a taste for them all. So what did he care, if he was the only cracker on Shepherd Avenue. What did he care, if he was the only cracker in all of L.A.

•

B
ACK IN THE
A
VENUE'S
holy-rolling heyday, the Laurel Canyon limousines would idle at the curb from Friday night until the Sunday sermons. It was a colored town to be sure, but one with painted porches and barbershop poles. Bernie the Weisenheimer (who had a nose for making money off of those who couldn't make it off of themselves), he bought a roadhouse on an empty block and christened it the Rum Tum Club. He slapped tuxedos on the boys in the band and dropped some red leather booths around the four-tops. Then he ran a rope right down the middle of the dance floor, so the ises and aints would know where to do their dancing.

But after the Crash, Bernie went bust right along with the neighborhood. The porch paint peeled, the candy stripes stalled, and the highfalutins headed for higher ground. By the summer of '36, when a Harlemite by way of Havana reopened the club as El Rey's, he didn't need a rope to keep the order on the dance floor anymore; but he left it lying there just the same. And as the bands played a jazz as half-bred as he was, the local girls would sweat through their dresses and shimmy over that rope with relish.

That's why Litsky couldn't believe his eyes when the front door opened at eleven
P.M.
and in walked Miss Olivia de Havilland in a strappy red dress. She was on the arm of that ravaged blonde he'd heard about, the one who'd come out of nowhere. With the blonde leading the way, the girls took one of the tables near the band and ordered tequilas and lime as if they'd been born in the barrio.

•

E
ARLIER THAT YEAR
, Litsky had followed Dehavvy around a bit like everybody else—but what a waste of shoe leather. The boys at the studio had her on a short leash and it showed. She was all seltzer at six, supper at seven, and safely home by nine for some Mother Goose and milk before they tightly tucked her in. But then, you really couldn't blame them. They knew exactly what they were sitting on: the 79th element.

Because on every Saturday night in every small town in America—after milking the pigs and slopping the cows—Fred and Edna were headed for the picture show. And while in exchange for their hard-earned nickels they surely hoped to see an escapade, once they'd traveled all that way to merry old England, it was the girl next door who they hoped to find on the throne.

And Dehavvy was just the ticket. As genteely in person as she was on the screen.

Yes, Siree Bob. When Fred and Edna sat at their kitchen table with their pickup cooling in the yard, as they were savoring their happily-ever-after over one last piece of pie, they could feel as proud of Dehavvy as if they'd raised her.

Knowing everything there was to know about getting his money's worth, Jack Warner had been working Dehavvy like a horse—strapping her to a new picture every three or four months. And now the word on Wilshire was that old Jack was set to lend her out for a part in
Gone with the Wind
, thanks to a big fat IOU with Selznick's name on it and a little arm-twisting by Mrs. Warner herself on Dehavvy's behalf.

So this blonde from nowhere must have had the boys at the studios tearing their hair out. From across the room you could see that no one had a leash on her. While Dehavvy looked like she'd never seen a dance floor before, the blonde was taking things in with the narrowed eyes of a killer. She was sussing up the place and she liked what she saw. She liked the band, the tempo, the tequila—the whole shebang. If Dehavvy was bandying about with the likes of this one, then you wouldn't have long to wait for the wrong place and the wrong time to have their tearful reunion.

•

U
NBEKNOWNST TO THE SPICE
Of life, the band began playing their trumpety little number for the third time. Some sort of cross between a mariachi and a rumba, this song would skip along for twenty measures and then all the boys in the band would stop on a beat and shout
La Casa!
before picking up where they'd left off. When they played the number for the second time, Litsky rolled his eyes with everyone else—thinking,
amateurs
. But when they struck it up for the third time, the crowd broke into a head-shaking grin. Maybe the gauchos were a little more soused, or maybe they were itching to showcase the steps they'd practiced in take two, because before you knew it, they had dragged their dates back on the floor and grabbed them by the hips.

Dehavvy would have been blushing, if she weren't so busy blinking. All of twenty-two, weighing in at a hundred and one pounds with shoulder blades poking through her skin, she looked better than she had in '37—but she was still a year's worth of good living away from looking like a woman.

—Hey. Shorty.

Litsky looked back from the dance floor.

It was the lazy baritone behind the bar. He was drying his hands with a dirty rag.

—You gonna have a drink? Or you gonna sit there all night?

—What's your hurry?

—That perch is for the parched.

—Yeah, yeah . . .

Litsky took a bill from his pocket and tossed it on the bar.

—Give me a Scotch on the rocks. And this time, pour it from a bottle instead of a jar.

Ol' Man River shuffled off and came back with the drink and the change. Litsky left a nickel on the counter to show his heartfelt appreciation for the five-star service. Then he turned on his stool, leaned his back against the bar, and stirred his whiskey with a finger.

At the table by the band, the blonde was nodding her head to the beat of the claves with a that's-more-like-it sort of smile. She took a drag from a cigarette and shot a column of smoke at the ceiling.

McNulty, that knucklehead, had heard from someone who'd heard from someone that she was a moll on the run from Chicago. Besides the fact that molls on the run don't hide out in Hollywood, the caption didn't jive with the candid. There was definitely a streak of the privileged class in this one. Becker, the two-bit stringer, claimed she was another Kraut flown in by von Sternberg. But that didn't figure either. This blonde had a joi de vivre that couldn't get a visa to the Rhineland.

She was leaning forward now to say something to Dehavvy. She pointed at the percussionist with a discerning cigarette. Dehavvy listened and nodded with the rapt attention of the newly under wing.

Who the hell is she? Litsky found himself thinking, for once.

And he would have let his mind dwell on that quandary, if down the bar two Tijuana roosters hadn't begun disturbing the peace. Que es eso? the one on his feet was saying for the second time. The seated one turned on his stool like a spokesman for ten generations of family feuding. When he stood on principle, he knocked over his barstool. Ol' Man River drifted downstream. He put his big black hands on the bar and told them to take it outside; but he didn't need to. The first one spat on the floor and headed for the exit with two of his kin. The other one counted to ten, then signaled his amigos who were picking their teeth at a table nearby.

Spics.

Litsky shook his head and shifted his gaze back to the business at hand. While the blonde studied the band, Dehavvy peeked over her straw like a schoolgirl. Like a cousin from out of town. Like the ward of the king of England.

Litsky took a good, long look at Dehavvy, then back at the second pack of Tijuanans who were swaggering out the door in the footsteps of the first. Then he took his nickel back off the bar. He went to the phone near the boys' room and dialed the 77th Street precinct.

—I'd like to report a knife fight, he said into the receiver—Yeah, that's right, a knife fight—In the parking lot of El Rey's—On Shepherd off Central—When'd it happen? Any minute now.

Litsky hung up.

This
is going to be interesting, he thought to himself like a philosopher.

But when he returned to his stool, Dehavvy and the blonde were nowhere to be seen.

Shit.

Litsky studied the path from their table to the little girls' room; then, short on hope, he scanned the club from end to end. But lo and behold, there they were: Elbow-to-elbow on the dance floor.

The band was playing a Mexicali Begin the Beguine. Either by order of the front man, or through some collective instinct, all the boys had gotten on one side of the rope and the girls had gotten on the other. The band's take on the number had some advanced mathematics and the local girls were making the most of it. They were doing long division with their hips and shaking their cans to the thirteenth power. Dehavvy and the blonde couldn't keep up. They didn't have the bodies for it, or the backgrounds. But they were indisputably in the mix.

Maybe you had to give the blonde credit for taking Dehavvy to El Rey's, after all. Because if anyone on the dance floor knew who she was, they weren't showing it. By the time the locals got to El Rey's, they'd had their fill of deference for the day. (Yes, ma'am. No, ma'am. Thank you, ma'am.) And with their eyes half closed, swaying like a crowd of cocoanut trees, they were plenty primed for some rapture serene.

At least, that's what Litsky was thinking when the band broke into
Mi Casa
for the fourth time. Within a beat, every seat in the house was empty. The blonde and Dehavvy had taken places on opposite sides of the rope now and were matching each other step-for-step—shaking their heads in tandem and waiting for the twentieth measure, when they could stand on their toes and shout
Mi Casa!
with the rest of them.

Despite the clamor, Litsky could hear the sweet, unmistakable sound of sirens in the distance. He looked back toward the club's entrance in time to see a tall, thin kid in chauffeur's getup come scrambling through the door. He took off his hat like he was entering a church. When his eyes lit on the blonde, he made a beeline for the dance floor.

Litsky got off his stool.

The kid beckoned her to the edge of the floor and whispered in her ear. From across the room Litsky could see her eyes narrow; then she rattled off instructions like a drill sergeant; and as the kid headed back to his car, she grabbed Dehavvy by the hand. She led her through the crowd, behind the bandstand, and toward the kitchen door.

Litsky snatched his bag from under his stool. He hoisted himself onto the bar and swung his legs over it, toppling a bottle of beer.

—Hey! Ol' Man River shouted from around the bend.

Litsky scurried out the loading door into the night. Rounding the back of the club, he could see the lights of the kitchen shining through the screen door just as a pine green Packard appeared from the other direction. Litsky was barely ready when the door swung back and out came the blonde dragging Dehavvy behind her. Litsky steadied himself, whistled, and pulled the trigger. With a great pop the flash went off. Sparks fell to the ground filling the air with the smell of brimstone. The blonde wouldn't let go of Dehavvy until she had her safely in the car; then with her teeth bared, she turned toward Litsky—but he was gone.

He was already cutting a wide circle through the underbrush headed toward Central Ave, where he'd had the good sense to leave his car. He slipped under the wheel, set her in gear, and turned onto Shepherd. In the lot of El Rey's he could see the cops conferring in a tight circumference with los Capuletos y los Montagues. He saluted them all as he passed, and then he switched on the radio.

It was another heart warmer from that happy-go-lucky huckster, Bing Crosby.

He hated Bing Crosby.

But he left the dial where it was and found himself singing along soon enough. For in the instant the flash had gone off and the girls had looked up in surprise, as clear as crystal he could see that Dehavvy had stepped on the hem of her dress while scampering out the door. Because her left shoulder strap had snapped free—and peeking out from behind the silky red fabric was a million-dollar indiscretion.

A
S
L
ITSKY DROVE ALONG
Santa Monica Blvd., he watched the buildings slinking past his windshield. It was like turning the pages of the
Oxford History of Class Acts
: At the corner of Highland Ave was the hotel where Errol Flynn had tried to lower himself from a third floor window by a towel; two doors down from La Brea was the Cancan where Gloria Swanson had almost plucked out the eyes of the Blue Angel; and a few blocks later, he passed Antonio's, where Louis Mayer had begun dining on lettuce for fear that he soon wouldn't be able to cross his fat little fingers when crossing his heart and hoping to die.