Hillary Kanter - Dead Men Are Easy To Love (15 page)

“Oh, in this town, David? You mean Atlanta? No problem, you jerk. They don’t even
make
movies here.”

“In
Hollywood
, you bubblehead!”

Clark intervened. “Look, David, you have this all wrong. We were just talking. Nothing more.”

Selznick glared at his debonair star. “If you weren’t who you are, and we weren’t where we are, I’d really let you have it. Oh, and by the way,” he sneered, “where is
your
wife? Maybe you should be worrying about
her.
”

Clark stepped closer, getting in the producer’s face. “It’s none of your goddamn business where my wife is. It looks to me like we have all had a little too much to drink, so before anybody says anything else they will regret, let’s drop it. Okay?”

Selznick dragged the woman off, and slammed the door behind them.

Clark, seeing Margaret and me, walked over. “I’m sorry the two of you had to witness that spectacle. He is a conceited little SOB. He drove everybody on the set crazy, the insufferable little maggot. We
all
wanted to strangle him, and he’s lucky I did not deck him just now.”

Margaret fidgeted. Her party was not going as hoped.

Clark placed an arm over her shoulder. “But let’s not allow him to spoil our evening. What’re you ladies drinking? I’m having a strawberry daiquiri. Would you like one too, or some more champagne?” His grin brightened the room, breaking the pall ushered in by the conflict.

“Some champagne,” I piped in, sure that my taste for daiquiris had been squelched permanently by Hemingway. I still could not believe I was in the same room with the Clark Gable.

Too bad he was married.

As if reading my mind, Margaret asked Clark, “Where’s Carole? Isn’t she coming?”

“She wasn’t feeling well and went up to the room. She might be coming down with a bug or something.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. We were hoping she would be here.”

Really, Margaret? Listen, lady, speak for yourself.

My thoughts were interrupted by the reappearance of Mr. Selznick. “You son of a bitch,” he screeched in Clark’s face. “She told me all about you two! Listen, you—I have been working with her, grooming her for six months now, and that is the best little piece of ass I’ve ever had. With all the other starlets falling all over you, you could have a
nyone.
But no, you had to have
her
, didn’t you?”

“Hey now,” Clark said, backing up.

Selznick took a swing at his face, catching him on the chin and knocking him backward. He did not fall, but blood seeped between his fingers when he covered his mouth. He scanned the polished marble, then bent for an object he had dropped.

I could not believe my eyes.

False teeth?

I’d heard rumors like everyone else, but here on the floor was irrefutable proof. For the second time in five minutes, the room fell silent.

Clark’s face reddened as he popped the teeth back in his mouth. All eyes looked away. “Well,” he said, not missing a beat, “I guess he took the words right out of my mouth … along with everything else.”

That was smooth.
Real
smooth.

With the tension relieved by his self-deprecating humor, the party resumed, the angry producer retreated, and I offered my handkerchief to Mr. Gable, coming to his rescue like he had come to mine earlier. He dabbed at the corner of his mouth with his left hand and thanked me. With his right hand, he swiped another glass of champagne from a server’s tray—as easy as could be, as if nothing had happened at all.

Smooth, like I said.

***

It was past one in the morning by the time all the guests had left.

Tired and ready to call it a night, I heard some people planning to continue the party elsewhere. I headed up to Margaret’s suite instead, where we spent the next hour trading gossip about who was the prettiest of the women and handsomest of the men. I told her that I too was a writer, at work on my first book, and she showed genuine interest.

My dress had grown uncomfortable, and my corset beneath it even more so. I longed for sleep, and when I saw that it was 2:30 a.m., I wondered aloud where I was supposed to spend the night.

“In your room,” Margaret said. “I know you’ve had a bit to drink, but surely you wouldn’t misplace your key. Check your purse. That would be the natural place to put it.”

“My key? Oh, of course.” I stared at my closed purse.

“Well, go on.”

I ventured a peek inside, startled to find a key with the number 601 on it. That would be the room directly one floor below this one. I lifted the key into view, and Margaret flashed a mischievous grin. I figured there was no need to argue.

And that’s when Fate marched in.

***

Since the elevator was at the far end of the corridor, I decided to take the stairs down instead. As I tiptoed toward my room, a “Psst, psst” caused me to turn, and I found Clark Gable himself in the doorway of the room across the hall—naked, except for a towel around his waist and a half-empty glass in hand.

“Look,” he said in a hushed voice.

I was looking, all right.

“I’m in kind of a jam here,” he went on. “Can you help me out? See, Carol and I had a little fight. Actually, we’ve been fighting all evening, and she decided to go get her
own
room. She ran out, and when I tried to follow her … well, the door closed behind me, and now I’m locked out.”

“You don’t have your key on you?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Do
you
see it anywhere?”

“Maybe you or Carole dropped it on the floor. Take a look around.”

He did so, the towel twirling and providing a clear view of his firm, famous, well-rounded butt.

“Nope,” he said. “Don’t see it.”

Well I saw it, alright. But it was not any key.

“Ariel, I can’t go downstairs like this, not with the photographers and reporters still lurking about. So …” He paused. “Would you be a lamb, and allow me into your room to call the front desk for an extra key?”

This, I thought, explained why Carole never made it to Margaret’s party.

“Of course,” I said. “My room’s right here.” What else could I say? Who was I to deny helping a gorgeous film icon in his hour of need?

He followed me in, plopped down in his towel on a large club chair. He poured himself a drink from the tray on the lamp stand. While he seemed comfortable enough, I was decidedly uncomfortable. He was turning me on, and I could hardly look at him.

“Mr. Gable—”

“Ariel, please. I’m alone with you in your room. I’m wearing barely anything. We really don’t need to be so formal, do we?”

“Clark,” I said, meeting his gaze. “I loved the movie. You must be happy about all your success, huh?”

He sipped the golden liquid from his glass. “Look, you wanna know the truth? A lot of the stuff that’s happened to me has been nothing but blind luck. There’s no special light shining inside me that makes me a star. I’m just a lucky slob from Ohio, who happened to be in the right place at the right time, with a lot of smart guys helping me along the way. That’s all.” Another sip. “And it was the same with
Gone with the Wind
. None of us thought it would amount to a hill of beans. Hell, I didn’t even want to do the damn thing.”

He had entered my room to call the front desk, and hadn’t done so yet. As far as I was concerned, though, this scenario was too interesting to interrupt.

Was I staring? I straightened an imaginary wrinkle in my bed.

He was wearing that smirk again. He lit a cigarette. “You want one?”

“Oh, thank you,” I said, forgetting I didn’t even smoke. When he leaned in and touched the lighter to the tip, I found a billow of smoke filling my mouth and burning my throat. I broke into a coughing fit.

“My dear girl, are you all right?” He seemed amused.

“I …” Coughing, I nodded my head. “I’m fine.”

“Now tell me the truth, Ariel. Have you ever even
smoked
a cigarette?”

“Ummm … Actually, no. Well, not since I was sixteen,” I said, grinding it out in the ashtray.

We talked for a long time after that, about Margaret, the parties, and the people in attendance. He wanted to know everything about me, but I remained elusive, aware in the back of my thoughts that I was from a different era and could return there at any second.

“I’m a writer.  From New York,” I said. “I’m working on a book.”

“You’re prettier than most writers. You do
know
that, I hope.” He leaned back in the chair, took a long drag, and studied me with smoldering eyes.

“You know, it’s not really something I think about. But thank you.”

“You should send me that book when you finish it. I’d love to read it.”

Was he bullshitting me? It was certainly possible. And so what if he was? So what? I was tired, sure, but this was a night to always remember, and I did not want it to end.

 Apparently, Clark was in no hurry to see it end, either. He showed no signs of leaving anytime soon, or of phoning the front desk for access to his own room. Did I mind? Not one bit.

Although I try to avoid alcohol late at night, I issued no complaints when he offered to fix me a drink. I took a few sips, and my vision began to blur.

“Say, do you have a boyfriend? You
must
have a boyfriend.”

“No.” I shook my head. “Not at the moment.”

“Good. A woman like you should be selective.”

Selective? If he only knew the poor dating selection these days in New York City.

“Vivian is learning to be the same,” he said. “All these men throwing themselves at her … it could be her downfall, if she’s not equally selective.”

“She’s unbelievably beautiful.”

“She’s a star, that’s for sure.”

“I loved her canary diamond ring,” I exclaimed. “And did you see that
necklace
she was wearing?”

“Yes, they were very beautiful,” he said. “But you have something far more important. You have …”

“What, Clark?”

“Oh, how can you expect me to remember what I’m saying when I’m looking into these gorgeous eyes of yours?”

I fell madly in love with him, then. Who would not?

Through my curtains, I could see the sky blushing with dawn’s first hints of pink. I could not believe Clark was still sitting near me in that towel. When at last he rose from his chair, I watched in undisguised awe.

“I think I’ve kept you awake long enough,” he said. “You must be tired.”

“No, I’m … Really, I’m not. I feel wide awake.”

“Stand up,” he whispered gently, moving toward me.

I stood. He took me into his arms. He tilted my face up to his, and pressed a soft kiss to my lips. I was still in my taffeta gown, and I felt his fingers touching the clasps at the back. He kissed me again, deeply this time, slowly undressing me. I thought of his wife, of his relational troubles, and then shoved aside those concerns. He was a man, capable of making his own choices. And if experience was any indication, I could be escaping the scene of this crime at any second anyway.

Abruptly, he stopped.

“What is it, Clark?”

He looked me in the eyes. “No, I … I don’t think I am going to do this. I’ve gotten around a lot in this life of mine. I’ve had any woman I wanted. And I’ve done a lot of damage. I need to have one beautiful, unsoiled moment to look back on, one time when I rose to a higher place inside of myself and did the right thing.”

Could I be the one to give him that moment? Just my luck. He was having a pang of guilt. But I understood that he did not want to follow his lust at the expense of his existing relationship.

“Ariel,” he said, releasing me. “I cannot make love to you tonight.”

One lone tear spilled down my cheek, but I nodded.

“I’m sorry,” he added.

“Me, too.”

We stood like that, only inches apart, our eyes never leaving each other.

A sudden pounding at the door broke through our thoughts and repressed desire. “Open up, you bastard,” a woman shouted. “I know you’re in there!”

“It’s Carol.” Clark’s face turned ashen. “How did she know?”

“Someone in the hallway must’ve seen you coming in.”

“Quick,” he said. “Open the window. I’ll go out on the ledge, and you can just tell her you haven’t seen me.”

I pried it open, as instructed, and he climbed outside. Was he out of his mind? The ledge was six inches wide, at best. As for the temperature, it was thirty-five degrees—tops. And he was only wearing a towel. This was not good. What if the wind blew off his last bit of covering? What if he fell?

Talk about gone with the wind.

Even as I turned back inside, I imagined the scandal of Clark Gable being discovered
naked
on the ledge outside my window, in the ever-brightening dawn.

“Let me in there!” Carol demanded.

I never unlocked that door. I told her she had woken me up, and I had no idea what she was talking about. When she finally left, I peered out the window to see how Clark was doing. Directly below, an old woman was taking in the view from the street, her mouth hanging open. Clark smiled, then tipped an invisible hat to her—just as his towel fell to the ground.

I started to say something, but then the room bucked underneath my feet. With the fluttering of that runaway towel, my thoughts and surroundings twirled down, down, down, fading, fading from view …

***

My limbs were numb. I sat up, finding myself back in present day New York City, in my apartment, on my bed, with my thirteen-pound cat Baby meowing plaintively from her position on my stomach.

Funny. I did not remember even getting into bed, and I was still fully clothed.

Oh, man. It had happened again.

After feeding Baby, I turned on the TV. The A&E Channel was chronicling, of all people, Clark Gable. The voice-over explained that
Gone with the Wind
had premiered seventy years earlier, on this very same date

I was all ears.

The narrator continued, “There were strange goings-on the night of the Atlanta extravaganza. Allegedly, Gable disappeared with a young woman he had just met, which created a major row with his new wife, Carole Lombard. Lombard reportedly ran out of the hotel, screaming and cursing—only to find a group of hotel staff gathered outside, pointing up to a sixth-story window where her husband balanced naked on a window ledge. Although he never revealed the identity of the mystery woman, and claims he never saw her again, he spoke fondly of her in the years that followed. During a rare interview from his own deathbed, soon after Lombard’s tragic death in a plane crash, he gave us this final insight into that mysterious evening in the winter of ’39: