Playland (53 page)

W
here was blue all this time?

In L.A., Arthur French said. Preparing
Broadway Babe
.

Recording the score.

She said she hated to lip-sync.

It was a way of keeping her busy, Jack. To keep her mind on things.

And off Jacob.

I suppose you could say that.

Were you seeing her, Arthur?

Yes.

Sleeping with her?

That’s a cad’s question.

You’re the only person I know who’d use the word
cad
, Arthur. What finally made her go over to Vegas?

Not what, who.

Who then?

Rita.

Another polo Sunday.

Lilo Kusack was on the telephone. “All right, Jimmy.” He was speaking softly, not watching the match, admiring Blue,
who was wandering through the crowd, hidden behind oversized sunglasses and a huge straw hat, sipping a piña colada. It’s like she’s giving the straw head, Lilo thought. Advertising her availability. Poor Arthur. In her life he would always be a utility player. In the starting lineup only until someone better showed up. She was not wearing a brassiere either. Lilo could tell. Tits like concrete. They didn’t move when she walked. “Wherever Morris says,” Lilo said after a moment. He had always been able to think about women and business at the same time. “He’s an old man. I understand. But you understand, too. It’s time. Okay? So let me know.” He hung up the telephone. “I get old, I get soft,” he said to Rita Lewis, “do me a favor, shoot me.”

“I could arrange that,” Rita Lewis said. “No trouble. I imagine there’s a couple of guys out there would do me that favor.” She took a lipstick and touched up her lips. She knew Lilo was on the verge of dumping her, but she would land on her feet, or on her back, she always did. Maybe she should do the dumping. It would be more flattering to her ego. Lilo was a good and steady fuck, but a fuck was just a fuck. Anyway, however it broke, she still had her nest egg. A little here, a little there, a bauble or two in the safe deposit box, her furs, the odd tip on the market, a boat race at Hollywood Park, a bonus for carrying packages and never asking what was in them, it added up after a while. Especially with the number of men who had passed through her life, and the kind of men they were. Jake had paid her back, as she knew he would. Jake would cheat a man, but never a woman. It was matter of vanity. And he had not tried to discount the amount, as she knew Lilo would have tried to do if he had been in Jake’s situation. But of course Lilo would never be caught in Jake’s situation. He arranged situations, he did not get caught in them. Lilo was a picker-up of pieces, many of which he had caused to be broken in the first place. “So tell me, Lilo, what do you mean, it’s time.”

“I mean, it’s time you minded your own business for a change,” Lilo said. “And in case you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, forget it. I told it to Benny once, the dumb
fuck, and I’ll tell it to you, I’m an officer of the court. Funny stuff I want nothing to do with.”

Rita knew she had pushed this particular button as long as it could be pushed, but if she was on the way out anyway, one more push couldn’t hurt much. “What you’re saying is, they don’t play polo at Folsom.”

She moved away from Lilo and sat down next to Blue Tyler, who for a moment did not acknowledge her presence. Blue sucked up the last of her piña colada, a great slurping noise, then held out the glass to a maid. “Why do horses go poo-poo so much, Rita?” Blue said. “Arthur falls off so often, I’m afraid he’s going to fall into a pile of horse poo.”

“I haven’t given it all that much thought,” Rita said. She knows everything there is to know about fucking and cock-sucking and camera angles, Rita thought, but nothing at all about the world, and how it works. Because of her Jake had cut his ties to the only organization he had ever known, and sooner or later it was going to get him killed, for as much as he might want to be a part of her world, he brought too much baggage to it, and it had no place for him. She wondered if Jake knew this, and she thought he probably did. He was never dumb, he just did dumb things. Lilo said the emerald earrings and the other jewelry that Jake had given Blue were paid for out of the Playland account, and Lilo said that’s a no-no. She did not know if this was true, or whether Lilo was just saying it, trying it out on her before he tried it out on Jimmy Riordan, and once he told Jimmy, Jimmy of course would tell Morris.

“You read the rewrite on
Broadway Babe
yet? We used some of your back story, the part about you and the ginney gangster from Chicago. We didn’t make him a ginney, though. Moe wants to call him Bo Lamarr.”

Rita looked at Blue, all sunglasses and straw hat and boobs that didn’t jiggle, and for the first time she felt old. In her whole life she had never been as young or as unwary or as protected as Blue Tyler. You could spell it out for her, but Blue would never be able to comprehend that she was Jake’s only chance. Her presence would put him in a kind of protective custody, because
she was too valuable and too visible to have anything bad happen to her, and if it did, too many questions would have to be asked, too many scores would have to be settled. But that wasn’t in any script Blue had ever read, any picture she had ever seen. For Blue everything always worked out in the last reel, and Al Capone was called Bo Lamarr. “You’ve never worked without a net, have you, Blue?”

“I’ve worked since I was four. Which is more than you can say.”

“I mean, you’ve always had Arthur. And his father. And the studio. On your side.” She paused, certain that Blue did not understand. “Jake’s over there with nobody on his side.” His name caused an almost imperceptible shudder. “Some people are saying he got in over his head because of you.”

Blue ostentatiously pretended not to listen, and clapped loudly as Arthur hammered a ball downfield.

“It’s real life, Blue,” Rita said, moving close to her. “No directors. No writers. No makeup, no wardrobe, no script. Just one man out there, walking a tightrope for you, and all the guys on both coasts making book on when he falls off. Not if he falls off. When he falls off. Because he will. And when he does, you know what I bet you’ll do?”

Blue whirled around. “The only reason you even care about him is because you used to fuck him,” she said savagely. Suddenly there were tears at the corners of her eyes. Rita remembered Chuckie saying that she only cried on cue. Maybe, maybe not. “What’ll I do?” Blue said.

“What you’ll do is, you’ll go out to dinner,” Rita said gently. It occurred to her, a bad moment, that she was probably old enough to be Blue Tyler’s mother. “With the polo player. And his father. Like you’ve done once a week since you were four years old.”

What happened over there, Arthur?

She never talked about it.

Never?

Ever.

We hold on Blue at the polo match, Sydney Allen said, no dialogue, the match going on behind her, the sound fading and her face slowly filling the screen, blotting everything else out, then we dissolve off her face into the desert, and we pick up a piece of music …

EXT. PLAYLAND NIGHT

THE LIGHTS
of a
LIMOUSINE
on the desert highway.

ANOTHER ANGLE—JACOB KING
aware of the approaching lights, ever watchful.

THE LIMOUSINE
pulls to a halt in the parking light. Its lights remain on.

ANGLE ON JACOB KING
shielded by his car, his hand going close to his gun.
BLUE TYLER
steps from the limo and stops when she sees Jacob.

BLUE
You still want me out here?

CUT TO
:

INT. PLAYLAND SHOWROOM NIGHT

BLUE TYLER
alone onstage in the unfinished showroom. She is barefoot, in jeans and a sweatshirt, holding a champagne glass as a make believe microphone as she sings “I See Your Face Before Me.”

ANGLE ON JACOB KING
alone, at what will be the premier table in the vast empty showroom, watching Blue.

THE SOUND OF BLUE’S VOICE
fades but music carries over the next scenes.

DISSOLVE TO
:

INT. PLAYLAND CASINO NIGHT

JACOB KING AND BLUE TYLER
dancing, alone among the empty tables, as Blue slowly begins to undress Jacob, dropping his tie on a crap table. MUSIC carries over.

DISSOLVE TO
:

His suite was only half-decorated, with tarpaulins and sanders and sawhorses and paint cans stacked in a corner of the living room, and paint samples on the sheetrock walls, different hues of peach, none quite right, the peach had to be right. Set against one wall, unhung and unframed, was the still-unfinished portrait of Jacob in riding clothes. He liked it unfinished, it had a roughness to it, maybe that’s the way he would hang it. And without a frame either. Every window looked out at the sign,
KING’S PLAYLAND
, ablaze in neon. In his bedroom, he kept the curtains open all night, the sign illuminating his face and helping him sleep. His bed was round, six feet in diameter, a mistake, he had concluded, it was difficult to get comfortable in a round bed stationed in the center of the room, he always felt as if he was going to fall out of it. During his stay, he had fucked three or four of the girls he had picked for the chorus line, none more than once, his heart didn’t seem in it, one of the girls had said, only his dick, and he didn’t want them there in the morning.