Tell My Sorrows to the Stones (25 page)

“Some of it’s gruesome stuff, some sensational in that old Hollywood gossip rag kind of way. You know, the costume Lauren Bacall was wearing the first time she and Bogart made love. It was on the set of
To Have or Have Not
. That sort of thing.”

Courtney liked that he had said
made love
instead of
had sex,
or something even cruder. Massarsky was an old-fashioned sort of man, befitting his age, the sort who might be a barbarian in the presence of other men, but still knew how to act the gentleman.

She cocked her head curiously and picked up a small glass cube. Inside, three yellowed nuggets rattled. She turned toward him.

“Are these—?”

“Teeth? Yes. Bobby DeNiro had them knocked out during the filming of
Raging Bull
. I bought them from Jim Feehan, the old-time boxer who trained DeNiro for that film. They’re the real thing.”

Don, who’d been keeping his mouth shut until now, probably wanting her to establish a rapport with Massarsky, couldn’t stay quiet any longer.

“How can you be sure?” the manager asked.

Massarsky might have been offended, but he smiled. “I asked DeNiro.”

“He didn’t mind that you had them?” Courtney asked, amazed.

Massarsky spread out on the chair, relaxing, king of his castle. “Far from it. You want to know the truth? A lot of these things have legends around them, like they’ve got some kind of Hollywood magic. In the late seventies, I knew guys who claimed that in the Golden Age, there were real muses in this town, captured or brought to life or summoned, I don’t know. But I’m talking real muses, like in Greek mythology. Writers and directors and studio bosses worshipped these women, and they got genius in return.”

Courtney and Don both stared at him, unsure what to say.

The producer laughed. “I’m not saying I believed them. But when I say these guys believed, I’m totally serious. They bought into it, hook, line, and sinker. Anyway, a lot of the stuff I’ve collected has that kind of lore around it. But most of it is just weird and fascinating to me. The story behind DeNiro’s teeth is this—after he had them knocked out, he went to his dentist, who brought in a doctor. Turned out the mercury in the fillings he had in those teeth had been poisoning him.”

“So losing those teeth might’ve saved his life?” Don asked.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Massarsky said. “Still, it’s a great story.”

At that point, Marta arrived with a tray bearing three tall glasses of pomegranate juice, each with a slice of strawberry on the rim and full of ice. Courtney was surprised there weren’t little tropical umbrellas in there as well.

The woman vanished as quickly and quietly as she appeared.

“All right,” Massarsky said, “more chitchat later. I’ll even give you a tour if you want. Right now, let’s talk about
this
movie.
Daughter of the Snows
. What appeals to you, Courtney? This isn’t the sort of thing most people would expect from you.”

She smiled as she came around the leather sofa and took a seat, purposely placing herself between Don and Massarsky, who sat in matching chairs at either end of the coffee table.

“That’s exactly why I want it. It’s not about being beautiful or witty, it’s about pain and survival. It’s the kind of film where what’s going on in the actor’s eyes is at least as important as the words coming out of her mouth.”

Caught sipping his pomegranate juice, Massarsky paused and regarded her carefully, without any trace of a smile. The mask of easy confidence had slipped, and she saw the man beneath, shrewd and intrigued and more than a little bit lonely.

“You actually meant that,” he said.

Courtney nodded. “Of course.”

Don Peterson’s presence in the room was completely forgotten. The two of them looked at one another for several long seconds, and then Massarsky’s smile returned.

On the patio outside Lemongrass, the guitarist launched into another song Courtney didn’t know, a sweet, slightly upbeat love song he introduced as “Everything Under the Sun.” She left the shade of the tree on the corner of Montana and continued down the side street, staying on the opposite sidewalk from Lemongrass. With every step, more of the outdoor dining area became visible, and through the five sets of open French doors she could see many of the tables inside as well.

Just inside the doors, off the patio, a thin, fortyish man she knew as Wilkie sat with his back to the street. From this angle she could only make out part of his profile and his thick tangle of black hair, but it couldn’t be anyone else. He sat alone at a table for two, and opposite him, a red balloon had been tied to the back of the empty chair. It danced a bit with the breeze coming off the patio, and she felt her chest tighten. If it came loose somehow, it might be carried out the open doors by the wind, might float off into the sky, the ultimate children’s tragedy, and yet perhaps far more than that.

Wilkie seemed unafraid.

But why should he be afraid? After all, it was only a balloon.

When they returned home from three weeks in the Mediterranean, the honeymoon she had always dreamed of, Massarsky—now “James” to her—showed his new wife the last, most precious items in his strange collection. They were all bits of Hollywood history, oddities with charming or gruesome tales behind them, and her husband had become the curator of his own little museum, in a room he called the library, to which only he had the key.

“Finally,” he said, turning with a ringmaster’s flourish, passing through shafts of light coming through the tall windows, dust eddying in air so infrequently disturbed. “The crown jewel.”

James pulled a gold, braided cord and a small curtain drew aside, as though to reveal some tiny stage upon which puppets might perform. But this was no puppet theatre. Behind the little curtain was a rectangular glass case thirty inches high and twelve wide, within which rested a single, red balloon, its string hanging beneath it and coiling at the bottom of the case.

Courtney arched an eyebrow, chuckled a bit, and reached out for her husband’s arm. “A balloon?”

He looked at her, this man who had made her so happy, who believed in her so thoroughly, and his eyes sparkled with mischief.

“Not just any balloon. I’m going to assume you’ve never seen the film,
The Red Balloon
. Mostly, I’m assuming so because, as far as I know, only a few hundred people in the world have ever seen it in its completed form. While he was shooting
Cimarron
, the director Anthony Mann got a script from Leigh Brackett, who had adapted
The Big Sleep
in ’46 and then done damned little until
Rio Bravo
in ’59. Glenn Ford was starring in
Cimarron
, and Mann convinced him to star in
The Red Balloon
. They did the picture for MGM in 1960, but it was never released. Somebody—I’ve heard a lot of names, from Jack Warner to David Selznick to Bob Hope, believe it or not—bought the film from MGM and put it in a vault somewhere. It’s never been released. Ford went straight into making
Pocketful of Miracles
, basically as an apology from MGM.”

Courtney waited a moment before urging him on. “And? Why did whoever it was not want the movie released?”

James Massarsky smiled. “Brackett’s script—and Mann’s movie—was about a Chicago mobster who was obsessed with a red balloon. The balloon never lost its air, never went flat, and the mob boss believed that as long as he had the balloon in his possession, that he would never be sick or injured, that he wouldn’t grow old, and that it might even keep him alive forever. But he had to keep it safe, because if it popped or deflated, he would die. Supposedly, Brackett heard the story from some people she knew who were actually connected to the Chicago mob. The movie ended with the balloon being stolen, and the mob boss dying, but the narrative left it open for the audience to decide if it was all just coincidence, or the truth.”

Courtney processed that a moment, then laughed, shaking her head. “You think someone kept that movie from being released because the story was true?” She looked at the glass case. “And you think that’s the real thing, right there?”

James brushed her blonde hair from her eyes, leaned in, and kissed her. Then he shrugged, that manic, almost sprite-like mischief still in his eyes. “I’ve had this thing nearly two years, and it’s still inflated. In that time, I haven’t had so much as a sneeze. You’re the audience, sweetheart. You be the judge. Either way, it’s a great story.”

“What’d this guy do to you, anyway?”

Courtney thought of all the things she could have said, the way her life and her career and her self-esteem had been disassembled, all of the humiliating examples of her ruination that she could have listed. Instead, she met Wilkie’s gaze firmly with her own.

“He broke me.”

They sat just inside Lemongrass, half the table in shadow and half bright with sunshine that streamed in through the open French doors. The breeze off the patio warmed her, and the cute, slightly scruffy guitar player continued to play songs that were unfamiliar and yet fun and thoroughly agreeable. On another occasion, drinks with a handsome stranger under such circumstances would have been a pleasure. But Wilkie was a thief, not a date, and Courtney didn’t like the way he looked at her.

“You don’t look broken to me,” he said.

She stiffened, hackles rising. “You don’t know me. And who asked you? When Alison gave me your number, she said you were professional and discreet.”

Wilkie played with the salt and pepper shakers on the table, a lopsided grin spreading across his face. He picked up his beer—Stella on tap—and took a long sip, watching her over the rim of the glass. When he set it down, he wiped his mouth, staring at her.

“Your friend there, Alison? She doesn’t know me very well. I did a job for her once, and I guess I got it done, or she wouldn’t have sent you to me. As for the job you asked me to do . . .” he pointed to the red balloon, tied to the back of her chair. “It’s right there.”

Courtney had ordered a pomegranate martini, aware of the slight irony, if irony was even the word. Symmetry, then? Perhaps. She had taken a few sips from the drink but otherwise it sat untouched in front of her on the table. At first she had wondered if this was indeed the red balloon from her husband’s collection, and how she would be able to tell. But the string was just that—a real string, like on a kite, and grey with age—not a thin ribbon like people used these days. Beyond that, she just knew.

The red balloon wasn’t something she could have brought up in their divorce proceedings. There were loads of material things that she had asked for in the settlement, from furniture to art to the house in Maine, but if she’d tried to get any part of his personal collection, her lawyer had told her such claims would be next to impossible to justify. But James had
hurt
her, and Courtney wanted to hurt him back.

This was the way.

She took a deep breath, suddenly tired of Wilkie. Why was she sitting here having a drink with this man? Distracted, wanting to be away from here, to be done with him, she reached into her clutch and pulled out a folded envelope, sliding it across the table.

“The rest of your fee,” she said. “Feel free to count it.”

Wilkie smiled. He had a weathered, surf-bum look about him, but his eyes glittered with intelligence. “No need. I trust you. So, our business is concluded? All done, right?”

“All done,” Courtney agreed as she slid back her chair.

“Then you got what you wanted. The balloon’s yours. But I’ve gotta ask . . . why? I know I said ‘no questions asked,’ so you don’t have to answer, but what’s so important about a damn balloon that you’d run the risk of hiring someone to break in and take it?”

She hesitated—it wasn’t like she owed the guy an explanation—but the genuine curiosity in his eyes got to her. Glancing around the restaurant, wary of being overhead, she gave a slow nod.

“All right. You want the story?”

“I do. It’s a weird job, you have to admit.”

Courtney smiled thinly. “You don’t know the half of it.”

And she told him.

Wilkie sat and listened with a bemused expression, frowning now and then until at last she had finished and he cocked his head to one side and gave her an indulgent smile.

“You do realize how nutty that all sounds?”

She paused, playing her own words back in her head. Of course she knew how it sounded. She slid sideways in her chair and set about picking at the loose knot he’d used to tie the balloon string to the chair.

“So this movie,” Wilkie went on, undeterred by her silence. “Have you seen it? Did your ex have a copy?”

“Not that I know of. I always assumed he just knew the story about the mobster. He told me only a few hundred people had ever seen the movie and he never claimed to be one of them. The screenwriter, Brackett, probably heard the story in a bar. Just because she wrote the script doesn’t mean she believed it.”

As Courtney managed to free the balloon from its knot, wrapping the string around one finger, she noticed that Wilkie had begun to stare at it.

“It’s just another Hollywood fable,” she said. “There are a thousand of them.”

Wilkie leaned back in his chair. “True enough. But according to your ex’s story, somebody believed it enough to pay a fortune to get MGM to shelve the movie, put it in a vault and never let it out. Whoever did that, they sure as hell believed. And your husband believes it, doesn’t he?”

“Completely.”

“What about you?” Wilkie asked. “Do you believe it?”

“Of course not,” Courtney said automatically.

Wilkie gave her a lopsided grin and leaned forward, studying her. “Bullshit. Look at the way you’re holding onto that string. Maybe you wanted that thing just to deprive an asshole of his favourite toy, but you’re an actress, too. A Hollywood girl, past her prime—”

“Fuck you, Wilkie,” she muttered. “I don’t have to—”

“—you can’t tell me that a little part of you didn’t want it because you think it’s going to keep your tits from sagging.” He scoffed, shaking his head. “Jesus, immortality from a goddamn balloon.”