Gwendolyn stepped out of the empty store and into the harsh sun, barely registering the early afternoon traffic that was sailing past.
“Well,” Kathryn said behind her, “that was certainly a slap in the face.”
Gwendolyn faced the store she’d hoped might soon be Chez Gwendolyn. “It would’ve been perfect.”
“The rent!” Kathryn exclaimed. “Talk about highway robbery. Did you see that realtor’s face?” She took on the guy’s haughty Connecticut accent. “‘Obviously you haven’t been keeping up with the times.’”
The papers were all reporting how Los Angeles was undergoing the biggest boom since the transcontinental railways arrived in the 1880s. Article after article detailed how rents were spiraling ever upwards, as were costs for construction, labor, and raw materials. But cloistered inside the walls of the Garden of Allah, Gwendolyn hadn’t paid much attention.
After she’d delivered all fifteen dresses for her Midnight Frolics customers, they were so happy with them that she got orders for four more. After paying Arlene for her time, she had nearly a thousand dollars stashed in her Girl Scout cookie tin. She’d been so thrilled when she walked past that empty store last week. It was exactly what she’d been picturing all these years. Two spacious windows, lots of good light, and she could walk there from the Garden. But if that’s what they were asking for in rent, and without her black market stash . . .
Damn Linc Tattler and his thieving little fingers. Without Chez Gwendolyn, what have I got to look forward to?
“If Linc were here, I’d slug him in the guts.”
“Howard offered to fly you down.”
“Humpty Dumpty has a better chance of flying an airplane than he does. Can we please change the subject?”
“Shall we talk about tonight?” Kathryn suggested.
Gwendolyn knew it was only a lavender marriage, but now that Kathryn and Marcus were unraveling their bonds, she felt a sort of grief. And now that Chez Gwendolyn had withered on the vine, it was as though her whole life were dwindling to a standstill. The last thing she felt like doing was hosting the Gay Divorcée party she’d offered to throw.
“Schwab’s is delivering the booze at six,” she said. “Are you sure you want to do all the hors d’oeuvres?”
“Haven’t you heard?” Kathryn said proudly. “I’m queen of the hors d’oeuvres now.”
“I didn’t hear from Dottie. Is she coming?”
“Yes! Universal is doing a picture called Smash-Up from some story she wrote with the guy who did The Corn Is Green. I saw her at the Nickodell after my show last week. She’d been angling to write the screenplay, but they’ve given it to John Howard Lawson.”
“Isn’t he on Billy’s blacklist?”
Wilkerson’s list of suspected Commies had become so notorious, everybody now referred to it as “Billy’s Blacklist.”
Kathryn nodded. “Which is why I told her she’ll have dodged a bullet if she doesn’t get the job. Lillian was with her, so of course she was agitating that Dottie ignore me.”
“She wouldn’t be Lillian Hellman if she didn’t.”
By the time they walked through the Garden of Allah’s main building and out into the pool area, it was just after five. That gave Gwendolyn two hours to freshen up and organize her place for the dozen guests. But that plan flew out the window when she spotted her brother sitting in the foyer.
“MONTY!”
Gwendolyn’s brother was a life-long navy man who’d survived Pearl Harbor and ended up serving on a battleship in Tokyo Bay the day the Japanese signed the peace treaty. Gwendolyn was proud of her brother’s service, but she hardly ever saw him.
She launched into his outstretched arms and breathed in the starch of military discipline, mingled with briny sea air. She hugged him until her arms ached.
“Typical navy,” she sobbed. “Never give a girl any notice. You appear, you stick around, you vanish, then three years later you pop up again.”
“You should be used to it by now.”
She looked into his sky blue eyes. He seemed older than his thirty-four years now. “How long have I got with you?”
“Seventeen hours.”
“Not even a full twenty-four? Monty!”
“What can I tell you? It’s typical navy. I’m on tomorrow’s Sunset Limited to San Francisco.”
“You’ve timed it well,” Kathryn said, stepping forward. “You can be the special guest at the wingding Gwendolyn’s throwing me tonight.”
Monty’s weathered face lit up. “Birthday?”
“Come with me,” Gwendolyn said, “and I’ll try to explain.”
* * *
Monty wasn’t as impressed with being in the same room as Trevor Bergin and Melody Hope as she’d thought. After five movies, the two were MGM’s most successful pairing since Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, but Monty was clearly bored with Trevor’s talk of his upcoming Valentino remake at Paramount.
Monty looked horrified as Melody teetered into Gwendolyn’s apartment with a bottle of bourbon in each hand, superfluously announcing that she was already half-soused. She made a point of spilling a full glass on Quentin, who did his best to laugh it off, but Gwendolyn could tell he was on the verge of leaving. She wished she could grab Monty and find some quiet restaurant to spend a long evening just the two of them.
“Hey! Pinky the Pinko!” Melody called out. Trevor’s face congealed at the mention of the kleptomaniac in Reds in the Beds that was based on him. “Ain’t you gonna pay me any attention?” Melody whined. “Even if it’s just for show?”
“Take it easy, Mel.” Bertie made a grab for Melody’s drink but Melody pulled it away and launched the contents of her glass onto the wall several feet behind her, missing Gwendolyn’s portrait by inches.
“Everybody grab something!” Gwendolyn announced. “We’re taking this party outside!”
The party was soon relocated to the far side of the neglected patch of dirt that had once been a victory garden, and an impromptu bar was set up on the periphery of a small fountain.
“Hey, Melody!” Quentin said. “Now you can toss around your hooch without ruining anything.”
Melody attempted a wisecrack, but inspiration failed her, so she made do with a sneer instead.
“Surely you’re capable of more than pulling a face,” Quentin persisted. “Nellie Burch would have cut me down with a real whammy.”
Please, everyone, Gwendolyn thought, can’t we just have one night without that book?
“Did I hear someone say Dee-Dee Grifter?”
Kay Thompson looked dazzling in a pantsuit swathed in orange bugle beads. “Bill’s show ran into technical difficulties tonight. Sends his apologies, and best regards for a blissful divorce, and insisted I stop off with these.” She held a couple of bottles of champagne aloft. “Imported!” She set one down on the fountain’s ledge and tackled the cork on the other.
“You know what I heard at CBS tonight?” she asked nobody in particular. “That Clifford Wardell spent a week here at the Garden to get veris—verisimilit—what’s the word I’m searching for?”
“It’s verisimilitude, you big knucklehead.”
Dorothy Parker had arrived with Lillian in tow, and the two of them were wearing virtually identical outfits of mildew blue. “That Wardell prick sure got around, didn’t he?”
“Don’t believe a word of it,” Marcus said. “I’d have seen him, and then strung him up by his balls—if I could find them.”
“I think it took balls to write what he did,” Melody said. “He knew exactly the sort of blowtorch he was lighting.”
“Melody!” Trevor looked like he was about to wallop his lavender wife across her strident yap. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, so pipe the hell down.”
Gwendolyn grabbed up a plate of Kathryn’s liverwurst on rainbow rye. “Everyone, you ought to try these.”
“I hate to say it,” Lillian said, “but I agree with little Miss Movie Star over there.”
Dottie Parker looked as horrified as Gwendolyn felt. “Oh, Lil, you can’t mean that.”
Lillian Hellman had been tenacious in her criticism of Billy’s blacklist, mainly because she was an unapologetic member of the Communist Party herself. “Now that we’ve vanquished the Nazis and the Japs, America needs a new enemy to rail against. What gets my goat is that someone seems to have decided that our new nemesis should be the Communists.”
“Please don’t stand here and defend that book.”
Gwendolyn could tell from the steely mien in Marcus’ eye that he was getting steamed up and ready for a fight.
“Of course not,” Lillian said. “That book is atrocious, but it’s pushed the issue onto center stage where we shall all be forced to grapple with it, come what may.”
“I’ll tell you what may come,” Marcus said. Oliver laid a placating hand on his shoulder, but he jerked it away. “If we don’t play this very, very carefully, we’re going to find ourselves blackballed.”
“Oh, Marcus!” Kay fluttered her hand at him. “I hardly think it’s going to come to that. And even if it does, you’re no longer actually writing any of these movies, so it’s hardly going to affect you.”
“What affects one of us, affects us all,” Kathryn put in.
“Says the gal who works for the guy who wrote the blacklist that kicked it all off,” Melody said.
“My boss didn’t start it, Wardell did,” Kathryn said.
“Yeah, but he sure as hell picked it up and ran with it,” Dottie said.
“COULD WE PLEASE JUST DROP IT?” Gwendolyn exploded. “I asked you all here tonight because Marcus and Kathryn are getting divorced. All of us here know why they got hitched in the first place. Not the most ideal reasons, but under the circumstances, practical and necessary. And now it’s practical and necessary that they unhitch, and I thought we might gather together and wish them well. Is that too much to ask?”
Bertie stepped forward. “Quite right, Gwennie.” She lifted up the filled champagne coupe in her hand. “Here’s to Marcus and Kathryn, the happiest married couple I know, which is ironic, all things considered.”
Everybody disposed of whatever liquor happened to be in their glass, and started chatting among themselves. Gwendolyn was starting to feel like she’d managed to prevent the party from turning into another philosophical slugfest when Dottie piped up.
“Can I just say one more thing? The fact that Wardell portrayed the Garden of Allah as a hotbed of subversive—”
“JESUS!” Gwendolyn felt the last wisps of patience dissolve between her fingers. “I’m so sick of hearing about, and talking about, and arguing about the lousy Reds in the lousy Beds. I wish we could pile up every last copy, and set fire to the whole dang thing!”
Gwendolyn hung her head while an uncomfortable hush rendered the group immobile.
It was Oliver who broke the silence. “Why don’t we? Let’s make a funeral pyre and burn the lot.”
“A Viking funeral!” came from Arlene. “If we could get a sheet of metal—”
“There’s some corrugated metal in the parking lot,” Trevor put in.
“We could sit it on the life preserver next to the pool, then pile it high with as many copies as we can find. Then flambé the whole thing, push it out into the middle, and watch it burn.”
“Like Clifford Wardell’s soul in hell!” Lillian declared. “How positively cathartic!”
Everybody looked at each other, waiting for a dissenting voice, but nobody could conjure a single one. Arlene was first to dash off to her apartment, and the rest scattered to their corners of the Divine Oasis.
Minutes later, they gathered by the pool clutching their books. Marcus laid the Garden’s life preserver on the ground and covered it with the corrugated metal. Everyone placed their books onto it, forming a pyramid with Marcus’ copy on top, standing upright, its pages splayed open.
Marcus doused the whole thing in brandy, then Oliver gingerly placed it on the water. Kathryn stepped forward and struck two matches, saying, “A pox upon you, and all who sail in you!” and tossed them onto the pyre.
Gwendolyn felt the heat of flames as it flared to life. Someone shoved a rake into her hands, and she pushed the burning pile toward the center of the pool. The crowd let out a cheer, raw and purgative; the pent-up tension dissipated in the night air.
“Where thine enemies have been vanquished,” Dottie intoned, “Where the brave shall live forever.”
“What the hell was that?” Lillian asked.
“A Viking funeral prayer,” Dottie said. “Or something. This is my fourth bourbon, so don’t put any money on it.”
The group stood in silence, watching their floating bonfire.
“I must admit,” Kathryn said, “there’s something satisfying about seeing that mound of excrement burn.”
Several others agreed with her, consigning Wardell to the hellhole from which he crawled.
Gwendolyn turned to her brother. “And that’s the way we do things at the Garden of Allah.”
Monty let out a long, low whistle.
“I don’t expect you to get it,” she said. “But in this town, that book has been the bane of every person with the God-given sense to know the difference between right and wrong.”
“It’s just that—well—y’all just participated in a book burning. Isn’t that what the Nazis did?”
A heavy silence fell over the group as they watched the charred rubble subside into a faintly glowing heap, then, finally, extinguish altogether.