Marcus lifted his kitchen window curtain and looked out at the Garden’s main building. “Is it one o’clock yet?”
Luckie didn’t look up from his game of solitaire. “What time was it when you asked me four minutes ago?”
Marcus dropped the curtain. “How are you not nervous? Our whole future depends on what’s about to happen.”
Luckie put a five of spades onto a six of hearts. “In the first place, no, it doesn’t.”
“But what if—”
“And in the second place . . .” He studied his cards and found he was stuck.
“And in the second place—what?”
“There was no second place. I only had a first place because in my experience, worst-case scenarios rarely play out.”
“You’re not the slightest bit nervous that we’ve shot our wad on a story we had no legal right to—”
“Who said I’m not nervous?”
“I’m the one pacing back and forth like a dead man walking; you’re sitting there like we’re on a Sunday picnic down at Laguna Beach.”
Luckie slammed his cards onto the table. “If we start running around like chickens with our heads chopped off, it’s not going to make a very good impression on someone we really need to impress, now, is it?” He looked down at the chaotic mess he’d made of his game. “Look at what you made me do.”
Knowing that Luckie was agitated too enabled Marcus to relax for the first time in the two days since Nelson had called to say that he’d located Claude Roundtree.
Selling the grandfather clock had been the hardest part of putting together The Beginning of the End. The negotiations with the antique clock dealer on the edge of downtown LA had dragged on for two weeks. But when he and Luckie had finally made an agreement, it was enough to pay Nelson his retainer and give Lucille Ball a down payment on a twenty-day rental of Desilu’s smallest soundstage. She’d given it to them at a rock-bottom price on the promise that they divulge it to nobody, “otherwise every damned production company in town will come pounding on my door asking why they’re paying so much.” It was no bigger than a small house, tucked away at the back of the old RKO lot, but it was theirs.
A few days later, Luckie announced he’d found “some rich old queen who wants to slide me between the sheets so he’s ponied up the rest of the money. We’re in business!” Marcus didn’t ask if Luckie had put out or not. All that mattered was the check cleared and a set designer—a friend of Rex’s built sets on Gunsmoke—was hired.
By that time, Luckie had also secured distribution through Ray Theaters out of Dallas. Jesse Ray had spent years accumulating a huge swath of the theaters that the studios had been forced to sell off. Better still, he saw himself as a maverick much like this new rising crop of independent movie producers. Ray had guaranteed them up to a thousand screens as long as they could be in by the end of September because he had Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, then Houseboat, and after that, Bell, Book and Candle. It was achievable but only if filming took no more than four weeks and editing was done by the end of July. Luckie insisted that he had everything in hand and told Marcus to focus on the script.
Pretty much everything had changed in the twenty-five years since Roundtree had written his screenplays: pacing, language, slang. Movies were deeper now; characters were more layered. This was especially true for a story that was really about two young men falling in love, one of whom was disguised as a wisecracking tomboy.
Around halfway through the script-writing phase, Luckie had floated the idea of giving Rex the director job. Shocked, Marcus had asked Luckie if he was sure. He had shrugged like it was nothing. “We didn’t have an ugly break-up and we need someone we can trust. I trust Rex. Don’t you?” Marcus had assured Luckie that he thought Rex very trustworthy. “And anyway,” Luckie had continued blithely, “a guy like Rex doesn’t stay single for long.”
That was when Luckie had blinked that slow, deliberate blink of his—the sort of knowing double-eyed wink Doris Day might give her leading man. Innocent but perceptive. No sudden awkwardness, no resentment, no poisonous barbs. Just an airy quality of “I know, and I want you to know that I know. I don’t need to talk about it, so let’s get on with the business at hand.”
And they did. Through working on The Man Who Knew Too Much, Luckie had learned from Alfred Hitchcock that meticulously planned setups before production started was time well spent because it allowed for straightforward editing. With such a straightjacket-tight schedule, it was the only way they could get the movie done on time.
Each night, Rex would come from the Brick by Brick set and work on the pages Marcus had produced that day. Together, they hammered out every camera angle and edit cut. The whole time Marcus had lived in Hollywood, he’d only ever generated a script before sending it out to meet whatever fate the studio had in store for it. He’d never had such a central role in a movie’s production and it had been exhilarating. And when work was done for the day, the two of them would fall into bed and get their fill of each other, which never seemed quite enough.
But playing in the background through all this was Nelson’s fruitless search for Roundtree. Desilu needed their soundstage by the July fourth long weekend, so the start date for filming was rigid. As each day passed without any word, the downside of playing Movie Moguls grew more and more apparent, reminding Marcus and Luckie that being a Mayer or a Zanuck wasn’t as easy as it looked.
Yesterday, Nelson’s call had finally come. “I’ve sent him a Greyhound ticket; he’s due in LA tomorrow morning. I’ll bring him straight to the Garden. We should be there by one o’clock.”
Marcus had asked him for background information. Found him where? Does he know about the books or the movie? What is he like? Angry? Personable? But Nelson had been on a public phone and had run out of quarters.
The thud of boots hitting the path outside brought Luckie to the window.
“Is it them?” Marcus asked.
“Uh-huh.”
Marcus fanned himself with a copy of Look magazine. He’d had a long time to anticipate this confessional moment, but now he felt woefully ill-prepared. “What does Roundtree look like?”
“Friar Tuck without the brown robe.”
“Is he smiling?”
“No. But he’s not frowning, either.” Luckie jerked back from the window.
Nelson rapped three times on Marcus’s door, and, swallowing hard, Marcus pulled it open.
Claude Roundtree barely reached five feet and possessed the fully rounded belly of someone who enjoyed his roasted venison dinners.
Nelson said, “Claude, I want you to meet Marcus Adler. Marcus, this is Claude Roundtree.”
“I know who you are.” Roundtree kept his tone even, revealing neither malice nor benevolence. He did, however, accept Marcus’s extended hand and shook it firmly.
Marcus welcomed them inside, introduced Luckie, and invited them to take a seat at his table. “What’s it like being back at the Garden of Allah?”
Roundtree’s smile was the merest sliver required for the sake of politeness. “My time here was a mixed blessing. I moved in during the summer of 1930.” Every word this guy spoke was metered out with careful deliberation. “Everybody was so articulate. So clever. So ambitious. I was from a podunk town in Nebraska, so it felt like falling into Wonderland.”
“I don’t live here,” Luckie put in, “but I’ve visited often enough. My goodness! The parties—”
“You don’t remember me,” Roundtree cut through Luckie like he wasn’t even there, “do you, Mr. Adler?”
Marcus shifted in his chair. “I’m still trying to place you . . .”
“Don’t feel bad. It was a long time ago. I spent a lot of the time in my room, staring out the window, watching what was going on.”
“You didn’t come down to join us?”
“How could I compete with the likes of Dorothy Parker and Tallulah Bankhead?”
“The only competition was to see if Dottie could outdrink Tallu.”
“No, no, no,” Roundtree said with a sigh. “It was too much for this little kid from Scottsbluff. I felt much more comfortable sitting in my room, working on my screenplays. I didn’t send any of them out, of course. Never fooled myself for a minute that they were any good.”
The moment had arrived.
“Do you know why we’ve brought you to Los Angeles?” Marcus asked.
“Mr. Hoyt shared enough to convince me to get on that bus, but was short on concrete details.”
Nelson rubbed the back of his neck and shifted his gaze to Marcus. “I thought it best if the whole story came from you.”
Marcus cleared his throat. “A while ago, a small publishing house asked me to write a novel. It was a decent amount of money and I wasn’t too solvent at the time, so I took them up on their offer. But right away I fell victim to writer’s block. There I was, check cashed and not an idea in my head. Around that time, I was rooting through the basement and came across a cardboard box that had obviously been sitting there a very long time. It contained a stack of screenplays and, being a screenwriter myself, I pulled out the top one and started to read it—”
“Holy ravioli!” Roundtree slowly raised his plump little hands and pressed them against his chest. “You’re M.A. Jamieson. A Dash of Lavender.”
“So you knew about the book?”
“Only by chance. I live on a commune fifty miles north of Lake Havasu. Once a week, we drive into town to pick up supplies. Someone came back with a copy of it. Just as a silly sort of joke. One of the guys is always wearing purple. It’s his obsession. Anyway, it got a laugh and I thought nothing of it. Later that night, it hit me—A Dash of Lavender! I got out of bed and rummaged through the trashcan, took it back to my room, and stayed up all night reading it.”
“What did you think?” Marcus ventured.
A florid rosiness flushed his face. “I loved it!”
“You weren’t angry that someone had stolen your work?”
“Heavens, no! I was flattered that somebody thought my story was worth publishing. But you took it and improved it.” Roundtree jerked his head up as though someone had poked him with a knitting needle. “Is that what this is about?”
Marcus glanced at Luckie and Nelson. This was going much better than he’d expected. “More like to beg your forgiveness.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Roundtree said.
“But I took No Stranger to Champagne and The Sun Chasers, too.”
“And I’m sure you improved them, as you did with A Dash of Lavender. Don’t you fret for a single minute longer. Seeing my story in print has been all the thrill I need.” Tears pooled in Roundtree’s moss-green eyes. “One of the reasons why I couldn’t bring myself to join those parties is that I was rather in awe of you.”
Marcus wished he could conjure up some memory of this guy. “But the time you were living here I was just a Western Union delivery boy.”
Roundtree shook his head. “You were a man on a mission with the determination to get where you wanted to go. When I heard about you working for Cosmopolitan Pictures, I thought, Well done, Marcus Adler. Bravo.”
Marcus blushed at the idea that somebody had been watching him from the sidelines, cheering him on, and he had never even known it. “I wish you’d said something. I could have used the encouragement.”
Roundtree shooed away the notion with a flick of the wrist.
“There’s more to it than that,” Luckie said, “Money is involved. Royalties and the like.”
Roundtree shook his head dismissively. “This commune I live on, it’s not a monastery but we’ve pretty much given up the capitalist approach in favor of a more ascetic way of life. I’m done with that now. You can keep your royalties, whatever they may be.”
“Well, all right!” Luckie opened his briefcase and pulled out a one-page contract he’d prepared in the unlikely event that Roundtree might say exactly that.
Marcus laid a hand on it, preventing Luckie from shoving it in front of Roundtree. The movie producer in him couldn’t have asked for a better outcome, but the screenwriter wouldn’t get another sound night’s sleep knowing that he’d kept from this guy the knowledge that his long-dormant dream was about to come true. “There was another script in the box, The Beginning of the End.”
“Is that the one about the four Pennsylvania Dutch boys?”
“We want to turn it into a movie.”
Roundtree let out a barely audible squeak. “You mean I’ll get to see—? Goodness, that is exciting.” He pressed his chubby little fingers to his chest again. “What I remember most about that story is the mother. I hope you’ve cast someone good. It’d be a hell of a part.”
The mother wasn’t a large role, but it was central to the plot because she facilitated the central romance and encouraged all four kids to get out of town while they were still young.
The actress whom Marcus and Luckie wanted to cast projected exactly the right screen presence. She had desperately wanted the role but came with baggage: she was still blacklisted. In the end, they had given her the role and decided to turn what could have been problematic into a positive. Casting a blacklisted actress would likely earn them scads of publicity—the headlines virtually wrote themselves—but that was only good if they had the support of the movie houses where the film would be showing. Fortunately, Jesse Ray loved the idea of sticking it to what he’d called “myopic Hollywood” and had given them his blessing to cast Melody Hope.
Marcus and Luckie exchanged hesitant glances. They couldn’t be sure what Roundtree’s politics were. The guy lived on a commune fifty miles past the middle of nowhere—would he care about the blacklist? Had he even heard of Melody? The paper he needed to sign was sitting right there with Nelson’s fountain pen sitting on top of it. Would this wrinkle kibosh the whole deal?
“We have cast the mother,” Marcus told him.
Luckie added, “And we think she’ll bring a lot of meat to the role.”
“Sounds to me like you fellers have got your ducks in a row.”
Marcus stared at the contract. All he had to do was hand him the pen.
But. But. But.
Blood pounded in Marcus’s ears. “We cast Melody Hope.”
Roundtree squinted as he pictured Melody in the mother role. “Wasn’t she blacklisted?”
“Yes, sir, she is.”
“Is? Those poor people are still boycotted?”
Marcus wanted to lay his head on the table in relief. “It’s still going on, and by casting her, we hope to remedy that situation.”
“Good for you! Doing the right thing is always the best path.”
“Thank you,” Luckie said in his best take-charge voice. “We think so. But we must also keep the lawyers happy and so we need you to sign off on using your script.”
“Of course,” Roundtree said. “More than happy to.”
But Marcus’s conscience still throbbed at the back of his skull. Stealing this guy’s work had been eating at him like acid and he knew it wouldn’t give him any peace until he had done not just the legally right thing, but the morally right one, too. “I would love it if you read my version,” he said. “Your approval would mean the world to me.”
Marcus didn’t need to look at Luckie to know the guy was throwing him a face that said, Did you have to? We were so close.
“I must admit,” Roundtree said, “I am rather curious.”
Marcus sent Luckie to the kitchen to make coffee and showed Roundtree into the living room with his copy of The Beginning of the End. It was an agonizing hour and a half before Roundtree turned the final page and joined them back at Marcus’s kitchen table.
He flattened his hands on top of Marcus’s script. “I barely know where to begin.”
“So you . . . liked it, then?” Luckie asked.
Roundtree turned to Marcus. “My dear, dear man. I knew you were talented, but this is marvelous.”
Marcus ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m so glad you think so.”
“You’ve made it so much better than it was. And not just the plot but the characters. They were paper cut-outs compared to the fully fleshed people you’ve transformed them into. Really, Marcus, the whole thing is wonderful.”
“I was thinking perhaps we could share a co-written-by screen credit.”
“What you’ve got here is virtually a whole new story. Yes, okay, the version you found down in the basement may have been your kick-off point, but I barely recognize my work anymore.”
“But without it—”
Roundtree slapped the table. “This story is essentially yours now and you deserve to take credit for it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Look,” Roundtree said, sighing, “my life is as far removed from all this as you can possibly get. It took me a while to realize that Hollywood was the wrong town for me but eventually I did. None of that stuff means a thing to me now: screen credit, notoriety, fame, money—I’ve left them all far, far behind. You want it? Take it. All of it. And with my complete blessing. I sincerely hope it brings you everything you want.” Roundtree picked up the pen. “Where do I sign?”
Marcus pointed to the dotted line at the bottom. After years of getting so close only to have serendipity snatch it away, he’d forgotten that sometimes life works out the way it’s supposed to. “Do you drink?” he asked Roundtree.
“I’m a libertarian, not a teetotaler.”
“In that case, let’s break out the champagne.”