Kathryn tugged on the wig she’d spent the past week fashioning when she ought to have been packing up her villa. Thirty-two years was a lot to wrap in tissue paper and cram into boxes. But the nearer the Garden’s closure loomed, the harder she tried to ignore it.
And then suddenly there was only six or seven days left, and panic had set in. She’d tackled the kitchen first, but when she had broken four dinner plates in the first hour, Nelson gently took the wrapping paper from her.
“I’ve moved seventeen times in twenty-five years, so let me handle everything.” He’d meant to be helpful, but without the distraction of bundling up her life, facing the fact that it was all coming to an end was so much worse than being on the set of Beloved Infidel.
She’d turn a corner, or enter the bar, or duck past the fountain on the Havenhurst Drive side, and a vivid memory would smack her between the eyes. Dorothy Parker carrying home an empty fifth of Dewar’s White Label. Bogie and Bacall the day they’d set off to be married in Ohio. Skinny little Sinatra checking in during the war.
Her only comfort was that Marcus and Gwendolyn had been dragging their feet too, half-heartedly packing their traveling trunks and suitcases with random items: steam irons with shower caps, two-thirds of the Encyclopedia Britannica with Café Gala salt and pepper shakers.
We need to get our act together, they’d told each other. A month from now, this will be a patch of dirt. A year from now it’ll be—oh! the ignominy of it all!—a bank. We’ve found new places to live. Nice places. Chuck’s refined home in Pasadena; the delightful one-bed-one-bath house Kathryn and Nelson had rented near Fourth and Crescent Heights; Marcus’s woodsy bungalow in Beachwood Canyon. And yet the power of procrastination weighed them down like a rusted anchor.
It was Kathryn who suggested a way to help drag their reluctant butts across the finishing line: a closing night party.
“Let’s give our Garden a send-off so big, so brash, so outrageous that LA will never forget what was here.”
It was the kick in the pants they’d all needed. Gwendolyn suggested a costume party and Marcus proposed the theme: come dressed as someone who was big in Hollywood when the Garden opened in 1927. That gave people a wealth of inspiration: actors, characters, politicians, writers, directors.
Kathryn knew who she wanted to be, but she needed a wig made of short black braids, each one topped with a white ball. It was an impossible challenge for someone who’d only just conquered chicken fricassee, so she’d called Sydney Guilaroff. MGM’s chief hairstylist had bobbed Louise Brooks’s hair, turned Lucille Ball into a redhead, and given Judy Garland her Wizard of Oz braids. With Sydney’s gentle patience and several photos from a 1923 issue of Motion Picture magazine, their replica of Nazimova’s outrageous Salomé headpiece slowly came to life.
With the wig in place, she stood in front of her bathroom mirror. If she added too much eyeshadow and the right shade of lipstick, she would get away with it.
It was nearly seven o’clock. In twenty-four hours, this’ll all be over.
She reached for two tubes of lipstick: an Elizabeth Arden blood-red and a sarsaparilla-brown Max Factor Tru-Color. If she blended them together in just the right ratio, it’d be perfect.
Marcus threaded film through an old projector he’d retrieved from the basement. He wasn’t convinced it would last the whole night, but one run-through would be okay if it meant people got to see Alla Nazimova in all her cinematic glory.
He was glad now that he’d hung onto this print of Salomé that Nazimova’s girlfriend, Glesca, had given him before she’d moved to Georgia. Alla was gone and soon the Garden would be a parking lot. There wasn’t much he could do about Lytton Savings and Loan, but he could give Madame a memorable farewell.
Since that thrilling/horrible night of the Oscars, Marcus had often sought comfort on the lush grass that surrounded her plaque at Forest Lawn Cemetery. But invariably he’d end up torturing himself with the boundless zeal of a sadist.
Why did I give in to the temptation to appropriate those scripts?
Why did I think I could get away with it?
Why didn’t I come clean with Rex?
He might well have wallowed in self-loathing limbo until the first bulldozer revved its engine but for an unexpected telephone call he’d received several weeks after he’d brought Oscar home to an empty villa.
Lewis Milestone, a double-Oscared and formerly blacklisted director, had called from Warner Brothers, where he was working on an all-star heist picture called Ocean’s 11. The script was okay but it needed some gloss, and the movie’s star, Frank Sinatra, had suggested him. Marcus nearly swallowed his cigarette when he heard the fee.
A few days after he’d handed it in, he got a call from The Mirisch Corporation asking him to script-doctor their next Elvis Presley picture. It was an easier job that paid even better. He wasn’t yet finished on Follow That Dream when United Artists begged him to sharpen their Elmer Gantry screenplay, and they were willing to pay twice the Ocean’s 11 fee. At night, he might have been a lonely and reluctant bachelor who drank more than was good for him, but during the day, it was raining money.
With just two weeks to go until the Garden was shuttered, he hadn’t even started looking for a new place to live. Lewis Milestone had recommended a real estate agent who’d found him a cottage in Beachwood Canyon. It was secluded but not isolated, surprisingly roomy inside, and homey in a Hans Christian Andersen sort of way. The owners were keen to sell; he could pay cash; the deal was done inside a week. And just like that, he was ready to move out.
No. Not quite ready. One more party to see the place out with a bang, a splash, a last hurrah. And Madame Alla Nazimova had to be a part of it.
He plugged in the longest extension cord he could find and trailed it through the daisy bushes outside his kitchen to a card table he’d set up near the pool area. Crossing to the other side, he unrolled a pair of bed sheets he’d pilfered from the laundry. Why not? Room service didn’t need them anymore. He’d stitched them together as best his negligible sewing skills had permitted. Leaning the gardener’s ladder against the wall of an empty villa, he hung the sheets from the guttering using clothespins he’d also stolen.
He flipped the switch and crossed his fingers in the hope that the projector would work, the ancient film would roll, and that whatever bulb sat inside would be strong enough to project Madame’s masterpiece from across her pool.
The opening title appeared on his ad hoc screen, dead center, clear and crisp as though this were 1923.
NAZIMOVA
In
“SALOMÉ”
An Historical Phantasy
by
Oscar Wilde
He let the film roll through the opening credits and prologue until Madame made her first appearance seated at a banquet table wearing the wig that Kathryn had duplicated. He wanted to drink her in but he hadn’t showered yet. He had no idea how many people would show up tonight. Twenty? Five hundred?
Even if nobody bothers, that’s okay. The three of us can sit here and watch Madame play her greatest role before giving up the cinema and opening the hotel that brought the three of us together.
He switched off the projector, wound the film back to the start, and headed into his villa.
Gwendolyn secured the yellow bandeau around her head and knotted it under her left ear. She couldn’t quite recollect what Clara Bow had worn in It but she did recall the headscarf. She turned to the dress splayed out on her bed and ran a finger along the sky-blue georgette shot through with gold thread.
She could remember everything about this fun little number she’d made over thirty years ago. She’d paid $1.07 for the material at a fabric store around the corner from the downtown May Company on 8th Street. It had taken her 11 hours and 40 minutes to sew together. And she’d first worn it to a speakeasy called The Sneak Inn on Washington Boulevard.
What a lifetime ago that seemed now.
She wriggled the dress over her hips and across her bosom, then zippered up her left side and fastened the two hooks at the top. Okay, so it was a mite snug in places, but hell’s bells, how many women could fit into a dress of theirs from the 1920s?
She stepped into her bathroom for a final check in the mirror. Her hair color wasn’t quite right, but the heavy eyebrows were pretty good. The bee-stung lips were more Mae Murray than Clara Bow, but in a couple of hours everybody would be plastered so nobody would fault her for it.
It was a quarter past seven. Raucous laughter from some early guests sailed in through her window. Gwendolyn hoped Chuck wouldn’t be much longer. She didn’t want to miss a minute of the Garden’s final bash. Had he found the time to change into his costume? Without her Clara Bow, his Antonio Moreno get-up wouldn’t make much sense.
He’d also promised he’d have the information that Gwendolyn was waiting on.
Good lord, but what a turning point the past week had been. As if packing up and leaving the Garden of Allah hadn’t been enough, she was still coming to grips with the aftereffects of her landmark show.
In contrast to her damp armpits and dry mouth, Ambrose Hightower had been erudite, educated, and knowledgeable, and as relaxed as a cat in the sun. The first number, “Stars Look Out for Us Tonight,” went over so well that the studio audience was still applauding Mahalia Jackson and Harry Belafonte when Rex had cut to a commercial.
But then came the finale. She survived with only a flub or two before cutting to Jackson, Belafonte, Horne, and dear, sweet Xavier Bartholomew to punctuate daytime television with the biggest exclamation point it had ever seen.
And oh brother! What a talent Xavier had proved himself to be. It didn’t matter that he was thirty years too young for the role he was singing. Or that he’d had only half an hour to rehearse. Or that he’d never been on television. His voice had filled the studio like a trumpet played by an angel.
It could well have been the accumulated strain of the herculean effort, but the number had left Gwendolyn in tears, which she hadn’t bothered to hide when Rex had cut back to her. The moment Rex announced they were off the air, he had rushed up to her, assuring her that if they hadn’t wowed the viewers, the network, and the critics, they might as well pack up and go home.
They didn’t have to wait long for a reaction.
Within hours, the episode had generated a flurry of news, swinging the spotlight onto Brick by Brick, CBS, Xavier Bartholomew, Cabin in the Sky, Ambrose Hightower, and Desilu. At the end of the week, Madison had called Gwendolyn into his office to tell her that by introducing an important new American opera, Brick by Brick had scored itself a reputation as a quality program. But, he’d warned, television networks live and die by ratings. They would be out in a few days and he’d send her a copy.
Ratings came out Saturday mornings and it was now Saturday afternoon. Gwendolyn checked her watch again. The late summer sun was liquefying into a red-orange haze and the hullabaloo of the crowd outside was growing louder with every passing minute.
She stepped into her gold sling-backs, threw open the door, and scanned the crowd until she saw the white balls in Kathryn’s wig shining in the tree lights that Marcus had strung up one last time.
The hem of Kathryn’s Salomé tunic of ivory chiffon stopped five inches above her knees. She wondered if she’d been overly ambitious to think she could get away with such a skimpy costume at her age—not to mention going braless. She threw back her first martini and watched Salomé play out on Marcus’s makeshift screen. If Nazimova could summon the nerve to play Salomé, I can certainly be a fifty-one-year-old pretending to be a forty-four-year-old playing a sixteen-year-old.
By the time Kathryn got to the bottom of her second cocktail, she didn’t give two hoots if she could get away with it or not. This was the Garden of Allah! Those trees and those shrubs and those daisy bushes had witnessed a lot worse.
She was dancing the Charleston with some guy dressed as a blackfaced Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer when Gwennie showed up.
“CLARA!” she screeched. “Don’t you look a dream!”
“How many martinis behind am I?” Gwendolyn asked.
Kathryn raised her glass to the light. It held a solitary mouthful, which she chugged in a slurpy gulp. “Two!”
Gwendolyn picked up the pitcher and filled their glasses. She held the jug out to Al Jolson. “Martini?”
As Gwendolyn poured, Kathryn said, “I don’t believe I caught your name. Have we met?”
“Yes, we have.”
“Sorry, but it’s hard to tell under all that greasepaint. Used to live here, did you?” She floated her glass in a circle to indicate the Garden.
“No,” Jolson said, “but this must have been a marvelous place to call home.”
“I suppose it’s looking a little rundown and tired now, but in its heyday—” Kathryn took a sip. Whoever had made these martinis must have used Robert Benchley’s recipe. It was perfect. “—this place was the be-all and end-all.”
Earlier, Nelson had rigged up a portable record player and attached a speaker to propel music across the crowd. He’d then paid the son of the front desk clerk ten bucks to play records until the last guest crawled out of the pool. “I’m Looking Over A Four-Leaf Clover” gushed into the warm evening air, beckoning partygoers to sing along.
Kathryn was about to ask Al Jolson where they’d met when Marcus appeared. He was decked out in a World War One aviator’s uniform with a leather belt strapped across his chest, white wings insignia sewed above his left breast pocket, and a leather helmet. He adjusted the flying goggles perched on top of his head.
Kathryn tapped her chin. “Let me guess.”
“I wouldn’t have thought you’d need a hint.” He pointed at Gwennie’s Clara Bow.
“Buddy Rogers in Wings!”
He flicked a finger against one of the white balls attached to Kathryn’s wig. “You look stupendous.” He turned to Gwennie and clinked her glass. “You too, my darling.”
The music changed to “Shaking the Blues Away,” and Norma Shearers danced with Lew Codys, Douglas Fairbankses with Lupe Velezes, Colleen Moores with Pola Negris, and Tom Mixes with Ramon Novarros.
Kathryn lured Gwendolyn and Marcus on to the dance floor, where she let the martini blunt the spiky regrets that had been grating at her since she and Nelson had returned from their Las Vegas honeymoon. She regretted letting Wilkerson and Connolly treat her the way they had. Hell, she resented it, too. As flappers and Mack Sennett Bathing Beauties jitterbugged to Sophie Tucker’s caution that “Fifty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong,” Kathryn realized that she specifically resented that they’d left her with so few options. When push came to shove, apparently what counted was the contents of a person’s trousers.
A warm breeze blew across the crowd, bringing with it a breath of bougainvillea. She looked forward to creating a home just for her and Nelson, but she was going to miss all that color. She watched a mannish woman in a tuxedo lead a Lillian Gish type through the crowd to the exact place where Gwendolyn had thrown up on Errol Flynn’s shoes at their end-of-Prohibition party.
“Were we idiots to think this place would always be here?” she asked out loud.
Marcus nodded. “Such idiots.”
Gwendolyn frowned. “I prefer to think of us as idealists.”
“The Varsity Drag” blasted out of the speaker and the crowd launched into the best version of the Charleston that they could manage in their Gloria Swanson and Marie Prevost drag.
The songs and the memories they unearthed came at them one after the other: “Ain’t She Sweet” followed by “The Best Things in Life are Free” and “Funny Face.” By “Strike Up the Band,” Kathryn had run out of steam so they returned to the bar. The martini pitcher was empty but the ingredients for a sidecar were handy so she set about mixing up a batch.
“I can’t imagine why Nelson is so late. I hope he’s okay.”
“And Chuck,” Gwendolyn added. “He’s usually so prompt. You don’t suppose they’ve had car trouble?”
Marcus fixated on a tall figure dressed in white tie and tails, with a crimson silk sash across his chest.
“Who’s that?” Kathryn asked.
“Francis X. Bushman. I met him at the opening night party.” Nostalgia blossomed across Marcus’s face. “My first Hollywood celebrity.” He accepted the sidecar Kathryn handed him. “I’m going to say hello.”
“You should,” Kathryn said, “and if you bump into Nelson or Chuck, send ’em over.”
Marcus rounded a table filled with women dressed in the sort of raggedy sackcloth worn by extras from DeMille’s King of Kings, which had opened Grauman’s Chinese in 1927. “Clever costumes.” He doffed his aviator goggles as though they were a fedora. A cheeky blonde with a Marion Davies look about her lifted a glass in salute.
“I can’t imagine you’ll remember,” Marcus said, drawing alongside Bushman, “but we met at the opening night party to this place.”
At the time, Bushman had been at the height of his career, earning an enormous salary and billed as “The Handsomest Man in the World.” Well into his seventies now, he had retained some of his charisma, but his baffled expression told Marcus that he had no recollection of their meeting.
“When I walked in here, the party was in full swing,” Marcus said. “The waiters were dressed as matadors and there were Japanese paper lanterns strung up in the trees.”
A scintilla of recognition sparked in Bushman’s face. “You’re wrong,” he declared. “The matadors were musicians.” His eyes crinkled at the edges. “You were that waif with the cardboard suitcase.”
“And you were the first star I met.”
Bushman’s long aristocratic face softened. “I hope I didn’t disappoint.”
“You cut a fine figure—and still do.”
“Did you end up booking a room here?”
Marcus nodded. “I never left.”
Bushman reared back in surprise. “Good lord!”
To their right, a girl with a thick rope of hibiscus slung over her chest launched a cluster of orange balloons onto the surface of the pool. She hollered a string of words that Marcus guessed was a Hawaiian blessing, and then she jumped in after them.
Bushman looked around them and nodded affectionately. “There was always a special quality to this place. Even when it was Madame’s residence.” He held up a finger. “Now, there was a woman who knew how to frolic.”
He launched into a long story about a soirée Alla had thrown when women had won the right to vote, but the sound of his voice trailed away when Marcus caught sight of a figure standing next to a dying rose bush. A chiaroscuro of shadows crisscrossed the man’s face; the lights strung through the trees stroked the guy’s chin at just the right angle.
“Excuse me,” Marcus cut Bushman off, “but there’s an urgent matter I must attend to.”
Skirting the edge of the pool, he pummeled an errant balloon back into the water. He ran his eye over the man’s costume: a World War One aviator’s uniform—chest belt, leather helmet, goggles, the lot.
“Well, now,” he said, drawing alongside him, “this is an intriguing fluke.”
“I’m missing a wing insignia.”
“But your helmet fits better.” Marcus pulled at the straps dangling down his neck and seesawed it from side to side. “I keep thinking it’s going to fall off.”
The guy pointed to Nazimova on the screen. She wore a triangular white-blond wig and had draped herself in Salomé’s veils. “She looks marvelous, doesn’t she?”
Marcus’s mouth went dry. “I’m awfully glad to see you.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.”
Marcus longed to grab Rex’s hands and press them against his face.
An old Rodgers and Hart tune, “Where’s that Rainbow?” floated at them from across the pool as a roaring cheer exploded from a table of drag queens dressed as Dolores del Rio. With Rex briefly distracted, Marcus stole a step or two closer. He jerked his head toward the front door of his villa. “It’s mine for one more night. If you’d like to talk, it’s the only place we’ll get any privacy.” They headed over and Marcus opened his door. Rex followed him inside, keeping quiet until they were standing where Marcus’s dining table used to be. “There’s so much I want to say that I barely know where to begin.”
“I do.” Rex hooked his hand around the back of Marcus’s neck and pulled him close until their lips met.
Marcus melted at their touch. He always did when Rex kissed him. It had been four excruciating months since the Academy Awards and now a hunger overwhelmed him. Arms wrapped waists. Hands groped butt cheeks. Leather helmets fell off. Fingers raked hair. Pelvises pressed together. Tongues probed.
Marcus wasn’t sure how much time had passed when they finally broke apart. Three minutes? Half an hour? He hadn’t a clue.
Rex surveyed the empty apartment. “I was hoping to see your Oscar.”
“It’s at the new place. Still wrapped in my beach towel. Perhaps you could help me choose a place to put it.”
A gentle smile sneaked onto Rex’s perfect lips. “I’d like that.”
“You would?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
Gertrude Lawrence’s “Someone to Watch Over Me” wafted in through the living room window. It wasn’t Marcus’s favorite rendition, but it fitted the moment. “And I’m happy you are. It’s just that the last time—well, we both know how well that went. But we do need to talk about it.” Straight away, Marcus wondered if he’d made a smart move. He was quaking with joy at seeing Rex; the last thing he wanted to do was mess up. Again.
To his relief, Rex nodded. “Okay, so here goes: I can be a callous bastard when I get my back up. After that Windermere joker told me what he told me, I saw red. I tasted blood. I was so mad at you. So frustrated and so disappointed.”
Marcus wanted to stroke Rex’s hand, but the guy had crossed his arms. “And you should have been,” he said. “I let you down. I let us both down. I should have told you the full story but—oh, I dunno. The timing never seemed right. Even as I say it now I know what a lame excuse that is. But when Claude gave us his blessing, there didn’t seem to be much point.”
“The point is,” Rex said, “I was misinformed.”
“But you didn’t know it at the time.”
“Nor did I give you a chance to explain. You tried but I shut you down. And on your big night, too. I can’t begin to tell you how deeply I regret what I did, but I was so angry at you. And I stayed angry right up until last night.”
“What happened last night?”
“I bumped into Luckie at the Polo Lounge. He explained what happened when Nelson brought Roundtree here that day. Jesus! Did I ever feel like a piece of shit.”
“And now you’re here.”
The first hint of a smile broke across Rex’s face. “In the same costume as you, no less.”
“That’s a pretty good sign, if you ask me.”
Rex uncrossed his arms and inched closer to Marcus. “I really am so very, very sorry for my behavior.”
“Not as sorry as I am about mine,” Marcus told him.
Rex’s smile broadened. “So maybe there’s a way we can mend things?”
Marcus ran his finger along Rex’s shoulder and down the leather sleeve of his jacket. “If that smoocheroo just now is anything to go by . . .” In a swift, blurry motion, Marcus wrapped his arms around Rex and pulled them closer together, chest to chest.
“I’ve never missed anybody half as much as I’ve missed you these past months,” Rex said. “Even when I was mad as a wasp at you, it was agony to be so far away—”
Marcus pressed his mouth to Rex’s, swallowing the rest of his speech, and kept it there until no more words were left.
Kathryn wasn’t sure where Marcus had disappeared to, but the Garden had become so jammed with partygoers that it had become impossible to keep track of anything. She scanned the crowd for Nelson but got distracted by Charles Lindbergh threatening to dunk the Metropolis robot girl into the pool as Laurel and Hardy looked on.
“How long do you think it’ll take before some of this patio furniture ends up in the pool?”
It was Al Jolson again. He held a couple of cocktails and offered her one.
She took a sip. It was a Tom Collins. Strong. Delish. “I never did catch your name.”
An enigmatic smile slipped out from between his white painted lips. “I guess it must be the makeup.”
She studied him more closely, but all she could see was Jolson down on one knee singing about his mammy. “So we have met?”
He nodded, then, “Do you have cold cream?”
“What self-respecting woman over forty doesn’t?”
“Close by?”
“Lucky for you, the last bits and pieces from my medicine cabinet are in my handbag in there.” Kathryn pointed toward her villa.
“Can we go? Right now, I mean. This greasepaint, it’s making my skin so hot and itchy.”
“Horrible stuff, isn’t it?”
She led him past Lindbergh—robot girl was in the water now, but didn’t seem particularly distraught—and around the pool. The villa’s emptiness jarred her. No paintings, no knickknacks, no potted plants. She handed him her cold cream and pointed him to the bathroom. As he set about removing the blackface, she returned to her front steps to see if Nelson had arrived.
After a few minutes she spotted him trailing behind Chuck, dressed in his Harold Lloyd costume of tweed jacket, black circular glasses, and straw boater hat. It was hard to see them through the tangle of revelers. Mahatma Gandhi was now shimmying on a tabletop with a Barrymore. The women from King of Kings surrounded them in a circle, arms raised like Pentecostals. Kathryn called out Nelson’s name but Helen Kane started warbling “I Wanna Be Loved by You” and everybody chimed in. She caught another glimpse of Nelson through a gap in the frangipani bushes. He and Chuck were each lugging large packages but the lights in the trees were too dim to make out much detail.
She heard Jolson behind him let out a heartfelt “Phew! Miss Massey, I cannot thank you enough.”
She blinked like a ventriloquist’s dummy. “You!” Freshly scrubbed of Jolson’s minstrel mask, Ellison Gladwell looked like he’d taken off three layers of skin. “Do you know how hard I’ve been trying to contact you?”
Trepidation tinged his hesitant smile. “I do.”
“You never return messages!”
He joined her at the doorway, wiping away cold cream on her last clean towel. “I had a good reason why I wasn’t returning yours.”
She extracted the towel from his grip. Nudging his chin away to the side, she dabbed at patches of cream he’d missed. “What are you doing here?”
“My wife went to school with Saul Bass.”
“He’s been in big demand since he designed the opening credits for North by Northwest.”
“There’s an exhibit of his movie work and he flew us out here to see it. While we were there, we met a lovely girl named Doris. She invited us to the party. Seeing as how the theme was 1927, The Jazz Singer seemed a fun idea but I won’t be doing that again.”
“Did you know I’d be here?”
“No, but I was awfully glad when I saw you.”
“And the reason why you didn’t return my calls?”
“I’ve been secretly negotiating for a job at a different publication. It was tricky and prolonged, and I didn’t want to offer you anything until I was sure I could.”
The opening arpeggios from Cole Porter’s “Let’s Misbehave” blasted over the loudspeaker. “Offer me?”
Gladwell nodded. “I’ve moved to Cosmopolitan.”
“A women’s magazine?”
“That’s what my wife said, but they’re a progressive bunch. Very on-the-ball. They’ve realized that the demographic for women is starting to change. Early marriage is on the decline. More of them are going to college and are putting off having children until later—if at all. Women in politics, women in business, women in government—it’s all changing, and women’s magazines have to reflect that if they want to survive. The ones who have their wetted finger in the wind, they’ll be in a position to report, describe, and shape public opinion. Those who don’t aren’t likely to see out the nineteen-sixties.”
To Kathryn’s far left, Salomé was leaning against a curved cage. Years ago, Nazimova had told Kathryn over Sunday afternoon hibiscus tea that the cage itself had been painted with gold. “Not that anybody watching the movie would’ve known that,” Madame had sniffed, “but I knew. And I know all about gilded cages.”
Kathryn turned back to Gladwell. “And where do I fit in?”
“You’re smart, articulate, and fearless. You’d slot in like a jigsaw puzzle piece. Be honest—wouldn’t you like to write about more than box office receipts and movie-star divorces?”
It was a pretty bouquet of a speech, but joining a magazine like Cosmopolitan meant moving to New York. If she’d been single, she would have said yes on the spot. But there was Nelson to consider and, even with the downfall of Confidential, a constant flow of business was coming through the door at the Melrose Detective Agency. It wouldn’t be fair to ask him to move across the country.
“If you want to be the magazine of choice when it comes to covering the sort of social change we both know is coming, I’m not sure that an East Coast publication can keep its finger on the national pulse.”
Gladwell’s shoulders drooped. “You’re turning me down?”
“Unless you have a West Coast office.” She raised her eyebrows. How’s them apples? She spotted Nelson amid the mayhem, a matching pair of champagne flutes in hand, looking around. “If you’re offering me the job of running the West Coast office for Cosmopolitan magazine, count me in.”
He stuck out his hand. “Deal.”
“Just like that?” She stared at it, distrustful that this could be so easy. “Shouldn’t you ask the boss?”
“I am the boss.”
“We should at least talk about salary.”
“How about this?” He faced her more squarely. “I’ll pay you twenty percent over whatever Wilkerson’s paying you.”
“Twenty?”
“Okay, twenty-five. The head of our West Coast office is going to need an expense account and a company car, isn’t she?”
“Well—yes!”
“I’ll have my secretary put it in writing tomorrow. I just need your new address.”
They retreated inside, where Kathryn scouted around for pen and paper. Everything had been packed away, so she had to make do with an eyeliner pencil and the back of a discarded envelope. “You sound like you have all the money in the world.”
“We just got a wheelbarrow-full of new funding from Hearst.”
The pencil fell from her grip. “What’s Hearst got to do with it?”
“Cosmopolitan is part of Hearst Magazines.”
A hiccup popped out of her, which sounded like the funniest thing she’d heard all day and made her laugh that much harder.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
The white balls on her wig clinked and clunked together as she settled it back into place. “Many moons ago, I threw myself into the battle over Citizen Kane. William Randolph Hearst hated me with the passion of a thousand cutthroats, and now I’m going to be working for his corporation. Oh, the irony of it all.”
“Is it enough to kill the deal?”
“God, no! But I need to get back out there. I have a husband to rescue.”
Gwendolyn was chatting with Beau Geste when she spotted Chuck darting among the tables set up outside the Garden’s bar. “Where have you been?” She squinted at the standard tux he was wearing. “And who are you dressed as?”
“Sorry, but I didn’t have time.” He pawed his lapels. “Tuxes fit in pretty much everywhere, don’t they?”
“You and Francis X. Bushman are practically twins.” She threaded her arm through his. “Somebody’s making the most superb martinis, so let’s go get you one and perhaps we can discover who it is. Although Nelson’s the detective, so maybe we should—”
“I have something to show you.” He pulled her through clusters of costumed partygoers whooping it up with gay abandon. They bypassed Marcus’s villa, then Kathryn’s, then skirted her tulip bed and arrived at her old villa.
“I’ve said my goodbyes to the old place. It’s empty now; there’s nothing left inside.”
He laid a hand on the doorknob and slowly twisted it. Gwendolyn had switched the lights off when she came outside to join the party. Why were they on again?
At the center of her living room stood a large rectangular object, six feet tall, four feet across, and covered with a red-and-green-checked picnic blanket. A smaller object, two feet tall but bulkier than its neighbor, sat next to it, draped in a length of dark blue velvet.
Chuck positioned Gwendolyn in front of them. “Are you ready?”
“I might be if I knew what was under there.”
He stepped up to the larger object and whipped away the blanket with the skill of a stage magician.
The shock of seeing Alistair Dunne’s portrait of her as Scarlett O’Hara sent Gwendolyn staggering back a step. It was better than she remembered—the colors more striking, the likeness more uncanny, the smile playing on her lips more inscrutable.
“I had the devil of a time tracking it down,” Chuck said. “Thank goodness Kathryn is married to a detective.”
“What—? How—?”
“There’s a cabbage farmer in Connecticut who’s probably still cursing that I talked him into selling it to me. I know it financed your Sunset Strip boutique and all, but honestly, my love, how could you part with it?”
The last Gwendolyn had heard of Alistair was a few years back when she came across a Time magazine profiling the ten best post-war American artists. She’d been glad to see him doing so well but felt no nostalgic urge to track him down—not even when she saw that painting in Wesley Everett’s foyer. She clutched at Chuck’s arm. “I can’t begin to imagine what you’ve gone through to retrieve this for me, but—but why?”
“I didn’t do this for you.” He stepped to the other shrouded object, picked it up off the floor, then pinched the velvet between his fingers. “I did it for this.” He yanked away the cover to reveal a two-foot tall bottle shaped like a Grecian urn and made of deep sapphire-blue glass. A reproduction of Gwendolyn’s portrait filled the label in the center.
“Hollywood is so focused on the young and the fresh,” he said. “Once a woman turns forty, she’s put out to pasture. But not you. You are admired by mature women everywhere. They’re emulating your style, your clothes—your entire persona. That in itself is an admirable accomplishment. But I’ve been thinking that you need to clinch your status as a fashion maven as we launch into the sixties. And suddenly it came to me. Everywhere I go, I hear women lamenting to you how much they miss your perfume.”
She took the sapphire bottle from him. “So this is . . .?”
“A project we can work on together. With my business savvy and your unswerving sense of style, we could conquer this country.”
“You really think so?”
“Let me tell you: the money’s in the merchandising.” He gestured toward the bottle. “This is just a mock-up. We can change the shape or the color. We don’t even have to use the portrait, but it’s so arresting that—”
“I love it!” she exclaimed. “The bottle. The colors. The whole bit!”
“Good, because if I’m going into business with my wife, I want us to be equal partners. None of this ‘love, honor, and obey’ nonsense, thank you very much. It’s got to be fifty-fifty—”
“Wife?!” Gwendolyn pulled away from the bottle. “Who said anything about—”
Her stupefied gaze traveled from Chuck’s matinee-idol blue eyes, down his arm to the hand that held a white-gold ring topped with a marquise-cut sapphire the same shade as the bottle. “I’m sorry there’s no velvet box, but I came directly from the jeweler. It’s why I was so late. And I wish I could get down on one knee but after years of standing behind a bar—”
She set the perfume bottle on the floor and pressed a palm to his mouth. “Shut up and ask me already.”
One proposal, one response, and one very heated kiss later, Gwendolyn and Chuck emerged from her villa and threw themselves into the riotous free-for-all the Garden of Allah’s final wingding had become.
Patio furniture now floated in the pool—along with a dozen guests in various stages of undress. Some of the lights Marcus had strung through the trees were out, throwing cozy nooks into convenient shadows as “My Blue Heaven” filled the air. And on a screen improvised from swiped bed sheets, Alla Nazimova had surrounded herself in a gossamer veil and twirled, twirled, twirled like a blazing dervish.