Hence I found myself with a jolly companion on our way across the park, while the taxi meter seemed to jump every half block. She was waxing sentimental all over the place, doing a big number on Manhattan and how much living there had changed her. All that art and culture. Yes, I thought, I know; the ones with the dots.
While we wound along the park drive, she fell silent, and, glancing at her, I saw her head turned away, staring out the window as the trees flashed by. We came out through the Seventy-second Street exit and pulled up at her apartment building, the San Remo, one of the noblest on Central Park West, the one with the two tall lighted towers, and no sooner had the doorman opened the door—she sort of tumbled out of the cab—than she discovered to her horror that she’d lost both her earrings.
“Were you wearing earrings?” I questioned, not recalling them.
“Good God, don’t you think a woman knows if she’s wearing earrings or not?”
A search failed to turn them up and I felt obliged to volunteer to cab it back and look for them at Viola’s.
“Oh, would you, dear? What a darling you are! And call me in the morning, won’t you, to let me know? I’m for beddie-byes, I’m simply done in.” I walked her to the elevator and as it arrived she threw her arms around me and kissed me on the mouth. Definitely not an MGM kiss, but with lips full open and the tongue at work. She hung on, clutching me, as if she’d be happy to stand there for hours, smooching away like Corliss Archer. I extricated myself, saying I’d better get back to VPs before she went to bed.
“And, Charles, dear, don’t forget your promise, will you?”
“What promise is that?” I asked as she stepped back into the elevator car.
“Why, to help me with my autobiography.” She kissed her fingers to me as the doors began to close. “Bless you, darling.”
If Viola had retired I’d damn well wake her up.
“Earrings? What’s she talking about?” Vi demanded testily at my ring from downstairs. “She wasn’t wearing any earrings.”
Saved by the bell.
“Vi, you’d better put the lady straight on one thing. I ain’t ghosting her autobiography, no way. Where’d she get the idea I would?”
“Ohh… you know how she is, dear.”
No, I didn’t know, I countered, and would frankly rather not know, if it was all the same to her. Ten minutes later, when I let myself into my apartment, the phone was ringing. Somehow I had the idea it had been ringing for some time, and a little birdie even told me who it was.
“Hello, Claire.”
“Darling, you’ll never guess—I found them!”
I didn’t ask where but she told me anyway.
“In the bathtub, isn’t that the limit? Don’t ask me how. They’re insured, but I’d have hated to lose them, they belonged to the Queen of Sweden. Anyway, thanks for dumping me off. I hope it wasn’t any trouble. And I adored seeing you again. Now. When can we get together?”
The first part had been all smarmy and laugh-laden; the last sentence was pure cast iron, right down to the nitty-gritty.
“Well, I’m not sure—I’ll have to check my schedule,” I responded warily.
“Oh.”
That “oh.” I knew the next line in advance. “Very well. If that’s the way you feel. I’ll just have to get someone else, I suppose.” My ear chilled; the frost was on the pumpkin again.
“It really might be best at that,” I said, not believing it could be this easy, then adding, “There are plenty of writers around who specialize in that kind of thing.”
“You don’t have to hit me over the head, you know. I can certainly see that you’re not interested.” Her voice actually broke with her poor little Claire sob. “It’s just that—I felt—since you’re such a good, good writer, you’d have a deeper appreciation of the material—having known the milieu yourself, if you get what I mean.”
Did I ever.
“My legacy—to my lifelong profession,” she went on in that crystal-clear voice, all choked up to hell and gone. “For the record—tell the truth for once—the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And I just thought you and I had a—sort of—special rapport, going as far back as we do. I guess you really don’t like me after all—I always thought you did.”
“Sure I do. But—”
“No, you don’t, either,” she pouted like a child. “You never even sent me a Christmas card, not once.” Now she was really into her Poor Little Match Girl number. “Every year I’d hope to find one—I literally get thousands of cards every year, but I’d look and look and there’d never be one from you and it always made me so sad to think you’d forgotten me.”
“I don’t send cards, Claire. I don’t even send my mother—”
“No, no, it’s all right. I understand, I really do. You don’t have to explain. Remember Noel Coward—‘Never complain, never explain.’ Just forget the whole thing. It was only an idea—Vi’s idea, actually. She said it was the book you were born to write. But we won’t speak of it anymore. It’s best we don’t. Thank you and g-good night.”
That tiny catch was the capper. She really choked up big and swallowed her quavery voice so all I got was the impression of gallant farewell. I’d seen the same bit in countless of her films—her “Valiant is the word for Carrie” act. She was trying to suck me in, but I still wasn’t about to be sucked. Though I really didn’t know her, I really knew her so damn well. She wanted to attach me. Like a salary, a used car. She wanted me as an appendage, part of her entourage: her husband, her secretary, her agent, her manager, her maid, her hairdresser, her furrier, her liquor dealer—her biographer. I was to be her scribe, running around with a stylus and a stack of cuneiform tablets, recording the Life of Our Lady of the Anecdotes, artifacts to be placed in locked receptacles for archeologists to find some three thousand years hence, like King Tut’s tomb.
Yet the sob in her voice had got to me, no doubt of it. The familiar little movie-throb that by now was a Claire-cliché. My mind played tricks on me. I pictured her alone, at the end of her life, damsel in distress—that kind of thing. And who knew? Maybe she did have something interesting or original to say. Maybe she did need help. Maybe—even—I was the right guy. Oh shit. I fought down the urge to call her back.
I was hard at work when the phone rang, and I grabbed it without thinking. It wasn’t she, however; it was old Vi. “Dear, you’ve hurt her terribly,” she said, getting right to it. “She thinks you hate her. You’ve made her feel worthless. She has no self-esteem.”
“Look, Vi, honey, cut the crap, will you? Her lack of self-esteem isn’t my fault. I just won’t be made an accessory before the fact. If she wants to commit this heinous crime, let her do it on her own. I’ve got my play—I wouldn’t have time, anyway, so the whole thing’s purely academic. Let her fry her fish and I’ll fry mine, okay?”
“Yes, dear, of course, you’re perfectly right, and I know exactly how you feel. And, dear, you don’t have to tell me. I know what she’s like if anybody does.” She lowered her voice. “But look, dear, there’s something you don’t know.”
“What?”
“She’d absolutely kill me if she finds out I told, but Belinda was right on the Awards show—Claire’s really not well at all.”
I was trying to keep from swallowing the hook. “What’s wrong?” I asked in a bored tone.
“They don’t know. And of course Claire doesn’t say. But she doesn’t want anyone to know the truth. Or face it herself.”
“That’s the trouble with her, she never does,” I said.
“I think it has something to do with all that Christian Science stuff she practices,” Vi went on. “But really, dear, I think it’s only a matter of time. She’s known of it a month or so. That’s why I invited her last night, I feel so sorry for the poor thing—she’s really being awfully courageous about it, don’t you think? Lots of people couldn’t bear up that way.”
“How long has she?”
“Quien sabe,
dear?” Vi replied in a hallowed voice. “So far as she’s concerned her health is a closed subject. I shouldn’t think it’d be too long, though. Now, look, sweetie. It wouldn’t take so much time just to read through the material, would it? Then maybe you could sit down with her and tell her—in a perfectly nice way, of course—what’s wrong with it.”
“Good God, Vi, are you saying you want me to sit down with Claire Regrett and criticize her work? You must be off your rocker. You know how she loathes to have anyone criticize her.”
“In a nice way, I said. Then maybe you could just knock off a few chapters yourself, to sort of show her the kind of style it needs—in your own write, as they say.”
“Vi, we’re talking about the life of one of the most famous movie stars in the world and you think it can be tossed off like an Erma Bombeck column?”
“No, no, of course not, they’re not in the same league. We’re talking major book here, big stuff! And it means so much to her, it really does. Look, do me a favor, just this one favor. For me, sweetie, your old Aunt Vi, will you? Just take her to lunch. Take her to lunch and talk to her. An hour and a half—two hours, that’s all. Let her tell you her ideas. And the pictures. Sweetie, she’s got photos no one knows ever existed. Really intimate shots with the Prince of Wales, with Mahatma Gandhi, with Haile Selassie.”
“Terrific! What about Hitler? Bruno Hauptmann? Judge Crater?”
“Don’t joke, dear, she’s moribund. Be kind. Show your human side. Just see her. Take her to lunch—I’ll pay. I’ll even make the reservation. You still like the Four Seasons?”
So it was that by dangling lunch at one of New York’s posher and better victualed restaurants Auntie Vi got me to swallow the bait. Four Seasons it was, and it marked the beginning of the winter of my discontent.
Naturally Madame was late. At the bar I ran into an acquaintance, an actor I’d known on the Coast, and I was surprised when, looking at my watch, I realized thirty minutes had elapsed in movie chitchat. I glanced over to the reception desk, where Tom Margittai, one of the owners, grinned and shrugged. I shrugged back. Claire, who usually made a business of promptness—it seemed to fit her image—was late and I suspected it was so she could make the best possible entrance. A moment later I noticed some of the bar crowd leaning over the railing into the stairwell and in seconds there was an audible buzz. Tom gave me the high-sign: Madame had arrived.
I was at the head of the stairs, from which vantage point I could observe the royal entrance. She was in smart black, a dish-sized hat with a cunning veil, the fur stole the Black Magic Fur Company had given her for posing, and her trademark ankle-straps. With those huge eyes and scarlet slash of a mouth, graciously smiling and dispensing favor, she ascended, dripping her ten fingers at me. In the grill, prominent heads were craning, some people were on their feet applauding. It was the Star of Stars. Claire Regrett had arrived.
She pulled her Little Match Girl number again, the eyes wide as Christmas morning, the mouth a little O. “For me?” her look seemed to say. “Little me?” She kissed my cheeks, both, bestowing her patronage, then turned to beam upon our host. “Tom, how nice to see you. My absolute favorite restaurant in all the world. Bless you, darling. I hope you have some lovely veal, my mouth is absolutely watering.”
She was breathless and lit with some inner glow that seemed to transform her into a woman much younger, vital and alive, ready to war on the whole wide world. Directing a glance toward the grill as luncheon-goers returned to their squab and sole veronique, she bent to give a wavette to a face she may have recognized; then Tom conducted us back to the Fountain Room. I had a good view of the heads as they turned upward to gawk. Her progress through the bustling room was an enviable and palpable demonstration of Star Power. And she hadn’t made a picture in ten years.
Since I was behind her in this royal progress I couldn’t see her face, but I knew what it looked like, the great eyes shining, the red mouth in a half smile, the chin held high, Hollywood royalty showing that noblesse does indeed oblige. She tossed her furs off her shoulder with a studied casualness, and I noticed how firmly her feet moved on those high heels. When we arrived at our table and Tom set down the drinks, she thanked him effusively for his attentions, allowing her diamond to glint in the light. She draped her stole over the back of her chair and initiated the process of removing her gloves a finger at a time, truly an artful piece of stage business.
“Isn’t this the most fun?” she exclaimed vivaciously when she’d made herself comfortable. She’d no sooner handed me her lighter to light her cigarette than two young girls in party dresses came shyly up in their maryjanes, asking her to autograph their napkins.
“We haven’t got a pen,” one explained.
“That’s all right, you darling little thing, I never go anywhere without a pen.” At the same moment, “Did you see Walter in the other room?” she muttered to me as she signed each napkin with flourishes.
“Walter who?” I muttered back.
“Cronkite. He’s usually at ‘21.’ There you are. And bless you, darlings,” she said in her most queenly manner, her smile a yard wide.
“Thank you, Miss Regrett,” the children chorused and trooped off with their treasures.
“Bless you… bless you, darlings, mizpaw.”
“Mizpaw?” I’d drawn a blank on that.
She grew this soulful look as she explained. “It’s an old Indian word. It means ‘May the Lord watch between thee and me while we are absent one from the other.’ I read it in this book Ten Simple Ways to a Happier and Brighter Life, by A. F. Loveteague. Ever read him? Divine. Lives in a cabin somewhere near Missoula, commutes with nature. I think a word like mizpaw has a lot of meaning in this busy world. And such enchanting little girls,” she said, raising her voice so others could overhear. “Darling, you’ll never know how much I mourn not having had children of my own. Alas, my womb is barren.”
“But mink-lined,” I said to myself, taking the overscaled menu from the waiter.
Claire had already accepted hers and put on her glasses, tortoiseshell, about the size of a pair of snorkeling goggles. Looking up from her card, she smiled and gave me the benefit of her eyes. “How very very nice you look! Don’t you just love New York in the spring? I think it’s the most enchanting place in the world, I simply adore getting out and walking, seeing the real down-to-earth people. My telephone’s been absolutely ringing off the hook. So many people called to say—well, you know. Radie Harris is agog. I told her I couldn’t believe my ears. Imagine Belinda saying all those nice things about me. She has a generous soul, I always knew it. And what a terrible life—tragedy, darling, Belinda Carroll has been simply stalked by tragedy, hasn’t she? Oh, look, veal, goodie, and milk-fed, too. I’m simply ravishingly hungry. How can they say I’m ill, when I eat the way I do? Oh, people, people, and those malicious little tongues of theirs. But they’ll get it all back, darling, I promise you, they’ll get it all back, if not in this world, then the next. Do you believe in reincarnation, Charles? People coming back as baby elephants or trained fleas? I’m not actually sure I’d want to come back; what if I reincarnated as a giraffe or baboon?”
We ordered, the scallopini for her, the lobster ravioli for me, Caesar salad for two, sans wine. By now she was on her second martini, and as she sipped I witnessed a notable exercise in how to drink from a stem glass. “I love one or two martinis, they always seem to relax me so. And, darling, speaking of Belinda, is she still on the wagon? Still A.A.? Staunch girl. Many people need that kind of group support. I’m glad I don’t, I couldn’t bear going to those meetings—all those awful people. Right off the Bowery, aren’t they? I mean…” Her expression grew solemn, then downright pained. “But, you know, I’ve been giving things quite a bit of thought these past few days and I’m truly sorry she and I haven’t been better friends over the years, truly. I think if we’d actually tried, we could have bolstered each other at times of crisis, you know what I mean—oh, you’re laughing at me
again. You just love laughing at me, don’t you, you miserable putz? Oh no, I didn’t mean that, only joking, darling.”
I assured her that I had not been laughing at her. “It’s just that I was never aware that you had Belinda’s interests at heart.”
“Oh, but you’re so wrong, darling, really. You’re terribly wrong. Certainly I was angry when they took away my dressing room—the dressing room that had been mine for eighteen years, it was like home to me—and gave it to her—that lousy bastard Louis Mayer—and then to put salt in the wounds they had it repainted that awful blue—Belinda blue, can there be such a thing?—anyway I hope I’m a forgiving person. I’ve never been one to bear a grudge, I’m sure no one can ever say that about me. But I was brokenhearted. I walked in the front gate and out the back. Like a subway turnstile. That’s Hollywood, I guess, here today, gone tomorrow; look at Luise Rainer—two Oscars and they send her over Niagara Falls in a barrel. I’d really like to show the real honest-to-God Hollywood, let the people know what really goes on, y’know? Paint the real picture.”
“Do you intend doing that? Tell ‘the whole truth and nothing but’?”
“Certainly I do. What the hell do you think I am, Pollyanna or something? I’m really going to get in my licks. Look out, Hollywood, here comes Momma—steamroller all the way.”
“I like that,” I prompted. “Give me a for-instance.”
“Well, I mean, it’s no secret that Hollywood was a hotcha town, is it? A girl had to get along, didn’t she? If she wanted to get somewhere. You know Sam—Sam was a pincher from way back. Not just a pincher, Sam was a terror. People will be shocked to hear what used to go on up in that big white office of his—sitting around on his knee, putting in your lap time while he went over the clauses in your contract and then gave your boobs a squeeze. Then asked you if you wanted to go to the Coconut Grove for a little rhumba session. You were there, you know nothing was sacred. I know where more bodies are buried than Vi does, don’t think I don’t. And Momma’s going to start digging them up.”