When I leaned over to thank them the man gripped my arm. If you need another lift, now you know where I live, and he winked in a way that surprised me less once I had bothered to read his books with all their aging male characters besotted by the beauty of young men and boys.
Even though the age difference between us was not nearly so great, is that how it felt, Myles, to be desired by an older man, to suffer that leering gaze, the hungry possessiveness which presses against the skin as tangibly as a hand? It was flattering but also unnerving to find myself the object of such scrutiny again, as I had on several occasions in my adolescence, to feel that my admirer had not just peeled off my clothes with his eyes but flayed my body so my heart was exposed to his longing.
On the walk to John’s gate I felt a sense of disquiet at thinking how you might have felt the first time I stared at you, the way I’m sure I failed to control the fire in my eyes as we spoke, how I must have been unable to keep myself from studying your face and letting my gaze dart across your shoulders, down your arms, devouring the angles of your torso, the symmetries of your chest, the neat waist and muscular legs, how my eyes would have held your own even when you tried to look away in embarrassment, those lilac eyes that could burn cobalt or coppery blue in different lights, a blue so transparent it seemed as if one were looking not just at the surface of the eye but into and through it, deep to the opposite side, only to realize that in those depths were only further depths, bluer and more remote.
John and Mary’s housekeeper, Nathalie, opened the front gate. In the past she always did this from inside the house, pushing a button that made it swing open. That morning, however, she took the trouble to come out in person and I wondered if the remote-control mechanism had failed, or if something else were afoot. Oh, it’s just you, Mr. Frank, she said, sounding relieved, and turned the latch to let me in.
In an upstairs window I could see Mary moving across a room, her hair catching the morning sun. A cameraman once joked that if they shot her without a filter she overexposed every frame. She paused in the upstairs window and stared out, frowning, not at me but the dark coupe on the street. The two men in the car – men exactly like those I had seen frequently in recent weeks, often blond and bronzed, always in dark suits and snap-brim hats – looked at me the way you and I might glance at and hold the gaze of strangers, wondering whether the object of our gaze will be receptive or hostile, if the man we regard desires in the same way that we desire.
John was on the phone in his study when I knocked and he motioned me to come in and close the door. Forgive me, but you don’t sound like any friend of mine, he grumbled into the receiver. I handed him the rewritten scenes and he shook his head. You’re not alarming me, buddy, he said. Then whatever the person on the other end replied made John wince as if he had stepped on a shard of glass. Sweat beaded his brow and he loosened his tie. I think you’ve got the wrong idea, he said, swiveling the chair so his back was to me. What kind of trouble are you trying to make? If you phone again I’ll call the police. Then he spun the chair back around, picked up his watch from where it lay on the desk, wound it, and glanced out the window towards the terrace and the topiary hedges bordering the lawn. I could hear the dial tone throbbing as he held the receiver at arm’s length, staring at it, before dropping it back on its cradle.
Damnedest thing, Desmond. I was having a dream this morning, just before the alarm went off. It was three parts She Turned Away and one part I don’t know what. He glanced again at the squat black phone. I was in a cellar, three or four floors below ground, and I was a killer, I mean in the dream I knew I was a murderer and probably on my way to the gas chamber if I got caught, and all my victims were lying around me. I was using a broken shovel to dig into the concrete floor, trying to bury the bodies, and some of them weren’t even dead yet, they were groaning and turning over in their death throes, and I was hitting the blade of the shovel against the concrete so that sparks flew and it vibrated like a tuning fork and the vibrations went straight up my arms and made a ringing in my head, and then I realized the ringing wasn’t in my head – it was police drilling through the walls, trying to get to me, and every time I looked around there were more and more bodies, like they were multiplying, filling up the room to the ceiling and threatening to suffocate me. Then the alarm went off, or it must have been going off already. The ringing, I mean…
Who was that on the phone?
Damnedest thing, John said again. At first I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman, maybe even a child. Iris can shred her voice into a pack of barking dogs and mimic men three times her age, so there’s no telling, but the more the fellow talked the more I think he might have been like you.
Like me, John?
You know, he said, like you…
You mean a pansy.
John blushed. I wouldn’t have put it like that. He was young, sort of breathy and adenoidal. Peter Lorre with a Southern accent.
And what did your Southern pansy want?
John grimaced and I could tell he didn’t like me using that word. He stood up, tiptoed to the door, and flung it open as if expecting to find someone on the other side. When there was no one there, he almost seemed disappointed, but then closed it again and turned the lock. The guy on the phone said that tomorrow Mary’s going to give a statement about her past. Probably about my past, too. And what she knows. Do you understand what I’m saying?
What he meant, of course, was that the anonymous caller was suggesting Mary had volunteered to give the FBI names of people she either knew to be or merely suspected of being Communists. Jesus, John, I said, pretending to be stunned, but the fact is I was not in the least surprised, or perhaps only insofar as it had taken Mary that long to turn informer. While I knew she had once been party to progressive causes I understood that such activism was well in her past. I remember how I used to complain to you, Myles, that on his own John had a sense of determination to do good in the world and champion the poor because he himself came from such humble beginnings, but every time his ideas grew a little too radical Mary killed them in the cradle. Although I had never confessed this to John because you don’t tell a friend that his wife makes your skin crawl, from the moment I met her I knew Mary was not on the side of the gods.
I can’t imagine it’s true, John said. It must be someone trying to make trouble. What do you think of Nick Charles for instance?
I think he’d put a knife in his own grandmother’s back.
John nodded. Every day Nick shows up on set smiling more broadly and Mary won’t even meet my gaze. He picked up the rewritten scenes I’d placed on his desk. How are the pages?
Given the constraints, I told him, they could be worse. The truth is that having rewritten those scenes in the middle of the night, on the back of our fight, preoccupied with the secret I was keeping from you, I feared I might have inadvertently shown my hand, allowing a character to speak in a way that, properly decoded, could have revealed what I was, or even what you were, Myles. Not that I was trying to hide from John. Perhaps I never told you that when he was deciding to cast you he took me aside and asked whether our relationship was going to complicate the production and I said quite the opposite, it would make everything run more smoothly because your happiness and safety were always my chief concern. I suspect you won’t believe that but try to imagine me balancing the anxieties of my own situation with an absolute love for you, even if it was not my first or the greatest, whatever ‘greatest’ might mean to me now. A great love might simply be one that is comfortable and sustaining and has a sense of longevity – even just the assumption of permanence. We never had the chance to discover if we loved each other enough to last decades, but I still choose to believe that we did.
John rubbed his eyes and put down the page he was reading. I thought of telling him I was intending to leave the following day, but didn’t know whether I could trust him not to tell you. That was the moment I knew the secret I was keeping from you was a betrayal as grave as if
I had gone to bed with another man.
I haven’t had any coffee, Desmond, I can’t see straight.
Even now, at this moment late in my life, living south of the Arno with a young Italian who makes me quietly happy, there are days when I imagine sending you a plane ticket and pleading with you to come live with me, so that we can reclaim whatever time remains to us both. Like so much else – including this reconstruction of a single day in our past that is the object of my letter to you – I know this is fantasy.
In the kitchen John’s daughter Iris was in the breakfast nook reading the trades and drinking a glass of orange juice. John ruffled her hair and kissed her brow.
Go back to bed, viper.
Iris stood up from the table taking Variety with her but John reached out and plucked the magazine from her hand. ‘H’wood Pix in Virtual Blackout Behind Iron Curtain’, one of the headlines shouted.
Iris hesitated at the door. Why is that car outside?
What car?
The one across the street.
Autograph hounds.
Why don’t they come to the door like all the others?
Different breed. How long have they been there?
I heard the car stop before midnight. It hasn’t moved since then.
Good girl. Now back to bed.
We watched as Iris walked down the hall towards the front door and turned up the stairs. John squared the pages and pushed them across the table to me.
You don’t think it’s possible Mary might make a statement behind my back, is it?
Given the chance I would have told John I thought it was entirely possible, but this was not a question I could answer because a moment later Mary arrived in the doorway of the kitchen wearing a scarlet gown with a platinum mink over one arm and a clear acrylic purse dangling from the other. Oh, you’re here, Desmond. What’s the call, Marsh?
Seven-thirty, John said, as if he had reminded her half a dozen times already.
Bergman isn’t on set before nine.
You’re not Bergman.
I could get you fired, Marsh.
In the past I had seen them argue on set, but never at home, and never with such rancor. Whenever you and I fought I always felt we were conscious of the stakes, aware of how awful it would be to lose what we had found in each other. Between John and Mary, I sensed little remained but anger and suspicion. He asked her if she had any plans for the weekend and her whole expression altered, eyes widening. What’s that? she asked, in a voice full of bubblegum and soda pop. Plans?
Since it’s your birthday tomorrow, I thought you might have plans, John said.
Still in the same voice Mary asked why on earth she should have any plans. I couldn’t tell if this was coyness, hoping John might reveal a birthday surprise, or actual dissembling. The party that night had been planned long before we knew shooting was going to overrun and it was too late to cancel because Mary had sent invitations months earlier, hired a band, arranged catering from Chasen’s, ordered flowers and fireworks.
I thought we might go to Malibu, Mary.
Malibu? No, Jesus, I’d rather stay in town.
Where’s Nathalie?
Ironing tablecloths.
And the boys?
Is this a census? They’re not my children.
Have you said goodbye to Iris?
If she’s awake at this hour you should have spanked her.
She’s too old for that.
A girl’s never too old for a spanking.
Is that an invitation, Mary?
Cool off, Marsh. I have to go places. She turned towards the door, taking the mink and acrylic purse with her. I’ll meet you at the car.
Whatever venom the anonymous caller had poured in John’s ear was beginning to seep. He tilted his head at the sound of Mary moving around upstairs, listening for the flush of a toilet and water in the pipes, but there was only the sound of a door opening and closing again and Mary’s heels clicking back along the hall.
She’s up to something, he said.
*
In the garage we found Mary standing next to her white Coupe de Ville, waiting for John to open the door. She had slipped into the mink and still had the purse hanging off her arm. Do you have the scene, Desmond?
I handed her the pages and she began to read as John backed out of the garage, idled for a moment while Nathalie opened the remotecontrolled gate, and then pulled onto Summit where the dark coupe with the two men in hats was still parked. When the other car turned to follow Mary glanced over her shoulder, pulling the mink tighter around her body. You drive too fast, Marsh. Slow down.
It was only seven but the streets were crowded with shades of baby blue, canary yellow, ruby red, hunter green, black and navy. Sunlight caught a curve of chrome and must have dazzled John because he ran a red light and nearly hit a turning truck. Mary shut her eyes, mouthed a line, then spoke it aloud.
Not exactly riches you sent me. Not exactly riches you sent me. It’s not like you sent me riches – that would be better. People don’t talk like you make them talk, Desmond.
John frowned and kept his eyes on the road. What’s the line on the page?
Mary and I spoke it at the same time. Not exactly riches you sent me.
Then Not exactly riches you sent me is what you say, Mary.
She turned back to the pages, saying the line in a number of different ways: angry, perturbed, put-upon, resentful, self-pitying. What does Ursula feel in this moment? she asked.
Defensive. She has to convince Orph she isn’t a criminal.
When Mary heard this, her eyebrows pinched together.
Wouldn’t it be riches you send me?
She’s talking about the past. Her husband has returned. Riches you sent me.
Stop trying to think, Mary, John snapped. Do as you’re told and we’ll all go home happy.
Do as you’re told, she mocked. You should learn to treat me better, Marsh, or I might throw you over for someone less economical.
Now who sounds like one of Desmond’s characters?
At the studio gate the wash of morning light made the columns and porticos look like marble instead of the stucco and concrete used twenty years earlier when the whole place was rebuilt from its more modest beginnings. Beyond that phalanx of ersatz Grecian temples, the soundstages loomed like airplane hangars, and down one of the long studio streets I could see the open-air sets of the backlot, its shifting jumble of European villages and castles, Wild West ghost towns and New England main streets, as if the essence of every place and culture could co-exist while remaining mutable, capable of being built and torn down and reimagined as some other space and time all in the course of a day. The longer I spent there the more I came to believe it was the atmosphere of unreality and impermanence that conditioned the way those of us who made our lives within it imagined the world. I don’t mean that as a criticism of you or anyone else, Myles, but as a proposition that we all struggled to see truth even when it stood right before us. We wanted the illusion because it thrilled or terrified or seduced us into believing in the possibility that beauty could be conjured from the ordinary. Reality was too alienating, its contours and colors too prone to numb or bewilder.
John parked the car in Mary’s spot and jumped out to open the door for her.
Beyond the arches of the studio gate the dark coupe that had followed us all the way from Summit Drive pulled to a stop. I knew John and Mary both saw it but they acted as if they had not. Then, without saying anything, Mary handed me the rewritten pages and slipped into the backseat of the car that was waiting to take her to her dressing room suite.
I have visions sometimes, John said as we watched the car driving Mary slowly down Main Street, I can see myself racing to catch up to her, flinging open the car door, slugging the driver, pulling her from the seat and shaking her until she confesses. I don’t know what to call them, Desmond, but these fantasies have become more frequent in the past few weeks. Do you think I’m a violent man? Mary
says I hate women and just can’t admit it. I don’t know where the anger comes from sometimes. I open my mouth and it’s my father speaking and when I shout at her Mary becomes my mother and all of it gets jumbled in my head until I’m convinced I’m replaying one of the fights my parents had when I was a boy and my mother wanted nothing more than for Dad to show her a little kindness. In those moments the roles are dizzyingly reversed, so I can see myself as my mother and Mary as my father.
I suppose that’s often the way, John. I knew I sounded impatient but I wanted to be free of him and see if you were already in your dressing room, except your car was not in its spot. It made me wonder whether you had been delayed in leaving home or if something had happened en route. Without having a way to contact you I imagined an accident, fearing you had figured out what I was planning and became so wracked with grief you succeeded in doing what I nearly did earlier that week and drove the car off a cliff or – as I nearly had that morning – waded into the pool and inhaled until water displaced all the air in your lungs.
*
At the Executive Building John and I parted and I stood trying to calm myself, then dropped off the new pages at the Writers’ Building and walked up Main past the commissary toward the soundstages. It was the last day I would ever make that short journey, the final time I would look at the sun on those streets or wave hello to people I recognized but never really knew. I turned onto Third Avenue and walked past Stages 3 and 4, my heart beating faster again because I was anxious to find you.
The day the studio gave you one of the Star Suites I remember you seemed as excited that your room had a view of Joan Crawford’s as you were to be getting a suite of your own. That innocent enthusiasm, the star-struck exuberance you kept even when you were a star in your own right, never failed to charm me. How could you be so innocent of your talent, or of your beauty?
I was about to knock on the door of your suite when you came up the stairs behind me. Before I’d turned around I knew it was you because I could hear your ankles clicking as you climbed and I’ve never met anyone else in the world whose body makes that sound.
Night for Day Page 4
