Closer to the entry, unusually ajar for this time of day, stood Esteban in a diaphanous tunic, dripping fake diamonds on twenty chains worn against faux-silver shorts. He held crystalware filled with some concoction.
“He walks in beauty! Like the night.”
“More like he stumbles in dog-poo,” Victor corrected.
The music, which had been loud, got louder as several people began singing at once, “Hell-lo Doll--y!”
Esteban offered a glass. And removed four or five chains to put around Victor’s neck, trying to lick his ear or kiss his lips with every one.
“Hemlock?” Victor asked.
“Cosmos. We’ve got a small lake of the stuff here. That and Long Island Iced Tea. Tobey wants to use up all the hooch in the house. Leave your bags at the door. You’re staying with us tonight.”
Victor dropped the bag and followed Esteban into the living room. Two elderly tiara-wearing although not otherwise overdressed men were perched on the sofas with fishing rods aimed at opposite aquaria. They shouted “Hi ya!” and hoisted their own cosmos in salutation. One of them was Andy’s old pal, the cocktail pianist/showman Lassiter, and the other Alliger Munday. Victor bussed Lass and shook hands with Alliger who said in the unmistakable Scotch brogue, “I’ve heard so much about you that I took you to be entirely mythical.”
“Not from me, he didn’t,” Lassiter quickly clarified. He went on to tell a story about how he was touring the country with Sally Kellerman impersonating Greta Garbo, of all people, the two of them singing and playing piano, in effect doing a cabaret act. “It was headed for Broadway,” Lass said, then sipped. “But it closed in Hamatramack!” He laughed a big, throaty, unbitter laugh, and they joined him.
In the dining room, at least three people appeared to be necking on the ten foot long table. Chips and dips, including guacamole, had been moved to the side.
They ambled into the kitchen, where strange collies and dalmatians were dry humping each other while leaning against the cabinetry.
Victor took a big glass full of cosmo.
“So remind me again what this party is about?”
“It’s Tobey’s seventy-fifth birthday. His Diamond Jubilee. Thus!” Esteban motioned toward his outfit and the various silver, gold, and sequin-sprinkled decorations.
“That’s odd. I thought Andy told me to come because Tobey was dying and wanted to say good-bye.”
“Well, you know what, hon? That’s happening too,” Esteban said brightly. “Both! A birthday and a deathday! Together! Now, if you’ve got a moment, I wanted to show you what really feels nice with two guys when one has a very fuzzy tongue.”
He almost fell into the wall-sized aquarium, just missing by an inch as Victor scooted out of the way, out the French doors and onto the terrace, and almost immediately into a Blue-Point Angora dyed pink. It squalled at him and turned and hissed, claws far out on one paw, but otherwise resembled a dropped, mobile, heap of cotton candy.
“You met Stravinsky!” Elmore picked up the cat, which subsided into a purring ball of fluff. “Have you seen my better half?” He stage-whispered. “We had a big fight.”
“No!”
“It was terrible. China went smashing. The cats were all tossed in different directions. Stravinsky here, Schoenberg, and Sibelius. Igor-puss is the only one that socializes at all well. So the other two are moping in the Ginger Rogers Memorial Suite.”
“Evidently, I’m coming home with you,” Victor said.
“You and Miss Grant both. His stuff is already mostly moved in. We’ll have a grand time.”
As they walked around the garden a bit, Victor asked, “Was this really Tobey’s idea? The party? All these . . . people?”
He was being kind with his noun. They peered into the kitchen, where three overweight middle-aged bearded men wearing pret-a-porter sequined frocks far too small and far too sheer for them, only partially redeemed by ropes of fake jewels, were standing on the table with arms around each other, singing and kick-dancing “Aint We Got Fun?” Outside, the pool was filled with silver- and gold-foil balloons and was crisscrossed with sequined “Happy Diamond Jubilee” banners strung from the eaves to the oleander bushes. It featured a half dozen muscularly nubile young men in silver lamé Speedos frolicking in the water, punching balloons at each other or necking in side-by-side lounges.
“Yes indeedy!” Elmore giggled. “Tobey picked them all out his very own dear little self! This crew, for example is the entire cast of last year’s Coachella Valley hit theater piece. You’ve heard of Naked Boys Singing and Naked Boys Dancing? Well, ours was more literary—Naked Boys Reading Marcel Proust. Also, Tobey alone knows the secret of exactly what combination of drogas are in that ten-gallon garden canister holding the cosmo mixture. He swore Miss Grant to secrecy. And, by the way, you have to go and get your gift. Each one of us gets a departing present.”
“Shirley, you jest!”
“I don’t. But you can call me Shirley any day of the week.”
They’d arrived at the door leading into the master bedroom suite, which was opened but covered with silver and gold curtains.
“Go on!” Elmore shoved him through the material.
Victor was instantly inside the jungly thatched corridor where a half dozen tall dull people in drab clothing were seated or kneeling and loudly praying. It was like being suddenly thrust through a rift in the Twilight Zone directly onto Planet Boredom. One looked up at him briefly and smiled, perhaps because he wasn’t offensively naked and had only about six sets of glittery beads around his neck. The door to Tobey’s bedroom was ajar.
Victor set his drink on a teak table with upended turtle-shell candy dishes, and in seconds the same tall man who’d been there when Victor visited before stuck his head out of the doorway and motioned him to come inside.
Four more people, including the woman from before, were kneeling or seated and far less loudly praying. The room was dim and very cool. Tobey was under a light cover with a fake diamond tiara set on the pillow just above his head. He was very shrunken, and his red hair had finally lost its flame and was settling into recalcitrant embers.
Across from where he lay was the settee with another Happy Birthday banner. On it were dozens of silver and gold-foil wrapped packages, bound in sequined chains.
“Is he conscious?” Victor asked, church-quiet.
“At times,” the man answered. “We’re not certain when. You are . . . ?”
Victor told him his name and the man went over to the pile of gifts, searching.
Victor knelt at the bedside and leaned over, lightly touching one of Tobey’s shrunken little hands. “Hey, cutie!” he stage-whispered. “Happy Birthday! You made it to Seventy-Five.”
He felt an inkling of a response in the fingers, but not an iota of Tobey’s face moved.
“So . . . do you have your number planned?” Victor asked.
Another tiny, double response, as though in question.
“It’ll be your biggest audition ever when you get up there. You’ve got to dance like you never danced before. Remember, they’ll be filming it all. And you know what, Tobey?” The doubled response in question. “You can dance as long as you want, because it won’t just be a novelty act. And no one will ever yell, ‘Okay, cut!’”
The fingers responded by holding his pinky. Tobey had gotten the message.
After a minute or two, his finger was released. Toby was sleeping or out of it again due to morphine.
Victor stood and was handed a package and walked out into the corridor again, into the loud praying.
He wasn’t going to, but he was so curious that he tore the paper off in front of all the Fundies and then he had to laugh.
He was holding a copy of the 1943 book that had been in the guest suite. It was titled Ginger Rogers and the Mystery of the Ghostly Ranch.
“What a guy!” he said loud enough to be heard over the praying.
Outside again he ran i
nto Andy Grant, who was bedecked with tiara, necklaces, and silver lamé, right down to his silver-painted sneakers. He was drunk and he was carrying two glasses of cosmos.
“Look what Tobey gave me!” Victor had to share. “How cool is that?” He took the offered drink and steered Andy to the pool area, where they sat at a table.
“Do you still have the wrapping?” Andy asked.
Victor had bunched it up and stuck in his shorts pocket. He pulled it out and laid it on the table, where Andy picked through the fake beads and pulled out an antique gold watch.
Victor inspected it. “It looks like real gold.”
“It’s worth about five thou’.”
“I can’t take this!”
“Maybe you can’t wear it, since it’s so small! But you can certainly sell it.”
“But . . . why?”
“Tobey said you always supported and encouraged him.” Andy sighed. “Unlike stupid me.”
Victor thought about what he’d said. “I did again, in there.”
“See?”
The party continued madcap around them. After a while Victor asked, “So now what? For you, I mean?”
“I’m moving into Es and El’s place. And they’re going away to Asia, for like a month. So I’ll house-sit the cats and dogs. They’re taking Claudius and Portia, too. Then I’ll hang with Lassiter awhile at the place he’s house sitting, as those people are staying in Bonaire forever! I’ve already gotten offers from five or six people here at the party to house or pet-sit for them. Others asked me to visit for shorter or longer periods of time. That might take me through a year or two.”
“You ought to take this watch,” Victor insisted. “You need it more than—”
“It’s not the money, although I’m not affluent any more. Tobey left me a lot of things I can sell. The Olds. Another car. He had stocks and bonds, too, stashed away. Who knew? It’s just— I don’t know what to do with myself, Vic! I need to be loose and free and unattached to anyone or anything for a while to . . . I don’t know, maybe find out what’s important. I know you went through it big time, but Tobey and all this really shook me up.”
Taking time out sounded like a good plan to Victor.
“When you run out of those places to stay, I’ve got a little upstairs sleeping area. It’s just a mattress on a floor. Good for maybe a week. Anyway, here’s to Tobey!” Victor said. “He came through, in the end.”
“He sure did. Look at this party!”
Just then Es and El appeared with a giant severely over-decorated silver- and gold-frosted sheet cake and set it on the table, forcing them to vacate.
Esteban rang a bell while Elmore called out, “Time to sing Happy Birthday!”
When they’d all gathered, Andy parted the silver and gold curtains and Victor went in and asked the Religious to cease their praying for a few minutes. Then he stood looking in both directions, right at the bedroom door lintel.
Yes! From here, if he were at all conscious, Tobey could hear them singing “Happy Birthday Dear Tobey!”
CHAPTER FORTY-two
She flung open one of the tall front doors and stood on the blood-red tiled floor wearing a simple cobalt sheath that rose high on her neck, where a double string of globular, obviously authentic pearls glowed. Her hair was long and white and only slightly page-boy. Her eyes were a luminous blue, two shades lighter than the silk dress.
“I love doing that,” she said. “You know it took me weeks to learn to do it on the sound-stage because the door they’d put up for the set was so flimsy. It was just pasteboard or fake boards or something. And I kept flinging it too hard. It broke twice!”
“I’m really honored to meet you. I’ve seen several of your films and my mom was your biggest fan.”
“That’s lovely . . . Victor, is it?”
He saw her into the car, wondering if it was too low for her to enter, but she was agile and so small.
As he took off, she was quiet. Fifteen minutes later, as he was turning into the porte cochere of the house on Carthay Square, she said, “Do you mind if we decide on a few signals for the evening?”
“In fact I’m relieved. I didn’t know how to bring it up, myself.”
They worked out a half dozen, which amounted to variations on “Get me away from her!” or “Get me outta here!”
“Just one word of warning. Some of these ladies take these awards a bit seriously, if you know what I mean. So no funnin’ allowed on the topic of Oscars.”
“Including you?” Victor asked.
“Excluding me. But I would like to meet several people later, so I’ve got the few parties I want to go to on this list.”
He read two names. Governor’s Ball. Mortons. She also handed him the invitations to be held in his tux jacket’s inner pocket.
“Take a deep breath and ring the bell,” she said.
Carol and Bobby opened the door with loud greetings of “They’re finally here!” The evening had begun.
“This fellow is what people in Hollywood who aren’t refer to as a, quote, A Class-Act, unquote,” a slightly tipsy Sam Alan Haddad said to his wife, Lucinda, who Victor was meeting for the first time. “Did you see who he walked in the door with? A total legend! What befits a legend most? Another legend!”
“She’s gorgeous!” Lucinda asked. “At what, eighty-something?”
“If it’s in the genes,“ Victor said, “it doesn’t ever have to go away. She’s very nice too.”
“Come sit here with us a minute,” Sam instructed, “while she’s busy talking to those alte kockers. Colin Renfrew is out and about somewhere,” he said in a confiding voice. “I understand you two have exchanged e-mails and phone calls.”
“Guilty as charged. All business, unfortunately. Scott and Evan’s scenario.”
“Which everyone has signed off on. Good. Well, you’ll get the chance to be far more guilty very soon, as Evil Rudolf has flown the coop.”
“Colin left him,” Lucinda clarified.
“Oh! Right! When did I become the Ann Landers for El Lay’s gay set, anyway? I’m not very good at it.”
“Nor me, although I did see Joel Edison chumming about here earlier with _____ _____,” Victor named the Once Famous Actor who was the Actor Now Clearly On The Return, “and my neighbor, the former fitness trainer, Mr. Done Right. I’ve got to take credit for him, at least.”
Always quick on the uptake, Sam got the joke. “Is that what you call him?” He laughed. “Did you hear, Luce?”
“Heard and saw both of Joel’s clients mobbed by other guys’ wives and daughters. Mucho testosteron-i-o!”
“So, you know Joel’s set-up, already?” Sam asked. “I get two of those guys more or less for the price of one.”
“Because one is untested and the other is damaged goods?” Victor asked.
“Damaged or not, he’s insurable again. That’s all that matters.”
“And I assume contrite, too. Tina too? The young woman we met with the . . .” he went basso for a second “. . . deep, sexy, voice?”
“Do you like her? Colin does. Ask him. I don’t know. He’ll be line producer. I’d only be Exec.”
“Only?”
“Meanwhile I’m finagling the consultancy for you, but it’ll have to be a shared credit. That okay?””
“Sounds fine.”
“See all I do for you?”
“Next, we’ll all watch you walk atop the surface of the reflecting pool without getting wet!”
“There’s Jamie and Colin, now,” Lucinda alerted them.
Victor followed her direction and saw them. Jamie was oddly all-girl and flouncy in a puffy peach frock. Colin was in a classic summer-white tux with a tartan bow tie and matching cummerbund. He looked as though he’d just stepped off the sound-set of The Philadelphia Story.
“Go!” Sam said, pushing Victor out of his seat. “Go make goo-goo eyes with him. In return, you’ll get a wonderful man and a grade-A film made from your book. Go!”
“I’m going! I’m going! Sheesh!”
It turned out to be Jamie’s first Oscar evening, and she was flushed with excitement. She’d championed the costumer who won the Oscar that night for their film, and she’d been more thrilled than the more soigné French couturier himself. Colin had been to a few ceremonies before. Even so, he almost choked on his champagne when Victor mentioned who his date was. The two men remained together, more or less saying nothing of any importance, until Lucinda came—doubtless, under Sam’s direction—and dragged Jamie away from them and over to their table.
Conversation changed immediately to Joel Edison’s “new” talent and their potential connection, which Colin confirmed by saying, “We do this for him, and I’m confident they’ll work out fine. Joel Edison didn’t get where he is today by handling his clients long-distance.”
“You mean he’s really hands-on?”
Colin began blushing. “What I meant to say was—”
It was then that Victor saw Loretta making a signal, which, if he recalled correctly meant “Not right away, but in a few minutes, come get me.”
“My date’s about to take me outta here,” Victor said. “I suppose it’s an early night for the Virtuous.”
“And I. Though I’ve got one more hoe-down to face. I’d much rather Jamie and Sam and Lucinda went on without me.”
It was then that a very awkward, nearly abstract, sentence questioning why both should have to be alone later, emerged from out of Victor’s mouth unbidden. And it was taken up equally awkwardly by Colin, who stammered cutely while trying to think up a few especially dumb excuses for both of them going home separately and alone, which included working-out to make up for earlier wretched food and alcohol excesses; catching and answering all the congratulatory e-mails and phone calls that were sure to arrive; and something having to do with laying out fresh newspaper for budgerigars, whatever they might be—small caged birds, possibly, Victor thought.
Then, more hopefully, Colin appended to all that malarkey this statement: “Of course, I still have the printed-out e-mail directions to your place from—what was it, earlier this week?”
Justify My Sins Page 35
