The John Maclay

by John Maclay

  “To make me like you are,” I replied flatly. And, for the life of me, I knew I could never resist the woman in blue.

  I was dimly conscious of a ceremony, there in the dim cellar, in the bed of the silk-lined coffin. It involved a coupling below, one even more fantastic, mind-altering, than what I’d had before with her perfect body. But what took place above was even more important. As, with a third and final set of “shaving cuts,” Monique not only took, but gave.

  Then I slept. And woke, but didn’t wake. The butler must have driven my car and me back to the city, because I found myself on my worn leather couch, the dawn coming in the dirty window. With a preternatural quickness, I got up, pulled the shade down.

  And remembered my lover’s half-humorous parting words. “Never go out in the daylight, Tom. But that shouldn’t bother you. You were always a noir type, anyway.”

  …So I lie here, listening to the run-out tape flap, flap, flap on the reel. This part won’t be recorded, nor the other cases—damn, how many thousands will there be?—that I solve in the years ahead. Like the man said, it wouldn’t be prudent. The cases I solve, as I go around the night city with my thinning hair, my cheap suit and hat…my close-mouthed smile. In the purgatory of my neighborhood, with its cheap hotels, pool halls, pinball arcades, lunch counters…and nude bars. Stopping, when I hunger, to kiss a hooker on the neck. A true existential hero, goddamn.

  Yeah, there are times when you go on day after gray day, not realizing that you’re not yourself. And maybe you won’t come out of it, one of those times. Even if you can trace it back, find out what happened.

  But there’s nothing really wrong with you, suddenly you feel stronger than the ages. So you don’t trace it back anymore, don’t deny it anymore.

  You’ve got a new self now.

  You go on.

  STARDOM

  I met Susan one night in a hotel bar in L.A. As a forty-five-year-old plaintiff’s attorney, I’d flown out from my New York office to see a client, my business was done, and I was killing time before bed and a morning flight back. Though I was divorced and otherwise unattached, I was tired and wasn’t looking for any action.

  But I recognized Susan instantly, not because I’d met her before, but from movies and TV. She was a tall, classy blonde actress who’d been big for a while twenty years before, then had been seen a little, then not at all. I knew, since movies were my secret passion.

  She was sitting alone just around a corner of the bar, and while I didn’t want to make a fool of myself, we made eye contact, and I felt I had to say something. So I flashed my best smile and told her I’d always liked her work. And after she looked me over in my thousand-dollar suit, apparently satisfying herself I was worthy, we started talking.

  When I did the mental math, I decided Susan was about my age now. But in the black sleeveless cocktail dress she was wearing, she was a great forty-five, her face more knowing and her body more defined. Yet that, as it turned out, was a problem, not an advantage.

  “I just finished appearing at a fan convention here at the hotel,” she told me, after I’d said who I was and why I was there. “I get paid to sign autographs for people who remember me.”

  “But why aren’t you working now?” I asked, immediately wishing I hadn’t.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” she laughed, seeing my embarrassment. “I’ve had a couple of drinks, so I’ll tell you just how cruel things are.”

  Then she reviewed what I had known, that actors went on forever, even being thought more ruggedly handsome as they aged, while actresses struggled to make it past thirty-five. She mentioned the old line that the latter started out as “babes,” then were cast as lawyers like me, then as mothers. She cited half a dozen actresses far bigger than herself who’d simply disappeared.

  But Susan said it had been even worse in her case. “Babe” always only lasted a few years because then new ones came along, but when it had happened to her, she hadn’t looked old enough to play lawyers. Then when she had, it had been tough getting back in, and pretty soon it had been mother time.

  “That didn’t work for me, though,” she concluded. “So now I’m so out I’m just nostalgia.”

  And to my credit, I replied, as she beamed, “Because you’ll never look like a mother.”

  It was getting late, and I’d noticed she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. But despite my position in life, I felt like a schoolboy in front of her, since I’d never made it with anyone who’d been remotely a public personality. However, Susan made it easier for me.

  “You might say what you’re thinking,” she reflected.

  “But I wonder if you’d want me to,” I replied.

  “Well, maybe I would,” she laughed, taking my hand.

  Saying she’d been on her way home anyhow, she led me out of the hotel to her average car, then drove us to her apartment in a less affluent neighborhood. I mustn’t have done a good job of hiding the curiosity about this that was mixed with my awe of her, because she explained.

  “Very few actresses at my level save up a lot,” she said. “And the notion that we marry a rich old man is only true for a few. Besides, I’ve never wanted to settle down. Please don’t think, either, that I want money from you, or worse yet, that I’m, you know. I have enough for what you see.”

  “I’d never think that,” I replied, my heart going out to her.

  Susan had me sit on the living room sofa as she undressed for me, smilingly doing so as if performing for the camera. When I saw her classy body naked as I’d never seen it on the screen, I was in a fantasy heaven, but it was real. And thankfully, I wasn’t so overawed that I couldn’t respond. I stripped down too, she led me to the bedroom, and we made passionate love that was better than any fantasy.

  In the morning, when I awoke to the sight of her coming from the shower, at her urging I cancelled my flight and called my New York office to say I’d decided to stay for a few days’ vacation in L.A. And when I was alone under the warm spray myself, I tried to come to terms with what had happened.

  As a guy in an old TV ad might have put it, there I was, just having had sex with a movie star. I knew from her own words it would just be an affair, so I could file it away as a great experience of my life, or unworthily brag about it at the office.

  But as Susan, now wearing a white blouse and tan skirt, drove me around to see some sights and have lunch at a sidewalk cafe, where a few passersby seemed to be trying to place her, something more, and totally unexpected, grew in me.

  It was a feeling of affection and protectiveness, which I knew was natural given my job as a plaintiff’s attorney. But it was similarly an impulse to right a wrong, and even to exact revenge.

  And as we lay again in her sweet bed that night, I decided to see if that was echoed.

  “Don’t you ever get, well, angry that others are where you aren’t?” I asked gently, not wanting her to take the latter as an insult.

  Then suddenly, as I must have sensed would be the case, she lost her classy cool, her whole body stiffened, and I could see her eyes flash even in the dim light.

  “Damn right I do!” she exclaimed. “If you’re any good, the only reason you get into this business is to be at the top!”

  And at that moment, I knew what she and I had to do, improbable as it might seem.

  We had to do it quickly, since I could only extend my vacation for a week at most. And of course it had to be a secret, but she as an actress and I as an attorney were good at those. We were lucky, too, that no one who mattered had seen us together.

  “We’ll start with an accusation,” I told Susan, as we sat at breakfast the next morning, sharing the memory of another night of passion, but being all business now. “I think you’ll agree it should be against an older actor, not actress, since even the best of the latter have the same trouble you have.”

  “What do you mean?” she ask
ed, raising her lovely eyebrows.

  “Sorry,” I replied. “I’ve been thinking, not telling. The bottom line is, I’ve come up with a plan that should not only express your anger, but should get revenge for you and the others like you, put you back in the game, and even make you a top star at last! That is, if you’re up for it.”

  “I am,” she responded, only taking a minute to consider. “I don’t know how it came about, but you know me, and thank heaven you’re here in time. In spite of my cool image, last year I almost succeeded in killing myself after one of those stupid conventions. So anything’s better than that. ‘No more Ms. Nice Woman,’ to change the old line.”

  “Okay,” I went on, feeling saddened by her confession, but even more, confirmed in my plan and heartened by her actually happy resolve. “What really big actor did you ever work with? And, uh, do you still have a press agent?”

  “Well, I did have a small part in a movie with Todd,” she replied, not even having to add a last name since he was so stellar. “But no, every sort of agent has long since dropped me.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I smiled. “You’ll just call the papers yourself. But after I tell you what to say, I’ve got to move back to my hotel for appearances’ sake, and we’ve got to do the rest by phone. Don’t call me, and I’ll use the lobby line to be anonymous.”

  “You’ll be back, though, won’t you?” Susan asked, rising from the breakfast table, letting the white terry robe she was wearing fall open, and coming into my arms.

  “Oh, yes, lover,” I replied. “It can’t be soon, but someday I will.”

  It took two days, but then the headline appeared, and what was more, was picked up by broadcast and cable news.

  “Former Two-bit Actress Accuses Todd of Long-ago Rape.”

  I felt sorry about how she’d feel about the characterization, but I knew she was strong and could take it, and at least the game was afoot. And for good measure, since she was so classy, she looked great and believable in the footage they got of her leaving her apartment.

  Of course, the esteemed star’s press people immediately issued outraged denials and further condemned Susan, and his lawyers threatened suit if the accusation wasn’t retracted. It was also said, as the usual plea for sympathy, that he was so upset he’d gone into seclusion at his Palm Springs ranch.

  But I knew that was only playing into our hands. And, equally insidiously, that his physical location had been revealed.

  In my hotel room, I suddenly thought long and hard about what I was doing. There I was, again like the old TV ad, a respected New York attorney, maybe lost in spite of myself in La-La Land, plotting something horrendous, just because of an ultimately naive brush with a movie queen, and not even that. Was I to stake my whole life and career on such, and further, could I live with the guilt?

  But somehow I knew the whole thing was fated, and if she could, I could. So I dialed her number, and moved us to endgame.

  “What are you wearing?” I asked when she picked up, trying for a bit of relief.

  “Nothing, lover,” Susan breathed, as I immediately pictured her beautiful face and her smooth, perfectly-proportioned body.

  “Are you using me?” I was moved to ask, suddenly thinking of some old, dark movies I’d seen.

  “No,” she replied firmly, not at all fazed by the question. “Nor are you using me, since what would you have to gain?”

  “Only you, as you should be,” I said incisively, “however it comes out. The bottom line is that we understand each other, and that we’re ready to see it through to the end.”

  “But what happens next?” she inquired. “As it is, I’m still only some bimbo, with an story I can’t prove and that isn’t true anyway. Besides, it will be only a media flash in the pan.”

  “Right you are,” I replied. “But maybe I, who’s only dreamt Hollywood for all my other accomplishments, actually through that distance knows it best. So here’s what you’ve got to do now.”

  When I told her, I could picture her expression, the cloud of doubt in her exquisite eyes that maybe indeed she’d picked up a loony, in spite of his thousand-dollar suit, in a hotel bar. But then I could see those eyes changing.

  “You have a car, but do you have a gun?” I asked.

  “Both,” Susan answered, and I immediately sensed from her voice that she knew where I was going. “This is L.A., after all.”

  “Do you think you can do it?” I asked again, like in a court of law.

  “Yes,” she answered. “But will it be right? He personally didn’t do anything to me.”

  “There’s right, but above all there’s justice,” it was my turn to answer.

  “And will I go to jail?” she asked again.

  “You will,” I answered. “But it won’t be for long. Here’s the number of the best defense attorney in the country, and of course, don’t mention my name. He’ll jump at the chance for such publicity.”

  “Star Murders Famous Rapist,” screamed the new headlines, at least in the tabloids, a couple of days later.

  And as I took the red-eye back to New York, I had to note “star,” and that the dead no longer could deal in terms of “accuses” or “alleged.”

  To end it indeed, Susan served two years in a minimum-security prison, but when she emerged, she was absolutely major. There’d been the sympathetic articles in journals of opinion, and the movie industry’s vaunted reassessment of older actresses’ worth, resulting in many starring roles for them.

  True, it took awhile until she herself could reap the real benefits, as she was tentatively cast in some “lawyer” roles indeed, with a couple of nude scenes thrown in.

  But then, at the hands of an on-the-edge screenwriter, the obvious vehicle arrived. She was ennobled, in a thinly-veiled “biopic,” as herself.

  I was back home concentrating again on my law practice, and we’d sensibly had no contact in between, but Susan secretly invited me to the Academy Awards. And feeling like a fish out of water once more in spite of what I’d done, I watched her, in a white, low-cut gown, climbing the steps to accept the golden statuette. And when she gazed out to me across the crowd, I didn’t see any sorryness in her eyes, only thanks, nor was there any in mine.

  After the ceremony, I stood on a nearby dark street corner waiting, as she’d also told me to do. She’d been smart enough to know that the press would dig deep if they saw us together, and my colleagues in New York might recall I’d been in L.A. when the murder occurred.

  A limousine stopped, the door opened, and Susan pulled me in and came passionately into my arms.

  “‘Lover, come back,’” she appropriately quoted the title of a movie, “one more time.”

  The privacy panel between us and the driver was up, and she shrugged off the top of her gown and offered her perfect breasts to my hands.

  “You knew I would,” I replied, as I lifted her skirt and joined with her. “For better or worse, this is Hollywood, this is America, this is life.”

  MAX

  I first met Max thirty years ago, when I joined a Masonic Lodge. He was the Tiler, spelled that way, the officer who sat outside the closed door during meetings, to make sure non-Masons didn’t enter the room. And as to that, he even had a sword beside his chair.

  But before I continue, maybe I should briefly offer, to the uninitiated, some information about Masonry itself.

  It’s the oldest and largest fraternal organization in the world. Some say it goes all the way back to ancient Egypt, some say it began in the Middle Ages, some say it began as recently as the 17th century. But in any event, it’s old.

  And its rituals, which are enacted beyond the closed door, basically have to do with the building of King Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem, as symbolizing how everyone should build a spiritual temple within themselves. Also, there are many elements of Egyptian, Hebrew, and Christian mysticism, alc
hemy, and the like.

  There’s an altar in the center of the room, with the well-known square and compasses symbol on it, there are principal officers in the south, west, and east, there are two pillars in the west.

  And, back to the east, there’s the famous letter “G” on the wall—which stands for geometry, and for the grand geometer of the universe, namely God.

  Lastly, Masons run the gamut, from practicing mystics, to those who only treat the pursuit as a charitable and social club. And if anyone thinks we secretly rule the world, well, we’re far too various for that.

  But now, back to Max!

  Dressed in a tuxedo, as all the officers were, Max was tall, balding, and cadaverous. He was friendly enough, but with a quiet, nasal voice, and with a withdrawn air about him. No one knew where he worked, or where he lived, but that wasn’t unusual, since Masons didn’t much share such details, and didn’t ask about them, concentrating instead on who they were within the Lodge.

  Nor could I, nor, as it turned out, could anyone, as I broached the subject to them, make a good estimate as to Max’s age. He certainly looked to be over forty, but beyond that, he could have been anywhere up to ninety. That made him even more of a mystery man.

  Another odd thing about Max, was that as he sat outside the door, he read newspapers to pass the time. But these newspapers were always from other cities, though they bore recent dates. And Max didn’t look like a man who traveled.

  Also, in an uncanny way, Max seemed to know everything. Not only could he always reference the Masonic schedule for the whole State. He made accurate predictions about the weather, and about how the latest world crises would turn out.

  And one more odd thing, was that Max wasn’t a “local.” No one had grown up with him, attended school with him, or the like. The first anyone could remember seeing him, was when he’d first appeared at a Lodge door.