by Adam Braver
How was that for irony?
Baker did what he did best—he turned oyster shit into a pearl. He interviewed the bishop and one of his flock, Dorothy O’Brien. They snapped the picture. He talked to the theater owners. Drafted the story in a dive named Ralph’s around the corner from the church and edited the commas in a downtown bar that would make the Vienna Buffet look like a family Hof brau. He filed the story. A goddamned hero he was around the newsroom.
After that Tuesday edition ran, Baker tossed the unread paper into a garbage can and then stopped off at a local bar named Willie’s. He threw back a couple shots of some well whiskey that stung like a sonabitch. He gave a nod to the bartender and a few malcontents hugging the corner but didn’t speak a word. He lifted a Lucky Strike from his pocket, tapped the butt against the mahogany once or twice, and then stuck it unlit between his lips. He leaned forward to light the cigarette by candle flame, then pulled back, smoke rising from the amber tip. Takes you right off the stinking earth with the first drag every time. He ordered up another glass. Sucked the cigarette down to the bone. Then rinsed back the whiskey. He wasn’t ready to go home. Being alone in his new apartment on Pico could be dangerous, a man could lose himself in that kind of mess, rot away crazy until the landlord finally has the doors rammed in when the unbearable stench gets too loud. But he also had no intention of pouring on a useless drunk, one that would inevitably find him stupidly waking up with the last broad left standing at closing time.
Baker slapped two bits on the bar to settle and left. The night air was still warm, smelling of Pacific salt and bubbling lard from the Mexican taco stand up the street. It seemed quiet out. A few couples strolled back in secret huddle, followed by an occasional chatty group with one inevitably shrill distaff laugh that hung nearly visible against the concrete and plaster. The oddly loud volume of his shoes against the sidewalk thudded like the trampling of lazy hooves.
He found himself walking down Second. Hands in his pockets. Integrity feeling slightly wounded. He picked up his pace. Skirting past closed offices and businesses. No sign of life other than the winking eye of a haberdasher’s mannequin under a small gray-brimmed hat. Our Lady of Angels lay one block ahead. He thought to cross the street and avoid the thing altogether. He couldn’t give a rat’s ass about what they were doing and why. He had done his part. Played the middleman in the brokerage of decency. The one who kissed and made up, keeping a straight face while Bishop Conaty and O’Brien spewed out the most sinfully vicious thoughts. But he took it well. Wrote it up convincingly and eschewed being a reporter, instead turning goodwill ambassador for a day. But if he had had a crystal ball when he rolled out of that no-name lady’s bed two mornings ago, he would have walked right into the Herald office with a FUCK YOU sign taped across his chest and given the Herald another scandal to negotiate. He had no intentions of turning into their gossip guy, covering people whose biggest crises are which theaters they are going to play.
The cathedral looked set back and almost haunted under the cover of night. Plaster fissures slowly leaked down the wall. Each step had a pile of uncrushed leaves windswept into the corner that made the perfect bum’s pillow. A general lifelessness to the windows, long ago absent of the fog of human breath. Baker imagined that somewhere in the back of the church, the bishop must have been mulling around. Maybe preparing a sermon, decoding the fine print of a land contract, or in one of those chats with God. Maybe Dorothy O’Brien was still in there, poring over the roster of names for potential league members in her head while polishing the savior’s feet. She would look up at the sound of the bishop’s footsteps, and congratulate him on his work with the reporter, silently begging for the bishop’s attention and admiration. And they would have no idea that the reporter felt like one of the broads he took home and banged when the bars closed—used and alone. All potentials cast away.
Vince Baker sat down on the steps of the cathedral. He wiped his nose against his sleeve. It smelled of tobacco. The sky opened in purple with stars sparkling in promise. Sometimes there is no place like Los Angeles to make you feel full of life. Everything is believable and possible. Maybe the bishop would walk right out the front door now. He could sit beside him, and Baker could explain it all to the priest. Then they could gaze at the stars together and smile, thinking about how great it is to live in L.A.
CHAPTER TWO
May 14, 1906
ABBOT Kinney stood next to her, a crisp knuckled hand on the doorknob. His sweat smelling of the smoke that made his tobacco fortune. Sarah could barely see his eyes in the darkness of his office, a small adjunct room tucked into the bottom corner of the auditorium that adjoined the pier that bore his name. She could only imagine Kinney’s tall, worldly physique by the stature in his voice.
Bright sunlight streamed in beneath the door. Beyond the dark entrance, the cries of the miniature railroad that circled the distant midway blew along the weathered planks. Heavy sea air rolled down the great incline of the auditorium’s red roof and spilled onto the bustling pier, while a procession of brass entertained the sightseers on the gondolas navigating the replicated canals of Kinney’s dream city: Venice, Italy.
“They’re all out there,” Kinney said. “Waiting for you. Go tell them you don’t care. That’s what you wanted, right?” His crooked finger eerily pointed at the door. The scribes from the Los Angeles tabloids all gathered at the heart of the newly built pier. Keenly aware that the great French actress sat sequestered in the founder’s office. Their shoes tapping faintly. A murmur of voices clipped by the rush of the tide breaking under the quay. There were two quotes that they expected—a flip Sarah Bernhardt denunciation filled with a sardonic yet demure tone about the Los Angeles archdiocese, and one from Kinney that disregarded the Los Angeles culture as a thing of the past, citing as an example Sarah Bernhardt’s pending performance in Venice of America.
The reporters had been waiting outside for nearly a half hour. An event orchestrated by Kinney himself. A self-made publicity man, he was the type who wasn’t nearly as intimidated by reporters as he was by the fear of failure. Certain that with one errant move he could trample his reputation into a fine powdery dust. This town was not kind to damaged careers. Guys like Kinney always needed to keep the business going. And show results. Otherwise it was a long slow road back to Shitbowl, New Jersey.
Kinney had wanted something big to happen with his development. He wanted people to know that he had been the one to draw a line in the beach in 1904 and declare this playland of west Los Angeles as the new entertainment center of the city. Coney Island meets Italy. Canals and Ferris wheels. Venice of America. Ocean Beach. CA. He needed an event to turn a profit for the theater. He told that to his staff every day. Told them he was paying them to make things happen. Not just agree. And last week when those loudmouth Catholics started blowing their traps about Sarah Bernhardt being immoral and unfit for performing downtown, it was Kinney who personally tracked down Max Klein in midtour in New Mexico and made the arrangements to get her here. All within a matter of hours. His next move was to make sure the whole world knew where she was and why.
VINCE BAKER HAD BEEN ORDERED by Graham Scott to wait there on the pier. Normally Scott would have assigned a story like this to an F. T. Seabright, but since the Vienna Buffet debacle, Seabright had become too gun-shy to investigate where his balls went on an cold night. Scott had tried to convince Baker this story was bigger than some petty pugilist shit. “She is as big as all those robber barons that you like to cover. She is powerful. Look at how easily she stirs up guys like Conaty.”
The boycott story had made Baker sick, but the fact that he was brought into the politics of the Vienna Buffet made him even sicker. It was no different than falling for a broad at closing time. But what had really started to gall him was how Sarah Bernhardt became his beat, and his byline. There was no time for this—not when Los Angeles was in the process of turning itself inside out and unfolding into something bigger and larger than it ever might h
ave imagined. And there were greedy millionaires lining up at the gates to claim their shares. That’s where the news was. That’s what he knew. Not this Seabright kind of shit. Scott was wrong—she didn’t have an ounce of their power or their stature.
As he approached the entrance to Kinney’s office, Baker noticed a new crew of reporters gathering. He didn’t know the faces. Seabright probably would. They were the entertainment guys. Downtown boys. The ones who palmed the maître d’ a brand-new bill in order to sit behind a table of celebrities. They pretended to be engaged in other activities while they listened intently, scratching notes under the table, leaning back with staged yawns, practically dropping their ears on the neighboring table when the celebrity talk turned to a whisper. Then they submitted this spying to their editors and it ran in the rags religiously with neither a confirmation nor an opportunity from the celebrity subjects to respond. The reporters never introduced themselves. Kept it cat and mouse. Chicken shit kind of stuff. But the editors loved it. Readers ate up that gossip, and it sold papers. Sold advertising. A constant reminder to all involved in the industry that the newspaper was first and foremost a business.
To a passerby, Baker would have appeared the distant one. He stood attentive near the periphery of the crowd, his eyes with the narrow pitch of a wild hunter, the near visible adrenaline pulsating against his temples. Once the action started, these social scribes would launch a couple of empty questions, laugh gratuitously at the responses, ingest whatever Kinney served up, and then turn in the story before deadline with just enough time left to throw back a few at the company watering hole before the suspicious hours loom, where husbands and bartenders are forced into a collusion of silence. But Baker wanted to get his quotes and get out. Then he might find some real news.
SARAH BERNHARDT TUGGED ON HER DRESS, brown batiste cotton with embroidered red polka dots, and an ivory lace hemline that graced the floor of Kinney’s office. Her shirtwaist was a subtle white, blooming out from her straight-front corset that she defiantly wore loose at the torso, revealing the true beauty of her delicate figure. She patted the sides of her hair, and then adjusted the pink sash that adorned her head in the latest style.
“Well, then,” she muttered as she sat down in a thick-framed captain’s chair, the wooden dowels jailing her back. She propped her elbow up on the armrest, and rested her cheek against a loosely closed fist. Sarah looked at Kinney set with a lazy posture, his arms crossed in mock authority. She was inclined to make a pedantic remark designed to waylay his overestimation of himself but instead swallowed her comment, as bitter as the salt air. By this point in her life, she had learned some sense of control. She had met a million Abbot Kinneys before, and found their self-aggrandizing pusillanimity to be personally offensive. They didn’t know what it really took to be at the top. They were usually the types who latched themselves onto some peripheral part of the chain, and hung on tight enough to feel the warmth of the spotlights. So sure that they were in the know. In her younger days she would have said something that reminded him of the difference between them. A quick swipe at his lanky physique, a demand that he shine her dog’s ass, or determine which of her shoes stank worse. But today she didn’t say anything. Once again, the other Sarah had abandoned her.
Abbot Kinney’s face etched an outline shadow, his pointed beard shone in its grayness. “When you walk outside, every Los Angeles reporter is going to be waiting for you to tell him that you couldn’t care less. That the great Sarah Bernhardt could give a damn about what some dementia-brained Catholic thinks about her career.” He dropped his hand from the doorknob and laced it bureaucratically behind his back. Pacing. Calm with purpose. “Because I’ll tell you one thing, the dirty little secret—they’re not sure if you matter anymore. Not sure if the light has faded from the brightest star to ever shine down on the world. That’s what they want to find out—if you still have the moxie to tell them where to go. I told your manager this, and now I’ll tell you: playing in Venice turns their perceptions upside down. Sends them a sign. This is where it is. Where it all will happen. We should both get down on our goddamn knees and kiss the feet of the good bishop for divinely sending you here.” He told her he knew her history of brawling with these maniacs and then advised her to go out there and just shake her head with one-quarter smile, and three-quarters French indignation.
She took a deep breath. Her strength was aged and abused. She was too old for this nonsense. Sixty-one years. Her whole career had been about holding up mirrors, pursing her lips to blow the smoke away, and in the clearing creating a performance that allowed the world a chance to see a reflection of itself. Now she was exhausted. If the goddamn church wants to run her out of town, then maybe she should let them. At least she could use the rest.
“Madame, are you ready?”
She spoke softly. Her accent drowning her words in an inaudible sorrow. “I don’t know what you want me to say. Tell me the script.” She needed Max now. He was the only one who could run through lines with her.
“Okay, Madame,” he said, “here’s what you say. You say, ‘I am thrilled and delighted to have the opportunity to perform at the Chautauqua at Abbot Kinney pier as part of my farewell tour of America. I am’—here comes the subtle kicker—‘a firm believer in promoting culture, not restraining it. I am honored to play in Venice of America, the new center of California’s cultural renaissance.’ What do you think?” Kinney asked. “The beauty of it is that you thumb your nose at the cowardice of the Los Angeles theater world without ever actually thumbing. It can only reflect better on Venice. Plus it’s what those reporters are all waiting to hear from you.” He looked at Sarah, the diluting dark starting to turn his features accessible. The shape of his face looked tired and calculating. “What do you think?” he asked again.
“Do you have a back door?”
“Why?”
“I’m ready to go fishing.”
Kinney cracked an understated laugh. A slight tearing at the sides of his mouth that tugged his whiskers. He looked controlled. Always controlled.
“I am hungry,” she said. “Too hungry for all this. I just want to take a fishing pole, drop the line into the ocean, and hook a nice fish for my breakfast…Max said you would…Your chef can prepare it for me, right?”
“Of course.” Kinney paused and leaned back on his desk, scattered in papers and signatures. “But I’m concerned about the press waiting for you.”
“They will follow. Reporters never go away. They are just dogs led by the scent of another dog’s ass. They cannot control it.”
“They can’t sleep until they know that they’re keeping someone else awake all night.” He laughed, looking over at her. “Okay, then, well, to hell with them. They come to us. Yeah? Madame Bernhardt says that she prefers to go fishing now. You show them the beauty of Venice of America. I’ll make the announcements and then join you on the pier. We’re in charge here.”
A pause held the room. It felt the same as the first day she had walked into the Grandchamps convent in Versailles still as Henriette-Rosine Bernard. A scared little girl surrounded by red velvet and brass, a smirking Jesus hanging at the end of the great hall, welcoming and despising. A Mother Superior who played host and talked comforts and hypotheses. She said theories couldn’t replace action. The young freethinking conscripts who came to her convent would have to give in eventually to the peace of conformity. Just be honest with God. He won’t let you down. The church was after Sarah back then, as well. They didn’t even bother to find the Jewish blood that traveled her veins. Maybe because they figured that her father must have money. A bank account answers a lot of prayers, so you don’t even think to ask the questions. Still, she nearly gave in and became a nun. The need for belief and acceptance usually go hand in hand.
When Kinney cracked open the door for a look, Sarah heard the familiar bray of reporters jumping over one another, trying to pitch the big question. What did she think of the bishop? I got an afternoon deadline. Dangling
ropes for the hanging. She stood up from her chair. Swallowing. Looking to Kinney. Adjusting the pink sash on her head. Her shoulders squared in a stage posture. Feet tingling. Her hands formed a dramatic pose. She still mattered. “I need to go,” she said to Kinney. “Now.”
Before he left, Kinney picked up the phone and instructed one of his minions that once Sarah had her catch, to bring her back to the dining room at the King George, wrapped fish and all. Louis should gut and fry it for her. Then they would figure their strategy of how to work the press and keep those loudmouth downtown Los Angeles Catholics out of Venice of America. Crucify the lousy pope if need be. He flung open the door, then closed it as quickly, leaving a flash of light that hung in the room like a frozen lightning rod.
