The Garden on Sunset

by Martin Turnbull

  When she returned with six packets of Gauloises, Louis B. Mayer called over to her. “Tell me, are you a professional cigarette girl, or do you do something else? Sing, or dance, or act, perhaps?”

  Gwendolyn’s heart heaved into her throat. Mayer wasn’t just any old question popper; he was the question popper. She swallowed hard. As a matter of fact, I do was about to gush from her lips, when she saw Thalberg’s neighbor roll his eyes. He had the hardened face of a day laborer. “Oh, sweet Jesus, it’s that big lug,” he muttered. “Whats-his-name, Paramount’s brother-in-law.”

  Gwendolyn heard a rasping groan behind her, and held her breath.

  “Hey, toots! You! Cigarette girlie. Gimme my brand. You know what I want.” Broochie sounded like he was talking through a pillow.

  She ignored him and counted out Thalberg’s change. Thalberg tipped her ten dollars as Broochie called out again.

  “CIGARETTE GIRL! Who you trying to impress?”

  Gwendolyn had no choice but to straighten up and turn to face the hoary-eyed gorilla. His jacket was open and hanging off his shoulder. His mouth was curled up in a deep scowl. He held his freshened drink like it was a turkey leg.

  “Why don’t you follow me, sir?” Gwendolyn suggested and turned to lead Broochie away from the MGM table.

  “Why don’t you give me my jewelry back?” He spat out the words loud enough that most of the nearby tables heard him over Bing Crosby’s “I’ve Got Rhythm.” Gwendolyn scanned the room for help.

  Broochie lunged at her. He stumbled but kept his whiskey level. His fingers brushed her sleeve and caught the loop of gold braid on her shoulder pad, spinning her around backwards. She reached out for Mr. Mayer’s table, but grabbed at air.

  The momentum spun her around full circle and she faced Broochie just in time to see the upward swoop of his cocktail hand. It hit the underside of her tray with a loud thwack and shot dozens of cigars and packets of cigarettes into the air. The tray slammed into her forehead. As it fell back down, the sash yanked at her neck and she tumbled forward under a hailstorm of tobacco. She toppled into Mr. Mayer’s lap. Half of Broochie’s whiskey smacked her in the face. She didn’t want to know what the other half did to the most powerful man in movies.

  CHAPTER 24

  Kathryn rapped on her mother’s front door as loudly as she could. “Mother! This silent treatment has gone on long enough.” No answer. “Mother!” she called out again. “I still have my key.”

  Kathryn hadn’t seen her mother in so many months she’d lost count. She regretted throwing Francine out of her villa that day, but, she had to remind herself, the melodrama was too much to take. Lost her fortune in the stock market crash, indeed.

  After a couple of months without a word, though, Kathryn started to worry that she’d been too harsh. She dropped by from time to time when she was nearby on Gower, but her mother was never at home. Gwendolyn assured her that she must have found a job, and Kathryn started to leave lighthearted, sincere notes. When none drew a response, they became apologetic, then contrite, then exasperated and angry. In the end, Kathryn decided that she’d done all she could to mend the fences, and if Francine wanted to resume their relationship, the white flag had been raised.

  But when 1930 became 1931, Kathryn’s patience ran out. She pulled on the brown checked woolen overcoat Tallulah had given her for Christmas and marched to her mother’s home. She stuck the key into the lock. “You give me no choice!” she called out. “I’m coming in now.” But it refused to turn. It took Kathryn a couple of attempts to realize that her mother had changed the lock. She rounded the corner, took off her coat and jimmied the bathroom window in two minutes flat.

  “Hello!” she called. No reply. She wandered up the hallway to her mother’s room and pushed open the door. The room was neater than Kathryn had ever seen it, and the bed was covered with a new red, white, and blue paisley quilt. It was a huge improvement over the tatty swamp-green chenille bedspread it replaced. A delicate pink porcelain vase sat atop the bureau; that was new, too. It looked like Gwendolyn was right. Francine had found herself a good paying job — not easily done, now that they were calling the recession a “depression.”

  But when she studied the smiling couple in an antique silver frame, Kathryn’s heart quickened. Who were these people? Francine Massey had no friends. She’d been so devoted to her daughter’s career that she had never taken the time to cultivate her own friendships, and that had been part of the problem: neither could her daughter.

  Kathryn put the picture down and picked up a small portrait of a woman in sparkling tulle just as the sun outside the window slipped behind a cloud. She opened the wardrobe and found lots of suits and trousers and neckties. She raced into the livingroom. It was freshly painted in very pale blue and over the fireplace hung a painting of Paris in the rain instead of the mirror with the crack, and brown spots staining the bottom corner.

  “Good God. I’m in someone else’s home.”

  She leaned against the doorway and gaped at Place de la Concorde, unable to move. Then she heard a man’s laugh on the front step. “Sounds like the worst Christmas ever! I sure hope 1931 is better than that!”

  Kathryn ran up the hallway to the bathroom as the front door opened. She was still only halfway through the window when she heard the man exclaim, “What the heck?!” Kathryn froze. “Get back in here!” he demanded. She eased herself backwards until she was standing on the john.

  “Get down offa there, for crying out loud!” he ordered, and she turned around to face the man from the photos. He was older now, his eyes more crinkly and his hair largely a thing of the past. He frowned, puzzled at first, then it dawned on him. “Say, I know you!”

  As gracefully as she could manage, Kathryn stepped down from the rim of the john. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “You’re the girl in the photographs, aren’t you?”

  “Are you in casting?”

  He winced as though she had slugged him. “God, no. What are you doing crawling in my bathroom window?”

  “Technically, I was climbing out–”

  “Oh, wait, I get it now. You used to live here, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. But I didn’t realize . . . I didn’t know . . .”

  His anger evaporated and he smiled at her. “Follow me.”

  He led her into her old bedroom. It was an office now with a desk and a row of metal filing cabinets. He crossed to a wardrobe in the corner, yanked open the door and grabbed an old May Company shirt box that Kathryn recognized immediately. “I don’t know why I’ve kept this,” he said, sliding off the top. He pulled out a photograph and handed it to Kathryn.

  She nodded. “Yes, that’s me. A million years ago.” She was twelve in the photo, her hair set in long sausage curls. It had taken three laborious hours in the beauty parlor, and Kathryn couldn’t believe that anyone, even Mary Pickford herself, would sit through that every day, even if she was earning five thousand a week.

  “You’re the one who wrote all those notes,” he said, his face full of sympathy. Kathryn nodded up at him. “I’m sorry, young lady, but I don’t know where your mother is.”

  “That’s the problem. Neither do I.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Marcus didn’t just like his new necktie. He loved it.

  It was Kathryn’s Christmas present to him, and it was too beautiful to take it out of its Bullock’s box and white tissue paper. He’d never seen this shade of purple before, deep and rich as a ripe plum, with a hint of lavender but vibrant as crimson. Pressed into the material was a light pattern of waves, hardly visible except close up, and even then you almost had to be touching it.

  She shouldn’t have gone and bought him anything for Christmas. God knows he hadn’t gotten her anything. Western Union had cut his messenger pool from twelve to eight, and rumor was rife that it might soon go down to six. He was living on beans and rice, bread and Sanka until he knew whether he’d make the cut. His hopes of being hailed as Garbo’s savior
hadn’t amounted to anything, either. Sure, the sinking of the Montfalcone had made all the papers and even sparked off a public furor over all the floating casinos lined up along the coastline, but there’d been no mention of Garbo in any of them. All he got for his trouble was a persistent ache deep in his bones from that grueling three-mile swim to shore. He was lucky the tide had been with him otherwise he might not have made it at all.

  Tallulah hadn’t cut Kathryn’s wages yet, but it seemed like a matter of time before the Depression hit the movie stars, too. Kathryn shouldn’t have bought him anything, and he told her so, but boy, oh boy, he loved that tie!

  By the second Sunday in January, he couldn’t wait any longer to wear it. He didn’t have anything that matched it and a new suit wasn’t on his sartorial horizon, but he dressed himself as smartly as he could in his best black flannel trousers and his tweed jacket from Kress. He took the Hollywood Boulevard Red Car downtown and got off a few blocks from the Biltmore Hotel. By the time he was within a block of Pershing Square, he’d given up trying to convince himself that a jolly Sunday promenade was all he was doing that day.

  Marcus knew there had to be other men like him out there. So there had to be places he could meet them. He knew that his chances of meeting Ramon Novarro again were low-to-nonexistent, so it was time he looked further afield. Sure, he’d seen plenty of residents at the Garden scamper between villas late at night or early in the morning, but none of them had been men like him. Marcus didn’t know where to go or who to talk to, but one thing was for damn sure: he wasn’t going to meet anyone by sitting in his dark little room. It was time to take a chance.

  On Sunday morning, the Pershing Square crowd was different from the workaday week crowd. The offices were all closed, but there were plenty of people around. A tall, thin guy about his own age did a double take when he saw Marcus’ purple tie. His eyes flicked up and held Marcus’ gaze until they’d passed each other.

  Marcus didn’t think much about it until the same thing happened half a block closer to Pershing Square. This time it was a much older gentleman with the rounded paunch and healthy gray beard of a doctor. He too spotted Marcus’ necktie and lifted his eyes to meet Marcus’, but hurried by without looking back. So Marcus headed for the square, a leafy park at the center of Los Angeles.

  A pair of college students walked toward him with their shoulders and heads pressed together. They were smiling at him and murmuring out of the sides of their mouths. Their eyes kept flickering down to his tie and back up to his face. Marcus stopped and watched them walk past, wondering if they’d been laughing at him. One of them looked back, but when he saw Marcus staring at him, he swung around again and nudged his friend to walk faster.

  On the way down the gravel path to the fountain in the center of the park, the same thing happened twice more. Each time, a single gent, all decked out in his Sunday best, stared at him as he walked by. The second one opened his mouth to speak, but changed his mind at the last moment.

  Marcus stopped at the fountain and trailed his hand in the cold water for a moment. He felt someone watching him and glanced up into the eyes of a guy on a bench nearby. He wore a simple pair of dungarees, a white tee-shirt and a dark blue duffel coat. His wide open prairie-state face had nothing to hide. He was staring at Marcus in the same way the other men had, but didn’t look away when Marcus looked back. Marcus shook the water off his hand and sat down next to him.

  “I like your necktie,” the guy said.

  “It seems to be attracting more than its fair share of attention.”

  “I don’t doubt that for a minute. That color. It’s an interesting choice.”

  Marcus lifted the end of his necktie and angled it toward the late morning sun. Did it look different outside than in his shadowy room?

  “You know,” the guy said. “Purple.” When Marcus looked at him blankly, the man’s warm smile dimmed. “Purple,” he repeated. “A purple necktie . . . ?”

  Marcus felt suddenly awkward, like he had at a childhood party when he’d realized everyone was playing a game he’d never heard of. He could feel himself blushing.

  The man’s smile evaporated and in its place was a pair of thin lips pressed into a straight line. “Are you with the vice squad?”

  Marcus wanted to laugh, but the man was quite serious. “I’m a telegram messenger with Western Union.”

  Warmth crept back into the man’s smile. “The purple necktie,” he said, “is a sort of code. Among a certain sort of people.”

  “What sort?

  “The sort of men who are looking for . . .” He raised his eyebrows.

  The hotel room at the Derbyshire Arms four blocks from Pershing Square was large and airy and smelled of wood polish. Marcus liked it. It had a low wooden bureau, moss green wall-to-wall carpeting, its own bathroom, and a four-poster bed.

  “Do you live here?” Marcus asked.

  The guy grinned and shook his head.

  “It gets a lot of light.”

  “Not when I pull the blinds.”

  Marcus ran his hand down the post at the foot of the bed. “This is nice,” he said. “You don’t see four-poster beds in hotel rooms much anymore.”

  “Been in lots of hotel rooms, have you?”

  A nervous laugh popped out of Marcus. “No, not really.”

  The guy took a couple of long strides. They were the same height. He was close enough now that Marcus could smell the salty tang of his tee-shirt.

  “What’s your name?” Marcus asked.

  “My name? What the hell does that matter?”

  “If we’re going to . . . I thought it would be nice if we introduced ourselves.”

  The way the guy looked at him made Marcus feel like a fifteen-year-old debutante. “You can call me Zachary. Or Zach. Whichever you like.” He reached up and pushed Marcus’ tweed jacket open. It slipped down his back and landed in a jumble at his feet. When Marcus bent down to pick it up, Zachary told him to leave it there.

  He loosened the purple necktie, pulled it over his head and tossed it onto the jacket. The smell of the ocean grew stronger as Zachary drew his hands around Marcus’ waist and pulled their hips together. As he watched Zachary’s mouth inch closer to his, he thought of Dwight, and his father’s jail cell, and what happened last time he felt like this. Dear God, he thought, if there’s any justice in the world, don’t let the cops bust through that door.

  Zachary forced his mouth against Marcus’. He slid his hand up until he palmed the back of Marcus’ head and pressed their mouths even more firmly together. Marcus wrapped his arms around the man’s body, so different from Dwight’s. It was harder, firmer; he could feel each muscle in Zachary’s back torque as Zachary crushed himself against Marcus. His tongue pushed into Marcus’ mouth until the burn of chewing tobacco was all he could taste. He let his body melt into Zachary’s, but suddenly Zachary pulled away.

  “What is it?” Marcus gasped. “The cops?”

  “You’re a regular Mexican jumping bean, ain’t you?” Zachary walked to the window and pulled down the blind. The room slid into half-darkness. A shaft of sunlight fought its way in and sliced a path between them. Marcus could only see Zachary in silhouette now.

  “If you think the four posts are nice, wait till you try the mattress.”

  Marcus rolled over onto his back and stared up at a water stain that had been poorly whitewashed.

  “For a while there, I thought this might’ve been your first time,” Zachary said with a yawn. “But you took to that like a heifer at milking time, didn’t you?”

  Marcus was too embarrassed to admit that it had been his first time, so he kept his trap shut. Any doubts he may have harbored in the deepest, darkest corners of his mind about his feelings toward men had been wiped so clean that he could scarcely recall them. He felt unfettered and light-headed. In this moment, he was free of the shame and guilt that had yoked him for so many years. It was gone — swept away in less than an hour. He felt like an ex-con being le
t out of jail.

  “I didn’t hurt you, did I?” Zachary asked.

  Hurt me? Marcus thought. On the contrary, you sent me to a corner of heaven I only ever suspected–hoped–might exist. He shook his head.

  Zachary followed Marcus’ eyes to the stain on the ceiling. “Sometimes I get carried away. The heat of the moment and all that. But for a guy like me, it can be a long time between drinks.”

  Marcus turned and stared at the mat of blonde hair that covered Zachary’s chest. It was softer than he’d expected but the man’s pecs were firm and tanned from years of outdoor work. He longed to feel Zachary’s hands wander over his skin again and could feel the heat in his groin grow once more. Was it too soon to ask for another round?

  Marcus reached up to run his fingers through Zachary’s chest hair but the guy headed him off at the pass. In a smooth motion, he sat up and swung his feet around to the floor. “I don’t suppose you know where I flung my shorts?”

  Marcus looked at Zachary’s back. It was wide at the shoulders and narrowed down into a taut waist. It was splattered with dark brown freckles; a patch of fuzz sat at the top of his butt cheeks. “When can I see you again?”

  The naked man let out a laugh that seemed unnecessarily harsh. His back rippled; Marcus longed to lick it, press his face against it, feel the muscles twist under his fingers. The guy didn’t turn around. “I’m a navy man. Never around. Besides, bucko, we’re queers. We don’t get to have dates any more than we get to have marriages or relationships or love. This is it, so learn to like it the way I have.”