The Garden on Sunset

by Martin Turnbull

  Navy life suited Monty and Gwendolyn told him so several times. Gone was that kid brother of hers, all elbows and kneecaps and hands that didn’t know what to do with themselves. His shoulders were broad now, and his chest was strong, and she teased him about having a girl in every port. He didn’t deny it, but he changed the subject.

  “Are you a movie star yet?” Monty asked.

  “Are you an admiral yet?” she countered.

  “No,” his voice serious, “but I plan to be.”

  All Monty had ever wanted to do was join the U.S. Navy. School didn’t matter, college didn’t matter, even his friends didn’t matter much, because once he joined the navy, he’d never see them again. By the time he was twelve he could identify every ship in the navy’s fleet, but Gwendolyn had never wondered what he wanted to do once he joined.

  “Good for you, Mo-Mo!” she told him. “Aim for the top.”

  Monty slowly frowned. “But what about you, Googie?”

  For a moment she saw the pool of blood seeping into Broochie’s white carpet and wondered if her brother could see her guilt. “What about me?” she hedged.

  He shrugged. “All I hear about Hollywood is about oversexed people indulging in wild parties with too much liquor and not enough morals.”

  “Why, Ensign Montgomery Horatio Brick!” Gwendolyn exclaimed. She sat up straight in the diner booth, opened her eyes wide, and slapped her hands on her hips. “Since when did you become such a bluenose?”

  “Since my sister moved to the sin capital of America.”

  She swatted away Monty’s concerns as though they were a sandfly. “I never figured my baby brother for the worrying type. You can put your ever-lovin’ mind to rest. Hollywood is not all about wild parties and bootleg and orgies, or whatever you’ve been reading. You do not have to worry about me dissipating into any sort of tawdry life of fallen womanhood. I don’t even drink.”

  “The boys on board told me that liquor was easy to come by in Hollywood.”

  “Oh, it is, it surely is. It’s just that I don’t want to . . .” she tore her donut in half and dunked a piece into her coffee. “Oh, you know. The way Mama was.”

  Monty looked at her with a sad light in his eyes. “But you’re nothing like Mama.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure. If I lost my husband to the Spanish flu so young, I might turn to drink for comfort, too.”

  Monty let out a heartless laugh. “Oh, Googie, how can you spend so many years in a place like Hollywood and still be so naïve?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Dear old Daddy didn’t up and die o’ no flu. And Mama sure as heck didn’t turn to the booze because o’ no lonely old heart.”

  An awkward silence fell between them. “What are you saying?”

  “Mama’s stories about Daddy. That’s all they were: stories she made up so she didn’t have to think about the truth.”

  Gwendolyn chewed on her bear claw; it suddenly seemed spongy and indigestible. “What truth?”

  Monty sighed. “The long and short of it all was that Daddy went and died of syphilis.”

  “Syphilis?” All her life, Gwendolyn had sat through her mother’s endless speechifying about the nobility of her father’s death. How stoically he suffered! How rarely he complained! The indignities he endured!

  “Old Doc Lewis reckons he knew what he had, but was too ashamed to admit it. Daddy let it go on for so long that by the time he landed himself in the doc’s office, he was too far gone.”

  After a lifetime of thinking her father had died of the Spanish flu, Gwendolyn found it hard to switch over to syphilis. “But that’s a venereal disease, isn’t it?”

  “Doc Lewis said that our daddy was the most notorious wildcat in all Broward County. It was just a matter of time before he picked up something. But you have to hand it to Mama. She didn’t toss him out. She nursed him until he died.”

  “Of . . . syphilis.” Maybe if I say the word often enough it eventually won’t sound horrible.

  “The Spanish flu was just a more socially acceptable way for Daddy to die. You know Mama.” Monty’s voice was more gentle now. “So proud to be born a Boyington. Raised to be a southern lady, all genteel-like, with nothing but magnolia blossoms and big floppy sun hats to fuss over. It wasn’t her fault all that tobacco money ended up in the pockets of riverboat card sharks and Savannah madams. Life had to be one damned disappointment after another for her. No wonder she turned to the hooch.”

  Poor Mama, Gwendolyn thought. Gin for breakfast, gin for lunch, gin for dinner, always on that saggy old sofa with Grandma’s lace doilies along the back to hide the rips and tears. “How come you know all of this and I don’t?”

  “Right after I signed up for the navy, I bumped into Doc Lewis. I told him I was going to be a sailor, and he frowned at me all serious-like. He said I was about to find myself in all sorts of situations all over the world, and he told me how to protect myself properly. He said, ‘I’m telling you this because I don’t want the same fate to befall you that befell your daddy.’ Exactly what fate was that, I asked. And then he told me everything.”

  All too soon it was time for Monty to return to the ship. Gwendolyn walked him back to the naval base where they hugged for an extra long time. She felt ten years older than she had that morning. Monty extracted a promise to send him cakes and chocolates as often as she could–other guys’ families sent care packages, the contents of which acted like currency on board ship. She watched Monty jog up the gangplank and turn around to wave before disappearing into the huge battleship.

  As she wandered away from the base, she mentally tried to swat away the word ‘syphilis’ that bounced around her head like a rabid mosquito. What had she gained by learning that her daddy was a wildcat? Maybe it’s a good thing, she thought with a silent sigh, that I live in a town that manufactures make-believe for a living.

  Gwendolyn was window shopping at Baggenshue’s when she saw a blood-red stiletto start to wobble. Within seconds, the window display toppled over and the sidewalk began to tremble. The trembles escalated to rapid shudders and pitched Gwendolyn sideways into a telephone pole. She hugged the pole and looked up, expecting thunderclouds to match the deafening noise, but the sky was clear, bright blue. A woman screamed inside Baggenshue’s just before a shower of glass started to fall. Gwendolyn ducked and covered her head with her pocketbook as the telephone pole jolted, splintered, and plunged toward the store. Gwendolyn let go and tried to escape the glass and tile that crashed down to the pavement.

  She started up the sidewalk, but it shook so hard she couldn’t stand. She fell like she’d been punched and the concrete tore her palms and knees. A man screamed behind her, and she looked back in time to see a brick wall quiver like cardboard and the ground rise six inches into the air, then drop just as suddenly. The whole street shuddered and tilted toward her.

  Ramon Novarro was in no shape to drive; the smell of rye liquor pervaded the insides of his black Pontiac. At the corner of Hollywood and Sunset, the set of Intolerance, Hollywood’s first blockbuster, still towered. Ramon took the corner on two wheels. Marcus gave up counting the red lights they’d run somewhere around Aimee Semple McPherson’s evangelical temple on the way into downtown.

  “What’s the hurry?” Marcus asked.

  “We have waited too long for this moment, yes?”

  Marcus nodded. But wouldn’t it be nice to get there in one piece? he thought.

  Ramon turned onto Fifth and lurched into a parking spot. Marcus looked across the street to the Derbyshire Arms where that sailor, Zachary, had told him queers don’t get to have dates or marriage or relationships. The place was rattier than Marcus remembered.

  “Is that where we’re going?” Marcus asked.

  Ramon’s eyes followed Marcus’ and he shot him a look that said, Why would you even think that? They got out of the car and Marcus followed Ramon to the top of Pershing Square and into the river of commuters entering the Subway Termina
l, a huge, gray, four-pronged building. They descended two stories to a subway platform crammed with men anxious for the leafy outskirts of Pasadena.

  Ramon led Marcus to the end of the platform and opened a door marked TRANSIT STAFF ONLY onto a corridor lit by bare bulbs every fifty feet or so. They rushed up a staircase and turned right at the fork onto a narrower corridor that smelled of wet concrete. Marcus ached to ask, Wouldn’t my bed at the Garden of Allah have been more comfortable? but said nothing and followed Ramon through the next door. They walked into a wide, warm corridor. The air smelled inexplicably citrusy. Lemons? Pineapples? Marcus couldn’t quite make it out.

  Ramon took Marcus’ hand and led him beneath a skylight made of thick, frosted glass, reinforced with wire. The light there was the gentle, forgiving light that movie stars favored. Did they drive all the way here so that Ramon could be well-lit for their romantic love scene? Marcus couldn’t figure out if he was finally seeing Ramon Novarro for being the vain movie star he was, or was he marveling at Ramon’s originality and ingenuity for finding such a perfect make out hideaway? I don’t know what to think at this point, he told himself. You’ve got what you wanted, haven’t you?

  Ramon leaned against the wall and pulled Marcus to him. “Look up there.” Marcus looked up at the soles of people’s shoes walking along the street right above them. They listened to the metal tips of a girl’s high heels hit the glass: clack-clack-clack-clack. “I love to come here,” Ramon’s voice echoed softly in the concrete hallway. “I watch the people walk past. I love that they are walking home from work, going to buy a newspaper, and just below them are two men making love. It gives me a thrill.”

  It dawned on Marcus that he wasn’t the first guy Ramon Novarro had brought here. He searched himself and found that he wasn’t jealous; he was flattered.

  Ramon cupped his hands around Marcus’ face and pulled their mouths together. Their tongues explored each other with a pent-up passion that Marcus’ Pershing Square encounters lacked. He slid his arms around Ramon’s waist and pulled him close until he could feel the heat of Ramon’s body along the length of his own. Ramon’s smooth hands wandered inside Marcus’ shirt and down his trousers, melting his skin wherever he touched. Their trousers slid past their knees, and Marcus could feel the air of the underground corridor brush past his leg hair.

  Two pairs of heels clattered across the glass slab a foot and a half above their heads. “I am close,” Ramon whispered into Marcus’ ear, “but we must not rush.”

  He reclaimed Marcus’ mouth and they kissed again, long and hard. Ramon kneaded Marcus’ ass and Marcus rode up and down Ramon’s taut body, his climax rising inside him. He started to pant.

  They froze when they heard the sound of steel girders scraping against each other. Someone stopped on the skylight and exclaimed, “What was that?” The wall that Ramon leaned against began to shudder, then jolt, and a deep crack snaked along the wall toward them. The thunder grew louder and louder and suddenly the corridor filled with dust. A skylight shook loose and a block of glass and wire slammed to the floor.

  Ramon grabbed Marcus’ hand and pulled him back the way they’d come. They had just reached the door when a violent jerk rocked them off their feet. Marcus yanked the door open as a load of bricks crashed down outside it.

  CHAPTER 31

  His name was Roy. It wasn’t short for anything, and it hadn’t been invented for a movie marquee. It suited him like his dungarees and sturdy boots did, and Kathryn liked it. This comforted her as she lay under Roy under the smashed second floor of Exotica Flowers and Bulbs amid plaster, glass, and a world-class selection of potted dahlias.

  It was hard to know how long she had been out, but when she came to, the dead weight of a strange man was on top of her. He had been on the first floor and she on the second when the quake hit, so it wasn’t clear how they ended up together, but there they were, head to head, toe to toe, groin to groin.

  She assumed he was dead. She squirmed and writhed to get out from under his body but he was pinned to her by a heavy wooden beam. It was her squirming that brought him around. Her relief at discovering she wasn’t buried underneath a cadaver was only short lived and quickly replaced by the discomfort of realizing that a fully conscious stranger was laying on top of her like a casual afternoon lover.

  It seemed appropriate to introduce themselves before they struggled together again–Hello Miss Kathryn Massey...Good afternoon Mr. Roy Quinn–but they couldn’t budge the beam an inch and quickly exhausted their strength. They called out for the florist. Kathryn closed her eyes. “She must be dead.”

  When Roy didn’t reply, she opened her eyes and found him staring at her. “Your hair is absolutely gorgeous,” he said, as though the quality of her hair was the most pressing problem facing them right at that moment. “My mother was a hairdresser, so I know more about hair than men ought to.” He threw her a disarming smile that bunched his cheeks into the dreamiest dimples she’d ever seen. She blushed.

  “Are you in pain?” he asked her. “Any bricks or broken beams jammed into your back?”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “And your legs? Your feet? They’re not caught at an uncomfortable angle or anything?”

  “My right ankle is throbbing a little,” she admitted. “What about you?”

  “I had a nice lady to break my fall.”

  They were screwing before the second aftershock. The first one was strong enough to disturb the rubble and shift the crossbeam from his thighs to his ankles, allowing him a greater range of motion. Straining against the beam did little other than drive Kathryn’s orange sundress up to her hips. Roy said apologetically that he didn’t think he could hold his head up for much longer, and would it be very forward of him to rest his forehead against hers.

  Kathryn smiled to herself as she gazed along the curved driveway of the Long Beach Community Hospital, waiting for Roy to pick her up. If I could just lay my forehead against yours . . . Looking back now it was a wonder it took us a full ten minutes to start kissing. Was it because, by then, the sun had slipped away and we could hardly see each other? Kathryn laughed out loud. Sun or no sun, it was a hell of a way for a girl to lose her virginity.

  A faded blue old Ford pick-up, rutted with dents and pockmarked with rust pulled up and Roy jumped out. His car suited him as well as his name did.

  “Were you laughing at my truck?”

  “Heavens, no,” Kathryn said. She hooked her crutches under her arms. “You’re a godsend for doing this for me.”

  A hundred and fifteen people were dead, thousands were homeless, and nearly everyone in Southern California had been injured by the great Long Beach earthquake. She’d even read a report about how it had interrupted filming of the “Shadow Waltz” a musical scene in a new Warner Brothers musical, Gold Diggers of 1933, nearly throwing choreographer Busby Berkeley from a camera boom, and rattling dancers on a thirty-foot-high platform. But somehow Kathryn and her sprained ankle scored a bed for the night. It wasn’t until Roy headed west that the full impact of the earthquake hit her. Building after building lay in dusty piles of broken bricks and glass. Where a façade was shaken loose, the rest of a structure was exposed like a giant doll’s house. That was the odd thing about earthquakes — one building could be reduced to a heap of dust while the one right next to it was undisturbed, as though nothing happened. Much like people, Kathryn reflected. She and Roy had survived relatively intact but that poor florist was probably laying in an awful, crowded morgue somewhere.

  Roy turned north onto Temple and suddenly Kathryn imagined her mother’s place in shambles. “Pull over!” she ordered. Roy looked surprised, but obeyed. At the curb, Kathryn turned to him. “About what happened last night . . .” She wanted to say that she would never forget making love with him under such preposterous circumstances. Aside from the wrenched ankle and four-hour imprisonment under a mountain of bricks, she was so very glad to have spent that time with him, but she didn’t want him to feel
obligated to her. She wanted to say all that, but when she looked into his blue-gray eyes, the words evaporated like spit on a griddle. Instead, she was overwhelmed by the longing to slide into the strongest arms she’d ever seen. He read her mind and pulled her close.

  “Please don’t tell me you regret last night,” he said into her hair. “I haven’t stopped thinking about you since I left you at the hospital.”

  Talk to him, you big dummy, she told herself. This guy is so completely the opposite of all the slick Hollywood phoneys, pretty boys and sleaze balloons that the last thing you want is to stand on the sidewalk and watch his dented old Ford rattle off into the distance. She pushed herself out of his arms so that she could face him squarely.

  “Last night was wonderful. Wonderful. But I want you to know that it puts you under no obligation. To me, I mean.”

  His expression clouded. “Oh, I see. It’s just that . . . I was kind of hoping maybe we could try it someplace more comfortable, like a bed . . . ?” He pulled her close and Kathryn melted into him again. He leaned down and kissed her deeply.

  When Francine popped into her head, Kathryn sat back and straightened her hair. “What on earth am I doing? My mother could be . . . and I’m sitting here . . . with you.” She wanted to walk the rest of the way, to come upon her mother’s house alone, so she scrambled out of the truck with her crutches and slammed the door shut with the hip that didn’t ache like hell. They waved goodbye.

  Kathryn’s heart sank when she came to Francine’s place. Five-zero-five Temple Street was a set of four Californian bungalows, two on each side of a central garden alive with petunias and poppies, daisies and lilies. The bungalows themselves were a soft peach color and their roofs blanketed with ivy and bougainvillea. The pink-purple flowers burst with color so bright it almost hurt to gaze at them. Kathryn could tell it must have looked like some idyllic scene from a painting before the quake hit. Now the bungalows on the right looked like they’d been tackled by a wrecking ball on rampage. The ones on the left had lopsided front doors; every window in the place was busted.