“Overrated!?”
“Gorged with style. How clever! I like simple storytelling. Clean and direct.”
“Yeah, direct to some guys nuts!” Abbie said.
“Oh, you’ve seen my films!”
“I suffer from insomnia.”
We came to the landscaped area that denoted the grounds of the Castle. There were pine and fir trees, fruit trees and other plants exotic to this locale. Suddenly on a slight elevation above the road you could make out part of a curved structure with Ionic columns, one of the marble colonnades that adorned the Neptune Pool, if my memory of research served. The cars stopped and we got out of the limo and followed Ranger Blunt up some stairs to an area in front of La Casa del Mar. Fine enough to be a palatial home for just about anybody but the most ostentatious, it was here, on the hill, just one of three guest houses. The view was spectacular, which was not unexpected. Very rich men like William Randolph Hearst did not spend thirty years building such homes without a spectacular view. A view not just of beauty. Your eye followed the land down, past the well-maintained landscaped area, to the oak woodlands, then onto the grassy coastal plain, finally picking up the ocean at the finely etched coastline, an ocean that did not end abruptly at the far off horizon, but definitely continued on in a curve beyond it. This was a planet you were standing on! You felt that deeply, and if you had owned this land, it would not have been too difficult to allow yourself to feel like a god astride it.
“This way.” Hatless and seven Ranges ushered us through the grounds of patios and gardens; of fountains; of ancient statues—an Egyptian that was probably over 3,000 years old—and of reproductions—Donatello’s David high atop a three tiered fountain casually standing nude over the severed head of Goliath, his exposed penis just as casual (nice to know the kid didn’t get off on violence)—until we got to the front entrance of the main house, the actual Castle, as everyone calls it, La Casa Grande, Hearst called it, when he didn’t just refer to it as the “Ranch House.”
“Wow!” Brett said.
“Jesus Christ! It’s like a fucking cathedral!” Brooke added as her eyes traveled up from the very gothic entrance full of sculpted limestone portraits of religious figures—including a Virgin and Child high up over the massive, iron bar covered doors—to the twin Spanish Renaissance bell towers. “This thing was built on purpose? I mean, like, in this century? For a home?”
The doors were now open and in the doorway stood Sara Hutton. She was still wearing her RAF pants, but had the jacket off. The light blue shirt had been opened at the neck and the black tie had been pulled down for some relief. As the clothes had obviously been tailored for her, she did not look odd, like a little girl playing daddy, and yet she was not attractive enough as a female to make it a unisexual sexy fashion statement. It was just her uniform and she wore it with authority. “Brooke, my dear, William Randolph Hearst loved beauty. Wherever throughout the world he found it and could buy it, he did. If he couldn’t buy it, he reproduced it. He obviously wanted to be surrounded by beauty, so he built all this. Architecture, sculpture, nature, everything you’re going to see inside. A beauty cocoon! What a fucking neat idea. If you can afford it.”
“Yeah, but,” Brooke’s lip curled, Elvis like, in mild disgust, “it’s so—so—“
“When you build yours, Brooke, then you can decide on the beauty.” She then turned to all of us. “Welcome. You are going to be guests at La Casa Grande, a privilege long since faded into the past, when the elite of Hollywood were called up here on a regular basis to keep company with Mr. Hearst. I hope you will find it a pleasurable and enlightening stay. The Rangers will take you to your rooms. Freshen yourselves up. Go for a swim in the Neptune Pool, if you wish. Cocktails are being served in the Assembly Room at six sharp. Oh, and by the way, Lydia, we have put you in the Celestial Suite on the top floor. I certainly hope you don’t mind being that close to heaven.”
“I have no objections if heaven doesn’t,” Lydia said.
Sara smiled then stepped back into the house, closing the doors as she did so.
“This way,” one of the Rangers, one who had not yet spoken to us, said as he lead us around the back of the house and had us enter by a narrow door. There various Rangers took control of us and led us to our bedrooms.
Sheila Barnes took Lydia off to the Celestial Suite, while the hatless Ranger conducted Henderson and Pinsker to:
“The Della Robbia Suite,” he stated the fact dryly.
It was like stepping into the early Italian Renaissance.
“Della Robbia?” I inquired of Hatless.
His eyes went hard. “I’m not a guide.”
“Oh, sorry, thought you might—”
“I’m here for security.”
“Security?”
“Valuable property. State park. Protecting it for all our citizens.”
“How democratic of you. So this Max? What is he, first among equals?”
He obviously didn’t understand the question as his brow knitted tight.
“Never mind. Uh,” I slapped my pockets, “I would give you a tip, but I’m all out of change.”
An insult he could understand. Hatless snorted. “Enjoy your stay,” he said in a tone so mono it truly stood alone. “I’ve been ordered to say that, but I don’t mean it.” He turned and left.
“He’s honest in his insincerity,” Roee said.
I gave Roee a look, one to remind us both that we were probably being listened to. “Nice room,” I said.
There were two beds, side by side, each a four poster carved in walnut with massive headboards. Behind the beds was a tapestry of some happy maids. Over one window was a round wall plaque featuring stars and over the fireplace was a base relief of a man and a child. Across the room was a large painting of a woman looking immaculate. On the floor was an oriental rug. On the rug was an octagon table with chairs. It was all dark and heavy and somewhat oppressive, as if we should, in this room, be planning the poisoning of some colorfully robed head of State.
“Well,” I said to Pinsker, “should we get a little sun?”
*
Henderson and Pinsker showed up at the Neptune Pool in exactly the same clothes they had worn to the air show, carrying their briefcases. They came to a deck area between a colonnade and the mock Greek temple facade, and sat stiffly in two patio chairs. They placed their briefcases on their laps, opened them, pulled out papers, and began to consult with each other.
We were the epitome of gray men.
It was only about seventy-five degrees out, but the five were in the pool. How could they not be? Three hundred and forty-five thousand gallons of pure, clear mountain spring water in a setting that would not look out of place on Mt. Olympus—I mean the home of the Gods, not the high-price residential district in Los Angeles, just off Laurel Canyon—is pretty damn inviting, no matter what the weather.
Brooke was doing laps in a kind of asexual one-piece suit you usually see on competition swimmers. Abbie was alternatively floating on his back, then doing backward underwater somersaults. Thad was clinging to the side of the pool by a grouping of statues of goddesses, mermaids and cherubs, slowly kicking his legs, dreaming, still wearing his small round glasses. Brett, wearing tight trunks, kept getting out of the pool to dive back in, showing off the form of his not unattractive body. The form and a certain protuberance thereof.
“Flaunt it, baby, flaunt it,” Roee very quietly whispered.
“Hey!” Nick called from the deep end where he was treading water. “What are you guys doing there? Get your suits on! Come on in!”
“I’m sorry,” I shouted across the pool, “we didn’t pack any suits.”
“So?” Brett said on the edge of a dive. “Skinny dip. We will if you will.”
“I think not,” Pinsker said as Roee regretted.
“Ah, come on, join us,” they all said in encouragement.
“Leave the boys alone!”
It was Lydia, suddenly there in a very small, bei
ge bikini. “Skimpy” was a word that hardly covered its briefness—as it, indeed, hardly covered Lydia. Its flesh tone finished the dreamlike illusion. Maybe, after all, she was Venus.
“I do not pay my boys to have fun. Much less frolic in the water. I’m only comfortable when they have paperwork in front of their eyes, and I’m only comfortable when that paperwork includes projections of the profits they are helping me to make. So please, don’t splash around them and don’t encourage them into frivolity.”
With that she ran towards the pool, leaped off the edge and dived in with the grace of a Maxwell Parish sea nymph. Parish with a touch of Vargas.
“Well, I think I found something interesting about Della Robbia!”
It was Petey. Not quite whispering in my ear through the concealed earpiece. I could have answered through the micro-microphone well-camouflaged on my person, but I had no need to. Petey would know just to give his report. Having heard the name mentioned while he was monitoring us earlier, he decided to look up Della Robbia. He checked guidebooks on the Hearst Castle, and he checked into the history of art. He gave me the information. I noted it. Roee, on the same frequency, heard it as well. We would have shared a chuckle if we did not think that it might have been an inappropriate thing for two fully clothed lawyers sitting around the gorgeous pool of the gods to do.
When the five and Lydia had had their fill of swimming, they all got up on the deck and found spots surrounding Henderson and Pinsker to stretch out on and dry off.
“Do you know who has swum in this pool?” asked Abbie, the film buff.
“Robin Leach while he was doing a segment on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous—the Deceased Edition,” Brooke suggested.
“Yeah, well,” Abbie said, “dead, but not forgotten. Charlie Chaplain. Cary Grant. Robert Montgomery—”
“Who?” Brett asked.
“Elizabeth Montgomery’s father,” Nick answered.
“Who?” Brett asked again.
“Bewitched,” Thad stated.
“Oh, yeah. We’re remaking that!” Brett was now happy. He understood.
“Greta Garbo,” Abbie continued. “Buster Keaton. The Barrymores, John and Lionel. Irving Thalberg.” The last name was said with some reverence. “They all used to come up here. Do you know how rare it is that anybody gets to swim in this pool anymore? Do you know what a privilege this has been?”
“How do you know they all went for a swim?” Brett really wanted to know.
“What?”
“All those old stars. I mean, how do you know they actually went for a swim, just because they visited here. I mean, maybe they couldn’t swim, maybe they didn’t like to swim.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Well, you asked, ‘Do you know who swam in this pool?’ So I thought—”
“Okay, then. Do you know who’s been up here? Who has stayed at this place?”
“All those dead people you mentioned?”
Abbie was disgusted. “Yeah, all those dead people. Those dead people used to be the royalty of Hollywood.”
“And now we are!” Brooke announced it, raising her hands into the air as if accepting some appointment—or anointment.
“Yeah, like I said. It’s a privilege for us to be invited up here.”
“How did Sara pull it off,” Thad wanted to know.
“Not Sara. It’s this Max,” Abbie said. “He can make things like this happen. Don Gulden came up here. He said we are going to hear some very serious shit. Some important stuff. He said, ‘count yourself lucky to be included. Those that are, are the Hollywood of the future.’ That’s what he said.”
Lydia laughed at the drama of it. “Wouldn’t this Max be more impressive if he actually owned this place?”
“Hell, no!” Nick said. “That would only take money. Getting us in here took manipulation of the government. That’s Power!”
On the word, Power, Brooke gave a little shake and just the tiniest of squeals. The temperature had dropped a couple of degrees, and a cool breeze was rising, so it may have just been a shiver—or it just might have been the manifestation of a thrill over what the word represented. That would not have surprised the gods.
*
At six PM we all gathered in the Assembly Room on the ground floor of the Castle. A sitting room so large—2400 square feet, Petey lodged into my ear—that the grand piano in one corner was hardly noticeable. The room had been built to display four large tapestries that depicted the victory of Roman general Scipio Africanus Major over Hannibal at Zama in the year 202 BC—or Petey told me.
“Kind of feels like a museum,” Henderson said to Pinsker.
“Yes,” Pinsker said. “Wish I had one of those audio tour setups so I could find out what absolutely everything is in the most detailed of accounts.”
“You would?”
“I would.”
“I wouldn’t. No, I wouldn’t like that at all, in fact, I would hate that. It would irritate me. Drive me to certain violence, I’m sure. Something really gruesome. Bloody. Lot of body parts laying around, say, like there was after the battle of Zama.”
“All right, I’ll shut up! I thought maybe a little edification would be welcomed, but if this is the way it’s going to be appreciated, consider your tour at an end!”
“Small miracles, Mr. Pinsker,” I quietly said to Roee, “are always the most welcomed.”
After a closer look I realized that the Assembly Room seemed less like a museum than like the lobby of a very old, never refurbished, Grand Hotel. Once the central meeting place of power in its city, now a quiet, if moldy, respite for those weary of the Twentieth Century and not looking forward to the Twenty-first. There were groupings of overstuffed chairs around tables; a card table and chairs; the grand piano you had to look for; a sitting area anchored by a couch under the window; a long mahogany table in the center of the room with four huge silver candlesticks on it, a massive, ornate French stone fireplace adorned with statues; several very old and dark carved wood choir stalls ripped out of some gothic church. The choir stalls, which lined the walls under the tapestries, formed a row of hard, uncomfortable looking chairs with extremely tall backs—trying to reach to heaven, I suppose, like the vaulted ceilings they would look best under. The walls, when you could see them, were formed of large, light colored bricks laid in an alternating pattern. The floor, seen where the oriental rugs were not, was teakwood done in a parquet design. The whole room was illuminated by thirty-two groupings of four naked light bulbs each, attached to a Renaissance ceiling of elaborately carved wood panels. It was not vaulted, but was stratospheric enough not to matter.
Four of the Rangers were there, serving drinks, including Hatless and Blunt, now in civvies. That they were still armed I had no doubt, and a brief accidental bumping against Hatless confirmed the fact for me. Nick, Brett, Abbie, and Thad were in suits, a small army of Armani (to be a walking cliché seemed admirable to these gentlemen), and Brooke was in a skin tight, near fire engine red cocktail dress that ended mid-calf in a flare out of ruffles. Lydia’s dress was stunning, deep azure blue emphasizing everything about Lydia that took so well to emphasizing. She wore her hair down, allowing it to cascade on her shoulders. On her lips she wore a red-purple lipstick that literally sparkled.
Henderson and Pinsker? Brooks Brothers, of course.
Sara entered, grabbing our attention wearing an extremely short, simple black cocktail dress which left her with bare arms, bare back and bare legs (no stockings, I noticed). Her hair was gelled into style, making it almost a soft helmet, and she wore make-up, well applied and subtle, but giving her a glow of the face we had not seen before.
“Hello, how are you,” she greeted us. “What are you having to drink?”
Almost everyone was having a martini in large glasses of fine crystal with jade green steams and bases. Sara saw this and said, “Oh I’ll have one of those,” to Ranger Blunt, who prepared it and brought it over to her. Their eyes met as both their hands held
the glass during the transference. It wasn’t hard to sense that a connection was made.
Sara took a sip. “Isn’t this a fabulous room?”
Everybody said, yes, yes, and nodded in agreement.
“Did you enjoy your swim?”
“Yes,” Thad said. “What a great pool.”
“Well, the indoor pool, you know,” Sara said, “which is like this huge Roman bath, is even better. Of course, that one is best used late at night.” She turned to Lydia “You should feel right at home, Lydia. Everything Hearst has here in the Castle was either brought over from Europe or is based on works from there.”
“Yes, I suppose it could serve well as the Parliament House for the European Union,” Lydia said.
“It would be marvelous as that wouldn’t it? If it was only in Europe, of course.” She had not really understood the tone Lydia’s tuning-fork tongue.
“That’s okay. Europeans love to travel.”
“Well….” Sara had no idea where to take it. “So, Lydia, you’ve spent the day with my friends here, but let me play the good host and really introduce them to you.”
She walked over to Thad and put her arm around his waist. “Thad here is an agent at William Morris. Young and aggressive, yet with a quiet, subtle method that, oddly enough, is bringing him much attention in the business. He’s making his name by concentrating on new directors. His star at the moment is Jim Cruckshank, who made last year’s big sci-fi epic, Hell Planet. Such a good picture Thad.” She gave Thad an affectionate squeeze around his middle—as if he had made the film.
“Brett is a director of development at Tri-Star, just moved up from the story department.” She moved over to him and grabbed his hand, like a girl grabbing a boy’s hand at the prom. “We’re very proud of Brett.”
“But you do not run Tri-Star, you run Olympic,” Lydia said.
Sara took the accusation with an open face. “I’m trying to inject some magnanimousness into the industry.” She looked up into Brett’s face. “Keep up the good work, Brett.” He leaned down and kissed her. It must have been expected for she returned it promptly enough.
“Both Brett and Thad went to Harvard, by the way. Not as impressive as Yale, of course, but….”
Hollywood is an All Volunteer Army Page 28
