by Ed Ifkovic
“Ethan,” she announced. “You’ve brought the circus.”
“Be nice, Lorena,” he pleaded.
“Why would I go out of character?”
He laughed, a dry, brittle laugh that seemed more sardonic than celebratory. Immediately he disappeared into a corner of the sofa, and began picking a trace of Rags’ generous dog hair off a pants leg. “In Arabian countries,” he told no one in particular, “it’s considered unclean to have dogs inside a house.”
“I’m a hard-shell Baptist,” Ava told him.
“Christ,” he mumbled.
Ava looked toward Max and Alice, shrugged her shoulders, and mouthed the words: I’m sorry. Max waved back, a thin smile on his face.
Reenie circulated with more appetizers, but deliberately rolled her eyes when she approached Tony, who was mixing his drink with his index finger. For a few minutes I talked quietly with Lorena about her life in the script department of Paramount, but it was a strained conversation. Everyone seemed to be keeping a deliberate, if tense, distance from one another, the two hostile factions content to drink in corners and eye the others over the rims of their whiskey glasses. No one was happy, but maybe Tony/Tiny.
Lorena told me, “As you can tell from our opening skit, Ethan used to be a scriptwriter.”
From across the room Ethan shook his head. “For God’s sake, Lorena. Not really. One measly script doesn’t count. I’m a numbers guy.”
“You mean a racketeer,” Frank joked. He was pouring himself a drink.
“Yeah, sure thing.” Ethan didn’t look happy.
Ethan, I noted, drank spring water, refusing liquor. And he eyed Tony who got drunker and drunker, at one point spilling his drink on his sleeve. Now and then Ethan put out his hand, protectively, admonishingly, warning in his eye. When Tony turned away, Ethan slid Tony’s glass to the side, the older brother as desperate protector. He saw me looking. “I am my brother’s keeper, Miss Ferber. A lot of good it does me.”
Tony looked at his brother, squinted. “You won’t let me have fun.”
“That’s because one of us goes to work in the morning, the one who pays your bills.”
Tony narrowed his eyes, a trace of resentment there. “I make money at the club.”
“Which you toss away.”
“Now, boys,” Frank began, “remember your old mama in Hoboken.”
Ava spoke up. “Francis is loyal to old friends to the point of downright suffocation. Get him talking about playing kick ball with Lenny in the street and he’ll get weepy on you.”
Frank ignored her. He raised his glass. “To the memory of Lenny, my old boyhood friend.”
I toasted someone I didn’t know, but I noted that neither Max nor Alice raised their glasses. At the mention of her dead husband—I flashed to that clipping of Alice in a police station—Alice looked down into her lap. Lorena was shaking her head, unhappy. Ava sat with her arms folded, her lips drawn into a straight line.
Tony leaned into me. “Frank takes care of us. Got me the job in the valley. He knows people.”
Ava spoke over his words. “Max used to be Tony’s agent, but Tony deserted Max when…” She stopped, flustered.
Downing his drink and swaying back and forth, Tony bellowed, “When Alice murdered my brother.”
The words sailed across the room. Time stopped.
Lorena had been lighting a cigarette but froze, the match burning.
Looking up, Alice gasped.
“Cool it, Tony.” Frank spoke through clenched teeth.
“Don’t be an idiot, Tony.” Ava punched his sleeve. “Not here tonight.”
Ethan was frowning. “Tony, shut up.”
But Tony couldn’t be stopped. “I gotta say it again. She pushed him off that balcony. She got all the money. His money. Our money. Lenny promised us, remember? She married that…that fool Max. Him.” He pointed at the ashen man. “He was just…waiting.”
Ava spoke to me sarcastically. “The legendary Lenny Pannis had lots of money, pots of it at the end of the Hollywood rainbow, at least his brothers believe he did. He ran shadowy businesses and played with the big boys. He was a big shot in this town. Supposedly he made a fortune.”
“He did,” Tony went on, his words biting. “He did. Alice killed him. He was gonna divorce her. The money…” He glared at Alice, who was staring down into her lap again. Max was making rumbling noises, fidgeting in his seat.
I stared at them all, stupefied by this raw and public scene.
“Stop it now,” Ethan whispered.
Ava was trying to end the conversation and looked at me. Perhaps she saw disgust on my face, tempered by a little wonder. “The neighbors heard them arguing on the balcony. Lenny, agitated, toppled over. Alice was inside…”
Tony yelled, “That’s the phony story the police bought.”
Ethan stood abruptly and looked shame-faced. “We shouldn’t have come. Tony, get up.”
But there was no stopping the drunk man. “I fired Max. He was an accomplice to murder.”
Ava sneered. “And look at the jobs you’ve been getting ever since.”
“Hey, I’m doing all right.” He pointed at Max. “You ruined all our careers, Max.”
Max started to say something, but Alice put her hand on his knee. He blinked wildly at her.
“Say good night, Tony.” Ethan prodded him.
I turned to Ethan. “And what do you think of Max?”
Ethan deliberated, cool, quiet, steely-eyed, turning from me to glare directly at Alice. He spoke to her. “He married the woman who murdered my brother, Miss Ferber. We just can’t prove it. And on top of everything else, now we learn he’s a Commie. Max is filled with surprises.”
Silence. An awful silence.
Ava sidled up to Frank and watched as he poured himself a drink at the sideboard. I didn’t hear what she whispered to him, though Frank, gulping down a drink, spoke loud enough for all of us to share the moment. “Hey, I got friends, too. You did say party. I only party with friends.”
Ava whispered something else, but he turned away. He caught my censorious eye—a look I’d perfected and executed on even more annoying members of the lesser species—but he simply smiled that charming witchcraft smile. A hard nut to crack, this Sinatra boy, a crooner confident in his power to attract. I figured it was time he met his match.
The two Pannis brothers huddled in a corner, Ethan whispering in Tony’s ear. The woman who’d followed them in—she’d stood in a corner the whole time—now tucked her arm around Tony’s waist.
I sat back as Max nudged me.
“Edna.” Max tried to make a joke. “You don’t look like you’re having fun.”
“I didn’t expect to.” I sipped my drink. “I’m too old for these shenanigans.” I pointed a narrow finger around the room. “This tinseltown soap opera.”
“I expect you never liked cocktail parties…ever,” Alice added.
“Like New Year’s Eve parties, which I avoid like the plague, cocktail parties thrive on forced hilarity and futile dreams of new and unexpected pleasure.”
“Good God,” Lorena howled.
“Then what do you do for entertainment?” Alice asked.
“Well, I go to cocktail parties and New Year’s parties. I like to watch people fail at their dreams.”
Max shook his head during the abrupt pause that followed my comments. “Don’t believe her, Alice. The people Edna watches will end up in one of her novels. She’s memorizing our scintillating dialogue right now.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, Max,” I chided. “George Kaufman you’re not.”
The woman who was hanging onto Tony’s sequined sleeve squealed at something he said, and then apologized. She clung to Tony, sipping the drink he’d handed her, but she looked frightened, as though she couldn’t understand what had just happened in the room. Now she was whispering in Tony’s ear, and he didn’t look happy.
“Is that Tony’s keeper?” I asked Alice.
Ma
x, listening, answered. “Liz Grable.”
“Tell me about her.”
Max brushed an affectionate hand across Alice’s face. “See, what did I tell you? The novelist.”
“Is she Betty Grable’s misguided sister?” I wondered aloud.
Alice smiled as Max spoke in a soft voice. “Her name is Liz Carnecki. A fledgling actress, at least a decade ago. She thought a name change would usher her into stardom.”
“Did it work?”
“She’s still trying, God knows where. I was her agent for a split second, a favor to Tony way back when, but I could rarely place her. Nowadays she works in a hair salon on Hollywood Boulevard. Hair Today. Can you imagine? She’s got an efficiency that’s way, way out by the Hollywood Cemetery on Santa Monica Boulevard, where Tony squats these days.”
Liz Grable/Carnecki was now staring at me, mouth agape, showing too many capped teeth. Had she heard us chatting about her? An impossible woman, I realized, all bamboozle and peroxide, hair so teased and puffed and platinum she looked like cotton candy at a fair. A woman in her forties—those lines could no longer be disguised by all that pancake makeup—she attempted a sweet twenty-something starlet look with that round bright red blotch on each cheek, that Clara Bow cupid’s mouth, that tight cobalt-blue fringed cocktail dress slit up one leg, and a stenciled leopard pattern scarf around her shoulders. A shock of seashells—yes, they had to be seashells gathered on some California strand—circled her powdered neck. She was, I suppose, perfect for Tony/Tiny, though I hereby confess a definite orneriness in my description of the bodacious lass.
“Miss Ferber!” She came sailing across the room, and I feared a catastrophic collision. “I was telling Tony last night that I would make a perfect Sabra Cravat in any remake of Cimarron. I was born in Oklahoma. And I hear you’re finishing your book on Texas. I know oil wells. My papa…”
Tony/Tiny, her sequined conquering hero, dragged her away.
Lorena leaned into me. “Are you ready to leave yet?”
“I’m always ready to leave a party.”
Lorena lowered her voice. “I can’t believe they all showed up here, Edna. Everyone has been so careful to…to avoid these encounters. And that drunken attack by Tony—well, we’ve heard it before.”
“Is Tony always like this?”
Lorena glanced at Tony. “He’s often the one everyone likes—when he’s sober. He can be sweet—used to be sweet. But when he drinks…”
“Why are they here?”
“Frank brought them here on purpose—to rile Ava. He had to know. Ethan and Tony refuse to be in the same room as Alice. Frank knows that. And Frank can’t stand Liz. To bring her here…”
“She’s not a favorite of yours?”
Lorena shrugged her shoulders. “I’m too unglamorous for her. And of no importance. She tends to ignore the other women in the room. Liz spends her days clipping hair and waiting to be discovered like Lana Turner at the Tip Top Café on Highland Avenue.”
“It’s not going to happen?” I injected wonder into my words.
“Not in this lifetime, even out here in fantasy land.” But Lorena seemed to regret her words. “I shouldn’t mock her. She is who she is. It’s the boys I should be angry with.”
The two hostile camps settled into different corners of the living room, though every so often Tony hurled hostile looks at Alice. Max was mumbling about leaving, repeatedly checking his wristwatch. Alice whispered, “A little longer, Max. Just for Ava’s sake.”
But Ava wasn’t happy. Her strides across the room were abrupt, jerky. Frank stood next to the liquor cabinet, his tongue rolled into his cheek, the wary battler, eyeing her, waiting, waiting. Lorena and I made small talk about Agnes Moorhead who played Parthy in Show Boat, an actress we both knew slightly and who now, Lorena informed me, was unhappy with the way her lines were cut in the movie, making her a one-dimensional harpy. We watched Liz Grable, lipstick smeared on one side of her mouth, pick her nervous path across the floor to Frank’s side, where she proceeded to vamp and titter like a schoolgirl flirtation. From where I sat I could pick out her coy flattery, as her fingers grazed his sleeve. Nodding silently, Frank leaned into her, made a loud, cruel observation about cheap Woolworth’s perfume and looked ready to shove her away. Hurt flooded Liz’s face, her eyes blinking wildly. Any moment she’d burst into tears.
Lighting a cigarette, Ava watched the scene carefully. One false move on Frank’s part, I suspected, and she’d tear across that room, nails extended, clawing Liz’s powder-puff face to shreds. But Frank turned away, delicately maneuvering Liz out of his path, and Ava leaned against the wall. Her chest heaved, a spasm of utter sadness escaping her.
The party died. Voices drifted off, eyes closed, weary. Drinks slipped onto the floor, and a funereal pall settled in the room. I’d been chatting to Lorena about something Agnes Moorhead told me during her visit to New York when I became aware that my voice was the only sound in the room. Bothered, I looked up into a sea of blank, accusing faces. Tony, eyes narrowed, was glaring at Max, who stared back, bothered. Alice had leaned into her husband protectively, her fingers gripping his sleeve.
Suddenly I wondered how drunk Tony really was. His look conveyed more sloe-eyed resentment than, say, an inebriate’s sloppy anger. How much of his drunken spiel was a deliberate act? There was caginess in his eyes as he surveyed the room. A sweet man? I wondered at Lorena’s words. A man definitely hard to read. His severe stare moved to Alice, his former sister-in-law, and the rubbery face contorted, tightened. It was, frankly, an awful moment, rank as a battlefield wound. The room shuddered.
Ethan had been sitting next to him, moody, withdrawn, his eyes also on the black widow Alice, but now, jarred by Tony’s grunting and jerky moves, he roused and reached out to grip Tony’s arm. “Stop it, Tony.” Words said softly, but forcefully.
“No, it ain’t right. What she did.”
“Not now. For God’s sake.”
“You take too much crap, Ethan.”
“Look around. People are watching you.”
“Who gives a damn?”
Frank spoke up. “You’re acting like a creep, Tony.” He motioned to Ethan, snapping his fingers. “Okay, take him home, Ethan. He’s too drunk. Get him the hell outta here.”
Liz Grable suddenly got protective, one of her arms cradling Tony’s shoulders, drawing him in. “He’s in a bad way tonight.” She looked at me, apologizing. “Tony’s a…lost boy. I’ll take care of him.”
“Take him home, Ethan. Now! Do you hear me?” Frank’s words thundered in the room.
“Yeah, sure,” Tony sneered. “Let’s leave Adam and Ava in their little paradise.” He brightened. “Isn’t that what you called them, Ethan? Adam and Ava.”
Ethan reddened and shot a nervous glance at Frank.
“Now!” Frank snapped his fingers again. His foot stomped on the floor. “Goddamn it all. Scram!” One of the Degas prints on the wall shifted.
Tony’s voice became a plaintive howl. “She married a goddamn Commie, Ethan.” He swayed, nearly fell. “We’re sitting in a room with a Commie.” He pointed a finger at Max. “You ain’t loyal to America, Max. Ain’t it enough that you ruined all—yeah, all—of our careers. Me and Liz and…and everyone else. But you turn your back on America. Christ Almighty, what a city. You”—he spoke at Alice—“kill my brother and then shack up with a pinko.”
I stood, ready to leave, tired of this maddened scene. Outside Frank’s bodyguard/driver was sitting patiently in a town car—not, I hasten to add, the monosyllabic gorilla I’d anticipated, but, rather, a gentle giant who fussed and salaamed before me, the perfect gentleman. I only saw the gun in his inside pocket when he bent to pick up some dropped car keys. He was out there now, patient, this Sir Galahad, my chariot ride back to my cocoon at the Ambassador.
“Good night.” I raised my voice.
Ava pleaded. “Edna, I’m sorry.”
“Delightful evening.”
“I’ll make i
t up to you.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“Now!” Frank thundered again. I was the one who jumped and grabbed my throat.
“Commie,” Tony repeated.
Alice had started to sob as Max maneuvered her from the sofa, headed to a side door. As he passed Ava, she reached out and touched his cheek, a quick, reverential gesture that reminded me suddenly of Julie, exiled from the showboat, leaving in darkness and gently touching the swarthy cheek of Joe as he mourned her expulsion. I expected strains of “Ol’ Man River” to swell now, a clichéd Hollywood crescendo. But no: silence in the room. Little Rags leapt around, rattled by the tension, his noisy panting and yelping a soundtrack to the evening’s ragged coda.
And then, almost as though a chapter was skipped in a book, the room emptied, everyone gone. Alice and Max left by the kitchen door, quietly. Lorena hastily shooed Ethan, Tony, and Liz into her car, taking them away. I had intended to be the first to leave, so I had no idea why I was still there, standing in the center of the room, the referee announcing the next battle between Ava and Frank. Adam and Ava in paradise my foot!
Outside my charioteer was most likely standing next to the passenger door, fingering the tattoo of MOM he doubtless had on a concealed bicep. He was probably checking his pistol in case I got feisty on the ride back.
“Good night,” I said again.
Ava breathed in. “Edna, Tony isn’t always like he was tonight. He’s a…quiet man. Lately he’s been getting worse—drunk and…” She sighed. “He has bad nights. If you meet him another time…”
“I’d rather not,” I interrupted.
Frank snickered. “His life is going nowhere.”
Ava readied another apology, but Frank looked at me as if I were the tidal wave that had caused such havoc in the room. I sensed he didn’t like me, the old biddy come a-calling. He was looking from me to Ava, a gaze that was both dismissive and furious.
