by Amor Towles
—Let’s to it, said Eve.
The proprietor accepted Eve’s payment and placed it with ceremony in a small tin box. Then he proceeded to collect the essential attributes of her person and to calibrate the contraption accordingly. He punched the letters of her name into a panel of dislodged typewriter keys. He set three adjacent dials to the year, month, and date of her birth. He took a fingerprint. He turned an arrow embedded in a spectrum of colors to the precise pigmentation of her eyes. And finally, he handed Eve the end of a stethoscope that was cabled back into the inner workings of the machine.
—If you would be so kind, he said, pointing shyly toward her sternum.
Eve slid the stethoscope under the neckline of her dress and you could suddenly hear the beating of her heart broadcast through the gramophone’s horn. As Eve and Olivia realized what they were hearing, the tempo of Eve’s heartbeat increased. But closing her eyes, Eve exhaled and inhaled and exhaled again, until her heartbeat subsided to the tempo of the waves beneath the pier.
The proprietor nodded in sober appreciation. Then after reclaiming the stethoscope, he reached into his watch pocket and produced a hexagon of brass.
—I caution you, young lady, that the Astrologicon is not to be taken lightly. I suspect the path of your life appears clearly before you—a path that in all probability is popular, convenient, and profitable. But the Astrologicon cares nothing for popularity, convenience, or profit. Rather, like the Oracle at Delphi it will advise you to do what you should regardless of opinion, difficulty, and cost.
He handed the hexagon to Eve and gestured to a slot in the machine marked by four converging arrows. Then he put his hands together and bowed.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Eve dropped the token in the slot.
There was a buzz followed by a whir. The needles on the temperature gauges began to climb and after a blast of steam the axles of the engine set in motion the pistons and pinwheels. The proprietor led them down the length of the machine, pointing to each kinetic phase—to the interpolator and the centrifuge and the epistemolog—until with the ring of a desk clerk’s bell, an envelope fell into a sterling silver toast caddy.
The envelope was addressed in fine calligraphy to Evelyn Ross—November 5th, 1938. Eve thanked the proprietor. Then she led Olivia to an uncrowded spot under a lamppost and placed the envelope in her hand.
—Livvy, whatever this says—I think you should follow it to the letter.
Olivia didn’t smile at the suggestion. She only nodded and closed her fingers around the envelope.
Then the two continued their progress past the roller coaster toward the very end of the pier where they could now see the ocean-going casinos bobbing outside the city limits. And it felt to Olivia as if the continent was being tilted and all of California was going to slip into the sea. And though she couldn’t remember the exact reference—and whether it was from mythology or the Bible—she knew instinctively as they approached the pier’s limit that she mustn’t look back.
Litsky
THE GIRLS ON THE dance floor at El Rey’s came in all his favorite colors. There were girls from across the Rio Grande with tequila-colored skin who liked to wag their fingers and shake their heads in coy dissuasion. There were girls from Alabama and New Orleans who had skin the color of bourbon and dispositions twice as sweet. And the girls from the islands came as black as a glass of rum molasses. Ochre, tawny, bronze, beaver, russet, pistol, pitch: Litsky had a taste for them all. So what did he care, if he was the only cracker on Shepherd Avenue. What did he care, if he was the only cracker in all of L.A.
•
BACK IN THE AVENUE’S holy-rolling heyday, the Laurel Canyon limousines would idle at the curb from Friday night until the Sunday sermons. It was a colored town to be sure, but one with painted porches and barbershop poles. Bernie the Weisenheimer (who had a nose for making money off of those who couldn’t make it off of themselves), he bought a roadhouse on an empty block and christened it the Rum Tum Club. He slapped tuxedos on the boys in the band and dropped some red leather booths around the four-tops. Then he ran a rope right down the middle of the dance floor, so the ises and aints would know where to do their dancing.
But after the Crash, Bernie went bust right along with the neighborhood. The porch paint peeled, the candy stripes stalled, and the highfalutins headed for higher ground. By the summer of ’36, when a Harlemite by way of Havana reopened the club as El Rey’s, he didn’t need a rope to keep the order on the dance floor anymore; but he left it lying there just the same. And as the bands played a jazz as half-bred as he was, the local girls would sweat through their dresses and shimmy over that rope with relish.
That’s why Litsky couldn’t believe his eyes when the front door opened at eleven P.M. and in walked Miss Olivia de Havilland in a strappy red dress. She was on the arm of that ravaged blonde he’d heard about, the one who’d come out of nowhere. With the blonde leading the way, the girls took one of the tables near the band and ordered tequilas and lime as if they’d been born in the barrio.
•
EARLIER THAT YEAR, Litsky had followed Dehavvy around a bit like everybody else—but what a waste of shoe leather. The boys at the studio had her on a short leash and it showed. She was all seltzer at six, supper at seven, and safely home by nine for some Mother Goose and milk before they tightly tucked her in. But then, you really couldn’t blame them. They knew exactly what they were sitting on: the 79th element.
Because on every Saturday night in every small town in America—after milking the pigs and slopping the cows—Fred and Edna were headed for the picture show. And while in exchange for their hard-earned nickels they surely hoped to see an escapade, once they’d traveled all that way to merry old England, it was the girl next door who they hoped to find on the throne.
And Dehavvy was just the ticket. As genteely in person as she was on the screen.
Yes, Siree Bob. When Fred and Edna sat at their kitchen table with their pickup cooling in the yard, as they were savoring their happily-ever-after over one last piece of pie, they could feel as proud of Dehavvy as if they’d raised her.
Knowing everything there was to know about getting his money’s worth, Jack Warner had been working Dehavvy like a horse—strapping her to a new picture every three or four months. And now the word on Wilshire was that old Jack was set to lend her out for a part in Gone with the Wind, thanks to a big fat IOU with Selznick’s name on it and a little arm-twisting by Mrs. Warner herself on Dehavvy’s behalf.
So this blonde from nowhere must have had the boys at the studios tearing their hair out. From across the room you could see that no one had a leash on her. While Dehavvy looked like she’d never seen a dance floor before, the blonde was taking things in with the narrowed eyes of a killer. She was sussing up the place and she liked what she saw. She liked the band, the tempo, the tequila—the whole shebang. If Dehavvy was bandying about with the likes of this one, then you wouldn’t have long to wait for the wrong place and the wrong time to have their tearful reunion.
•
UNBEKNOWNST TO THE SPICE Of life, the band began playing their trumpety little number for the third time. Some sort of cross between a mariachi and a rumba, this song would skip along for twenty measures and then all the boys in the band would stop on a beat and shout La Casa! before picking up where they’d left off. When they played the number for the second time, Litsky rolled his eyes with everyone else—thinking, amateurs. But when they struck it up for the third time, the crowd broke into a head-shaking grin. Maybe the gauchos were a little more soused, or maybe they were itching to showcase the steps they’d practiced in take two, because before you knew it, they had dragged their dates back on the floor and grabbed them by the hips.
Dehavvy would have been blushing, if she weren’t so busy blinking. All of twenty-two, weighing in at a hundred and one pounds with shoulder blades poking through her skin, she looke
d better than she had in ’37—but she was still a year’s worth of good living away from looking like a woman.
—Hey. Shorty.
Litsky looked back from the dance floor.
It was the lazy baritone behind the bar. He was drying his hands with a dirty rag.
—You gonna have a drink? Or you gonna sit there all night?
—What’s your hurry?
—That perch is for the parched.
—Yeah, yeah . . .
Litsky took a bill from his pocket and tossed it on the bar.
—Give me a Scotch on the rocks. And this time, pour it from a bottle instead of a jar.
Ol’ Man River shuffled off and came back with the drink and the change. Litsky left a nickel on the counter to show his heartfelt appreciation for the five-star service. Then he turned on his stool, leaned his back against the bar, and stirred his whiskey with a finger.
At the table by the band, the blonde was nodding her head to the beat of the claves with a that’s-more-like-it sort of smile. She took a drag from a cigarette and shot a column of smoke at the ceiling.
McNulty, that knucklehead, had heard from someone who’d heard from someone that she was a moll on the run from Chicago. Besides the fact that molls on the run don’t hide out in Hollywood, the caption didn’t jive with the candid. There was definitely a streak of the privileged class in this one. Becker, the two-bit stringer, claimed she was another Kraut flown in by von Sternberg. But that didn’t figure either. This blonde had a joi de vivre that couldn’t get a visa to the Rhineland.
She was leaning forward now to say something to Dehavvy. She pointed at the percussionist with a discerning cigarette. Dehavvy listened and nodded with the rapt attention of the newly under wing.
Who the hell is she? Litsky found himself thinking, for once.
And he would have let his mind dwell on that quandary, if down the bar two Tijuana roosters hadn’t begun disturbing the peace. Que es eso? the one on his feet was saying for the second time. The seated one turned on his stool like a spokesman for ten generations of family feuding. When he stood on principle, he knocked over his barstool. Ol’ Man River drifted downstream. He put his big black hands on the bar and told them to take it outside; but he didn’t need to. The first one spat on the floor and headed for the exit with two of his kin. The other one counted to ten, then signaled his amigos who were picking their teeth at a table nearby.
Spics.
Litsky shook his head and shifted his gaze back to the business at hand. While the blonde studied the band, Dehavvy peeked over her straw like a schoolgirl. Like a cousin from out of town. Like the ward of the king of England.
Litsky took a good, long look at Dehavvy, then back at the second pack of Tijuanans who were swaggering out the door in the footsteps of the first. Then he took his nickel back off the bar. He went to the phone near the boys’ room and dialed the 77th Street precinct.
—I’d like to report a knife fight, he said into the receiver—Yeah, that’s right, a knife fight—In the parking lot of El Rey’s—On Shepherd off Central—When’d it happen? Any minute now.
Litsky hung up.
This is going to be interesting, he thought to himself like a philosopher.
But when he returned to his stool, Dehavvy and the blonde were nowhere to be seen.
Shit.
Litsky studied the path from their table to the little girls’ room; then, short on hope, he scanned the club from end to end. But lo and behold, there they were: Elbow-to-elbow on the dance floor.
The band was playing a Mexicali Begin the Beguine. Either by order of the front man, or through some collective instinct, all the boys had gotten on one side of the rope and the girls had gotten on the other. The band’s take on the number had some advanced mathematics and the local girls were making the most of it. They were doing long division with their hips and shaking their cans to the thirteenth power. Dehavvy and the blonde couldn’t keep up. They didn’t have the bodies for it, or the backgrounds. But they were indisputably in the mix.
Maybe you had to give the blonde credit for taking Dehavvy to El Rey’s, after all. Because if anyone on the dance floor knew who she was, they weren’t showing it. By the time the locals got to El Rey’s, they’d had their fill of deference for the day. (Yes, ma’am. No, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.) And with their eyes half closed, swaying like a crowd of cocoanut trees, they were plenty primed for some rapture serene.
At least, that’s what Litsky was thinking when the band broke into Mi Casa for the fourth time. Within a beat, every seat in the house was empty. The blonde and Dehavvy had taken places on opposite sides of the rope now and were matching each other step-for-step—shaking their heads in tandem and waiting for the twentieth measure, when they could stand on their toes and shout Mi Casa! with the rest of them.
Despite the clamor, Litsky could hear the sweet, unmistakable sound of sirens in the distance. He looked back toward the club’s entrance in time to see a tall, thin kid in chauffeur’s getup come scrambling through the door. He took off his hat like he was entering a church. When his eyes lit on the blonde, he made a beeline for the dance floor.
Litsky got off his stool.
The kid beckoned her to the edge of the floor and whispered in her ear. From across the room Litsky could see her eyes narrow; then she rattled off instructions like a drill sergeant; and as the kid headed back to his car, she grabbed Dehavvy by the hand. She led her through the crowd, behind the bandstand, and toward the kitchen door.
Litsky snatched his bag from under his stool. He hoisted himself onto the bar and swung his legs over it, toppling a bottle of beer.
—Hey! Ol’ Man River shouted from around the bend.
Litsky scurried out the loading door into the night. Rounding the back of the club, he could see the lights of the kitchen shining through the screen door just as a pine green Packard appeared from the other direction. Litsky was barely ready when the door swung back and out came the blonde dragging Dehavvy behind her. Litsky steadied himself, whistled, and pulled the trigger. With a great pop the flash went off. Sparks fell to the ground filling the air with the smell of brimstone. The blonde wouldn’t let go of Dehavvy until she had her safely in the car; then with her teeth bared, she turned toward Litsky—but he was gone.
He was already cutting a wide circle through the underbrush headed toward Central Ave, where he’d had the good sense to leave his car. He slipped under the wheel, set her in gear, and turned onto Shepherd. In the lot of El Rey’s he could see the cops conferring in a tight circumference with los Capuletos y los Montagues. He saluted them all as he passed, and then he switched on the radio.
It was another heart warmer from that happy-go-lucky huckster, Bing Crosby.
He hated Bing Crosby.
But he left the dial where it was and found himself singing along soon enough. For in the instant the flash had gone off and the girls had looked up in surprise, as clear as crystal he could see that Dehavvy had stepped on the hem of her dress while scampering out the door. Because her left shoulder strap had snapped free—and peeking out from behind the silky red fabric was a million-dollar indiscretion.
AS LITSKY DROVE ALONG Santa Monica Blvd., he watched the buildings slinking past his windshield. It was like turning the pages of the Oxford History of Class Acts: At the corner of Highland Ave was the hotel where Errol Flynn had tried to lower himself from a third floor window by a towel; two doors down from La Brea was the Cancan where Gloria Swanson had almost plucked out the eyes of the Blue Angel; and a few blocks later, he passed Antonio’s, where Louis Mayer had begun dining on lettuce for fear that he soon wouldn’t be able to cross his fat little fingers when crossing his heart and hoping to die.
On the sixth floor of the Fulwilder building the lights were out in the corner office, which figured. Humpty Dumpty must have waddled back to his bungalow in order to catc
h up on the sleep he hadn’t got behind his desk all day.
Litsky turned onto Fairfax and pulled into O’Malley’s. As usual, the place was empty. O’Malley himself was standing on a pantry stool taking down the colored lights that were still hanging behind the bar.
—Hey, Santy Claus.
O’Malley looked back with a grimace. He stepped off the stool, leaving the lights swinging from a hook.
—A round on me for everyone in the house, said Litsky.
—Hardy har, said O’Malley.
He grabbed a bottle by the neck like it was a duck he was about to strangle. Once he’d poured the whiskey, he finally took in Litsky’s expression.
—You look like the canary in the coal mine, he observed.
—It’s the cat who caught the canary, you flummox. But you’re on the right track.
—Cats, coal mines, said O’Malley with a shrug. What gives?
Litsky waggled his empty glass and put it on the bar.
—Just keep these coming. Then maybe I’ll teach you a thing or two about this town.
O’Malley reached for the bottle and Litsky headed for the phone booth in back. After shutting himself in, he took off his hat and pulled a scrap of paper from the inside band. Ragged and stained it was scratched with five different numbers that were none too easy to come by. Litsky dialed the fifth. Even from the sleepy style in which he drawled Hello, you could tell that Marcus Benton was an educated man. A measured man. A man who knew the difference between the pennywise and poundfoolish.
—This is Jeremiah Litsky, Litsky said into the receiver—That’s right, that Litsky—Yeah, I know what time it is—Never mind how I got your number. You’ll be glad I’ve got it—That’s it, counselor. I’ve a certain something you’ll want to get your hands on—How big? You’re going to need a ladder to see over it—You know the diner on Wilshire & Clay?—Maybe you should come see me there some time. Like tomorrow at eight. And bring your wallet.
