The Glamorous Dead

by Suzanne Gates

  And me? I didn’t touch Rose’s clothes. I wore a long checked skirt I’d made myself, in high school, and the same white blouse I wore with trousers and coveralls. I’d hid a pocket stain with a rhinestone brooch. I’d tied my hair with white ribbon. Parties shouldn’t be fashion shows, should they? A party’s a place to meet friends and enjoy food and gossip, wander Stany’s house a bit, find the room where Rose bled, and sit in that room to honor the last time I’d seen my best friend alive. If I happened to meet Bob Taylor, fine, but I wasn’t betting on that. I kept my autograph book in my purse.

  We parked on Mapleton and climbed the hill. Rocks in my stomach grew bigger the closer we came to Faring Drive. Sharp, mean rocks. Gravel. I wanted to tell Madge everything. I needed to tell her. I was walking the same street I’d run down that night, after I’d jumped off the ladder in Stany’s backyard.

  “Don’t you wonder,” I said, “why Rose and I were close to here on Halloween?”

  “You told me. Rose robbed houses.”

  “Don’t you want to know which house? Aren’t you dying to know?”

  “This is where you confide in me, isn’t it?” She stopped and pulled her lighter from her handbag. She lit a cigarette and blew smoke to the hibiscus that hid a rich house. “Where you make me listen to your awful story and how bad your life is. I’m going to Stany’s, Pen. I’m going to drink and dance and eat all the food she sets out. I’m not carrying your trouble with me, I won’t do it. I have my own. I don’t think you killed your friend. You’re too weak to rob houses, you don’t have the guts. Therefore, you either followed your friend to Beverly Hills to stop her, or you came with her and didn’t know what she planned. Either way, you’re innocent. Can we go to the party now? Damn. Which is hers?”

  “Faring Drive,” I said. “Left side. Like a Mexican villa. Tile roof, hedge. Nice pool in the back. You have to climb over a gate to get there. Madge, I really need to tell you this. I need you to know. If you lean a ladder against the upstairs, you can break a window and fall right in. You might cut your thumb on some glass.”

  Madge let her eyes glance at me, but not her face. She kept her face toward the corner of Mapleton and Faring. She smoked. “Goddamn you. I knew it. I hate you. You just ruined my goddamn night.”

  “The Career Girls are here.” They walked toward us on Faring Drive. They came from the direction of Claudette Colbert’s house, but they didn’t know Claudette Colbert. They must have just parked by her house. The girls saw us, ignored us, and turned onto Stany’s front walk.

  You might think it’s strange we didn’t talk. I’d shared a bedroom with two Career Girls for months and never talked to them. Not a hi, not get your clothes off my side. A Wallflower lived downstairs and we didn’t talk, either. It’s because they weren’t always Career Girls or Wallflowers. Before the Paramount job, they were just Nez Perce and Sioux and Paiute, and who cares about them? I don’t mean to be cold. They thought the same of me. None of us could do the others any good, so we didn’t talk.

  Besides, friends are messy. First you learn real names and then you’re buddies at cattle calls, you both go to clubs and pictures, and soon you think of a girl as herself, a person. Then the day comes when you and the friend both get callbacks. It’s the same role and only one girl gets it. If you get the role, then it’s your fault she’s the loser. If she gets the role, you hate her. Either way, the friendship is over, and ignoring a friend is harder than ignoring a Career Girl.

  I’ve never been in the situation where a picture role was between me and a friend, but it could happen. We hear stories like this all the time.

  “Stany’s house isn’t as grand as it should be,” Madge said. “I’m disappointed. This house could belong to anyone rich. I expected more, you know? The hedge needs a shave. Think she’ll recognize me?”

  “She’ll know you’re part of the cast.” I got swallowed by trumpets. Stany had a small band instead of a table in her dining room. We walked into a dance hall. Stany must have had regular house furniture like a couch and love seat, but not right then. The furniture in her house was gone, and a few chairs and small tables held people and food. Couples danced, maids served plates of nibbles, and roaming between cameramen, gaffers, assistants, sound guys, and assistants to the assistants was Stany. She wore black trousers and a red silk blouse, black bangles on her wrist. I remember the bangles, how they clanked on each other when Stany wiggled fingers at Ed, Preston’s secretary. He held a plate of meatballs.

  A cast party, except the cast wasn’t here. Hank didn’t come, or Eugene Pallette or Abbott or Preston or the guy whose name we didn’t know. This was the other cast, the one that wasn’t seen. Robert Taylor wasn’t here, either.

  Madge was right, though. Stany’s house wasn’t grand. The inside wasn’t marble or anything, just Mexican tile. I’ve never been in a marble house, but I’ve seen photographs, and the staircases always curve. There are chandeliers, and the movie star—say, Carole Lombard, because that’s who I’ve seen in the photos—stands on a marble stair in a belted silk dressing gown. She has one hand on a handrail, and she could be going up or down the marble stairs; you don’t know, up or down. Anything less than Carole Lombard’s marble is a disappointment. At Stany’s, the doorways are arched like Rose’s Aunt Lou’s. A plain staircase with tiled stairs. No furniture and no rugs, and people eating. The house looked like a church basement. No wonder Robert Taylor was gone.

  “It’s like Abbott said that first day on set,” Madge said. “See the Femme Fatale? We’re exactly like our types. Femme Fatale. See her? I expected more. I wanted different.” Then Madge was dancing, and her brown curls bounced on the shoulders of Rose’s suit. She let a guy twirl her. I climbed Stany’s tiled stairs.

  * * *

  Bathroom, with tile and soap. Bedroom. Another bedroom, a study. All full of clunky Mexican carvings and headboards, dull reds and orange.

  Middle of the hall, on the left, I found the yellow bedroom. The room was dark. I walked right in before I knew it was the right room. I stopped when I saw the bedspread. Yellow walls that looked brown in the dark, open closet with suits that smelled like cigarettes and a screen star. Closet with suits, not dresses.

  Rosemary fell into Bob Taylor’s bedroom. She’d have loved that. She’d have danced in his room and touched his sheets if she’d known. With new window glass and clean floors, I had to think hard to remember the room on Halloween, with glass pieces all over, cuts on my arms and calves. A slash across my palm. No blood on the floor now, no stains.

  I backed to the doorway, my hand on the wood frame. I rubbed the scar on my palm. I guess I was looking for something—a leftover bit, a glass chunk not swept from the baseboard. A souvenir like we bring home from vacation. Everyone does it. Go to the Grand Canyon, bring home a rock. From Monterey, a crab shell. From this room—nothing. Yellow drapes, matched bedspread and walls, ashtray, pottery horse on the bureau, and all of it fine, like it hadn’t seen me slip on Rose’s blood and crouch beside her and rip my dress to press on her hand.

  I moved into the dark room to look at the floor, a close look at the wood slats. Rose’s blood leaked into these cracks between planks, and mine, too. Stany couldn’t have cleaned it all up, she’d have to replace the floor to get rid of us. We still lived in the seams of Bob Taylor’s bedroom. I couldn’t see much in the dark, but if I switched on the light, I would have seen dried blood in the cracks.

  “I knew you’d break in again.” Stany’s kid stood in the doorway. Dion, her little boy, her son, her freckly baby. He wore kid blue jeans and a checked shirt.

  “Don’t tell,” I said. “Don’t tell it was me. Our secret. It’s fun to have secrets.”

  “You should have broke in downstairs. You should have walked in like you went to the party, then waited all night until we’re asleep.”

  “I didn’t take anything,” I said. I was stuck in the room, in the spot with the bloody wood floor. And then he walked closer, like he expected something. He look
ed at the window and its new pane. He was between me and the door, and my eyes were flicking around.

  “I’m packed,” he said. “I knew you’d come back. I’ve got my own suitcase.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “You’re not good at planning. We have to wait until everyone leaves.” He reached an empty hand to me like he was already passing over his suitcase, his packed suitcase, and I couldn’t touch him. The room was dark except for the light from the hallway and the light from the old-fashioned lanterns on Faring that stretched over the hedge and shone into second-floor rooms. I didn’t know what he expected with that hand. And I peed a little.

  Then I heard feet on the stairs and saw Madge in the doorway. A guy was with her.

  “This is Kenny,” Madge said. “He’s half-French and half-something.”

  “Hiya,” Kenny said. “I’ve got hiccups.”

  “Come meet Uncle Buck’s dog,” Madge said. “He can do tricks. You hold up a cracker and the dog bows. I’m not kidding! Maybe it’s a curtsy, I don’t know. Who’s in here with you?”

  “Nobody.” It was true, sort of. The room was dark enough that it was true.

  “Well, come see. Did you try the shrimp dip? Who can afford shrimp? I’m eating as much as I can.”

  All I had to do was leave the room and walk down the hall, but it was the hardest thing, a simple turn to the door, with Madge saying “shrimp dip, shrimp dip.” Yellow bed, yellow walls, and the window. The ladder. A gash on my hand, a little boy. Rose cold, because she’d left her coat on the ground and climbed the ladder without it.

  I hadn’t picked up her coat. Did she pick it up? Would she have remembered to grab her coat? I told her, Get down the ladder. Run to Sunset. Wave at a car. I didn’t say, Remember to pick up your coat.

  Now I tried to imagine the ladder and me climbing down it, fast. The woman yelling. Yes—at the bottom, a dark pile of coat that I left in Stany’s backyard like I left the ladder when I ran to the gravel path. Or was I making it up now, and hadn’t seen the coat at all? I couldn’t remember.

  “Shrimp dip,” Madge said. “And big mushroom caps stuffed with cheese and sausage, served hot. Only they might not be hot anymore.”

  “Hic-hic,” said Kenny.

  “Why are you standing there? Pen?”

  The hardest thing, that turn to the door. The step past a short kid in shadows with his hand still out. Then: “Mushroom caps? I’m starving. Where are they?”

  Madge pulled me back to the party. I watched a Career Girl dance with Uncle Buck, dance with Uncle Buck’s dog, dance with some guy. The Jack Bennys came for a while and then left. Some neighbors stopped in. Nobody could talk with a trumpet and drums, so we smiled and ate and watched each other. No little kid came downstairs.

  Then Stany’s red blouse danced toward me. I saw the red blouse and then Stany, because I was drunk. She yelled in my ear. She led me through her patio, into her backyard. It took a while. People stopped her to yell hellos, or yell how lovely, how delicious, with Stany smiling and yelling back. Each time she stopped, I waited and looked at the pool. My stomach hated that pool. I didn’t want to go outside and stand where I’d stood on Halloween. I knew I’d get out there and look for Rosemary’s coat. Or that was exactly why Stany wanted me outside, to confront me, because she knew I’d climbed into her house. Her kid had told her I was the Halloween thief.

  Oh, hell. I went outside with her anyway.

  “You all right?” She stood at her pool’s deep end, and the house lamps lit water, then lit Stany and turned her hair swimming pool blue.

  “Yes,” I said. One thing about trumpets, you can hear them from anywhere.

  “You having fun?”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “You are? You don’t look like you’re having fun.”

  “Such fun,” I said.

  “Well, good. Are you drunk?”

  “No, I swear.”

  “You can be drunk if you want. I was just asking.”

  “Your blouse is nice.”

  “Yes, it is. Well. So you’re having fun. That’s good. Penny, I want to ask you. Can you talk? Do you have to go? If you can’t talk . . .”

  “What is it?”

  “I’m a little embarrassed,” Stany said. “A little, oh, you could say embarrassed. Tell me about your friend.”

  “Madge?”

  “Who’s Madge? I meant Rosemary. Tell me about Rosemary.”

  “That’s your question?”

  “Sort of,” she said.

  “Rosemary,” I said. The night air was chilly. I didn’t see Rose’s coat in the backyard.

  “Who was she? I mean, why was she here, what did she do for fun?”

  “Why was she here? Why was she here?”

  “In Hollywood.”

  “Oh. Rose was here for the jobs, same as me.”

  “She was very beautiful,” Stany said.

  “She was. Everyone says she would have been a star. She had the looks and—”

  “The tits,” Stany said.

  “Yeah. I meant personality, though. She had the kind of spirit that made people notice her. She was excited to work on your picture.”

  “She was?”

  “Oh, yeah. Rosemary was excited,” I said. “The first day on set she said it was the best that could have happened.”

  “You told me she wanted to sign with MGM.”

  “I know, she did. She did. But you should have seen her. When security first let us past the gate, she pushed a girl to get in front. The girl sprained her knee and security called a nurse. Rose was that glad to be at Paramount. Not Paramount exactly, it was you she was glad about, that we’d be in a picture with you. At Central Casting she begged for the job. She promised the clerk she’d date him if he got us to Paramount.”

  “You’re lying,” Stany said.

  “All right. Not date. She took him in the back room for a while. When they came out he gave us the job. He wanted to see her again but she said no.”

  “She fucked the Central Casting guy to work with me.”

  “I don’t know, but yeah, she did it for you.”

  “I should be flattered,” Stany said. “I think I am flattered. What? Why are you looking like that? What aren’t you telling?”

  “Shrimp dip,” I said. “It’ll be gone, and I want some.”

  “Liar.”

  “I like shrimp, I do.”

  “I’m sure. I’ll send you a crate of the fucking dip. Nobody cringes because they like shrimp. You’re leaving out something big. What is it.” Not a question, a command.

  “Stany—”

  “I’m perfectly capable of using my fists.”

  “That hurts. Don’t hit me. Don’t touch me.”

  “I want the truth, damn it. I’ll hit you again.”

  “Fine. She said you’re not glamorous. You can act, but that’s it. She said in a race with her, you’d lose. That’s why she wanted on your set. Because on film, Rose glowed like a goddamn klieg. She’d drown you out in a crowd scene, in a speck of film. If Rose was there, it didn’t matter where you stood, what you said or did. She’d get the audience, her, not you, and she was right. Conejos told me Preston noticed her. The wedding scene has to be scrapped. Did Preston tell you he scrapped the scene?”

  I’d given Stany the wrong truth. She didn’t like what I’d told her. Rose’s coat didn’t wait in the backyard. I hadn’t come tonight to steal a kid and his suitcase. Rose didn’t idolize Stany, although I stood in a houseful of folks who did. A houseful, in a church basement. Yet they didn’t matter. They weren’t the reason Stany knelt by the pool with her face away from me and scooped water in her hand, then splashed the water on her face and silk blouse.

  * * *

  “Bob Taylor has his own bedroom? You take the keys, I’m too drunk.”

  “That’s what I thought, too,” I said. I unlocked Madge’s car, and she crawled into the passenger seat. “I thought, why don’t they share a bedroom? But now I kno
w. I think he has a room for his suits.”

  “I’m tired. I’m so tired. That Kenny’s a liar,” Madge said. She hit her head on the back of her seat. She kicked the dashboard. “He don’t even speak French.”

  “Ooh la la,” I said.

  “Fuck you. Fuck your ‘ooh la la.’ All Kenny’s good for is rumors. He says Edith Head’s teeth are rotten and that’s why she never smiles. He says Zukor’s cook is a Nazi spy. Well, of course she is. Isn’t she German? He says there’s a secret tunnel between Paramount and that building across the street. A camera guy told him. He says that’s where the bigwigs meet their girlfriends, right in the middle of the day. I don’t feel good. And those guys are all married.”

  “You said Kenny’s a liar.”

  “Ah, who knows. We probably walk on top and don’t even know it’s there. I’m tired. That Kenny’s a goddamn liar, I told you. And you’re going to believe him? Are you going to let this guy follow you?”

  “What?”

  “Joe is following you. Studio Joe. That’s his name? Joe?”

  “Now you’re the liar.”

  “Then why is he following?” Madge asked.

  Joe in his squad car, engine idling, middle of Mapleton, waiting for me to pull out.

  “He’s a Hollywood cop. What’s he doing in Holmby Hills?”

  “Following you,” Madge said. “Are you stupid? I keep saying.”

  “He might’ve went to Stany’s party.” In his squad car, on duty for Hollywood.

  I drove Madge’s car downhill to Sunset, turned left, and Joe’s car trailed me. I shot corners, stopped and started again, pulled to the curb, and Joe did the same. Madge kept talking, probably drunk talk, none of it true.

  CHAPTER 18

  Ginger Rogers and Ronald Colman in an unusually sophisticated comedy which has stretched several points in the matter of plausibility, but is good entertainment nevertheless.