The Burnt Orange Sunrise

by David Handler

  “Now how on earth did you know that?”

  “I already told you,” Ada said impatiently. “We’re kindred souls. Listen to your heart, Des. Get out before it’s too late.”

  “And do what?”

  “Go your own way—wherever that way takes you. But it will be your way, not theirs. I happen to be a cranky old woman. I know this because I was a cranky young woman. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned after all of these years, it is this: If you possess what other people want, and can’t have, then they will try to destroy you.” Ada paused, gazing around at the opulent ladies’ lounge. “It’s just like with this place.”

  “Astrid’s Castle? What about it?”

  “They will never, ever get it,” she said insistently.

  “Who, Ada?” Des asked, wondering if the old lady was totally with it mentally. She seemed sharp enough, full of fire and strongly held views. But she also seemed to be up to her ears in paranoia.

  Or was she?

  “Promise me you’ll think about this,” Ada said, clutching Des by the wrist now. “Promise me you will never forget this conversation. Will you do that for me?”

  “Ada, I will never forget this conversation. Count on it.”

  “Thank you. I feel much better.” Satisfied, Ada Geiger released her grip on Des, then got slowly to her feet and glided back out the door.

  Des stayed put for a while, staring at her reflection in the mirror as she sipped her wine. It was better this way. She was alone in there and no one else could see just how badly the goblet was trembling in her hand.

  CHAPTER 5

  “WE CARED NOT ONE bit about studio politics,” Ada told Mitch as she nibbled regally at the food on her plate. Dinner was a flavorful beef bourguignon, roasted root vegetables and good, crusty bread. “All we cared about was making our movies. We wrote them together. My dear Luther produced them. And I directed them, which the studio boys didn’t like at all. I was a broad. Broads are for sleeping with. Broads are for shutting up. I wouldn’t do either of those things. Nor would I back down, because I saw them for the complete boors that they are, and… Lester, must I compete for attention with this New Age crap?” Ada meant the vaguely Eastern-sounding music that was playing on the dining hall’s multi-speaker surround-sound system, something with tubular bells and wind chimes. “I feel as if I’m at one of those touchy-feely retreats where they stick needles in your feet.”

  “Sorry, Ada. Force of habit.” Les hurried over to a wall control by the kitchen door and flicked it off. “We turn it on to signal our guests that it’s mealtime.”

  “What are they, lab rats?”

  The dining hall of Astrid’s Castle was even vaster than the Sunset Lounge. It had three chandeliers, walk-in fireplaces at either end, both ablaze, and enough tables to accommodate a hundred or more guests. Right now, only their lone table by the windows was set, complete with twin candelabra. Les and Norma were at either end. Ada sat on Norma’s left, Teddy on her right. Mitch was next to Ada, with Des directly across from him. Aaron was next to her, facing Carly, who sat in between Mitch and Spence. Carly seemed very subdued. She’d said nothing since they sat down to dinner. Just kept staring across the table at Hannah, who was next to Aaron.

  Outside, the frozen rain pattered loudly against the windows, and the wind continued to howl.

  “You say the boors that they are,” Mitch spoke up. “That sounds like you think the movie business hasn’t changed much since the fifties.”

  “It hasn’t,” Ada said. “Oh, sure, they come out of Harvard Business School now instead of the rag trade. But they’re still the same boors. And the movies are the same dumb crap. Mitch, there are so many amazing people out there leading amazing lives. So many fascinating stories to tell. Instead, they keep churning out their same tired kiddie stories about flying saucers, Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. Mind you, the movies are louder and shinier than they used to be, and they can do things with computers that we never even dreamed of. But no matter how you dress them up, they’re nothing more than fake, sickening bedtime fables.”

  “Here’s what I keep asking myself,” Mitch said. “And maybe you have the answer, Ada. What is this steady diet of fantasy doing to us?”

  “Nothing good,” she replied flatly. “We’re turning into a nation that cannot cope with reality. We no longer deal with any of our genuine social ills. We merely pretend to be—more fantasy. And that is a very dangerous thing, Mitch. Because people who cannot accept reality are generally considered to be insane.”

  Jory appeared at Mitch’s elbow now with the serving dish of beef bourguignon. He helped himself to seconds. Across from him, Des was still pushing her food around on her plate. She was not at ease at dinner parties with people whom she didn’t know well. When she felt tense, her appetite vanished. Mitch was entirely the opposite. Hence their entirely different body shapes.

  “I don’t agree with you about our movies, Mrs. Geiger,” Spence said, ladling seconds onto his own plate. “True enough, we put out our share of youth fare. But I’d still stack up this year’s slate of mature-audience films against any in Hollywood history. We are talking about many, many Oscar-worthy films.”

  “They pass out those awards as easily as they do condoms—and for much the same purpose,” Ada sniffed, peering down the table at him. “And you are… ?”

  “That’s Spence, Mother,” Norma reminded her. “He’s with the New York office.”

  Ada curled her lip with disdain. “Ah, yes, the New York office. Let me ask you this, Mr. New York Office. And do think hard before you answer: Have you ever performed one single spontaneous act in your entire life?”

  Spence didn’t respond. It wasn’t a question that called for a response. He went back to his dinner, reddening.

  Hannah took a quick, nervous gulp of her wine, clanking the glass against her teeth, and blurted out, “How did the actors take to it? Being directed by a woman, I mean. Was that hard for you?”

  Ada sat back in her chair, dabbing at her mouth with her linen napkin. “Actors want to be directed. I had no trouble with my casts. Not even Bob Mitchum, who everyone told me would be difficult. He wasn’t. He was a pussy cat. He always wanted me to teach him how to fly a single-engine plane. I told him, ‘Bob, you stay out of two-seaters and I’ll stay out of whorehouses,’” she recalled fondly. “It was the crew that was my real challenge. They had to know I was in charge of that set, knew what I wanted, knew when I’d gotten it. Because if your crew thinks you’re at all unsure, you’ll never make it.”

  “I think today’s women would be thrilled to hear how you did it,” Hannah plowed ahead. “What you had to go through, how you coped, how you came out on top…” She was deep into her movie pitch now, no question. “You should share some of this with women my age, Ada. You’re such an inspiration.”

  “What I did fifty years ago doesn’t interest me at all,” Ada responded stiffly. “I don’t care to look back. Looking back is strictly for people who think their best days are behind them.”

  “You don’t miss the old days?” Mitch asked her.

  “Never even think about them,” she insisted, in spite of the glow that had come over her deeply lined face when she’d mentioned Mitchum. “There’s so much that is new and fascinating to talk about. Why look back?”

  “For any lessons that might be learned,” Carly said. “As historians, that’s what we are always trying to do.”

  “Like with the blacklist,” Mitch said, sopping up the last of his gravy with a chunk of bread. “People are interested in how we let that whole, awful episode happen. And they should be. Because if we forget, it could very easily happen again.”

  “It has happened again,” Ada said sharply, glaring at Aaron. “Because fear never goes away. Nor do the self-proclaimed patriots who fan that fear and twist it and profit from it.” She paused, wetting her thin, dry lips with a pale tongue. “Were they right about Luther and me? Of course they were. Not only were we active in sociali
st causes in the thirties, we were proud of it. I’m still proud. This country was falling apart. Capitalism was failing. Millions were out of work. Spain was falling. Hitler was on the rise. My God, we almost didn’t make it in this country. And if it hadn’t been for Franklin Roosevelt, we might not have. But we pulled together. We fought. And we prevailed.”

  “And then Roosevelt gave half of Europe away to Stalin,” Aaron cracked. “Just a little parting gift from one comrade to another.”

  “Franklin Roosevelt was a great president, Aaron,” Norma objected. “He saved this country, whether you wish to admit it or not.”

  “He can’t admit it, Norma,” Ada said. “He and his so-called friends are too busy trying to dismantle the government that FDR worked so hard to build. Let me tell you something, Aaron. You people were wrong about the New Deal seventy years ago and you’re still wrong now. But you won’t let up, will you? Not until you’ve destroyed every single public agency that exists for the common good in this country.”

  Des’s napkin slipped from her lap onto the floor. She bent down to retrieve it, briefly ducking her head under the tablecloth. Mitch could have sworn she’d done this on purpose. When she sat back up, napkin properly restored, he looked at her curiously. Her face betrayed nothing. She was a lovely, impassive sphinx.

  “You’ve been out of this country for too long, Grandmother,” Aaron lectured her. “You’ve lost touch with average people. I am simply espousing mainstream American values.”

  “What in the hell do you know about mainstream Americans, Aaron?” Ada demanded. “For your information, mainstream Americans will be living out of mainstream garbage cans after you and your band of greedy jackals have your way. Besides, I am not out of touch. To live overseas is to see us for the bullying, rampaging hypocrites we really are. We are positively awash in self-delusion. We steal peoples’ lands and tell ourselves we’re ‘liberating’ them. We lecture other countries about human rights even as we stage public, state-sanctioned executions of our own mentally handicapped. We preach equal opportunity, yet we’ve never, ever practiced it. Just ask anyone of color.” Ada glanced at Des. “No offense, dear.”

  “None taken,” Des said quietly, as the frozen, windblown rain continued to pelt the windows.

  “Now you just hold on one second, Grandmother,” Aaron countered. “I have allowed you your say—”

  “You have allowed me nothing, you little twit.”

  “But I don’t believe I should have to apologize for living in the greatest country in the history of the earth.”

  “I think that we in the studio audience are now supposed to clap our hands like seals,” Ada jeered.

  “This is the land of opportunity,” Aaron pronounced, his voice resonant and assured. “Everyone is free to make his or her own way, however they choose. The only thing holding them back is their own damned government robbing them blind to pay for bloated bureaucracies such as Social Security, which is nothing more than a spectacularly failed Ponzi scheme that was forced upon us by dreamers and fools.”

  “Dreamers and fools,” Ada said, nodding her head. “That’s what we were. Some of us still are. Not you, though. You are a true, red-meat American, Aaron. And good for you, I say. But do me a small favor, will you? Give me an example of one moment of pure joy that it’s brought you in your entire adult life. One moment that wasn’t based on the manipulation and misfortune of others.”

  Aaron sat there with his mouth open, at a loss for words. Which Mitch felt had to be a first.

  “You can’t, can you?” Ada went on. “And that’s terribly sad. Because I can think of a hundred moments, a thousand moments. We had passion, Aaron. We cared about other people. You don’t. All you care about is sounding clever on national television.” She raised her chin at him, her eyes fierce. “My God, if your father could see you now…”

  “My father was a loser,” Aaron snapped.

  Norma let out an astonished gasp.

  “You are way out of line, buddy,” Teddy said angrily. “My brother was a great man, and you’re not going to run him down—especially in front of your mother. Try that again and I’ll take you outside and pop you one.”

  “Oh, go play your stupid piano, Teddy,” Aaron said to him savagely. “No one is interested in what you have to say.”

  From across the table, Des locked eyes with Mitch. Behind those heavy horn-rimmed glasses, hers were wide with amazement. She had a few months of service in Dorset under her belt, but she still could not get used to this—wealthy white people behaving badly.

  “Hey, come on now,” Les interjected, forcing a cheery smile onto his smooth pink face. “Let’s all relax and enjoy our meal, okay?”

  Carly stayed out of the line of fire entirely. Just kept staring bale-fully across the table at Hannah. Mitch wasn’t sure why. He did know that Hannah was growing very uncomfortable under her gaze.

  “I feel bad for you, Aaron,” Ada went on. “You’re my grandson, and I love you, and you have no idea how they’re exploiting you.”

  “And just exactly who is they?” he demanded, seething.

  “Why, the ruling class, of course. You’re not one of them, Aaron, and you never will be. You’re merely their court jester, all dressed up on television in your little bow tie. Should you displease them, they will unplug you. And you will cease to exist. You do know this, don’t you? You are such a realist you must realize this particular fact of—”

  “Why did you even come back?” Aaron erupted at her. “You’re a horrible hateful woman! I wish you had stayed in Europe. And I’m sorry I schlepped all the way up here to see you. Carly made me. She said I’d be sorry if I didn’t. Well, guess what? I am sorry. I am really, really—” Aaron jumped to his feet, kicking over his chair, and fled from the table.

  “Does the truth frighten you that much?” Ada called after him as he went charging across the dining hall, his footsteps heavy and clumsy.

  “Leave him alone, Mother,” Norma pleaded. “He’s very young.”

  “He’s an ass,” Ada shot back.

  Teddy shook his head at her in amazement. “You haven’t changed a bit, have you, old girl?”

  “And why should I?” she demanded.

  “No reason,” he said, smiling at her. “No reason at all.”

  The commotion brought Jory out of the kitchen. She righted Aaron’s chair, then refilled the wineglasses with the last of the Côtes-du-Rhône they’d been drinking.

  “We’ll be needing another bottle, Jory,” Les said. “Would you mind getting one from the cellar?”

  “Be happy to,” she said brightly, heading back through the kitchen door.

  “I’d better see to dessert,” sighed Norma, massaging her temples with her fingers.

  “You seem tired tonight, dear,” Les observed. “Let Jory take over.”

  “I’m quite all right,” she insisted.

  “Always the steady little plugger, my Norma,” Ada said, needling her. “Always the one to keep her troublesome personal feelings bottled up inside.”

  “Yes, Mother,” Norma said irritably. Ada had pricked a tender nerve.

  Mitch was wondering what that particular nerve might be when a tremendously powerful gust of wind rattled the dining hall windows, followed almost at once by a sharp, frighteningly loud crackle somewhere outside—and then by a thud that practically shook the castle to its foundation.

  “My God!” Hannah cried out in alarm. “What in the hell was that?”

  “That, my dear, was the sound of a very large tree coming down,” Les responded quietly.

  Hannah shook her head in disbelief. “But why did it…?”

  Another crackle interrupted her—and a second tree crashed to the ground. This one seemed even closer.

  This one also plunged the entire castle into darkness.

  Or something sure as hell did. The only illumination in the cavernous dining hall came from the candelabra on their table and from the flickering, amber glow of the fireplaces. The d
oorway to the entry hall was nothing but a black void. Likewise the kitchen door.

  “Just a localized blip,” Les assured them. “Our power goes off like this all the time when there’s a storm. It usually comes back on again in a second.”

  But it didn’t come back on again in a second.

  Des went over to the windows and looked outside, shielding her eyes with a hand. “I don’t want to alarm anyone, but I don’t see a single light on anywhere in Dorset. Or across the river in Old Saybrook or Essex.”

  “It’s the ice storm,” Mitch said. “The trees can’t handle the extra weight, not when there’s this kind of wind. It can split them down the middle.”

  “And right down onto the power lines,” Des added grimly. “This looks bad. Very bad.”

  “Poor Jory is stuck down in the wine cellar,” Norma suddenly realized. “I’d best take her a flashlight.”

  “I can do that,” offered Spence.

  “You’d better let me,” Les said. “Those old cellar stairs are tricky, Spence. You might fall and hurt yourself.”

  As Les started for the kitchen, candelabrum in hand, Norma began lighting the candles that were set on the other tables.

  Over by the windows, a pager started beeping.

  “That’s me,” Des said. “I need to check in.”

  “I’m afraid the phones will likely be out, too,” Norma told her.

  “It’s okay, I’ve got my cell.” Des grabbed a candle, excused herself and retreated in the direction of the taproom.

  Now Mitch heard a door slam somewhere, followed by heavy footsteps. Someone with a powerful flashlight came clumping into the dining room from the kitchen. It was Jase. The shy caretaker was covered with ice and panting so hard for breath that the key chain on his belt was jangling like a tambourine. “There’s… there are…” He could not get the words out, he was so agitated.

  “What’s happened, dear?” Norma asked him gently. “Go ahead and tell us. Speak right up.”

  “It’s the t-trees!” he stammered. “They’re coming down all over the place!”