‘Well, now that Betsey and Jock are playing cross-pond ambassadors, it would seem they’ve renewed their old friendship. Apparently it came up over dinner that Pam would simply love a holiday in New York.’
‘Naturally.’
‘And Betsey offered to host her, knowing full well she had no intention of coming home. So guess who it falls to…’
‘Baby sis. Christ, what a pain.’
Babe poked at the muddle of mint in her mojito, peeved. ‘It is a hassle, especially Europeans. The last batch we took in wanted their sheets ironed. Hand-ironed! Anyway. I told Bets I’d do it—I mean, what else could I say?’
‘NO!’ Slim and Tru bellowed in unison.
Babe smiled. ‘But we know I’d never do that, don’t we.’ She took out her cigarette case, lit two L&Ms and passed one to Slim. ‘I agreed to the minimum. I’ll throw her a dinner at Kiluna on Friday, then drum up theater tickets for Saturday, which is hope-fully where you come in,’ she nodded to Slim. ‘Sunday she’s on her own.’
‘I’ll have Leland pull house seats. King and I or South Pacific?’
‘Either. More important, since you’ll be in Spain with Betty, and Tru in Verbier with Jack, I was wondering if Leland would mind terribly joining our group as Pam’s escort? Just for the play on Saturday—I wouldn’t dream of putting him through that dreadful dinner! I know it’s a bit of a busman’s holiday, but I have to find someone willing to sit with her for the two hours between curtain up and down before we can ship her back to wherever she came from.’
‘Leland wouldn’t mind.’
‘Are you sure? I know it will be frightfully dull.’
‘Anything for a pal,’ said Slim, true to form.
‘When does Leland leave? To join you?’
‘Betty and I’ll meet up with Papa in Madrid, avec bride número cuatro—’
‘Puh-leeeze,’ Truman groaned. ‘One of the great closet queens of our time!’
Slim, ignoring him. ‘—Then we’re off to Paris. Betty’ll leave to film in London, and Leland and I will head to Munich to meet the Baroness.’
‘The Baroness… ?’
‘Von Trapp. Nun-turned-nanny. Snagged the father, fled the Nazis. She’s written a memoir about their singing litter in leder-hosen. Leland thinks there’s a musical lurking in there somewhere. We’re going to negotiate the life rights.’
‘I’ve always thought those SS boys could be whipped into a marvelous chorus line,’ Truman posited, poking two bread rolls with fork-and-knife, staging his own version of Chaplin’s Dinner Roll Dance, manipulating the doughy ‘feet’ into a goose-stepping series of high kicks, to a jazzed-up rendition of ‘Deutschland über alles.’
‘Oh, Tru.’ Slim shook her head, snickering at the notion.
‘You really are too much.’ Babe, shielding her eyes with her hand.
They sipped their mojitos, indulging a peal of guilty laughter.
SLIM FELT A rush of warmth wash over her as she walked into the hotel suite at the Ritz in Madrid.
A sensation curiously reminiscent of the shock she’d felt walking into the surf at Matador Beach, hurtling exposed skin into the most deliciously salty of breakers. An ‘involuntary memory,’ as Truman would have told her, launching into a characteristic explanation of Proust and madeleines.
Whatever the trigger, the mixture of shock and delight transported Slim for an instant from the Ritz in Madrid to a beach in Malibu. Enjoying the tingling she knew would cling to her skin—a secret, carnal saltiness that could be tasted on her flesh long after she’d dried. The faintly briny perfume of seawater beneath an evening gown.
That saltiness was Leland all over, lingering on her skin like a tantalizing secret. Perhaps it was the scent that made her think of Hay, which led to an endless chain of memory.
For even before she and Betty entered the room, the perfume beckoned. Not the clandestine oceanic fragrance of memory, but a sweet, floral one, wafting into the hallway, beneath the tiniest crack in the door. Slim pushed the portal open to reveal a room filled with white flowers. Sculptural orchids. Freesias. The Little Gem magnolia, Truman’s favorite, the whole of the South in seven waxy petals.
It was Tru who’d introduced Leland to them at Petrov’s Florist on Sixth Ave., gushing—‘Now, Big Daddy, you’ve just gotta buy one of these for Big Mama. They’re the crème de la crème. Just smell that…’
Leland had leaned in and inhaled, with a sommelier’s judgment, the fragrance of the creamy saucer-bloom. Milky. Spicy. Heaven.
Truman, who simply loved to elbow his way into the wooing process, was famous for his taste, all the more appreciated by men of taste themselves.
‘And get a load of those leaves! They’re like flowers in themselves!’ He touched one’s stiff, deep-green surface. ‘Leathery and glossy—the most divine mix of hard and soft. Just like Big Mama.’ He stroked the bronze, fuzzy underside wistfully. ‘Do you happen to know that Little Gems are some of the first trees to lift the veil of winter? Nina kept these, everywhere she lived, in tiny pots, even out on her crummy old postage-stamp fire escape when she was still Lillie Mae, before she met Joe. She loved them on account of their flowers being the first to grace the bare branches of spring,’ he added with a sad smile. ‘You know they start out pretty scrawny, but they eventually get as big as grandifloras… it just takes them a little longer.’
Always one for a pitch, Leland had flagged the florist and ordered a dozen.
‘Noooooo, Big Daddy—you only need one of these,’ Truman jumped in. ‘That’s how precious they are. Big Mama can pin it in her hair… beautiful, that paper-white against the gold? Afterward float it in a soup bowl filled halfway up with water. Trust me, Big Daddy, there’s something magic that happens when they get wet. There’s nothing quite like the scent of wet magnolia.’
Leland had repeated this to Slim as he presented it to her that evening, encased in its plastic coffin. How he’d caught the glint in Tru’s eye, and, with a laugh, pulled out his wallet.
‘Truman—enough. Sold.’
THERE WERE BOWLS of flowers now, filling the hotel room, jockeying for space amid the hothouse of white petals.
Slim and Betty dropped their handbags on the sofa by the door, taking in the scene with the delight that had been its objective. A card sat on an oval inlay entry table. Betty picked it up, fishing her thick black-framed glasses from her pocket. Jarring, Slim always thought, to see the screen goddess with the bookish specs, removing the celluloid chill that belied her actual warmth, reminding those who’d known her all along of the gawky Betty Joan Perske before she’d been neatly packaged into ‘Lauren Bacall’ (Betty being too homespun and Perske sounding too Jewish).
It was Slim who had spotted her, while standing in a grocery line in Santa Monica, in March of’ 43. Slim had been arrested by the image of a girl not unlike herself. Lanky, blonde. A severe, no-bullshit gaze, a directness that when coupled with uncultivated beauty could be construed as intimidating. The girl stared back at her from the magazine rack. Waiting…
In a smart navy suit in the foreground of the frame, ‘BAZAAR’ emblazoned above her. Behind her, a frosted door bore a scarlet cross—the shadow of a nurse passing behind the pane as if through a film of gauze. The girl seemed to be waiting in a hospital foyer. The message was clear—Give Blood, Help the Red Cross, it’s the patriotic thing to— —
Yeah, yeah, Slim thought, unable to take her eyes off the girl, who would, to be fair, command anyone’s attention. Nobody’s thinking of blood or war—or anything but those eyes. Piercing, belying their years. Unapologetic. Emanating a scrubbed-clean, healthy glow, but with the dangerous hint of a panther prowling beneath. Slim felt she was looking into a mirror.
‘I’ve found your girl,’ she told Hawks that night over dinner.
‘Which girl… ?’ he asked, uneasy. Though the marriage was new, his philandering had not tempered. Slim guessed he feared she’d discovered the girl in the commissary, who she’d known about for months. Or
Dolores Moran, that bimbo Howard had cast for an unspecified film, in an unspecified role. Slim could guess what her role would be, and when the affair was known around town, many a crowded table at the Derby had found themselves weeping with laughter at her impersonations of her husband’s lover, changing her name from Dolores Moran to ‘Dollar-ass Moron.’ It was Slim’s way— make’ em laugh, no matter how you cried.
‘Your girl. For the Bogart picture.’
She’d pulled the folded fashion rag from her bag and passed it to Hawks, at the tail end of another meal soured with his lies. While his initial response was unenthused, the minute he saw those eyes gazing at him, he grabbed the magazine, studying it closely. Slim lit a cigarette, enjoying her cleverness.
‘I called Mrs. Vreeland. Found out who she was. One Betty Joan Perske.’
Howard wrinkled his hawk nose. ‘Well, that’ll have to go.’
‘I dunno… I kinda like it.’
As Slim tapped her cigarette ash and refilled her dwindling manhattan, she watched Howard see what she herself had spotted…
‘My God. She’s you.’
‘Who did you think I’d found?’
Howard looked up from the glossy page, on guard.
‘Look, Slim, I have no idea what you’re—’
Bored, Slim leaned in, predatory, kissing his lips, if only to stop the lies.
Howard pulled back, startled. It had been a long time since they’d kissed like that. A long time since she’d been rough with him. Slim had learned early on that’s what turned Howard on— violence. Fight then fuck. That was his fetish. Just looking at his films, wasn’t it obvious? Shouldn’t she have watched a few more of them before throwing in her lot? Barbed banter, a slap, a punch, then the leads tumble into bed. That was Howard’s idea of seduction.
Well, give’ em what they pay for.
INT. HAWKS HOUSE — DINING ROOM — DAY
Slim shoves her tongue deeper into his mouth, giving his lower lip a good bite as she exits. Howard pulls back, bringing his dinner napkin to his lips, blood seeping through the clean, white linen.
HAWKS
What did you do that for?
SLIM
I’ve been wondering if I’d like it.
HAWKS
What’s the decision?
SLIM
I don’t know yet…
(they kiss again)
It’s even better when you help.
She steps away, recovering her smoldering cigarette, sucking in a long drag to erase the taste of the well-done T-bone Howard had inhaled for dinner.
SLIM (CONT’D)
I’ll be out back. If you need me, just whistle.
HAWKS
Slim…
SLIM
You know how to whistle, don’t you, Hawks?
Sly smile playing at the corners of her mouth.
SLIM (CONT’D)
You just put your lips together… and blow.
As she turned to leave, she could almost see Hawks spinning the exchange into a scene for Bogie and the razor-eyed Miss Perske, who, sitting down with her mother to a soggy pastrami sandwich at the Formica table in their Bronx walk-up, had no idea that her life was about to change.
Slim opened the back door of the prim Colonial that she had designed, based on the set for Hawks’ Bringing Up Baby. God, how he’d loved that fake house, and Slim had, in the early delusional days of their marriage, thought that a replica transported to the Bel Air canyons would set the stage for the notion of happily ever after. Especially a house that bowed to Howard’s vanity, reconstructed by his own scenic artists, who were even so bold as to incorporate the hopeful cliché of the white picket fence.
Slim looked around the suffocatingly traditional facade of the home she’d come to love all the more, knowing it was temporary. She knew what the next plot in her script would be. And she’d achieve it while Howard was preoccupied, per plan, with To Have and Have Not—a story she’d help him convince Papa to option.
Ernest had objected, pushing the Spanish book instead, For Whom the Bell Tolls. Hawks had failed to understand it.
‘Give me your worst piece of work—the absolute turkey. With a rewrite and Bogart, I’ll make it a hit!’ he had boasted to Papa, while shooting pheasant in Sun Valley.
Slim’s gaze had met Papa’s in that moment around the campfire. She’d rolled her eyes and Papa had laughed. Slim thought Papa’s Bell his best work yet and told Howard so. But then Howard rarely listened to Slim.
Not like Leland would…
Leland, Slim’s ‘Hay.’ Her second-act hero, waiting in the wings to enter the scene, offering armloads of pallid blooms.
Yes, Slim knew, the timing was perfect. Howard would be consumed with her doppelgänger, Miss Perske, who Slim had so generously scouted for him. Obviously he’d seduce her, with the ever-ready excuse of the director-showing-the-starlet-how-to-play-the-scene.
There was no way of Slim knowing that she’d chosen at random a woman after her own heart. Betty would not play casting-couch games with Howard, as it turned out, but have the gumption to fall madly in love with her co-star. Had Howard known, he would have picked another ingénue.
Slim couldn’t know that she had plucked a lifetime friend fromthe grocery stand in Santa Monica. Couldn’t know that Betty Perske-turned-Bacall would become Bogie’s ‘Baby,’ whose own babies she’d see born, whose hand she’d hold as Bogie, in a decade’s time, would die the most gallant of deaths. For months riding down each evening in a dumbwaiter (lacking the strength to take the stairs) for cocktails with her and Leland, with Leland’s old flame Kate and Bogie’s best friend Spence. The Inner Circle. The only ones allowed to witness the harrowing process of Bogie’s decay. Slim couldn’t know that she’d clutch Betty’s arm moments after Bogie’s labored breathing ceased, a single squeeze communicating all that they had shared.
All she could think as she stood in the gloaming was that there couldn’t be a better moment to make her exit from the role of Mrs. Howard Hawks.
Slim found herself musing, as she stamped her cigarette into the flagstones with the heel of her espadrille, that her only regret would be that she’d never get credit for all that dialogue.
‘TO MY TWO Exotic blooms—love Leland.’ Betty read the card aloud, in the hothouse of the Spanish Ritz.
‘Sweet Hay,’ Slim smiled, proudly.
‘What a prince,’ Betty flattered.
‘What a prince,’ Slim agreed.
After Slim had disappeared into her room to unpack her case, had rung Papa and arranged to meet for sangria, precorrida, this being Papa’s passion du jour, she rejoined Betty in the sitting room.
She found her by the window in one of a pair of club chairs, the second empty beside her, the dying light hitting her severe profile at just the right angle.
Betty sat holding a bouquet of starburst lilies, looking into middle distance.
Slim approached, kicking Betty’s calf gently, flopping into the chair beside her.
Betty smiled at Slim, cradling the lilies, tears welling in her eyes.
‘These were in my room.’
Slim looked to the graceful blooms, their significance registering. ‘Casablancas… Get it… ? Isn’t Leland lovely.’ And with that Betty crumbled, weeping into the sleeve of the mackintosh she hadn’t yet removed.
Slim grabbed her, pulled her close, and didn’t let her go until the tears had ceased.
A DRINK WOULD fix everything, Slim assured her.
Well, maybe a couple of drinks…
They were on holiday after all—and not just any holiday. This was a resurrection. They were already well oiled from a pitcher of sangria, sipped overlooking a sand-swept square, by the time Papa arrived. The fruit was bruised and the wine hard, but it went down a treat.
Betty looked to Slim like that nineteen-year-old girl she’d first known—even younger now, perhaps, her butterscotch hair swept into a girlish ponytail and her face bare, nose freckled from the sun. For the first time
since her world had fallen to pieces, Betty looked happy. It had been ages since they’d laughed, simply for the pleasure of laughing.
When Papa approached, entourage of matadors in tow, he bellowed Slim’s name across the plaza, ‘MISS SLIMMMMSKY!’ She smiled as he made his way to her, taking her hand and kissing it, whiskers tickling the back of her skin like the bristles of a soft white porcupine.
‘How are you, Pap… ?’
‘My Slimsky.’ He touched her golden hair covetously.
She nodded to Betty behind her. ‘Meet my pal.’
Papa fixed his cloudy eyes on the sunburnt Betty Bacall and Slim saw him, for the first time since they’d met—nearly two decades back—turn his gaze from her to another. He looked at Betty and fell hard, as only Papa could. And, to be fair, for the better part of the afternoon he loved her with unwavering devotion.
‘Mrs. Bogart.’
‘Mr. Hemingway. Call me Betty,’ her throatiness at odd contrast with the girlishness.
‘Ernesto,’ he replied, a grotesquely boyish grin emerging through the leathery folds of his weather-beaten face. ‘At last we meet.’
‘I feel that we have. Your little book changed my life. I’ve already had your words in my mouth.’ As ever with that voice, the most innocent line seemed to pulsate with innuendo. Slim watched with satisfaction as the scene unfolded, Betty opening and blooming like a Casablanca.
Papa chuckled. ‘Much as I’d love my words in that mouth of yours, I’m afraid I can’t take credit. That was Miss Slimsky. Hundred percent.’ He cut his eyes to Slim, a conspiratorial wink. ‘Slimsky, forgive me. You and I both know we’re destined to end up together…’
‘Spoken for.’ Slim raised her left hand, bearing the delicate band Leland had slipped on her finger in a modest ceremony on the Paleys’ back lawn at Kiluna, nearly a decade before. Babe had set a beautiful luncheon table with gazpacho and crab salad and cold salted beef, and they’d dined al fresco around a table for eight, the tiny wedding party toasting the newly minted Haywards with chilled champagne cocktails.
In reply Papa waved his own wedding ring, as if to cancel her argument. ‘Not for long you’re not… Ten years is about your matrimonial run, isn’t it?’
Swan Song Page 16
