Alone

by Loren D. Estleman

  “Well, it’s your Chapter Eleven. I just dropped by to ask if you were thinking of serving roast pig or something like that tonight.”

  “Dinner’s the farthest thing from my thoughts. Why?”

  “Fanta and I are driving up the coast. We’re staying the weekend in a bed-and-breakfast.”

  “Don’t you have a class to teach tomorrow?”

  “I’m sure I do, but if I showed up after all this time I’d just confuse my T.A. and the students.” He made a gurgling noise through his unlit pipe. “I’m going to pop the question.”

  “What happened to your case of cold feet?”

  “Fanta’s are warm enough for both of us. I’m still too old for her, but I figure marriage to her will kill me off while she’s still young enough to shop for a second husband closer to her age.”

  “Kyle, you’re an incurable romantic.”

  “I wouldn’t be doing this if I weren’t. What do you think Elaine would say?”

  “I think she’d be happy you found someone to look after you. You know, this is the end of eggplant margaritas at midnight.”

  “That’s okay, I was starting to get on my own nerves. That’s what happens when you live alone. On a completely unrelated subject, how are you and Harriet getting along?”

  “She sat with me through How Not to Dress.”

  “It’s love, then. I screened it this morning.” He grasped the doorknob. “Remember what I said about living alone. It’s an unnatural state.”

  **

  Alone that night in Broadhead’s house, Valentino called Harriet and told her about his day.

  “I was going to tell you about mine,” she said when he’d finished. “Suddenly, trying to trace the only tooth in a homeless man’s decomposing head to the dentist who filled it doesn’t seem so bad. You aren’t going to pay the little jerk, are you?”

  He smiled at the living room wall. “You’re the first person I’ve spoken to who didn’t try to persuade me to.”

  “You wouldn’t be who I thought you were if you did.”

  “I hope you still feel that way when I finish falling from the top of the zoning tree, hitting every branch on the way down.”

  “There’s another way,” she said. “Turn him in.”

  “Kalishnikov says he’s too slippery. It’d be my word against his.”

  “Not if you had evidence.”

  He laughed shortly. “Now you think I’m a detective. I’m going back to calling myself a lowly archivist.”

  “You can find something on him. You found Greed.”

  “I’m beginning to think they’ll put that on my headstone. I’m not even sure Kalishnikov is right about Spink. Maybe he’s just an overachiever.”

  “If that’s true, he should lose interest soon. Spending all that time at one site can’t be a wise investment of taxpayers’ money.”

  “I knew talking to you would cheer me up,” he said. “Listen, Mom and Dad left me in charge of the house this weekend. Why don’t you come over tonight? I’ll roast a pig.”

  “I’m not sure what that means, but I can’t. I’m working a double shift. How about tomorrow night?”

  “Tomorrow night I’m in Tijuana, trying to talk a retired director of Mexican movies out of his life’s work.”

  “You and I are starting to sound like the typical professional couple.”

  “If you call tracing teeth and bullfighting films typical.”

  “Welcome to Hollywood.”

  **

  Irving Thalherg shifts in his seat, unwraps a small white pill from tinfoil, and places it under his tongue. Frances Marion, veteran scenarist that she is, has never seen the slender, delicate-appearing head of production display so much agitation.

  “Are you all right?” She whispers, but not low enough to prevent a woman seated in the row in front of them from turning and shushing her. Every seat in the theater is occupied; unaware of the sneak preview scheduled to follow the comedy short. San Bernadino moviegoers have nevertheless provided a capacity crowd to see the main feature, The Kiss, Garbo’s last silent— evidence of unprecedented loyalty to the star in this talkie-dominated year of 1930. An audible gasp of pleasurable anticipation has greeted the title card for Anna Christie, accompanied by the legendary name. But Thalberg seems unmodified.

  He ignores the interruption. “If you must know, I’m as nervous as a schoolgirl. Gilbert’s fall has the entire industry on edge.”

  Marion’s own unease is twofold. Audiences reacted with universal disapproval to John Gilbert’s voice heard for the first time in Redemption. His career is in shambles, and MGM has lost one of the most bankable stars in its stable. Everything depends on how well—or ill—a speaking Garbo goes over. This, together with rumors of Thalberg’s fragile health, has Marion concerned for the studio’s future should the genius behind its success expire, possibly in this very theater. The first full year of the Great Depression does not smile upon unemployed screenwriters.

  “We’ve been living on borrowed time for three years,” Marion reminds her employer. “She couldn’t go on making silents forever.”

  “I’m not so sure. There isn’t a thing predictable about that impossible creature.”

  The woman shushes them again. Garbo has entered, fifteen minutes into the first reel.

  She leans against the door frame in a shabby waterfront bar, demonstrably exhausted, dressed in glamorous dowd in a cloche hat and a simple dark jacket over a low-cut blouse with wilted ruffles and a skirt reaching to mid-calf, plain shoes with two-inch heels on her feet, which some iconoclasts have described as large. As she slumps to a table hauling a plain suitcase, the auditorium is eerily silent—before a talking picture. Even silent films have always been accompanied by a musical score to match the mood. Not so much as a cough or a nervous giggle breaks the tension.

  Thalberg leans close to Marion. “Garbo is holding them in the palm of her hand.”

  “She hasn’t opened her mouth yet.”

  Seated with her suitcase beside her on the floor, she makes eye contact with the waiter for the first time. Her lips part. The air quivers. Marion is quivering too.

  “Gimme a visky,” says Garbo in that queer husky voice; no coach has interceded to dilute the heavy Scandinavian accent. “Chincher ale on the side.” As the waiter heads off, she turns her head his way. “And don’t be stingy, ba-bee.”

  The stillness following this first line makes the one that preceded it seem absolutely rowdy. Thalberg reaches over and grips Marion’s wrist tightly. He has never before made physical contact with her.

  And then the audience is on its feet, pounding its palms together in an artillery battery. One talented individual puts two fingers in his mouth and blasts an ear-splitting whistle. Moments elapse, and several on-screen lines are drowned out, before the viewers resume their seats, thirsty as drunkards for the next beautiful foghorn note from that celebrated breast.

  “By God!” Thalberg isn’t whispering now. “By God, Frances! We’re saved!”

  The woman in front of them turns her full face on them, stiff with indignation. “Please! Garbo’s talking!”

  **

  Valentino’s alarm clock rang. He came to consciousness, completely disoriented. He’d brought a DVD of Anna Christie home to Broadhead’s house from the office and watched it on the professor’s television before going to bed. He had no idea where he’d gotten the details of his dream; Hollywood lore stopped when Irving Thalberg had told Frances Marion, who’d adapted the scenario from Eugene O’Neill’s play about a Swedish prostitute, that Garbo had held her audience in the palm of her hand. The rest of the story was based on rave reviews and box-office totals. Encouraged by the success of her first talking feature, Garbo might have gone on making movies with her name above the title until she’d died at age 82, had she not retired in her thirty-sixth year into a life of relentless seclusion.

  He roused himself sufficiently to flick the switch
on the alarm and fall back onto his pillow, only to stir again when the ringing continued; it was the telephone on the nightstand. He fumbled the receiver off its cradle and muttered something into the mouthpiece.

  It was Harriet. “Turn on CNN, quick.”

  “What?”

  She repeated it. “Call me back.” The connection broke.

  He stumbled out into the living room, turned on the set, and surfed to the proper channel. The female anchor was talking about Iraq. He had to wait three minutes until the scroll at the bottom brought him fully awake.

  He didn’t call Harriet back right away. Instead he dialed Matthew Rankin’s unlisted number in Beverly Hills.

  **

  CHAPTER

  13

  RANKIN HIMSELF ANSWERED on the third ring. Valentino realized suddenly how late it was and that the housekeeper had probably gone to bed. “Did I wake you?”

  “No, I’m just sitting here in my study, combing the Net for an estimate of how much my employees are cheating me out of. I think the experience of last week has snarled my sleeping rhythms for good.”

  “The Swedish Military Archives have gone public with the theft. It’s on the news channel.”

  “I imagine that took courage on their part. I wish some of our own institutions were as forthcoming.”

  “I’m afraid there’s more. You know how the press is when it smells two breaking stories that appear to be related. Someone leaked to them the content of Roger Akers’ phony Garbo letter.”

  A short silence slammed. “Who?”

  “A source with the Beverly Hills Police Department who asked not to be identified.” It didn’t have to be Ray Padilla. Harriet had said keeping secrets wasn’t law enforcement’s strong suit; but it was only the one percent of uncertainty that kept Valentino from sharing his suspicions with the tycoon. “They’ve got just enough of the facts to reach the same conclusion you did at the beginning. They think the letter’s real, and they’re reporting it as if it’s among the material missing from Sweden. As they see it, Garbo and Andrea were having a lesbian affair and that’s what Akers was using to squeeze you.”

  “The hyenas! I’ll sue them right off the air.”

  “You’d just be throwing gasoline on the fire. When they find out Akers was in Stockholm, they’ll treat it as confirmation, along with any strenuous action on your part to squash the story. I’m surprised you haven’t heard from them before this.”

  “My number’s unlisted.”

  “If I were you I’d change it, or discontinue the service. Telephone operators aren’t paid much, and the media have money to burn.”

  The silence this time was longer. When Rankin spoke again his tone was level. “I’ll take your advice. Thank you for the warning. I’ll triple my security. If you need to contact me, call Clifford Adams.”

  “There’s one other way to handle it,” Valentino said. “I doubt you’d like it, but it may be more effective.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Call a press conference. Tell them the letter was forged and how it was done. They’ll swarm around you like bees for a couple of days, but when the authorities back you up they’ll find something else to boost ratings. In the meantime you’ll have set the record straight about Andrea and Garbo.”

  “It will come out anyway, without my having to expose myself to the swarm.”

  “It will take longer, maybe long enough for the rumor to grow legs of its own. Forgive me for presuming, Mr. Rankin, but I know how things work in this town, and I think you’ve been too busy insulating yourself from the outside world to understand. Without a host to feed on, a fifteen-second sound bite dies after a few days, but whenever a story lasts long enough to grow sidebars, travel the talk-show circuit, and get argued about at dinner parties, it can hang around as long as Paul Bunyan. The stigma may linger forever.”

  “I disagree. A lie cannot live, and I can’t bear to wallow in the muck for even fifteen seconds.” Rankin thanked him again and excused himself to wake up his lawyer.

  **

  It was as bad as Valentino had predicted.

  Throughout the weekend, every time he looked at a TV screen or passed a newsstand, Greta Garbo’s bewitching face gazed out at him. News libraries throughout the country were ransacked for decades-old studio glamour shots, telephoto candids, and pictures she’d posed for in the very early years before she began refusing to give interviews altogether. Oddly— or perhaps predictably—very few showed her in the fullness of her later years, despite the comparative availability of snapshots taken with her consent by her small circle of intimates; those that displayed her in gray hair and wrinkles were almost invariably blurred and grainy, showing a frumpily dressed matron in concealing hats, suffocating scarves, and the ubiquitous sunglasses adopted by generations of actresses eager to show the world they were as unapproachable as Garbo. These last never strayed beyond the width of a column, or glimmered longer than a few seconds over the shoulders of broadcast anchors. It was as Camille and Mata Hari and Ninotchka and Anna Karenina and the Swedish Sphinx of twentysomething that she filled pages and screens and the covers of magazines. It wasn’t so much that the camera had fallen in love with her all over again as that it had never abandoned its infatuation.

  For Valentino, the phenomenon certainly brightened the sprawling acultural scenery of Los Angeles. He abhorred only the dirty-little-boy attitude that accompanied it, as if sexual tolerance were suspended and suddenly everyone was either straight or a fag. Even the lesbian organizations that came forward to embrace the icon as one of their own seemed merely to be exploiting her for their own purposes. The world had conspired to turn her into the very object she’d gone underground to avoid becoming.

  But rock bottom had not yet revealed itself; not when the right-wing owner of a cable franchise in Missouri banned the showing of any of Garbo’s films on his station, and not even when a national tabloid composited Garbo’s and Andrea Rankin’s heads on the bodies of an entangled pair of lingerie-clad women on its front page, claiming exclusive evidence of their illicit relationship. Rock bottom came when the television program Law & Order ran a teaser on NBC of an episode “ripped from the headlines,” about a legendary star’s guilty secret exposed long after her death, with a sordid murder blended in for extra spice. Valentino had spent most of his adult life in the entertainment capital, but had never known a scandal to metastasize so rapidly.

  He heard people discussing the story even in Tijuana, where the archivist sat in a steamy rented room above a laundry, nibbling at a glass of tequila and trying to pin down the tenant regarding the existence and condition of a dozen films he’d shot for pesos on the dollar during the short colorful heyday of the B movie revolution south of the border. The director, fat, seventy-five, and sweating tequila from every pore, was best known for a series about the leader of a gang of transvestite bandidos, six films produced back to back throughout the summer of 1958. Valentino suspected they might find an appreciative new audience in the postcamp world of the twenty-first century, which had embraced the best of Ed Wood and the worst of Roger Gorman. However, after two hours he confirmed that the poor old fellow possessed no prints of his work after all, and had responded to his guest’s query to interview him only to alleviate his loneliness. Valentino spent an additional forty-five minutes out of pity, thanked him for his time, and surreptitiously parked fifty dollars in American bills under a tobacco can on his way out.

  He was grateful that his fifteen minutes of fame seemed to have departed with his black eye. No one appeared to be following him, going south or north, and when he stopped for gas he attracted no notice. The defenders of the First Amendment had lost interest in the shooting at the Rankin estate and reverted to their natural preference for sex and bringing low the mighty. That left Valentino entirely out of the loop.

  When he got back to Broadhead’s house, feeling wilted and drained of all ambition and energy, he found his host seated in front of
his TV watching the first season of Temptation Island on DVD. Something about his deflated posture in the old armchair suggested the set might have been off for all the attention he was paying to the intrigue onscreen.

  “I thought you weren’t coming back until tomorrow,” Valentino said.

  “Bed-and-breakfast joints bring out my claustrophobia. A man could suffocate in one of those big poofy beds. Fanta turned down my proposal,” he added.

  “I’m sorry, Kyle. Is it the age difference?” Valentino sank into the sofa.

  “Astonishingly, no. She said she can’t be married to a man with no aspirations. Evidently I’ve been resting on my laurels ever since I published The Persistence of Vision. I barely teach, I don’t research, I don’t write. I’m the coot sitting in the corner criticizing everyone else’s efforts without making any of my own.”