Reds in the Beds

by Martin Turnbull

  Marcus retrieved a bottle of Four Roses and brought it to the table, kicking the rest of Oliver’s briefcase out of sight. “What did she say?”

  “First, she had to explain what it was, because she could tell from our what-the-fuck mugs that we were in the dark.”

  “She must have got a kick out of that.”

  “And then she mentioned your name.”

  Marcus felt lightheaded, but not in a champagne-with-a-whiskey-chaser way. “In what context?”

  “This.”

  Mannix pulled a strip of paper from out of his pocket and handed it over. It was a list of about twenty names, commencing with Lewis Milestone and Charlie Chaplin. Immediately following them was Dalton Trumbo, one of MGM’s best screenwriters—his Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo was one of the highest-praised movies during the war. Then Lester Cole, a screenwriter whose work for studios all over town Marcus had long admired. He ran his eyes down the list. Some names he knew, some he didn’t. He stopped when he got to Ring Lardner Jr. and thought of the conversation Kathryn had with Nelson Hoyt outside the Hollywood Canteen. But it was the last four names on the list that made Marcus twitch: Lillian Hellman, Donald Ogden Stewart, Trevor Bergin, and Dorothy Parker.

  Marcus only started breathing again when he realized his own name wasn’t there. “Whose list is this?”

  “Hedda’s, but it looks like Wilkerson’s. You see why we asked your wife to leave the room?”

  “My name’s not here,” Marcus said.

  “That’s what bothered Hedda, seeing as how you were on board that Ruskie tub. That’s when we got into the whole Simonov thing. Who else was there?”

  Marcus shrugged. “The rest were strangers to me.”

  “What about when Simonov was pitching the Pavlova movie to you? Anyone else hear that?”

  Oh boy. I thought I was going to be able to skate past this one.

  A rustling noise came from the bedroom, like heavy shoeboxes tumbling over. Mannix’s eyes shot toward Marcus’ closet.

  “Is somebody else here?”

  “The plumbing,” Marcus said as blithely as he could. He poured some more whiskey. “It’s got a life of its own.”

  Mannix kept his eyes on the bedroom.

  “Clifford Wardell,” Marcus blurted out.

  The name was enough to cause Mannix to lose interest in Marcus’ closet. “What about him?”

  “We both got invited because Simonov wanted to offer up his Pavlova idea.”

  “What did Wardell think of it?”

  “Said it was a piece of crap. That’s how we got it. But it’s shaping up to be a fine picture. Got class written all—”

  “Kill it,” Mannix said darkly.

  “We’ve spent a decent amount in preproduction.”

  “The time to make that movie was when the Ruskies were our allies. Since Churchill dropped his Iron Curtain, those fakakta Bolshies are now the enemy. Cretins like Wilkerson and Hopper have seen to it that anything associated with Russia is now painted with pink and red stripes.”

  Marcus thought of his greatest success as a screenwriter. Free Leningrad! was set in Russia during the first part of the war. Were agitators like Wilkerson going to start applying their slanderous labels retroactively?

  Mannix squinted over his cigar. “We got any other Russian pictures on the slate?”

  Marcus’ mind was hazing over. “I’ll double check on Monday.”

  “You’ll go into work tomorrow and triple check,” Mannix told him. “L.B.’s ordered that anything remotely connected with Russia be shut down.”

  Ironic, considering Mayer was born in Minsk.

  “We need to find a picture with an all-American hero,” Mannix continued. “Tough as nails and braver than shit.” He glowered at Marcus. “I don’t care if you have to pull it out of your ass, Adler, but you need to find us something so patriotic it’ll make every lousy Pinko on the face of the planet shrivel up and die. I’ll be damned if we’re gonna let that bitch call us Metro-Goldwyn-Moscow and think she can make it stick.”

  Marcus’ closet emitted another shuffling sound, louder this time. Mannix got to his feet and stepped inside the doorway, cocking his right ear toward the room. “What you got in there? A gorilla?”

  “I’ve got exactly the picture we need,” Marcus said shrilly.

  “Yeah?”

  Marcus hadn’t read Anson Purvis’ The Final Day yet; it was still languishing on the outer edge of his desk because he thought of Wardell every time he reached for it.

  “It takes place on the last day of the war. It’s got patriotism, bravery, an American hero, the whole bit.”

  “And it’s good?”

  It’d better be. “I’ll have a detailed synopsis on your desk first thing Monday.”

  Mannix threw back the last of his drink. “All this bullshit’s giving me a fucking headache.” He put on his hat and started for the front door. “Tell your missus sorry to boot her out of her own house.”

  “She understands,” Marcus said. “She enjoys her chocolate malteds at—” Mannix slammed the door behind him.

  Marcus ran into his bedroom and yanked open the closet door. Oliver toppled out.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Let’s just say I’m in no hurry to do that again.”

  As Oliver hauled himself to his feet, the two of them sniffed the air.

  “Do you smell something burning?” Oliver asked.

  “My cake!”

  They raced into the kitchen and Marcus yanked open the oven door. A bloom of pungent smoke enveloped him as he retrieved the cake tin and set it on the counter. Marcus fanned away the smoke. The edges were moderately, but not irreparably, singed.

  “Is it salvageable?” Oliver asked.

  “That depends,” Marcus replied, “on whether you’re asking about my cake or my career.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Gwendolyn stepped out of the empty store and into the harsh sun, barely registering the early afternoon traffic that was sailing past.

  “Well,” Kathryn said behind her, “that was certainly a slap in the face.”

  Gwendolyn faced the store she’d hoped might soon be Chez Gwendolyn. “It would’ve been perfect.”

  “The rent!” Kathryn exclaimed. “Talk about highway robbery. Did you see that realtor’s face?” She took on the guy’s haughty Connecticut accent. “‘Obviously you haven’t been keeping up with the times.’”

  The papers were all reporting how Los Angeles was undergoing the biggest boom since the transcontinental railways arrived in the 1880s. Article after article detailed how rents were spiraling ever upwards, as were costs for construction, labor, and raw materials. But cloistered inside the walls of the Garden of Allah, Gwendolyn hadn’t paid much attention.

  After she’d delivered all fifteen dresses for her Midnight Frolics customers, they were so happy with them that she got orders for four more. After paying Arlene for her time, she had nearly a thousand dollars stashed in her Girl Scout cookie tin. She’d been so thrilled when she walked past that empty store last week. It was exactly what she’d been picturing all these years. Two spacious windows, lots of good light, and she could walk there from the Garden. But if that’s what they were asking for in rent, and without her black market stash . . .

  Damn Linc Tattler and his thieving little fingers. Without Chez Gwendolyn, what have I got to look forward to?

  “If Linc were here, I’d slug him in the guts.”

  “Howard offered to fly you down.”

  “Humpty Dumpty has a better chance of flying an airplane than he does. Can we please change the subject?”

  “Shall we talk about tonight?” Kathryn suggested.

  Gwendolyn knew it was only a lavender marriage, but now that Kathryn and Marcus were unraveling their bonds, she felt a sort of grief. And now that Chez Gwendolyn had withered on the vine, it was as though her whole life were dwindling to a standstill. The last thing she felt like doing was hosting the Gay Divorcée party she’d off
ered to throw.

  “Schwab’s is delivering the booze at six,” she said. “Are you sure you want to do all the hors d’oeuvres?”

  “Haven’t you heard?” Kathryn said proudly. “I’m queen of the hors d’oeuvres now.”

  “I didn’t hear from Dottie. Is she coming?”

  “Yes! Universal is doing a picture called Smash-Up from some story she wrote with the guy who did The Corn Is Green. I saw her at the Nickodell after my show last week. She’d been angling to write the screenplay, but they’ve given it to John Howard Lawson.”

  “Isn’t he on Billy’s blacklist?”

  Wilkerson’s list of suspected Commies had become so notorious, everybody now referred to it as “Billy’s Blacklist.”

  Kathryn nodded. “Which is why I told her she’ll have dodged a bullet if she doesn’t get the job. Lillian was with her, so of course she was agitating that Dottie ignore me.”

  “She wouldn’t be Lillian Hellman if she didn’t.”

  By the time they walked through the Garden of Allah’s main building and out into the pool area, it was just after five. That gave Gwendolyn two hours to freshen up and organize her place for the dozen guests. But that plan flew out the window when she spotted her brother sitting in the foyer.

  “MONTY!”

  Gwendolyn’s brother was a life-long navy man who’d survived Pearl Harbor and ended up serving on a battleship in Tokyo Bay the day the Japanese signed the peace treaty. Gwendolyn was proud of her brother’s service, but she hardly ever saw him.

  She launched into his outstretched arms and breathed in the starch of military discipline, mingled with briny sea air. She hugged him until her arms ached.

  “Typical navy,” she sobbed. “Never give a girl any notice. You appear, you stick around, you vanish, then three years later you pop up again.”

  “You should be used to it by now.”

  She looked into his sky blue eyes. He seemed older than his thirty-four years now. “How long have I got with you?”

  “Seventeen hours.”

  “Not even a full twenty-four? Monty!”

  “What can I tell you? It’s typical navy. I’m on tomorrow’s Sunset Limited to San Francisco.”

  “You’ve timed it well,” Kathryn said, stepping forward. “You can be the special guest at the wingding Gwendolyn’s throwing me tonight.”

  Monty’s weathered face lit up. “Birthday?”

  “Come with me,” Gwendolyn said, “and I’ll try to explain.”

  * * *

  Monty wasn’t as impressed with being in the same room as Trevor Bergin and Melody Hope as she’d thought. After five movies, the two were MGM’s most successful pairing since Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, but Monty was clearly bored with Trevor’s talk of his upcoming Valentino remake at Paramount.

  Monty looked horrified as Melody teetered into Gwendolyn’s apartment with a bottle of bourbon in each hand, superfluously announcing that she was already half-soused. She made a point of spilling a full glass on Quentin, who did his best to laugh it off, but Gwendolyn could tell he was on the verge of leaving. She wished she could grab Monty and find some quiet restaurant to spend a long evening just the two of them.

  “Hey! Pinky the Pinko!” Melody called out. Trevor’s face congealed at the mention of the kleptomaniac in Reds in the Beds that was based on him. “Ain’t you gonna pay me any attention?” Melody whined. “Even if it’s just for show?”

  “Take it easy, Mel.” Bertie made a grab for Melody’s drink but Melody pulled it away and launched the contents of her glass onto the wall several feet behind her, missing Gwendolyn’s portrait by inches.

  “Everybody grab something!” Gwendolyn announced. “We’re taking this party outside!”

  The party was soon relocated to the far side of the neglected patch of dirt that had once been a victory garden, and an impromptu bar was set up on the periphery of a small fountain.

  “Hey, Melody!” Quentin said. “Now you can toss around your hooch without ruining anything.”

  Melody attempted a wisecrack, but inspiration failed her, so she made do with a sneer instead.

  “Surely you’re capable of more than pulling a face,” Quentin persisted. “Nellie Burch would have cut me down with a real whammy.”

  Please, everyone, Gwendolyn thought, can’t we just have one night without that book?

  “Did I hear someone say Dee-Dee Grifter?”

  Kay Thompson looked dazzling in a pantsuit swathed in orange bugle beads. “Bill’s show ran into technical difficulties tonight. Sends his apologies, and best regards for a blissful divorce, and insisted I stop off with these.” She held a couple of bottles of champagne aloft. “Imported!” She set one down on the fountain’s ledge and tackled the cork on the other.

  “You know what I heard at CBS tonight?” she asked nobody in particular. “That Clifford Wardell spent a week here at the Garden to get veris—verisimilit—what’s the word I’m searching for?”

  “It’s verisimilitude, you big knucklehead.”

  Dorothy Parker had arrived with Lillian in tow, and the two of them were wearing virtually identical outfits of mildew blue. “That Wardell prick sure got around, didn’t he?”

  “Don’t believe a word of it,” Marcus said. “I’d have seen him, and then strung him up by his balls—if I could find them.”

  “I think it took balls to write what he did,” Melody said. “He knew exactly the sort of blowtorch he was lighting.”

  “Melody!” Trevor looked like he was about to wallop his lavender wife across her strident yap. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, so pipe the hell down.”

  Gwendolyn grabbed up a plate of Kathryn’s liverwurst on rainbow rye. “Everyone, you ought to try these.”

  “I hate to say it,” Lillian said, “but I agree with little Miss Movie Star over there.”

  Dottie Parker looked as horrified as Gwendolyn felt. “Oh, Lil, you can’t mean that.”

  Lillian Hellman had been tenacious in her criticism of Billy’s blacklist, mainly because she was an unapologetic member of the Communist Party herself. “Now that we’ve vanquished the Nazis and the Japs, America needs a new enemy to rail against. What gets my goat is that someone seems to have decided that our new nemesis should be the Communists.”

  “Please don’t stand here and defend that book.”

  Gwendolyn could tell from the steely mien in Marcus’ eye that he was getting steamed up and ready for a fight.

  “Of course not,” Lillian said. “That book is atrocious, but it’s pushed the issue onto center stage where we shall all be forced to grapple with it, come what may.”

  “I’ll tell you what may come,” Marcus said. Oliver laid a placating hand on his shoulder, but he jerked it away. “If we don’t play this very, very carefully, we’re going to find ourselves blackballed.”

  “Oh, Marcus!” Kay fluttered her hand at him. “I hardly think it’s going to come to that. And even if it does, you’re no longer actually writing any of these movies, so it’s hardly going to affect you.”

  “What affects one of us, affects us all,” Kathryn put in.

  “Says the gal who works for the guy who wrote the blacklist that kicked it all off,” Melody said.

  “My boss didn’t start it, Wardell did,” Kathryn said.

  “Yeah, but he sure as hell picked it up and ran with it,” Dottie said.

  “COULD WE PLEASE JUST DROP IT?” Gwendolyn exploded. “I asked you all here tonight because Marcus and Kathryn are getting divorced. All of us here know why they got hitched in the first place. Not the most ideal reasons, but under the circumstances, practical and necessary. And now it’s practical and necessary that they unhitch, and I thought we might gather together and wish them well. Is that too much to ask?”

  Bertie stepped forward. “Quite right, Gwennie.” She lifted up the filled champagne coupe in her hand. “Here’s to Marcus and Kathryn, the happiest married couple I know, which is ironic, all things
considered.”

  Everybody disposed of whatever liquor happened to be in their glass, and started chatting among themselves. Gwendolyn was starting to feel like she’d managed to prevent the party from turning into another philosophical slugfest when Dottie piped up.

  “Can I just say one more thing? The fact that Wardell portrayed the Garden of Allah as a hotbed of subversive—”

  “JESUS!” Gwendolyn felt the last wisps of patience dissolve between her fingers. “I’m so sick of hearing about, and talking about, and arguing about the lousy Reds in the lousy Beds. I wish we could pile up every last copy, and set fire to the whole dang thing!”

  Gwendolyn hung her head while an uncomfortable hush rendered the group immobile.

  It was Oliver who broke the silence. “Why don’t we? Let’s make a funeral pyre and burn the lot.”

  “A Viking funeral!” came from Arlene. “If we could get a sheet of metal—”

  “There’s some corrugated metal in the parking lot,” Trevor put in.

  “We could sit it on the life preserver next to the pool, then pile it high with as many copies as we can find. Then flambé the whole thing, push it out into the middle, and watch it burn.”

  “Like Clifford Wardell’s soul in hell!” Lillian declared. “How positively cathartic!”

  Everybody looked at each other, waiting for a dissenting voice, but nobody could conjure a single one. Arlene was first to dash off to her apartment, and the rest scattered to their corners of the Divine Oasis.

  Minutes later, they gathered by the pool clutching their books. Marcus laid the Garden’s life preserver on the ground and covered it with the corrugated metal. Everyone placed their books onto it, forming a pyramid with Marcus’ copy on top, standing upright, its pages splayed open.

  Marcus doused the whole thing in brandy, then Oliver gingerly placed it on the water. Kathryn stepped forward and struck two matches, saying, “A pox upon you, and all who sail in you!” and tossed them onto the pyre.

  Gwendolyn felt the heat of flames as it flared to life. Someone shoved a rake into her hands, and she pushed the burning pile toward the center of the pool. The crowd let out a cheer, raw and purgative; the pent-up tension dissipated in the night air.