by L. J. Greene
She sighed. “Same thing I end up doing every day of my life. Shoveling fresh horse shit from one pile into another.”
It was jarring to hear the phrase falling from her lips. But I was more taken aback by her tone. She sounded not quite herself; bitter.
“Listen,” I said. “What I came out here for was to tell you I think you’re in trouble. I don’t like some of the talk I’ve been hearing your brother make behind closed doors.”
She paused and leant on the shovel. “You’re quite right,” she said, panting slightly. “I am in trouble. I want to marry, you see.”
“Oh,” I said, taken aback. “Who’s the lucky fellow?”
“No one in particular,” she said, going back to her work. “But I’d like to take control of my part of the family fortune, and it won’t come to me until I marry.”
I huffed a laugh. “Doesn’t seem like something your brother’d be too keen about.”
“No, indeed. He’s furious about it.”
“He must have known it’d come sooner or later. Besides, you’re a free woman, aren’t you? You could go back to London on your own.”
She slowed again in her shoveling. “Reggie wasn’t always like this, you know. Before the war, he was quite different. Cheerful. I remember he’d play hide and seek with me at Holford Hall when he came back in the school hols. He’d take supper with me in the nursery, play at my dollies’ tea parties with me. After our parents died he became my ward at a very young age. And he was very kind to me. Very kind.”
I couldn’t imagine it, a kind Cresswickham. “A lot of boys came back changed from the war,” I hedged.
“Yes. Yes, I suppose it must have been the war that changed him. Now perhaps you should go back to your novel,” she said with a brisk air, “unless you plan to help me with this?”
Horse shit. That was the undertow scent in the place, the base note I hadn’t identified before. No wonder the smell of it reminded me of Leo, I thought spitefully.
“I’ll leave you to your manure. I’ve got enough of my own to deal with.”
On my way back to the mansion, I thought over what Alice had told me. Marriage. Could it be? Was that what Cresswickham had planned for me, for Alice? If he thought he could control me and marry his sister off to me, then he’d still have Alice, and all that money, not that he didn’t have more than enough as it was. It didn’t seem likely—the man loathed me—and yet the thought of it gave me a strange thrill. Alice.
Alice, and all that money.
I was appalled at myself by the time I got back to my room. Take Alice just because it suited me, suited Cresswickham? Morals of an alley cat, my old Ma used to say about young ladies of a loose kind. I wondered what she’d say about me if she could see me now, thrilling to the idea of murder, to a sadist joining me to his rich, beautiful sister. How far I’d come in the world, I thought bitterly, since that day I met Leo at Chateau Marmont—and then I thought about Leo.
All it took for me to start rotting was a few months living with money. Could I really blame Leo for his cold-blooded attitude, having lived this way for over a decade?
Chapter 23
It took more nectar than usual to wash away my worries that night, and when I woke the next day I was just about in ribbons. Whichever Angel had attended me that morning had tactfully left the curtains closed, but my breakfast tray was cooling on the bedside table. I drank down the sweet juice gratefully. My head was swimming. Still, I’d learnt my lesson, when someone came rapping at the door just after I’d heaved myself up to sit against the pillows.
“Who is it?” I demanded.
The door cracked open and one beetle-black eye peered in at me. “Good morning,” Mancini said cautiously, and then, “May I?”
I grunted in reply and started chewing on cold toast.
“You look a little under the weather,” he said, slipping into the room. He shut the door after himself and leaned up against it, as though wanting as much distance between us as possible. Well, I’d told him to stay away from me, after all.
“What do you want?” I asked, sinking back into the pillows. I could’ve used another few hours’ sleep to knock the hangover down to manageable.
“It’s a little tricky. I’d organized an outing, you see. Before you asked me to leave you alone.”
“Before I realized what a Judas you were?”
Leo ignored that, and played his trump. “Charles Scribner is in town.”
I split one eyelid open and tried to read his face. “Junior?”
He nodded.
“Of Charles Scribner’s Sons?”
“The same.”
I sat up again in bed, just like he’d known I would. “My, but you’re a sly one,” I said. “I almost admire your artistry.” Charles Scribner’s Sons had published every author I cared about. Wolfe. Hemingway. Fitzgerald, of course.
Charles Scribner, Jr, had taken over as head of the company a few years back at the tender age of thirty-one. He’d trained as an editor as well, and had a sterling reputation. My heart beat a little faster at the thought of meeting him, but I wouldn’t give Mancini the satisfaction of knowing it.
“And how were you planning to play this out?” I asked, crossing my arms and grinning a death’s-head grin at him. “Do tell.”
He rolled his eyes as though I were the one overdoing it. “Charles and I became acquainted during my time in New York. When he wired to let me know he was coming out to Los Angeles, I arranged a luncheon. I wanted you to meet him, talk about your book with him. But of course if you’d rather nurse your sore head, that’s up to you.”
“Acquainted,” I repeated. “Acquainted, you say?” Before he could reply, I had to make a dash to the bathroom and retch into the toilet for a while. I sauntered back out with a clammy face, and I didn’t miss the way Leo’s eyes traveled over my naked torso. “Who, exactly, did you plan to invite to this tea party?”
“Just the three of us. You and I and Scribs.”
“Just the three of us, huh? No Reggie?”
“I booked us a table at the Brown Derby.” It seemed like a non sequitur, but I took his meaning. I didn’t have to stretch my imagination far to guess the Marquess of Holford’s opinion of a Hollywood restaurant like the Brown Derby. “Anyhow,” Leo sighed, and pulled open the door. “I’m driving into town at half twelve. Meet me at the car if you want to come. I shall understand if you don’t.”
He left me to stew on it. It wouldn’t have surprised me to discover that the serpent of Eden had trained Mancini as a protégé. I cleaned myself up as best I could and was waiting obediently by the garage for him bang on twelve-thirty. He said nothing, barely even glanced my way, and we drove out of the mansion grounds in stony silence. I sat beside him in the front, unwilling to be chauffeured like Cresswickham, but two minutes in I wished I’d taken the back seat after all. It was damned uncomfortable to be sitting stiffly there next to him, keeping my elbows tucked in and my thighs tight together to avoid any chance touches as he went around corners.
Once we were in company, Leo was all affability. You would have thought we were old college buddies the way he clapped me on the back and talked me up to Scribner. The publisher was thirty-six now, and a long-faced, ascetic-looking fellow until he smiled. His twinkling eyes took me by surprise, and his charming, cheerful manners put me at ease. I refused the waiter’s offer of a drink to start, until Scribner asked for a rye and water.
“Now, Scribs, you shouldn’t encourage that sort of thing,” Leo said. “Besides, poor Cole had a rough night.”
I shot him a glare, but Scribner waved aside his objection. “Hair of the dog,” he said. “Best thing for it. Besides, writers will drink, won’t they? Fitzgerald drank like a fish. Hemingway, too. When I was going over his last manuscript—”
I liked him. I wanted to impress him and chum up to him and wheedle my novel into his hands for publication, but most of all, I liked the man. When he asked to see a copy of my book, I found myself nodding en
thusiastically and promising to send it as soon as it was complete.
“Can’t you send what you have already?” he asked, as though nothing in the world would please him more than to read my shoddy first draft.
“We-ell, I’ve only the one copy,” I started, in the tone of someone changing his mind, but immediately he stopped me.
“My God, don’t send me your only draft. I shall wait, eagerly. But for goodness’ sake, hire a typist to whip you up a copy, soon as you can. I always advise our writers to keep multiples. Never know what might happen, after all.”
I didn’t like the idea of anyone else getting their fingers on my work before it was done, but I nodded my head and agreed that I’d think about it. We whiled away a pleasant three hours of food and drink with his tales of great American novelists, and by the time we were driving back to Bel-Air, I’d thawed considerably in my attitude to Leo.
“That was some lunch,” I groaned happily, pulling at my waistband. “Some lunch.”
“Just the food?” he inquired.
“The conversation, too. And company.” I gave him a glance. “I suppose I ought to thank you.”
“There’s no need,” he said, coming to a stop at the traffic lights. “Whether you believe me or not, I want you to succeed. I want people to talk about your work the same way they talk about Fitzgerald’s, and Hemingway’s, and all of those great writers.”
“Do you?” I asked. We looked full into each other’s face. “Is that what you want?”
His eyes went soft, and slid back to stare at the red light. “It is,” he said. “I want your every dream to come true.”
“Then ask your keeper to let me go. He would. He would if you asked him. You know how to play him, you could—”
“I can’t,” he said, and abruptly accelerated as the light went green. “I mean, I tried,” he added, as he took a sharp corner with more speed than was strictly safe. “I told him I was tired of you, that I didn’t want to perform for him anymore, not with you.”
Not with me? But before I could ask what that meant, Leo continued: “So you needn’t worry about being summoned again. Only he won’t set you free, not yet.”
“Not yet,” I echoed, as the car turned into the gates and up the driveway to the mansion.
“Not yet,” he said when we reached the garage. He turned off the engine. “I don’t know that he really believed me. But…” He let out a breath, and looked over at me. “But I’m going to try again. I have to catch him in the right mood, d’ye see? If he thinks I’m lying, that I still—well, he won’t free you. But on the other hand, if he thinks I really have lost interest, he might keep you around to be contrary. I have to be careful about it, give it some time.”
Time. Of course. The Brown Derby had seduced me, and I rubbed at my eyes like a man waking from a dream. I gave a laugh and hopped out of the car. “Oh, sure,” I said, leaning down to look in the window at him. “Sure. I guess you’ll take all the time you need.”
His face went impassive, and he got out his side. “Shall we engage a typist to make a copy of your draft so far, as Scribs suggested?” he asked politely, as we walked towards the mansion proper.
“I’ll think about it,” I muttered.
In the foyer, he tried again. “I’m glad you decided to come.” I marched up the staircase and he followed behind me. “I do think Scribs is interested in your work, you know. Very interested.”
On the landing, I detected a trace of Cresswickham’s scent, drifting about like a disembodied spirit. I paused for a moment, struck by how it seemed stronger the closer I stepped towards Alice’s wing. Mancini grabbed my elbow and gave it a pull, startling me.
He said in a low voice, “In this house, it’s not just your actions that have consequences. How they are perceived matters just as much.”
“Meaning?” I snapped, yanking my arm out of his grip.
“Meaning, friend, that it won’t help your cause to be caught brooding outside Alice’s door, not if you want Reggie to cut you loose any time soon. Come along, now.” He took up my arm again and hustled me down the corridor. I was too busy being irritated to protest, and when we reached the door to my bedroom he gave a short, ironic little bow. “Now, after that pleasant afternoon, I’ll take your wishes to heart and leave you be.”
And off he strode towards his own room, while I reminded myself once again that he was a no-good liar, a scoundrel, a snake. I rubbed at my sore elbow, tender where he’d grabbed me, and ignored the twitching in my underpants.
Chapter 24
The most surprising thing to me over the next few days was that Leo did as I’d told him, and stayed away from me. It had a strange effect on me. I felt so lonely some nights that I stayed up until late playing Solitaire in the drawing room, long after the others retired. I was drinking more, too, and my writing suffered for it, but tomorrow always seemed like a better day to give up the bottle for good.
My thoughts strayed, no matter how I tried to keep them on the straight and narrow. Despite the extra booze, my downstairs problem had started to clear up, as though in punishment for pushing Mancini away. I woke stiff and ready every morning as one of the Angels opened my curtains, and felt self-conscious about it until they left the rooms, as though they could see through the quilts and blankets. Michael in particular stared hard enough at me to make me wonder if he had X-ray eyes, and once or twice I thought I detected an offer in his raised brow, or in his fingers brushing mine as he set the breakfast tray in my aching lap. But I didn’t want him.
I told myself I didn’t want Leo, either. Leo, who would hardly look at me, even over the dinner table.
One night after such a dinner, when Cresswickham was stowed and snoring, and we’d all met up in the drawing room, Alice began to pick out a tune on the piano. She and Leo fell into singing duets. Leo favored jazz tunes, and although Alice claimed she was a poor singer she sounded sweet as Peggy Lee to me. Leo had a fine voice, though he claimed it wasn’t suited to jazz.
“What about you, Blue Eyes?” he asked me. He and I were leaning on the grand piano as Alice plink-plinked idly at the keys. He had undone his bowtie, leaving it slung around his neck with a risqué air. His undone top buttons kept me mesmerized, staring at the tuft of hair peeking out at me.
Alice looked up at me with a smile and said, “Yes, give us some Sinatra.”
They wouldn’t allow me to demur, so I sang a few lines from Frank’s last record, looking into Leo’s face: “I get along without you very well, of course I do, except when soft rains fall…” I was struck by the melancholia in my own voice, and so were the audience.
“It doesn’t sound romantic at all when you sing it like that,” Alice said, and laughed. She picked out a soft, slow version of the song on the piano. She could pick up any tune by ear and mimic it perfectly.
“Is it supposed to be romantic?” I asked. “I thought it was about loss.”
“Yes,” Leo said, and we looked at each other. “The pain of loss, but also the delusion that love has died, when it clearly has not.”
“Coulda fooled me.”
Alice hit an off-key note and we dropped each other’s gaze. I ruffled up my hair at the back of my neck, hoping Alice didn’t see me blushing. When I looked at her to check, she gave me a gentle smile. I couldn’t help goofing over her, dreamlike and fragile and beautiful as she was, even though she’d given me short shrift. Besides, if Cresswickham had plans—
“Sinatra’s playing at the Birdhouse this Saturday,” Leo said abruptly. Alice turned to him, her eyes bright.
“You haven’t taken me anywhere for weeks,” she said. “Is that an invitation?”
“Why, certainly, my dove,” he said, and wandered away to where he’d left his cigarette case.
"Cole?" Alice leaned over to grab at my hand. "You'll come, too?"
I grinned. "Sure, I will."
Leo said: “Let’s ask Reggie, too."
I slumped against the piano, like the hope and happiness had
rushed out of me. With four words Leo had clouded the atmosphere. “But he doesn’t like jazz,” I said, and it came out like a whine.
“He’s coming around to it,” Leo replied. His face was blank as marble, but I felt my stomach knot.
Alice startled me by playing three chords: an unmistakable dun-dun-dunnn.
“Come on, come on,” Betts called. He was sitting at the card table, shuffling a deck in his hands. “Enough of that. Over here and cut the deck. Time to test your luck.”
“Skill, surely,” Alice said as she made her way over. “Bridge is a game of skill. Cole, shall we partner?”
“Sure,” I said, and sat opposite her.
“It’s always Lady Luck who gets the last laugh,” Betts said seriously. “Fox knows it, don’t you, mate? Luck’s the only thing that matters in the end.”
“Yes indeed, Betty,” I said. “Luck’s the thing. Mine hasn’t been so hot lately, but the wheel always turns.”
“To your luck, then,” Leo said, and set a glass of bourbon in front of me before he sat at my right hand side. “May it come hot again.”
I made sure he saw me glance at Alice, who was busy arranging her hand. “Oh, I think it will,” I said. He stared resolutely at his cards. There was an unhappy cast to his mouth.
We threw in the towel around one in the morning.
“You’ll see me bankrupt,” Leo said to Alice at the foot of the stairs, and kissed her goodnight.
“I shouldn’t think so,” she replied vaguely. “Reggie would never let you go destitute, would he? Goodnight, Cole.” I grinned like a loon after her as she ascended the staircase, until Leo raised an eyebrow in a pointed sort of way.
“She sure is easy on the eyes,” I said, by way of explanation.
“An eloquent observation,” he replied, and I could tell he was piqued. We walked up the stairs together slowly, as though we both wanted to say something but couldn’t bring ourselves to speak. We trooped the same unwilling march along the corridor, and at the door to my bedroom, he hesitated.
