Reg chuckled, reached round to his back pocket, and handed me a coarse blue foursquare kerchief. “It’s clean, Miss Granville. Ironed, even. The wife just gave it to me this morning, and I swear, I haven’t used it yet.”
I tied Reg’s kerchief under my chin. The car hummed to life, and we pulled out of there in yet another cloud of dust.
“I really do appreciate the ride. I’m Roxanne Granville, by the way.”
“I know who you are. Leon Greene’s granddaughter.”
“Don’t believe everything you read in the society pages,” I said, assuming he had seen photos of me at the Cocoanut Grove or some such place.
“If it’s in the newspaper, it ought to be true. Isn’t that the standard for journalism?” he asked as though I had some sort of answer. I didn’t. He continued, “I’m Terrence Dexter. I’m a columnist and reporter for the Challenger. Your grandmother was a big supporter of our paper and the NAACP.”
Oh god, now I remembered his face! “You were at my grandmother’s funeral. You brought the umbrella.”
“I did.” He looked over at me, rather surprised, and I wondered how I could ever have forgotten his face. He smiled, and I noticed he had a gold canine tooth.
“You came to the lawyer’s office with the man in the wheelchair.”
“Mr. Branch. He’s editor in chief of the Challenger and a leader of the NAACP.”
“I had no idea that Julia supported those causes.”
“Judging from the looks on the white folks’ faces there, no one else did either. Your granddaddy surely didn’t.” He barely suppressed a chuckle.
He wrapped his long fingers around the steering wheel and drove with an easy certainty, double-clutching when necessary. The Porsche didn’t ride like the MG; it seemed to sit lower to the road, and the engine had a deeper tone. The leather seats had their own peculiar odor. Terrence Dexter was a fearless driver, downright scary. I held tight to the door handle. He was speeding and taking curves faster than he should. Certainly faster than I would have taken them, and I consider myself an experienced driver.
“You have to master a Porsche or it will master you,” he said laconically.
“Well, my MG has mastered me. Sometimes I swear it stays more at Reg’s than it does with me.”
“An MG is like a little-bitty firefly that has some magic. But a Porsche isn’t like that. A Porsche is like an eagle. No magic, but it has strength.”
“That’s an odd, imaginative way to talk about a car.”
He shrugged, and gave me a look that made me vaguely uncomfortable. When I see this sort of look on people’s faces, I always assume they’re looking at the stain on my cheek and thinking, Oh, that poor girl with her ugly cheek. But he couldn’t see the birthmark on the right side of my face, and his assessment was of an oddly different nature.
“My brother, Booker, and I used to do valet parking for parties at your granddaddy’s when we were in high school. Summit Drive is where I acquired my taste for fast cars and pretty women. We drove some fine sets of wheels till Clarence caught us driving the cars without white gloves, and, well, there was hell to pay. Said we had to promise we’d wear the gloves, all valets gotta wear gloves. So we quit. Just walked off laughing while he . . . well, he was plenty steamed.”
“Why would he insist on gloves?”
“So our black hands wouldn’t be touching the white folks’ steering wheels.”
This had never occurred to me. Of course servants wore gloves. I might have said something, but Terrence Dexter passed a lumbering Buick on a curve, downshifting for a burst of speed, rousing a blast of the Buick’s horn. I clung to the door.
“Clarence is the squarest of the squares. Everything gotta be just so. He’s my uncle, married to my Aunt Ruby.”
Clarence had nephews? I knew nothing of his life. “Does anyone else in your family work at Summit Drive?” I asked for want of anything else to say other than Please slow down.
“Well, over the years some of my cousins have been waiters at the big parties. And they wore white gloves, you can bet on that. Aunt Mavis used to be a cook there.”
“I remember Mavis,” I said, a little embarrassed I had no recollection of her last name. “She was always nice to me, had warm tapioca pudding for me when the chauffeur brought me home from school.”
“Yes. Aunt Mavis used to say how sweet you were, but spoiled rotten, and your grandparents let you run wild. She felt sorry for you that you didn’t have your own mama and daddy.”
“I didn’t feel sorry for me,” I replied with a touch of hauteur. I could feel my birthmark flooding with color. “My mother . . .” How to say My mother can’t stand the sight of me? I let that thought pass. “My father went back to England. My father is Sir Rowland Granville, the famous British actor.”
“My father is James Dexter, the famous American auto mechanic,” Terrence replied.
“Then why do you take your car to Reg’s?”
“He’s dead. Both my parents are dead.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Thanks, but you don’t have to be. I don’t need your sorry.”
He was awfully testy for what was after all a mere conventional expression. “I don’t remember when Mavis left Summit Drive.”
“When Mr. Greene put a loyalty oath in front of everyone in nineteen forty-seven. They all had to sign it, swear by Almighty God that they had no intention of overthrowing the government. If you didn’t sign it, you got fired, and probably your name turned over to the FBI.” He glanced over at me. “Why do you look surprised? Your granddaddy is great friends with J. Edgar Hoover.”
“I’m . . . I mean, I know the studio requires everyone to sign a loyalty oath. I just didn’t think Leon would ask it of people who worked in his home.”
“Clarence was happy to sign it, yes sir, and happy to have the job there for twenty-five years, and looking forward to the next twenty-five, thank you. Everyone signed except Mavis. Mavis said, ‘I’m a freeborn American, and ain’t no one gonna make me sign an oath.’ Easier for her than for some. She’s a great cook. She cooks for Lana Turner now.” He drove for a few minutes in silence, then added thoughtfully, “The loyalty oath impinges on the First Amendment, and it’ll go through the courts, and be defeated, but that’ll take forever. Seems like everything takes forever.”
He talked some more about the courts—appeals courts and the Supreme Court, subjects in which I had no interest whatever, as we started up the Sepulveda Pass, a two-lane highway bordered on either side by woods. He took another curve at alarming speed. The glove box popped open and a book fell out. The Negro Motorist Green Book.
“What’s this?” I asked, leafing through it, state by state.
“When was the last time you peed in a field, Miss Granville?”
“I have never peed in a field, thank you.”
“If I gotta travel, drive someplace far from where and what I know, I need this book to tell me where can I stay. I gotta know where I can eat. Where can I get gas? Lots of Shell gas stations won’t even sell gas to us. Others, if they sell gas to Negroes, they won’t let us use the toilet. You look surprised,” he said again.
“I would never have thought of that.”
“Well, you wouldn’t, would you? A girl like you, you go somewhere and the guy pumping gas, he’s white, the waiter, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. Everyone except the shoeshine boy and the janitor or the maid. But me, I have to be careful. Even here in LA, we all do. I’m not talking Alabama, I’m talking Glendale. Right up the road. That’s what’s known as a sundown town. Your black ass better be out of there by sundown. My brother once played a gig in a club up there, and he had a hell of a time getting home at three in the morning, couldn’t get a cab to save his soul. Had to spend the night under a bus bench.”
“In Glendale? What— Oh god!” I screamed as
a huge deer leapt out of the woods, antlers and all, right overhead, its hooves flying, its eyes rolling crazily as Terrence swore, leaned on the horn. I ducked and clutched at his arm and he downshifted, swerved, sped up. The deer landed in the opposite lane, and that driver nearly hit it. Both cars fishtailed, squealed, and burned rubber before Terrence righted the Porsche, and shook off my hand.
“Oh! Sorry!” I cried.
“No! No! I had to steer and shift at the same time!”
That brief moment of physical contact crackled between us like experiencing an electrical shock. The deer. The danger. I was trembling. I could not catch my breath. His hands coiled around the wheel, and he kept shaking his head and cursing the deer.
“I didn’t mean to grab on to you,” I said. “I shouldn’t have. I have never been so close to dying. Your driving saved our lives. Thank you.”
“At least you had your gloves on.”
“If you mean because you are colored—” My voice quavered.
“Please, Miss Granville. I am not colored. Look at me,” he insisted. “No, really, look!” I turned and met his eyes, which were dark and fierce. He was about my age, and he bristled with an intensity I had seldom experienced in anyone. “I’m not blue or pink or green. I’m black. I’d rather be a black bastard than a colored boy.”
“I only meant . . .” But then I wasn’t sure what I meant, and I was still in shock. After a short silence, I said, “I hope I haven’t kept you from anything important.”
He did not reply, but reached in his suit pocket and put on his sunglasses.
I opened my purse and put on my dark glasses. It wasn’t my job to entertain him. And then I thought, Well, Roxanne, it’s not his job to entertain you either. In a silence that felt ominous we crested a hill, and the city fanned out before us. He gave the car one last burst of speed before we came down into the broad city streets, where he slowed, mindful of the speed limits and traffic lights, and, I feel pretty certain, keeping an eye out for cop cars.
As he pulled the Porsche in front of Pierino’s flagstone circular driveway, he remarked, “I hope you don’t expect me to get out and open the door for you.”
I had no opportunity for a retort, because just then I saw none other than Gordon Conrad standing under the awning by the valet’s podium, handing off the keys to his Cadillac. Gordon gave me a weird look just as the valet opened the door to the Porsche. I got out, and the Porsche roared away before I had the chance to thank Terrence Dexter.
Gordon asked with no other greeting, “Who is the jungle bunny? Your new chauffeur? And what’s that on your head? You look like a farm girl just back from a hoedown.”
I snatched the kerchief from my head. “Really, Gordon, do you have to be vulgar?”
“No, but I like to. What are you doing here?”
“I’m meeting Elliott and Charlie at one.”
“You’re early.”
“I had car trouble, and he—that man—gave me a ride in from Reg’s.”
“I always told you to drive a Cadillac. Well, you might as well have a drink with us till Elliott gets here.”
“Who is us?”
“Leon, Denise, Elsie, and me.”
This prospect shook me up even more than driving with a speed demon and having a deer leap right over my head. My throat tightened, but I stuffed Reg’s silly kerchief into my purse along with my sunglasses and followed him in.
They were naturally sitting at the best table in Pierino’s, Denise looking like a camellia in a bouffant skirt that brushed the floor, Elsie like a great flowered pillowcase. Leon rose and embraced me, and, though no one but me would have guessed, his hug was perfunctory.
“Roxanne just got out of a fancy car driven by a boogie,” said Gordon after the waiter brought the drinks.
“Don’t call him that. He was very kind. I had trouble with the MG, and I had to leave it at Reg’s. He was picking up his car and offered to bring me into town. He’s a reporter. He writes for a paper called the Challenger.” I decided not to mention his connection to Clarence, or that he had been at Julia’s funeral and the reading of her will.
“The Challenger is the voice of the NAACP,” said Leon. “The NAACP pretends to serve colored people, but they’re a Communist front, roiling up race relations.”
“Now, now, Pooks,” said Denise, tapping his arm. “Let’s talk about my new picture, Fly Me to the Moon.”
Leon glanced over at me briefly, uncomfortably, then looked away.
“Who will play Professor Bleeker?” asked Elsie. “Gary Cooper?”
“He’s too old,” Gordon protested, though with a quick look to Leon, he corrected himself. “I mean, why should we pay for the star power of an established actor when there are so many young actors who are cheaper? Rock Hudson. We’re thinking of Rock.”
“Dreamy,” said Elsie. “Positively dreamy.”
“He’s too tall for me,” said Denise with a small pout. “Every time I stand beside Rock, I’d look like a Munchkin. I’d look . . .” she sought the word.
“Diminished,” I offered without an ounce of irony.
“What about Alan Ladd, honey?” Denise tucked her hand through Leon’s arm. “He’s not very tall.”
“What about Jonathan Moore?” I volunteered.
“He has no comedy credits,” said Gordon. “Just a lot of sword-and-sandal crap.”
“Hardly comedic,” said Elsie. “I’m for Alan Ladd.”
“If Jonathan wants to audition, that’s fine with me,” said Leon. “Just because he’s never been in a comedy doesn’t mean he couldn’t do it.”
Talk turned to the cameras rolling in August and for the production schedule to be fast-tracked so Fly Me to the Moon could be released at the end of the year. “To qualify for the Oscars,” said Denise with a delighted smile.
I was relieved when Elliott and Charlie entered Pierino’s together, Charlie looking especially handsome, like a surfer Bill Holden in his new suit, his blond hair neatly brushed back and gleaming with Brylcreem. He was the perfect young writer, deferential, respectful, calling the men sir and the women ma’am, and telling Denise how much he had loved her in Banner Headline.
“You know the script needs rewrites, don’t you, Charlie?” asked Leon in a prosecutorial voice. “A few more contemporary touches.”
“Rewrites, sure,” said Charlie, his teeth flashing white in his tanned face. “I’d do anything to make you and Miss Dell happy.”
Denise rewarded him with one of those smiles movie stars master, the goddess from on high toying with mere mortals. Elliott escorted Charlie and me to our table and ordered a bottle of champagne to celebrate the giving of the keys to the Empire Writers’ Building to Charles David Frye.
That lunch was the apex of my career to date. Charlie’s too. After lunch Charlie drove me home, both of us bathed in the glow of cocktails and great expectations. He was so happy when we got to my house, he came in, loosened his tie, and took me in his arms. He didn’t even put on John Philip Sousa.
Chapter Fourteen
Jonathan dismissed my idea that he audition for the role of Professor Bleeker in Fly Me to the Moon. He insisted he was a dramatic actor and would not discuss it further. But I’m not so easily dissuaded. I went to Casa Fiesta the following Saturday night, thinking I might have better success there, that others would chime in and tell him how foolish and stubborn he was being.
I parked my car on the street and wandered in; someone put a drink in my hand, and I drifted over to where Jonathan and Diana Jordan were arguing. Diana was fueled with alcohol and fury. She had just axed her bastard-louse agent, Irv Rakoff. In addition to heaping verbal merde on Irv (which, admittedly, I enjoyed), she and Jonathan and Bongo were arguing about the best jazz club in LA. Bongo was all for the Dunbar Hotel.
“Wrong! It’s the Comet Club,” Diana insisted, flinging her glass int
o the fireplace. “The Comet Club has the best jazz in this town, in this whole state!”
Jonathan put his glass down and said, “Prove it!”
And that’s how I somehow ended up with him, Bongo, and two handsome actors, Dwight and Dennis, or Don and David, or whoever they were who had played high school students in Blackboard Jungle. With Diana at the wheel we were on our way to Central Avenue. In the front seat Diana raged on, swearing at Irv, every name in her vast arsenal of insult. Occasionally she’d shout into the back seat to me, “No offense, Roxanne. I know you’re an agent too.”
“None taken!” I hollered back. With Jonathan pinned (so to speak) to the back seat, I worked on him all over again about the audition.
“You know I don’t do comedy!” Jonathan shouted at me over Diana’s harangue.
“You’ve never tried.”
“I don’t want to do comedy. I’m a serious actor.”
“Oh, come on, how serious was that last role? Wasn’t your name something like Gluteus Maximus? Would you rather go on saying lines like ‘My little dove of Canaan’?” I was pleased that he visibly squirmed. “You need to audition for Professor Bleeker.”
“What a disgusting name.”
“What if I told you his name was Hamlet Bleeker? Auditions are Friday morning. Do it! Working is always better than not working.”
“Isn’t Leon afraid that Denise will fall in love with me? I am so much better looking.”
“But you’re not richer and more powerful, and you never will be. Audition.”
Diana drove through the Central Avenue district, known for its raffish cafés and jazzy clubs, its after-hours cabarets and jam sessions. I’d been lots of times with groups of friends to the Dunbar Hotel, or the Club Alabam, places where the music was cool and the reputation was hot. I’d never heard of the Comet Club, which is where we stopped. She handed the guy five dollars to park her car, saying it shouldn’t be too far away. She’d need it again soon. She also threw money at the big guy manning the door and collecting for the cover charge, and the six of us sashayed into a dark club full of roiling jazz, where the musicians played their instruments the way a moth plays with a flame, daring it to kill him.
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