City of Flickering Light

by Juliette Fay

  Her mother was clearly nervous about being fired. She pinched Rosemary in the thigh several times, but this only made the baby lurch momentarily and then fall right back to sleep, and left ugly red marks on her legs.

  Wilson put a stop to it. “We can just as easily do those scenes tomorrow,” he assured the distraught mother.

  “It will put us behind schedule!” Vanderslice whined.

  “Not if we do a couple of tomorrow’s scenes today.”

  Irene had to admire Wilson’s restraint in not pointing out that the director himself had put them behind schedule hours before and made the baby wait too long for her nap.

  They decided they would shoot the scene where Jack breaks in and Millie first sees the intruder. The prop man gave her a baby doll to hold, which would be spliced with takes of the live baby once they shot those the next day.

  If it was possible, Jack looked even more handsome for having had some of his smooth edges roughed up a bit by the makeup girl. He no longer looked like a college freshman at his first football game. He looked like a man who’d been around the block a few times.

  Irene had rewritten the thief’s backstory over and over, finally hitting on his being the oldest son of a widowed mother with several younger children, whom he’d helped raise in his father’s absence. He worked as a bricklayer—Henry had given her wonderfully colorful details—but his cruel boss had denied him his wages, and his family was about to be evicted and thrown into the street.

  When the husband leaves (without a “quick roll,” much to Conrad’s chagrin), there was to be a title card for Millie that read, “DON’T FORGET TO LOCK THE DOOR, DARLING. I’VE HEARD THERE HAS BEEN SOME THIEVERY IN THE AREA.”

  Conrad clearly leaves without any concern for the door. Thus Jack is able to enter without a sound. He sneaks into the living room and reaches for a silver candlestick. Startled by the baby’s loud coughing, he knocks the candlestick to the floor. A distraught Millie comes running down the stairs, babe in arms, hoping it’s her husband so he can fetch the doctor.

  The young mother and the thief catch sight of each other and freeze, staring.

  Irene—along with everyone else on set—froze, too. The take was absolutely flawless.

  “And cut,” Vanderslice said quietly, almost reverently. Even he could find nothing to complain about.

  Then Jack and Millie burst out laughing. He strode toward her and knelt, taking her hand and kissing it. “Your servant, ma’am,” he intoned in a British accent.

  She plunked herself down on his knee and giggled. “Aren’t you the cat’s pajamas!”

  Oh, Lord, Irene thought as the crew cracked up around her. He’s Millie in pants.

  32

  The only achievement I am really proud of is the friends I have made in this community.

  Gary Cooper, actor

  The premiere of The Queen of Sheba was on March 31, only two weeks away, and Henry did not have a tuxedo yet.

  “You can borrow one of mine.” Edward sat sipping coffee in his pajamas and reading the Hollywood Citizen at his kitchen table. “We’re about the same size.”

  “I’d take you up on it,” said Henry, kissing the top of his head as he went by on his way to the percolator, “but my zayde would spin in his grave if I wore another man’s suit to a formal event.”

  “But he wouldn’t mind you wearing another man’s pajamas?”

  Henry smiled. “Strangely, we never discussed it.”

  Edward folded the newspaper and gazed up at Henry. “I wish we could go together.”

  “Acclaimed director Edward Oberhouser cannot be seen taking a lowly extra to his sure-to-be-a-hit film, never mind a male one.”

  “You’ve already starred in a picture.”

  “The public doesn’t know that. Husbands for Sale won’t be out for two months.”

  “My point is you’re no lowly extra anymore. You’re Henry Weston now.” The studio had determined Weiss to be too “ethnic,” and almost before Henry knew it, he had a new last name.

  “Thanks to you.”

  “Thanks to your own talent!”

  “And your friendship.”

  “Ah, well,” scoffed Edward, “ninety percent of the people in the business got here through friendships of one sort or another.”

  “How many through our sort?”

  Edward reached out and caught Henry’s hand. “Only the luckiest ones.”

  It had taken a long time for Henry to feel comfortable staying the night at Edward’s apartment in Westlake. In those first few months, even dating a man seemed so foreign to him that he’d often told Edward he had other plans when he didn’t.

  Stranger still, he was suddenly noticing men! He’d tamped down his interest for so long and so completely that once the lid blew off, his desires flew out like a prank snake from a fake can of peanuts. Hollywood was disturbingly full of handsome men, and Henry sometimes found himself so distracted he could barely walk down Sunset without running into a streetlamp.

  He’d visited more establishments that catered to individuals of his variety, too. Research, he thought as he struggled to know this side of himself. He’d kissed a few other men, including Charlie, but it never felt quite right. No one filled his heart like Edward.

  Fortunately for both of them, Edward was a patient man.

  “I grew up in the Midwest,” he’d reminded Henry once. “There’s fear in me that I’ll take to my grave.”

  “It doesn’t show.”

  “Yours doesn’t either.”

  “Because I work hard at making people think I’m not afraid of anything. You just live your life!”

  Edward smiled. “I’m older than you. I’ve had ten more years to cast off the self-loathing. And I don’t live in front of the camera and on movie magazine covers like the stars do. As long as I’m not too obvious about it, I can do as I like.”

  “I’m going to take up directing,” grumbled Henry.

  Edward had patted his hand. “You’ll be wonderful at it.”

  “I suppose you’ll be with your gang for New Year’s Eve,” Edward had said to him at the end of December, over dinner at the Pacific Dining Car in Los Angeles.

  “Actually, Gert went home to Binghamton for the holidays to see her sisters. Irene will certainly be with Dan—they don’t seem to spend a minute apart—and wherever Irene goes, Millie goes. Eva Crown is throwing a party at her place up in the hills.”

  Edward’s gaze was mild, undemanding, and he said nothing. In fact his silence seemed as if it might last indefinitely.

  Henry fiddled with his dinner napkin. “Do you have plans?” he asked finally.

  Edward shook his head. “Quiet evening at home.”

  Henry had thought he would go to Eva’s party, but as he sat there across from Edward, pretending to have a work-related dinner, he knew now that he would not be happy at Eva’s. He’d be imagining beautiful Edward alone, sipping a drink, listening to his phonograph. And he’d be desperate to get there. To be in Edward’s calm, loving presence.

  “Maybe I could come by,” he said.

  “That’d be nice.”

  “I could pick up dinner.”

  “The Valley Quail packs up a good meal.” It wasn’t lost on Henry that Edward had suggested the restaurant where they’d had their first date.

  “I’d stay for midnight, if you weren’t too tired,” said Henry. “Silly to be alone at midnight if you don’t have to be.”

  “I won’t be too tired.”

  “Of course it’s hard to get a cab at that hour.”

  “I’ll have my driver take you home.”

  Henry could feel his breath coming in and out, time slowing down, the moment upon him. “Or I could stay.”

  Edward, so patient, so yielding. Without the slightest change in expression, Henry could feel the man’s love flood across the table, and it was all Henry could do not to lean over the remnants of the meal and kiss him.

  “That would be lovely,” Edward said quiet
ly. “But if you change your mind, that’s all right, too.”

  “I won’t change my mind.”

  And he hadn’t.

  The tuxedo arrived in the nick of time for the premiere of The Queen of Sheba at the end of March, and a little part of Henry was disappointed. He would have liked to wear one of Edward’s. They wouldn’t be able to touch each other all evening, and that tux would’ve felt like a secret embrace.

  The premiere would be held at the newly built Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. Henry and Gert had strolled by on opening night, when tickets to the premiere of Robin Hood, starring Douglas Fairbanks, cost the princely sum of five dollars! And he had been inside several weeks later to see that same movie, though they’d only had to pay the still-quite-steep price of seventy-five cents for gallery seats. Orchestra tickets were a dollar and a half.

  But now, at the premiere of The Queen of Sheba, his orchestra tickets hadn’t cost him a nickel. Walking down the red carpet of that instantly famous courtyard with Gert on his arm, searchlights crosshatching the sky, the creases of his new tuxedo so sharp he could almost hear them snapping as he walked, Henry felt as if he’d wandered into someone else’s life. Someone far more glamorous, of course, but also someone to envy. In his whole life, he’d never felt remotely enviable. Until now.

  He and Gert didn’t inspire the gawping stares that Betty Blythe or Fritz Leiber did, of course, but Henry could hear the crowds cordoned off to either side murmuring, “Who’s that?” and “Aren’t they a handsome couple!”

  Gert heard it, too. She cut her eyes up at him with a look of amusement, as if she were in on the grandest secret. We’re no better than any of them, that look seemed to say, but we keep scrapping. And here we are.

  There was an unspoken agreement between them. Neither asked too many questions about the other’s love life. Gert dated here and there, but always circled back to Henry for any important events. She’d canceled a date with a ridiculously handsome supporting actor a few weeks ago because Henry had just found out he’d gotten the lead role in Fox Trot on the Congo, a comedy about a society couple who goes on safari, and she wanted to be there for the celebration with Irene, Millie, and Dan.

  They took their seats in the orchestra section, which were several rows back from Edward, the two stars, secondary leads, and studio muckety-mucks. Sid Grauman certainly knew how to make movie watching seem like a trip to Buckingham Palace, or in this case, King Tut’s tomb. The stage was flanked by four massive pillars and topped by several facades, all painted with colorful hieroglyphs. The wall above was cast with an enormous metallic rising sun, rays spreading out across the cavernous ceiling.

  When the curtain rose and the opening credits rolled, the cast and crew clapped and hooted as if they were at a high school pep rally instead of a high-hat affair. This continued throughout the film every time a new cast member appeared, or when there was a particularly strong scene. Betty Blythe got thunderous ovations for every new costume, and Henry saw Albert raise his small hand and give a wave in acknowledgment of his minimalist creations.

  When Henry first saw himself hanging on for dear life as he rocketed across the Mojave Desert in a horse-drawn chariot, he was amazed. He’d only ever seen a still picture of himself, and that was as a child. He’d been about nine, and his mother had insisted they go to a photographer’s shop and have one taken as a family. His father had thought it was too expensive, of course, but it was one of the very few things she had ever insisted on, so she’d gotten her way. The last Henry had seen of it, it was hanging in their small parlor by her favorite chair.

  And now here he was on-screen, in motion—and a lot of it. His arm muscles bulged as he hung onto those reins for dear life, his body shuddering against the bumpy ride. He was surprised to see that even with the strange brown tint to his skin, and knowing how scared he’d actually been, he nevertheless looked strong and fierce and unafraid.

  That’s me, but fearless, he thought.

  Gert leaned over and whispered, “That’s you, made of light.”

  The party afterward was at the Ambassador Hotel’s Cocoanut Grove nightclub on Wilshire Boulevard, not far from where Edward lived in Westlake. There was no question of Edward giving them a ride, however. Henry and Edward were careful not to be seen as too chummy. They rarely spoke to each other in public, much less sported about in Edward’s car with the top down. Gert and Henry took a cab.

  The nightclub sparkled with stars twinkling from the indoor palm trees, and with human stars, their wattage even brighter. Henry and Gert nearly tripped over two of the Talmadge sisters chatting with Buster Keaton. Prohibition was locked on the other side of the grand gilded doors. The drinks were expensive, but the atmosphere alone was worth it.

  Gert flirted and danced, but she had a sign she’d worked out with Henry when it was time for him to cut in. She tucked her thumb under her palm, leaving only four fingers showing behind the gentleman’s back. “Number four, he’s out the door,” she called it.

  At the moment Gert seemed happy with whatever handsome hopeful now had her in his grasp, thumb clearly visible. Henry went up to the bar to order another drink.

  “Enjoying yourself?” Edward was suddenly behind him, standing a bit close.

  Henry sidestepped to put a few feet between them. “Yes, you?”

  “Having the time of my life. The picture is a success. I’ll be negotiating a raise by noon tomorrow.” His speech wasn’t slurred exactly, but Henry could hear it was just slightly less crisp. Edward smiled falsely into the crowd and tapped his finger on his glass.

  How many of those had he had?

  “I’m thinking of calling it a night soon,” Henry murmured and nodded to a crew member whose name he couldn’t remember.

  “You do that.”

  “Edward . . .”

  “Oh, who’m I kidding. If you go, I go.” He turned and looked at Henry, waited until Henry met his gaze. “On nights like this, with everything so perfect . . . I just wish . . .”

  Henry slipped a hand onto his back. “I do, too.”

  He loved Edward; he’d even told him so. And now, in such a public place, he could only remind him with a glance, and a brief one at that.

  “There’s the great director!” said Carlton Sharp, Olympic’s publicity chief, and Henry moved away, aware that in just those few moments, they’d stood together too long. He looked out onto the dance floor, and there was Gert with four fingers up . . . staring straight at him.

  He felt it like a punch in the gut.

  She was now one of his closest friends. But he had no idea where she stood on the idea of love between men. If she found out, it was quite possible he would lose her.

  He strode over, hoping to control any damage that may or may not have been done, and tapped the poor fellow on the back. “Mind?”

  “Well, I—”

  But Gert was already stepping into Henry’s arms, and he spun her away quickly.

  He smiled broadly. “How’s the most popular girl at the dance?”

  She gazed at him intently, as if she couldn’t quite see him clearly and was attempting to refocus the image. “How’s Edward?”

  “Oh, you know how he is,” Henry said, trying to sound offhanded, but coming off as derisive, which he immediately hated himself for.

  “Yes, I do. Pretty standoffish is how I’d describe him.”

  “He’s fine, and I’m happy just to dance with my best girl.”

  Gert stopped short and stared up at him. “Don’t do that.”

  “Do what?”

  She pulled away from him and strode off the dance floor to the far side of one of the palm trees, and Henry followed, of course. She spun around to face him. “Don’t try to throw me off the scent by billing and cooing at me!” she hissed.

  “There’s no scent, Gert.”

  She kept staring at him, and he knew for certain that she was mentally putting the pieces together. “I thought it was Irene,” she said finally.

&nbs
p; “Irene?”

  “Who you loved. And that was why you never fell for me.”

  He could have told her he had fallen for her, taken her in his arms, and kissed her. He wouldn’t have minded. He loved Gert, and she was certainly beautiful with her soft blond curls, magnolia petal skin, and shining blue eyes—as the yearning looks from almost every other man in the room could attest.

  But he knew in that moment it would be the worst of all the lies he had ever told. It was Gert, after all, and she was, as his uncle had said, a mensch. And Henry was . . . not fearless, certainly not that. But he could muster enough courage not to lie. Not to her.

  “It wasn’t Irene.”

  Gert crossed her arms hard across her body, as if she were suddenly furious and cold all at the same time. “Look,” she began. Then she sighed and dropped her arms. “Look . . .”

  Every muscle in Henry’s body tensed as he braced himself to lose his friend.

  “I, um . . .” she said. “I love someone I’m not supposed to love, too, okay?”

  He certainly hadn’t seen that coming! “Who is she?”

  Gert chuckled. “It’s not a girl.”

  “He’s married.”

  “He’s not married. At least he wasn’t the last time I saw him, which was a while ago.”

  “Is he Jewish? Because around here that’s not as much of a—”

  “He’s colored.”

  Henry’s eyebrows went up.

  Gert put her hands on her hips. “Well that’s a laugh, coming from you.”

  “No, it’s just . . . you’re so . . .”

  “White?”

  Henry felt his cheeks go warm. “Yes, I suppose that’s what I was thinking. To be honest, it’s hard to imagine.”

  “Well, it’s hard to imagine you kissing a fellow, so there we are. Both of us kissing the wrong people. People other people don’t want to imagine us kissing—or anything else, like just living our lives, for instance.”

  Henry put a hand on her shoulder. Gert Turner, quite a woman. He wished he did want to kiss her. “Where is he?”

  Her face broke a little, and he could see a pain so familiar that he felt it in his own skin.