All That Glitters (36 page)

“Don’t do that,” April said, drawing back nervously.

“Never mind, my girl, you just sit down smartly and listen to what I’ve got to say.” She pushed April into a chair and stood over her, then repeated the threats she had just made to me and Jenny.

“You’ll be washed up, April Rains, by the time I’m finished with you! You’ll never work another day in front of the camera—do you hear me?”

Hedda’s racka-racka had April staring glassy-eyed, an agonized expression freezing her face while tears streamed down her cheeks.

“Can’t you see you’re frightening her?” Djiberta said, unafraid to stand up to Hedda.

Tonio spoke up. “Yes, please, Mees’ees ’Opper, be gentle, be nice—thees-a young lady, she don’t feel so good.”

“She’ll feel a lot worse by the time I’m finished. What’s wrong with her?”

“I think she ate something bad, she’s-a need lie down.”

“Food poisoning? Well, don’t just stand there, someone call a doctor!”

“No!” April leaped from her chair and stood tottering as if she would fall. Jenny moved to her and put an arm around her waist. “I’m not sick!” April declared. “I just want to lie down.”

Crusty Hedda jerked her chin at her. “Then do it. But I warn you, my girl, and this is my last word. If you get up to any more of these tricks with a certain married guy, I’ll have your scalp nailed up at Ciro’s, I promise! Ask Ingrid, she knows.”

April took a gulp of air and her eyes blazed. “Oh, shut up! Can’t you just be quiet? What business is it of yours, anyway? You’re nothing but a miserable gossip-monger, all you want to do is hurt people. It’s none of your business, or anyone’s! I love him! Don’t you understand? I love him—he loves me—we want to be together, we
have
to be together!”

“You do, do you? You’ve apparently forgotten that the gentleman just
happens
to have a wife, a home, marital responsibility.”

“But he doesn’t love her!”

“So he tells you, but I know better. It’s been a sound marriage, no matter what anyone says. If you’d only stay away from him!”

“Wait a minute, Hedda,” I said, stepping between her and April. “Give her a break; she’s not alone in this. Besides, can’t you see she’s upset?”

“She’ll be a darn sight more upset when I’m done. Face it, you’re in hot water, my girl.”

Hedda’s censorious finger came into play once more, but instead of quieting April, it galvanized her; she leaned forward and her teeth clamped down.

“She’s biting me!” Hedda cried and tried to rescue her finger, but those teeth held fast. “Stop—you’re hurting!”

Again I was forced to intervene, this time physically. April’s eyes rolled with hysteria, she was making strange, guttural sounds in her throat, and her head was turned at an odd angle, trying to keep her hold on Hedda’s finger. But before I could effect a release, Hedda’s other hand flashed out, striking April’s cheek. April released her hold, and sank to the floor like a felled ox.

“
Dio mio
, be careful,
il bambino
!” I heard Tonio exclaim. The fateful words sprang out unchecked; then we heard him draw breath through his teeth and saw him dart a fiercely apologetic look in my direction. “
Madre di Dio
, I’m-a so sorry—”

Without pause I scooped April up and, followed by Jenny, I rushed her into the bedroom and laid her on the bed. Leaving Jenny in attendance, I hurried back into the other room, where Hedda was nursing a sore finger and ferociously interrogating the crestfallen Tonio.

As he tried once again to apologize, I told him to forget it and turned to Hedda. “Well, there’s a cat out of the bag for you,” I said. “What are you going to do?”

It was Hedda’s moment of triumph, the moment she’d come to Rome for. “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, Charlie-boy. Your old Aunt Elda’s going to spread this tidbit across the front page of every one of my newspapers,
that’s
what I’m going to do!” She crossed thin arms over her withered bosom and dared me to contradict her. I hung dog.

Her threat was appalling, the thought of April’s ruin brought about in Hopper’s ninety-eight newspapers.

“You can’t!”

“You’re darn tootin’ I can. Unless…”

“Unless what? What do you want?”

“The truth! I want the whole story from April herself! Start to finish. The works. Then I want her to promise to leave Frank Adonis alone. When I’ve got that promise, it’ll remain our little secret. Just between us.”

I tended to doubt she would go so far as to expose Frank and humiliate Frances this way, but even so I decided to play along with her. “You mean you won’t print it?”

“Not if she does what I ask.”

Again it was a question of ethics—Hedda’s. And we had no choice. We had to believe her or see the career of April Rains disappear down the tubes. Hedda plunked herself down and ordered tea while I explained the situation to Jenny and April in the bedroom. April washed her face, put on lipstick, and came out to beard the lioness in her parlor.

“What do you want?” she asked dully.

“You know what I want, and you’d better give it to me. Once I have it you can forget all about it—I won’t write a word. Not unless this gets to Lolly and
she
prints it. After that it’ll be no holds barred. Now, sit down and have some tea, you’ll feel better. Surely you’re not going to go through with it—this baby?”

“Yes.”

Hedda was aghast. “But how can you? It won’t have a father!”

“Frank is its father. The baby will be Frank Junior.”

“I think Mrs. Adano may have something to say about that.”

“No she won’t. She’s going to divorce him.”

“You’re either out of your mind or the most foolish creature I’ve ever seen. For your information, yesterday, before they left, the Adanos, man and wife, had an audience with His Holiness. A
private
audience, mind, in which their marital differences were discussed and ironed out.
Ironed
, my dear—and it was the Pope who did the pressing. When you see tomorrow’s paper you’ll get the whole picture, and in the meantime I’d advise you to collect yourself. I’m told you have two weeks left on this Trojan opus. If I were you, I’d get them polished off and then skedaddle for Sunny Cal. The Adanos are at present in London, staying at the Savoy, and if I hear one word about you crossing the English Channel to get to Frank, I’ll do worse than nail your scalp up at Ciro’s, I’ll skin you in print so you won’t ever be able to go home. Do you get the picture?”

Dry-eyed but white-faced, April nodded acquiescence; but I for one didn’t believe her.

“Good. Now that we understand things, dear,” Hedda said smoothly, “I can tell you, the talk is that you’re coming over very well in the picture. In fact I heard in the bar last night that Agyar wants you for a film. Take my advice, dear, be a star, not a husband stealer; there’s more in it for you. And when we get home, I’ll call you and you’ll come over to Tropical Drive and we’ll have lunch and laugh about the narrow squeak we had in Rome.”

See? That was Hedda, a wire-wheeled bitch one instant and your sainted Aunt Elda the next Racka-racka…

Photographs of the papal audience at Castel Gondolfo duly appeared in the Rome press. We were shocked to see Frank in his best bib and tucker, side by side with the black-clad Frances wearing an embroidered Spanish veil and looking stern and gaunt. Too gaunt by far, and I called up Hedda to ask about it.

“For me to know, you to find out, Skeezix,” she said, and flew off on her broom.

And that was the end of that; except it wasn’t, of course. Not even close to the end. But it was at this point that it struck me hard—Jen and I often talked about it—that, whatever voyage April may have thought she’d embarked on, it was a trip to nowhere. A secretary in Sioux City may fall in love with her married boss and get her nose nicked a bit, but for a growing luminary in the Hollywood firmament to put all her eggs in the basket of one of the town’s best-known citizens, one with a spouse determined to have and to hold him, well, this was plain folly. Jenny sometimes took it upon herself to talk to April about it, and it was just at this point that there seemed to surface the first cracks in the plate, auguring broken pieces to come. Just now April was nearly as much a curiosity as a “star”; people were interested in her not merely in the way they might be interested in an Esther Williams or a Doris Day; they were interested because of her direct relation to one person: Frank Adonis. If she’d chosen to break things off at this juncture, she and Frank going their own ways, she might have continued indefinitely, attaining the stardom he’d wanted for her. But there was to be no finding out because they didn’t part, even though she was reeling badly from the pressures of stardom, the bear-trap jaws of fame, the required decorum in such touchy situations; nor had the fact that Hopper had sided so violently against her helped matters. It was a no-win situation.

I telephoned Frank in London to check out his current state of mind. He was Happy Frank again; you’d never know he had a problem in the world. “Look after baby, will you,” he said before hanging up. No problem, I told him. Besides, Kit Carson was back on the scene, and I knew Bud would perform yeoman service in the cheering-up department.

It doesn’t take much imagination to appreciate April’s fragile state of mind when
The Trojan Horse
wrapped and she arrived in Paris. Her agent and lover being one and the same individual, she could hardly look to him for aid or comfort in her extremity; in fact, Hedda had been exact and explicit in the matter: no congress of any sort whatever was to pass between them. Yet one of the first things April did upon arriving was to go into Charvet and buy a pair of cuff links, the famous Charvet silk knot, but in 24-carat gold, and a polka-dotted silk bowtie, requesting they be sent to Frank at his London hotel in time for his birthday. The tie cost only thirty-five dollars; the cuff links were expensive. It was the sort of impulsive gesture she loved making, but in the circumstances it was imprudent.

The fact that with April’s arrival in the City of Light she was separated from her lover by no more than the width of the English Channel meant only that it was that much harder for her to be away from him. So near and yet so far. Given the opportunity, she would have camped out at Calais with a spyglass, pondering invasion of what was left of the British Empire, longing to cross the water and once again find herself wrapped in those arms she loved. As luck would have it, though, she was not obliged to bridge the gulf, for before too long Frank appeared at her side, for what he believed to be one final scene.

But before that there were other arrivals. First arrived Kit Carson, also liberated from
The Trojan Horse.
April was elated by Bud’s appearance; she got him a room at her hotel and together they set out to see the sights. Flushed with the success of his latest venture and with
molto lire
burning a hole in his pocket, Bud proposed marriage twice, once on the Eiffel Tower, once in a
bateau mouche.
He’d even bought her a ring from Buccellati. She declined both times and refused the ring.

This was pretty well the set-up when Frank turned up. Jenny and I had been with him in London and getting lots of attitude from Frances, who regarded us two as traitors to her cause and was icy to freezing, depending on the time of day. There were problems everywhere, and Frank had trumped up this business about having to go check things out at the Trocadéro for Babe Austrian’s opening, still months away. And so he did the forbidden thing and crossed the Channel, while we stayed on in London and awaited reports from the front.

He arrived on a Friday, and after lunching at the Tour d’Argent with a party of business acquaintances, he had his hired chauffeur drive him to an address on the Ile St.-Louis, to an apartment belonging to Tonio Gatti. It was here that Frank and April kept their last rendezvous. The apartment was costly and expensively furnished in French and Italian antiques, and had an impressive view of the city from the tenth floor. Many well-known people, including several international film stars as well as an English duchess, occupied the premises. Frank and April found their rendezvous a bittersweet one, but each regarded it as necessary; the threat of Hedda notwithstanding, there were important matters to be discussed. They talked for several hours, each entertaining the foolish notion that all they were doing was “straightening out a few things,” and that they weren’t there to make love at all.

They conversed quietly on the terrace until sundown, when the Parisian evening drew on in all its soft violet splendor, painting the old buildings that remarkable shade that lends its name to “
l’heure bleu
,” the blue hour of cocktail time and romance
à la Parisienne.
Under the circumstances, the hour was well named. It
was
romantic; certainly it was blue; it would get bluer.

Frank never said much afterward about this particular evening, but I know it was an anguishing episode for him. It was Jenny who heard all about it from April, later, when we three were in Yugoslavia together. She and Frank had talked at length until, as the evening chill came on, they moved inside, where they had a fire, sweet reminder of Malibu nights. There was a polar-bear rug in front of the hearth, and when they found they couldn’t deny themselves any longer, they took off their clothes and made love.

It was a scene of much passion and infinite tenderness, played as if each knew that it was to be the last time they would be together like this. Painful, aching, hindered by their mutual feelings of unfulfillment, they lay together on the white bearskin, while the firelight danced on their faces. In that stranger’s room, unfamiliar to both of them but serving admirably their present purpose, high above the crooked streets of the ancient island in the Seine and the traditional sounds of taxis crossing the Pont Marie, they yearned in each other’s arms. It always surprised her how, large as he was, he never hurt her, he was so gentle, and even in their climb up the mountain he was never hurting, and when they fell off the mountain together and went floating out over purple Paris, it was ecstasy of the highest order. Could Bud give her this? Could any other man?