Girl of My Dreams (56 page)

She had never slept in silk before.

“I'll warm them,” Trent said, rubbing his hand back and forth on the bottom sheet. Static electricity shot in Thelma's direction; she shrank away yet felt nothing. “There,” Trent said, “move over a little onto this patch of warm territory.”

As she moved in the direction of Trent, Thelma brushed his leg with her own. It was a strong leg, muscled differently from Matt's, not unpleasant. “Oh sorry,” she said.

“No,” he said, “it's perfectly all right.”

She moved a little more. There was his leg again. Or thigh. He chuckled.

“Oh,” she said. “Well, we are married.” She found the pillow and lay her head upon it, not daring to ask who had painted the fluorescent stag on the ceiling. Trent was getting settled too, wasn't he? She raised up to lean over Trent to see what time the clock read on the bed table on his side. The clock was turned the wrong way and as she reached toward it Thelma's hair fell across Trent's ribs. Trent stopped chuckling as Thelma's nipple just brushed his chest. Thelma fell back; it was almost four o'clock.

Trent rolled toward Thelma, then away. Rolling back again, he rested his head on Thelma's shoulder. “I can't believe this,” he said.

“Can't believe what?” she said.

“I think I'm actually becoming a bit stiff.”

“You are?”

“God save me but I am.”

Thelma felt better now, not at home, but better. “Well,” she said, giggling a little and reaching for her first male since she was a teenager, “waste not, want not.”

The coupling was sweet, a dessert made with the wrong ingredients but still tasty.

There would be no Acapulco. In the morning Thelma and Trent were strangers again, awkward, unsure, apprehensive. Friendly strangers but strangers all the same. They both knew they had to get out of town for a couple of weeks. Thelma decided to go to Gallup, New Mexico with Matt, while Trent said he was off to Reno with Boy Boulton and the man who played in crime movies and really did like to gamble. “You'll be recognized before you can lay down your first chip in a big place like that,” Thelma said, “and everyone will think you're there for a divorce. What about someplace like Elko? I did a picture there, and they have a couple of casinos. You wear a beard and sunglasses, no one will know you.” “What a helpful idea,” Trent said. “After all,” Thelma said, “I'm supposed to be your helpmeet.” Trent was out of the house in less than half an hour.

In the way of the flesh, nine months later a child was born to the shocked Thelma. By that time she and Trent had been officially separated for two months, which Mossy permitted because of Thelma's pregnancy and its happy, presumed proof of heterosexuality. The only casualty in Thelma's life was Matt, who couldn't bear Thelma anymore as soon as she began to show. When the baby was born and named Lee Jubil after the studio that had spawned her, all Hollywood, led by Louella, roared its approval as Thelma and her daughter moved back to Trent's house. Trent beamed paternally in the
Photoplay
pictures of the couple by the kidney-shaped pool with their baby. Matt came more or less crawling back to Thelma a few months later, but by that time the willowy Charlotte Gelfano, expanding her wedding toast to include herself as a listener, had moved into Trent's house. Trent's own fellows came and went, changed and returned, and stayed awhile before they drifted off again. Trent was always delighted when a new man arrived, never sorry when he departed. Boy was the most frequent returnee, kind of a patient footman. Trent enjoyed being a father, at least intermittently, and the marriage lasted five years, a sterling record by community standards. Thelma and Charlotte moved with the daughter of Thelma and Trent to Santa Monica, and Trent visited. He would stay overnight when Lee Jubil was having a birthday party or on other special occasions like Halloween. But Lee Jubil's parents never slept together again.

28

Henscher Gets His

When I went to Pammy's bungalow for the second biopic session, she was so angry she had tried to call me to cancel the appointment. I asked what she was upset about. “Him,” she said, “who else?” I asked what for, and she said, “What
not
for?” Then she asked if I'd been upstairs in Mossy's house the day she was there. Mortification Sunday. She knew I'd been downstairs. “No,” I said.

“Are you lying?” she asked.

“I don't want to talk about that day,” I said.

“That bastard. He's absolutely sodden with treachery. You know my sister?”

I knew her a little. Pammy announced that Elise had had an affair with Mossy. I immediately assumed the sisters were jealous of each other. She saw that and broke into my thoughts. “This has nothing to do with anything between Elise and me,” she said. “Under some circumstances I'd have thought it was funny. I hadn't known about the affair until Elise broke down and told me yesterday. You remember Joey Jouet?”

Of course I remembered the great stuntman, Elise's husband, who drove his motorcycle off the Santa Monica Pier after being fired from Jubilee. “How's your sister doing?” I asked.

“Not so well, but her daughters are slowly pulling her along. Children don't stop, you know, just because a parent dies.”

“I've heard that,” I said.

Pammy went on to tell me that Elise also carried a terrible guilt. The day Joey died, Mossy had been with her. Already ashamed, Elise had told him she couldn't see him anymore. Mossy said he needed to talk to her about Joey's work at Jubilee. Horrified that her husband was about to be fired, Elise agreed to see Mossy and arranged for Pammy herself to take her daughters for the afternoon. When he arrived at her home, Mossy asked if Elise would mind having Joey do some dangerous stunts in a circus epic Jubilee was planning; after all, Joey himself had been in the circus before coming to Hollywood. Touched at being asked, Elise said she knew Joey could take care of himself. Only later did she understand Mossy's question about the circus picture was emotional blackmail to earn himself some Sunday brunch sex. Upstairs, they had made enough noise so Elise wasn't sure what caused the sound downstairs. She'd thought—hoped—it might be the cat. After they finished, Mossy told Elise he knew he shouldn't be with her, but Joey's job was safe forever at Jubilee.

When Elise went downstairs after Mossy left, she found the saddlebag from Joey's motorcycle. Her husband had come in, no doubt started upstairs eagerly to surprise her with his early arrival home from location, then hearing the sounds she and Mossy were making, he backed downstairs again, forgetting the saddlebag with his clothes in it as he crept out the kitchen door. As he was leaving, Joey had probably also noticed the Packard touring car with the license plate AZ parked outside.

Elise ran back upstairs and threw herself on the bed in tears. She must have lain there an hour, feverishly wondering if she could possibly mend her marriage. How would she explain to Joey? What would she tell him? How could she ever make it up to him?

Two phone calls blasted her thoughts about reparation. The first was from one of Joey's pals at the location in Victorville, calling to say how awful he felt that Joey had been fired. In shock, Elise mumbled she knew Joey would be grateful for the sympathy. The next phone call, from the police, interrupted her waking nightmare with a worse one. When Elise pieced together the firing with the early arrival home with the call from the police, she understood how hellish her husband's last moments were.

Then the police were at her door with more information. Sweet Joey kindly stopped to fix a flat tire for Mervyn Galant, a has-been, as Joey knew. There was no advantage for Joey. He helped out a broken down director while he was on his way to kill himself. As Elise conceived of her husband's death, Joey drove off the pier convinced that Mossy had fired him to get rid of him, probably with Elise's collusion, so that he and Elise could run away together. Their little girls would be rich. By the time Pammy brought her daughters home, Elise understood that while there could never be redemption for her she would devote herself to the girls for the rest of her life.

A few days later Elise, furious, guilty, grieving, demanded that Mossy tell her why he'd had Joey fired. Mossy denied doing any such thing. He said that Dunster Clapp, who had done the firing, wielded the hatchet on his own. This was probably true since Mossy would be unlikely to fire—or as he liked to put it, shitcan off the lot—someone whose wife he was in bed with, at least while he was still in bed with her. He admitted to Elise that he'd told Dunster Clapp Jubilee had to cut costs to please New York, and a good place to start would be with workers being paid more than others who essentially did the same job. This was what led to the firing of Hurd Dawn, Jubilee's prima donna set designer. Likewise, Joey Jouet—experienced, skillful and with a Ringling Brothers pedigree—was the highest paid stuntman at Jubilee. Dunster Clapp took it upon himself to chop Joey from the payroll.

Pammy hadn't suspected Elise's affair with Mossy, which her sister was ashamed of anyway and infinitely more ashamed after Joey's death, until Elise shrieked it all out in Pammy's bungalow. “He was probably confident,” Pammy told me, “that Elise wouldn't reveal anything to me out of simple guilt. The bastard has no regard for anyone beyond satisfying his own appetites.”

“That may be true,” I said, “but both of us still work for him, at different ends of the totem pole, of course.”

“Don't be so sure we're at different ends. Everyone's a peon to Mossy. He'll do more for those who make him richer, but everyone's still a peon.”

Pammy had also discovered the seamstresses upstairs from the contract actresses' dressing room, the women Colonel DeLight had shooed me away from. “What does he pay these Mexican women?” Pammy wondered, “ten cents an hour, or is it fifteen?”

She knew about the writers calling off their strike when the carpenters were bought off by Mossy. “It isn't just Amos Zangwill,” she said, “it's the whole damn country. But maybe we start with what's in front of us.”

That was when she told me about Cy Henscher and his brutal mistreatment of Rachel Honeycut. He had beaten the young actress so badly that the day I'd seen her at Pammy's Red Woods home Race had screamed when Teresa Blackburn mischievously shoved her into the pool before I arrived. I'd wondered why Race wore such a full body-covering suit while Pammy and Teresa were in skimpy two-piece suits. Race had gone to Pammy's Beverly Hills home the night of the beating, but she'd made Pammy promise not to tell anyone about Henscher's abuse. After climbing out of Pammy's pool a week later, Race had shown Teresa the welts and cuts on her back and buttocks. Henscher had tied her to a bed and hit her until he became aroused and then raped her.

“Rape is the crime I understand least,” I said, “and murder of a rapist the one I understand best.”

“What a virtuous sentiment, Owen. How noble. How inconvenient that this is not an occasion for virtue or nobility.”

I felt as stupid as she'd intended. “What do you mean?” I asked.

She explained that Henscher was just hired by Mossy to score a picture about a romantic couple in Atlantic City. Mossy loved the picture's beginning, but the middle was weak and the ending fell off the table. Henscher had made suggestions Mossy liked, and he offered the composer-lyricist extra money and the additional credit of associate producer. The schedule was so tight Mossy had Henscher start work on the score even before the reshooting was complete. He'd already promised exhibitors they'd have the Atlantic City love story in two months. He put a fresh writer on the picture to make the changes Henscher wanted.

Taking advantage of her temporarily preferred position with respect to Mossy, Pammy had rushed to his office and told him that Cy Henscher was a sadistic brute and that he had mistreated Race Honeycut in particular, a contract player for Jubilee. Mossy said, “Okay, Cy Henscher is a shit with women, but Race is not in the Atlantic City picture anyway.” “You don't get this, do you Mossy?” Pammy had said, trying not to explode. “You have to fire Cy Henscher.” “If I did,” Mossy said, “I'd have to settle his contract since I've already agreed to pay him for this picture and three more. Then we'd fall even further behind schedule and I couldn't deliver the Atlantic City picture in time. Tell you what, Pammy, I won't hire him again if that will make you happy.” “Happy?!” Pammy did explode now. “No, it will not make me happy. You have to get rid of this monster now, today.” Mossy had refused and that was where things stood.

“Amos Zangwill is right now a total shit heel,” Pammy said to me. “Henscher should be in jail, and we can't do that, but we can do something. Will you help?”

Even while I was nodding my foolish head—Sure I'll help—I was intrigued by the politics of the situation. I was, as usual, cast as a flunky, but now I was her flunky instead of his. Furthermore, I'd be a foot soldier in a battle she was waging against him. She who was not only his employee, like me, but also his lover. I supposed she was on her way to being his former lover. “I don't want to be used,” I said, “in some kind of romantic spat between you and him.”

Which made Pammy angry. “This is no romance, not anymore,” she said with heat. “It's mean of you to bring that up, Owen. I thought you were a friend.”

“I'm sorry,” I said quickly, “so sorry.” And I was thinking, Oh Jesus, she's pretty cunning herself. While she was having her rendezvous with him upstairs in his house, I was a wretched few feet away shining his shoes. Of course, that part she doesn't know. And the part I don't know is if anything he says is true. Still, why her injured innocence? Twenty-four I was, and I'd never had a real girlfriend for any length of time, for any of the complexity of a relationship to show up, for any of the manipulations on both sides that can make an endless circle of coupling. “Please,” I said, “Let's just go on.”