Wake Up and Dream (28 page)

“And who, pray, is this handsome man over here?” she announced when she finally noticed Clark. “Why, it’s none other than genius writer Daniel Lamotte, who has just sold his latest feelie script for a rumored five figures.”

He had to put his glasses back on and grin and pose like all the rest of the idiots before she finally agreed to be dragged away to the car.

“This stuff is brilliant, Dan. It’s absolute dynamite. I’ve already got enough for fifteen editions of
LA Truth
!”

“My name’s not Dan.” The Delahaye’s carpets were awash and fresh rain was coming in through the broken window as he drove. “And I didn’t think your paper was that kind of trash sheet.”

“Hell, Clark. Whatever you’ve been up to this evening hasn’t done much for your mood.”

“It hasn’t. But it
is
some story.”

“Well, I think I’m starting to get a proper handle on this whole thing…”

She instructed him to take a detour down Western Avenue toward Inglewood, then east along Manchester toward South Park. The only time he’d been around here lately was to listen to the nigger music at Topsy’s Night Club, but apparently this was also where
LA Truth
had its base. He was still thinking of that conversation with Peg as the wipers thwacked and Barbara Eshel talked.

“… It makes every kind of sense when you think about it. Kisberg, right—he and his Wall Street backers are the ones who’ve made the real money out of the feelies. How
convenient
that was, to push the old LA studios into bankruptcy and take over with another new technology they couldn’t afford just when the Depression was at its worst. And now they can fill people’s heads with whatever they want. Sure, it’s not all trash, but the bias is plain. That huge re-make of
Birth of a Nation
featuring as the guys in white the good ol’ Klu Klux Clan. All those stirring tales of the good ol’ South. Even the classic stuff. The way that when they do Dickens it’s
Oliver Twist
with bad old Jewboy Fagin. And when it’s Shakespeare it’s
The Merchant of Venice
. And
White Legion
—my God, what a production that was! And now there’s all these nice Germans. These people can convince anybody of anything they want just as long as they keep them entertained. They’ll be telling us next that dinosaurs are Old Testament dragons.”

“You obviously go to the feelies a lot more than I do.”

“But can’t you see what I’m saying? No wonder the Liberty League are successful. No wonder Herbert Kisberg’s going for president. I mean, the Republicans are bad enough. It’s left here, by the way. And watch that pothole.”

“Sure.” The Delahaye gave a splashing lurch.

“And now they’ve got your—I mean Daniel Lamotte’s—feelie biopic nicely lined up as an extra bit of publicity.”

“All it would take,” he muttered, “is for Lars Bechmeir himself to put in an appearance tomorrow night at the Biltmore rally. Kisberg would pretty much have the whole country sewn up.”

“Right! I mean, people are
relieved
it’s going to be him that gets the ticket. Can you believe that? Instead of that creep in Chicago who looks too much like a gangster. And that oily twerp Pickens—no one’s ever forgotten the way he lashed out at that woman. Or it could be—hold on, Clark, what were you just saying about Lars Bechmeir?”

“I saw him.”

“Saw who?”

“Who do you think? Kisberg himself took me to see the guy. He was just in this room hidden away from the party with a couple of nurses. He’s an invalid. Apparently he’s been holed up somewhere quiet all these years, down in Orange County. But now they plan to wheel him out tomorrow night at the Biltmore and maybe get him to mouth a few words. And hey, it’s the ultimate Liberty League endorsement.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah. Shit. The guy’s barely there and I can’t see him being around for much longer. I guess that’s why they’re planning on using him now… And why they were so keen on Dan’s script. If Timmy Townsend’s to be believed, they’re even planning on squeezing an interview with Daniel Lamotte into the live coverage on
Star Talk
.”

“But that’s brilliant! You’ve got a chance to denounce the Liberty League in front of fifty million listeners. You know, great writer stands up for real liberty and—”

“For God’s sake Barbara—you’re sounding like Timmy Townsend in reverse. No.
Definitely
no. And who exactly am I supposed to denounce, and for doing what?”

“We’ve another whole day to find that out. And you’d better slow down. Here comes another pothole…
and
you’ve gone and missed the turn.”

L
A TRUTH
WAS BASED ALONG A STRIP
of commercial holdings which, in typical LA mish-mash, lay between the high brick towers of the Firestone Rubber Company and the white frontage of Angels’ Abbey, an up-and-coming mausoleum. He’d been expecting some kind of editorial offices, although he realized that was naïve. There were a few scattered typewriters, tables and chairs, but this was basically a dirt floor workshop filled with machinery most of which looked to be beyond working—apart from the one which
was
, and then only just. The man tending the thrashing, clacking device with a pair of oilcans held like sixshooters gave a comic start when he noticed them. He was dressed in overalls and was very young and very thin. The straggly beard which he affected only made him look younger and thinner.

“
Barbara
? Is that really you… ?” They waited as he did the many things required to still the machine. “Almost didn’t recognize you there.” He glanced quizzically at Clark. “What are you up to?”

“I guess you could call it research. This is Clark Gable, by the way. And this is Dale. Dale’s our printer, as you’ve probably gathered. Although he’s got many other jobs here at world headquarters of
LA Truth
.”

“Editor. Compositor. Delivery boy…”

They both chuckled. It was obviously a well-practiced routine.

Rain still pattered the roof, or dripped into overflowing buckets. They sat around a rickety table and Barbara gave Dale the eight reels of photographs she’d taken at Kisberg’s party—seemed that another of his jobs was photo processor. She explained that Clark was a private detective who’d happened upon some odd events which seemed to have something to do with the invention of the Bechmeir Field. But she didn’t say much else. Maybe, Clark thought, she was just protecting him from whatever was out there. Or more likely she was protecting her sources.

“There are some things we expect to happen tomorrow, and some stuff we hope to find out, which could turn this into the biggest story to hit this state since Julian Pete. What I’m saying, Dale, is I want you to hold working the next edition, and be ready to run with whatever I can get. And quick. Even if it’s only one badly laid sheet.”

Dale nodded. As they talked his eyes lingered for long periods on the vision that Barbara Eshel had become this evening, then drifted over to Clark, and then away from him and back to Barbara Eshel again. Dale was a good-looking kid if you discounted the beard, and he was probably about Barbara’s age. You didn’t have to be a matrimonial private detective to work out that she had him, as Peg Entwistle herself might have put it in her still classy lilt, on toast.

But he wasn’t going to tell Barbara about Peg Entwistle. Not yet anyway. For all that had and hadn’t gone on between him and Peg, he didn’t think he wanted to be the one who put her back on the front pages for all the wrong reasons. Despite what the studios said, there was such a thing as bad publicity. And despite what Peg herself had said, feelie stars really were still people. Some of them were anyway.

Back outside and in the Delahaye, Clark thought for a moment that he saw a pair of headlights on the road behind them. Then they seemed to blink off. He started the motor, pulled slowly around the potholes. Then he took a quick right, turned sharply north along Central Avenue past Sears Roebuck, and took Ninth past the Cabrillo Club in a screech of tires. Then he stopped.

“What was all that about?”

“Nothing.” He checked the rear-view. Either they weren’t being followed, or whoever was following them was good. He pulled back out into the empty road. “So—you and Dale. Are you sweet on each other?”

“Why should we be?”

“No reason, I suppose. Or the same reason as always. Does he make a living, doing what he does back there?”

“Some, but not much. Tomorrow morning he’ll be hauling trolleys in the fruit market.”

“But how about you, Barbara?” “How about what?”

“I mean, like Dale. What else do you do when you’re not changing the world?”

“You really want to know?” “Sure. I’m curious.”

“Many a young lady,” she began, putting on a cutglass accent, “suffers, without even knowing, from a terrible blight on the glorious blossoming of her early teenage years. As she stands at the gateway to womanhood, she finds that the strength of her happy childhood has ebbed away, and yet the poise and resolve of adult femininity still lies tantalizingly out of reach. Her back slumps. Her head droops. She is languid, uncommunicative, and often morose. What this delicate flower of early-blooming womanhood is suffering from, were she to know it, are all the symptoms of Feminine Weakness. And what she needs is
Tablon’s Iron Purgative
… That, or a good kick up her oh-so-delicate ass.”

“But you don’t write the last bit?”

“You have no idea how much I wish I could. I guess
someone
has to produce this sort of rubbish—advertising copy pretending to be proper articles. You never think about who it is, though, do you? Not until it’s you.
Tablon’s Iron
whatsit. That was me. Or
The Woman Who Forgot Keep Clean Napkins
. Otherwise, the world’d stop turning, right? Actually, I rather enjoyed writing that last one. Pity they edited out the last paragraph. The way I told it, the woman ended up on the street turning tricks. And all because of a sauce stain on one of her napkins.”

She was laughing now, and so was he. They were up on Bunker Hill. Past Edna’s Eats, which was closed and unlit, then a final turn. They were still laughing as they climbed from the Delahaye, and he wondered as he took her arm if he’d drunk more of that endless free Champagne than he’d realized. Or maybe she had. They found the door and took the stairs together, arm in arm. He caught her as she tripped on a ruck in the rug, and turned her around in the process so she was leaning against the wall by her door. She was still chuckling. She smelled rain-wet and womanly, and of Champagne and laughter. She was so beautiful that, even in this dark little rooming house, she almost glowed. This wasn’t the Barbara Eshel who’d aimed a gun at him—or even the one who’d been brandishing that heavy camera in a handbag which she now let drop to the floor. But he’d long known that women were capable of being many things, and often several of them at once. It was the same old mystery which he and a million other men had spent their lives trying to unravel. Never got there, of course. But it didn’t stop you trying.

He could feel her body rising toward him. He could smell the sweet bitterness of her breath. Women were another race, a whole different species. He touched her cheek, traced lobe of her ear, and raised her mouth and covered it with his own. Then he stepped back.

“Goodnight,” he muttered, and felt clumsily for his keys.

S
LEEP DIDN’T SO MUCH COME
quickly to Clark as overwhelm him in a crashing wave. With it came a rush of memory as bright as the Californian sunlight which had first beckoned him west. For this town wasn’t Akron, or Tulsa, or off-Broadway, or Portland, or even the Lurie Theater in Houston. This was LA and this was a different kind of acting to provide a different kind of entertainment to a changing world. He’d started off playing gangsters, wife-beaters and convicts and all the usual dross back at the turn of ’30, and was all set by the middle of that same year to head back east for a new production of
A Farewell to Arms
when he received a phone call from his new agent Mina Wallis to tell him he’d been offered a year long contract with MGM, no fucking less.

He was suddenly being groomed for stardom, and
groomed
really was the word. He had his suits cut in the latest vee which emphasized his broad shoulders and svelte hips. Saxony wool, or Prince of Wales plaid, with silk accents. Double-breasted mostly. He went to the studio barber—who called himself a stylist—at least once a week. There was advice about where he should eat, and what sort of company he should keep. There was even a trip to the orthodontists in a mostly futile attempt to sort out his teeth, and some asinine debate about whether they should pin back his jug ears. But he was who he was—Clark Gable. Or he soon fucking would be. When he cut a ribbon at a new supermarket, the people cheered like he’d built and stocked the whole place himself. He took a ride in a monoplane wearing a plain navy blazer with cream linen slacks and an open-neck Lacoste polo shirt with dark willow tan brogues.

The whole business of banging out talkies the way Henry Ford was banging out cars struck Clark as a decent enough thing to be doing for a living. Okies were being driven west by starvation and duststorms to die in streetcars and sleep on railroad sidings, but hey, at least those who could afford to get into the movie houses were being properly entertained.

The previews and reviews for his first above-the-title role in
Susan Lennox
weren’t so good. Garbo might be a bull dyke lesbian with a voice like a concrete mixer that would never have come out of the silents, but she was a genuine star. So it was Clark Gable who got the blame for the movie being a mess. The results for the pre-screenings for his next effort,
Possessed
were also pretty mixed, and Mina told him it was one of those talkies that could go either way. Clark Gable was a new face, and he gave the women in the audience—many of the men, for that matter—a certain tingle, but it wasn’t a tingle they yet felt entirely comfortable with. So was he just some gangling lout with big ears and bad teeth too clumsy to handle a scenery board, let alone act? Or was he the box office savior MGM had been promising themselves when they’d given him that contract?