Special Smashwords Edition
Scandal
A Novel
by
Gwen Davis
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Scandal
Special Smashwords Edition
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ISBN: 978-1-937698-45-4 (eBook)
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Version 2011.12.18
For Mimi, who opened the door,
and for Denise, who said “Come in,”
and for the gods of Bali, who still have their Magic.
Scandal
If a person gets caught by ambition only
when in a group, you could say that it was
a collective shadow.
Sometimes you feel quite all right within,
but you can come into a group where the devil
is loose and get quite disturbed …
On the other hand, we could say that as long
as such collective demons get us, we
must have a little bit of them in us.
M-L. von Franz, Shadow and Evil in Fairytales
CHAPTER ONE
When I first was at UCLA I knew this crazy old man, well into his nineties, Samson de Brier, who said he had been the lover of Andre Gide. Andre Gide, for God’s sake. But I loved knowing someone in Hollywood who knew(or said he knew) a true intellectual, a Nobel-prize winning Existentialist. As high-toned as that sounded, Samson still took great pleasure from collecting old movie magazines, Photoplay, Modern Screen, glossy mags from those really splendid early days. I took him out to dinner a couple of times, frail and failing as he was, so he left them to me. You know, the kind when Joan Crawford was young and a bathing beauty and so was Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and they ruined each other’s lives for a while but it doesn’t say stuff like that. It’s a treasure trove, really, what Samson left me, along with some stories about the young and beautiful Marlon Brando who used to stop by Samson’s house and fuck his agent’s wife. The agent dumped his wife but kept Marlon Brando. I love Hollywood.
So I have these magazines with pictures in them of Karen Engel, who’s in the suite on the third floor here at the hotel, when she was a toddler, the beautiful child of beautiful parents, her father who ran a studio, and her mother who was a siren of the time. Then I have the issue bordered in black where her mother committed suicide, and five-year-old Karen was the one to find her with her throat slashed. Not exactly an enchanted childhood. None of these kids had it easy as many psycho wards could attest. But they were all dressed well, at least for the publicity shots.
Tolstoy wrote that happy families are all alike, but I don’t think there are too many happy families in Beverly Hills. Maybe the Iranians who came here when the Shah fell, but who knows what goes on in their houses. The native residents, as far as I can tell, have just as many confused secrets as those 19th century Russians. Children on cocaine, husbands on their secretaries, the only part of that never—changing story being that often now the secretaries are men.
The hotel I manage has only 51 rooms, so Rock bands don’t stay here, as we don’t offer enough space for mayhem. But there is usually a young movie star, or a young man who doesn’t know why he isn’t a movie star. When Rita checked in, and I saw through her disguise, trying to hide her remarkable eyes, I guess she figured the hotel was as good a place as any to hook up with someone, maybe get a Green card.
“Rita Favorita” the Italian papers christened her in the hot course of the scandal. The rest of the European papers picked up the name. This hotel is the rare high-end/low-key one in Beverly Hills, so people who come here are generally not annoyed by the paparazzi. Mostly they’re saving their flashbulbs and buzz-buzzy ways (“Zeta! Zeta!’ they yell, trying to get the subject to turn her head) for outside the Beverly Hills Hotel, the forecourt of the Peninsula, the Montage, or the Regency Wilshire where the movie of ‘Pretty Woman’ was set. Rita would make the current female ‘stars’ seem homely, or at least sexless. Eyes like hers leveled at the right guy (or the wrong one) last time just broke up a popular Hollywood couple. This time they nearly brought down an entire country.
The lucky thing for a European who’s been in a scandal is they can be pretty anonymous here. Nobody in the States pays much attention to what happens in other countries. This still may have the attitude that it’s the greatest country in the world, in spite of everything that’s going on, but it does believe it’s the only one that matters, so most people pay zero attention to what goes on elsewhere except when elsewhere is exploding.
I myself have a subscription to ‘Hello!’ so keep track of European gossip, because our clientele is in good part foreign, so I like to stay on top of who’s in those glossy pages. Rita had the cover and a big spread, if you’ll excuse the expression, in several issues. Her real name, as I remember, is Elisa, but that doesn’t rhyme with anything but Pisa, and she’s from Rome. So Rita Favorita she will stay.
Her disguise is kind of amateurish for a professional. Sunglasses, a wig, too much make-up over her tan: she would probably have a fake mustache if she were a guy. The face behind it is diamond-shaped, pointy-chinned, little-girlish. For some reason that pleases me, as it allows me to imagine she isn’t quite the whore the Italians branded her. I try not to read too much into first impressions, but you learn how to spot things without even lifting your eyes when you are managing a hotel, like a candle-bulb that’s burnt out in a chandelier.
Her sunglasses are thick dark horn-rims with crystals all around them. The blonde is an obvious wig, hiding her notorious red hair, which gave the papers even more ammunition, not to mention labels. Red. Rosso. Slut. The name of the hottest pussy porn-site. Not that I myself indulge. I just happened to hit on it by accident checking out a Bruce Willis movie. The web can lead to unexpected adventures, but who has time for them when you’re managing a hotel.
I am not yet what I consider middle aged, forty, so I have risen pretty high considering how competitive the hospitality business is, and that it really isn’t anymore about hospitality, but like everything else has become about the bottom line. That makes me sad but then there is a lot about the world that makes me sad. I won’t dwell on that because it’s my job to keep a cheerful façade like the hotel has, bright lights shining. So if anyone asks me how I am, I always say “Never better.”
Truth is people don’t want to know if you have anything really wrong in your life because they are so worried about themselves. When you’re concerned or anxious about the impression you might be making on someone else you don’t have to be, because they are concerned with the impression they are making on you. What people like to fixate on, as it distracts them from having to face what is true or false or empty in their own lives, is gossip about shiny people. So it’s kind of an unexpected bonanza, Rita Favorita coming to my hotel.
In spite of all the accusations, there is something innocent about her. But life is hard. Increasingly hard. Like generations long before her, she might have made the mistake of thinking it would be easier in America. Money growing on trees and the rest of it. But it’s just as tough here now as in the rest of the so-called civilized world, unless you are heartless or in the financial game, not necessarily in that order. Still, it’s a place where a looker, built, as they used to say, like a brick shithouse, can use traditional tricks to reach her goals. Never falling completely to earth, even with stilettos on. Or maybe especially. One of the videos on the porn site was that very thin, long stiletto heel forking a guy’s crotch till he got hard and the woman blew him. I didn’t hang around but I couldn’t help seeing. I am not the kind of man who delights in that sort of thing, riveting as it might be for the moment you chance on it. But as I am not in politics, it is hard to be comfortable with being a bit pervy.
After her involvement with the saggy old prime minister, sunbathing naked on his yacht, I’d bet Rita would welcome a change of pace. In a perfect world, which this isn’t, but it must seem pretty new and glitzy when you’re coming from the Coliseum, he would have to be attractive. Maybe she wouldn’t insist on handsome. After all, this is Brad Pitt territory and good-looking after a while becomes dull. I’ve noticed that from the men accompanying the cookie-cutter types you see hanging around the counters at Neiman Marcus a couple of blocks away from here, waiting for the sales when $7000 bags are marked down to $4000. Not that I like to judge, but who are these people, so extravagant even in hard times? Most of them with perfect features, the men as well as the women, as if there was plastic surgery envy. After a while it’s like a cartoon, as though they’ve all been to the clinic across the street from here where many of our clients go to repair before they restore in our comparative quietude.
Whatever man Favorita targeted she would probably prefer him tall. She is an impressive height, one of those big-boned girls, but ultra-feminine, with sensational tits. Those, too, made several front covers, and went viral, as they say, on the Internet. I like that expression because it makes the Internet sound a lot like a disease, which I think it may be. Maybe she came here hoping to impress her knockers in the cement in front of Grauman’s, the way they should have had Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell do instead of their hands and feet.
“May I have a credit card?” the receptionist at the front desk asks. He is Willie, good-hearted, twenty-three, a little dull, just doing his job, not even really looking at her.
“Mi dispiacce…” Rita says. “I am not having. Only cash.”
She pulls out a bundle of notes that would, as they used to say, choke a horse. There were horses once in Beverly Hills, galloping along the track that ran on Santa Monica Boulevard down to the ocean, when the movie business was just beginning, but they are long gone, along with people that carry that much cash. There is still a dirt path alongside the gardens that border Beverly Hills, between the plants and the boulevard, and every once in a while in the early morning silence, I can hear the echo of those hoofs galloping towards the sea.
One of the things I was considering doing for my thesis if I had stayed in school was a history of Hollywood. The origins of the business, how it took off and grew mighty after those little Jews from Chicago stole the whole process from Edison, is past fascinating. The way the studios got started and the American Dream migrated into movie houses, where people could lose themselves in the darkness, and feel comforted. Even if they couldn’t get what that dream had been in the beginning, that everyone could become whatever they wanted, they could still imagine they were friends with those figures on the screen, and were part of their lives and stories, and so forget the hard reality outside.
There’s that great line from ‘Sunset Boulevard,’ “Just us, the cameras, and those wonderful people out there in the dark” We can’t all be Gloria Swanson, but we can be and are the people out there in the dark, and it is a relief, especially in bad times, to think we are wonderful.
Rita Favorita is standing with that roll of bills. Willie the receptionist looks uncomfortable, so even though I don’t like to interfere with my employees, make them feel they are doing less than a great job, I step in. “How long are you planning to stay?” I ask her.
“I… no sure.”
Her room is three-hundred eighty a day, plus tax, so I have her lay down two thousand, which she does without turning a hair, red or otherwise. Then I explain she will have to put down another five hundred to cover her extras, food in the restaurant, beauty parlor downstairs, a personal trainer we call in for residents who want to make serious use of the basement gym, a masseuse, the mini-bar in her room. Again, that bothers her not at all. I explain in very slow gentle sentences, which is my way, that when the two thousand is used up, and the cash for the incidentals, I will have to ask her for another deposit. She looks at me very hard, struggling to understand every word I am saying. But apparently taking in the essential part, she says, with that accent, “No worries.” Obviously one of her … what shall I call them? … associates? … was Irish or Australian, where all anguish is met with ‘No worries.’
“My father was Italian,” I say, hoping to make her feel a little bit at home. Usually when I have a repeat guest I send them a small basket of flowers on their arrival, with a note: ‘Welcome home.’ In a world where so many feel displaced you’d be surprised how much return business that gets you. Even if they hadn’t planned on coming back soon, they do. “Mi papa.”
She smiles. The teeth behind the glossy, full lips do not match the rest of it. They are a child’s teeth. Tiny. The front two overlap, come forward a little, so the tip of her tongue catches in the right over left, and I can see the sharp point at the corner of her overlapping tooth. A little like a stiletto heel?
“Mi papa was American,” she says. “Not enough to make me a…” She struggles for the word, her long-fingernailed, well-manicured tanned hand twirling the air, as if she would change it to another channel where the answer is.
“Citizen?” I offer.
“Si. Has to be my mamma.” She looks genuinely disappointed, not just with the immigration rule, but also possibly with her father, for marrying her mother without thinking ahead. Assuming her father actually married her mother. From the scurrilous reports in the European press, she was likely turned out before she was ten, so what kind of background could she have come from?
At this moment the elevator near the front desk squeaks to a halt, and Karen Engel opens the inside gate, one of those brass things on hinges that take forever. The elevator, an old-style French one, brought from the Grand Hotel de Quiberon in Brittany, helps add to the antique feeling of this place. Our guests seem to enjoy that Old World atmosphere. To add to the feeling of colorful antiquity, we even have an old-fashioned switchboard, with keys and holes they plug into, bought by the management at auction. It works to a degree, but mainly it’s there for interesting show, so guests can feel timeless, a part of a vanished era that everyone imagines was better.
The walls here are Venetian plaster, with a hand-waxed shiny eggshell finish, hung with old photos. Some are daguerrotypes, the beanfields that were once Beverly Hills. Some show the more glamorous vanished past, people crossing on ocean liners, royals getting out of limousines. Mme. Engel herself would have an antique feeling had she not stayed so impressively in shape, her body, at least in clothes, the same as when she was as famous as any woman in America, or maybe the world.
Her face, of course, does not look the same as it did then. It has obviously had a number of assists. She is booked here for six weeks, so I guess she has come here for a lift from the doctors who work out of the clinic across the street. For all the convenience of this location, it is also strangely secluded. After the stitches are out, women can hide here and Arnica and Vitamin E away the bruising. You get to know things like that as a manager across from a plastic surgery hospital, when you have to send the bellman out to the pharmacy, to bring back stuff that heals. At least on the surface.
The other one who’s here strictly for plastic surgery is the poor bastard in 408. He was in a terrible accident off the highway in Malibu that killed his wife, and burned 40% of his body and face. The burn clinic part of his recovery was pretty much over four months ago, but they’ve been doing a series of grafts across the street. The hospital bookkeeper stops here for a drink at the end of her day, and although she is discreet to a point she has told me a little about him that adds to what I know myself. He is very closed, like his door always is. He takes his meals in his room, sending the hotel limo driver for bottles of pomegranate vodka. That seems to me not so much the act of a drunkard as a lonely man who doesn’t like what’s in his mini-bar.
Of course he doesn’t want to be seen, with his whole face and neck covered in bandages. He goes out in the daytime only to consult with the doctors at the hospital. I am not old enough to remember Claude Rains, but the Contessa who comes at Christmas to visit her great-grandchildren, bumped into him once in the hall and told me it was like seeing ‘The Invisible Man.’ She was too well-mannered to scream, but it did make her hold her heart.
There is one other old royal, a Marquesa who is a longtime resident of the hotel. She has a little white dog that she comes down twice a day to walk, something the dog does with more ease and panache than she does. One has the feeling the dog is keeping her alive.
“Did my letter come?” Karen Engel says softly, stopping by the reception desk. She seems unaware of Rita Favorita, staring at her with that look the young reserve for those they know they have seen but can’t remember exactly where. But since Rita is in Hollywood, or its priciest vicinity, she seems to get that Karen is a movie star, and appears appropriately wide-eyed. With those eyes. Pale green, with specks of gold. Luminous.
“The mail isn’t in yet,” says Naomi, the other receptionist, reaching for the ringing phone.
There is something curiously touching about Engel, a woman who still waits for an actual letter, with all that the world has done to amp up communication and make it less meaningful. The post offices here are in as much money trouble as any other business, so a lot of the branches have closed, and there’s no more Special Delivery. I guess whoever sent her the letter she is waiting so breathlessly for either didn’t want to attract too much attention to it by sending it Express, or was too stingy to pay the tariff.
‘Hotel Royale,’” Naomi says into the receiver. “How may I help you?” She covers the mouthpiece, smiles at Engel. “I’ll send up your mail the minute it comes.”
“Thank you.” Engel goes out towards the garage, where her Lamberghini is parked. It is apparently all she has kept besides the ‘Madame’ from her last husband, Hendrik Bos, the Dutch billionaire dumped by the communications company he founded when they discovered his hand in the till. Rich people. They can’t seem to get enough. Once that particular scandal erupted, he disappeared completely, with several more hundreds of millions of other people’s money. There are lawsuits against him from all over the world, investors who thought he was giving them trading tips when in hard fact he was giving them the shaft. I wonder if the letter she is waiting for is from him, but I let that query go, even in my head, because if curiosity killed the cat, it certainly would get rid of a hotel manager. Discretion is not the better part of valor in a hotel: it is what keeps you your job. All the harder because a manager who seems amiable becomes a kind of housemother in the eyes of long time guests and staff so they tell you everything.
It is lucky for me that Samson is long gone, because it would be a mighty temptation to share all the inside info with him, and probably would have kept him alive for another hundred years. If he knew who was hiding out in the secret, fairly inaccessible room, fourth floor rear, it might even bring him back from the Beyond.
421 is as close as the hotel comes to having a ‘safe room,’ one of those in-house hide-outs that the very rich or the very paranoid have in their mansions, that no one can get into unless they have a key or are invited. It is my understanding that Allegra de Sevigny has one in her house, journalist though she purports to be, climber that she actually is. If she only knew who has taken sanctuary here, she would give her right arm, and several dinner parties. His door is right by the stairs that no one ever uses, so even his food can be brought in without anyone’s seeing. Burgers and fries.
We offer free limousine service to places in the vicinity, a white Rolls Royce so guests can imagine they are in one of the better hotels in Hong Kong, where they line the entrances as if there had never been a handover to the Communists. But Mme. Engel obviously prefers her own wheels. It is fascinating to watch her leave a room. Her walk seems fluid. She has obviously been exercising. Her pants are stylish and what’s in them is still pretty impressive.
The fading celebrity having left the lobby, I am free to turn my attention to the newly glossy one. Besides the Louis Vuitton luggage the bellman brought in on a trolley, Favorita carries a small brown leather notebook. That also looks Italian, a leather tie around it, with one of those little gold angels they stamp on things in Italy, putti, they are called, as I remember. Those tiny cherubs that sit in the corners of ceilings in churches all over that beautiful country. She makes notes in it while she waits for her room key.
“You keep a diary?” I ask her.
“I write down my dream.” She says the word with a reverence, as if she hasn’t made a mistake putting it in the singular, and means it to be not only what is in her mind when she is sleeping, but her goal in life. I cannot help wondering if maybe what she hopes for is more than a meal ticket. But that is only me being a romantic, something I put aside along with my academic career. The world no longer honors aspiration, which has a breathlessness in it, like the hope of love. It’s all about ambition now. And that entails money. Not that I mean to rise that high in the hotel world, but I do intend to stay alive.
At this point a heavyset blonde woman of more than a certain age, (a polite description would be ‘an uncertain age’ but besides the years her face is weighty with disappointment and stored-up anger) blows in through the side entrance. “I need help with my luggage,” she demands in an edgy voice.
“If you’ll be kind enough to wait for a moment,” I say.
“You have any idea who I am?”
She says it like I should.
“I’m Louise Felder,” she proclaims, absent only a gong that signals ‘Pay attention.’
“If you’ll just wait for a moment,” I say again, as calmly as I can in the face of her onslaught, which it really is. I know the name of course. She was the most powerful agent in Hollywood when Hollywood was still really Hollywood, absent these breakable figurines that pass now for actresses. She all but stamps her foot to underline the show of impatience.
“I’m not used to waiting,” she says. “My suite was supposed to be ready at nine.”
“Would you check to see if Miss Felder’s suite is ready?” I say to Naomi. Naomi riffles through the notes beside her computer, and checks the computer itself. Her cheeks redden as she searches.
“And so we don’t waste any more time, have someone bring in my luggage.” Felder hands me the key to her car. “I have calls to make.”
Naomi shoots me a desperate look. She is a dark-haired, dark-complexioned young woman, but she blushes like a thin-skinned blonde at the first sign of pressure, which this obviously is.
I make my way around the desk and lean close to her, so she can tell me what is wrong, which something obviously is. She points to the computer screen. The hotel suites are all occupied, and there is no reservation for Felder.
“I’m sorry, Miss Felder,” I say. “But there seems to be some mistake. We have no reservation for you.”
Her shadowed eyes get very small, and I think I can see smoke coming from her nostrils. The fact that she had a reputation as a dragon seems to have become a part of her physiognomy. “You got to be kidding.”
“I’m afraid not. I’d really like to accommodate you, but all the suites are occupied.”
“I will kill that bitch,” she says, opening her cell phone, clutched in her left hand, and punches the speed dial. ‘Lemme talk to Dorothy … What hospital? … I’m supposed to give a fuck about her mother? Why wasn’t my reservation taken care of … I know that’s not your job, it’s her job. Tell her she no longer has it.” She shuts the phone.
“Look here, Mr … “
“Riccioni,” I say.
“They’re termiting my house and my secretary fucked up. I need to stay here till the tenting comes off.”
I picture what is probably her gated Bel-Air mansion with the big blue tent over it, covering it completely, poison fumes being pumped into it, and regret that she isn’t inside. Power when it flexes its muscles has never impressed me, especially in a woman, which may sound sexist and probably is. But I see none of the rumored wit, the charm that has been attributed to this virago. Only the self-absorbed, self-important bully.
‘We’ll certainly do our best to accommodate you, but you’ll have to wait your turn,” I say.
She looks literally taken aback. Probably no one has made her stand in line since MGM had more stars than there were in Heaven, except now they are all in Heaven if there is a Heaven, and there is no more MGM.
I turn back to Rita, and hand her the room key. “Please make yourself at home,” I say. “Se accomodo. The bellman will see you to your suite.’
“You give her a suite and you don’t have one for me?”
“She has a confirmed reservation,” I say evenly.
“Grazie,” Rita says, and moves towards the elevator, a shimmy of fur and a clunk of very high heel.
Miss Felder looks after her contemptuously, all but snorting her annoyance. Annoyance isn’t exactly the word. Contained rage would more likely nail it. “You must be used to working at Ellis Island,” she says to me. “Maybe I should have come looking like I was just off the boat.”
I understand that sarcasm is her weapon of choice, and am tempted to turn to it myself. But irony doesn’t work in the hotel business. So I am silent and smiling, understanding that will probably irritate her more. It pleases me to be raising her blood pressure, as the tales about her are legion, and from her blustery, inconsiderate entrance, I believe them all. The story is also that she was once very funny, winning really. But as they say here, that was Then.
“So what are you going to do for me?” she says.
Vance Willson passes through the lobby. He has just been named Sexiest Man Alive by People Magazine, one of those slicks that has taken over in place of real information. To me he seems an Empty Suit. Except in LA he would have to be described as an Empty T-shirt. Pushed up at the sleeves to show the overworked muscles, loose around the armpits so we can see the hair, the assertive black patch of masculinity. He doesn’t stay here but he likes the bar, and one of our bartenders, a sharp little hottie named Amber. Also I think he’s hoping to meet one of the European moviemakers who pass through our hotel. He may be all over TMZ and the magazine stands, but he hasn’t made a winning movie in a while, and his trail is cold.
“Little Lulu!” he says on seeing Louise.
“Oh, thank God, a sort-of leading man. Not a moment too soon!” Louise says, and gives him a Show Biz hug, kissing the air beside his well-defined cheeks, the ones on his face. “You have to tell this fellow who I am.”
“I know who you are,” I say, checking the computer. “It’s a question of logistics. We can only do our best.”
“What do you mean, ‘a sort of leading man’?” Vance says, not very successfully hiding the hurt on his generically handsome face. It is an aspect of his braggadocio that he doesn’t use underarm deodorant. But he has a sweetly cutting odor, as if he has lavished himself with light cologne.
“Don’t you have a guest room in your hillside mansion as recently shown in Architectural Digest?” she asks him.
“My mother’s visiting me.”
“You actually have a mother?” Louise said. “I thought you sprang full-grown from the forehead of Al Pacino.”
“There’s a single on the third floor, looking down on the pool,” I say.
“I prefer looking down on people. But I suppose I could do that right here in the lobby.”
“Of course I have a mother,” Vance interjects. “She’s very proud of me.”
“Would you like me to phone over to the Montage and see if they have space?” I say. “It is Awards season.” That means everyone who has an interest in Hollywood is in town, so rooms of any kind are at a premium.
“If I wanted to be in the center of things I would have booked the Peninsula. Vance…” she whines, and suddenly her voice is that of a little girl, the not-so-little girl who came and took Hollywood when she was in her twenties and according to local legend gave new resonance to the expression “Star Fucker,” starting with those who were already stars, expanding her horizons to those she made into stars before fucking them. “Save me. I’m not having a good time.”
“What did you mean, ‘a sort of leading man?’”
“Do you want me to book the single?” I ask her.
“Can you believe Lulu is being treated like this?” she appeals to Vance, oblivious to the hurt she has caused, aware only of how quick she is, how clever she seems, if you are not the object of her darts. That was, I would guess, her modus operandi throughout her career. “Obviously these people don’t read Vanity Fair.”
In fact, I do. But the piece on her was in a very old issue. I could probably strike her mute by saying that. But that is not my way. Besides, at some level I feel sorry for those whose greatest glory is behind them, even when they have the sensitivity of armadillos.
“Do you want the room?”
“Well, at this point I seem to have no choice,” she says, and hands me her credit card. “Vance, you mustn’t tell anybody where I’m staying unless Alec Baldwin decides he wants ‘mature.’” She turns and looks at Rita, who is waiting for the elevator. “You think she advertises on Craig’s List?”
“She happens to be royalty,” I lie. “From the royal family of San Marino.” I am so past irritated by this balloon of an ego, I’d like to take a little air out of her. The only thing that intimidates these people is family, since few of them actually have one. Or if they did, they left them behind, breaking off relations as soon as they were successful. And royal is always good, though not as good as it was when there was Diana.
Besides, I like Rita. And as with the tale of Andre Gide, it isn’t likely anyone would know how to check it out. Especially as that country is important only to those people who live in it, and those who use it as a tax haven, and even they probably have trouble finding it.
“I didn’t even know there was a San Marino,” Felder says.
“It’s a tiny country surrounded on all sides by Italy,” I say, the truth, little known.
“What is she?” Vance says interestedly. “A princess?”
“She asks that we not give out any details,” I say, lowering my eyes. “The paparazzi.”
I see the twice-over Vance gives Rita who is waiting for the elevator. He seems disappointed she doesn’t look back or appear interested in him, salt in the wound Felder has succeeded in inflicting. I give Rita a couple of points for ignoring him, as it is probable she has seen him in movies. He was very big worldwide, as they say in Variety, before he started making those clunkers. I don’t mean to be judgmental but in a job like this you have to learn to appraise people pretty quickly or you might get stuck on a bill or find shit all over the room if they have a dog and no sense of common courtesy. I mean when Stewart was here, his pit bull had about the same amount of manners he did. You have to wonder about a man who travels with a pit bull.
“Hotel Royale, Good Morning,” Naomi says into the phone. Like most of the young women in town, waitresses, secretaries, beauty salon managers, she is hoping to be discovered, using her salary for acting lessons, trying not to look like she is gazing out to sea waiting for her ship to come in. That worked for Meryl Streep as the French Lieutenant’s Woman, but she was already the best actress in town, any town she was in. Besides, the sea is too far away from here to gaze out on. But everywhere there are palm trees, those lining the street right outside the hotel, the ones in the courtyard surrounding the pool. When there is a wind the fronds ripple like gentle fingertips across the imagination, and the place looks really idyllic, if you don’t mind having your thought processes stultify.
About these trees: when they become lofty enough, a second growth emerges from the trunk, a tight cluster of hideous flowers like those sold at exorbitant prices at the florists, called Birds of Paradise. You can spot them by their slick, hard shells, ending in what looks like a beak, while from their crown spurt shafts of color. Sometimes I am moved to think of people who live here, especially those who work in movies, as birds of paradise, except that their shells are harder, and, in many cases, emptier.
Vance is barely able to contain his excitement. If he were a better actor he could maybe pull off seeming cool. But the dark hairs on his arm are moving visibly, showing he is aroused. “I’d like to get me a piece of a royal,” he murmurs.
Rita gets into the elevator, and pulls the metal gate closed.
“I don’t trust anybody who can walk in heels that high,” says Felder. “Especially so young.”
“You can’t hate somebody for being young,” Vance says.
“Maybe you can’t.” Louise turns back to me. “Well…?”
Her hands are not quite on her hips, in that posture that means “You want to tangle with me, buddy?” But then her hips are better concealed than her anger. She is wearing one of those Muu-Muus popularized by the late producer Allan Carr in-between the stomach by-passes that made him thinner from time to time, or Elizabeth Taylor when she was bingeing. There is little that I haven’t taken note of during my stay in this village, which it really is. Not a city, but a tiny village. Kind of the vitriol version of ‘Our Town.’
“You are more than welcome to the room we have,” I say. “May I have a credit card?”
She pulls out a platinum American Express, and hands it to me.
“Thank you,” I say, and give it to Naomi to record. “Is there anything special you will need?”
“I’d appreciate it if one of your maids could help me with unpacking,” she says, almost civilly.
“I’ll send someone up right away,” I say, and do. Just because I don’t take a particular shine to a guest doesn’t mean I don’t know how to do my job. She did, after all, say she would appreciate it. That was probably a giant step for Hollywoodkind.
Just now comes a fuss that indicates the senator is back. Clever as we may be as a rule in discouraging the paparazzi, he is beyond high profile, having recently emerged as a champion villain, humiliating his extraordinary wife by proving the whispers about his screwing around behind her back were unfounded: he was doing it right in front of her face.
He is safely inside by way of our secret rear entrance. Back access to the Royale is copied from the Ritz Bar in Paris, where Princess Diana made her final exit through a revolving door, imagining, I would guess, that at that fateful moment she was escaping the press. But there is no escaping Destiny, especially the dark kind. Following Jon Bon Jovi out into the alley behind the Paris Ritz, Diana went straight into the supposed security of her waiting limousine. As the world learned at the time, to its universal sadness, there is really no such thing as security. Or a clever way out when the Fates or the cards are stacked against you. Still, we harbor at the hotel the illusion that there is always an option for those whose personal safety is at risk, with that secret exit. Important, as we do have a high profile clientele. So protection is all, after profit, and the policy is to coddle our guests.
Understanding that this is a country, a village, a world that feeds on scandal, especially among those considered high, we have all still been struck cross-eyed by the extent of the senator’s arrogance. Hubris, really. A conceit so blustery as to challenge the gods, if they still exist. One wonders at moments like this, at least I do, if there is anything like justice on this earth, where this magnificent woman, in her own way genuinely royal (as opposed to the alleged princess from San Marino) has been dishonored by this oaf.
But we do not let opinion influence what guests are welcome at the hotel. This is a capitalistic society. Bankers with platinum and diamond-faced Rolex watches still roam the streets where lie in the doorways homeless people there because they were deluded and scammed by those bankers. But Christ, I think it was, said ‘Judge not that ye be judged,’ and irreligious as I might be, I hew to his illuminated line, in view of who sits on the High Court now. Who wants to tangle with those guys? Especially since they have made it clear that the country is to be run by big business, giving corporations the okay to be considered a person and buy their candidates into office.
And we are in business here, too, after all. As noted, rock stars and self-imploders notwithstanding, we do not bar anyone but longtime offenders (Stewart.) The senator had checked in before his situation hit the ravenous-for-scandal airwaves, and once he was ensconced, there was no way to un-ensconce him legally, though a few of the chambermaids refused to clean his room. We had an actual meeting about it.
“The man is a pig,” said Consuelo, the head housekeeper.
“All men are pigs,” said Valiente, a maid who had learned English the hard way, linking up with a car salesman so she could get her Green Card, then finding herself responsible for his debts, which she is still working off.
“Not peegs,” said Mimea, her English at a learning level. “Dogs.”
I was tempted to ask the difference, but did not want the meeting to extend any longer than absolutely necessary, as I had a lot to do. Women, when given the opportunity, can rattle on endlessly about perceived wrongs, especially to other women. I work out in my own mind that the difference between pigs and dogs is that pigs are always in search of food, whereas dogs constantly sniff out not just food but holes. That sounds about right for the senator. I promise them all extra privileges if they will overcome their justifiable distaste and change his dirty linen in spite of his flaunting it in public.
He has arrived the back way, the locked way, so the photographers who have attached themselves to his every movement are kept out, and haven’t got the brain cells to figure out a better way to stalk him. Eventually they leave. In truth, the story is already old: there will be a new and better disgrace surfacing any moment, to feed the gaping maw of the public’s boredom with their own lives. The next one will probably be coming from Washington, as we’re edging close to election season, and those guys rut and steal and cheat better than Reality ‘stars’ and movie actors.
“My room key, please,” the senator says.
Naomi blushes dark as she hands him his plastic card, her eyes averted.
I, personally, avert my soul, in case I actually have one. A magazine Samson did not live to collect, but I flipped through, had a story on the senator and his wife when they were courting. She was a radiantly plump young woman obviously in the grip of infatuation. How shyly pretty she looked, lightly freckled and rosy with excitement, her bright blue eyes alive with the enchantment that seemingly great love brings. Plump, I said. Actually she was a chub. How she must have suffered to pare down those pounds, will-power carving out those glorious familial cheekbones, so the betrayed, brave wife now facing the TV cameras with “no comment” could add to her description, besides philanthropist and spokesperson: gaunt.
Apparently unsettled by having lost my complete attention, Vance opened up his Blackberry, checking it or Twittering something inane in 140 characters or less. He has entered the Land of the Curse of the 21st century: people who can’t be where they are. It made me sad in the beginning, couples walking down the street, texting. Handsome young couples, Love by their side, their attention someplace else. Now I just find it irritating.
“Hey,” he says indignantly, looking at his screen. “Were you pulling my leg?”
“What do you mean?” I say.
“I Googled San Marino. It says ‘the world’s oldest existing republic, having never had a ruling royal family (like Monaco or Liechtenstein), looking back instead on nearly a thousand years of communal governance, and a democratic constitution written in 1601.’”
As impressive as it seems to be that anyone can find anything on the Internet, I am appalled that such a lout can have access to answers, without even a smattering of education, or, in his case, an actual thought. “I just didn’t want to tell you the real story in front of her,” I say, in very hushed tones, as Felder closes the brass gate, pushes the button, and the creaking elevator ascends.
“What is the real story?” Vance says. “How do I get the inside track? I mean, the whole world must be hitting on her.”
“You have no idea,” I say, because he doesn’t. I am not a sadistic man, but the sight of this six-foot two poster-boy for Self made so sucky-uppy truly delights me. I usher him into the alcove by my office, and lower my voice even further, so we are truly conspirators together. “The real story is… Do I have your word it’s just between us?”
“My hand to God,” he says, holding up his hand, I presume, to God.
A whisper. “She is the grand-daughter of two of the greatest, best-looking movie stars of all time. The two most beautiful people ever to be in movies.”
“Who?”
“No names. This is what the late great Hollywood columnist Army Archerd would have called a Blind Item.” I capitalize it with my tongue as Army would have with his old typewriter. He was part of the lost glory of the recent past, a gentleman who never had an unkind word to say about anybody. Army, like Samson, my magazine benefactor, was deeply in love with the past of Hollywood, which, I guess, had actually been his present. He died not too long ago, but left a heritage of good will and the idea of a Blind Item, where you insinuate your ass off but nobody is named, thus avoiding a lawsuit.
“You have to tell me who.”
“You need to vacuum your own memory and think who there was in the Fifties, breathtakingly beautiful, the man and the woman both, who had a forbidden romance.”
“Why was it forbidden?”
“She was the longtime love of the man who made her famous,” I say.
Samson loved nothing better than movies except gossip about movie stars, and schooled me in the history of the town, and the romances therein.
Now, understand that to be able to call something a romance here, once you’re past Norma Shearer and Irving Thalberg, is close to a miracle, one Scott Fitzgerald picked up on for The Last Tycoon, big romantic that he was and a sucker for Hollywood, trying to make it into more than it was, so he did. If you are a great artist you can make a work of art out of a cockroach as Kafka showed us, and Fitzgerald did that with Hollywood, the harbor for the shipwreck of his young dream. But other than what he did with that book, it’s a stretch to characterize most on-set relationships here as romances. They’re more like erotic hysteria. All those good, hot bodies together on the set, waiting hours for the cameras to be ready, with nothing to eat up the boredom. What else could they do but fuck?
“They fell in love while they were making a movie in Spain,” I say. “He was stylish. An enormous amount of class. Charm. Wit. All those things that hardly exist in movies today.”
“So what happened?”
“You enjoy Googling. Google the big movies made in 1957. There’s a video on You Tube of the woman dancing the flamenco, and you can witness how intensely he was watching her when they were making the movie, observe him falling. A veritable nosedive. He was truly in love with her.”
“So what happened?” Vance is holding his breath, which I can tell from just a few feet away is lavender scented.
“As much of a gentleman as he was, she was a true lady. A great lady. She had been under the wing of this much older man since she was a teenager. So even though her co-star was crazy about her, she was loyal and went back to marry her protector.
I exhale a great breath. “But not for a while. And nobody knew about the little girl.”
“What little girl?”
“The baby they had together. Midwifed by nuns in a convent.” His mouth is literally agape. Deception, when aimed at someone pretentious, is its own reward, as virtue is supposed to be, but seldom is. “All of them, of course, were sworn to secrecy, which you can really count on with nuns,”
“But how could you possibly keep something like that a secret? Especially in this town.”
“Are you kidding? Clark Gable, the biggest star of his day, had an illegitimate daughter with Loretta Young, the most prominent Catholic in the industry. It wasn’t until their kid was old enough to write a book that anyone knew.”
“So what happened to the baby of these other two?”
“As a child, she determined to live a life of celibacy, her only real mother figure being nuns. But sometime around her twenty-ninth year, the hot blood in her took over, she fell for some guy, and got pregnant. She died in childbirth, but the baby lived. And that’s who you saw coming in the door of this hotel today. Their grand-daughter.”
“Oh, come on. You expect anyone to believe that story?”
“Expect them to believe?” I look as incensed as a Jane Austen heroine. “I don’t expect anyone to hear it! You gave me your word. Does your word mean nothing?”
He looks suitably mortified at this challenge to his integrity. “This is their grand-daughter? That’s really true?”
“Truth is stranger than fiction. Especially in this town. I’m really trusting you.”
“Your faith will not be misplaced,” he says.
From behind the door I watch him go out into the garage and get into his car. He waits for what must be, oh… maybe as much as forty seconds before picking up his cell phone and calling someone.
CHAPTER TWO
“Do you understand English?” Louise asked the maid as she unpacked.
The maid shook her head. “Poquito,” she said, putting her fingertips together with her thumb to indicate how little.
Louise lay back on the big double bed, the bolster under her head, her arms crossed behind her neck. “Well, at least the bed is comfortable,” she said. “You say your name is Mimi?”
“Mimea,” the maid said, unpacking.
“Well, Mimea, it’s a little early in the day for me to be exhausted, but I am.”
Mimea looked at her, uncomprehending.
Louise lay back against the mound of pillows, her hands behind her head. “It gets harder and harder to get up in the morning. You wonder if there is anything really to get up for. Everybody you loved, or at least the big stars you slept with, and the few men you cared about till they fucked you over, they’re all dead. Except for a few behind-the-scenes veterans who are still breathing and loved Lulu, enjoyed how bright she was, remember all the great deals she made, nobody cares. I can give one of my fabled dinner parties and the new young celebs will come out of curiosity, because I am legendary. But nobody really cares about the actual me. Au contraire. I am a hated woman.”
Mimea looked at her, held her palms beside her ears and shook her head.
“I understand you don’t understand. That makes it easier to be truthful.” Louise took a deep breath. “I never meant to be hated. I wanted to be feared.”
She sat up a little, leaning on her elbow. “No. That isn’t true. I wanted to be loved. But it was easier to make people afraid of me. People are more quick to fear than they are to love.”
Mimea held up a plastic packet of toiletries and looked quizzical. “In the bathroom,” Louise said, and pointed. “Bano.”
The maid went inside.
“So here I am, the face that launched a thousand shits… And they were, really. Most of the people I gave a start to and helped build did absolutely nothing to make the world a better place. I suppose that sounds silly coming from me, at least it would if you understood English and knew my reputation. I mean it’s not like I went out of my way to help the needy, although you’d be surprised how needy most of these stars are. And I was always there for them.”
“But who’s there for me, now? I can hardly get anybody on the phone.”
“Perdoneme?” Mimea said, coming out of the bathroom.
“It’s all right, querida, you’re not supposed to understand. This is very liberating for me, really. Most of the shrinks I went to are dead now, too. Besides, they almost never said anything helpful. And the psychiatrists now are so worried they won’t be reimbursed by the insurance companies, they don’t even want to listen, they just hand out meds.
“I must admit I really like meds but I’m afraid they will slow down what’s left of my brain. So it’s great to be able to vent and know that you won’t tell anyone. Because you couldn’t understand a word I said.”
Mimea just stood there.
“You’re so lucky. At least you know what your purpose is. You probably have a couple of squalling babies you take care of. The first man I loved told me I would probably eat my young. He turned out to be a total cad—that’s a word that’s gone out of style, as he did—but I really loved him. Oh, but he was right. I would have been a terrible mother. So in a strange way, I envy you. Everything you do is for survival.
“But this town is all about being important. I’m not important anymore. I’d like to be important again. I want to be the biggest name in the room.”
She swallowed a sigh. “I never told that to anyone. Well, actually, I may have told it to Bunyan Reis, but I’m sure he was drunk at the time, and didn’t take it seriously. He thought I just wanted to be with the biggest name in the room.”
“Senor Reis?” Mimea said, snapping suddenly to attention.
“Huh?” said Louise. “You know Bunyan Reis?”
“Eees aqui,” Said Mimea. “Here. In hotel.”
“Sometimes there’s God so slowly,” said Louise, and reached for the telephone.
“But my darling I thought you were in the south of France if you were living at all,” Louise said as they met in the bar.
“Kumquat!” he said, and held his arms out to her. “Imagine your being in this hotel! Are you staying here so you can be the biggest name in the room?”
“Shit,” said Louise. “I thought you were drunk.”
I can see them on one of the security screens in my office, embracing with the phony enthusiasm of old friends who are aware the other one, too, has fallen out of favor. After all, this is Hollywood, and sincerity is not the order of the day, no matter how close you might have been to immortality while still alive, or how lauded, as no one was more than Bunyan Reis. Everyone knew his name, even those who did not know anything about art. And Louise had risen higher than a great many of those she represented, her power being indisputable among industry insiders who usually had disputes about everything.
Bunyan pinches her cheek with a stubby hand that sports several rings. They are oversized and silver, very much sidewalk craft show, one of those events everywhere on the planet where people who thought they had a future in museums now find themselves selling off carts beside the road where vendors are also offering waffles. The rings have the same cast as what is left of his hair, and different colored stones. One of them looks like a college ring. But when he first checked in and made it known he intended to stay a long time, I looked him up to know the full extent of his accomplishments, and he never went to college. Not that that makes him less in my eyes, certainly, as I didn’t finish. Besides, I have seen some of the work he did when he was at his best, and it was quietly dazzling. If Samson were still alive they might have become lovers. Bunyan Reis had the same heft in the art world as Andre Gide did in his time as a literary figure, and is cut from the same epicene cloth.