Ed Ifkovic - Make Believe

Larry looked into his face and said in a small voice, “That was then.”

“And now we have a paradise…if not lost, well, at least in the hands of creditors.”

Larry snapped at him, “I don’t see you refusing the monthly check from the real estate folks.”

“True.” Max shrugged. “Edna, Larry was in a few Betty Grable movies. One movie, if I remember, with Myrna Loy. Bit parts, but a line or two. God, how we cheered him on back then! Our friend on the movie screen. The handsome cad. The suave hidalgo, the continental gigolo.” He smiled innocently. “Typecasting.”

Larry squirmed in his seat. He looked the faded actor, the square-jawed juvenile lead, romantic, with his tall lithe body, the chiseled bronzed face, the full head of carefully combed black-gray hair, an elegant Roman nose a little too red these days with blood vessel speckles. Yet he sported unfashionable sideburns, a pirate’s affectation, as though he’d just tottered off the set of an Errol Flynn movie. I imagined he inflamed a few fluttering hearts, even these days, this man with the matinee idol carriage. But his eyes betrayed callowness, a grubbing meanness. They darted too much, the caged animal; their blackness was dull and flat. I didn’t like him, though I didn’t know him.

“I gave up acting, though I get called for parts-small parts-now and then.”

“Are you his agent?” I asked Max.

“God no,” Max said. “Larry set his sights on high ground-his first wife knew somebody who knew Paulette Goddard…”

Larry started to stand, then slipped back into the chair. “Sorry to hear about your troubles, Max.”

Max shrugged his shoulders. “So I’ll live.”

“These are tough times.” He sucked in his breath and glanced away. “But you asked for trouble when you fired off that foolish letter. Christ, what were you thinking?”

Max’s voice was rushed. “I was thinking about my friends.”

“And you signed that petition against that mouthy senator, and Red Channels listed your name…” He seemed to be checking off a list in his head.

“I didn’t see your name on it.”

Larry snarled, “Nor will you ever. I don’t want to lose my job. I got three ex-wives to support.”

“Just what do you do, Mr. Calhoun?”

My question seemed to take him by surprise, a puzzler, because he furrowed his brow and seemed unable to answer. Then, with pride, “I’m a manager at Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre, where, by the way, Show Boat will shortly hold its West Coast premiere. It’s a real coup for us.”

Max interrupted. “You don’t come around the house any more.”

Larry stood now, rocked on one leg. “And you wonder why?”

“I know why.” But Max was looking at me.

“You can’t bring us down with you, Max. You have to understand that. The hint of scandal these days, names bandied about like crazy, the mere suggestion of Communist stuff, sympathies-you know, a death sentence.” He swallowed the last two words. “Miss Ferber, good day.”

He hurried into the lobby and he didn’t look back. Pausing at the registration desk, he seemed to be asking for someone, and then idly glanced back at us. For a second my eyes locked with his. Even from that distance, I could detect fear there, palpable, stark. He turned away, his shoulders hunched as he leaned on the desk.

“A coward,” Max grumbled. “The older he’s gotten the more frightened he’s become. He used to be a roustabout soul like the rest of us. I mean-the three of us had the times of our lives. Then he got scared. Now he plasters photos of Joe McCarthy into a scrapbook.”

“I’m so sorry. Some friend.”

Max reached across the table and held my hand, tightened his fingers. His touch was oddly cold, stiff.

A low hum swept through the lobby and into the lunchroom. People walking by stopped, their steps frozen, heads tilted. Everyone seemed to be in motion yet, strangely, no one moved. Nearby a busboy, a freckled, red-faced lad with a hawk nose, had been refilling a water glass from a pitcher but now, oblivious, poured water sloppily onto the table. A comic scene, some foolish Marx brothers routine, but the hum got louder still, almost a titter, until I wondered…earthquake?

When I looked at Max, he was grinning.

Every head had turned, as though on oiled ball bearings, toward the center of the lobby where Ava Gardner, striding across the floor, momentarily stopped and looked around. As epicenter of that seismic shift in the earth’s rotation, she stood there, checking her watch, as all those around her seemed to lose their minds.

It was, frankly, awesome. This presence one woman could have, electric, galvanizing, stupendous. Everyone was smiling, wide-eyed, like little children surprised by a treat. Only Ava herself, standing there naturally in the center of that space, bringing one hand up to check on her hair, seemed unaware of the rumbling sensation she caused. This was Movies, writ large; this was melodrama on the wicked showboat stage; this was Theater; this was, perforce, a blinding of the noontime sun.

I held my breath, enthralled.

She spotted us and smiled, gave a slight, tentative wave that struck me as oddly insecure. The lonely girl in town who spots an old friend at the bus station.

As she approached our table, the busboy dropped the pitcher, and was immediately admonished by the truculent patron whose lap now was sopping wet. The boy didn’t seem to care.

She held out a hand to me, and I shook it. Politely, she’d first slipped off her elbow-length white cotton gloves before she gave me her hand. A nice gesture, and correct. She dazzled, truly, but I was unprepared for her…radiance. A run of movie-magazine catchphrases sailed into my head, and I smiled at them all.

Now I’ve never favored my own plain looks, not back as a young woman with bushel-barrel hair, and certainly not as I approached my seventies. A part of me had always irrationally resented the easy and fashionable beauties who glided through life. But now, slack-jawed, I found myself watching her. The most beautiful woman in the world, they called her, Hollywood exaggeration and utter blather. Now, frankly, I didn’t know who else came close, Helen of Troy having long departed from the world stage.

You saw a woman put together with exquisite care, a black-and-white ensemble of geometric patterns, a white lacy blouse under a sleek black silk jacket with green oriental stitching, over a tight black skirt that hugged her curves at the hip but dramatically flared out at the knee, lampshade style. It was her face that arrested yet excited: those high cheekbones, lightly rouged; the emerald almond-shaped eyes with a slight yellow mote that caught the overhead light; that seductive dimple on her chin, a face encased in a swirl of chestnut curls. Wide, sensual lips, coated in a deep passion crimson, a color so bloodlike it seemed enamel. Luminous porcelain skin with an opalescent cast, vaguely foreign.

“Miss Ferber, I’m sorry I’m late.” A low, husky voice, and I thought of Greta Garbo speaking in Anna Christie . She leaned in and I smelled exotic perfume, pungent jasmine perhaps, a sweet elixir, heady as thick wine.

Such women were dangerous.

Deadly, but they compelled one to draw close. Ships were wrecked on the coasts of their attention. You had no choice.

I smiled, stammered, “So you’re the new Julie LaVerne.”

Those green eyes gleamed, catlike. “It’s a wonderful part, Miss Ferber. I don’t have to show my long legs, and there’s even a scene where I’m allowed to look haggard, worn, without makeup. I don’t have to look like the glossy prints in Photoplay .” She struck a model’s artificial pose, held it, and then burst out laughing. Her roar was raucous, whiskey husky, a late-night voice, closing time at the bar.