I turned to Ethan. “And what do you think of Max?”
Ethan deliberated, cool, quiet, steely-eyed, turning from me to glare directly at Alice. He spoke to her. “He married the woman who murdered my brother, Miss Ferber. We just can’t prove it. And on top of everything else, now we learn he’s a Commie. Max is filled with surprises.”
Silence. An awful silence.
Ava sidled up to Frank and watched as he poured himself a drink at the sideboard. I didn’t hear what she whispered to him, though Frank, gulping down a drink, spoke loud enough for all of us to share the moment. “Hey, I got friends, too. You did say party. I only party with friends.”
Ava whispered something else, but he turned away. He caught my censorious eye-a look I’d perfected and executed on even more annoying members of the lesser species-but he simply smiled that charming witchcraft smile. A hard nut to crack, this Sinatra boy, a crooner confident in his power to attract. I figured it was time he met his match.
The two Pannis brothers huddled in a corner, Ethan whispering in Tony’s ear. The woman who’d followed them in-she’d stood in a corner the whole time-now tucked her arm around Tony’s waist.
I sat back as Max nudged me.
“Edna.” Max tried to make a joke. “You don’t look like you’re having fun.”
“I didn’t expect to.” I sipped my drink. “I’m too old for these shenanigans.” I pointed a narrow finger around the room. “This tinseltown soap opera.”
“I expect you never liked cocktail parties…ever,” Alice added.
“Like New Year’s Eve parties, which I avoid like the plague, cocktail parties thrive on forced hilarity and futile dreams of new and unexpected pleasure.”
“Good God,” Lorena howled.
“Then what do you do for entertainment?” Alice asked.
“Well, I go to cocktail parties and New Year’s parties. I like to watch people fail at their dreams.”
Max shook his head during the abrupt pause that followed my comments. “Don’t believe her, Alice. The people Edna watches will end up in one of her novels. She’s memorizing our scintillating dialogue right now.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, Max,” I chided. “George Kaufman you’re not.”
The woman who was hanging onto Tony’s sequined sleeve squealed at something he said, and then apologized. She clung to Tony, sipping the drink he’d handed her, but she looked frightened, as though she couldn’t understand what had just happened in the room. Now she was whispering in Tony’s ear, and he didn’t look happy.
“Is that Tony’s keeper?” I asked Alice.
Max, listening, answered. “Liz Grable.”
“Tell me about her.”
Max brushed an affectionate hand across Alice’s face. “See, what did I tell you? The novelist.”
“Is she Betty Grable’s misguided sister?” I wondered aloud.
Alice smiled as Max spoke in a soft voice. “Her name is Liz Carnecki. A fledgling actress, at least a decade ago. She thought a name change would usher her into stardom.”
“Did it work?”
“She’s still trying, God knows where. I was her agent for a split second, a favor to Tony way back when, but I could rarely place her. Nowadays she works in a hair salon on Hollywood Boulevard. Hair Today. Can you imagine? She’s got an efficiency that’s way, way out by the Hollywood Cemetery on Santa Monica Boulevard, where Tony squats these days.”
Liz Grable/Carnecki was now staring at me, mouth agape, showing too many capped teeth. Had she heard us chatting about her? An impossible woman, I realized, all bamboozle and peroxide, hair so teased and puffed and platinum she looked like cotton candy at a fair. A woman in her forties-those lines could no longer be disguised by all that pancake makeup-she attempted a sweet twenty-something starlet look with that round bright red blotch on each cheek, that Clara Bow cupid’s mouth, that tight cobalt-blue fringed cocktail dress slit up one leg, and a stenciled leopard pattern scarf around her shoulders. A shock of seashells-yes, they had to be seashells gathered on some California strand-circled her powdered neck. She was, I suppose, perfect for Tony/Tiny, though I hereby confess a definite orneriness in my description of the bodacious lass.
“Miss Ferber!” She came sailing across the room, and I feared a catastrophic collision. “I was telling Tony last night that I would make a perfect Sabra Cravat in any remake of Cimarron. I was born in Oklahoma. And I hear you’re finishing your book on Texas. I know oil wells. My papa…”
Tony/Tiny, her sequined conquering hero, dragged her away.
Lorena leaned into me. “Are you ready to leave yet?”
“I’m always ready to leave a party.”
Lorena lowered her voice. “I can’t believe they all showed up here, Edna. Everyone has been so careful to…to avoid these encounters. And that drunken attack by Tony-well, we’ve heard it before.”
“Is Tony always like this?”
Lorena glanced at Tony. “He’s often the one everyone likes-when he’s sober. He can be sweet-used to be sweet. But when he drinks…”
“Why are they here?”
“Frank brought them here on purpose-to rile Ava. He had to know. Ethan and Tony refuse to be in the same room as Alice. Frank knows that. And Frank can’t stand Liz. To bring her here…”
“She’s not a favorite of yours?”
Lorena shrugged her shoulders. “I’m too unglamorous for her. And of no importance. She tends to ignore the other women in the room. Liz spends her days clipping hair and waiting to be discovered like Lana Turner at the Tip Top Cafe on Highland Avenue.”
“It’s not going to happen?” I injected wonder into my words.
“Not in this lifetime, even out here in fantasy land.” But Lorena seemed to regret her words. “I shouldn’t mock her. She is who she is. It’s the boys I should be angry with.”
The two hostile camps settled into different corners of the living room, though every so often Tony hurled hostile looks at Alice. Max was mumbling about leaving, repeatedly checking his wristwatch. Alice whispered, “A little longer, Max. Just for Ava’s sake.”
But Ava wasn’t happy. Her strides across the room were abrupt, jerky. Frank stood next to the liquor cabinet, his tongue rolled into his cheek, the wary battler, eyeing her, waiting, waiting. Lorena and I made small talk about Agnes Moorhead who played Parthy in Show Boat, an actress we both knew slightly and who now, Lorena informed me, was unhappy with the way her lines were cut in the movie, making her a one-dimensional harpy. We watched Liz Grable, lipstick smeared on one side of her mouth, pick her nervous path across the floor to Frank’s side, where she proceeded to vamp and titter like a schoolgirl flirtation. From where I sat I could pick out her coy flattery, as her fingers grazed his sleeve. Nodding silently, Frank leaned into her, made a loud, cruel observation about cheap Woolworth’s perfume and looked ready to shove her away. Hurt flooded Liz’s face, her eyes blinking wildly. Any moment she’d burst into tears.
Lighting a cigarette, Ava watched the scene carefully. One false move on Frank’s part, I suspected, and she’d tear across that room, nails extended, clawing Liz’s powder-puff face to shreds. But Frank turned away, delicately maneuvering Liz out of his path, and Ava leaned against the wall. Her chest heaved, a spasm of utter sadness escaping her.
The party died. Voices drifted off, eyes closed, weary. Drinks slipped onto the floor, and a funereal pall settled in the room. I’d been chatting to Lorena about something Agnes Moorhead told me during her visit to New York when I became aware that my voice was the only sound in the room. Bothered, I looked up into a sea of blank, accusing faces. Tony, eyes narrowed, was glaring at Max, who stared back, bothered. Alice had leaned into her husband protectively, her fingers gripping his sleeve.
Suddenly I wondered how drunk Tony really was. His look conveyed more sloe-eyed resentment than, say, an inebriate’s sloppy anger. How much of his drunken spiel was a deliberate act? There was caginess in his eyes as he surveyed the room. A sweet man? I wondered at Lorena’s words. A man definitely hard to read. His severe stare moved to Alice, his former sister-in-law, and the rubbery face contorted, tightened. It was, frankly, an awful moment, rank as a battlefield wound. The room shuddered.