Chapter Two
Five days ago Max Jeffries had answered the door before I had a chance to press the bell. He stood there, this tiny slip of a man, his face wide in a sloppy grin, and then, wordless, performed an exaggerated two-step. I grinned and bowed. He glanced over my shoulder at the departing taxi and squinted. “Too far to walk, Edna?”
“I didn’t want to be taken in by the police.”
It was one of our running jokes. Years back, visiting Los Angeles, I’d left the Bel-Air Hotel for my obligatory early morning stroll but was summarily stopped by a cop who seemed stunned that I wanted to walk the streets. “Madam,” he kept saying as he wagged his finger. I soon learned that walking was suspect behavior here, enclosing oneself in a shiny new car was de rigueur, and nothing else would do. Folks drove to the corner store, and considered it a worthy journey.
Max’s snug bungalow, situated perhaps a quarter mile from my top-floor suite at the Ambassador, was an easy stroll, though one likely forbidden by local ordinance and rigorous custom. I’d hailed a taxi. A New York cabbie would have balked at such a piddling trek-indeed, would have cursed me roundly in salty Neapolitan or robust Gallic dialect-but here in the land of wide boulevards and constant sunshine I garnered a half-hearted smile. Everyone in L.A. smiles too much. Incessant sunlight makes folks giddy, of course, maddened like buzzing horse flies near a cottage porch light.
Max laughed and ushered me inside. “I could have picked you up.”
“Don’t be foolish, dear Max. It’s bad enough that I’m mooching supper from you.”
We sat in a small living room, which I recalled fondly from a visit years back. A shadowy room, too dark, despite thick velvet burgundy curtains pulled back to allow sunlight in. It was early evening, still light outside, yet you’d never know it. The bungalow-one of a row of similar white stucco homes, each with narrow white columns banking the front doors-was nestled under the intimidating presence of a towering skyscraper cruelly built yards away, relegating the quaint homes to darkness and isolation.
Max had switched on too many table lamps that did nothing more than exaggerate the long drifting shadows on the walls. I settled into a deep, worn sofa. A lived-in room, comfortable, inviting. A home. Max’s home. Every space from table top to wall, even a paneled door, held black-and-white photographs chronicling Max’s long career in Broadway theater, on the road during interminable tryouts, and, for the past couple of decades, life in Hollywood as a freelance musical arranger as well as small-time talent agent.
A quick glance gave me shots of Max with Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Ginger Rogers, Jerome Kern, among so many others. Max grinning with Fred Allen at the Chi Chi Club in Palm Springs. Max playfully sparring with Mickey Rooney. Max doing an exaggerated soft shoe with Marge and Gower Champion, the two veteran hoofers now in the new Show Boat. I admit I didn’t recognize many of the celebrities in the photos. Despite my being enthralled, begrudgingly, with movieland magic, I always declared an abiding dislike of Hollywood’s trashy output. How many doomsday pronouncements had I made to the press on the unsavory effects of movies while at the same time demanding Hollywood moguls buy the rights to my novels? Jack Warner was now wooing me for the rights to Giant, a novel not yet published. Carl Laemmele used to send me boxes of Belgian chocolates. Max and I had long, intense talks on that subject, let me tell you.
Max’s face got serious. “Edna, you didn’t have to fly to L.A. to see me, you know. I don’t need…”
I held up my hand. “Don’t be ridiculous, Max. My indignation over the way you’ve been treated fueled my journey, truth to tell.”
He laughed. “It is wonderful to see you after so many years. It’s been so long.”
He walked to a black-lacquered art deco sideboard and poured red wine into two glasses. “Still merlot?”
“You know me, Max. The little tippler.”
“Yeah, I recall your insistence that one glass of anything is worthy and healthful. Two glasses makes you say and do foolish things.”
“Well, it’s true.”
“Edna, you’ve never said a foolish thing in your life.” He raised his glass to me.
We clinked glasses. “I’m an old lady now. Maybe it’s time to be foolish.” I sat back, sipping the delicious wine. I smiled back at him, the two of us silent for a moment, lost in the comfortable space that old friends fall into so neatly and deliciously, some reflective touchstone. A peaceful kingdom, this little bungalow.
Max had aged. He was a small compact man, so slender of build he seemed an undernourished adolescent boy. He had a bony face with jutting chin covered in a slight stubble, grayish. Balding now, his once straw-like honey-blond hair was sketchy and stringy. But those eyes, metallic steel gray, always-and still-giving his face a mischievous, impish look, the boy who steals the crab apples from your neighbor’s yard. Those deep-set eyes made the utterly drab face burst alive, rivet, demand your attention. As a young man, he’d been a dancer in a chorus line back in New York, a live-off-the-cuff gypsy. But when his dancing days were over, he became a back-of-the-chorus baritone in Broadway musicals. Then, for his final passion, a mighty fine arranger of musical scores, with a growing reputation for originality and cleverness. In time he became an intimate of Jerome Kern, a man I knew well, a man notoriously hard to befriend.
“You’re staring at me, Edna.”
“I know. I’m not sorry. I like looking at you.”
He shook his head. “My wife’ll be jealous…for the first time.”
I took a deep breath. “Max, a married man.”
“Hard to believe, no?” He pointed to a corner china cabinet with scalloped trim and chalk-white finish, something that rightly belonged in a colonial home on Cape Cod. “Your gift of the Baccarat vases was excessive.”
Four years back-Max, fiftyish then-the inveterate bachelor and summer nomad who trekked alone across the Alps, had surprised everyone by marrying a local widow, whom I’d never met. No one had-at least none of the New York circle that knew Max. Fond of Max, our serendipitous court jester, we were tickled-and talked of nothing else for days. George S. Kaufman famously quipped, “Some men have to reach that half-century mark before they make their first mistake.” Max’s letter to me, intimate and cozy, had gushed-a squirming emotion I dislike in nearly everyone-his absolute devotion to the mysterious Alice.
“And where is Alice?” I asked now.
“She’s dressing-keeps changing her dress.” He slapped the side of his face, a silly gesture. “Oh, perhaps I shouldn’t tell you that. She’s so nervous about meeting you that she’s been fretting all day. You’re Edna Ferber. You’re Show Boat…”
“Good Lord,” I interrupted him. “I’m hardly some massive pleasure craft lumbering down Wilshire Boulevard.”
“You know what I mean.” He grinned sheepishly. “She’ll be out in a second.”
It was almost a stage cue because, with a squeak of an unseen door and a very audible titter, the woman appeared in the hallway. She stood there, statue-like, one hand extended out for no apparent reason, a paralyzed smile on her face. I was reminded of the indomitable Katherine Cornell and her usual preposterous stage entrances, whether called for or not in the script. Max made the introductions while Alice slid into a canary-yellow wing chair opposite me. I wondered when she planned to start blinking.
I didn’t know what I expected, but not this prim, matronly-looking woman, dressed now in a simple floral-print housedress with two rather ungainly red bows stuck indecorously to her bodice, a dress that clashed with the yellow of her chair. Hardly Hollywood-more Emporia, Kansas, the farmer’s wife at a Grange supper of pork-and-beans that followed a Methodist quilting bee. George Kaufman, always privy to transcontinental gossip though most was spurious and definitely scurrilous, had informed me that she was a notorious black widow whose rich gangland husband had died under mysterious circumstances. I’d expected some slicked-over movie confection, much too young for Max, a vacuum slathered in a harlot’s glossy lipstick and dime-store rouge.