All That Glitters (66 page)

But Frenchy wasn’t long for the world, as we all know. When he got sent to Alcatraz for invasion of the federal mails and assorted bits of graft and other felonies, he went up for a four-year stretch; but he never made it out again. The story was strictly headlines. Unpopular with his fellow inmates, Yves found life behind bars a hard scrabble deal. His duties partly entailed an occasional stint in the prison laundry, where one evening his carcass came to light at the bottom of the steam transformer, looking like a New England boiled dinner, the skin flayed off his parboiled flesh, his lobster-red head unrecognizable.
Dommage.

Watching Claire sneak a quick shot of vodka now and then, I decided she deserved a boost, being married to a guy like that. Everybody knew about this surreptitious tippling, people had been talking about it for years; her hairdresser, her makeup man, the director, even the producer, they all knew. She kept little Dixie cups of blue label Smirnoff strategically tucked away behind things on the set, making believe they were only water, and I’d catch her hiking one back before a take.

One day they were setting up for a scene where we had a heavy clinch on a bearskin rug in front of a fireplace, and when it got around to my closeup, with the camera set behind her and over the shoulder on me, she said, “Raise your chin a little,” then lifted it herself. Her peremptory air annoyed me, and I said with some sullenness, “The shot’s on your back, how do you know where the camera is?”

“Baby, I can smell it,” was her brusque reply. “I’ve been making love to the camera for a lot of years and, believe me, it treats me better than most of the men I’ve made love to.” She reached out and touched my cheek, an affectionate gesture, but the makeup man later told me that hubby Yves had picked up on it from the shadows and had spat, with a “
merde
” for me to boot.

Later, when we were getting warmed up for a take, the all-important clinch became a problem of sorts. I got at her with a good healthy smooch and she yanked back as though I’d copped a feel or something. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.

“Kissing,” I said. “It’s in the script.”

She looked appalled. “You can’t kiss me like that. Keep your lips closed; this program goes into family homes, you’ll offend mothers and fathers.” This, from Hot Lips Houlihan herself.

The next time we tried the kiss, I managed it as prescribed—the way I’d kiss a maiden aunt on her annual visit. After every take I’d shoot the director a questioning look, but he’d just cross his eyes and say nothing. Later, when I went to him, he explained that, being studio bred, Claire had been taught not to kiss with open lips since it was against the old Hollywood Code. Yet, as everybody knew, she’d been on more beds than a Wamsutta sheet. Where did she draw the line? At the television sets along the Platte River, evidently.

We finally got a printed take, but as I got up from the bearskin I caught Yves out of the corner of my eye. He glared, then disappeared inside Claire’s trailer; next day when she arrived on the set she wore a wicked shiner. I happened to be at the water cooler when she came in through the door and I got a good look at it.

“Jesus, did that son-of-a—”

She put her fingers to my lips to shut me up. “Okay, Galahad, no heroics. Get me Lou quick, will you?” She ducked into her dressing room and I went to find her makeup man. Lou couldn’t completely hide the bruise, and when the director saw the damage he was furious. He had to change his entire day’s setups.

Then, after having scored points, I was so foolish as to get Claire pissed off at me. It was the last day of shooting, and as I passed her door at lunchtime she crooked her finger at me. “Darling, I’m having just a few close friends in when we wrap. Nothing fancy, but of course you’ll come. Champagne, some hors d’oeuvres? I made them myself. We can mess around till flight time. Sound like fun?”

“Gosh, Claire,” I blurted, “I can’t. I’ve got something on.”

I’ll never forget the glazed look that came over her face. It froze blue, like a Maine pond. Her whole body tautened, and the lips formed that famous movie mouth. “
Oh
.” Quick and sharp. “Well. I’m sorry you’re so busy.”

I knew right away I’d made a gaffe. My whole career now had wings on it and was flapping out the window. The director came to me. “What’d you say to her?” I told him what had happened. “Jesus, can’t you do something?” he pleaded. “I’ve still got sixteen set-ups before we wrap.”

Jenny was expecting me to pick her up at the airport, but I made a call and arranged for a friend to do it. I wrote a note of explanation for Jen, then went and rapped dutifully on Madame’s door.

“Come.”

“Say, Claire, I got out of my thing later, and if the invitation’s still open I’d like to come.”

She melted like a stick of butter on a hot griddle. The huge eyes teared; she patted my cheek gratefully. “How
nice
, darling. And how enchanting of you to change your plans just for me. I hope I haven’t loused things up for you.”

“No, not at all,” I lied. “And I want you to know I’ve really enjoyed working with you.”

“Oh,
bless
you, darling! And
I you
! I hope we’ll do it again. My prediction is—” And I got a bouquet of flowery sentiments as to my budding screen career.

At the party her husband was conventionally cordial; we exchanged a few trite remarks and that was about it, but I knew he didn’t give me much. He was even rude to Jenny when she arrived, and at the last minute he managed to get in a word. “In my contree,” he said to me in an aside, “I would know what to do with a
cochon bleu
like you. Now you can say to zee world you have kissed zee wife of Yves de Gobelins.”

“And you, my friend, can say you’ve kissed the ass of the man who kissed the wife of Yves de Gobelins.” I stepped back and he lunged, tripped, and fell out the doorway, where a group quickly gathered. I made a good show of helping him to his feet and brushing him off, ministrations he was forced to submit to. “They ought to do something about that first step,” I said as I went to gather up my gear, “it’s a bitch.”

He and Claire were flying off to Vegas in only two hours, and at that moment Claire chose to reappear in her “traveling outfit,” oblivious to the altercation. She looked like Wilma in
Buck Rogers
, a stripped-down movie-star model none of us had ever had a gander at before. Except for lipstick and her long eyelashes, her face was devoid of makeup, and the healthy skin gleamed from the oil or grease she’d slathered over it. She was tricked out in a khaki jumpsuit with couturier lines, mid-calf boots, military epaulettes, and a designer aviator’s helmet—with pink-tinted goggles. She had three diamond bracelets slung on one wrist, a baguette diamond the size of a plum on one finger, her waist was cinched with a gold kid belt and the jumpsuit was unzipped nearly to the waist, with a generous revelation of braless freckled boobs. “The only way to fly, gang!” she laughed, wafting a glass at us. Then we got the “Bless you, darlings” routine, and at an opportune moment she drew me aside and pressed something into my hand.

“Just a little remembrance,” she said. She wasn’t kidding, either: a lambda peace symbol in a little plastic box. “Peace,” she said, and kissed my cheek ever so butterflyly. “It
was
fun, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, fun.”

“Let’s do it again sometime.”

“Yeah, let’s.”

“Bye, Charlie. You’re a
good hard
worker—I
like
that.” She gave me one of her deep, meaningful looks. “Bless you, darling—and thanks for your forbearance. I’m sorry if Yves was acting like a putz.” At that moment I saw something I hadn’t seen before, something not fully expressed, which hinted at the more sincere modes of feeling common to the race. Then she blew it. “Bless you, bless you,” she tacked on in her best Greer Garson voice.

Not four days later, I received a communication through the mail.

Charles, dear [she wrote on the famous violet stationery with a Vegas postmark, and up at the top was the Gobelins coat-of-arms Yves had paid a Paris heraldry firm to design for him], Again, I can’t tell you how truly nice it was working with you last week. Imagine, my “TV lover” turning out to be that cute signalman I did the Lindy Hop with! God bless you, my Knight in Shining Armor, may you always have your heart’s desire and your very own “Oscar” one day.

Devotedly

Claire Regrett Gobelins

(Mme. Yves de Gobelins)

P.S. Yves has been contrite as can be over our little countertemps [sic]. Such things are best forgotten, don’t you agree? Our little secret.

B.Y.D.

(Bless You Darling)

And for the next five Christmases I received a card from her, no longer signed as above but rather as plain Claire Regrett and lavishing me with endless B.Y.D.’s.

Sometime during that period I got a call from an indignant Viola. “Charlie, why don’t you ever send Claire a Christmas card?”

I was somewhat taken aback by this unexpected assault, and explained that I’d stopped sending cards years ago. “I don’t even send my mother one.”

“She thinks you’re being very rude. After all, she sends you one every year.”

“Does she do it just so she’ll get one back?”

“Well… think of it this way, dear; you’re on her A list. Very few people make her A list.”

Vi made me promise to be sure and send one, but I never did, and after a while Claire’s card stopped coming. I knew I’d been dropped from her A list and stuck on her shit list.

When I got to New York, I went about settling into my apartment for the duration, however long it would take to get my play on. As it happened, Vi was in New York, too, and I called her. The first thing she did was book me for dinner on the night of the Academy Awards. She had an apartment in New York, and had invited “one or two others” to watch the show, too.

When I reached her building, I gave the name of Miss Ueberroth and was astonished when the doorman informed me that I was expected: “Miss Regrett just went up five minutes ago.”

So I’d been tricked. Miss Ueberroth would pay for such betrayal. I was tempted to abandon her without even putting in an appearance, but persuaded myself that, given a chance, it might somehow end up an interesting evening after all. I was not to be proved wrong. As I was admitted to the foyer, I heard that laugh I knew so well, heh heh. Star of stage, screen, radio, and TV was in the other room. I’d been framed. Yes, someone would pay.

As I came in, my eye fell immediately on Claire, seated in a high-backed chair by the fireplace, a champagne flute in one hand, a cigarette holder in the other (“The Queen is discovered onstage in a thronelike chair, etc.”), and in her lap—wonder of wonders—her own Oscar (“… in case anyone wanted to see what they really looked like”). Viola interposed her small, rotund figure between us, giving me the chance to let her know I was displeased by this unexpected turn of events. Ignoring my signals, she put her withered cheek up to be kissed. “Charlie dear, how nice that you’ve come; do you know—” and she introduced me to several people, among them a noted cellist and his wife, a well-known British stage actor, and a duo of butch ladies in butt-sprung slacks and sensible shoes, producers in the current Broadway theatre. “And of course you know our darling Claire,” Vi said as we ended up before Madame, ensconced upon her pickled-walnut throne. When I put out my hand, she pulled a meant-to-be-charming pout.

“What, Charles—no kiss?” I bent to administer a dutiful peck, looking down into her cleavage, which was badly raddled. A diamond brooch glittered there, radiating dollar signs, and I caught a heavy whiff of perfume. “I only dab a
touch
of perfume,” I remember reading in her book; “men don’t like to be smothered in heavy scent, floral or otherwise.”

She made me pull up a footstool and there I was, sitting at her feet, just where she intended me to be. She started off with “I’ve read every one of your books. How did you
ever
manage to
write
them?” Before I could reply, she seized both my hands in hers and held them tight while she looked deeply and entreatingly into my eyes, giving her head tiny, earnest quivers of intensity, and said, “What made you want to change from acting to writing? Did you
always
know?” Before I could respond she hurried on. “I know—you don’t have to tell me—you longed for another mode of expression, isn’t that it?” When I opened my mouth, she laid her fingers over it. “Don’t say it, I
know
, I really
do
.” Now her eyes began to coruscate in the light. “Frank was
so
damned
proud
of you! And I know—I really feel sure that we were destined to stumble across each other this way. Do you believe in destiny, Charles? Of
course
you do, you
must.
You’ve always been metaphysical, at least I always thought so. I can usually tell, you know. You and I are on the same wavelength, aren’t we?” She leaned her bare, conspiratorial shoulder at me. “It’s part destiny, part luck, but mostly just plain hard work, isn’t that so?” She handed away her glass for a refill. “You and I know that, don’t we? I’m a workaholic, so are you, we’ll go to our graves working. I in my socks and buskins, you with ink-stained fingers. How I wish
I
could write the way
you
do! You make it seem so easy, as though it all just comes dribbling out from your fingertips, as if you didn’t even have to think about it a single moment.”

I regarded these words as damning with faint praise, but let them pass. A brouhaha with Madame was not what I’d come to New York for, and I sat back, silent, while the flood of encomiums engulfed me. “Look at me, everyone!” she proclaimed with a little laughing sob, bringing all other conversation to a halt. “I’m crying over one of his stories! I want you all to know this fella is one of the best goddamn writers we’ve got! And little Claire knew him when!”

“I’ll bet,” declared the more mannish of the two lady-producers.

Claire put her hand up and spoke behind it,
sotto voce.
“I wish somebody would stick a finger in that dyke.”