Crowned Heads (43 page)

Soon the sun will be setting, always his worst part of the day. There in the lanai, in those very wrought-iron chairs, it once had been his and Bee’s custom to take a late afternoon English tea, a daily ritual. The butler would bring it on a silver tray and they would watch the sunset. Now Bee is gone; so is the butler. Willie hates watching sunsets.

What he has been gradually forced to face—and it has come as the truth always does, slowly but most awfully—is that without Bee he might have been only a mediocrity; worse, a nonentity. With her he’s been everything: half a century of stardom was not to be sneezed at. Heigh-ho, he thinks, poking his fork at the carrots and peas, the dollop of gelid mashed potato, the unappetizing Salisbury steak. What can the world be coming to, with such food?

He pushes the portable table and the tray from him; he cannot eat. Gets up, ignoring the television set for the moment, and wanders disconsolately about. What to do? How to get through the evening? He pauses momentarily at the card table in the corner, with the typewriter and his assiduously gathered notes, and the pile of manuscript pages, “Salad Days,” long promised to the world. The chronicles of his life and times. His times have ended; his life, not quite. He draws out a page at random, studies his syntax:

… at the Cocoanut Grove one night we saw an amazing girl, an unknown then, one Lucille Le Sueur, quondam Billie Cassin, of Kansas City, flashing feet, naughty hips, and oh, those eyes. Later she became Joan Crawford, but that night she was just a girl dancing to win a Charleston cup in a nightclub. Win she did. How did it feel? they asked her. Said Joan, “My little feet may be dancing, but my little heart is breaking.” She’d had a fight with her beau, a meatpacker-playboy. “Well, that’s show business,” Bee declared.

Willie slips the page back into the pile and takes up the first page, which bears these words:
“J’ai vécu.”

“I lived; I existed through it all.”

Willie leans strongly toward this quotation as the epigraph to his memoirs, courtesy of the Abbé Sieyès, whom he greatly admires. The abbé survived the Reign of Terror and his tenacity saw him safely from the fall of the Bourbons, through the Revolution, to the Restoration. Like the abbé and Joan Crawford, Willie, too, has existed through it all. He is a survivor.

He has survived vaudeville, the microphone, the Depression, three or four wars, CinemaScope, 3-D, television, he has survived the waning of love, popularity, fortune, the loss of hair and teeth, impaired eyesight and hearing, internal disorders, he has survived his own age and that of many others; he has survived even death.

Ah, Bee …

My little feet may be dancing, but my little heart is breaking.

It was his impaired hearing that caused him to turn up the volume on the TV, where, on
The New Treasure Hunt,
a black girl was practically in tears because she had muffed her chance at five thousand dollars, and since his sympathies were directed toward the unfortunate girl, Willie did not hear the door chime. The dogs scampered off, barking, but he failed to notice. The cockatoo made him aware that something was happening beyond the range of his hearing. Agitated by the dogs, the bird, in its filigreed cage, was uttering piercing cries as an intruder suddenly appeared in the doorway. Willie at last looked up from the set and stared toward the hall.

“Howdy,”
called a hearty voice.

Willie could make out only a large hulking shape in the archway. Alarmed, he dropped his napkin into the gravied meat compartment and half rose from his chair.

“Hope I didn’t scare ya. Guess ya didn’t hear the doorbell. It’s me, Mr. Marsh. Bill Bowie.”

“Bowie … Bowie … I don’t know any Bowie.”

Squinting, he could make out a faceless young man, rocking on the balls of his feet and punching a fist into his palm.

“Sure,” said the young man amiably. “Remember—Friday night—Viola’s? You said come for drinks?”

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Was he losing his mind? Willie wondered. “You’ve got the wrong night,” he called out. “Tuesday. You’re supposed to come Tuesday.”

“What?” returned the young man, cupping his ear.

“I—say—you’ve got the—wrong—night.” Ridiculous, shouting this way. Willie consigned
The New Treasure Hunt
to oblivion, while the young man stood in the doorway. A swift stillness hung briefly in the room, then they started toward one another at the same instant, both speaking at once.

“You were supposed to come—”

“I could’ve swore you said Monday—”

Willie scooped up the dogs, put on his glasses, and watched a giant Buffalo Bill advancing across the room: long hair and a buckskin-fringed jacket, fringed buckskin pants. His large hand was extended.

“—Tuesday,” Willie ended weakly. Surely it wasn’t the same fellow; this one looked like another person entirely, not the neat young man in the shawl-collared dinner clothes. Nor was he alone. Half obscured by his large bulk, came a girl, teetering in his wake on wooden platform shoes, which clattered on the tiles. Willie hardly knew what to do, juggling the animals and, to his surprise, taking the offered hand. The young man wrung it, and chucked one of the dogs under the chin.

“Hey, boy, hey, boy … And this here’s Judee,” he added, with a nod to the girl.

“Hiyuh,” said the girl. A cloud of reddish frizzy hair topped her head like an Afro, and her eyes were sooty with mascara and Egyptian penciling. Willie set the dogs down and looked from one to the other. Clearly an impossible situation. What had happened was that last Friday night Viola Ueberroth had given one of her biannual parties, a large affair under a lawn tent. Willie had been persuaded by Vi to renounce his mourning temporarily and attend; he regretted it the moment he arrived: faces, faces everywhere, but so few he recognized. It was while standing at the bar, turning from some people who’d been condoling with him, that he came face to face with the young man. Pleasant enough, he introduced himself, explaining that he was Viola’s masseur, and had been invited as part of a contingent of dateless men who could possibly amuse husbandless women. Having scraped acquaintance, and not at all abrasively, he had been complimentary about a number of Willie’s pictures. He seemed well informed about them, and it was then that he had mentioned the much-publicized magazine spread, and expressed interest in the collection of art and movie memorabilia, even going so far as to say he would consider himself lucky to inspect it in person. Willie had at first demurred, but remembering that he’d invited some people up for drinks on Tuesday, thought it the considerate thing to include the young man. “Bring a date, if you like,” he’d said; and here they were—but on the wrong night.

“Hey, this is quite a spread you got here,” said the young man affably. “Even better than in the pictures.”

“It’s just like living between the pages of
Modern Screen,
” the girl chirped, moving past Willie, her large googly eyes gazing around her with the wonder of an urchin at a bakery window.

“I’m glad you like it,” Willie said. “But I’m afraid tonight won’t do. You see—”

“Aw, say,” the young man chimed in, “that’s too bad. Boy, are we dumb. Wrong night.” He shook his head woefully at his mistake. He looked at the girl and spread his hands wide. “Gee, Jude, whatcha think?”

“I think it’s terrific,” she replied, going to tap the cockatoo’s cage.

“See, the thing is,” the young man continued, “we got up here, but we can’t get down.”

“Is your car not working?” Willie asked.

“Naw, see, what it is, we got a ride up. A friend dropped us off. He’s coming to pick us up, but not for …” He looked at his wrist, where there was no watch, then around him, as if the time might appear and announce itself from any corner.

“I see.” It was all really awkward. “Well, uh—Bob—”

“It’s—uh—Bill, Mr. Marsh.”

“To be sure. Bill.” They stood facing one another, Willie abstractedly brushing his pate, the young man slamming his fist into his palm again and grinning. Not knowing what else to do, Willie invited them to sit. The chairs had been resurrected by Bee from the old Turf Club at Santa Anita, four of them grouped around a French lawn basket with a glass top, crowded with glass and crystal ornaments.

“I see you were watchin’ TV,” the young man said. His cowboy boots were large and colorful, the sides stitched with designs in many hues, the toes squarely pointed and turned up like the toes of a caliph’s slippers.

“Yes, that
Treasure Hunt
thing,” Willie replied. The girl was silently watching him with her skittish urchin’s look.

“Oh,
Treasure Hunt,
uh huh.” The young man nodded agreeably.

Willie was still having difficulty recognizing the person he had met before. His hair hung around his face in a long mane. The eyes were clear, if bland, the nose was snub, the face large and square. The round cheeks dimpled when he smiled, which was often. The jawline was outrageous.

“Well.” Willie glanced tentatively from him to the girl, and back again. “Well, Bob—”

“It’s—uh—Bill, Mr. Marsh.”

“Yes, Bill, to be sure—Bill.” He stamped it indelibly on his memory, dismayed by the glimpse he caught of himself in the mirror: the bald spot that the public never saw, since he usually wore a toupee, his wash slacks, the canvas sneakers, the shirt that was getting a second wearing; hardly the picture of dashing elegance he had for so long striven to present to the world.

“Honest, I never
saw
so many things,” said the girl. “Did
you
ever?” she asked Bill. Bill had never, either. He extracted from his jacket pocket a cloth bag and a pack of papers, sprinkled tobacco, and nimbly rolled a cigarette, twisting the end, which he hung on his lip while he searched in his other pockets for a light.

“Here.” Willie handed him a package of matches; Bill lit up.

“’S okay, Mr. Marsh—just Bull Durham,” he said reassuringly, as though Willie might think it were something else. He smiled at the match cover and tossed it to the girl. “Look, Jude, how ’bout that.”

The girl read the inscribed cover:
“To a matchless person. Sincerely, Bee and Willie.”
She giggled. “That’s cute. I like it.”

“We thought it was fun,” Willie said. He hadn’t got her name; terribly sorry.

“Judee, with two
e
’s, not a
y
.” She held up a pair of fingers to demonstrate, then vee’d them into a peace symbol. Bill was looking around for an ashtray. Willie leaned to bring one closer, straightening quickly as he realized the unattractive sight the top of his head presented. “Well,” he said again; obviously the matter was not to be avoided. “I suppose, as long as you’re here, you may as well have a look around. How long did you say before your friend … ?”

Neither of them seemed quite sure; maybe half an hour? The friend had had to run over to the valley; but he’d be back.

“Well, then … Would you like to watch the rest of the show, while I take care of one or two things?” He was already out of his chair, wheeling the TV dolly to a more suitable position.

“That’d shore be swell, Mr. Marsh,” Bill said. “Sorry to bother you, though. What a dumb thing …”

“Not at all, not at all. I’m working on my autobiography, as you can see, so we’ll just hurry through and you can go along and I’ll get back to the typewriter….” He pointed to the card table. “I always write at night; the thoughts seem to flow better.” He clicked the remote wand. “So”—like a magician, as the picture formed. “I’ll be back in a moment.” He would slip quickly upstairs, put on his toupee, give the pair the twenty-five-cent tour, and by that time, with luck, their friend would come to collect them. The wrong night, in the name of God. Carrying his dinner tray, he glanced back several times as he crossed the room. They had sat again, eyes already glued to the set; as he went through the doorway the girl gave him a little wriggle of her fingers.

“Bye-bye.” She turned back to the screen. “Aw, gee, the show’s ending.” As shrieks of audience excitement were heard, Willie hurried from the room.

Despite the girl’s remark, the show was not ending, but rather just beginning. The couple’s attention did not stay long with the television set. The young man waited briefly, then got up from his chair, signaling to the girl, who hurried across to the doorway and looked around the corner. Behind her back she wagged her hand at her companion, who moved to the bar, where he quickly stabbed the buttons on the telephone.

“Hey, you there? We’re in.” Cupping the mouthpiece, with glances over his shoulder to the girl, speaking in low tones. The girl, meanwhile, stayed by the doorway, keeping watch while her friend listened on the telephone, then, “Sure, fine …” Pause. He read off the number from the dial. Another pause. He listened, reported the time from the wall clock, and hung up. He signaled to the girl, and they quickly resumed their places in front of the TV set.

Which was where Willie Marsh found them when he returned a short while later.

“Hey—cowboy,” said the young man brightly, eying the togs. Willie had changed into a natty Western outfit: tan whipcords, a plaid Western shirt, tooled leather belt with an enormous silver buckle, and boots not dissimilar to Bill’s. Bill slapped his hands on his thighs, spun out two imaginary pistols fashioned from pointed fingers and cocked thumbs, and poked the muzzles in quick rotations.
Choo,
he said as one went off, then
choo
again as he shot the other, then twirled the invisible weapons and neatly reholstered them. “Hugh O’Brian,” he said with a sheepish laugh.

“Well, now.” Willie rubbed his hands together briskly and gave an affable smile; since his alterations in attire, and with his toupee on, he was of a more amiable disposition. “Where shall we begin, eh?” He looked from the boy to the girl, who got up, and they moved off in a group. Willie took in the room with an expansive gesture.

“Here’s what you saw in the magazine layout—the Crystal Palace, as we call it. Or the Crystal Womb. That’s a little joke of ours,” he explained. “Years ago, Kay Francis was here for the first time. She came in, looked around, and said, ‘Heavens, a cwystal woom.’” The girl looked at Willie, then at the boy. Willie explained, “She had an impediment, you see, she couldn’t say her r’s. So—‘cwystal woom.’”