Hollywood Buzz (8 page)

Della handed over an etched glass. “Call me Della,” she insisted, adding that her husband D.B., who I would be meeting shortly over
real
cocktails, would want me to call him by his first name too. With a clink, we toasted to health, friendship, and a quick end to the war.

The first sip, though delicate, warmed me going down.

“Er, the winding stairs,” I said. “Do they go up to the cupola?”

“Sort of. They lead to a small study D.B. and I use as an office. From there, you have to climb a ladder to get outside.”

I hoped Della would invite me up to look at the sights. My hostess had other ideas. Some initial polite chitchat about their hailing from Tex-
suhs
segued into my training in Sweetwater. How did I like being a WASP? How did I feel about making the sacrifices that came with the job? What made me stick to a job so challenging? Was I prepared to die for my country? And so forth and so on until we arrived at why I was in Hollywood.

“Say, my brother G.R. is based at Fort Roach,” she said, topping off our glasses. “Maybe you’ll bump into him filmin’ some prototype plane or new equipment. Bomb sights, radar…” She let the sentence drift off, suggestively adding, “It’s what they’re doing there, right?”

I started to nod, but hesitated. Miss C had briefed me about the work being done at the base, but I still wasn’t clear on what I could—or couldn’t—say openly.

An uneasy silence followed as Della turned an expectant stare on me.

I deflected her look, concentrating on the sherry remaining in my glass. What was she after? Many of the films produced at Fort Roach dealt with confidential material. Did she think I knew about something secret going on inside the studio and was itching to talk? Maybe her interest wasn’t actually in what was going on at Fort Roach. She knew I flew military planes. Did she want me to divulge what I know about secret flight equipment? Radar?

My lips stayed zipped. How green did she think I was?

Apparently, green enough to go a step further. “What do you think of the XP-59A?” she probed, her tone offhanded, as though she were asking for nothing more than my opinion of the weather.

I sipped the drip from the bottom of my glass. The XP-59A was an experimental jet—one of the first. I’d only gotten wind of it day before yesterday, on my stopover at Wright Field.

“How’d you hear about the XP-59A?”

Della twisted a diamond-encrusted earring. “G.R. talks ’bout planes all the time.”

That brother G.R. was quite the blabbermouth. If I ever did bump into him, count on it, he’d be getting a piece of my mind.

“Don’t you think G.R. should be more discreet?”

Della’s eyes hardened. “Are you sayin’ my little brother is tellin’ secrets?”

I hesitated. My news about the advanced plane had actually come through scuttlebutt I’d heard in the ready room at Wright. That meant the project was probably beyond the top secret stage. I backpedaled a little.

“No…But why broadcast our new developments? ‘Be smart, act dumb,’ that’s the motto. Axis sympathizers have been found in the most unlikely places.” I looked over at the bed. “Ilka says you and your husband travel a great deal.
Cairo
?”

Della hesitated, as though now she had to decide whether to explain. She didn’t.

With a laugh, she suggested we forget the war for a minute and have a bit of fun. “Let’s have a look in my closet, shall we? That officer’s uniform looks better on you than most women who wear one, but somethin’ more festive is in order this evenin’.”

Picking out something to wear
was
fun. We were like a couple of old pals on a shopping lark, in search of the perfect party dress. There was plenty to choose from in Della’s walk-in closet. At one point, she let me know that her closet was my closet. “Feel free to borrow anything, anytime,” was the way she put it.

At last I settled on a black outfit: wide-legged crepe trousers and a square-necked top with beaded cap sleeves draped matador-style over shoulder pads extending beyond my shoulder line.

I left the master suite, Della’s exclamations about how chic the ensemble would make me look ringing in my ears.

Chapter Six

In my room, simply furnished but with its own private bath, I reveled in a luxurious soak. Soap was a scarce item, impossible to find in most hotels these days, yet alongside the tub was a jug of rose-scented bubble bath. What a treat!

A knock on my door from Ilka, saying my hosts were waiting, cut short my grooming time. Standing before the mirror, I gave Della’s blouse another yank. When I’d borrowed the outfit, I hadn’t realized the top was cropped at the midriff. The style was too revealing for my taste, but what choice did I have? Too late to change.

***

Downstairs, I paused in the doorway to the library. D.B., I noted, had classic good looks: eagle’s beak nose, slick brown hair, neat mustache. He was standing in front of a bookcase, directly across the room. Another man stood nearby in shadow.

“Hi, Pucci, darlin’,” D.B. called out. “You look smashing.”

I took a step into the room. My breath caught.

“C’mon over and meet Della’s brother.” The surprise must have shown on my face. “Say, do y’all know one another?”

You bet we did. Della’s brother G.R. was
Gunnar Rask!

I hovered near the doorway, composing myself. Well, what do you know? Mr. Blabbermouth himself was the film editor I’d met today at Fort Roach…the editing whiz who intended splicing Frankie’s crash scene into a training film and into who could guess what else.

My gaze darted about. Something about the layout of the library was different from when I’d peered into the room earlier with Ilka. I walked toward the men. D.B. sported a tweed jacket, an unlit pipe, and a goofy grin. Gunnar wore cowboy boots and had traded his uniform for jeans, a Western shirt with pearl buttons and a string tie. He was grinning as well.

What was so funny? My distress?

An awful thought rattled me. I glanced down. The cropped top was still in place.

“Don’t pay them no never mind, Pucci,” Della said, breezing in behind me in flowing white satin trousers and a matching tunic jacket. “Boys, y’all get that bar out here right this minute. C’mon, sugah. You look as though you could use a stiff one.”

With a tug and a shove, D.B. and Gunnar spun the bookcase they’d been standing in front of around to reveal the well-stocked bar that had gone missing. I laughed wholeheartedly. I’d been truly duped.

D.B. began mixing up a batch of martinis, explaining that the false front bar had been installed during prohibition. The talk about restrictions imposed back then segued into a discussion of current recreational curtailments brought on by the war.

“The drop in tourism has affected the night-club and restaurant business,” D.B. said, emptying the clear contents of a frosty metal container into wide-rimmed glasses. After skimming lemon rind around the lip of one of the glasses, he handed it to me. Whisk, whisk, whisk, three more drinks were ready. “Ciro’s closes and opens at intervals. Coconut Grove’s open Fridays and Saturdays only.”

“And yachtin’s out of the question.
Verboten
!” Della said, gutturally. “Might bump into a Jap sub.”

We laughed, but we all knew the possibility was real. There’d been a shelling of an oil refinery by an unidentified vessel off the coast near Santa Barbara in February last year. Also in February, in the dark of night, air raid sirens went off, huge searchlights flipped on, and the sky south of Santa Monica lit up in a spectacular fireworks show of tracer bullets and thousands of exploding shells witnessed from streets and rooftops by hundreds of residents below. Rumors abounded, but what the antiaircraft batteries had been firing at that night remained a military secret. Another incident that followed later in the year had the makings of a fantastical movie script akin to Brody’s
Adrift with the Enemy
. Except this brush with the enemy occurred off the Pacific coast, and it was real.

A Japanese submarine carrying a small plane with folded wings slipped across the Pacific into the unprotected waters off the Oregon coast. In the predawn darkness, the plane and its pilot were shot by catapult into the air. He flew over the coastline, dropping two 168-pound fire bombs into the forest. The outrageous incident didn’t end there. The pilot, after landing in the water on the plane’s floats, managed to reconnect with the sub. The crew quickly stowed the plane and the sub submerged, successfully evading our Navy’s frantic search. Three weeks later, the mission was repeated. Two more bombs and more fires provoked alarm up and down the coast.

Such penetration of American soil was hard to forget. Concern over what else the Japanese might have up their sleeves lingered.

“Most everyone who owns a yacht ’round here has turned ’em over to the Navy or Coast Guard,” D.B. said, nudging me from my private thoughts.

Gunnar shrugged. “No fuel to run them anyway.”

“Still, they deserve credit for the patriotic gesture,” I said. “Could turn the
tide
of the war!”

Everyone groaned, but I’d started something. A skirmish to top my play on words followed, and “yacht donating” gave us plenty to quip about.

As the bantering continued, I began to think maybe Gunnar wasn’t so bad after all. He had a relaxed manner and easy sense of humor that made him comfortable to be with, and the work that went on at Fort Roach had not come up once. I decided to save any reproach about “loose lips” and “crash clips” for another time.

Ilka popped her head in to announce dinner was served. Della led us to an annex off the formal dining room. A snug space, the prominent feature of the room was a low table set into a circular pit and surrounded by plump, richly upholstered pillows. Candlelight and a massive tapestry of South Seas natives welcoming a ship’s explorers to their shores lent intimacy to the setting. What a blessing I’d worn pants, I thought as we kicked off our shoes and nestled into the pit, legs crossed pow-wow style.

Lia waltzed in with a tray of dishes. One by one, she passed them to Della who, in turn, placed them on a Lazy Susan at the table’s center. D.B., in charge of beverages, displayed bottles of red and white Hungarian wines. “Bela Lugosi’s treat,” he announced, spinning the crowded platter and creating a space for the wines in the center.

We wasted little time digging into a meal that lived up to the intriguing smells I’d detected in the kitchen earlier. The main dish featured rice tossed with coconut, raisins, apples, and chunks of chicken flavored with an exotic sweet spice I’d never tried before: curry. The revelation that Gunnar had selected the menu was another pleasant surprise. He’d brought the recipe back from a trip to the Far East, he confided.

I discovered something else refreshing about Gunnar during our meal. Midreach for something on the table, he accidentally dipped the cuff of his sleeve into the curried dish. Rather than ignore the yellow dab, or make a fuss of blotting it with water from his goblet, Gunnar, without pretense, brought the sleeve to his mouth, dabbed it with his tongue, then got on with the dinner conversation as though nothing at all had happened. While the gesture may have appeared gauche to some, I read it as a sign of a man completely at ease with himself. Perhaps it was the sherry, martinis, or the Bull’s Blood, full-bodied as Lugosi had advertised, but I began to like Gunnar even better.

I would have liked to hear more about Gunnar’s travels or about his and Della’s childhood on the ranch in Texas, but attempts at getting personal information from my dinner companions went nowhere. Della and D.B. dominated the conversation with talk about the zillion war-related volunteer activities they were involved in. They were inundated with committee work which was fine by them. D.B.’s age exempted him from military service and they relished the reward in having found a way to do their part.

We finished our meal and while we were waiting for dessert, Della talked a bit more about their war contributions. “Truth is we get restless if too much time slips by without a call from someone askin’ for our help in arrangin’ this or that event. Besides, contacting our friends, askin’ ’em to volunteer, helps us stay in touch with what’s going on around town, know what I mean, sugah?”

Once more, I wasn’t sure I got Della’s drift. But before I had the chance to clarify what she meant by “what’s goin’ on around town,” a phrase she’d put special emphasis on, D.B. came up with a more vexing matter.

“Della get a chance to tell you the news yet, darlin’? G.R.’s moved his gear into one of the guest rooms. Gonna be staying with us for awhile.”

“Oh…” I said, strangely unsettled by the prospect.

“Yup. There’s a glut of government workers assigned to Hollywood right now.” Gunnar shifted the cross-legged configuration he’d fashioned for sitting at the low table. He fluffed the pillow at his back. “It’s put a crimp on housing and I’ve been bunking at a barracks on the lot. Sis and D.B. having so much extra space and all…well, they roped me into comin’ here.”

Ilka entered in a hurried flourish. “Mr. Rask. Urgent telephone call. Your office.”

While we were taking our last bites of the meal, Gunnar returned. He had to leave. An emergency at the base.

Della turned to address D.B. “What about that important meetin’ we have tomorrow, sugah? It’s first thing in the mornin’, right?”

The tone of Della’s question was unmistakably leading. I looked up from ferrying my fork to my mouth and saw the three of them firing discreet glances at one another.

After we bid good-bye to Gunnar, Della announced we’d be having dessert in the dining room. She had a special surprise planned for me.

***

The dining room was long and narrow, with rough-hewn beams across the ceiling. At the room’s center, tall wood-tooled chairs surrounded a massive dark wooden table festooned with a pair of ornate candelabra.

My “surprise” began when Ilka joined us, wearing an elaborate jacket embroidered with astrological signs. We arranged ourselves at one end of the table. Before taking her seat, Ilka lit the candles. Next Lia entered the room carrying a tray of parfait glasses. Green tea ice cream with a hint of nutmeg flavor. Delicious. Thick black “Finn” coffee was also served.

In between sips and bites, Della and D.B. spoke effusively about their good fortune of having Ilka in their employ. The Dunns’ deep involvement in wartime fundraising left little time to devote to household matters. Della had even managed to get Ilka involved in one of her ongoing projects, an innovative popular event that featured Ilka as fortune-teller-to-the-stars.

“Ilka has incredible intuitive powers…”

“Shh,” Ilka admonished with a tinkly laugh. “I will tell. For the most part, fortune-telling—fortune-tellers—it is a sham. But I was born with the gift. I did not choose it.”

I recalled what Ilka had said about her Gypsy roots. “You said you came here two years ago, as a refugee. You left your family, all that was familiar…it must have been a difficult decision.”

“Decide? There was no choice.” Ilka’s tone was no longer lilting. “Things had become too dangerous,” she added softly.

She didn’t say more, she didn’t have to. In early ’41—the year Ilka emigrated—Hungary technically became part of the Axis. My Swedish grandmother and her diverse circle of immigrant friends frequently engaged in heated political discussions. I’d overheard one particularly fiery debate about the political situation there and knew it to be complex. True, a pact was signed and a fascist legislature was established. But an agreement did not mean that all of Hungary embraced Nazi rule. Recent reports in the press had even hinted there was a growing faction determined to undermine the alliance.

D.B. tactfully turned the focus away from politics. “Actin’ is in Ilka’s blood,” he said. “Both her mother and father worked in Budapest’s National Theater.”

“Yes, Papa was set designer and
édesanya,
Mother, make costumes.”

“This was very unusual,” Della injected.

“She is meaning,
for a Gypsy
.” Ilka squeezed Della’s arm affectionately. “But my mother was strong-minded. At the age I am now, she decide, ‘I will follow my own path—a legitimate
Gajé
, non-Gypsy, path.’” She pushed the silvery curtain of hair off her face. “In summers, while both my parents, they are working in the city, my Grandmamma Roza, she tutor me in psychic powers and herbal methods of healing.” lka looked suddenly very sad.

With Ilka’s blessing, Della explained that Ilka’s parents were both killed by an avalanche while skiing during a family visit to Finland. Ilka was sixteen. She went to live with her grandmother. Later, as the war wore on, Roza decided it was no longer safe for Ilka to stay in Hungary.

“My parents, they had many friends at the National Theater,” Ilka said, “among them, Uncle Bela. My grandmamma, she find way to make contact and he make arrangements. I am fortunate to be here, safe, with much to look forward to. This I know.”

Lia returned and began clearing the dishes. Della stopped her and gestured for her to take a seat. There was a concerted huzzah when Della announced her surprise. Ilka was going to read my palm.

At first I objected—I wasn’t one to talk about personal matters, much less have them paraded before a group of people I didn’t know—then finally gave in with a “Why not?”

Ilka sat next to me, holding my hand atop the table. D.B., Della, and the Hungarian cook stood behind us, peering over our shoulders.

“Let us begin with the major lines,” Ilka said, turning my hand this way and that.

Several seconds of silence followed, during which I got a sinking feeling. Too much doom and gloom? Turned out, it was poor lighting. D.B. turned a knob that brightened the wagon-wheel chandelier centered above us.

“Yes. Better. Here they are –” Ilka traced the most prominent lines of my palm with her fingertip, “—the life line, the head line and the heart line. The life line, it is first.”

I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. I’d never had a palm reading before. A bunch of hooey, I’d always thought.

“Ah. A Neptunian life line. You are destined for a life somehow removed from the mainstream.”

So far, so good.

Ilka’s finger slid back to a deep horizontal line cutting across my palm. “This is the heart line, the representation of matters of the heart. Love, sex, romance…”