Hollywood is an All Volunteer Army (38 page)

“You think so?”

“Sure, but I would rather fly the Spit.”

“The Spit!?”

“It's the better plane, isn't it?”

Max signed. “And it's the winners who write the history.”

“What?”

“Did you know that in fighter vs. fighter losses during the Battle of Britain 219 Spitfires were lost, but only 180 109s?”

“But I thought—”

“Yes, I know what you thought,” Max smiled, he refused not to be my friend, “but the facts are what they are. Romantic visions of right fighting might don't ever change them. They might warm your heart and put a lump in your throat but they don't ever affect reality.”

“Well, yes, I guess that's so, but you have to admit this: The Spitfire is aesthetically the finer machine,” I declared.

“I would argue—”

“You can't,” I said. I was emphatic. “This also is a reality.” I got close to the German fighter, I pointed to each feature, and spoke with the dispassion of a lawyer ticking off the charges against the accused. “The Messerschmitt is all hard lines. A square, boxy canopy. A fat, brutish, lump of a nose. The thick wings sort of just jammed into the fuselage. The tail a straight, harsh 45-degree angle set against the fuselage. Now look at the Spit.” I let passion creep in now. Not melodrama, but passion. I wanted to make Max uneasy. “Curves, everywhere curves. The canopy is rounded. The nose curves up gracefully. The wings are thin, delicate, and they curve onto—not into, that's important—onto the fuselage, as does the tail. Like organic parts of a whole body. Like the neck of a beautiful woman curving onto her shoulder.”

“Henderson!” Lydia admonished. “Stop being poetic. It's unbecoming of a lawyer protecting my financial interests.”

But Max was impressed. “Good points, Mr. Henderson. For someone who collects aviation art. Still, I prefer the Messerschmitt. I prefer a blunt instrument.” Max smiled at me again. This time it was nearly paternal and almost kind. Then he turned his attention to the group. “I believe the chef is preparing a very delicious lunch for you all to enjoy as the rest of the show continues. Sara and I have some more flying to do, but we'll join you when we gather later this afternoon. The Rangers will take very good care of you and they will make sure that you get to your destination on time.”

“Which is where?” Thad feigned innocence, but not well.

“That's a surprise, but I suspect you've already guessed. Most likely having been told in the strictest of confidence by someone who has preceded you.”

Worry rammed Thad's guts. “Uh, no, really—”

“It's okay. I know you can keep the confidence. That's why you're here.”

Max turned to Sara. “Shall we?”

“Absolutely,” she said.

They climbed into their planes and started them, initial puffs of smoke expelling from the engines. Then they taxied away.

“Lunch.”

It was Ranger Blunt, appearing suddenly. The five took little notice of this, but then, why should they? We followed him to tables laid out with food, buffet style.

Max had been right, it was a delicious lunch. Beef, chicken and salmon cooked on an open grill along with a selection of vegetables. Three types of salad were available, including a Greek, and the most wonderfully sour of sourdough breads, baked right there in a portable oven. There were drinks of every kind, of course, well-brewed coffee and three desserts. One heavy on the chocolate, one heavy on fruit, and one a light pastry filled with a delicate cream.

Five of the Rangers stationed themselves around the area, warning off any errant plebes, and pointing out the van across the tarmac that sold hot dogs, chips and warm sodas.

Our conversation, at first, revolved around the food as we ate it, as if talk of it not only spiced it but etched it on our palates for future reference and comparisons. Then, as the air show continued the conversation moved on to other subjects, none of them relating to planes in the air. It was all Hollywood talk. Most of it just chatty, some of it catty. Henderson and Pinsker did not partake but Lydia got into it. She told stories of her past and of making B movies around Los Angeles, and of all her cleverness in avoiding various obstructionist authorities, for she never got the proper film permits; she never dealt straight with the unions, and she never paid off the Teamsters. She told how a Teamster official, at least he said he was Teamster official, promised to break her legs. She said to him, “Look, I'll make you a deal. Don't break my legs and I'll suck your dick.”

“What? He went for it?” Thad seemed excited.

“Wouldn't you?” Lydia held herself and her abilities up proudly.

“Well....” Thad blushed.

“Of course, afterwards, the bastard still demanded a pay off.”

“No!” Brooke was delighted to be shocked. “So you had to pay him?”

“No. I sued him. For sexual harassment!” Lydia laughed loud.

The five laughed with her. They loved Lydia. She was a character—and they had been so little exposed to character.

Around two fifteen the show was over and the hatless Ranger came to us and suggested we spend some time in the museum proper while we wait until three PM when the limo would take us to our destination.

“Why do we have to wait until three?” the precise Pinsker wanted to know.

“Winter hours,” was the hatless one's only answer.

We went into the museum, looking at the planes on display and reading the information about them on the little cards. Brooke, I noticed, started to hang close to Lydia. I think she was in love. The guys found most fascinating the old, yet operable, training guns, WW II versions of virtual reality, where you looked into a scope, saw a film of the enemy, sighted and pushed the firing thumb button.

There were whoops as the enemy died.

At three o'clock, the Rangers came to us and herded us into the white stretch limo, a congealed, happy unit of companions. Except for Henderson and Pinsker, of course, who sat, squeezed together, clutching their briefcases in exactly the same manner, dreaming of advantageously written contracts.

It didn't take anyone long to realize, or have confirmed, that we were heading up towards the castle that sat on top on the Enchanted Hill, as Hearst had dubbed it, really the peak of the Santa Lucia Mountains. If it was enchanted, it was only because Hearst had paid for it to be so. We started winding slowly up the road, passing tour buses on their way down, but there were no tour buses in front of us, or following behind. Winter hours.

As our caravan of the limo and two Ranger cars, one ahead, one behind, passed from the grassy coastal plain into the oak woodlands of the higher elevation, Abbie said, “I feel like we're in Citizen Kane.”

“Why?” Brett asked.

“Because of the scene when they're traveling on Kane's Xanadu property.”

It meant nothing to Brett. “I haven't seen it.”

Abbie was shocked. “You've never seen Citizen Kane!?”

“No, never got around to it.”

“You didn't see it at Harvard?”

“I was an MBA.” As if that explained it.

“Yeah, but, but—”

“I've never seen it.” Brooke said.

“Me neither,” Nick said.

“Me too. I mean neither, I guess,” Thad added.

“The greatest film ever made,” Abbie was trying to explain it to himself, “and you guys, film executives all, have never seen it?”

They shrugged in concert.

Abbie turned to Lydia. “Have you seen it?

“Of course.”

“And?”

“Overrated.”

“Overrated!?”

“Gorged with style. How clever! I like simple storytelling. Clean and direct.”

“Yeah, direct to some guys nuts!” Abbie said.

“Oh, you've seen my films!”

“I suffer from insomnia.”

We came to the landscaped area that denoted the grounds of the Castle. There were pine and fir trees, fruit trees and other plants exotic to this locale. Suddenly on a slight elevation above the road you could make out part of a curved structure with Ionic columns, one of the marble colonnades that adorned the Neptune Pool, if my memory of research served. The cars stopped and we got out of the limo and followed Ranger Blunt up some stairs to an area in front of La Casa del Mar. Fine enough to be a palatial home for just about anybody but the most ostentatious, it was here, on the hill, just one of three guest houses. The view was spectacular, which was not unexpected. Very rich men like William Randolph Hearst did not spend thirty years building such homes without a spectacular view. A view not just of beauty. Your eye followed the land down, past the well-maintained landscaped area, to the oak woodlands, then onto the grassy coastal plain, finally picking up the ocean at the finely etched coastline, an ocean that did not end abruptly at the far off horizon, but definitely continued on in a curve beyond it. This was a planet you were standing on! You felt that deeply, and if you had owned this land, it would not have been too difficult to allow yourself to feel like a god astride it.

“This way.” Hatless and seven Ranges ushered us through the grounds of patios and gardens; of fountains; of ancient statues—an Egyptian that was probably over 3,000 years old—and of reproductions—Donatello's David high atop a three tiered fountain casually standing nude over the severed head of Goliath, his exposed penis just as casual (nice to know the kid didn't get off on violence)—until we got to the front entrance of the main house, the actual Castle, as everyone calls it, La Casa Grande, Hearst called it, when he didn't just refer to it as the “Ranch House.”

“Wow!” Brett said.

“Jesus Christ! It's like a fucking cathedral!” Brooke added as her eyes traveled up from the very gothic entrance full of sculpted limestone portraits of religious figures—including a Virgin and Child high up over the massive, iron bar covered doors—to the twin Spanish Renaissance bell towers. “This thing was built on purpose? I mean, like, in this century? For a home?”

The doors were now open and in the doorway stood Sara Hutton. She was still wearing her RAF pants, but had the jacket off. The light blue shirt had been opened at the neck and the black tie had been pulled down for some relief. As the clothes had obviously been tailored for her, she did not look odd, like a little girl playing daddy, and yet she was not attractive enough as a female to make it a unisexual sexy fashion statement. It was just her uniform and she wore it with authority. “Brooke, my dear, William Randolph Hearst loved beauty. Wherever throughout the world he found it and could buy it, he did. If he couldn't buy it, he reproduced it. He obviously wanted to be surrounded by beauty, so he built all this. Architecture, sculpture, nature, everything you're going to see inside. A beauty cocoon! What a fucking neat idea. If you can afford it.”

“Yeah, but,” Brooke's lip curled, Elvis like, in mild disgust, “it's so—so—“

“When you build yours, Brooke, then you can decide on the beauty.” She then turned to all of us. “Welcome. You are going to be guests at La Casa Grande, a privilege long since faded into the past, when the elite of Hollywood were called up here on a regular basis to keep company with Mr. Hearst. I hope you will find it a pleasurable and enlightening stay. The Rangers will take you to your rooms. Freshen yourselves up. Go for a swim in the Neptune Pool, if you wish. Cocktails are being served in the Assembly Room at six sharp. Oh, and by the way, Lydia, we have put you in the Celestial Suite on the top floor. I certainly hope you don't mind being that close to heaven.”

“I have no objections if heaven doesn't,” Lydia said.

Sara smiled then stepped back into the house, closing the doors as she did so.

“This way,” one of the Rangers, one who had not yet spoken to us, said as he lead us around the back of the house and had us enter by a narrow door. There various Rangers took control of us and led us to our bedrooms.

Sheila Barnes took Lydia off to the Celestial Suite, while the hatless Ranger conducted Henderson and Pinsker to:

“The Della Robbia Suite,” he stated the fact dryly.

It was like stepping into the early Italian Renaissance.

“Della Robbia?” I inquired of Hatless.

His eyes went hard. “I'm not a guide.”

“Oh, sorry, thought you might—”

“I'm here for security.”

“Security?”

“Valuable property. State park. Protecting it for all our citizens.”

“How democratic of you. So this Max? What is he, first among equals?”

He obviously didn't understand the question as his brow knitted tight.

“Never mind. Uh,” I slapped my pockets, “I would give you a tip, but I'm all out of change.”

An insult he could understand. Hatless snorted. “Enjoy your stay,” he said in a tone so mono it truly stood alone. “I've been ordered to say that, but I don't mean it.” He turned and left.