North of Montana (25 page)

I steady myself as the limousine rocks gently around a corner, listening to Jayne Mason’s voice, unadulterated and flawless; for this moment, one of the elite.

•  •  •

We enter the Century City Shopping Center by some VIP entrance I never knew existed, parking behind another limousine, this one a double stretch in white. Jayne Mason puts on big dark glasses and fits a pale straw fedora over her French twist.

“Forgive me. I have to check one thing,” she says as Pauley comes around to open the door.

So I get out and follow. On the escalator I say, “If I’d known we were coming here, I would have brought my humidifier,” which of course makes no sense to her but she isn’t interested anyway, eyes on the widening bright space above us.

Once we hit solid ground she’s off like a smart missile weaving through the crowd toward a predetermined target. I have to quicken my pace to keep up. I’ve never seen a woman move so effortlessly in high heels. She is fixed dead ahead and pays no attention to the stares that come her way, shedding them off like raindrops from a nose cone. The nice thing about Century City is that it is an open-air mall and you get sunshine and updrafts and outdoor food stalls and guys selling cappuccino from wooden carts—but all of that goes by in a zip. The target is Bullock’s.

She pulls the chrome handles on the glass doors and strides across the cosmetics department on the first floor.

I guess she’s looking for a certain type of perfume because we make the circuit in about thirty seconds, past brass-trimmed counters, beautifully made-up salesgirls, customers, glossily lit displays, collections of fancy bottles, the two of us reflected in mirrored posts—she in vivid white and pink, me in khakis and a blazer—and gone. Overly sweet hot air envelops us and disperses in an instant as she hits the glass doors again and we’re back out on the sidewalk.

“I guess they didn’t have it.”

“No.”

“Want to try somewhere else?”

“If it’s not at Bullock’s, it’s nowheresville,” she says despondently.

We pass a chocolate shop and a place that sells dishes, keeping up the sprint.

“What did you want to talk about?”

“I
did
want to talk but now I’m not in the mood, are you?” she asks intimately, as if we’re on a shopping spree and maybe we should have some tea and rest our feet.

“Actually, yeah, I’m ready to talk anytime. It’s my job.”

We’re passing a complex of movie theaters.

“Have you seen
Days of Thunder
?” she asks.

“Not yet, but I like Tom Cruise.”

A modest crowd is lining up to buy tickets for the early bird shows. Without another word, Jayne Mason walks ahead of everyone, shows the cashier some kind of card, gets two tickets with no exchange of cash, and we’re off on another escalator up to the lobby.

This is definitely a left turn in the proceedings.

“I’m not sure I can do this—”

“Oh screw that,” she says. “Let’s go look at Tom Cruise.”

So we do. We actually do. We sit there and eat popcorn, Jayne Mason and me. It’s my kind of movie, full of bravado, and I enjoy it tremendously.

“ ‘Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse,’ ” Jayne Mason observes as we step out of the theater. “That was my line in a picture I made with Stewart Granger. Now
he
was a dreamboat.”

It is dark. Small white lights entwined in the trees and colorful banners flying off the Food Market create a carnival effect. People sit under yellow umbrellas eating teriyaki and kebabs and cheeseburgers at outside tables with their jackets buttoned up on this cool early summer evening, shoppers whisk by with floating white sacks. I feel flushed with the excitement of being on a first date: I like this person. I want to know more.

“Let’s eat. Someplace wonderful,” Jayne decides, and I acquiesce happily, enjoying the extraordinary experience of walking beside a world-famous movie star and the secret pleasure of knowing we are going back to a VIP entrance where we will get into a private limousine and be driven across the city to someplace wonderful.

•  •  •

We pull up at an Italian restaurant with a modest neon sign and a small green canopy. Tom Pauley gives a wry salute as we leave him back at the car. What a job. No wonder he’s down at the beach whenever possible. Inside there’s a cozy bar hung with clusters of half-size Chianti bottles and a huge photo of JFK. The walls are covered with movie posters and head shots of Lucille Ball, Don Rickles, and President Eisenhower, among others. I don’t see Jayne Mason in the crowd.

A slump-shouldered gentleman in a worn tuxedo says, “Good to see you again, Miss Mason,” and leads us into the main room, which is awash in soft orange-red light. The sweeping curved banquettes are orange-red and an assortment of ginger-jar lamps with linen shades have orange-red bulbs. Most of the tables are empty and white napkins are standing up throughout the restaurant like a herd of rabbit ears.

We pass a display case filled with models of trucks and pictures of that same slump-shouldered gentleman, thirty years younger, with the Pope. We pass two geezers complaining about losing at Santa Anita, and a decked-out blonde with some sleazeball type talking real estate deals. The waiters seem too old and depressed to notice their famous customer, but then I recognize an actor from a cop show and figure this must be a Hollywood hangout, the real thing.

“I’ve never had good luck with men and so I’ve always had to fend for myself,” Jayne says suddenly.

We are sharing an appetizer of fried zucchini, which, truthfully, they do better at T.G.I. Fridays. Jayne is drinking vermouth and I’m enjoying my 7UP and the clown art on the walls.

“My third husband, the used car king, was the final straw. He treated me like a piece of dirt under his feet. I used to wonder why the manicurist came out of his office wiping her lips.”

She pours us each more water from a small ceramic pitcher in the shape of a rooster head, which is the signature piece of the restaurant.

“He was the one who spent all my money. We were divorced in 1959. What else could a gal from Oklahoma do, flat broke with two children to support, except sing and dance her little heart out? So I did dinner theater, regional theater, hotel bars, any gig I could get, from Vegas to Palm Beach to Poophead, Iowa, and back. I did that for years, then I met Maggie Stockman.”

“She’s a smart lady.”

“She has no life,” Jayne says. “Her clients are her life.” Mason points the broken end of a bread stick at me. “She is an angel sent from heaven. Excuse me.”

On her way to the ladies’ room she passes a husband and wife wearing formal clothes. It is amusing to watch them trying to say, “That’s Jayne Mason,” without moving their lips.

She returns with fresh lipstick and Magda Stockman still on her mind.

“Maggie was the one who told me I should do drama. She convinced Joe Papp to take a risk with
A Doll’s House
and it changed my life, not only because it was wildly successful, but because it changed my thinking about myself.”

“You knew you were good.”

“I knew I was an actress. I left Ninety-first Street, rented a house in the Hollywood Hills, and within three years I won my first Oscar. You see, it’s all about self-image. We can’t let anyone take that away from us.”

A mumbling waiter brings two plates of Manicotti Dolly Parton. I had stared at the menu, confused by the Shrimp Angeli Mickey Rourke and the Chicken Dabney Coleman, and decided to get whatever she was getting.

“I’m sure you’ve heard terrible things about me—that I’m late on the set, that I’m drunk or high or rude, but let me tell you,
the
crew loves me.”
She drains the drink and says it again,
“The crew loves me”
with too much emphasis and I wonder if the cocktail is already getting to her.

“I’m having a wonderful time,” I say as we dig into our fat creamy noodles, “but what does this have to do with Randall Eberhardt?”

She folds her hands on the tablecloth so the bangles splay out with a golden splash. “This is why I am so passionate about bringing this man to justice. Despite everything I have learned, I am still a sucker for the male animal, and Randall Eberhardt took advantage of me all over again. I’ve worked too hard.”

She accepts another vermouth. “I’m sure you’re too smart to fall for that kind of thing.”

“Not necessarily.”

“How do you handle men?”

“I avoid them at all costs.”

Jayne throws back her head and laughs. “Oh my
dear
, we don’t want to do
that.”

“It works.”

She regards me quizzically, then hunches her shoulders in the white cotton jacket and works for a while on the Veal Johnny Carson.

“My third husband, the used car king, once secretly filmed us making love. Not many people know that. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find someone you can trust?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Magda’s the only one who’s stood by me all these years. Thank God for her and my children and grandchildren. I’ve had a rough time of it, but I still believe in romance.”

She catches the indulgence in my smile.

“I’ll bet you think it’s silly to wear all this makeup. I don’t do it for men, I do it for myself. I wake up in the morning and look in the mirror and keep
putting it on
and
putting it on
until I see
something
looking back.”

She laughs and I laugh with her, although trying to follow the increasing zigzag of her conversation has lost me.

“I did a musical directed by Vincente Minnelli. It was a Technicolor extravaganza and in one scene I wore a fox cape. Well, Mr. Minnelli had it sent to New York and dyed to match my eyes. Why? Because it was
romantic. ”

“I think I saw that one.”

“Louis B. Mayer always told me his philosophy was to make beautiful pictures about beautiful people,” she goes on with great sweep. “We all need romance, even you, Ana, dear. You are a serious young woman—I could see that right away—but there’s a part of you that needs to blossom.”

She is leaning over the table, fixing me with misty green-blue eyes. The pupils are dark and wide and wondering in the caressing orange-red sunset light.

“Give yourself the magic, Ana.”

It is as if she has seen through to my soul, seen what was missing, and supplied it. I feel myself touched and melting. I nod. I want to say, Thank you.

Tom Pauley is holding the car door open as we exit the restaurant.

“Did you enjoy dinner?”

“Lovely, Tom,” says Jayne with an edge.

Inside the limousine, she explains, “Now when I talk about romance, I don’t necessarily mean between a sixty-year-old driver and a twenty-one-year-old wardrobe girl, not that I think there’s anything
inherently
wrong, God knows John Barrymore was old enough to have been my grandfather at the time, but I do feel protective about my people and I’m afraid these two are heading for disaster.”

“So Tom and Maureen are an item,” confirming what I’d seen on the beach.

“Yes, but all is not well in the castle,” Jayne sighs, “all is not well.”

Pauley pulls the limousine into traffic.

“Take this.” She hands me a rooster water pitcher she has evidently just filched from the restaurant under my very eyes. “To remember the evening.”

I take it. It seems a harmless, endearing gesture. After the movie and the manicotti and the veal and the cheesecake and espresso, I feel cozy and content as a pet cat, stretching out and yawning unself-consciously, hoping Jayne Mason will start singing again.

Like Randall Eberhardt, I have totally lost my bearings.

•  •  •

Barbara looks up I enter her office carrying a large heavy glass containing two dozen yellow roses.

“For me? Are we getting engaged?”

I put the vase down.

“From Jayne Mason. On my desk this morning.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m such an understanding person.”

“You?”

“She said so in her note: ‘Thank you for being understanding.’ We went to the movies and dinner and she told me her philosophy of life.”

Barbara’s fair face flushes red. “You had dinner with Jayne Mason?”

“Just the two of us. She likes me.” I sit down and cross my feet up on her desk.

“A once-in-a-lifetime experience,” Barbara murmurs enviously.

“It was pretty amazing,” I admit, still basking in the warmth of the limousine. “ ‘Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse.’ She said that in one of her movies. I told her, Hey, Jayne baby, you’re talking about
me!”

“What else did she say about her philosophy of life?”

Barbara has stopped fingering the yellow petals. Her smile is tentative.

“Oh, she told a lot of great old Hollywood stories. You would have loved it. like the time this guy had a fox cape dyed to match her eyes—”