Chapter 17
Chapter 17
Hollywood—late 1953
She had met Paul in the bohemian world but they both lived in Hollywood, and Hollywood was changing quickly and not for the better. He stopped going to Larry Lipton’s—she was the only reason he had been going for those last months and now it was too dangerous for him too. Harvey and Charlie would not let her or Paul visit, reasserting the riskiness of such an association, but she talked to them when she could, much less often now that Confidential magazine had hit. They had to take even more care: she could call only with important news, and they talked only from pay phones. She hated to admit it, but Harvey and Charlie were right. Confidential was vicious. It upended the gossip industry, and now the others had to compete, and the whole game changed. It had been bad before, but now it wasn’t just gossip, it was scandal, the more destructive the better, and everyone was looking for it. The gossip queens had always had their own “investigators,” but now retired policemen hired themselves out to suss out “news,” and anyone could make money working as a private investigator. Studio publicity departments had to work overtime—not that they hadn’t had their hands full before, with alcoholic stars and affairs that had to be smoothed over so as not to mar the image of happy marriages, or marriages designed to hide any rumor of homosexuality or any kind of aberrance.
Lena lived in fear that one of them would discover who she really was, or bring the men she had never stopped watching for down upon her. She had remained vigilant, and the close call with Jasper made her even more careful—sunglasses always, hats. She had the beautician lighten her hair to a champagne blond, and cut it in a fashionable bob with a side part, flipped under just past her chin.
She and Paul lived separately: she had her apartment and he had his rooms at the Chateau Marmont. They both wanted so much; they had to live with no hint of impropriety.
At least, they did to the outside world.
At home, however, they kept the blinds down and snuck out before dawn, but those in-between hours they spent in bed, especially their first months together, always using condoms. She was afraid to get a prescription for a diaphragm in case the rumor of it got out, and they were both too ambitious to do something stupid like make a baby—Paul’s words, and if nothing else, Lena knew she could count on Paul’s sense of responsibility. He respected her career, but he wouldn’t be a man who lived off a woman, and though he’d sold a few screenplays, minor films in his eyes, two of which hadn’t gone into production, along with a Western and another science fiction film, it wasn’t enough. He winced at the thought of what the gossip columns would say: “‘Ambitious Screenwriter Marries Costuming Star.’ I’d never live it down.”
She laughed and tangled her fingers in his hair. She didn’t argue with him. As long as this mattered to Paul, she didn’t have to tell him that marriage wasn’t a possibility at all. “I’m not a costume star yet.”
“You will be eventually, maybe sooner than later.”
“Flavio will be there forever.” She said the words, but Paul knew that she’d been troubled about her mentor, and she wasn’t the only one. Flavio had been unreliable lately, enough so that Higbert Braxton, the studio head, had noticed, and that was not good. Braxton was a ubiquitous presence. He liked his fingers in everything. He liked striding the back lots and paying unannounced visits to the soundstages. Once he’d plunged through the door, sending everyone into a nervous tizzy. He’d demanded lighting changes and then he’d asked that Susan Hayward’s lipstick be changed. The makeup person had had to take the actress back to the mirrors, blot what she already wore, and send her back out again. Higgy Braxton had declared the new shade perfect.
When he left, the grips moved the lights back to where they’d been, but Braxton saw the dailies that night and noted the change and ordered a reshoot the next day. You could never be sure what Braxton cared about, or whether he was just making a change for the sake of it, and everyone knew it. He liked to tour the costume department when he was bored. Lena could always tell when he was there: the sewing machines, which operated normally at a smooth and steady pace, became erratic, with starts and stops she could feel through the floor, and Flavio would roll his eyes and hurry downstairs to restore order.
Braxton was a tall, blond, beefy man who looked as if he’d be more at home on an African savanna than in an administration office, and the truth was that he often was in Africa, big game hunting. His sandy-colored hair was expertly cut and perfectly pomaded, his mustache an exact copy of Theodore Roosevelt’s, as were his glasses, though he had sharply cut, classic Roman features. There was no Roosevelt roundness in Higgy’s face.
“His office looks like he’s studying taxidermy,” Flavio told her once. “God knows why he thinks it necessary to keep rifles at a movie studio, but maybe he thinks a trained lion will get loose or something.”
Lena herself had a respectful relationship with Higgy Braxton—that is, she respectfully kept her distance unless it was unavoidable, which it was the day Flavio didn’t show up for the Joan Fontaine fitting. It wasn’t the first time he’d missed a fitting; usually they were the first ones, where they took measurements and draped already chosen fabrics to see how they played with the actresses’ complexions and the light. These weren’t as important as later fittings, and Lena and one of the wardrobe girls had no trouble managing on their own.
But Miss Fontaine was not accustomed to being attended by assistants, and she complained to Higgy, who came galloping into Flavio’s office the next day, early in the morning.
Flavio was not there.
Lena was. She came out of her anteroom at the sound of Higgy Braxton shouting at the secretary, his booming voice reverberating through the walls. It took her only a moment to realize who it must be, time enough to catch sight of the Daily Racing Form on Flavio’s desk and tuck it away in a drawer—just before Braxton burst through the door, Flavio’s secretary hovering helplessly behind.
“Flavio!” he bellowed.
“He’s not in yet this morning,” Lena said calmly. She turned to the secretary. “Thank you, Amelia. That will be all. I’ll take care of Mr. Braxton.”
The secretary gave her a grateful smile and left.
“Where is he, Lena?” He delivered his words in a sharp staccato.
“He had an appointment this morning,” Lena said smoothly. “What do you need, Mr. Braxton?”
“I got a complaint from Joan Fontaine. He wasn’t at her fitting yesterday.”
“Ah, no. Cindy and I took care of that. Unfortunately Flavio had to leave early. His wife, you know ...”
“No, I don’t know.” Higgy frowned, nonplussed. “What the hell’s wrong with Sheila?”
“She had an appointment.”
“Don couldn’t drive her?”
Even his employees’ employees couldn’t escape Braxton’s notice. “I don’t know, exactly, but I believe Sheila wanted Flavio with her. It was”—Lena lowered her voice—“a woman thing.”
“Ah.” Braxton looked as momentarily uncomfortable as Lena had hoped. “I see. Well, tell him when he returns that I was here and I am most unhappy. This can’t happen again, at least not with a star of Miss Fontaine’s stature.”
“Of course. I’ll tell him.”
“And, um ... you.” He put his hand to his chin, looked at her as if she were an interesting specimen, and Lena couldn’t help but recall Flavio’s comment about Braxton and taxidermy. “Miss Fontaine did say that you were very efficient. Very professional.”
“Flavio has taught me to be.”
“Hmmm.” Higgy Braxton gazed at her consideringly. “She said you had a good eye.”
Lena smiled. “That’s very kind of her.”
“How long have you been here, Lena?”
“Three years, Mr. Braxton.”
“For God’s sake, enough of that. Call me Higgy. Three years, is it?”
“Yes, Mr.—Higgy.”
“How much of that have you served as Flavio’s assistant?”
“Two and a half.”
Higgy nodded thoughtfully. “Well. I can see you’re loyal to him. That’s good. I like loyalty. You’re protecting him, and that’s fine. But you let him know for me that this can’t happen again. I don’t know what’s distracting him lately, but twenty years with Lux will only go so far. You tell him that.”
“I’m sure it was important,” Lena assured him, though she was not sure at all, and Higgy’s words filled her with dread.
“You be sure to tell him,” Braxton said.
When Flavio came in late that morning, hollow eyed, and sagged on the couch, Lena said, “Higgy Braxton came to costume today to find you. I told him you had to go to an appointment with Sheila, so if he sends her flowers or something, she has a ‘woman thing.’ I don’t think he’ll ask beyond that.”
Flavio put his hand to his eyes with a groan. “Good thinking, my dear. What did he want?”
“Joan Fontaine complained about your missing the fitting yesterday.”
“Of course she did.”
“I promise that Cindy and I were perfectly competent. She didn’t seem unhappy at all.”
Flavio struggled to sit up. “I’m sure you were perfect. What did Higgy say?”
“That your twenty years at Lux would only go so far and not to let it happen again.”
Another groan. Flavio got to his feet and lit a cigarette. “Have Amelia send La Fontaine flowers, will you? I’m sure her favorites are on file. And thank you for your help.”
Lena headed toward her little office. “The racing form is in your desk drawer.”
They spoke no more about it. They never did. Not his addiction to horse racing nor his other predilections that often had him asking his driver to take Sheila home after a party or a gala or a night on the town while he went elsewhere. Lena simply covered for him whenever she had to. Sometimes, one of her designs made it into a movie because Flavio had simply not done what he was supposed to do. He was always apologetic, and Lena loved him, so it didn’t matter. It was a thrill to see her costume in a film, even if Flavio got the credit. He was the best teacher she’d ever had; she didn’t begrudge him the occasional lapse.
She worried what would happen if he lost twenty years of his own career, and so she bent over backward to make certain that his more and more frequent lapses went unnoticed, especially by Higgy Braxton. She was sure she had succeeded.
The day she realized she was wrong, she was in the commissary. It was eight months after her first conversation with Braxton about Flavio. She sat alone, eating a deviled egg sandwich while she feverishly made changes to a costume sketch that a director had requested that morning. The constant activity of the commissary was better than the insanity of the costume department, which was in a frenzy today. Everyone was in a flurry about a wrong shipment of dye, and a cutter had made a mistake with a burgundy shot silk that they had bought from an estate sale and could not replace. In her office, she would have been interrupted constantly to solve problems, and she needed to finish in time for an afternoon fitting with Susan Hayward, which she did not want to run long because she had a date with Paul tonight. He had finished his new screenplay, Club Medusa , which he said was the best thing he’d ever written, and he wanted to celebrate.
Lena was so intent on her work that she didn’t notice Higgy Braxton standing before her until his shadow crossed over the page. She looked up. “Oh. Oh! Hello.”
He pulled out a chair and sat across from her, which was the most disconcerting thing that had happened all day, more so than anything in the costume department. “How are you, Lena?”
Even more disconcerting. “I’m . . . um . . . good. I’m—uh—finishing this—”
He twisted his neck to look. “For Oh Oklahoma ?”
“Yes. I’m just adding the changes that Fred Stevens wanted. The director.” Then she felt stupid, because of course Higgy would know who Fred Stevens was.
His little smile made her feel more stupid. “Really? I haven’t seen the costume sketches yet for this one. Who designed that?”
His words felt like a trap. She had designed it, but she couldn’t say that, not without revealing that she’d designed most of the costumes for this film. Flavio had been so distracted; she thought he might be ill. She’d never tell Higgy that. “Flavio, of course. Who else? He just asked me to make the changes—”
“I don’t like being lied to, Lena.”
She laughed nervously. “No one would trust an assistant with such an important film—”
“I know you did the ball gown for All for Heaven . And the picnic scene for Margery Lawson . You did the cabaret costumes for Dawn Rain . Do I have to list them all?”
Lena said nothing; she didn’t know what to say, whether Higgy Braxton would think this good or bad, and which for whom. Would he be angry? He hadn’t said whether he liked the costumes or not, had he?
“I’m not an idiot. Keep in mind, everything goes through me, and I’ve been approving Flavio’s costumes for two decades. I know when I see his designs, and when I don’t.”
“There’s something wrong with Flavio,” Susan Hayward confided several weeks later. “I don’t want to go to Higgy with it, but I don’t have a choice anymore.”
Early the next morning, Lena found her mentor exactly where she’d expected to, watching the morning workouts at Clockers’ Corner at Santa Anita. He stood out among the horsemen and trainers, as fashionably dressed as he was in his black-checkered cravat and his hat, looking very louche as he drank coffee from a paper cup at one of the tables overlooking the racetrack and the San Gabriel Mountains.
He barely looked up from the day’s Daily Racing Form as Lena took the seat across from him. Hoofbeats thundered on the track; the horses looked gorgeous in the morning sunlight, muscular and gleaming. A slight breeze brought the scent of dirt and the stables.
She pulled the brim of her hat against the sun. “You should be at the studio.”
“I’m in hiding.”
“You’re going to have to hide from Higgy, too, if you’re not careful. And Susan Hayward.”
“Hmmm.” He hadn’t lifted his gaze from the form. “That is scary. I’ve seen her husband.”
“I think he gives as good as he gets.” Lena had heard plenty from the actress about her home situation. “Flavio, really. You have to stop this. Higgy loves you, but ...”
“But he’s starting to love you better.” A raised eye, a lifted brow.
“That’s not true.”
“He likes your designs.”
She sighed. “He has no choice when mine are the only ones he sees lately.”
Flavio reached for his coffee. She noticed that his hand trembled—and that he’d pulled his hat low over his brow and the collar of his coat high. He’d said he was in hiding. It wasn’t a joke, she realized.
“How serious is it this time, Flavio?” she asked softly.
“I can’t go back to the studio. Not today. Perhaps not for a while.”
“How long is ‘a while’?”
Lena saw the answer in the way he finally met her gaze.
Flavio set his coffee cup on the table and Lena reached to cover his hand with her own. “What can I do?”
Flavio laughed shortly. “Find a way to appease Scotty Fields?”
Lena winced. She should have known. She wished she wasn’t shocked that Flavio was involved with the LA mob, but Mickey Cohen had fingers in pies all over Hollywood. Studio bosses, actors, singers ... she tried not to think of how many films had mob financing. Thankfully Scotty Fields was one of Cohen’s lesser thugs, but that didn’t mean this wasn’t serious. She wondered what exactly the extent of Flavio’s thralldom to Scotty Fields was. Extortion? There were obviously things Flavio wanted kept secret. Loan-sharking? Given Flavio’s love for horse racing, it was probable.
She was afraid to ask. In the end, she didn’t have to. Flavio let out a long sigh. “Fast women and slow racehorses, Lena. They’ve always been my undoing, and they always will.”
“Does Sheila know about Scotty?”
He shrugged. A yes, then. Honestly, Lena would have been surprised to find it otherwise. Sheila’s acceptance of her husband’s ... peccadilloes ... along with her fierce protection of his reputation was a great part of the reason for the longevity of their marriage.
“All right.” She infused her voice with purpose. “You and Sheila should take a long vacation until we can get everything sorted. I’ll make your excuses to Higgy.”
“It’s long past time for excuses,” Flavio admitted quietly, and the pounding galloping added a drumbeat of mourning that Lena ignored, determined as she was to save him.
She hurried back to the studio, hoping that Higgy had not heard about Flavio’s absence, but it was a vain hope. She’d no sooner walked into the costume department when Flavio’s secretary said, “Higgy wants to see you, Lena.”
“Me?”
“He asked for you directly.”
Lena winced. This could not be good. But there was no avoiding Higgy Braxton, and no delaying. Nervously, she went to the administration building, and Higgy’s office. His secretary, who Lena thought wouldn’t know her from any extra on the lot, said, “Ah yes, Lena, go on in. He’s waiting for you.”
Somehow, she found that even more nerve racking.
Lena went inside, and understood exactly what Flavio had meant when he said Higgy’s office looked like he studied taxidermy. Higbert Braxton’s sanctuary had been designed in every way to intimidate: his desk at the far end elevated on a two-foot dais, a bearskin rug laid before it—complete with the animal’s open mouth baring menacing teeth—two African antelope heads, a lion, and an arching marlin decorated the walls. The chairs were covered in leopard skin. Crossed rifles had been placed on the wall to frame Higgy’s chair. A sideboard held a decanter of whiskey—only bourbon, because apparently that was what you drank when you met with Higgy—and a box of cigars. The room smelled of maleness: cigar and musk and Higgy’s particular bespoke cologne that evoked fire smoke and gunpowder and earth.
He barely looked up from his papers. “I don’t want to hear any more excuses for him.”
She was at a disadvantage already. “He needs to take a vacation, Higgy. Sheila is—”
“Sheila is perfectly well.” Higgy raised his eyes to meet Lena’s gaze. “And my head costume designer is done. He’s out.”
“Oh, no, you can’t—”
“His time is over, Lena. I should think you’d be happy. Flavio’s loss is your gain.”
She stared at him, not comprehending.
“You’re the new costume head for Lux Pictures,” Higgy said. “Congratulations.”