Chapter 34
Chapter 34
The gossips made the most of it. The news of Lena’s “assault” was all over the newspaper the next day; the morning columns were jubilantly gabby— ??Lux Costumer Assaulted on Rodeo Drive!! Attack just outside Flavio Couture. Coincidence? Is anyone safe in Tinseltown??? —and the photograph that made the rounds had her looking horrible and upset. Though what disturbed Lena most about the column that morning was the final lines: ??Lena Taylor has certainly flown high and fast among the Hollywood elite since she arrived at Lux Studios. One may well ask if there is more to the attack last night than meets the eye. Was she just a random victim? Or was the costume queen targeted, and for what reason? Was the location in front of Flavio’s a clue? Stay tuned to this space for more answers!??
She’d known the incident would be in the papers, of course. Last night she’d told Paul she’d been followed and a PI had captured it all, and no she didn’t know who or why but it was frightening. She’d trusted his worry would do the thinking for him, and she was right, it did, at least for then, and he asked no probing questions—yet. She’d called Flavio to reassure him and Harvey and Charlie, too, and then tried to forget it all and focus on work, but she was shaken and she felt ready to crack into a thousand pieces. Thankfully Claudia Mazur was too interested in punishing Lena for missing the last fitting to care about gossip. Claudia didn’t let Lena forget for one moment that she was doing her a favor by forgiving her, and she behaved as badly as any movie star Lena had ever worked with. None of the fabrics were right, though she’d already approved them. “I don’t remember that red being so yellow . It makes me look sallow.” “I told you I will not wear gray.” “I understand I’m supposed to be a housekeeper, Lena, but I should be a pretty housekeeper.”
None of Lena’s usual tricks worked. It was all the more frustrating because all the fabrics and colors and designs had worked for Claudia before.
Lena was relieved when the actress finally left, and she and Connie stood outside the open door of the fitting room to smoke and lament.
Connie exhaled smoke in a thin stream. “What are we going to do?”
“Nothing,” Lena told her. “Richard’s already approved the costumes, and she’s just being difficult and she knows she liked everything before. Make the fitting alterations, and the next time she tries them on, they’ll be perfect—you watch. Today was just to tell me to get bent.”
Connie sighed. “I don’t know how you do it. Especially after what happened yesterday. How are you holding up?”
“I’m fine,” Lena lied. She tapped her ash onto the asphalt. “It was frightening, but no one touched me. It was hardly an assault. Probably just another private investigator.”
“You aren’t worried about it happening again? What if it’s true that you’re being targeted for some reason?”
Lena couldn’t look at her assistant. “Targeted why?”
Connie was quiet.
“What, Connie? What do you mean?”
“Just that . . . never mind.”
Now Lena did look at her. “What’s the gossip on the lot?”
Reluctantly, Connie said, “Some people are saying it’s the mob, that you owe them for helping you move up so fast. Others are saying it’s the feds coming after you for un-American activities. I even heard”—Connie let out a harsh laugh—“well, I heard—it’s so ridiculous—that you’d been, you know ... there was talk of ... homosexual talk.” She lowered her voice to a nearly undecipherable whisper for the last words.
Homosexual talk? Where did that come from? The CIA? Julia’s men? Everyone at the studio knew about her engagement. The rumor was a lie, but it didn’t matter. Lena felt the machinations behind it with despair. Whoever started it meant for her to feel threatened. Julia had said she was in danger, it seemed now to assail her from all sides. Lena didn’t know how to fight it. She ground out her cigarette and tried to keep her voice even as she said, “This is all coming from the lot? Or have you heard it elsewhere?”
“Just the lot. For now.”
“You know none of it is true.”
“That’s what I said, every time I heard anything. But you know how it is. People love gossip.”
“That’s not just gossip. That’s—”
The phone inside the dressing room rang. Connie ducked in to answer it. The conversation was short. “Mr. Runyon is waiting for you at your office,” she announced when she hung up.
One more thing to dread. “Did Shirley say why?”
Connie shook her head.
They walked to the costume department building in silence. The rumors played in Lena’s head. The resentments over her rise and Flavio’s fall had never fully gone away, but this wasn’t just simple resentment or simple gossip. The accusation of un-American activities was far more serious, and as for the homosexuality bit ... that was worse. The accusation alone would be enough to ruin her. Where was it coming from?
But Michael Runyon waited for her in her office, and that was the first thing she had to manage.
He smiled when he saw her and rose from the chair in the anteroom. “Miss Taylor, I’m sorry I haven’t made an appointment, but your secretary tells me you’re done with fittings for the day.”
Lena turned to Shirley, who gave her a helpless shrug in return. “As it happens, she’s right. How can I help you, Mr. Runyon?”
“I wonder if you have a few minutes to discuss costuming for Medusa .”
She made a show of looking around. “Is George hiding somewhere? Usually the director is part of a costume conversation.”
“George is with the art director.”
“Shouldn’t we wait for him?”
“As you already know, I have his approval on all discussions about the movie,” Runyon said smoothly.
“Yes,” Lena said. “You know, I’ve never seen a production censor quite so involved in a movie before. You’ll forgive me if I’m finding it a bit odd.”
Another charming smile. “Braxton is determined that it be a big overseas hit, and he wants to make sure this film is in line with the values of the Motion Picture Alliance. There’s a great deal depending on it.”
“Why this film? There are others more in line with the MPA’s values, I think. Moon Crazy , for one—”
“Braxton chose this one.”
“I can’t help but wonder why, since so much needs to be changed.”
“He saw the potential from the beginning, and he believed in Carbone’s ability to change it, especially when he heard about the films Carbone had written for the army.”
“For the army?” Lena was surprised. She’d known that Paul had written screenplays while he was in the army—he’d written them all his life. But not that he’d written anything for the army, which seemed an important distinction. “Is that what you said? For the army?”
“Propaganda films,” Runyon said easily. “His experience was one of the reasons Braxton bought Medusa . You know Braxton produced army films himself, of course.”
Yes, she did know that, but she couldn’t imagine her fiancé writing such propaganda films for the military. As disillusioned as he’d been? She couldn’t imagine it of the man she first encountered sitting on the floor in Larry Lipton’s living room, talking about changing the system from the inside out. The man who believed in everything men like Runyon called un-American.
It clashed uncomfortably with the man she knew. Also, Paul had never told her about it. “I don’t—”
“Of course, war changes men,” Runyon went on. “I told Braxton that. Sometimes it gives them ... strange ideas.”
That same insinuation about Paul he’d made before. On top of the news about the propaganda films, it perturbed her. Abruptly, Lena said, “You wanted to discuss costumes?”
“Why don’t we go to the commissary?” Runyon said. “Or better yet—let’s go have a drink and discuss all this further. What about the Chapel?”
The Chapel was a bar not far from the studio. Lena nodded. After what Connie had told her about the studio gossip, she didn’t want to go to the commissary knowing people were talking behind her back, and frankly a drink would help ease her way through any conversation with Michael Runyon.
“I’ll meet you there,” she said.
“We can take my car,” Runyon said. “It’s not far. Why take two?”
She followed him out to his car, a two-toned Buick, blue and gray—nice for a production censor, but then again, how many production censors’ cars had she seen before? None. Maybe they were all nice. Probably censors were paid very well. It smelled of new leather, along with the ubiquitous cigarette smoke, and he had a tin of mints on the dash, which slid back and forth as he drove the short distance to the Chapel.
The bar was a popular after-work destination for Lux Studio employees, but the day wasn’t over just yet, and the brown vinyl booths and round tables were just starting to populate. The sun sent multicolored light slanting across the parquet floor, and with its dark wood, and narrow windows with stained glass fanlights, the Chapel lived up to its name. Brick walls embraced a small stage where local bands played on the weekends. A jukebox played the other days of the week, but just now it was silent. Lena chose a booth nestled beside the stage. She had no desire to get drunk with Michael Runyon, so instead of her usual martini she ordered a gin and tonic. He ordered a Manhattan.
She reached into her purse for her notebook and a pencil.
“You won’t need that,” he said. “We’re just—what do you call it?—brainstorming.”
“Okay.” She didn’t put the notebook back. “About what?”
“The Debbie Reynolds character.”
Lena couldn’t resist a laugh. “Mr. Runyon, Debbie Reynolds is not doing this picture. She’ll never play a Soviet spy.”
He rocked his head back and forth in a maybe motion.
“Then you know something I don’t,” she said. “She’s devoted to her image. And she’s getting married. Who knows what she’ll do after that. She may just decide to be a wife.”
The waiter delivered their drinks. Runyon took a sip of his. “Is that the gossip? That she’s planning to be a housewife?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have time to read the gossip magazines. But I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the talk.”
“You don’t sound approving.”
Lena laughed again. “I don’t have an opinion on Debbie Reynolds’s life.”
“Oh? I think you do.”
“Trust me, I don’t.”
“I see.”
“But if she plans on living on the career of a second-rate Frank Sinatra, she should probably think again. Eddie Fisher probably has a limited shelf life. She, on the other hand, has endless potential.”
“Ouch.”
“I know you think women are the ‘great civilizers.’ Isn’t that what you said? Or maybe that was George, but you agreed with him.” Lena squeezed the lime into her gin and tonic. “But not all men deserve a woman who would give up everything for them, you know? And not all women want to.”
Runyon considered her. “Are you saying you don’t believe in marriage?”
“I’m engaged.” She flashed her ring at him. “Obviously I believe in marriage.”
“Then you think Carbone is a man worth giving everything up for.”
Slowly, Lena sipped her drink. The gin was bracing, the tonic sweet and bitter at the same time. “Who said I have to give anything up?”
“Your job is very demanding.”
“It is.”
“Children are also very demanding.”
“Do you have children, Mr. Runyon?”
“No. No wife. No family. It wouldn’t be fair. My job consumes me.”
“Then you understand.”
“But you are getting married,” he pointed out.
Lena stirred her drink, raising bubbles.
“I see. You’re one of those women,” Runyon said slowly. “Does Carbone know this?”
“You’re very concerned about my future life, Mr. Runyon.”
“I suppose you envision a world of shared responsibility, shared child-raising, that whole equality-driven, egalitarian marriage where both husband and wife have vocations.”
“Is that such a bad thing? I think it rather modern.”
“Modern? It sounds more like communism to me.”
Lena’s warning instincts stirred. She took a drink. “You wanted to talk about costumes?”
“I’ve been hearing rumors about you, Miss Taylor.”
“Ah. I’m afraid those rumors have been about forever. But no, I did not get Flavio fired from Lux. I learned everything from him, and he and I are good friends. His leaving was mutually agreed upon—”
“I don’t care about that.” Runyon waved it away. “It’s more the company you keep.”
She stared at him, bewildered but also alarmed because it wasn’t what she expected him to say and she wasn’t sure how to interpret it. What exactly did he mean? “The company I keep? Mr. Runyon, if you’re questioning the company I keep, you’ll have to question all of Hollywood, and believe me, there are more secrets in this town than I certainly am privy to.”
“But you’re privy to some of them, aren’t you?” he asked, a bit too fervently. “If, for example, I were to ask you who uses marijuana, you would know, wouldn’t you?”
“You could go to Confidential for that,” she said. “I think they keep a running tab. But why would you care?”
“What about wife beaters?”
Lena tried to cover her squirming with a gulp of gin and tonic. “Why are you asking me these questions? What have they to do with The Doom of Medusa ?”
“What about communist sympathizers?”
“I don’t know,” she said shortly. “I don’t ask people their politics.”
Runyon shook his glass slightly, swirling the drink around the ice. “Have you ever been to Italy, Miss Taylor?”
It was all Lena could do to keep her expression even. “Why?”
“Some of your designs have a distinctly Italian feel. Very Roman sometimes.”
The chill from the gin had moved into her spine. “Classicism is a style. I was trained in it. I like the look. It speaks to me.”
“Where were you trained?”
Elsie Gruner had trained at Chouinard. Lena Taylor had come to LA with nothing. Abruptly she remembered that long-ago meeting with Jasper Rutledge, reborn as Gaspard whatever, just as she’d been reborn. Carefully, Lena said, “Flavio trained me. I think he’s been to Italy a few times.”
“And Carbone, too, I think.”
“Yes, I told you. He was in Rome for the liberation.”
“Is that where you met him?”
She tried to laugh. It came out short and stifled. “No. I told you that too. I met him here in LA. At a jazz club. Why all the questions?”
Runyon ignored that. “Did Carbone base his writing of the Medusa on the jazz clubs he’d seen in Rome?”
“I don’t know, why don’t you ask him? If you remember, he wrote the Medusa club as a nightclub. You changed it to a jazz club.”
“It reminds me of one I knew there,” Runyon mused, his fingers on his glass, though he didn’t raise it to drink.
“You were in Rome?”
“For a short while. I was working on a film there in ... must have been ’49? ’50?”
She was afraid now.
“There was a little place on ... hmmm ... it was in the neighborhood of Via del Babuino,” Runyon went on. “Anyway, lots of artists’ studios there. The street of the artists, they called it. The neighborhood was known for anarchists and communist sympathizers.”
It was Via Margutta that was known as the street of the artists, but she didn’t correct him. “Is that right?” she murmured.
“The club Carbone described is like one in that neighborhood.”
“So ... is that why you think his political views have changed since he got out of the army? Because of a jazz club he might have visited in Rome?”
“I don’t know,” Runyon said, and his expression turned sharp again, his eyes piercing. “What do you think?”
“I think Paul is not a communist,” she said. “Nor am I.”
“A pity. I thought if you were, it might help us decide what a Soviet spy would wear.” He said it casually, but it was not casual at all; Lena knew it.
She swallowed the rest of her drink. “That’s what research is for, Mr. Runyon.”
“Soviet spies are not obvious, that’s why they’re spies. They don’t just come up to you and say ‘Hello, I’m a Russian spy.’ And that makes it difficult to research. They try to blend in. That is, if they’re successful, they do.”
“You know a lot about Soviet spies,” she said.
Runyon said, “I’m only assuming.”
“If that’s the case, then it’s easy, don’t you think? We have her dress like everyone else. Quiet, unassuming. Drawing no attention to herself.”
“Rather the way you do,” he said.
She did not miss his implication, though he kept a friendly smile on his face. “I dress movie stars . I dress this way so I’m not competing with them. If you’d ever had to convince a gorgeous woman to look drab for a character, you would understand.”
“Of course,” he said, but the smirk on his face said differently.
Maybe he saw something in her. Maybe it was something in her voice. Maybe it was the memory that bit into the words, because it remained there, hovering, and she couldn’t bat it away. Whatever it was, Michael Runyon downed the rest of his drink and studied her as if he understood something she didn’t understand herself.
“You should be very careful, Miss Taylor,” he said.
“I have no idea what you mean,” she said. “But I should be getting back. I have plenty of work to do tonight.”
Once she was safely back in her office, she realized how tense she was, despite the gin and tonic. She felt flayed, honestly, and the struggle to reveal nothing and yet still defend herself and Paul— against what, exactly? —had worn her to a frazzle. She still had no real idea what Michael Runyon had been about, or what he wanted, or what rumors he’d heard, but she was disconcerted. More than that, she was afraid. She had not mistaken the threat in Michael Runyon’s words.
She eased off her slingback pumps and rubbed her feet and lit a cigarette. She’d received a few calls while she was gone; one from Paul. Another from Julia. Lena crumpled that message in her fist, though she knew she couldn’t avoid Julia.
The last was from Detective Joe Miller, asking her to call him at her earliest convenience. Regarding the Maynard case. After the chaos of the last few days, she’d nearly forgotten all about poor Walter; she’d forgotten the police would still be investigating the case, because for her the mystery had been solved. Julia’s bosses had happened to him, and the fact that she knew that, and the police didn’t, and it was just one more thing she couldn’t say, raised a terror in her she couldn’t push away. Walter had been the start of her new life; what an irony if he were to be the end of it.
She couldn’t bring herself to laugh.