Last Dance with Valentino, page 25
Relations between Perry and the twins worsened until it came to the point where they ignored him entirely, except to ask him when he would find a place of his own. But there was no budging him … I think we were all a little frightened of him.
Finally, a month or so in, the twins gave me an ultimatum. Either I got Perry out or I would have to leave myself. We quarrelled horribly.
I suppose the problem, when deep down you know yourself to be absolutely in the wrong but don’t want to acknowledge it, and when you’re drinking and consorting with a dope fiend and – frankly – not so far off being a dope fiend yourself, and when you’re full of self-disappointment, and guilt at being such a rotten friend to the two girls who were, and still are, your closest, kindest friends in the world … the problem with all that is it can make you into an utterly vile and unreasonable person.
So when they tried to tell me what a mess I was making of everything, when they told me I had to get rid of Perry, not only for their good but for my own, I wouldn’t listen. Instead, I pointed out how well Perry paid his way – more than paid his way – not just my share of the rent but most of theirs, too. Which was certainly true – because Perry (I’ve said it before) in spite of his sins, was always very generous. He kept us all in liquor – and not just moonshine, but real liquor, imported from Europe, in bottles, with original labels stuck on. He kept us in cocaine, too – though I suppose the twins were never quite so fond of it as we two were. And – until the resentment made it impossible – he used to take the three of us out to dinner to some of the swankiest places in town, sometimes two or three times a week. I pointed it all out to them, and a lot more: said a lot of things I didn’t mean, horrible things that Perry had said about them – until Lorna stopped me, her big blue eyes looking at me in a state of shock, and she said, ‘Lola – what has become of you?’
And she burst into tears.
I am fortunate they still speak to me. They didn’t for a while.
After the ultimatum, something happened, and I don’t know what – Lorna and Phoebe will never tell me. But I can only imagine Perry terrified them in some way or another. And God knows how, because the twins are as tough as any girls I know. But I suppose he had something on them. The next thing – it must have been within a week or even sooner – the twins moved out of the apartment without a word.
Perry had insisted, that same morning, that we take a picnic on the beach. I should have known something was up. It wasn’t much in character for him to suggest leaving the house at all during daylight hours. But I didn’t ask. I didn’t think. And when we came home they were gone. Their clothes, their stuff – everything: the cushions we had bought together and the fancy glasses I had bought them last Christmas, all gone. Without them, our beloved home felt dead.
Perry acted as if he was surprised, but I knew he wasn’t. He said he had no idea where they might have gone. And when I wept because I felt terrible – terrible for my friends and maybe even a little frightened for myself – Perry’s hands wandered down my dress, and he kissed me, and it occurs to me now that he loved it when I cried.
His clever hands wandered over my breasts, my hips, under my dress, and he whispered to me that the night before last, when he had been out and about, delivering his bounty to the deserving, he had mentioned my name to a certain gentleman …
I am pathetic. I detest myself. I can hardly stand to remember it. I hate to remember what a fool, what a weak and stupid person I have been. My confusion, my lust, my fear – and then the glimmer of a promise he gave to me – the reawakening of that wretched, hopeless dream ...
And still no letter came from Miss Marion. Almost a year since I saw her in that store and nothing. Not a word from her. I was lost, off-course, and I knew it. In Perry’s arms, his bed, his house, I had rarely felt so alone.
Chapter 16
Hotel Continental
New York
Thursday, 19 August 1926
Noon
Well. Time to prepare, I suppose. That is to say, I am prepared already – of course. I have been prepared for hours! But it is time to accept the dreaded moment has arrived when I must take leave of this room, this stinkpot of a safe haven, and head out into the noisy world again. I have butterflies in my stomach, but no gin.
I have survived Marion Davies in Beverly of Graustark, which was truly the most abysmal film. But at least I can say I have seen it.
I have my final version of Idol Dreams, all typed up with Rudy’s typewriter, and ready for delivery.
I have my new frock, freshly ironed, and I have clean hair … and for once it is not unbearably hot. All I must do now is to rouge my sober, sensible face. And put some lipstick on.
Chapter 17
Hotel Continental
New York
Thursday, 19 August 1926
5 p.m.
I needn’t have bothered. Not with that silly movie. Nobody mentioned it throughout the whole of luncheon. I wonder what Frances Marion had in mind when she suggested I look at the wretched thing in the first place, when nobody went to the trouble of mentioning it all through lunch. Oh, who cares? Who the hell cares?
In five hours it has all been turned on its head again, and Rudy’s temperature is rising, and I have been by the hospital on my way back from the luncheon and – like vultures – the crowds are back. I tried again to walk through those doors, but I barely got within twenty yards before those two reporters from yesterday started yelling about it.
Hey-ho, people, we got the crazy girl back again … This broad just can’t take no for an answer!
I didn’t care. That is, I wouldn’t have cared – except that the swarthy security man from yesterday, Steffen, the one who looks like a rat, and who called my good, kind friend ‘ghoul’, he spotted me, and came at me, with a glint in his eye, as if he believed one knockout punch would cure all the ills of his entire disappointing life. He had his fist clenched, I swear to it, and his arm drawn back, and I could see it coming and I still couldn’t quite believe—
Would he really? Lay that big fat fist on me, right here on West 50th, in front of everyone, in broad daylight?
It occurred to me very clearly that indeed he would. And most likely be cheered for it, too, such was the mood down there.
It is febrile, angry – everyone is tired – and there are the rumours flying around like bats, swooping on the crowd, swooping on all of us … awful, terrible rumours … But first— No, I shall come back to that because, for all the triumphs of my day today, it is at the hospital, of course, where everything begins and ends since nothing is worth anything without Rudy. And if the rumours are true then, of course, I am responsible. I am responsible for everything …
I saw that man’s fist making its way towards me, and I ran. He yelled at me, a roar of pure rage. I had moved too quickly for him. I kept moving – ran most of the way back to the hotel, and I am dripping with sweat. I am sodden. And there is nothing I can do but wait – and wait and wait and wait.
But first—
I wish I knew where to start. So much has happened.
First, then. The good news.
I believe I have found employment for Mr Hademak. He is to be interviewed by my luncheon date. I have sent him a message. I sent the boy round with a letter, telling him to contact me here at the hotel, right away. I might have telephoned him directly, I suppose. Only I couldn’t quite bring myself to call the boarding-house and hear that familiar wheeze clink wheeze of the concierge. Never again.
Mr Hademak is to be interviewed by my friend. Is that what she is? My new friend? Good God! This is barely above gibberish – I need to calm down or I shall achieve nothing.
– – –
First.
I arrived at my luncheon date very early – too early even to announce myself. But instead of taking a walk around the block, as I certainly should have done, I decided to wait in the Algonquin lobby, thereby encouraging my nervous energy to gather such a head of steam that I began to feel quite faint. So, after a while, I settled myself in a small leather chair in a far corner of the room. It was tucked a little behind the front door, and I surreptitiously tucked it a little further. I sat, watching the great and the good sweep this way and that as if – as if life were easy.
I watched the beautiful Nita Naldi gliding in – hatless, if you please! She was coming from the hospital, perhaps, since she and Rudy have long since been friends. It was all I could do not to call out to her and beg for her assistance in speaking to him – I didn’t. I did not. Aside from anything, I am not even certain if the two were once lovers. In which case I sincerely did not want to complicate matters. Though I understand she is currently linked with the wonderful H. L. Mencken. The three of them, she, Mr Mencken and Rudy, had dinner together here, in her suite, only a few weeks back. Ha! See the top-notch circles I am almost moving in now!
But that’s not the point.
I watched her as if, I suppose, she were a specimen from some other planet: that magical place in the galaxy where everyone already knows you to be friends with Rudolph Valentino and therefore allows you some private access to his life, his well being, his affections … I must try to order my thoughts. Otherwise, what point to write them all down? I might just as easily glide to the nearest speak and drink myself to oblivion. It would be better. It might be better. Except – what if he calls? What then? Somehow I have to make it through this interminable wait with my mind in place …
Well, I sat in the lobby of that hotel, and I listened to the brittle sounds of clever people in the room beyond, laughing lightly at one another’s wit – and the longer I sat, the more nervous I became, until the time passed when Miss Marion and I were meant to meet, and still I sat. I noticed little damp patches on the paper where I was holding my finished photoplay, and I wished more than I ever wished anything, almost, that I’d at least had the foresight to bring my hip flask.
It reached a point, and looking back, I don’t understand, can’t imagine quite how, but hearing the laughter, witnessing so much personal confidence sweeping this way and that, and then, remembering the state I had been in when last I saw Miss Marion, I discovered that I simply couldn’t pull myself out of that chair. I wondered if I would sit there for ever, with the sweat from my hands slowly obscuring every careful word of my Idol Dreams, and I would simply sit and watch as this one golden opportunity slipped slowly from my fingertips …
I might have done it too. I was bent over my hands, eyes shut tight and only a second from sobbing, when I heard her voice beside me: ‘Lola? Are you sick?’
A long pause. I didn’t know what to do. I did nothing. Said nothing. Didn’t even move.
‘You know,’ she said gently, ‘we have a table in the dining room, and we’ve been waiting for you. Wouldn’t you like to join us?’
I forced myself to look up. And I swear, if ever I could have loved a woman, I would have fallen for Miss Frances Marion at that moment; she was looking down at me with so much kindness and intelligence and humour and beauty (for she is very beautiful, even though she is quite old now – at least ten years older than I am, not so far off forty, I should think). She smiled.
She said, ‘My two friends are longing to meet you. They have read Malicious Intent, you know. I hope you won’t mind that I gave it to them. And they are as excited as I am. Even more so, perhaps. Anita is feeling positively jittery. She hates it when there is competition.’
‘Anita?’
‘Loos. You met her the other day.’
‘Oh, gosh. Oh … gosh. Oh, gosh.’
‘You absolutely mustn’t be intimidated. I love her dearly, and she’s a fine writer. But she is a very silly woman. She wants to meet you because she sees that you are brilliant and – as she says herself – it has always been her philosophy to keep brilliant people close … ’
‘Brilliant!’ I laughed – spluttered, actually. I sent a spray of spittle into the air, some of which, I noticed in horror, caught the light as it flew and landed on Miss Marion’s hand. She stepped back a smidgen, and – very subtly – wiped the back of her hand upon her coat.
‘You have written a terrific scenario.’
‘No – but I have another one here … I’m convinced you’ll think the last one is perfectly rotten as soon as you see this one. I wish you would look at this one instead.’
I am an idiot.
She laughed. ‘Of course I should love to see it. But don’t dismiss the last too quickly. You have a fan club for it, and, Lola, they’re waiting for you at the table. Anita is complaining she’s famished.’
I stood up, very slowly – worried that I might faint.
‘There is nothing for you to be intimidated by,’ she said again. ‘In fact I should think Anita might do better to feel a little intimidated by you … ’ I laughed at that – without the spray of spittle, this time. I was beginning to collect myself. And Miss Marion smiled again. ‘Well, that’s better,’ she said, standing back. ‘You look stunning, by the way. What a wonderful dress. Come on, then … Are you coming or aren’t you?’
‘But first, if you wouldn’t mind, Miss Marion – I wanted to apologise. It was dreadful, unforgivable, the way I accosted you on Tuesday. And after all you have done to help me. I am so terribly sorry.’
‘Oh, never mind that!’ She swept it aside. ‘As Anita always says, because she thinks it gives her absolute licence to behave in any way she likes, “We creative folk sometimes act a little crazy … ” And, Lola, I couldn’t care in the least. What matters to me … ’ she paused, looked back at me in deep seriousness for an instant, then broke into a giant grin ‘ … is that I was right! I love to be right! And I knew you were good, from that very first screenplay you gave to me – when you accosted me the first time. At the grocery store … Do you remember?’
‘Do I remember? Oh, gosh – you probably think it’s some dreadful habit, all this accosting, but I assure you—’
She interrupted with a delicate, dismissive wave, exchanging nods, as she did so, with a familiar-looking woman who was just then strutting across the lobby. ‘I knew you were good from the first reading of that very first scenario. And you have turned out even better than I imagined! Malicious Intent is truly the freshest piece of writing for screen I’ve laid eyes on in five years or more. And I’m longing to hear what Rudy plans for Wicked Pleasures. Did he say? Or did that ghastly little Ullman put his great boot in the way of things? He generally likes to.’
‘He—’
‘Tell us all over luncheon. Would you? I want to hear everything. Only we should get a move on. I want you to meet Anita – properly, this time. And I want you to meet my dearest, closest friend, Mary. Are you ready? I hope so. Because I believe, if I have my way, this luncheon is about to change your life.’
Was I dreaming?
‘And that, by the way,’ she indicated the retreating figure, still strutting, ‘in case you were wondering … ’
‘Well, yes I was … ’
‘Yes. It showed. That was the wonderful Miss Dorothy Parker.’
– – –
So it was the four of us. Anita, Frances, Mary et moi. I mean to say, of course: Miss Anita Loos, Miss Frances Marion, Miss Mary Pickford et Miss Lola Nightingale. Just the four of us. Miss Loos kept her silly hat on. Looked at me from beneath it with the same languid dislike as previously, but I wonder if it’s only a way she has, since I declare she looked similarly towards Miss Mary Pickford, and there is nothing about Miss Mary Pickford to make a person feel languid, even aside from her being the most adored woman on the planet.
She is (and I am trying my hardest to be moderate) not in the least as she appears on the screen. She is womanly, first and foremost, not some silly, simpering little thing,; she is thoughtful and tactful and gentle and so full of amusing stories!
Anita Loos was seated on the banquette. She and Mary Pickford were deep in conversation as Miss Marion and I approached. Anita Loos looked me up and down with that horrid look of hers – but then, after that, I know it sounds absurd – but the thing is – she saw me, and she shuffled up!
‘I found her in the lobby,’ Miss Marion said. ‘Lola, this is Anita Loos, whom you met only the other day. And this – of course – is Mary Pickford. Who adores your Intent, don’t you, Mary? She wants to discuss – well, perhaps I should let her tell you … And this … ’ she looked at me, standing before them all on one leg, like some dreadful schoolgirl ‘ … this,’ she said, ‘is Lola Nightingale!’
‘Well, Lola,’ drawled Anita (as she shuffled up), ‘we have all read Malicious Intent, and we all agree that you are quite brilliant. So you might as well sit down.’ As I took the space beside her she muttered something about keeping the competition close, and we all laughed – though at the time I was still too befuddled to be certain what she meant by it.
Miss Pickford – Mary (it feels too odd to write it!) – leaned across the table and patted my damp, sweaty hand. ‘I thought it was quite magical, Lola,’ she said. ‘May I call you Lola?’
‘Yes – and thank you. I mean to say, thank you. I’m quite – actually I’m tempted to burst into the most hopeless tears, which is absurd, I know, but to be praised by – and— ’ I looked stupidly from one woman to the next. They waited politely for me to finish but, really, I had nothing to add. Anything I said would have been pointless in any case since, really, it was quite obvious how a girl in my position would be feeling in these circumstances … and after so many years of scribbling away. ‘Yes, of course you may,’ I said finally. ‘Call me Lola. Please.’
