Lone star

Mercy shrugged her shoulders again.

Tansi was frowning. “And you call me a gossip?”

Mercy spoke coolly. “I don’t gossip, Tansi. I just insinuate facts.”

Chapter 5

Tansi insisted on driving me back to the Ambassador and seemed thrilled with me as her sole passenger. Her car, she said, was brand-new. Look, look at it, she insisted. What do you think? Bored, I looked. A spotless Chevy Bel Air, sparkling and shiny. “Everyone in L.A. has a new car,” I said, joking.

Tansi nodded. “Well, you have to.”

“How sad!”

“Why?” Tansi asked.

I chose not to answer, finding the subject tedious, but finally said, “I felt Mercy was being evasive. She was holding something back.”

Tansi pulled out into traffic. “You mean about his going out with Lydia?”

“And others. How he treats the girls he sees.”

A stretched out response. “Noooo…not really.”

“And now you’re doing it, too. Mercy strikes me as a forthright woman, and you’re an old friend, but everyone seems to deal with Jimmy gingerly, only comfortable on the fringes. No one wants to get to the heart of him.”

“Maybe because we don’t know how to talk about him.”

“Or,” I said, “maybe everyone is nervous about actually getting to the heart of him.”

“No, Jimmy is just a sweet guy who…”

That surprised me. “I’d never call him sweet, Tansi. Brooding, rude, sullen, yes. At times happy, joking, frivolous, funny. Sweet, no.”

“Charming, then.”

“All right, charming, if you will.”

But the conversation made Tansi uncomfortable. She started pointing out local landmarks to me, like a guide, cutting across boulevards, weaving her way through the city. Pershing Square, where soapbox orators declaimed their madness all hours of the night. Grauman’s Chinese Theater. The Moulin Rouge. The Egyptian Theater, where East of Eden was still playing. “Jimmy comes to stare at the marquee,” Tansi told me.

I kept repeating, “I’ve been here before, Tansi. Before you were born, in fact. The palm trees were smaller, but looked about the same. The buildings were still ugly and on the verge of being replaced with newer, uglier, shinier ones. And the stars were too clear in the sky, with too much space below. The mountains were still over there.” I pointed, dramatically.

Tansi laughed. “I’m sorry.” She turned onto Sunset Boulevard.

I pointed. “And that’s Schwab’s. We can sit at the counter and be discovered like Lana Turner.”

“They say that never happened.” Tansi pointed at a building and grinned. “But you don’t know about Googie’s.”

I eyed the eatery next to Schwab’s. “And I choose not to.” An odd-looking restaurant, with its grotesque architecture: upswept roof, diagonal glass panels, zigzag markings on the boomerang-looking signs, a nightmare clash of blue and orange, a matchbox construction, pieces of building dropped willy-nilly and then glued together.

“That’s a Jimmy hangout, a coffee shop. He used to live nearby.”

“Let’s stop in,” I said suddenly.

Tansi kept driving. “Oh no. I’ve never been there.”

“Come on, Tansi, let’s stop. I want to get a feel of the place. When I come to L.A., I’m squired to the Cocoanut Grove for drinks, to Don Roper’s on Rodeo Drive for fittings to make me look like Ginger Rogers, to the Mocambo to see Theresa Brewer or some other screeching singer I can’t stand. No one ever thinks to take me to a coffee shop.”

“There must be a reason for that. Googie’s is for young people.”

“Good. Then we’ll fit right in.”

Tansi swung her car around, a little too dramatically, so that I slid in my seat, held onto the dashboard. “I learned my driving maneuvers trying to follow Jimmy to events. He doesn’t believe in speed limits.”

“But I do, Tansi. My remaining hair is white. Please don’t make it fall out.” I patted my careful perm. “More than it already does.”

Standing in the doorway, a tiny woman dwarfed by the soaring archway, I waited and considered the place no country for me. Tansi, uncomfortable, hovered behind me. I surveyed the sleek, polished eatery, as crisp inside as a deco highway diner: the stark, high-backed booths and the chrome-and-glass tables, the cluttered geometric glass tiers suspended behind the counter, jam-packed with cobalt-blue soda glasses and rose-colored plates. Diagonal floor tiles, alternating black and white, gave the floor a dizzy, schizoid feel. The whole place seemed taken with itself, smart and trendy, and I thought of the hipster word I never employed-cool. But what made the small place bounce, even hum, was the energy, the sense that something was happening, something contagious and electric. Late afternoon in L.A.: freeways cluttered with honking, desperate cars, but, inside, a cavern of muted voices. Not quiet-there was too much talk going on, but it was like an interplay of piano notes, the one echoing off the other. Half of the tables were filled, perhaps. But the occupants sailed back and forth, young men and women, talking, laughing, backslapping, confiding. Everyone seemed to know everyone, and everyone seemed, to my jaundiced eye, eighteen years old.

“Tommy and Polly are here,” Tansi whispered.

I looked. Tommy and Polly stood near a booth, chatting with friends, watching Tansi and me settle into our chairs. I muttered under my breath, “Does he ever take off the red jacket?”

Tansi grinned. “Then he wouldn’t be James Dean.”

“But he’s not Jimmy.”

“And then his girlfriend Polly would leave him.”

I stared at the young woman I’d seen on Tommy’s arm. “What’s her story?’’

“Polly Dunne?” Tansi glanced back at the couple, both of whom had stopped talking, simply watching us. I saw a willowy girl, tall and slender-a sapling leaning back to earth. I supposed it had to do with her being a half-foot taller than her boyfriend, some way of making them seem more a couple. Tommy, on the other hand, seemed to be craning his neck upward, arching back, reminding me of a baby bird stretching for nourishment. An odd couple, really. Yet they touched a lot, seemed to bump into each other, as though to make sure the other was still there. I thought Polly’s look bizarre. For such a tall girl, she was almost all bone and no flesh, with a shock of brilliant auburn hair on her head-a crown of sudden sunset. She wore clothes I considered the stuff of thrift store backrooms: a lacy crinoline skirt that flared out, way below the knee, a puffy lace blouse that I thought had disappeared with Lillian Gish silents. A modern girl clothed in some ensemble more applicable to a barn dance in rural Kansas, circa 1900. Rebecca of Sunnybrook farm with garden spade, stopping for an egg cream in an American cafe.

“Well,” Tansi said, “she’s sort of hard to get to know. She clings to Tommy like he’s the last piece of floating driftwood. She spends much of the time berating him for his lack of ambition. Tommy believes fate will pluck him from the dailies and make him the next Brando. But Tommy’s lazy. Jimmy got him a bit part in Giant, as you know. Before that, he had an audition for a speaking role in Rebel, but he came late. Polly almost killed him.”

“Why doesn’t she leave him?” I eyed the staring couple, watching Polly fluff her head of red curls and Tommy pull on the cuffs of the jacket.

“I think she believes his friendship with Jimmy will get her a place in Hollywood.”

“Another ambitious actress?”

“They all are, his crew. She’s in Giant in a dinner scene. Stevens needed what he