Lone star

called a ‘statuesque beauty.’ Nell Meyers is the only one not infected with the acting bug-just yet. Though I’m afraid Lydia has put ideas in her head, too.”

I nodded. “Jimmy’s assembly of bit players.”

“Exactly. And the only one with any talent, clearly, is Jimmy.”

“Mercy says he’s trying to distance himself from them.”

“He already has. Lydia Plummer got on his nerves right away. We all saw it, but not her. Jimmy told me, I guess confidentially, that she wanted him to get her a juicy part in his next picture.”

“Rather brazen, no?”

“I suppose so, but not surprising. Very Hollywood, once you’ve been here for a while. Hollywood is the land of make-believe. Everyone makes believe they’re talented. At parties, the only refrain you hear over and over is, ‘I’m waiting for my break.’”

I bit my lip. “Most probably don’t realize the word ‘break’ should be used in the past tense. Polly doesn’t look very happy. And for some reason they’re still staring at us.”

“I hope you don’t get to know her, Edna. Despite her weird look, she’s known for her rude mouth. She can be harsh with folks.”

I was curious. “How does Jimmy deal with her?”

She shrugged. “You know Jimmy. He flirts with her, he ignores her, he makes fun of her-he can be a deadly mimic. When he knew you were coming west, he did one of you…”

“Me!”

“Of course, he didn’t know you, but he knew we were friends. So he’d arch his voice, piercing Margaret Dumont falsetto out of some Marx Brothers routine-with you wanting to rename the movie Gigantic because it made you rich.”

I grinned. “I love it. I do.” I glanced at the frozen, staring couple. “But Tommy Dwyer intrigues me, a boy who unashamedly takes his coloration from another, and isn’t afraid to be mocked. By God, he even does his hair like Jimmy’s.”

“What else does he have? Parking cars? Weekend auditions at the Beverly Hills Playhouse? He wants to stay in the sunshiny world of L.A., and, if he can be Jimmy’s occasional understudy or stand-in, so be it. It buys cheap red wine and Mexican food and New Year’s Eve, maybe, at LaRue’s on the Strip.”

“And they all know this femme fatale Carisa Krausse?”

Tansi glanced at the couple, then back at me. “I don’t think she was ever close to Tommy or Polly. More Lydia’s friend. Polly is close to no one. The girls don’t like her. But I’m invisible to her. Too old. I’m not a rival.”

I made a face. “One thing I’ve learned is that women become invisible quicker than men.”

“Some women are born invisible.”

I recalled Tansi’s lonely, solitary childhood under the care of this nanny or that one, sent to a Swiss boarding school where no one liked her, dragged from one New York apartment to another by an effervescent, much- marrying famous mother.

We ordered sodas from a waitress who never looked at us.

Then Tansi nudged me, and I jumped. I found myself staring at a couple of gangly teenagers, perhaps eighteen or nineteen. The boy and girl were identical twins, with small mooncalf eyes set too far apart in round, expansive faces, with stringy arms out of place on such rotund frames, with corn-fed, slapdash grins on splotchy, acned faces. A strange couple, the two, standing there, shoulders touching, blocking the doorway, and vacantly grinning like gassed fugitives from a dentist’s chair. Worse, both were dressed identically in T-shirts, penny loafers, and red nylon jackets.

“Good Lord,” I exclaimed. “The Katzejammer Kids are back in town.”

Tansi laughed. “Welcome to the sideshow. You’re looking at Alyce and Alva Strand.”

Eyes wide. “You know them, Tansi? They look like they’ve toppled from a hay wagon.”

The twins sauntered over, their heads swiveling left and right, as though on ball bearings, looking, looking. They stopped at Tansi’s table, though they first waved to Tommy and Polly, who immediately looked away. “Is he here?” one said, and I wasn’t sure which one spoke. The voice, garbled as though impeded by a mouth of marbles, was neither male nor female.

Tansi said no.

They looked at me, as if they should know me, and then silently turned and found seats on the counter stools, twisting left and right, facing each other, then shifting back and forth, scanning the crowd.

“Jimmy’s fan club,” Tansi remarked.

I raised my eyebrows. “My God.”

“They’re harmless. They follow Jimmy everywhere. He doesn’t know what to make of them.”

“And you do?”

“They’re Jimmy’s oldest fans. We’re talking 1951 now, a lifetime ago, Hollywood years. Jimmy got his first break on TV, playing John the Baptist in Hill Number One, an Easter pageant on Father Peyton’s Family Theater. Jimmy in a white toga and sandals, devastatingly handsome and sexy. The nuns at a California girls’ school assigned it as homework.” She chuckled. “The girls fell in love with Jimmy and formed the Immaculate Heart James Dean Appreciation Society. I’m not making this up, Edna, I swear. They held meetings, wrote letters-all the sheltered Catholic girls going crazy. One of the girls, Alyce Strand,” Tansi pointed to the ditzy girl, then sitting with an index finger tucked into her cheek, “became his devoted fan. And somehow her brother, he of the singular brain cell, became enamored of Jimmy, too. Jimmy has a legion of male fans now, though they’re the tough high-school misfits, the kind with the slicked-back Brylcream hair and the biker boots. Not so Alva. He’s an oddball who…”

“I don’t understand.” I was bewildered. “For what-four years-they follow Jimmy?”

“Yes, and after East of Eden and Jimmy’s spectacular celebrity, they ratcheted up their obsession. They feel they own him. They follow him.”

I was furious. “They are sick.”

“Harmless, Edna.”

“Oh, no, no, Tansi, I don’t think so.”

“Edna, you seem to give them more worth than they deserve. Stars need their fans.”

“Tansi, you seem to believe Hollywood is a land removed from the rest of America.”

“And it isn’t?”

I paused. “They’re like Tommy-living no life but Jimmy’s. They can’t have his life, you know.”

“They don’t work or anything. They live at home, and indulgent parents let them play out their bit parts.”

“I suppose it’s cheaper than the cost of an asylum.”

“Edna!”

Tommy and Polly, unhappy with the sudden proliferation of red-nylon jackets in Googie’s, left, nodding to Tansi and me as they passed. I noticed they purposely avoided looking at the Strand twins, who’d been facing each other, but then swiveled on the seats, facing out, grins plastered on faces. Their eyes never left Tommy. After all, Tommy Dwyer was a James Dean friend.

Tansi was telling me how the Strand twins amused her, but she stopped.

James Dean was standing just inside the front door. Oddly, he just seemed to appear: an apparition materializing from another world. But, of course, he’d strolled in, in a leather jacket and biker boots. He sat across the room, but didn’t acknowledge us, and I watched his profile: rigid, the flexible mouth, the cigarette dangling. He noticed me watching him, but turned away, looking away, too, from Alva and Alyce Strand. I saw him suck in his breath.

Clearing her throat, Tansi yelled across the tables: “Jimmy, here.”

He shook his head. No.

Jimmy’s presence compelled the eatery into an awkward paralysis. People stopped talking and watched him. Looking up, Jimmy caught my eye. Sheepishly, I smiled. Jimmy narrowed his eyes, tucked his head into his chest