Make Believe

Lorena ordered an avocado salad, the turkey club, and a pitcher of martinis.

Lorena had brought five clippings of Louella’s nasty column. She bubbled over, and in seconds she had Alice and me laughing, though I’d resisted. Last night’s melee at the Beachcomber still upset me…Max’s bloody jaw and Frank’s feral eyes. Lorena glibly termed it the “Mai tai Massacre.” A natural mimic, she assumed a haughty, imperious tone last heard, I supposed, from the throat of stuffy Margaret Dumont in the Marx brothers’ films. She arched her back, trilled her r’s, imagined a pince-nez slipping off an aggressive Roman nose, and oozed condescension. I laughed like a schoolgirl on holiday.

Yes, Lorena kept saying, she felt sorry for the poor bruised Max. Yes, as she patted Alice’s wrist, she was happy he was on the mend, luckily nothing broken, just an ego sorely compromised, a man who now insisted it (and everyone) go away.

“Thank God Max can’t hear us carrying on,” Alice said. Then, smiling, she mimicked Max with affection: “‘Please leave me alone to lick my wounds.’”

Lorena raised her voice. “Poor Louella. Tsk, tsk. It was all very sad for her to witness. Wasn’t Frank Sinatra a downright thug and a bounder? She worked herself into a Victorian lather over the blood-splattered white napkin-‘An affront to the refined Polynesian eatery, an elegant watering hole.’” Lorena’s voice cracked, and we all erupted into gales of silly hilarity.

She’d underlined the particularly enlightening phrases and insisted on reading aloud. “She saved the coup de grace for the last paragraph,” Lorena added, even though I’d already read the tripe more times than I cared to acknowledge. In her Margaret Dumont operatic singsong, “‘I had to witness this travesty. I’m used to sophisticated dining, with candlelight and crystal, not gladiator bloodletting and profane language. Dear Reader, I now draw a discreet Edwardian curtain over that crude farce.’” Lorena raised a glass. “To Louella, the best show in town.”

Alice bit her lip and confided in a low tone, “You know, Frank carries a gun on him.”

A chill swept up my spine. “What?”

“It’s hidden.”

“But why?”

“Ava told me.”

“But he sometimes travels with a bodyguard.” I thought of the gentle giant I’d met, the dapper thug in a double-breasted suit, gun hidden.

“Yeah, that same bodyguard threatened to kill a photographer unless he handed over the film in his camera. But Frank likes his own gun. No one knows.”

I whispered. “Has he ever used it?”

Alice shrugged. “He’s shot it off a few times. He likes to play cowboy. Once, in New York, when he and Ava battled, he called Ava to say he was killing himself, and then fired two shots into a mattress, holding the phone close. She came running, hysterical. And in Indio, outside L.A., Frank and Ava, both drunk as skunks, shot up the town’s streetlights with two.38 caliber Smith amp; Wessons, his guns, and…Frank grazed this man and…”

I raised my hand. “Enough. No more. This is frontier out here, no man’s land. Barbaric.”

“Welcome to the wild west, Edna,” Lorena quipped.

I looked at Alice. “So Max is all right?”

“Right now he’s sleeping like a baby. What the doctor ordered.”

“Poor Max.” But I smiled. Poor Max, that performance so out of character last night. Well, a man who could still surprise me.

“He should never have kissed Ava,” Alice whispered. Then she grinned. “I didn’t like the drinking, of course, but I’ve never seen him so…frivolous, flirtatious. It was…delightful. Until the end.”

Lorena chuckled. “I used to hope Ethan would do something spontaneous. During the three years of our fragmented marriage, even his husbandly kisses seemed measured out, charted on a military map. It was maddening. A drunk with a slide rule.” She leaned into Alice. “I didn’t tell you that I called your home a little while ago. To make sure you were coming.”

“I decided to walk over.” Alice looked perplexed. “Max answered?”

“Yes, but he said he was feeling queasy and was headed for bed. He said you’d just left.” A pause. “He told me something interesting. He mentioned that he’d heard through the grapevine that Tony lost his stand-up job at Poncho’s. Lord, I just heard about it late last night. Ethan called me. But just like Max to worry about others! He told me he’ll get Tony a job.”

“Sounds like Max,” Alice said. “Turn the other cheek. Did you tell Tony?”

Lorena nodded. “I was calling just as Ethan and Tony came in. Ethan whispered to me that Tony started drinking early this afternoon-he’s so depressed. When I told Tony about Max’s kindness, he refused to believe it-said Max was playing a game. Imagine! God, you can’t please him. But a few minutes later I saw Tony on the phone, so I thought he was calling Max. No, he told me when he hung up, he was calling Liz to tell her what Max was up to.”

“How did she react?”

“She wasn’t home, which bothered him. Ethan told me-‘What does it matter?’ he said. ‘He’ll only lose that one, too.’”

Alice looked pleased. “Max’ll do what he says.”

“Ethan is right-Tony will lose another job.” Lorena tilted her head to the side. “You know, Max didn’t hang on the phone. He said someone was knocking at the door.”

Alice looked worried. “What? He wasn’t expecting anyone.”

“He thought it might be his doctor.”

Alice glanced toward the pay phone near the entrance. “Well, maybe…”

“It’s all right, Alice,” Lorena assured her. “He’s probably asleep now.” She pointed across the room. “Well, speak of the devil-may-care. The co-owner of Paradise. Adam is here…with, of course, the sequined snake.”

We watched Ethan and Tony Pannis walk in from the kitchen, settle into the corner booth near the kitchen. Ethan spotted us, nodded formally to me, but avoided looking at Alice. He purposely turned his back on us. Tony seemed lost in his own world, leaning into his brother and blubbering about something.

Lorena whispered a little too loudly. “I feel for Ethan, frankly. This is gonna be a long evening, I mean, with Tony/Tiny fired from that club. He’s already soused. It was just a matter of time. Lately he’s only been filling in a couple nights a week. He’s lost his steam, really. That, and the fact that he is just not funny.”

Alice fidgeted. “Ethan is not happy I’m here, Lorena.”

Lorena lit a cigarette and blew sloppy rings in the air. “Who cares? You’re my friend. He’s begrudgingly accepted that fact.”

“Still…”

“Forget it, dear.”

Lorena leaned into me, confidentially. “On nights like this, Ethan’s sole purpose is to keep Tony from getting too drunk and staggering crazily down Wilshire Boulevard. Ethan works on his account books and plots out his burgeoning real estate empire while Tony drinks and gets loud and unruly. Then Ethan drives him home to Liz Grable’s waiting arms. A sad spectacle. Ethan doesn’t know what to do, I guess.”

Alice broke in. “Tony seems to be getting worse, no?”

Lorena bit her lip. “A shame, really. Two or three times a week he’s here getting plastered. It never was like that before. Liz won’t be around him when he’s drunk, so Ethan takes over.”

“Brotherly love?” Alice offered.

She smirked. “Yes, loyalty to a dead brother.”

Alice whispered, “Lenny.”

The name hung in the air, filled the room, explosive.

Lorena eyed her. “Sorry, honey…didn’t mean to bring that up.”

“I don’t understand the power of Lenny’s ghost over everyone.” I glanced at Alice, who wasn’t happy.

Lorena also glanced at Alice but answered me. “You see, Ethan, well, created the problem. Sorry, Alice, but I want Edna to understand. When Lenny died-the so-called murder at the hands of the lovely Alice”-she reached out and caressed Alice’s hand-“one chapter of the universe ended. Ethan was a drunk who got slapped awake. Lenny had said he’d be divorcing Alice here and bringing the boys into the business. Whatever that meant. Untold riches. Tony was a decent comic, mildly funny with his offbeat humor, endearing at times, a