little dumb but cagey enough about his career. Sarcasm and dumbness sometimes go hand in hand. A social drinker, that’s all.”
Alice spoke up. “I remember Tony as a cheerful sort, a jokester.” She glanced toward Tony. “And quiet.”
Lorena went on. “A nice guy. But somehow, maybe inadvertently, Ethan played Dr. Frankenstein and created the monster we have before us. Ethan hammered on and on about the murder, the money, the power they were now deprived of. The Hollywood triptych: gold, glory, clout. Lost now. Tony, depressed, started eating and drinking. Now he’s a mess-and sad.”
“And the insult comic was born,” Alice added.
“Tony stopped being the bumbling, goofy comic onstage, so Ethan talked him into becoming an insult comic. The chubby guy in the sequined outfits attacking his audience.”
“And a drinker,” Alice said.
“In here, mostly,” Lorena insisted. “Guarded by Ethan who, I suspect, feels guilty for his creation. His cookie-cutter mind can’t deal with the new and vastly deteriorated version of a harmless brother. Ethan is afraid because Tony-now Tiny Sparks-has these spurts of anger, out of control. So he plays…warden at the prison he built.”
“And Liz?” I asked.
“She loved him-the old Tony. She can’t understand what’s happened these past few years. So she makes him stay away when he’s-like
“Watching Tony at Ava’s the other night-that drunken spiel-bothered me. He struck me as an overgrown child, but a beaten child-an innocuous lad given to pouting. The brother who always expected to be duped, to be hurt, so he tries to be cagey. He ends up-miserable.”
Alice was nodding at me. “Now, grownup, he hides behind a bottle.”
Lorena clicked her tongue. “Ethan doesn’t know what to do. He’s not good with sloppy emotion.”
“It’s a wonderful life,” I commented, wryly.
Ethan had taken a sheaf of papers from a portfolio and was circling numbers with a pencil, ignoring his restless brother. Tony, suddenly staring back at us, was calling out to the bartender. Ethan looked up and frowned.
“Absurd,” I said.
“The bartender,” Lorena informed us, “knows to bring a drink only when Ethan nods at him. That way…”
I surveyed the vaudeville duo. “There is something wrong with those two. They’re…clowns.”
“Of course there’s something wrong,” Lorena roared. She threw back her head. “And yet it took me three long years to realize it.”
I was disturbed by noise behind me. Turning, I watched a group of chattering women sit down at a table. They all seemed to be talking at once. Alice and Lorena glanced at each other. “Lord,” Lorena muttered.
Alice whispered to me. “Sophie Barnes.” She indicated the woman nearest to me.
Lorena spoke softly. “Ah, Max’s infatuated secretary. Ex-secretary, I should say. She’s seen Alice but is ignoring her.”
I shifted in my seat, watching.
Sophie Barnes and her three friends were celebrating one of their birthdays. Sixtyish, bosomy, showy in flowered summer dresses with enormous brooches, they seemed unhappy to see Alice, who avoided their stares. Poor Alice, I thought: Ethan and Tony, and now Sophie Barnes. The nondescript housewife, so roundly maligned. One woman carried a bunch of flowers and a balloon, a tableau that seemed incongruous in a place called PARA ISE BAR amp; GRILL. Loudly, she ordered a bottle of house champagne while another talked shrilly of her boss, a martinet worthy of slaughter; and they all roared. I noticed a white pastry box placed at the edge of the table. I was glad we’d be gone when the candles were lit and a shaky chorus of Happy Birthday depressed the already dismal room.
A buxom woman now fiddling with the contents of an enormous black patent-leather purse, Sophie was probably early sixties, with a long horse face containing small bird-like eyes, her graying wispy hair coifed into a helmet of Shirley Temple spit curls. A rhinestone-studded pair of eyeglasses were suspended from a chain around her neck. She dipped into her purse and took out a handkerchief. As she drew it to her nose, she glanced toward us.
Our eyes locked. A flash of naked cruelty covered her face, the lips curled as her eyes darkened. I swear she mouthed those tantalizing words:
Good for you, Sophie. Fight back.
But I’m not an enemy you should make.
By the time we left to take in a movie, Tony could be heard arguing with Ethan, who seemed resigned to Tony’s attempts to put himself into a drunken stupor. “Do what you want,” Ethan hissed, disgusted. “Drink yourself into an early death. Die for all I care. One more brother of mine dead…”
Tony was yelling something to the bartender.
Lorena leaned into my neck as I walked in front of her. “Did I tell you that Ethan has a histrionic streak? He’s good at playing martyr.”
“It’s a thankless pursuit,” I offered.
“Yes,” Lorena agreed, “but martyrdom has a way of enslaving everyone in its path.”
“Let me call Max first,” Alice said as we passed a pay phone at the entrance. We waited. Finally she replaced the receiver. “He’s not picking up. Good. He’s asleep.”
“Or not answering,” Lorena teased. “I imagine his friends are having a field day with this.”
Alice pursed her lips. “What friends? Sol Remnick? Everyone else has disappeared. Max is a man without a country.”
“I’m his friend,” I insisted.
“I know, I know. And folks like George Kaufman. S. J. Perelman called. But…out here among the natives…you know.”
I did know.
On the sidewalk, headed to Lorena’s car, I began, “So that’s the redoubtable Sophie Barnes.” I’d spoken to her on the phone over the years, and Max had often commented on her importance to his office. “She runs the place like a military base,” he once told me. But I’d never met her. She looked exactly as I’d imagined her.
Alice chimed in. “His one and only secretary, from day one of his agency. A bulldozer of a woman, efficient as all get out. A prickly spinster, that one, and wildly, madly, insanely in love with the oblivious little Max. They were a team, the two of them.”
“I remember her. So friendly on the phone. Not chatty…but kind. Max hasn’t mentioned her in years, and I never thought to ask about her.” I looked back at the Paradise. “What happened?”
“Well, simple story, Edna. Max married me. The earthquake that rocked California. It was a big surprise for everyone, including the woman who quietly adored him. Sophie collapsed, hysterical, took to her bed. Suddenly she quit her job and hasn’t spoken to Max since that day. That’s when Max closed his office on Melrose Avenue to work out of his home. He wasn’t taking on new clients, and he’d meet the old ones in the bungalow. A month later Sophie wrote him a weepy letter that talked of his betrayal. A befuddled and miserable Max tried to reach her but to no avail. It still breaks his heart. He talks of her with such…melancholy. Whenever they cross paths in town, she makes a grunting sound, heaves those determined shoulders and storms away.” She glanced back toward the bar. “Max still worries about her.”
“What can Max do?”
“Well, nothing. Since the blacklist troubles erupted, she sent a brief note, along the lines of-‘I warned you, Max. I would have stopped you from sending out that letter. You reap what you sow. The Bible warns you, too.’”
“Another soul who has abandoned Max,” I lamented.
“Friends disappearing.” Alice touched me on the wrist. “You know, Edna, the disappearing act is the most popular form of entertainment in Hollywood these days.”
The movie delighted the three of us. Jimmy Stewart in
