Make Believe

“One of Frank’s goons might. Have you seen them? They’re like…buildings. But I don’t know…”

“Yes, I’ve met one. He was very polite.”

She grumbled. “Under orders probably not to kill you just yet.”

I clicked my tongue. “Thank you, dear. A comforting thought.”

“Frank is real sick of Tony these days.” She dug into the cheesecake.

“I noticed that.”

“After a while a leech starts getting on your nerves. Ask me about it. Tony lives with me-not for much longer, though. Anyway, Frank’s had it up to here, and Tony knows it now. That’s why they’re yammering about moving back to old New Jersey again, life among the goombahs. It ain’t gonna happen. Ethan thinks he can make Frankie boy beg them to stay here. Lot of good it’ll do him. But Frank’s a savvy L.A. customer, no? It don’t work. But, you know, it’s not only Tony. Frank’s had it with Ethan, too.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ethan used to see Frank as a God. Frankie this, Frankie that. He got on my one remaining nerve, let me tell you. Again, you know, the coattails to a world of money and cars and Palm Springs homes and Malibu and la-di-dah stuff. But Frank looks at Ethan as Tony’s zookeeper, small fry Metro hack that he is. It finally dawned on Ethan. Suddenly Frank’s colors are fading away. There’s Ethan, grinning that empty smile of his-alone. He’s got a brain that scares me-like a machine chugging along. He said something smart-ass after that ride home from Ava’s. Frank dropped both of them at my apartment-dumped them at my place. Tony said Frank treated them like trash in the car. Ethan said, ‘Frankie isn’t worth my little finger.’ Wow! Then he said, ‘Someday somebody is gonna plug him. Whoever did Max in got the wrong slob!’ Wow!”

“An angry man.”

“Tell me about it. Inside my apartment Ethan started in on that ‘failure’ crap-how he despised failure. Failure is an awful word, he said. All around him is failure. My God, he’s a bore. He pointed at Tony. Then at me, would you believe? The bastard. Then, at a picture of Frank Tony pinned to the goddamn wall. The biggest failure of all, Frank is. He’s glad that Frank is slipping, out of a contract at Metro, you know. ‘I still got my job at Metro,’ he said. ‘And my real estate.’ And Tony, to the slob’s credit, yelled back at him, “Yeah, but you just got enough to pay the tax on the Paradise bar.”

“How did Ethan take that?”

“He walked out, headed downstairs to get a cab.” Liz glanced down at her watch, and jumped. “For chrissake.”

“So you decided…Max…your visit.”

“I decided, what the hell, retrace my steps.”

“Max?”

“Exactly.”

“Why didn’t you call him?” I asked. “Instead you went to see him.”

She deliberated. “When we parted company, well, I had a few harsh words to say to the man. I ain’t a woman to mince words. I told him I hated him, that we all hated him. You know, over the top dramatics.” She preened. “I am an actress. So I figured he’d hang up on me.” Her eyes suddenly got moist. “I didn’t hate him, Miss Ferber. I liked him. I thought that he would see me standing there, all pretty in my new dress and my hair done nice like it is now, platinum and shiny, and he’d give me a break.”

“And did he?”

Gingerly, she patted her hair with her fingertips. “You know, Miss Ferber, I got something nobody else has. Nobody believes that, Max didn’t. But I got something. I watch movies and I think, yeah, I could do that. I’m perfect for this part or that one. I know I’m not Ava Gardner, but who the hell is? She comes along, a nobody, some cotton-picking gal from the backwoods, but God gave her that shape, those green eyes, that dimple. Christ! I swear when she looks at you, you sort of melt. But there’s something else there in those eyes…like a speck of gold dust. If you got the eyes, you make it out here. Look at my eyes. Gray, no? Drab. But I can make them sparkle.”

“Liz, tell me about going to see Max.”

She waited a while before answering. “Are you going to the police?”

“I think you should. You didn’t kill him.”

“Oh God, no. Will they think I did it?”

“I can’t speak for the police, but probably not.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m not sure, but honesty is best, Liz. Sooner or later, they’ll know and knock on your door. They will, Liz. Rest assured. It’s better if you tell them yourself.”

She debated that, but I could see her rejecting the idea.

“I don’t know. I can never decide anything.” She waved a forkful of cheesecake at me.

“Throwing Tony out is a decisive act.”

A wide, pleasant grin, her head tossed back. “Maybe you’re right. Thank you for that.”

“What did Max say when he answered the door?”

She had a faraway look in her eyes, as though she now reconstructed the scene. “I could hear him talking on the phone to someone. He yelled, ‘Just a minute.’ When he opened the door, he smiled at me. Well, I started to cry, Miss Ferber. I guess I’d been hungry for someone to smile at me. Tony grumbles all the time. Ethan frowns. Frank snaps. Christ, what do you gotta do to get a smile out of somebody these days? Anyway, he steps back inside, motions me in, and I tell him, ‘Can we talk, Max? I made a mistake.’ Direct as I could be. I could see he didn’t know what to think of that, but that was all right.”

“You went inside?”

She shook her head. “No, because I noticed his bandaged jaw. I’d heard that Frank knocked him down, but seeing that small man…battered like that…well, I asked him how he was. He was all groggy from painkillers, and he said he was going to sleep. Alice was out with you and Lorena, but come in. So I backed off. I said, ‘But will you call me, Max?’”

Liz started sobbing now, and globs of makeup bunched in the corners of her eyes and mouth, splotches of caked rouge. “‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘don’t worry. There’s always tomorrow.’”

She dabbed at her face with the cloth napkin, but that only seemed to make it worse. Her face looked ravaged and pocked.

“And so you left?”

“Yes. ‘Go to sleep,’ I said. He reached out and shook my hand. A gentleman, that Max. I stood on his doorstep and realized I was shaking.” She grimaced. “So now I’m back to bad-mouthing him ’cause I got to when I’m with the boys. I hate myself when I say nasty things about him.”

“Yes, I’ve heard you.”

“I ain’t proud of myself, Miss Ferber. I do what I gotta do.”

“You have to tell this to the police.”

A sigh. “I know.”

Watching her now, this woman who believed excess defined her-the skyward platinum hair and the garish lipstick, the brilliant spangled blouse, and the chunky rhinestone earrings and necklace-I felt sorry for her. Probably in her early forties, she most likely wrestled with late-night reveries about fame on the screen, though she felt, to the marrow, that life was somehow a dirty trick. The shadowy mirror she peered into in the bathroom at four in the morning told her a story she’d rather not hear, and so each day she renewed her dream with a grim resolve that you had to applaud. A cheap dream, this sad romantic, but it was hers. And, therefore, I supposed, wonderful.

“You went home?”

She shook her head. “No. Seeing Max really made me…fierce. I headed home but I was going nuts, so I drove around for a while. I even stopped for a hamburger and sat there almost crying. It got late but I decided to tell Tony what I’d done. So I drove to the Paradise bar because I knew he and Ethan would be there in that damn booth. Tony wasn’t working so he’d be drinking all night.”

“What did he say?”

She lifted her eyes, a gesture of disgust. “He was slumped in that booth. Drunk, staring at a wall, in a stupor.