“My new master. They don’t like these long vacations at Fox. On the lot every day. What can I do? No more freelance. Mr. Zanuck says I have responsibilities now. Yes, sir.” She raised her hand in a mock salute. “So I obey. The good soldier.”
“You?” Emma said. “He doesn’t know what he’s letting himself in for.”
The wide center hall, with two rooms off each side, was cool and dim, but it led to a large open room in the back that ran the entire length of the house, bordering the patio. It was an artificial room, clearly made by combining several smaller ones, and its whitewashed walls were Hannah’s art gallery, filled with large, vivid canvases. She painted in closeup. Over the fireplace, Connolly noticed two paintings from the corn series, massive abstract ears of multicolored kernels, but there were other subjects as well-desert landscapes, still lifes of chiles, an adobe wall lined with morning glories, so like the actual courtyard wall outside that it made a trompe l’oeil effect in the room. There were large terra-cotta jars on the tile floor and the geometric colors of Indian rugs. Single low- lying shelves held found objects-a rusty farm tool, little piles of pink rocks. Nothing was out of place. It was one of those rooms entirely arranged to serve an aesthetic.
The tea was ready so quickly that Connolly guessed she kept a kettle always near the boil. It was served, incongruously, in pretty Meissen cups, floral and delicate in the severe Southwestern room, like some gap in taste she could not leave behind.
“It was different before, of course,” Hannah said. “At Paramount they didn’t care. Well, maybe they did, but they didn’t say. When Mr. da Silva was there-Buddy da Silva,” she said, rolling his name. “So appropriate, you know. My Buddy.” She lowered her voice to imitate the song and laughed. “You could come and go there. They appreciated the artists at Paramount. From the first. Think of Von Sternberg, what they put up with from him. Such behavior. But now it’s a mess. Nobody knows anything. Before it was Marlene. Now Betty Hutton. It was time to go.”
“Hannah, you’ve been complaining about Hollywood for as long as I’ve known you,” Emma said.
“Yes? Well, that’s not so long, is it? No, it was different before. I was different, perhaps. So now I go to design musicals. Boost morale. Make Mr. Zanuck happy,” she said, smiling.
“And will that be any better?”
“But, my darling,” Hannah said, laughing, “think of the money. They have so much money now. Why not take some? If I stay on the lot and keep everyone happy, I can come back here for good. Just paint and paint and paint and let them tap-dance until they fall over.”
“You won’t,” Emma said. “You love it there.”
“No,” Hannah said seriously, “now I love the money. Besides, it’s finished for me there. Europe is finished. They used to call me for the ‘European touch.’ They would say it just like that. ‘Hannah, give it the European touch.’ What is that now? A bomb shelter? Rubble? No, no more Europe here, I think. It’s too serious now. This is a country of children.” She glanced at Connolly. “Oh, my country too. But now it’s for children. Mr. Zanuck and his polo friends. I don’t think he wants that European touch.”
“What does he want?” Emma said.
“Now?” Hannah replied, her mood light again. “Havana nightclubs. Palm trees. Girls. More girls. So now we go to Havana for a while and have fun. And then I come home to paint.”
“You’re really going there?” Emma said.
“No, no,” Hannah said. “They don’t want to go to Havana, just the nightclubs. It’s always the same nightclub. I went to Ciro’s. They have a long staircase there. You stop at the top when you enter, you stop at the top on your way out- two appearances, you see. All the producers go there. So they see my set and they say, yes, this is a nightclub. Wonderful. Hannah’s done it again. Maybe now I’ll have the Ciro’s touch.”
Connolly watched them as they smoked and talked, a quicksilver flow of gossip, and saw that for Emma it was like leafing through some colorful magazine of the outside world. Selznick’s divorce. The mad sets Dali designed for Spellbound, which Selznick was making because of his own psychoanalysis. Brecht, who never washed. Thomas Mann, who had recreated his Berlin apartment in Santa Monica. The difficulty of photographing Veronica Lake without making her look foreshortened. All messages from that world far from the mesa, where no one worked behind barbed wire and worried about algae in the water, where you could talk about anything. But what did she make of it? And as he watched her he realized, with a start, that she was watching him and that Hannah was aware of them both. They talked around him-he didn’t have to say a word-but Emma would glance over at him secretly, to see what he thought, his expression conversation enough. He became in some curious way their audience, without either of them addressing him directly. The talk was as ephemeral as column filler, and after a while he felt that neither of them was really paying attention, Emma because she was caught up in some disturbance he caused, Hannah because she was watching a drama play out. He felt like someone brought home to dinner on approval and wondered if Emma regretted bringing him, now that it was his approval she seemed to care about. When he lit a cigarette, she was alert to the sound of the match, and when he looked at her through the smoke, she flinched involuntarily, as if she felt him touching her. It was Hannah who rescued them.
“But enough of this foolishness,” she said, standing. “You must think I’m selfish, Mr. Connolly, talking only of myself like this. I’m afraid Emma’s to blame-she likes to listen to me, and you know, I can’t resist that. I don’t see many people. Now you must tell me about you.”
“He works up on the Hill,” Emma said protectively, before Connolly could answer. “Here, let me help you with the washing-up.”
“Ah, then I mustn’t ask any more. So all my chattering, it’s just as well. I know the rules. Emma told you maybe that some of your colleagues lived here at the beginning? With the scientists, no questions.”
Emma was collecting teacups and made no move to correct her, so Connolly said, “That must have been frustrating.”
“For me? Not at all,” Hannah said gaily. “I love secrets. And everyone was so charming. How is Professor Weissmann? Does he still play chess with Dr. Eisler? And that funny boy from New Jersey with the nice wife?”
“I never see them anymore,” Emma said. “Everyone’s scattered. Busy. I never see you anymore, come to that. It’s like people you meet on holiday and then lose touch.”
“Not you, my darling. Here you are, coming to see me off to Havana. And now you want to play hausfrau. Very well, here’s mine too. You wash up and go be nice to Hector, say nice things about me, and I’ll show your friend the ranch and say nice things about you.”
Emma glanced at her, disconcerted. “That won’t take long,” she said.
“That depends on how much he wants to know. You see that I’m a terrible gossip,” she said to Connolly. “Would you like that?”
“Very much,” he said, smiling.
Emma, holding a cup in each hand, gave a helpless shrug. “Do be back for supper.”
Surprisingly, Hannah leaned on his arm as they walked slowly toward the corral, not saying anything, an old couple. Even the silence seemed an unearned intimacy.
“She wants me to like you,” she said finally. They had reached the corral and stood at the fence, looking west toward the mountains.
“Do you?”
“Me? It doesn’t matter. She likes you.”
“Look, I don’t want you to think—”
“Ssh.” She put her finger to her lips. “It’s all right. Sometimes, you know, it’s easier to say something to a stranger. Do you mind if I say something to you?”
He looked at her expectantly.
“Be careful with her. I’ve been worried lately. I knew something was troubling her-now I see it was you.”
“You’re mistaken.”
“No. We can be honest with each other. Like strangers. I can see that you’re-well, ‘in love,’ what’s that? Something for the nightclubs, a fantasy, yes? Something for the children. No. Involved with her. That’s something too, you know. You can’t help it either, I see. You watch her all the time.”
“Do I?” Connolly said, trapped now in her premise, wanting to see where it would go.
She smiled. “Of course. That’s why I’m saying this to you. I think you can be good for her. At first I thought it was the boredom, something to do. The same way she studies those Indians. But now I see it’s more. With Emma, it’s always something more, you know? She can’t be casual. So you cannot be casual either, my friend. Don’t hurt
