The road curves through the pasture into a clump of sequoias.
There is a gatehouse but it is empty and the white armature is up, so I breeze through to Foxtail Ranch, acres of coastal woodlands with a private beach that Jayne Mason bought in the seventies for two million dollars, now worth easily ten times that much.
Five or six vehicles are parked in a small gravel area, workmen’s light trucks, the JM limousine, and a creamy new Cadillac with gold detailing that must belong to Mason’s personal manager, Magda Stockman, who (I have been told) will be present with her client today.
Thick foliage obscures most of the house. The entrance is nothing more than a door in an unglamorous white wall next to a garage.
A young man with lustrous shoulder-length brown hair answers my ring. Some men with long hair look like greaseballs and some look like jungle sex gods — like this one, with his muscular shoulders, alert animal eyes, faded swimming trunks, magenta polo shirt, and bare feet.
“My name is Jan. How was the traffic?”
“Better than Westwood.”
“It’s a hassle coming out but once you get here most people are glad they made the trip.”
I follow Jan through a courtyard, keeping my eyes on his powerful ankles (forget the calves, I won’t even go into the calves), which are embraced by a pair of woven Guatemalan ankle bracelets. I like the way the tan goes all the way between his toes — long, prehensile toes you can easily picture curled around the edge of a surfboard or, okay, the rails of a brass bed.
“You like it out at the beach, Jan?”
“Oh, yeah. I used to be a windsurfing instructor.”
“Don’t tell me Jayne Mason is into windsurfing.”
“No, she’s not,” he answers seriously.
“What do you do for Ms. Mason?” trying to keep a straight face.
“I’m her assistant.”
The Hollywood term for secretary. So Jayne Mason walked down to the beach one morning and picked up a hot young surfer to adorn the house and open her mail. His absolute lack of imagination makes me believe he is her secretary and nothing more. Everything he says is delivered with just enough energy to sound personal when it is actually by rote, like a bellhop in a good hotel. He isn’t interested in me. He doesn’t bother to meet my eyes. He is interested in his body and how he will look posed against the bar at McGinty’s tonight. I take note of these things because I have noticed that people generally hire assistants who are like themselves.
We continue around a corner where I am immediately hit by the sense of an old pool — the dense smell of chlorine and wet concrete — and sure enough, to my left is an oval-shaped swimming pool about forty feet long with a turquoise tile bottom. Nearby are two redwood chaise longues with green and yellow floral cushions, and, on the ground beside them, a Frisbee. The water looks funky and not very inviting, even to a water rat like me. I imagine the only people who use this pool are Jayne Mason’s grandchildren. Barbara told me she has five, from three marriages.
We enter a huge den with fake beams and a bright shamrock green carpet where I am suddenly jolted to find myself face-to-face with Jayne Mason, wearing an evening gown and a big smile and holding a bouquet.
After a stunned moment I realize it is only a life-size cutout but the presence is unsettling.
“Can I get you something? Coffee? Perrier?”
“Coffee would be great.”
“Decaf or regular?”
“Highest octane.”
“You got it,” Jan says without smiling, and leaves.
There are large deep brown swivel chairs that look like barrels and several coffee tables inlaid with stained- glass designs of maidens and doves and suns and moons. A prominent wet bar is stocked with everything from Glenfiddich scotch to French creme de cassis and plastered with layers of memorabilia.
Welcome to Cafe Jayne Mason. There are comic strips and caricatures and photographs of her taken with every conceivable celebrity including the last five presidents of the United States, as well as framed tabloid articles with amusing headlines speculating about her exploits. In the very center of the bar stands an enormous arrangement of fresh yellow roses in a crystal vase.
The odd thing is, the dates on the newspapers stop in 1974.
Now I understand the room. Why the brown louvered shutters are closed. Why the furniture, despite its grand scale and spotless upkeep, seems worn, and the air feels closed in and damp. This is a seventies house that has not been changed in twenty years. This room was designed for smoking dope and drinking alcohol and flirting and fucking and hiding from the California sun. It is a stage set for the kind of hedonistic pleasure that was taken in a certain style during a certain age and preserved intact so Jayne Mason can revisit that lusty image of herself whenever she steps through the doorway.
I pace the room, trying to get a feel for how recently it has been used and for what. No ashtrays. No wastebaskets. The fieldstone fireplace has been swept clean. But right above it, so poorly hung that it angles out from the wall as if about to tumble, is an utterly astonish ing painting. A seascape of sailboats racing across translucent blue-green water stirred by wind, so alive that it actually radiates light, too alive for the boundaries of its heavy gilded frame, the outdated room, the movie star’s sterile home.
Seeing such a thing in real life is a shock. I stare with longing into the passionately felt world of the canvas, unexpectedly moved to tears. The vitality of the painting makes everything else, including my own sad heart, seem dead.
“It was painted by Edouard Manet.”
I spin around. I hadn’t known there was anyone else in the room besides the cardboard cutout of Jayne Mason.
“She saw this when she was filming on Majorca. I have always encouraged her to collect art, but it does not suit her. She is only interested in acting, which is lucky for me. I am Magda Stockman, her personal manager.”
She is a large woman, a size fourteen, but dressed in a black suit with braided white piping of such fine wool and style that it makes her figure look trim. She moves with a rustle — it must be lined with silk. As we shake hands several heavy gold charm bracelets on her wrist jingle like Christmas bells and I am enveloped by a sweet, rich perfume. She wears black stockings and black high-heeled pumps with two back-to-back gold Cs on the toe that even a lowlife like me recognizes as the trademark for Chanel.
“Are there paintings like this all over the house?”
“Only a few small Picassos. It is just as well. Jayne is not the kind of person who enjoys to sit by the fire and look at pictures. She must always be
Magda Stockman rolls her hands over each other like a small engine so the bracelets tinkle merrily. The accent is mellow and burnished, possibly Central European. I get the impression she has been in this country a long time but cultivates the accent as part of the persona. She has broad Slavic cheekbones and moist unlined skin that seems extremely white against the black hair pulled severely off the face into a bow. She is so artfully put together that the only way to imagine her age is to guess somewhere between fifty and seventy.
“I am sorry to say that Jayne and I cannot see you today. We are having a meeting with some people out from St. Louis and it cannot be interrupted. Please to apologize to the FBI.”
My back stiffens.
“This matter came to us through the Director. We were told it was urgent.”
“It is of the highest urgency. But not today.”
She smiles indulgently with polished red lips.
“Please take your time and relax. You are of course welcome to walk down to the beach. Ask Jan if you need anything.”
Having given the United States government thirty seconds of her time, Magda Stockman hurries out, drawn by the ringing of a telephone somewhere in the house.
Jan reappears with a silver tray on which is a china coffee set patterned with strawberries — pot, cup and saucer, cream and sugar, the whole thing: service for one, like you’d see on a bed tray in one of those mail-order catalogues with hundred-dollar sheets, including a silver teaspoon on a blue cloth napkin.
He sets the tray down carefully, then runs a strong square hand through his tawny hair. “We’ll call your office
