North of Montana

to see people when they can’t see you is usually reserved for us law enforcement types; what a thrill it must have been for the doctor to share the privilege.

Then Jayne Mason begins to sing. Her head is still turned away from me and the voice is musing and low, as if I weren’t there:

“In the wee small hours of the morning / While the whole wide world is fast asleep …”

So this is what all the attention and fussing is about, why people put up with the silliness and the excess, why Magda Stockman has chosen to place her body between Jayne Mason and the rest of the world, why someone like my grandfather could actually be moved by a performance: this gift.

I steady myself as the limousine rocks gently around a corner, listening to Jayne Mason’s voice, unadulterated and flawless; for this moment, one of the elite.

• • •

We enter the Century City Shopping Center by some VIP entrance I never knew existed, parking behind another limousine, this one a double stretch in white. Jayne Mason puts on big dark glasses and fits a pale straw fedora over her French twist.

“Forgive me. I have to check one thing,” she says as Pauley comes around to open the door.

So I get out and follow. On the escalator I say, “If I’d known we were coming here, I would have brought my humidifier,” which of course makes no sense to her but she isn’t interested anyway, eyes on the widening bright space above us.

Once we hit solid ground she’s off like a smart missile weaving through the crowd toward a predetermined target. I have to quicken my pace to keep up. I’ve never seen a woman move so effortlessly in high heels. She is fixed dead ahead and pays no attention to the stares that come her way, shedding them off like raindrops from a nose cone. The nice thing about Century City is that it is an open-air mall and you get sunshine and updrafts and outdoor food stalls and guys selling cappuccino from wooden carts — but all of that goes by in a zip. The target is Bullock’s.

She pulls the chrome handles on the glass doors and strides across the cosmetics department on the first floor.

I guess she’s looking for a certain type of perfume because we make the circuit in about thirty seconds, past brass-trimmed counters, beautifully made-up salesgirls, customers, glossily lit displays, collections of fancy bottles, the two of us reflected in mirrored posts — she in vivid white and pink, me in khakis and a blazer — and gone. Overly sweet hot air envelops us and disperses in an instant as she hits the glass doors again and we’re back out on the sidewalk.

“I guess they didn’t have it.”

“No.”

“Want to try somewhere else?”

“If it’s not at Bullock’s, it’s nowheresville,” she says despondently.

We pass a chocolate shop and a place that sells dishes, keeping up the sprint.

“What did you want to talk about?”

“I did want to talk but now I’m not in the mood, are you?” she asks intimately, as if we’re on a shopping spree and maybe we should have some tea and rest our feet.

“Actually, yeah, I’m ready to talk anytime. It’s my job.”

We’re passing a complex of movie theaters.

“Have you seen Days of Thunder?” she asks.

“Not yet, but I like Tom Cruise.”

A modest crowd is lining up to buy tickets for the early bird shows. Without another word, Jayne Mason walks ahead of everyone, shows the cashier some kind of card, gets two tickets with no exchange of cash, and we’re off on another escalator up to the lobby.

This is definitely a left turn in the proceedings.

“I’m not sure I can do this—”

“Oh screw that,” she says. “Let’s go look at Tom Cruise.”

So we do. We actually do. We sit there and eat popcorn, Jayne Mason and me. It’s my kind of movie, full of bravado, and I enjoy it tremendously.

“ ‘Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse,’ ” Jayne Mason observes as we step out of the theater. “That was my line in a picture I made with Stewart Granger. Now he was a dreamboat.”

It is dark. Small white lights entwined in the trees and colorful banners flying off the Food Market create a carnival effect. People sit under yellow umbrellas eating teriyaki and kebabs and cheeseburgers at outside tables with their jackets buttoned up on this cool early summer evening, shoppers whisk by with floating white sacks. I feel flushed with the excitement of being on a first date: I like this person. I want to know more.

“Let’s eat. Someplace wonderful,” Jayne decides, and I acquiesce happily, enjoying the extraordinary experience of walking beside a world-famous movie star and the secret pleasure of knowing we are going back to a VIP entrance where we will get into a private limousine and be driven across the city to someplace wonderful.

• • •

We pull up at an Italian restaurant with a modest neon sign and a small green canopy. Tom Pauley gives a wry salute as we leave him back at the car. What a job. No wonder he’s down at the beach whenever possible. Inside there’s a cozy bar hung with clusters of half-size Chianti bottles and a huge photo of JFK. The walls are covered with movie posters and head shots of Lucille Ball, Don Rickles, and President Eisenhower, among others. I don’t see Jayne Mason in the crowd.

A slump-shouldered gentleman in a worn tuxedo says, “Good to see you again, Miss Mason,” and leads us into the main room, which is awash in soft orange-red light. The sweeping curved banquettes are orange-red and an assortment of ginger-jar lamps with linen shades have orange-red bulbs. Most of the tables are empty and white napkins are standing up throughout the restaurant like a herd of rabbit ears.

We pass a display case filled with models of trucks and pictures of that same slump-shouldered gentleman, thirty years younger, with the Pope. We pass two geezers complaining about losing at Santa Anita, and a decked- out blonde with some sleazeball type talking real estate deals. The waiters seem too old and depressed to notice their famous customer, but then I recognize an actor from a cop show and figure this must be a Hollywood hangout, the real thing.

“I’ve never had good luck with men and so I’ve always had to fend for myself,” Jayne says suddenly.

We are sharing an appetizer of fried zucchini, which, truthfully, they do better at T.G.I. Fridays. Jayne is drinking vermouth and I’m enjoying my 7UP and the clown art on the walls.

“My third husband, the used car king, was the final straw. He treated me like a piece of dirt under his feet. I used to wonder why the manicurist came out of his office wiping her lips.”

She pours us each more water from a small ceramic pitcher in the shape of a rooster head, which is the signature piece of the restaurant.

“He was the one who spent all my money. We were divorced in 1959. What else could a gal from Oklahoma do, flat broke with two children to support, except sing and dance her little heart out? So I did dinner theater, regional theater, hotel bars, any gig I could get, from Vegas to Palm Beach to Poophead, Iowa, and back. I did that for years, then I met Maggie Stockman.”

“She’s a smart lady.”

“She has no life,” Jayne says. “Her clients are her life.” Mason points the broken end of a bread stick at me. “She is an angel sent from heaven. Excuse me.”

On her way to the ladies’ room she passes a husband and wife wearing formal clothes. It is amusing to watch them trying to say, “That’s Jayne Mason,” without moving their lips.

She returns with fresh lipstick and Magda Stockman still on her mind.

“Maggie was the one who told me I should do drama. She convinced Joe Papp to take a risk with A Doll’s House and it changed my life, not only because it was wildly successful, but