covertly eavesdropping to get their story and
MAX HELD THE GRAND DOOR of Al Levy’s for Sarah. She graced in, immediately intrigued by the restaurant’s dark elegance yet disappointed by the obviousness of its idea, and that it lacked the informality that she had been hoping for. It was masterfully contrived, designed with the same artisanship of a master set builder, but still she felt the thinness of the walls, like a stretched canvas framed with boards, with the scene painted on the facing sides. It would not take more than a convergence of errant sneezes to accidentally blow the whole place down. It was as though she had entered stage left into a generic Europe from backstage Los Angeles.
She and Max waited at the door near the host’s podium. She had eschewed the idea of wearing a blouse but did stick with the idea of white in the form of a long, elegant dress whose hem gracefully dragged the floor. The material, thin batiste cotton (a fabric chosen for most of her California wardrobe, all tailored by Laferriere), flowed with a ghostly elegance. She looked to be in motion even when standing still. The greeting area was dark, lit only by two candelabras, clearly affected to further the drama of walking into the sparkling dining room. To an unsuspecting diner who happened to glance toward the front entrance, Sarah must have looked like a passing apparition in that hollow.
“Are you sure about this, Molly?” she asked, taking a short step backward.
“What I know is that the concierge recommended it.” He leaned into the empty host’s stand and drummed his finger against the hard wood.
“Maybe that’s it. It seems like a place that people think we would like.”
Max shook his head. He had been through this too many times to remember. Her first instinct was always to find the faults. Once she could identify everything wrong or suspect about where they were, then she could settle in to enjoy herself. “We don’t have to stay,” he said in an almost rehearsed fashion.
“Maybe if we could just be seated.”
“I don’t see the host.”
“Being seated would make it better.”
Max looked out into the dining room for someone who could assist them to their table.
“We have a reservation for sure?” Sarah asked.
“Concierge said he made it.”
“And you tipped him, I assume. You know they expect that here, don’t you?”
“Sarah, please.”
She threw her arms around his neck, adopting the role of the old lush. “Oh Molly,” she whispered, childlike. “Relax your ass cheeks. If we could just sit down is all that I’m saying. I’m so fatigued.”
They waited for five impossible minutes. Max began shifting foot to foot while his breathing hardened. It was difficult to know whether he was truly annoyed with the lack of service, or if he was anticipating his employer’s reaction.
Sarah finally fulfilled Max’s prophecy. “This seems an unusual amount of time to wait,” she said.
“I am doing my best.”
“The rest of our crew will reach Los Angeles before we get a table.”
“Sarah.”
“I am only joking, Molly. Please. Personal is not becoming on you…Maybe the host is upstairs by the bar. Perhaps we should check.”
“Maybe,” Max said, then suggested that Sarah should wait in the foyer in case the host did in fact arrive. He would go upstairs and check around. But she insisted on going with him, that she didn’t want to be left alone. All it would take would be one crazy Catholic to notice her, and then Sarah wasn’t sure that she could be responsible for how she might handle the situation.
They made a child’s pact. They would walk halfway up the stairs and then stop. Sarah would look up. Max would look down. If there was not a host to greet them by that point then they would descend the stairs, head straight out the door into a waiting cab with a directive to get to the nearest diner.
By the second step Sarah knew that she had been seen. There is a certain shift in the dynamic of the room whenever someone has made her—a pocket of silence followed by a downshift in volume, throwing off the balance of the room. Then it starts to spread. Sometimes a cancer. Sometimes dominoes. Until the entire space has adopted a new personality fueled by fascination and intrigue. It is at that precise moment, the one where the last voice has hushed, and a temporary silence stands, that she always knows when she has diseased the entire room, infected everyone there with her presence until they are consumed by her. On some level it does not really affect her, because it is intrinsic to her being; at the very least, it is the oxygen that keeps the being of Sarah Bernhardt the Stage Star breathing. Her dirty little secret is that the rest of the world doesn’t know how critical they are to keeping that Sarah Bernhardt alive. The moment when that room doesn’t take notice is the moment when Sarah Bernhardt wilts and withers away.
At the agreed upon halfway point, Sarah and Max stopped. She felt reinvigorated. Puffed with life. Her veins pure and free from the opium. She didn’t acknowledge the spectators. That was part of the game. The distance was the fascination. She thought about her agenda to quit that she had concocted while back at the hotel, and smiled to herself. In a million years, Max would never believe her if she was to turn to him and say that she wanted out of the business. He would probably give her one of those Molly kisses, stretching on his tiptoes for no real reason and grasping both her shoulders while gracing her cheek with stiff lips. He would be right. Sort of. There were two things she did refuse to do: fade away or be shoved away.
Sarah looked up at the bar, letting her gaze follow the piano’s melodic breeze along an empty dance floor big enough for two, then over to the bar where a slouch-shouldered bartender in a false black vest and white bow tie made time with a resentful cocktail waitress. Otherwise she didn’t see anybody else up there, least of all the gentleman host. “And do you see anything?” she asked Max.
“Not even an empty table.”
“We must remember to ask that concierge for your tip back.”
They turned in choreographed precision. Max took her arm as a gentleman escort, and they descended the stairs as the genuine article, misplaced in this faux proscenium summer stock one-act of a restaurant. Shoulders back. Chins arched slightly. Eyes above the crowd. “I really did just feel like having a
“The closest they have in America is a grilled cheese sandwich.”
“That will do.”
They walked down to the main floor and through the foyer without acknowledging or honoring any part of the surroundings. They didn’t even notice the sound of the potted palm falling over upstairs. Or the spray of coins hastily tossed on the bar. Nor the awkward stumbling behind them on the stairs they had just left. Or even the slamming door of the cab behind them as Vince Baker directed the driver to “catch that cab.”
MOST REPORTERS only get one chance. They get a single shot to pose their questions and establish their rapport. Unpreparedness. Boredom. Ignorance. Aloofness. Any combination of these integers will not only kill a story, but will also kill a reputation. There are no apologies. No second chances. Editors lose faith. The cubs on the dog watch start picking up the assignments, and you spend most of your days looking for some kind of dope that will lead you into the good fortune of a story that will reestablish your credibility on the street and in the newsroom. The bottom line, the lesson: Be prepared. Otherwise the business will eat you alive from the inside out.
VINCE BAKER HADN’T CONSIDERED IT irony but rather coincidence that Bernhardt’s cab turned down Broadway and stopped in front of Ralph’s—just around the corner from the Cathedral of our Lady of Angels—the very diner where he had drafted the beginning of the League of Decency boycott piece. He told the driver to keep the motor running as he watched Bernhardt get out of her car. She stood on the curb, looking into the Ralph’s window while her slightly younger companion fumbled through his wallet, no doubt calculating the worth of his bills and exchanging the rates in his head. It was clear to Baker that Bernhardt’s escort served in a professional capacity. He had a look of servitude in his posture. Confident and sure of himself. Poised to accommodate her in a way that only a smitten man who rarely saw night except for outside his window would behave given his one shot with a beautiful woman. But this man was no smitten agoraphobic. He stood a head taller than his mistress did, with a jacket cut so splendidly to his physique that neither he nor the jacket could be from anywhere else but the
