long, wide bed blocked off the back, fluffed up by a rumpled comforter with random brown stains that splattered out like haphazard sunrays, and bordered by a heap of threadbare pillows covered in what once had been the finest spun cotton. Behind it hung bright cherry wainscoting that was more funereal than royal. Along the right side sat a red velvet provincial couch, its richly cherry-colored legs standing like lazy soldiers on duty, buttressed against a rosewood table that held a Chinese vase and a Saxe statuette. Opposite it was a vanity with the mirror expanding up and wide in an ornate frame, carelessly brushed white more than once (its master carver surely would be horrified to see his detailed craft mauled by thick brushstrokes). The desktop was littered with small bottles of perfume made of cut glass and with silver tops, surrounded by jars of makeup and pills and brushes and clips and combs and traces of forgotten jewelry.
Sitting above the couch was the press photo of her taken in her infamous coffin some years back, placed perfectly so that it reflected in the center of the mirror. Her eyes seductively closed, arms crossed, and her lips drawn apart partly in defiance and partly in childish restraint, under the light of a single candle, while near the bottom of the casket was the inscription
Sarah loved the railcar for its comfort. It smelled of Paris. The sooty air. Remnants of perfume bouquets. Sweet butter caked into the furniture. And the spilled red wine stains hidden by the matching burgundy carpet and well-traveled ashtrays smelled of the breath of every Frenchman she had ever loved. This was her home. A place to go when the pressure became too much. When she needed a warm comforting bosom to cuddle into. And each time she entered the railcar it seemed like she fell to that couch and let out a sigh that blew a deep breath from within her, extricating all the posture and strength and image and grandness that inflated the tiny being of Henriette- Rosine Bernard into the larger-than-life Sarah Bernhardt. And she could almost see the breath coming out of her, as though it had its own form, a perfect cylinder colored chalky gray with a faint light in the middle, bellowing out of her mouth and then dissipating over the room in millions of crystalline shards that floated down lone and powerless. Then she would lay her head into her hands and cry. Sometimes for an hour straight. Sometimes less. Letting the warm tears stream down her cheek, mixing with the mucus that she didn’t bother to try to inhale. The gluey composite ran over her lips and sometimes her tongue, which made her cry even harder because she knew that she was tasting something real, that there was indeed flesh and bones sculpting this world.
BY LATE AFTERNOON, Vince Baker rode the red car into downtown Los Angeles. He figured that C. C. Brown’s might not be the worst place to go. He could deal with Fay’s petulance, certainly more than he could with Scott’s hot-breath demands for the latest installment on the Bernhardt story.
Once he had sat down, he thought about wanting to get back on his Hollywood piece—one that oddly enough also had involved Bishop Conaty. The newly growing Hollywood was a village whose confused identity was the soul of its intrigue. A locale that Bishop Conaty was desperate to preserve. A place torn between old-fashioned morality and innovation. The very collision of mores and new aesthetics. It was only last year that the city had voted to keep liquor out, in response to the area becoming a magnet for decadence. Bernhardt would love this tidbit for the irony: Bishop Conaty, sensing the need to protect the piety of Hollywood, bought the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart in east Hollywood and founded a new academy and novitiate of the sisterhood. Baker had interviewed the bishop while he politicked for his new academy (one that did not come cheap at $10,000), and Conaty had exclaimed joy at announcing the news that the liquor ban had passed with a vote of 113–96. The bishop never even considered that there were more than 700 people who lived there, and a total vote of 209 was barely more than a quarter of the population. As a reporter, all the vote told Baker was that there were only 113 people that the Los Angeles liquor industry could pay off to vote in their favor. After that, only 96 people really cared either way.
Baker spotted a destitute man who faced backward near the front of the car. The bum’s feet tapped alternate rhythms while his fingers drummed on his knees. His empty irises darted side to side. At one point they caught Baker’s, before leaping away at the exact moment of recognition. The man spoke to himself in a polite and respectful tone, never yelling and carrying on like some hobos can do, always keeping a reserved expression that painfully tried to hold back a dangerous smile. The man kept looking over at him. Talking. Shifting his eyes. Mumbling. Fumbling with his hands, intermingling his fingers. He then held Baker’s stare for a moment and whispered loud enough for him to hear, “There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved than the name of Jesus,” at which Baker laughed hysterically.
When Baker did file off the trolley at Seventh and Spring, the streets felt eerie, as if they were keeping secrets and engaging in conspiratorial whispers behind the midafternoon curtain of the shopping and business district. The unusual number of young people strolling the sidewalks in vociferous dereliction was a clear indicator of what the real downtown was about. Not Broadway with its theaters, haberdasheries, and ladies’ boutiques. In this deeper downtown, moral requisites looked like afterthoughts. Men sauntered in carnival laughter, trailed by flirtatious young women who looked liked the pen-and-ink models advertising “stylish, natty” ladies’ alpaca bathing suits from $1.98 to $5.00 in the local papers.
He made his way into C. C. Brown’s, “Home of the Ice Cream Sundae.” Bright lights reflected off the spotless white tiled floor. The counter was crowded with young girls set sidesaddle on the black cushioned stools while their overattentive dates stood beside them, each suitor competitively focused on attracting the attention of the lone waitress or ice cream jerk to fulfill his girl’s wishes, straddling the line between chivalry and puppy dog-ness. Traces of ammonia fumes rose from the floor in battle with the pungency of hours-old spilt ice cream and the sweaty anticipation of love. It was loud inside the place. Reams of laughter unrolled in stark contrast to the funereal utterances of the formal downtown establishments like Al Levy’s. People were alive in C. C. Brown’s. It was the Los Angeles of possibility. This area was not about broken promises or ambivalent possibilities. It was about here. About now. Where yesterday was gone and there was no tomorrow. It was not about dreaming, but about living dreams. All as long as you stayed within its confines and didn’t accidentally cross your way into Chinatown. Baker figured that after the good bishop saved Hollywood, he would surely press his efforts in this direction and into the seediness of the Chinese district. The subject had vaguely come up in Baker’s interview with the bishop, his expression practically cracking into four distinct pieces and slithering off his face when he had said the word
Fay immediately made her way over to the table, the water pitcher in hand. Her expression was equal parts confusion and domain. “Why I’m surprised to see you here,” she said, focusing her stare solely on Baker.
He leaned in to try to whisper. “I am here to get away from work is all.”
