Siren Queen(53)
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, wondering if I should say more, and Harry gave me a tired grin that still had some spark to it.
“Well, perhaps an old man can bore you all about it tonight. Dinner at my place?”
I smiled, aware that even as they flexed the marvelously webbed fins at my hips, Whalen and Braggo were listening closely to our conversation. Harry didn’t press. He was good at that, moving the conversation to the creature features being done over at Aegis, the price of steak in the city, and other things. After the shoot was over, he smiled to find me sitting on the bumper of his Bentley.
“Is Whalen still giving you trouble?” he asked, and I shook my head.
“He doesn’t dare. He’s worried that my Oriental honor will skewer him straight through his privates.”
Harry chuckled.
“I should remember that you are a girl who can take care of herself. Do I need to bring you home early tonight?”
I shook my head. I had moved out of the dorm two years ago. There hadn’t been much point in staying after Greta left, and Nemo’s Revenge impressed everyone enough that I could do as I liked. The apartment on Rexford Avenue was small and relatively ungracious, because most of my cash went home to my parents. My sister had moved out a year ago to live with some of her artist friends in San Francisco, and she hadn’t been back since. I’d wanted the apartment because it felt like a thing that I should have wanted.
In a gloomy way, I liked the loneliness. Now it was a choice rather than something I felt in the empty dorm room or walking between the fires on Friday night. I still spent most of my time at the studio, returning to the apartment via streetcar. Sometimes, when the nights were still, I opened the window and rested my chin on the sill, listening to the growl of the automobiles grow louder day by day.
I was never the most voluble company, but I didn’t have to talk at all. Harry kept up a stream of chatter from the studio all the way up to his house. He told me how hard it was to find a good man to look after the pool, he told me about the current feud between Brenda Marlow and Jean Livingston, he confided in me that Annette Walker was trying to sleep her way to the top, only to be stymied by the fact that she couldn’t tell a caterer from a producer, leading to a rather scandalous mix-up at Robbie Duval’s party …
As Harry talked faster and faster, he drove faster and faster as well. Finally, I reached over to touch his hand where it gripped the clutch. He was unexpectedly warm, almost feverish, but he glanced at me.
“You don’t have to with me,” I said, and he nodded once. He eased off the speed, and we made it to the house in Bel-Air in one piece. As he pulled into the garage, I noticed that there was something dark and almost foreboding about the house. When we entered, the lights were off, and the air inside was oddly stale, as if left unmoved for some time.
“Where’s Teo?” I asked, looking around. I had seen him the last time Harry had asked me to come for dinner. I brought a bag of perfectly ripe, perfectly creamy avocados, and the three of us had eaten all of them, sprinkled with salt and lemon juice. I could almost taste the avocado now, a strange and ghostly sensation in Harry’s suddenly unwelcoming house.
“Gone, I’m afraid,” Harry said, gesturing expansively at nothing. “Gone and left an old man to putter in the kitchen as best he can. I can still do us up something, I imagine…”
He started talking again as he heated oil in the pan and browned a handful of hastily chopped red onions. Teo was a perfect angel, coming to rescue an old sinner who certainly did not deserve him, Teo was too pure to be sullied by the filthy world. He had never deserved Teo, never would, and of course, inevitably, Teo had come to see that. Yellow bell pepper, almost incandescently bright in his hand, was chopped and scattered in the pan as well, and when the onions were softened, he added bloody red tomato before turning back to me.
“It is the way of the world, I suppose,” Harry said, smiling a faded smile. “The good move on, and the wicked remain.”
I envied the kind of girl who could walk over and wrap her arms around him, but I wasn’t that. I perched at the marble kitchen island, my chin in my hands, and watched him instead.
“The wicked is making me eggs,” I observed. “I don’t have any complaints.”
He chuckled a little at least, and he cracked three large white eggs into the skillet. He salted them and peppered them, scrambling them as carefully as he tied his tie first thing on set. He never let the wardrobe girls do it. Too hasty by half, he always said.
He set two places at the table, and it seemed to me that there was already something lost and old about him, like a pensioner puttering around a house that was too large and too full of memories. The food was good at least, eggs served over leftover warmed rice, and we ate in silence, letting the clatter of real silver and real ceramic plates do the talking for us. Teo talked a great deal, and without him, we were two silent mirrors, reflecting nothing at all.
“I’m getting married next month,” Harry said finally, pushing his plate away. I glanced up at him in surprise.
“I hadn’t heard,” I said cautiously, and he shook his head with bitterness.
“No, you wouldn’t have. Wolfe decided it a week ago, but it took Harvey Rose a little while to find someone who would be suitable. Confirmed bachelors are out, it seems, and they would like to make a family man out of me.”