The Chelsea Girls(80)

I sat down, reminding myself to breathe. The thought of even having one sip of coffee made me sick to my stomach, and I pushed it away.

“You’re not thirsty anymore?” Arthur poured a teaspoon of sugar into my cup. “I know you like it sweet.”

I decided to go on the offensive. “Did you steal my stationery and set up Charlie and Hazel?”

He tried, and failed, to keep a straight face. “What makes you think I’d do such a thing?” His eyes crinkled with amusement.

“It’s not a joke. You wrote that note to Charlie, didn’t you, and said it was from me?”

“It worked like a charm. The tabloids ran with it for days, and our boy Julius was moved to the inside pages, at least temporarily.”

“I thought we’d decided against it.” The words came out girlish and weak, plaintive.

He stuck a spoon in my coffee and stirred it, over and over. I watched, not wanting to meet his eyes, hypnotized by the clinking of metal against ceramic. “Yeah, well, you ran away from us, Max. They didn’t like that one bit. Did you really think you’d be safe in California?”

“I wasn’t safe in New York, what with Roy Cohn interviewing me and all.”

“We don’t like the idea of losing track of you, though.”

I threw up my hands. “I’m an actress who came to Los Angeles for a part. It’s not like I was trying to shake you.” I knew he didn’t believe me. “You got want you wanted, right?”

“True. Hazel and Charlie’s scandal took the heat off. I was eventually able to get out, as were a couple of others. So the question remains, ‘What’s next?’” His knee touched mine under the small table and I stopped myself from recoiling.

“I’m shooting a movie, that’s what’s next.”

It was as if he didn’t even hear me. “We have to rebuild. Start over. It’ll be like when we first met. That time was special to me. Do you remember?”

I did. Back when he was charming and kind. He’d sweeten me up and then catch me off guard with an offhand insult, a sarcastic remark. At the time, I dismissed it, thinking he’d had a bad day, that he was under too much pressure. I did whatever I could to soften him up and avoid another caustic sneer.

How I wish I could go back to that moment and do something different, knowing that I could manage on my own and didn’t need to twist myself into the smallest person possible to please him. I would’ve sneered right back and told him to go screw himself. I would’ve used the biggest, most booming voice I had—and I could boom when I needed to, just ask the folks in the back row of the Biltmore—and sent him running for the door.

It wasn’t too late, was it?

“Arthur. I’m out.”

“No, you’re not.

I recognized the steely edge to his voice from when he was dealing with a reluctant operative. No one went against Arthur’s wishes. All I needed to do was forget to lock a window one night and I’d be a cold corpse by the next morning.

Arthur finished his coffee and took mine for himself. “You’re not alone. You must remember that. You have me, you have your grandmother . . .”

The threat was implicit. Waves of panic poured off my body. I looked around, but no one else seemed to sense the danger. Only me.

He reached over to smooth a curl behind my ear. I flinched as if I’d been hit.

I never wanted to be touched by him again.

“Look, Arthur. I’m no longer interested in working for you, or for the Party. You should move on, find someone else without my complicated history. Really, why take a risk?”

He licked his lips. “Don’t forget the reason you’re here is because of us. Because we paved your way.” He waited a beat. “No. You can never leave the Party. Or me.”

I sat back and crossed my arms. “You don’t get to call the shots anymore.”

“Watch it, Maxine. You’re going to be very sorry if you continue to talk like this.”

It was now or never.

Before I’d left the Chelsea for good, I’d made one more stop, at Lavinia’s. A young woman stood in the middle of her living room—Lavinia had started taking on private acting students as a way to supplement her income since being blacklisted—and I apologized for the interruption. “Lavinia, I have to give you something.”

“I’m in the middle of a lesson, come back in an hour.” Lavinia turned back to her student. “Once again, and remember the character is trying not to cry. The tension comes from her fighting against the tears.”

“No, Lavinia,” I insisted. “I’m leaving, for good.”

She walked over to the door and stood close, concern in her eyes. “What’s going on, Maxine?”

“I want you to take this.” I handed over a sealed, brown-paper package consisting of all the pages I’d stored in my mantel: my diary, as well as detailed records of what I’d done and who I’d met with, of Arthur’s involvement in the Party, and my own. “Keep it hidden. Please don’t read it. If anything happens to me, give it to the FBI.”

“Maxine, are you in trouble?”

“I won’t be, if everything works out.”

“This means you’re leaving us all behind. Me, Hazel?” Lavinia sensed the truth, I was sure. She’d known me since I was so young, knew where I came from, who had influenced me. So many times I’d considered confiding in her but then pulled back, worried that I would be putting her in danger. Yet here I was doing so now. A miserable shame washed over me.