Chapter 26 - Where the Truth Lies

I HAD INTERVIEWED Richard Harris a few years after the success of his hit record “MacArthur Park,” which was named after a real place in downtown Los Angeles and which, on the recording, Harris continually and mistakenly referred to as MacArthur’s Park. During the course of the interview, he told me that his favorite place to stay in Hollywood was the Roosevelt Hotel, and I’d been puzzled by that until he explained that when he stole the towels in his room, they were correctly monogrammed for him. Much as he, Rita Hayworth, and Rex Harrison might have adored the Roosevelt for this specific reason, the hotel had clearly once seen better days, and its view of those better days was growing dimmer as they receded into memory. Like MacArthur Park (around which a Central American community was building but no real estate developers were), it was not that anyone was doing anything awful to the Roosevelt. It was simply that, when something broke, no one fixed it.

The Roosevelt Hotel—its address was 7000 Hollywood Boulevard—had been built in 1927, around the same time Joe Young built his Hollywood-by-the-Sea in Florida. It made a lot of sense as the place to hold the fourth annual Scotty Awards. At the Roosevelt’s once-fashionable Cinegrill, F. Scott Fitzgerald used to be a social drinker who never stopped being social; he once went ten rounds with Ernest Hemingway (I’m not referring to boxing) and won on a technical blackout. I wondered if Lil Walker had any Cinegrill stories to share with me.

I stepped into the hotel’s still-handsome two-story Spanish Mediterranean lobby, its tile floors bouncing the sound of my footsteps up to the hand-painted ceiling and back to my ears in a pleasant, precise ricochet. I walked by the staircase where Bojangles Robinson had purportedly shown Shirley Temple how they might perform a dance routine in The Little Colonel. Then on to the Daisy Room, where I found Nita Cowan, who was handling P.R. for Neuman and Newberry. She told me how thrilled she was that I could be part of the event. If she were about to be beheaded, she’d probably also have said this to the hooded man carrying the ax.

The room was smartly dressed, the tables in salmon-colored linen with a centerpiece of white flowers at each table. There was a dais, with a podium at center stage. Behind it was a transparent Lucite triangle upon which sat three clear shelves, the resting place for twenty-three Scotty awards, which were in the shape of Fitzgerald’s profile. I asked if the winners’ names were on them and was told no, that they would all be inscribed after the ceremony, if the recipient so wished it, for a very nominal fee. I asked if Rona Barrett was there yet (I had never met her, although like anyone who ever watched TV, I knew what she looked like). Nita said Rona had a taping conflict and that she would be arriving just before our particular presentation was to begin. I told Nita that my only concern was that I had a meeting with Vince Collins set for this afternoon, but she assured me the ceremony wasn’t going to go over two hours.

She suggested I head up to the podium and get the feel of the stage. She handed me a file card on which there were some quips I was supposed to exchange with Rona.

“Really?” I said upon hearing this information. “I’m a writer—can’t I just use my own words?”

She explained with not much patience that Rona would be working from the same script and that it would be unprofessional for me to depart from it, not to mention confusing for Rona. I walked up to the podium. The microphone was placed a little high, and when I bent its gooseneck down, it gave off the same sort of feedback that had made Jimi Hendrix the star of Woodstock. Everyone working in the room looked annoyed with me. I reeled off a sentence and retreated from the stage.

Nita looked displeased. “You better speak up when you do it for real, Kerry. I couldn’t hear a word you said.”

I looked down at the card in my hand. “Nita, I see that Rona is supposed to say to me, ‘Well, I’d say you really knocked one out of the park with your book. Has to be the first time anyone hit a home run on ball four.’ What does that mean?”

Nita examined the card with mild curiosity. As she read it, I added, “See, I’ve written for magazines and newspapers. My first book isn’t out yet.” She looked the notes over again and handed the card back to me.

“I don’t know, I guess it’s a joke. It is sort of funny. Just go with it.”

I stared accusingly at Nita. “Someone else was originally supposed to do this with Rona other than me—that’s what this is, isn’t it? Look, I don’t mind, I’m not a celebrity, I know that. But could Rona just talk to me as if I’m me? I don’t know how to reply to what you have her saying.”

Nita gave me a frosty smile. “Sure you do, Kerry. You read what’s on the card. Rona already has hers, she said she’d look it over on the way here.” She looked at the card again. “I have no problem with this. Look, it’s not like this is on TV or anything. And you must have interviewed someone in sports in your life.”

She was obviously expecting me to answer. “The closest would be Paul Newman when he made a film about hockey.”

Nita smiled. “There you go. I’ll see if I can fix it. Just be nice, okay? Neuman and Newberry had to fork out a thousand dollars for the table we’re at.”

It was an otherwise empty table. Nita and I sat there watching the proceedings alongside the three steps up to the temporary stage. It was silly for me to be nervous, but anytime I have to speak before more than five people, I get the jitters. The luncheon wasn’t exactly star-studded, but Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss as hosts were charming and sly. Shari Lewis presented the Best Children’s Book award to a lavish Disney edition of Lady and the Tramp, which was accepted by Dean Jones. Roger Vadim presented Best Book on Foreign Film. He said that up until recently, he’d thought that California champagne was imported and his ex-wife Jane Fonda was a foreign film star. They’d divorced only a few months earlier, and he added that now she was foreign to him all over again.

I was getting anxious that Rona Barrett would be a no-show. We were only one category away from our presentation, which was for Best Critical Book on Cinema. But as a round of applause went up for Best Song Folio from a Motion Picture, Rona Barrett slid into the chair next to Nita. She had clearly just come from taping because she had on the heavy makeup required for TV. Or maybe she always looked that way. As she took note of any celebrities who might be in the room, I leaned over to her and extended my hand.

“Hello,” I whispered. “I’m presenting the next award with you.”

Rona looked at me. “You’re not Jim Bouton.”

I nodded my head glumly. “I know. I’ve tried to be throughout my life, but as you see… a dismal failure.” Ah. So I’d been summoned in relief, as it were, for the pitcher-author of Ball Four.

Rona’s reaction was reasonable, intelligent, and proved me not insane. She gestured to the file card in her hand. “Well, then, what they have us saying makes no sense.”

“I know.”

“No sense at all. Typical.”

Richard Benjamin was introducing us. “Our next award will be presented by two women from parallel tracks of reportage. One is the first lady of TV gossip and the editor of three, count them, three magazines featuring all the showbiz news that’s fit to ooze.” Richard looked at the card in his hand with mild dismay. “Your turn, darling,” he said to his wife, Paula, murmuring, “and not a moment too soon.”

Paula took over. “And with her, a young woman whose questions of the famous have sometimes resulted in answers we never thought we’d hear. She also writes a lot about sports.” This was news to me. I looked at Nita, who winked as if to say, “Told you I’d fix things.” Oh thanks so much. Paula continued, “And her first book about, and written in collaboration with, Vince Collins will be published by Neuman and Newberry this spring. Please welcome Rona Barrett and Kerry O’Connor.”

Rona and I stood and headed toward the podium. Rona stopped to talk to about three people on the way to the temporary stage, so I was left up there alone for a good ten seconds with nothing to do but wonder what I was going to say. At last Rona arrived at the mike. The first line was mine, and I decided to not read what was written. Instead, I somberly intoned: “Ladies and gentlemen, the lovely Ms. Barrett here was originally scheduled to present this next award with Jim Bouton, former major-league pitcher and author of the best-selling book Ball Four. She was, of course, surprised to be told that I would be presenting the award with her.” I let mild anguish register on my face. “However, I’d like to make it clear to all of you…” (dramatic pause as I summoned the courage) “that I actually am Jim Bouton.” I put this across with solemnity. There was a moment in which I wondered what had made me think that was funny… and then, thank merciful heaven, there came a good-sized laugh across the room. “I hope you appreciate how hard it was for me to come up here and let you see me for who I truly am, and how hard it has been for me to keep my proclivities a secret shared only by my very closest teammates…” By now there was considerable laughter, including the encouraging howls of Rona. I added, “And if you thought my previous book contained some shocking revelations, wait till the next one.” I looked down toward the general area of my crotch and looked back up. “Its title will be Balls None.”

Hilarity ensued. The great thing about this setup, which Rona instantly realized, was that we could then do the Barrett-Bouton repartee as written, me in a slightly butch voice, she as her usual self, and it played nicely in this context.

Like every serious actress who’s ever found herself in an out-and-out stage farce, I instantly, shamelessly became a slut for laughs, a camp follower for a guffaw. Yes, this was what I’d always wanted. How lonely it had been, never hearing the laughter of my readers. I’d finish up my silly book about Vince and then head straight into stand-up work. College concerts more than nightclubs, I thought.

But before I did that, there was the little matter of announcing the Scotty award. Ho hum. Well, we’d soon dispatch that assignment. I had the envelope with the nominees and Rona had the envelope with the winner. I read:

“In the category of Best Critical Book on Cinema, the nominees are: Howard Hawks: The Vanishing Breed by Karl Thompson; Hitchcock and the Gaumont Studio by Robin Wood; Lelouch on Lelouch by Claude Lelouch; The Shy Genius of Harry Langdon by the late Arthur Conklin; and Val Lewton at RKO by Daniel Gerstein and Michael Croft.”

I stepped back and relinquished the microphone to Rona. My chum. She might want me to cohost her gossip show with her. I went back to get a Scotty award from a five-foot-eleven waif whose job it was to take the awards from the shelf and give them to the presenters.

“And the Scotty goes to…” Rona tore open her envelope and announced, “The Shy Genius of Harry Langdon by the late Arthur Conklin!”

There was applause that hopefully Arthur could hear somewhere. Paula Prentiss stepped over to Rona and whispered something in her ear. Rona nodded eagerly and proclaimed into the microphone:

“Ladies and gentlemen, accepting the award is Mr. Lanny Morris!”

I heard this as I took the Scotty award from the model, heard the crowd start applauding at their loudest level of the afternoon, heard the sound of the Scotty hitting the Lucite base of the display shelves where it had fallen after I’d let it pass through my hands.

The model picked it up and handed it to me again.

I had to run before he saw me—oh but of course he’s seen me already, I’m on a goddamn stage, I was just prattling away thinking I was being funny. Funny!!! That’s right, God, fuck me. Fuck me!!

More applause for Lanny.

Mom, please save me. I saw him moving quickly up the steps to the stage, looking dashing in a tuxedo.

Mom wasn’t going to save me. And Rona was too busy applauding Lanny to save me from this man who had taken me to Shea Stadium, taken me for Chinese food, taken me to the Drive-In, taken me to the Plaza, taken me. Lanny was now on the stage. With a big smile on his face, he pointed a finger at Rona, who hugged him.

He never took his eyes from mine, not even for a second. And he never stopped smiling, a big painted circus poster smile that held no mirth. His television technique served him well. He had always been able to cheat his angles so that when he seemed to be talking with Vince or a stooge at his side, he was actually looking past their shoulder at the cue cards. Suddenly, Rona was Vince and I was a cue card. He could read me like I was Hop on Pop.

I had made love with this strange man. I had held my body against his, surrounded him with my mouth, and drawn him into me gladly, angling myself to take him deeper. Now he looked at me with his big smile of hatred. I was so afraid of him.

I walked the Scotty award over to Rona, to hand it to her, but he let go of Rona and took the award directly from my unsteady hands. I felt so ashamed, as if I were five years old and had wet myself while sitting at my parents’ dinner party and now everyone getting up from the table would see the wet all over my pale yellow skirt.

I thought, Maybe there might be an earthquake. Oh Heavenly Father, if you ever were to do something for me, an earthquake now, I beseech you. Structural damage, yes, but no deaths. And if there have to be deaths, all right, but at least not children. Maybe I could just yell, “Earthquake!” But the audience wouldn’t take my word for that; they’d have to feel the room moving beneath them, the way it was moving beneath me this very moment.

Maybe he doesn’t quite recognize me. Maybe he’s smiling at me because he’s uncertain. It is possible for two people on two different coasts to look alike.

He plucked the award from me, took my left hand in his right hand, and spoke into my left ear: “Hello, Bonnie Trout, you cute little piece-of-shit liar.” He raised his eyebrows and smiled even bigger at me, as if I should find this funny. “Laugh at what I just said, you little fraud,” he said, his back to the audience. I laughed out of fear, trying not to vomit at the same time.

Lanny stepped over to the podium mike, never relinquishing my hand. I had to walk there with him. I’m sure to the audience it was as if he’d simply forgotten to let go.

Lanny fell into the public style I’d not heard much when I’d been in his company, the voice he’d used to calm the woman on the airplane.

“Uhm, I thought it would be I should let you know I offered to accept this Scotty award for whomsoever because with it all being so very with the decorations and the nice ladies…” The audience laughed, just from recognition, and his voice got a little less nasal. “And I just want to say to Mr. Jim Bouton…” He nodded at me amid pleasant laughter. “And boy, she sure could have fooled me, huh? I thought she was somebody else entirely.”

He gave my hand a squeeze. It hurt. I remembered from the Plaza how strong he could be.

“And to Miss Rhonda-Rhoda-Rina-Rona Barrett of Wimpole Street.” He beamed at her and she laughed good-naturedly. “You know I love you, sweetheart, and don’t say anything too not nice about the Lanny-Man, okaaaay?” Rona nodded an okay.

He leaned his lithe body into the podium and intoned, “Folks, Harry Langdon was one of motion pictures’ greatest comics. He possessed the sweetness of Laurel and Hardy, the stoicism of Buster Keaton, and the timing of Chaplin and Lloyd. I am overjoyed that this fine book by Artie Conklin has received the Scotty award, and I hope it will heighten awareness in years to come of the profound contributions Harry Langdon made to American film comedy. I’m honored to accept this award for both Arthur and Harry. Thank you so much.”

He gave Rona another hug, which was difficult since he still hadn’t let go of my hand. I waved goodbye to Rona the way my grandmother had waved to me as they wheeled her in for the surgery she never survived. Lanny walked us off the stage, where Nita had six cameramen prepared to assault us. The flash guns fired and fired at us. (“Lanny, look over here—What’s your name, miss?—Lanny, you ever talk to Vince? Lanny, this way please—What’s the spelling on that name, miss?”) No wonder celebrities arriving at opening nights look harassed and terrified. I was relieved when Lanny said “That’s it, fellas” and stepped us through the service doors into the kitchen—relieved until I realized I was alone with Lanny.

“We’re going to have a little private talk, you devious—” He stopped himself. “Is that agreeable to you? Because if it isn’t, I’ll turn right around and tell your publicist from your precious Neuman and Newberry about the cunning, unethical deception you put over on me. So you okay with a little private talk?”

Without waiting for an answer, he hurried us down a service corridor and a flight of steps. “You know this hotel, ‘Bonnie’? I know it real well.”

Frightened as I was, I protested, “Listen, you can’t just abduct me like this—”

“No complaints, Bonnie. I still haven’t decided whether I blow the whistle on you. Be nice now.”

We emerged into an enclosed cabana area attached to the hotel. “You like? Right in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard. Two stories of rooms surrounding all four sides of the pool. Very secluded.” Still moving at a fast clip, he walked us up a flight of steps and unlocked a blue door on the second level of the cabanas. “My room. Marilyn liked to stay here.” He gestured for me to enter. “She told me the first modeling job she had in Hollywood was lying on the diving board out there, wearing a terry-cloth swimsuit. She loved coming back years later, knowing she’d never have to pose for another cheesecake picture if she didn’t want to, that she could just stay in her room and fuck whoever she felt like fucking or, even better, nobody at all. That was her idea of success. Fucking nobody at all.” He drew the curtains in the room.

I sat on the bed, rubbing my arm. “You hurt me. You’re not above the law.”

“Sorry, but when you’re famous, you actually are above some laws. And you get a better shake on others. You don’t get executed if you’re convicted of murder, for example. You get life. It’s an understanding the courts have with the Screen Actors Guild.” He pulled out the room’s desk chair and sat, positioned opposite me. Behind him were color prints of Sacré-Coeur and Montparnasse. “And let me remind you that within the limits of our relationship, you are the lawbreaker, ‘Bonnie Fucking Trout,’ falsely assuming another person’s identity, representing her home as your home, all for the purpose of eliciting confidential information from a business competitor. That’s what was going on, right?”

He got up restlessly, went to the small refrigerator, and got out a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. “Mouth a little dry, Bonnie?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Yeah, I’d expect so.” He shut the refrigerator door, pulled the tab on the beer, and drank.

“Now look, wait a second,” I said in the strongest voice I could summon. “Obviously, I lied to you about who I was. I’m sorry. It was a huge untruth. It wasn’t planned, I was freaked out by suddenly being on the plane with you, having read your memoirs, having tried to get you involved in my book and been rejected—and once I was in the lie, I couldn’t get out. I know I would have told you eventually.”

He laughed one short snort. “When? After a reporter said, ‘Hey, Lanny, that girl whose hand you’re holding isn’t a schoolteacher named Trout like you’re telling everyone, she’s a journalist named Kerry O’Connor, I used to have drinks with her at the Old Town Bar, she’s writing an exposé about you, didn’t you know that?’ Would you have probably told me then?” He threw the beer can at me, but it hit the wall instead. I think he meant it to.

I snapped back, “But what about you, you bastard—you screwed me and left my body to be discovered by a maid at the Plaza Hotel!”

“Fuck you. Don’t pull that ‘a strong offense is the best defense’ crap. You have no defense. Go take off your clothes.” He nodded toward the bathroom door.

I guess I was not the first imbecilic young woman to have entertained the thought “If he rapes me, maybe I can convert it into a seduction, and I can pacify him.” Usually these women die.

I felt guilty, I wanted him not to hate me… but he had also treated me horribly in New York and now he was saying hateful things to me. I invoked Marilyn’s spirit. I didn’t have to fuck anyone I didn’t want to.

“No,” I said. “If you touch me, I’ll scream loud enough that the cabana boys will come in through the window, and then it won’t matter whether I’m Trout or O’Connor or Bouton, you’ll be Lanny Morris, America’s Favorite Rapist.”

I thought he was going to hit me, and that I’d better make my first scream as loud as I could because I might not get out a second one. Instead, he brushed by me and slid open a mirrored closet door. “Don’t flatter yourself. Put these on. We’re leaving, fast.”

On a hanger was a dove-gray shift in my size. From the shelf above the hangers he produced sunglasses and a blond wig. I turned to him and asked, “Do you always keep a woman’s change of clothing in your hotel rooms?”

He sneered like an intellectual Elvis. “You think I’m here today by coincidence? Well I’m not… and neither are you. I asked Jim Bouton to bow out as a favor to me yesterday morning, which he was more than glad to do. I told the committee if they could get you to present an award to the late Arthur Conklin, a guaranteed no-show, I’d appear at the ceremony and accept it for him… as long as they kept my involvement totally secret from you, your publisher, and your publicist. They jumped at the chance.”

I inwardly winced. So my star was not yet on the ascendant. Lanny had gotten me the invite, for purposes of his own.

“How did you find out who I was?” I wondered if Reuben had spilled the beans, but then realized that he knew me only as Bonnie Trout. And he was not the type to rush back to Lanny with the juicy news that I was in town. If anything, he’d have tried to spare me any further contact with his employer.

“A friend of yours told me,” Lanny stated matter-of-factly as he examined the blond wig. Clearly, he was not going to elaborate. “Go change.”

I was growing increasingly nervous about what Lanny had in mind once I’d donned the outfit he’d had waiting for me. “I don’t understand. Why do I have to disguise myself?” I asked.

“Because I don’t want to be seen with you in public,” he said airily. “You were just very visible at an awards luncheon, the press now knows who you are and about your current project, you did your little comedy turn, some of the same reporters may be staking themselves out where my limo is. If they spot the two of us, I’d rather they see me leave with a mysterious blonde than with a journalist who’s writing a book about me with my ex-partner. It might look as if I’m endorsing the book, or helping you with it, or doing anything other than trying to convince you—as my lawyers and I have been trying to do since Day One—not to write the goddamn thing!” He glared at me for a moment, then gave me the coldest smile. “So go change.”

A few minutes later he was hurrying us down the inside hallway of the ground-floor cabana area. Most guests on this level left their rooms via sliding glass doors that verged upon the pool’s patio area, thick with foliage, from which they could walk to the hotel proper. It was a pleasant, sunny route. The alternative was to exit your room by the front door, which put you into a narrow hallway used primarily by the maids and room service. This was how Lanny led us away from the hotel and out a service entrance where laundry was delivered. We walked down a few steps and were in the rear parking lot of the Roosevelt. Above us I could see huge letters mounted on a grid atop the hotel’s roof, proclaiming its name proudly, if backward. There was a limo lurking behind a dumpster. A driver with a hard face and big arms in a uniform that was too small for him was leaning against the car, waiting for us. He opened the rear door the instant he saw Lanny and looked around for possible paparazzi. There were no members of the press to be seen. It appeared that Lanny’s attempt to disguise me had proven unnecessary.

“Okay, Mr. Morris?” asked the driver. “Home?” This was a much rougher-looking man than Michael Dougherty had been.

“We’re taking the lady to her next appointment, Dominic. Bel Air.” He looked at me. “You’re going to see Vince, right? That’s what Nita Cowan told me you told her. I was sitting with her at your table while you were up there pretending to be a comic.”

So this was the end for me. Dominic closed the dividing window and partition and we moved along Highland toward Sunset.

Lanny stared out the tinted window. The last time I’d seen him look this way, he’d been recalling the time he got beat up by a gang in Brooklyn.

“How’d you manage to get the seat behind me on the plane?” he asked at last. “That must have taken some doing.”

“It was pure coincidence,” I said sullenly. Clearly everything I’d done or said was now going to be appraised in its most cynical interpretation. “Now I get to ask a question. How could you have just left me there that morning at the Plaza?”

“Stop trying to build it up. You were asleep, unconscious from the workout we had. So was I, but Reuben woke me, told me I had to be a substitute performer-conductor with the L.A. Philharmonic that evening, at the Hollywood Bowl. Charity comedy concert for Lanny’s Club. It was supposed to be Sid Caesar but Sid, you know… I had to get the first flight out. I knew we’d be together again. And see? I was right.”

He smiled coldly at me as we passed the igloo of the Cinerama Pacific Dome.

“But you could have left me a note or called me there.”

“I didn’t want to wake you, airplanes don’t have telephones, by the time I got to L.A. you’d left the hotel, and I left you a note with my numbers,” he said, looking away from me.

“Where?”

“I don’t know, I think I left it on the pillow next to you. If not there, then in the living room. Maybe the maid threw it out.”

Not even a clever lie. “And when you didn’t hear from me, you didn’t think, oh, maybe you should try calling me?”

“I did. Your—Bonnie Trout’s number was disconnected.”

“Really.”

“Yeah, I got a dead line. I called it more than once.”

There’s nothing that annoys me as much as when a man thinks a woman is stupid enough (or smitten enough) that she will accept his lamest excuses. The fact that we don’t always bother to challenge them is simply our prerogative. I’d called Bonnie myself almost every day since I’d left New York and always gotten through. And she’d called me from my apartment in L.A. with no difficulty whatsoever. I would soon have the phone bill to prove it. At worst, Lanny would have gotten the answering service. The number had never been disconnected.

“And you didn’t try reaching me, Bonnie, at my school?”

“Look, why are we even talking about this?” he blared at me, obviously eager to get away from specifics. “Have you not understood me? I don’t like you. I’m sorry we met. You put stuff over on me, I’m sure you probably laughed at me—I’m one of the great comedians of this era; no one is ever supposed to laugh at me until I cause them to do so!” He leaned forward and barked at Dominic, “Head up Stone Canyon Road.”

We turned off West Sunset Boulevard, following the “sane” route to Vince’s home that I’d figured out for myself after my first visit.

Lanny scoffed in a low voice, “Look, you’re not going to get around this. You told me you were someone else. You took me to your—sorry, to Bonnie’s—apartment and told me it was yours. You had just read my manuscript a few days earlier, something almost nobody on earth has seen, and you didn’t think you should have mentioned that to me when we met? Or at the very, very least before we had sex?”

“I was going to tell you.”

“When?”

The limo started to work its way up Tortuoso Way. “I don’t know,” I conceded.

It hadn’t been enough to go through this with Lanny. Now I’d have to witness the son et lumière of Vince’s shock, surprise, anger, resentment, and disdain. I’d partaken of recent sex with Vince’s ex-partner and forgotten to mention it to Vince. I’d allowed Vince to think that our book was being done without Lanny’s involvement when in fact I’d not only read fragments of Lanny’s own reminiscences but heard them from Lanny’s own two lips, pried and plied by me. I’d invented a half brother and flung his ashes across the Everglades. Duplicity, thy name is O’Connor.

“How did you find me out?” I couldn’t help but ask.

Lanny leaned forward and said to the driver, “Stop here, Dom.”

We pulled over and, with a slow crunch of gravel and dirt, stopped alongside a Cape Cod–style house with blue shutters. On our left was that same unmarked driveway with painted white stones on either side that led up to Vince’s home. Lanny wore the satisfied expression of a detective revealing the murderer’s identity to suspects assembled in the study. “I had to be in Washington last Friday making nice with some congressmen. Lanny’s Club needs to keep its federal funding. Saturday I spoke at a Boosters’ Breakfast for my Kids and had the rest of the day to myself. They’ve got this new train service to New York, the Metroliner. It arrives just across town from where you live—I remembered the apartment building real well. I thought instead of flying back to L.A. out of Dulles, I’d book myself out of JFK. I’d been thinking about you. I thought I might surprise you.”

Translation: I was alone in Washington and horny.

“So I bought some flowers when I got there, put on my usual disguise, you know, that blond wig—”

“Illya Kuryakin,” I realized aloud.

“What?”

I thought of Beejay’s description of the hippie with the blond pageboy haircut. “You looked like Illya Kuryakin. The character David McCallum played on The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”

Lanny considered this. “Yeah, I guess the wig does make me look a bit like him. So now I buzz your buzzer. ‘B. Trout,’ it says. You ask, ‘Who is it?’ I say, ‘Flowers for Bonnie Trout.’ You buzz me up. I take the elevator. You open the door. It’s not you.”

Poor Beejay. Neither the vice principal nor the narcissistic actor had sent her the flowers. Worse, she had met Lanny Morris and not even known it.

“The woman who is not you says, ‘Yes?’ I say, ‘Flowers for Bonnie Trout.’ She says, ‘That’s me.’ I feel like a jerk. I wanted to ask her, ‘Well, who is that girl who says she is you?’ But that might get you in some kind of trouble. I don’t know what the play is. I just know I don’t want this girl to recognize me. Lanny Morris is not supposed to go around ringing the doorbells of strange women living in the East Thirties. So I railroad myself back to Washington, completely confused. Sunday, I uncancel a speech I’d canceled at an Interfaith Luncheon. I fly back to L.A. that evening from Dulles.”

He knocked on the smoked window divider, and the driver lowered it. Lanny asked him for a pen and something to write on. Dominic produced a pen from his shirt pocket and a copy of the day’s Hollywood Reporter. Lanny wrote something on the back page, shielding it from my view. He handed the magazine and pen back to the driver. “Dom, give this number to the radio operator on the car phone after we’re outside the car,” he instructed. “Keep your voice down, it’s a private number.”

Well, since Lanny already knew the number and since he was giving the number to the driver, it was a safe bet the person he was keeping the number private from was me. Lanny opened the car door, stepped out, and motioned for me to step out as well. There was no dial on a car phone; you had to verbally request the number from an operator. I guess all this was simply to stop me from hearing what the number was. Frankly, at the moment, I felt better being out in the open than in the back of a limo driven by a thug named Dominic.

A car drove by, its driver not surprised to see a man in a custom-tailored tuxedo standing in the sunlight outside a limo in Bel Air. To while away the moments, Lanny continued his story as breezily as if he were pitching a movie to a cohort over drinks at the Polo Lounge. “I have a firm here in L.A. that handles security for me. Did you know that if you have the right people working for you, you can access anyone’s phone records? So Monday, I give them Bonnie Trout’s name and address. Tuesday afternoon, I was supposed to meet with Vince and a journalist named Kerry O’Connor, but as luck would have it, I’m doing this huge shoot that morning with Morris the Cat. The gag is Morris and Morris, like we’re the new comedy team. And they’ve got us in a nightclub set and Morris is saying Vince’s catchphrases and I’m saying, ‘With those kinds of jokes, we’ll need 9-Lives,’ very distinguished stuff for a forty-two-year-old man. Only they’ve got the guy from the ASPCA, and apparently you can’t have Morris under the lights for more than five minutes each half hour, and the director thinks he’s Otto Preminger, only more Teutonic. I get out of makeup four hours later than planned and Vince tells me you’ve already left for New York. How’s your brother, by the way?”

I didn’t reply.

“By that evening, I have an accounting of Bonnie Trout’s telephone calls in front of me. I was particularly interested in the night I left you in her apartment after we both had flown from L.A. together. After all, you had just spent the day with ‘the Lanny Morris.’ Who would you want to share this big news with first?” He smiled, aware how this sounded coming from his own lips. “Well, there was only one long-distance call made that night, but it was for three hours, no less! A collect call to a phone in Los Angeles, a Studio City exchange. So I dial the number and get your answering service. They answer ‘Kerry O’Connor!’ The same name as the journalist I was supposed to meet with Vince! I have my people try to get a photo of you, but they can’t find one in any of the articles you’ve written, except once when you wore a mask. That’s when I contacted the Scotties people and made a barter deal with them to get you up on stage at the Roosevelt. So I could take a good look at you. Looking good, Bonnie.”

The front right window rolled down and Dominic said, “They’re putting through your call, Mr. Morris.”

Lanny reached into the car and pulled the phone just beyond the window, as far as its coiled cord would stretch. He said, “Hello, Vince? It’s me.”

“You don’t have to tell Vince about this,” I whispered. “It was between you and me, it was a private matter.”

He looked at me as if I were truly demented. “Don’t be ridiculous.” He turned back to the phone. “Listen, Monsieur Collins, I wanted to pay upon you like a personal visit. Oh, say in three minutes, that okay?” He listened to Vince. “Has it been that long, really? My, how time flies when time flies. Yeah, I know. Uh-huh.” Vince said something that caused Lanny to react. “Oh, she’s coming by? You mean the one who’s writing your book? What’s her name, Bonnie Something? Oh. Kerry, that’s right. No, for some reason I remembered her name being Bonnie, I have no idea why.” He gave me a condescending glance, enjoying himself. “Yeah, well, I won’t be staying. Just had something I wanted to drop off. Yeah, Captain Mysterious, that’s me.”

He handed the phone back to the driver and gestured for me to reenter the limo. Was there any way out of this? If I ran away, what would happen? Lanny would tell Vince anyway. Better I tell him my side of it before Lanny poisoned his mind completely.

As we headed up between the white stacked rocks, Lanny looked as if he were debating with himself. Finally he spoke, in a very different tone than before.

“Listen, now I know you think you’re smart, and you are, although not as smart as you think. That’s okay. But in the unlikely event that you have any further dealings with our friend Vince, I want you to be very careful how smart you try to get with him. Because I’ll tell you something now: Vince is not that swift. I realize he’s intelligent, sensitive—I’m even told he’s well read these days. But let me tell you, Vince doesn’t always do what’s best for him. He just wants quick fixes to problems without considering the consequences. And like you, he thinks he’s a lot smarter than he really is.”

It was a ridiculous statement coming from a jealous man. The limousine had reached Vince’s gate. Dominic pushed the button on the intercom and gave Lanny’s name. The gate opened and here we were, rested after a brief intermission and a short lecture, ready and eager for Act Two of The Worst Day of My Life.

Through the windshield I saw Vince step out from the sheltered courtyard. He was wearing a nice navy-blue suit and club tie, the first time I’d seen him dressed that way. I thought it an odd outfit for a resumption of our interviews.

From the backseat, Lanny murmured to himself with not one drop of sarcasm, “Wow. Vince Collins. Looking pretty damn good there, pal.” He turned to me. “Listen, you stay here for a minute. I haven’t seen him in over a dozen years and I don’t know if we’ll ever see each other again, so I’d rather not start out with you as the primary topic of conversation.” He didn’t wait for my response but got out of the limo, saying to the driver, “See she stays put, Dom.” Lanny slammed the door shut and I heard the locks in the doors click. I gently tried opening my door, but Dominic must have had an overriding power lock. I could do nothing but watch this historic meeting through tinted windows and try to read their lips.

They stood and looked at each other. Lanny mouthed, “Hello, Vince.” Vince apparently replied, “Hi, Lanny.” There they were, one in tuxedo, the other in dark suit and tie; they used to wear matching tuxes or suits when performing in nightclubs or replicating that mode of performance on TV. It was strange to see them stand this long together with neither doing anything funny.

So far this summit meeting wasn’t exactly Stalin and FDR at Yalta. It looked like Lanny may have said, “I’m glad you’re doing so well.” Vince offered something pleasant back. They both laughed. Then the discussion seemed to grow more serious. Lanny asked a question. Vince looked down at his shoes and replied, shaking his head.

I rapped on the divider window and Dom turned around. I called out, “Do you have any drinking water in the car?” I made a hacking coughing sound. He shook his head no and turned back around. What a sweetie.

I coughed three more times, and on the last long cough, I toggled the button for my window. It slid down one-third of the way before I stopped. Dom didn’t seem to notice. I strained to hear the boys.

“I know, but I’ve got it covered.” (This was Vince.)

“How’s the drinking these days?”

“The drinking is doing great these days, it’s the sobriety that isn’t doing so well. No no, actually, it’s very under control. Thanks for asking. But some of this other stuff that’s out there—”

“Don’t get stupid with that,” advised Lanny. “You know, doing this book of yours is going to—”

“I know.”

They stood there. The sun decided to throw a green filter over this master shot, so it ducked behind a big, polluted cloud.

Vince nodded at Lanny’s tux. “Nice threads.”

“Paolo designed it. I was accepting an award. For somebody else.”

Vince laughed. “Awards. I haven’t gotten an award in—You, you’ve got the whole humane-society thing going.”

“Yeah, well, thank God for that. Can’t get arrested for a movie, you know. Did you hear I was offered the title role in The Picture of Dorian Gray?”

“You’re playing Dorian Gray?”

Lanny said in the official Lanny voice, “I’m playing the picture. Rim shot. Walk on ankles.”

“I’d brain you if you weren’t already brain-dead, you monkey,” Vince intoned flatly.

They had fallen into their ritual exchanges automatically but spoke them through to the end, as if not completing the Litany would bring upon them horrendous misfortune.

There had been a general backwash of sound from the cars that traveled on the road far below this perch. The sound stopped for a moment, the way all conversation in a crowded restaurant can suddenly stop, by sheer coincidence. I heard more clearly:

Vince said, “You know. You do, don’t you.”

Lanny gestured with his open hands as if he were comparing the weights of two bags of gold. “Vince, I know by default. You understand? It’s math. That’s how I know.”

Vince looked at Lanny as if his partner were a trick question. “But all it has to be is that you’re lying, and then the math means nothing. It would be so easy for you to do that.” His face went dead. “You know what, Lanny? I’m glad we broke up.”

“No more than me, pal.” They looked at each other as if they’d come to a new understanding. Lanny slapped his hands together once. “And now you’re going to be even gladder we did. I am, Frère Collins, the Bearer of Evil Tidings.”

Lanny walked toward the limo. Dominic hit the button that unlocked all the doors, and as it made its quadraphonic clicking noise, Lanny opened the door on my side and said, “Step out and meet Vince, sweetheart.”

I had never been in this kind of situation before. I’d be damned if I was going to step out of the limo with my head bowed, biting the nail of my index finger with shame. On the other hand, I really was in no position to brazen it out and act like a proud Jezebel. I’d been caught and been inarguably wrong. But suddenly I knew that I was not going to let a prick like Lanny Morris extract his full measure of flesh from me.

I got out of the limo, bringing with me the laundry bag containing my dress from the awards luncheon. Vince was truly shocked to see me, that much I believed. (On the other hand, I’d believed his tears in The Maginot Line when Elke Sommer had died in his arms, and to the best of my knowledge, Elke was still very much alive.) Vince looked at me, at Lanny, back at me. “I don’t understand.”

I spoke in the even tone of an independent auditor at a stockholders’ meeting. “Vince, a few days after we first met, I found myself seated behind Lanny on a flight to New York. Neuman and Newberry’s travel agent booked my seat—I had nothing to do with it. You can check that if you like. Whether Lanny had something to do with sitting in front of me is an unanswered question.”

“Oh, please—” Lanny groaned.

“Owing to the table-for-four seating in first class, I ended up having dinner with Lanny, his manager, and his valet. They asked me my name. Vince, I had just finished reading the first chapter of Lanny’s autobiography, obviously a rival work. His lawyers had let me see it in the hope of discouraging our own project. As a reflex, since he probably viewed me as ‘the enemy,’ I gave Lanny not my real name but that of a friend of mine whose apartment I was going to stay at in Manhattan. In other words, I lied to him, and I’m responsible for what came out of that lie. I thought at the time I simply had to get through the awkwardness of the flight itself, but the trouble is that Mr. Morris, as you know, is quite the self-promoter. We went to a ball game the next day, where he’d arranged to sing for a sell-out crowd at Shea Stadium. Then he flew me by helicopter to a rooftop in Manhattan, bought out a room at a restaurant so we could sip immense martinis in total privacy, took me on the mandatory hansom-cab ride through Central Park, and Vince, by the time we were back at his hotel, I admit I was completely starstruck, suckered, and schnockered.”

Vince nodded. “You slept with him.”

Lanny spoke up. “I think her words, Vince, were ‘Oh, take me, please!’”

I shook my head. “I swear I never said that.”

And I could swear, because what I’d said was “Oh… of course, yes, have me. By all means,” which was, of course, very different by the Spiro Agnew Standard of Nondenial Denial. I added, “But honestly, I don’t remember much of what happened after that.” Immense lie. I remembered everything, vividly. I’d hoped and expected it would happen again and again, if only Lanny hadn’t revealed himself to be the world’s biggest bastard. But Lanny couldn’t be inside my brain, wouldn’t know how much the night had meant to me, how much I’d fallen asleep thinking I’d awaken to a new phase of my life, so there was no way he would know what a lie this was. “All I can tell you is the next morning, I found that Lanny had left town without explanation. He never contacted me again. Today is the first time I’ve seen him since that evening. And that, Vince, is the truth.”

Lanny turned in a small circle. “Vince, she’s so full of crap I can’t even begin.”

Vince nodded. “Okay. What did she lie about?”

Lanny sputtered. “It’s the way she’s presented it. She’s one shrewd bitch, Vince. You can’t give her your trust. Understand? That’s the only reason I brought her here. To warn you.”

Vince withdrew a pack of Viceroys from his pocket and lit one with his gold stick lighter. He exhaled and looked at me. “So. You slept with my ex-partner.”

Oh God. What could I say? “Technically, yes.”

“Doesn’t sound like things were particularly technical.” He half-smiled. “I don’t suppose he forced you to do anything? I mean, it was all voluntary on your part.”

Something about this seemed familiar. I noticed Vince’s suave but wounded expression, the look of hurt when the world has let you down and you are not surprised. Where had I seen this before?

Then I realized where.

I’d seen it in my mind’s eye, when I’d read the very first part of Lanny’s first chapter, which recounted how Vince had “discovered” Lanny sleeping with Denise, the Florida P.R. woman whom Lanny helped Vince discard. Was this now a staged routine, was I seeing the grand reuniting of Collins and Morris? Did I detect a look passing between them, these two boys who on a nightclub stage had been able to read each other’s minds?

I wasn’t going to fold my cards like Denise had done and slink away, leaving the boys to find their next victim.

I spoke to Vince as if Lanny had evaporated. “When I came back here, I was ever so glad to embrace this work we’ve been sharing. I made a terrible mistake in New York. I apologize to you more than I know how to say. If my bad judgment and stupidity have destroyed the wonderfully comfortable friendship we were having, or made repugnant to you how we planned to”—I searched for the word—“conclude our work, I will be so woefully sorry. But, Vince, the realization of your life’s story shouldn’t be threatened because I have failings, or because I can’t handle two huge martinis, or because your ex-partner knows how to play to an audience of one. Please let me continue to work with you, Vince. I’ll help you tell your story right. Give me the chance to earn your trust, your faith, and your friendship again.”

Vince threw down his cigarette and put it out with his foot. He looked right at Lanny. “Nice seeing you, pally. We’ll have to do this every thirteen years.”

Lanny started to walk to the limousine, stopped after a step, and faced his ex-partner. “Just you be careful, Vince.” He turned slowly toward me. “Oh, and great recovery, Bonnie. You bend in even more directions than I realized.” Lanny headed back to his car and this time did not stop.

As the limo drove off, the sun decided to reappear. I stood looking at Vince’s suit. I’d never seen navy blue so brightly lit. “Nice suit,” I commented, not knowing at this point what else to say.

He looked at his outfit, seemingly embarrassed. “I made reservations for us for dinner. Somewhere special, requires conservative dress. You warned me on the phone yesterday that you’d still be wearing your Scotty-presenting outfit, so I thought it would work out fine.”

He looked at the drab A-line dress Lanny had made me change into. I held up the laundry bag from the motel. “I still have my outfit. I can change back into it in a second.”

He looked toward his house and up at the sky. “Oh, for God’s sake, it’s not as if I thought you were a virgin. Or that we’re both in high school and Lanny and I are rivals on the track team. By show-business standards, you’re a saint. For all I know, Lanny went out of his way to seduce you, just to get in a dig at me. Let’s go inside.”

We walked into his home. He had, with all good intentions, placed the tape recorder on the coffee table, near where I’d left it three days earlier. I looked up at this man who was taking off his jacket, loosening his tie. He was the remedy, the solution.

We went about our work, after a fashion. I asked him featherweight questions. Nothing today about the girl in New Jersey, whose name for the moment I couldn’t remember. To his credit, Vince raised the topic. I told him that, under the circumstances, I didn’t feel this was the day to embark on anything that serious. He understood. In my current state, I was not going to challenge Vince Collins, who I hoped still liked me and wanted me.

His answers to my powder-puff questions were as charming as ever. We laughed. I was just so happy to be laughing with him. Vince suddenly stood up. It seemed we were finished for the day.

“Hey. Come on, put on your fancy dress.” He smiled impetuously. “Let’s go get drunk in Disneyland.”

I thought he was joking. But oh, he was not. He was not joking at all.