Vince Baker sat at the end of the bar. Gone upscale for an evening. Maybe half a chance at meeting a sophisticated puss who would be seduced by his combination of rough edges and power. No promises. No odds. No hard feelings if he walked away alone. As with most nights he was content with avoiding his lonely box of an apartment, which, despite being new and in a more desirable location, felt just as empty and terrifying as every other place where he had lived. The only times he ever felt a connection to the outside world from his quarters were the occasions when the woman four times his age in the apartment across the street would stare vacantly out the window behind a single candle, a sad expression, wearing only a gigantic bra that looked more akin to a Visigoth’s armor. He held his place quietly at the end of the bar, wearing a rumpled dress coat pulled from a pile in his closet (his most suitable attire), looking out over the dining room at the patrons in their quest for Los Angeles culture. He’d give it twenty minutes or three more drinks, whichever came first, and then it was the next cab down to Willie’s for a nightcap and a shot at the last-chance dolls.
He hadn’t caught any rest at all today. Hadn’t done much of anything other than contribute to a follow-up on some City Hall scandal by getting a quote from a chirpy clerk hoping to make his mark through squawking. Baker probably wouldn’t even get a credit on the byline for that, but who really cared. He had spent the better part of the day trying to sniff out something good, a hot tip on some action that was going down, anything that he could take back to Scott to get him off the Bernhardt story.
By his third rusty nail he was beginning to consider the idea of just quitting. He lit up another cigarette, feeling the breeze of cool smoke calm his chest.
By the fourth rusty nail he kept a hawkish vigilance over the room.
He moved seats until he was tucked into the corner, camouflaged by a potted palm tree and the jacked-up hood of the grand piano. His own voyeur’s nest, where he could watch up close without being seen, not as a reporter, but as a person fascinated by the quirks of his own species. Still he took care to keep himself hidden. This was the kind of place where the power brokers that he covered would seek refuge. They loved joints like this; made them feel like the wild Spanish-American west had been made submissive through opulent grace. Baker scooted his stool deeper into the corner. He didn’t want any of these somebodys to look up from their sparkling tables, champagne toasts in hand, and see him looking down on them, mistaking him for one of those F. T. Seabright types, covertly eavesdropping to get their story and make news.
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 Laferriére), 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.