Lucy Jellicoe arrived, like the fog, on little cat feet. She carried a glass in both hands and raised it frequently as she spoke, punctuating her words with imperceptible sips of what might have been vodka but was, in fact, tonic water. Lucy had always supplied the timid counterpoint to Margo’s flamboyance.
“There you are, Luce! Come and talk to me. Where have you been hiding?”
“It’s my party, I can hide if I want to.” Instead of sitting where her friend patted the settee cushion between herself and Desmond Wicklow, Lucy perched on a concrete mushoom. Her late parents, who died together in the crash of a skiers’ gondola in the Italian Alps, had been into garden gnomes, some as large as female Olympic gymnasts.
“I want you to do something for me, Luce. You know all about my trip to California next week.”
“Everybody does. We all hate you for it.”
“I want you to give me Kincaid.”
“He’s not my slave.”
“But you pay him. I don’t want to pay him. I just want to take him with me. To look after things. My clothes and travel arrangements and the occasional meal in the hotel room. Things.”
“You’d have to ask him.”
“I took the liberty. He wants me to clear it with you.” In the ensuing silence, Margo Fletcher reached out and squeezed the author’s cheek. “Say something, Desmond.”
“Yes. Very important Kincaid comes along. I’ll be occupied full-time with press interviews and screenings. Poor Margo, she can’t find her other shoe.”
“Very good, Des. What say you, your Luceness?”
“I’ll be all alone tending the shop.”
“Only for a week or so. We’ll be back before you know it.”
“No you won’t. You and Kincaid will jump on another airplane and fly off to Hawaii.”
“Now there’s an idea,” Margo said.
The Los Angeles flight was like many a play Margo and Kincaid had starred in — interesting at first but too long by half. “Alone at last,” Charles was able to say when the bellboy closed the hotel room door. He gave a nervous laugh. Kincaid had been a bank executive for many years before the bank merged and downsized. Thus wounded in spirit, he allowed himself to become a servant to a wealthy woman. Now he was finding it hard to become a man.
“Take me in your arms,” Margo said.
The butler did as he was told. Some time later he said apologetically, “Jet lag, I’m afraid.”
“You read me wrong, dear,” Margo said, leaving him on the chaise longue with an encouraging kiss on the cheek. At the drinks table by the window high above Sunset Boulevard she said, “All I want is for you to be a handsome, happy man taking me places where other women will see us and envy me.” She poured tiny bottles of whiskey into two glasses and carried them to where he sat looking at his hands placed on his knees. “If anything more should happen, all well and good. Cheers.”
“Happy times, darling.”
Margo tossed back her drink in one and set down the empty glass. When she could breathe again, she said, “Precisely my point. There may not be any happy times, for me, that is, unless I can do something about Desmond.”
“About Desmond Wicklow?”
“Do something to him, I should have said. Kill him, probably.”
“Kill Desmond? How?”
“How should I know?”
“But why?”
“To keep him from killing me.”
It was Kincaid’s turn to go to the window and open two more of the tiny bottles.
The Awards ceremony would take place at a venue called the Kodak Theatre. There would be acres of red carpet, semi-dressed actresses smiling all over their bodies, endless TV reporters saying the same thing to everybody. Margo had seen it on television and now she was here. It was all thanks to Desmond’s book. His writing of it had driven her wild because of the excessive time he spent with pen and notebook instead of paying attention to her. Her on-and-off affair with the writer had begun before the untimely death of ace pilot Corky Fletcher. Lately, it seemed to be more trouble than it was worth. Margo Fletcher’s needs were simple; she wanted everybody to anticipate her every wish and attend to it immediately.
“I don’t ask much,” she said to Kincaid in the limo on the way to the auditorium. Desmond Wicklow had gone to the affair in another car with studio executives who believed So Much for the Few was going to win an Oscar.
The butler was staring through the window at L.A. traffic. It frightened and depressed him. So did Margo’s assignment. “I’m not sure I can do this thing.”
“I only ask people to do what I know they can. That way, I avoid being refused. Which I hate.”
“You’re quite sure he wants to kill you.”
“I told you, darling. I got it straight from Lucy Jellicoe. Desmond Wicklow has had this thing for me since before he wrote his book. He used to take me to a place on the Brighton Road called The Green Man. Corky found out about it.” Margo put on a mournful face. “You thought the Spitfire hitting that cliff was an accident?”
“I and everyone else.”
“It was suicide. My husband’s way of telling me and Desmond, ‘Take that!’ ”
“Horrible.”
“Ghoulish. Look at the way Wicklow profited from the tragedy.”
“I see your point.”
“All the time he was writing his book, he was having his way with me. Said I was his muse.”
“The swine.”
“He’s been after me to marry him. But I don’t love him, Charles. I love you.”
“Oh Lord.”
“I told Desmond. You should have seen his face. He said the famous words.”
“If I can’t have you, nobody will.”
“The male mantra.” Margo Fletcher took Kincaid’s hand. “And he hinted he’ll take care of you while he’s at it.”
There were great goings on before, during, and after the Academy Awards ceremonies. Charles Kincaid, with Margo Fletcher on his arm, found a microphone stuck in his face.
The reporter: “It’s a great night for Hollywood, sir.”
“Everyone seems quite jolly.”
“You sound like one of the British contingent.”
“Oh no, I’m just the butler.”
“The butler? Then you did it!”
“Not yet. I’m not sure I can. How did you find out?”
When the nominations were called for best screenplay based on a published work, Desmond Wicklow, who had adapted his own book, got to his feet as soon as his name was read and began approaching the stage. Desmond had made a discovery in America. It was Tennessee sour-mash whiskey and he was determined to drink as much of it as he could. He was off to a good start.
“God bless him,” Margo whispered in the shocked silence. “He’s reached a new level in irrational behavior.”
Desmond made his way up the carpeted steps and onto the stage while the presenters watched, fascinated. The inebriated author bore down on them, his crimson, sweaty face a mask of acquisitiveness as he said, “Don’t just stand there. Give me my Oscar.”
Now the audience, including the remaining four nominees, began to understand the moment. The applause and shouting was worthy of a sports event, which was appropriate because one of the presenters was “Slam” Duncan, star of the National Basketball Association. The other was Chucky-Joe Partridge. Chucky-Joe had become a Tinseltown icon two years ago by writing, directing, and acting in a film called Down and Out in Pismo Beach. Not only did he bring in his movie at a cost of a hundred thousand dollars, he won the Oscar for best screenplay.
These two stars, who were far from sober themselves, recognized an erratic brother-under-the-skin when they saw one. They embraced Wicklow from either side, turned him to the camera, and kissed him on both cheeks. It made a sensational photograph dominating the front page of the tabloids in the morning. “Limey Scribe Loses It,” said one headline.