“Tansi!” I yelled, shocked. But we all started laughing, and Tansi couldn’t seem to stop.
The eatery was largely empty at that hour, but Mercy nodded to some newcomers who strolled in, ordering coffee to go, and I realized one of the two women had been with Tommy Dwyer earlier. What was her name? The one with two words in Giant. Mercy waved them over, but both seemed a little reluctant, looking at each other.
Lydia, I recalled, Jimmy’s most recent girlfriend; that is, his most recently discarded flame. Yes. Lydia Plummer, hovering back in the shadows with Tommy Dwyer’s girlfriend, Polly. Now the women slipped into chairs opposite us, and Mercy made the introductions. “Edna, meet two of the satellites that revolve around Jimmy Dean. Lydia Plummer, still in costume-will they ever film that banquet scene? — and Nell Meyers, who works in the script department.” Both women nodded, then looked at each other. I could see that Lydia did not appreciate Mercy’s comment about her being another moon in Jimmy’s peculiar solar system.
“I can’t stay,” Lydia said, looking at no one. “I’m supposed to be there. They’re reshooting a scene. I have one line and I don’t want to tempt the cutting room floor.” She seemed to be speaking to the far wall, and her eyes looked teary.
Curious, I studied both women. So this was Jimmy’s last girlfriend-this bit player, Lydia Plummer. You saw an eye-catching girl, slender of frame though oddly fleshy, the mouth too large and too pouty, robust painted lips, the eyes already lost in wrinkling, bunching skin. It was hard to read her features, covered as she was in her screen makeup. But I thought her coarse-a roadhouse waitress, perhaps, a buxom Tom Jones barmaid. A little too vacant-eyed. That bothered me. The eyes glassy, perhaps a drinker’s eyes, dim, washed out. I wondered what she looked like without the elegant costume, the trumpery, but I supposed Lydia a prosaic beauty, maybe a high-school belle who was told too often she should be in Hollywood. Stupidly, she bought that Greyhound ticket.
“So you have a speaking line?” My words seemed to startle her. She actually jumped.
Lydia ran her tongue over her lips, moistening them. “One line in Giant, tomorrow a leading role. Look how fast it happened to Jimmy.” The words stretched out, labored over. But she said Jimmy’s name with an icy sarcasm, spitting out the word, and the name hung in the air like a black mark.
Mercy shook her head. “Edna, Jimmy is not one of Lydia’s favorite people these days.”
Lydia grunted. “Swine.” She tossed back her head, and the light caught the gold necklace around her neck. Then, in a quiet confessional tone, the voice now soft and fuzzy, “I just don’t understand why he stopped caring.” Again, she stared at the far wall. Following her gaze, I was intrigued by the sight of the cheesecake.
Nell spoke for the first time. “Lydia, you know how things are.”
A flash of anger. “No, I don’t. Not actually. Only someone who’s never been in love can say that.”
Nell turned red. The two women, I noticed, were a contrast: Lydia, fleshy, grossly sensual, perhaps; a little raw at the edges; a strawberry blonde; and Nell, short, squat really, round like a fur ball, a roly-poly frame that seemed, somehow, block-like, stolid. Perhaps it was the look in her eyes that suggested immobility, a marble glare, humorless. And yet she seemed to be smiling, like she was constantly telling herself a joke she expected no one else to get. A girl perhaps twenty, unpretty in a land where beauty was the name of the game. So she slapped on makeup, heavily so, a feeble attempt to enliven that dull face with powder and eyeliner. The general effect was of a chestnut burr slathered in confectionary sugar. You saw a girl all in black, a beret on her head-eyes darkened with kohl-chalk. She was very Greenwich Village transported to California, land of sunshine. A girl dropped into the wrong geography. No-some ersatz replica of Greta Garbo, an exaggerated approximation of the mysterious Swedish actress. Nell Meyers, script girl as seductress, playing an exotic chanteuse, maybe, waiting to be famously alone. If Lydia seemed garish and effusive, a pretty woman spilling out of her sexuality, then the younger Nell was a shadow, a hidden corner. Lydia was a bar girl with too many drunken nights at gin mills under her girdle. Lydia at middle age would be a Botticelli slattern, all rolling bulge and generous lipstick and five-and-dime perfume. Nell at forty would be a rotund sorcerer with a mosquito-thin voice, sitting on a bar stool saying, “Don’t come near me.”
“What exactly do you do?” I asked her, ignoring Lydia who suddenly seemed lost in her own thoughts.
Nell sighed, “I file scripts.” But she said it with a Garboesque flurry, the lacquered nails fluttering around her face, like wild birds.
Tansi spoke up. “I got Nell the job.”
Nell looked at her, still smiling. “Yeah,” she admitted, “I never ever wanted to work for a studio. My mom and I lived next door to Tansi, before Mom moved back home. I was taking classes at UCLA, aimless, you know. Tansi and Mom played-what? — bridge? Canasta? I never paid attention. So here I am.”
“Nell’s mother is so sweet,” Tansi said. “I miss her.”
“Well, I don’t.”
Lydia looked bored and stood up. “Let’s go.” She turned, forgot to say goodbye.
Tansi spoke up. “Stay a bit, Nell.”
“Love to, but I’m on the clock, you know.” She caught up with Lydia, who was already heading toward the door.
Mercy said to me, “You’ll find this interesting, Edna. Lydia was Carisa Krausse’s roommate a while back, before she moved to her new place. They had a falling out.”
“Over Jimmy?”
“Who knows?”
“And how does Nell fit into all this?”
Mercy shrugged. “Acolytes at Jimmy’s shrine, all of them.”
Tansi interrupted. “Nell met Lydia and Jimmy at a party, and that was the beginning.”
“You don’t sound glad,” I said.
“I don’t like Lydia.”
“Why?”
“There are rumors of drug use, Edna. Her and Carisa, in fact.”
“Tansi, don’t tell tales out of school,” Mercy sharply replied.
“I don’t care. A drinker, too.”
“Stop it, Tansi.” Mercy looked peeved. “You’re not being very nice.”
“I just don’t like her friendship with Nell. Nell is, well, an innocent. I know she’s playing some role in her head. Look at the dumb makeup. But she’s a child. I told her mother I’d look out for her. You know, I got her into the Studio Club on Lodi Street, near Sunset. Edna, it’s a hotel for young girls in entertainment, very safe and protected. One hundred girls, with references. Men can’t get past the lobby. But would you believe dumb fate-her roommate is Lydia, of all people. I want her to move out of the place.”
“That’s her choice,” Mercy insisted, pushing her coffee cup away from her.
Tansi’s voice was too loud. “Lydia is not a good role model.”
Mercy frowned. “Let Nell make her own choices, Tansi.”
“I know. But I promised her mother…”
“I had a mother who tried to run my life for decades,” I declared.
“And what did you do?” Mercy asked.
“Rattled my chains.”
Tansi spoke up. “Okay, okay, I won’t gossip, but I know things. I know that Carisa and Lydia had a fight, and Nell told me she herself was afraid of Carisa’s mouth.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Carisa took a dislike to Nell.”
“Because of Jimmy?”
“According to Nell, yes.”