“So we’re supposed to sooth his fragile ego? I’m one more older woman sucked into his…” I stopped.
Mercy looked serious. “He is fragile-and aggressive and rude. And often cruel. But I’ll tell you, Edna, I got to know him in the ugly dead world of Marfa, a place that hadn’t seen rain in seven years. At night you could hear your life leaving you. He was like a little lost lamb, shivering under the shadow of Liz Taylor’s beauty and Rock Hudson’s aggressive presence. They were the names. Filming Giant there with these three young stars-well, it brought out something in each of them.”
“Like what?”
“In Marfa, pettiness, vanity, and fear took over. Liz had to have someone fanning her ego, Rock kept trying to convince us all he was the Texas he-man. And Jimmy-well, he was the untried scared boy, frankly.” She paused, leaned in. “I’ll tell you, Edna, there were times when the sadness was so raw in him, so deep, I couldn’t look into that handsome face. He kept hiding from everyone. I’ve never met anyone so…lonely.”
“And it’s not a pose?”
“Maybe a fraction of it is, but no, it’s there. It used to frighten me. It’s like he doesn’t care if he lives or dies. You should see the way he races around in those cars, like a demon. If I live, I live. If I die, I choose it. You don’t meet people like that. They crave life so much that they cultivate dying for it.” She smiled. “Enough of this. We spend all our time talking about Jimmy Dean.”
“Well,” I said, grinning, “there’s something about that mouth.”
Mercy laughed. “Everyone says that. It’s a woman’s mouth. Someone in makeup called it a whore’s generous mouth. Everyone wants to watch those lips move.”
“Perhaps that’s why he mumbles, barely opening that mouth. He’s rationing its pleasure for us mere mortals.”
Mercy agreed. “So we mother him.”
I bit the end of a breadstick, chewed it. “I’ll not be a mother, thank you. I’ve managed to survive that trap for sixty-odd years.”
“You may have no choice.”
I looked at my watch and fretted. “I have little patience with lateness, Mercy. And I’m surprised about Tansi.” I looked to the doorway, where some other diners waited to be seated.
“Don’t look there,” Mercy said. “He comes in through the kitchen.”
Before long, I heard a brum brum brum, too close to the building, the grunt of shifted gears, the rat-a-tat dying of a loud, intrusive motor. Mercy rolled her eyes. Within seconds, the swinging doors of the kitchen clattered and Jimmy flew in, pausing a moment to look around. Spotting us, he strode across the room.
“You’re late,” I fumed. I eyed his uniform: the smudged jeans-an oil slick on his thigh-the worn biker boots, the white T-shirt barely visible under a shiny red nylon jacket, collar turned up. His hair was uncombed, looking like damp straw over a creased forehead.
He slipped into a seat, leaned his elbows on the table, and hunched forward. “Had some trouble with my cycle.”
“Your what?” I asked. Because, if I heard correctly, Jimmy pronounced the word cycle as sickle.
“My motorsickle.” Or so I spelled it in my head.
I grinned. “You from the Midwest?”
“Fairmount, Indiana, ma’am,” he said in a drawling, lazy voice. “Cows and corn and religious copulation.”
He began fiddling with the breadbasket, spinning it around, extracting the thick breadsticks, lining them up, log-cabin style, crisscrossing them, using every piece in the wicker basket. I stared at the construction, expecting disaster. Jimmy flicked it with a finger and the makeshift pile shifted, but didn’t topple. Boorish, I thought, and childish.
“I understand you’ve not read my Giant,” I said, purposely, looking into his face.
Jimmy looked at Mercy, half-smiled, rubbed one of his eyes with a grimy finger, and turned to me: “Rumor has it I haven’t even read the screenplay.”
“What?”
“If you listen to dictator Stevens who calls himself my director.”
“Don’t you think…”
“I think I understand Jett Rink the way you want me to. He’s a hungry boy who becomes a hungry man. He gets what he dreams of, but it ain’t ever enough.” He pushed the breadsticks, and they scattered across the table. He gazed around the room. “Sometimes when I come here nights, I sit in a little supply room right beside those kitchen doors. I sit on an orange crate, and munch on antipasto Patsy makes for me. And nobody knows I’m there. No one. My own little room, a closet with boxes filled with cans and jars and God knows what else. The problem with L.A. is that everyone is always expecting you to say something.”
“And you’d rather be quiet?” I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. “I refuse to sit over there.” He pointed to a booth across the room.
I pulled in my cheeks. “Too far to walk?”
Jimmy giggled. Actually giggled, full-throated and rich, and we all smiled. He pointed a finger at me and shook it, as if to say: “Good one, Miss Edna.” Then, serious, “No, that’s where Pier and I always sat. Unlucky number six.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said. “You’ve been here two minutes and you’re talking to yourself.” I wasn’t happy.
Mercy interrupted. “Edna, Jimmy dated Pier Angeli for a long time. You know, The Silver Chalice, with Paul Newman. Didn’t you read about it in the papers?”
“The gossipy sheets? Hollywood blather and bilge? Not even with a decree from Caesar himself would I…”
Jimmy spoke over my declaration. “You know, I asked her to marry me. But I’m not the kind of good boy her mustached Italian Catholic mama wanted, so she forced Pier to marry that empty shell Vic Damone. You know how Italian mothers believe their pretty daughters are all virgins, which is why they all try to become whores as fast as possible…”
Mercy reached over and touched him on the wrist. “Jimmy, enough.” Emphatic, but motherly, I thought.
Jimmy gathered up the breadsticks and tossed them back into the basket. The table was strewn with crumbs, flecks of sesame seeds.
For a while, we sat there, a frozen tableau, and I felt the room moving around me. Dishes rattled, glasses clinked, a waiter mumbled in angry Italian to another waiter. Silence at the table. A waiter gave us menus, then left. Jimmy drummed on the edge of the table with a breadstick, and the tip snapped off, toppling to the carpet. I heard his boot heel grind it. He hadn’t removed his dazzling red windbreaker, unbuttoned over the T-shirt. The brilliant red against the ivory white, sharp enough against his fresh blond looks. Very dramatic, I thought.
He clicked his tongue. “Miss Edna, can I give you a ride on my cycle sometime?” There was a mischievous gleam in his eye.
“I’m afraid I’d fall off the back.”
“Not if you hold onto me tightly. I’ll take you for a spin out to Laurel Canyon, all narrow roads and hairpin turns, up into the Hollywood Hills where you can look down on a different L.A.” He squinted his eyes. “Unless you want to do the driving. I’ll hold onto you.”
I realized he was flirting with me. Oddly, I was enjoying it. “The problem is that I’d travel so slowly you’d fall off for sheer boredom.”
“Jimmy likes speed,” Mercy said.
“If you can see where you’re going, then there’s no use in heading there.” He looked at Mercy. “Tell Miss Edna about the time I gave you a spin in my MG.”
Mercy laughed. “I can’t remember because I was unconscious for most of it.”
We were interrupted by Tansi’s arrival. She rushed to the table, apologizing for lateness, blaming it on the garage that serviced her new car. Tansi pulled up a chair, repositioned it, twisting her body this way and that, sputtering, taking over the conversation. We sat there, waiting. “A scratch, mind you, on a new car.” Jimmy, car aficionado, immediately began a barrage of questions about the Chevy Bel Air she’d purchased. Shoptalk, the two of them. I lost interest, then became angry at the inane exchange, Tansi talking of engine size, accessories, tire sizes.