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busterkeatonfanfic · 3 years

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Chapter 33

She would remember it so clearly. She was stretched out on the sofa reading But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes by Anita Loos, the west-facing window was open, admitting a cool breeze carrying the smell of lilacs, and the radio was playing a Ukulele Ike song. Her mood was better than it had been the day before. She had no plans except to read, study her lines, and maybe treat herself to Street Angel, which was playing downtown at 6 p.m.

A knock on the door made her jump. She didn’t have any time to tell whoever was on the other side that she was coming before there was the rattle of a key turning in the lock. She sat up straight as Buster staggered through the door.

“Goodness, what’s wrong?” she said, throwing her legs over the side of the sofa and setting the book down. As he lurched toward her and sat on the other end of the sofa, she could smell what was wrong. He appeared to have taken a recent swim in a bathtub of whiskey.

“Something happened,” he said without preamble, not looking at her. He took off his cap and played with the brim. “I’ll get you a glass of water,” she said. Whatever it was, it was bad. She would wonder later why she didn’t guess what it was. It was simply apparent to her that in his state, he was in need of immediate attention. She filled a glass from the tap and set it on the coffee table in front of him. He didn’t touch it. She sat next to him and laid her hand on his arm, but he refused to look at her as he went on.

“I’m awful sorry about this and I just don’t know how to tell you.” His nose sounded plugged and his voice was thick and nasal, his words a beat or two slower than normal. She wondered how much he’d had to drink.

“I hope you didn’t drive yourself,” she said.

He looked at her at last and his eyes were glazed. “Well who else was gonna do it?”

“Your butler,” she said. “You can’t drive like this. You could get in a wreck and hurt yourself. Or someone else.”

“Aw, to hell with my driving. I need to tell you something important.” He looked back down at his hands.

She realized then what it was. “Oh,” she said. Her mind was a blank. There was no before or after, only that moment suspended in time like a dragonfly in amber as she waited for seeming eons to hear what he would say next.

His expression was sorrowful. “The girls found out about us.”

Her heart pounded. “What girls?”

“The Talmadges,” he said. “Natalie’s sisters.”

She knew then by his voice and by the depth of his drunkenness it was over. Later, she would feel surprised by her reaction. She was neither heartbroken nor devastated, she only wanted to soothe him. “How did they find out?” she said softly, but she knew. Somehow Constance had pieced it together after her dance with Buster at the party.

“It’s been going around about you and me. Guess some folks knew about you being at the bungalow and word got around.” His thumbs massaged the rim of the hat.

She put her hand between his shoulders. Eddie Sedgwick. Maybe others too, peering out of their curtains as she hurried into Buster’s car with her head ducked. It didn’t matter. “And they told you it’s her or me,” she said. In her daydreams, insofar as she had allowed herself daydreams, Buster renounced Natalie voluntarily. She’d daydreamed it all wrong.

“Oh, it’s worse than that. I don’t know how to tell you, Nell.”

He’d never called her Nell. She bit her lip, feeling hot and numb.

“You see, about those pictures. I took those pictures of you, ‘member? The girls got suspicious and god dammit they went through my room and they found them.”

Nelly felt the color drain from her face. She rubbed Buster’s back, trying to give him the strength to go on. His voice was so heavy and nasally.

“Must have made them pretty sore ‘cause they say they’re going to take them to the papers if I don’t break it off with you. They’ve got me skewered. Mr. Mayer’s the type who wants all his stars minding their Ps and Qs. No scandals and they know it.” Nelly nodded mechanically. She felt like she was floating above her body looking down on them both. “It would cause a big scandal if they took the pictures to the papers,” she said.

Buster echoed her nod, sucking in his lower lip. “Uh-huh. ‘Cause they’ve got one of me too. I’d lose everything.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Gets worse.” Her heart thumped.

“They had you sacked.” His hands clenched over the hat. “There ain’t a fucking thing I can do about it either. I’m real sorry. I hate to tell you.”

Her hand fell from his back. “Oh.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, trying to take everything in. Her head was swimming.

“It’s all my fault. I dragged you into this and now I’ve gone and wrecked it all for you.”

She opened her eyes and he’d turned his head away from her.

“No.” She felt an unexpected courage fill her. He needed her to be brave. She would. She rested her hand on his knee. “It’s my fault too. I knew the risks. It was—well, it was bound to happen. I’ll be just fine.”

Even as she said that, it dawned on her that her options from here forward were limited and menial. As long as the Talmadges held those photographs in their possession, she’d have no chance in pictures. She could always get a job as a typist or a telephone operator, but what was the point of staying in Hollywood to be a typist? How could she carry on knowing she’d fallen so far? Carrying on in the same town as Buster as if nothing had happened? They sat there in silence. She decided. She would be brave for both of them.

“I’ll just go back home,” she said. “Don’t worry, it’s for the best. I don’t want you to get in trouble. It’s not worth throwing anything away for me.”

Looking back at it, she couldn’t believe how calm she was, how resolved. A deep-seated clarity was upon her.

Buster’s face was still turned away, but she could see him swallow hard. “I’ll be fine,” she assured him.

“I don’t like that one bit,” he said, clearing his throat.

“Well, what else can we do?”

He wrung his cap. “Just—cool it for a bit. Take a break for a few weeks. Then we’ll be extra careful. We can just keep it here, at your place. No more’n a couple hours at a time, maybe once a week or something.”

She shook her head. “They’ll be watching you like a hawk now. Then we’re back to square one and they’ll ruin your career. I don’t want you to throw it all away for me. You don’t want to throw it away all for me. You don’t have to pretend you want to. I know you still care for …” She didn’t want to say Natalie’s name. “It’s alright,” she said instead.

“Ah, hell,” he said, squeezing his eyes closed. “What about your career in pictures?” He put his head in his hands. The cap in his right hand shielded his face from view.

Nelly put a hand between his shoulders again. “Let’s be honest,” she said with a forced laugh. “It wasn’t going so well even before this. I’ll go back to the theater. It’ll work out.” She tried to make her voice light and reassuring.

They fell silent again. The radio was playing the Coon-Sanders Orchestra’s “Everything is Hotsy-Totsy Now.” The song was boisterous and happy. Sparrows twittered in the bushes outside the windows. Buster took a deep breath and blew it out heavily. She didn’t want him to leave. She tried not to think about the reality that this was the last time she’d see him. She had to be brave.

The minutes ticked away. The radio played a slow, sultry number from Annette Hanshaw. Just another night, nothing in sight, nothing but grieving. When I go to sleep, memories will creep, making me blue …

She could feel sadness seeping in with each minute. She was in danger of making some kind of irrational plea. “I should pack,” she said. “You need to get home before you get in more trouble.”

Again, every detail would stick in her memory. She walked Buster to the door, but kept him at arm’s length. She knew if she embraced him, she would lose control. He wasn’t crying, men didn’t cry, but he didn’t look like himself at all. His face was dazed, like someone had just punched him in the face. He put his cap on and stumbled as he reached for the doorknob. She told him to drive slowly and watch for other cars. If she could have driven him home herself, she might have considered it, but she didn’t know how to drive. He was almost out of the door when he turned around.

“I can write you, can’t I?” he said, with a sudden passion. He patted his breast pocket for a pen, looking lost.

She nodded. A hard knot had come into her throat and she could feel the reserves of her bravery diminishing. She tore a piece of paper from a steno pad and wrote her parents’ address down as he waited in the doorway. Their fingers touched as she handed it to him. She swallowed. “You drive safely, you hear?” she said, her voice somehow steady, blithe even.

Buster nodded. He looked into her eyes for a moment. Then she was shutting the door and his footsteps were going down the hall. For a whole half hour, she just sat on the sofa feeling stunned. At any moment, Buster would come running back down the hall and pound on the door, telling her he’d reconsidered. When that didn’t happen, she rose after a while and pulled her wardrobe trunk out from a corner and began to gather her clothes.

In contrast to her final encounter with Buster, her last days in Hollywood were indistinguishable. She was so busy, so overburdened and fatigued, her grief was compartmentalized for the time being. There were ads to place for her sofa, secondhand set of china, and other household odds and ends, and knocks at the door to answer as strangers showed up to buy or turn down her possessions; her landlord to notify and her May rent check to hand over even though two-thirds of the month still lay ahead and she wouldn’t be occupying the apartment for it; a telegram to send to her mother and father announcing her return home; a visit to the Los Angeles Players to tell them a sudden death in the family meant that her eager understudy would have to take her place; a decision to make about the phonograph and its two dozen records. There was no room in her wardrobe trunk or suitcases. She thought of leaving them behind, but couldn’t stand the idea.

That was the sharpest memory from that time, arranging to ship the phonograph and records back to Evanston. It was the first time she’d cried since Buster’s visit. She’d knocked on Mr. Hernandez’s door, not knowing who else to trust with one of her dearest possessions. He had always been friendly, though lately she always put down her eyes and mumbled her helloes when they met at the mailbox or in the hall. She wasn’t worldly enough not to be embarrassed by his hearing her in the grip of ecstasy more than once.

“Well,” she said, sitting in one of Mr. Hernandez’s floral armchairs holding the cup of coffee he’d insisted she have. “I’m leaving town.”

Mr. Hernandez was somewhere south of sixty, with a brown, weather-beaten face that added ten years to his age. His father had helped build the railroads in the Sierra foothills and Mr. Hernandez had followed in his footsteps, though in eastern Nebraska. He had come back to his native state for retirement, his two sons having grown up and his wife died fifteen years prior.

“Sorry to hear that. Where you heading?” he said, upon hearing her news.

“Back home to my folks,” she said, uncomfortable that she had an angle with the visit. “That’s why I came by. I’ve got a phonograph, some records too, I can’t take with me and I’m afraid it’s all too heavy for me to carry to the post office. There’s no room in my luggage. I hate to impose, but I’d pay you ten dollars. I don’t like to ask. I never did make any friends here.” She took a gulp of coffee for courage and burnt her tongue.

“I’d be happy to, but what’s the hurry?”

He had, she’d reflected, the older person’s ability to read the young person like a book. It piqued her, but she didn’t want to be rude, especially since he’d just agreed to ship her records. “I’m not having much luck with pictures here,” she said. “Thought I’d go back to the theater for awhile.” She offered an apologetic smile.

“What about that fella of yours?” said Mr. Hernandez, sipping from his coffee. “What’s he gonna do? I seen him once. Looks a lot like that movie fella. Harold Lloyd, I think that’s the one.”

She colored crimson. “Oh, he—” She didn’t know how to finish. Left because he still loved his wife and his two famous movie star sisters-in-law were blackmailing him? She couldn’t tell that to an old man she barely knew. As she struggled to come up with an excuse, she had remembered Buster coming up the hall with a box of birthday cake and the record that read on one side “You Took Advantage of Me.” The sorrow was like a wall of water that rose up from nowhere and slammed her off her feet. She burst into tears.

At one point during the torrent, she was aware of Mr. Hernandez kneeling by the chair and offering his handkerchief and a comforting arm. “There, there. I didn’t mean to upset you. This fella, forget it. Not worth all this. You’re a pretty gal. You’ll find a fella who cares more and this’ll all be forgotten.”

She nodded, agreeing, and cried some more.

The crying had not slowed at all when her train left Central Station and began its eastward trek. With no rent or bills to worry about any longer, she used some of her savings to buy herself the privacy of a bedroom compartment so she wouldn’t have to cry around strangers and face their questions or sympathetic looks. A black porter named Sam attended her. He was alarmed that she wouldn’t eat, and tempted her at regular intervals with grapes, baked chicken pie, and rice pudding with raisins, but food had become disagreeable. She could force only two or three bites. She stared out the window during the daytime and saturated her supply of handkerchiefs with tears. She didn’t know what she was sadder about, her silly dream of becoming somebody on the silver screen—or Buster. It was hard to believe the affair had lasted just three months and that he’d been in New York for a third of it. It felt so much longer, so much more consequential. It seemed like just yesterday that they’d kissed on the lawn of the Villa under the stars; it seemed like a lifetime ago. Her fitful dreams were filled with her own tears and wild pleas. In some, Buster was at a party or premiere with Natalie nearby, laughing for camera bulbs and ignoring her entirely. In others, he was hardened to her. She begged for him back but he wasn’t moved in the slightest. He’d look at her with a stone face and return to whatever he was doing, making it clear that she was bothering him.

She felt like a mummified husk of a woman when the train pulled into Union Station two days later. She’d cried so many tears that her mouth was dry and she was constantly thirsty. What little sleep she’d gotten had not been restful due to her tormented dreams and the thrashing of the train from side to side as it roared through the night. Sam the porter loaded her wardrobe truck onto a handcart and she took the suitcase, and together they made it up to Canal Street. It was almost noon. Sam hailed a taxi cab and helped load her luggage into the taxi, and she tipped him twenty dollars against his protests. To the cab driver, she said, “Ashbury Avenue, Evanston. I don’t care what it costs.” She could have had him take her to the L Stop, but the idea of having to have her luggage loaded and unloaded again exhausted her. The cab driver took her right to the doorstop of the slate blue house with the cream windows and the connected third-story dormers and heaved her luggage up the red-brick drive. She knocked on the door and Jennie answered. When Lena came bustling to the door at Jennie’s call and saw who it was, she squealed and threw her arms around her daughter. Nelly buried her face in her mother’s shoulder and cried.

“I’m home, Mama.” Buster dealt with the sudden end to his affair with Nelly the best way he knew how, by drinking. He was so plastered by Monday morning that he had Caruthers drive him to the studio. When he swayed his way onto Lot Two, he didn’t care who noticed. He thought he was doing okay holding his own until he dropped a weight on his left foot in the middle of a gag and Sedgwick ordered him to the infirmary, where a doctor iced the swollen appendage, which had already turned blue and green. “You’ve got to be crazy, thinking you can get away with acrobatics when you’ve had this much to drink,” the doctor lectured, the cigarette in his mouth bobbing as he talked. He wrapped the foot tightly in an elastic bandage and told Buster to stay off it for at least the rest of the day. Buster took another nip from his flask as soon as he’d hobbled out of the infirmary, then went and explained the score to Sedgwick. He was in every scene, so there was no point in filming as long as he was out of commission. They called it a wrap for the day even though he knew Weingarten would catch wind of it and give him hell. As he might have predicted, Sedgwick gave him the same lecture the doctor did. “It’s Monday, too. I don’t know what in the hell you’re doing drinking on a Monday morning.” Buster smiled grimly and said nothing.

He did ease off the next morning, though his hangover cried out for something to soothe it. His foot was painful and so swollen he could barely stuff it in his shoe. As they filmed that morning’s scenes, he had to use all his effort not to limp when the cameras were rolling. The pain, the willpower, not to mention the aching hangover, kept his mind off of anything else. That night was a different story. It belonged to Buster One. He invited the whole M-G-M stable to the bungalow and drank to his heart’s content. He couldn’t remember a single thing about the party when his alarm went off the next day, but he was still drunk and had the creeping suspicion he’d only been in bed for a couple of hours. Again, he gritted through the pain in his swollen foot as he dashed around the New York set with his Pathé. As long as he had the film to concentrate on, he didn’t have much room to think about anything else. Well, other than his foot.

After shooting wrapped on Wednesday, Ed Brophy, Buster Collier, and Cliff Edwards, his newest acquaintance, met him back at the bungalow, where Caruthers treated them to steak dinners and as many cocktails as they wanted before they sat down at the table for a bridge game. A couple girls wandered in, budding starlets looking for their “in” into pictures. One sat in his lap and played with his hair, and although he wasn’t much interested in anything having to do with girls, he thought of Constance and Norma didn’t push her away. They couldn’t tell him what to do.

Around midnight, there was a strong knock at the door. He was losing badly to Brophy and owed him at least three thousand dollars, but with as fried he was, it wasn’t bothering him any. “Come in!” he yelled.

The large frame of Edward Sedgwick lumbered into view. He was wearing blue-striped pajamas. Buster blinked at him, confounded.

“Has it occurred to you that you’re supposed to be on set in six hours?”

The girl in his lap giggled and shifted. He caught a whiff of cheap perfume and sweat.

“C’mon, Junior. I didn’t know you were next door,” he protested. “We can keep it down.”

“We’ll keep it down,” echoed the girl.

“No one asked you,” said Buster, scooting up in his chair a little. She was starting to hurt his thighs.

“My sleep’s the least of my worries right now.” The director seized Buster’s cocktail glass and dumped it down the drain.

“Oh brother have you caught it,” said Cliff, with a laugh.

“Put a sock in it,” Buster replied, reaching for the whiskey bottle. That too was contraband for Sedgwick, who upturned it in the sink. The bungalow was still amply stocked with spirits, but Buster got the point. “Alright, alright, we’re calling it a night. You satisfied? This is costing me three thousand clams.”

“Three thousand fifty,” said Brophy in his high-pitched New York brogue.

“Up,” said Buster to the nameless girl, pressing against the back of her waist with both hands. Under Sedgwick’s watchful eye, he cut Brophy a check for his winnings and grimaced at Cliff, his mediocre partner. Cliff just laughed, taking a swig of gin for the road. Pretty soon, he and Sedgwick were almost alone. The girl who’d sat in his lap was the last to leave. She caught his eye as she backed out the door, trying to communicate something. “Get lost kid,” Buster said, by way of farewell. When she was gone, he lit a cigarette and said, “Be sure you mention her to Norma and Constance next time you see ‘em.”

“What in the devil are you talking about?” said Sedgwick, sounding confused. He was standing in the doorway, so big he filled the whole frame.

“Never mind,” said Buster. He took a drag from the cigarette.

“What’s eating you lately?” said Sedgwick.

“Nothing. Just having a good time. Guess I lost track of the hour.”

“No, no, no. You’ve been plastered since Monday. Whatever it is, we can’t make a picture like this. Not when you can hardly stand up straight.”

Buster limped across the room for an ashtray. He couldn’t think clearly and he liked it that way. “I thought I was fine today.”

“You were better than you were Monday, but worse than you were yesterday.”

“I’ll split the difference tomorrow,” he joked. He sank into an armchair and ashed his cigarette.

“Give it a rest. Go to bed.” Sedgwick’s tone was firm.

He left and Buster was too tired to do anything but obey. He brushed his teeth, undressed, passed out as soon as he pulled up the covers.

The hangover was back with a vengeance Thursday and no amount of black coffee could take away its bite, but at least Sedgwick couldn’t accuse him of being drunk. They filmed in the newsroom set and his consolation for the hangover was getting to shatter the fake plate glass (made from sugar) of the entry door several times. After filming wrapped, he took a few swigs from his flask and tucked it into his jacket. For no particular reason, he found himself driving uptown to the small hotel where Joe lived.

“Hey Pop,” he said, when Joe opened the door. One half of his father’s face was covered in shaving cream and the other half was shaved. His tie was looped loosely around his neck, not yet tied.

“Come on in, son,” said Joe. He didn’t seem surprised by the unannounced visit.

Buster walked in. The Yanks game was on the radio and there was a glass of bourbon on the desk.

Joe noticed him looking. “Want a glass of the good stuff?” he said.

Buster shook his head and pulled out his flask, holding it up for him to see. Joe picked up the glass of bourbon and Buster had a pull of whiskey. Joe motioned him toward the bathroom and Buster stood in the doorway as he finished shaving. It was a funny thing. He owed his whole career, in a way, to his pa shaving at a mirror. Back in the Three Keaton days, Joe would lean forward, scraping delicately at his neck with the razor, and the basketball that Buster was innocently swinging on a rubber hose would get closer and closer until it finally popped him in the back of the neck and he’d bash his head into the mirror. Joe would roar, Buster would catch hell, and the audience would be in stitches.

“What’s eating ya?” said Joe. Buster must have looked surprised, because Joe said, “Look, just ‘cause I haven’t lived with ya since you was twenty-one, I can still read ya like a book. You’re my kid.”

Buster took a long swig of whiskey and lit a cigarette before he answered. Might as well come out with it. “I had an affair,” he said. It was the first he’d mentioned it to anyone. “Norma and Nate and them caught wind and so Norma and Dutch blackmailed me into calling it off. Happened Sunday. She had to leave town. She was working for United Artists and they had her fired.”

Joe slopped a wad of shaving cream off his razor and into the sink, and turned to scrutinize him for a few moments. He turned back to the mirror and angled his head, scraping the right side of his jaw. “You want my advice, forget about her as fast as you can. Women are a dime a dozen. You’ll learn to be more careful next time.”

The advice wasn’t comforting, but Buster couldn’t argue with it. As far as he was concerned, Joe had written the book on affairs. It was his old man who’d taught him about Della’s back in the summer before his nineteenth birthday. Buster shrugged in response, taking a drag from his cigarette.

“I can see you’re hurtin’,” Joe said.

Buster found an ashtray on the desk and returned to the doorway.

“I did that a few times,” Joe continued. “Fallin’ in love.”

The child in Buster still didn’t like to hear his father talk about his infidelity. As he’d grown from a boy into a teenager, he knew that Joe stepped out on Myra—and Myra knew it too—but somehow it got under his skin even now. He wondered if Jimmy and Bobby would feel the same way about him once they were grown.

“It goes away after awhile though. Ya get over it. Ya find another one.”

“Uh-huh,” said Buster. He held the smoke in his lungs, wanting the calm of the nicotine to linger just a little longer.

Joe splashed his face with water, patted it with a towel, and dabbed on some aftershave. “If ya want, you can come down to blind pig with me.”

His weeknight routine was unchanged from the latter Three Keaton days. Come five-thirty, he could be found getting ready for a night at the bar shooting pool, playing poker, and getting toasted. The only difference now was that Prohibition had driven the bars underground and the good stuff was scarce at the speak-easies, but Joe didn’t mind moonshine as long as the company was good.

“Nah,” said Buster. All things being equal he preferred to be alone.

“Suit yourself,” said Joe, then, “Oh!” The Yanks had just scored a run against the Browns.

He ended up driving Joe to the bar and dipped into his wallet for a couple General Grants after he parked. “Thanks,” said Joe, pocketing the bills and patting Buster’s shoulder before he got out of the car. He never made a fuss over Buster paying his monthly hotel tab and giving him a generous monthly allowance, but Buster felt his gratitude all the same. He looked ahead through the windshield at his father disappearing into the bar and swallowed against a sudden lump in his throat. More than half-cocked from the whiskey now, he thought of going to Nelly’s to be petted and consoled. When he remembered that her apartment was empty, he squeezed his eyes shut hard and pulled out the flask. Notes: To get the flavor of what Buster would have sounded like at Nelly’s, I watched parts of What, No Beer? I’m not sure there’s a single scene in that film where he isn’t completely plastered. It’s pathetic and hard to watch. Buster actually did drop a weight on his foot in May 1928 while filming The Cameraman. The scene between Buster and Joe Keaton was one of my favorite to write so far. It kind of just came out of nowhere too. I just had this picture of them in my head that I wrote down before beginning the first part of Buster’s section of the chapter. I’m closer to the end of the story, but I would estimate there’s still a good six chapters to go. Knowing me, this will probably stretch to more like ten to fifteen chapters! We’ll see. I’ve gone back and changed a couple details in the last chapter for continuity. I’ve done pretty well so far serializing this story Charles Dickens-style, but sometimes I need to tweak details for consistency. Btw, minstrel music was very popular in the 1920s, but the Coon of Coon-Sanders Orchestra isn't a racial epithet; it's the last name of one of the co-leaders of the band, Carleton Coon (not to be confused with racist anthropologist Carleton S. Coon).

#Buster Keaton #fan fiction #RPF #Actor RPF #Golden Age Hollywood #Silent film

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