The Legacy (2 page)

The call was from Carson Devron, and Barbara said, “Thank heavens it's you. I needed to hear your voice. Bless you.”

“I'll have an explanation for that later. Meanwhile, this rain will be over in about an hour. I'll pick you up before then. We'll drive to the beach and walk in the wet sand. And then I promise you good seafood. Yes?”

“Yes. Absolutely. What shall I wear?”

“Jeans. Heavy sweater, sandals.”

“I'll be out front, waiting,” Barbara said. “And saved.”

“Then I'm happy I saved you,” Carson said. “About thirty minutes.”

She had met Carson Devron three months before, on the evening of her fourth day in Los Angeles. Goldberg, her producer, had given her a party in his mansion in Beverly Hills. The mansion was a great oversized neoclassic house, vaguely modeled after Southern antebellum plantation houses; and as Goldberg put it, everyone who really mattered was there. Since Barbara was completely unaware of who mattered and who did not matter in what passed as Los Angeles society, she took him at his word but remained unimpressed. Aside from half a dozen film stars whose faces she recognized, she knew no one, and after a number of introductions, both faces and names merged into a confusing and meaningless pattern. Barbara disliked parties, and parties where everyone present was a stranger she disliked intensely. She was not a heavy drinker and not very good at casual conversation. Surrounded by a small cluster of people whom Goldberg had dutifully led to her, she was trying to be agreeable and not too ill at ease when Carson Devron saw her. He saw her first as a woman who caught his interest, not as Barbara Lavette, but simply a tall, large-boned, handsome woman in her mid-forties, her honey-colored hair caught in a bun at her neck and still untouched by gray. Her features were well cut, the brows straight, the eyes slate-blue, the mouth well formed and rather wide — but mostly it was her carriage that caught him, her height, the way she held herself, the set of her head. Carson Devron was talking to Jack Sheldon, a Los Angeles councilman, at that moment when he noticed Barbara, and he asked Sheldon who she was.

“Which one?”

“The tall woman in the blue dress.”

“That, my boy, is Barbara Lavette, the famous or infamous — depending on how you look at it — guest of honor.”

“I'd like to meet her,” Carson said.

“Go over and introduce yourself. I haven't met her yet. Goldberg was after me, but I haven't made up my mind whether I want to meet her.”

“Why?”

“Can't you guess why?”

“You're a horse's ass, Sheldon, if you'll forgive me.”

“You can afford it,” Sheldon said unhappily.

Barbara had noticed Carson Devron and had taken him for an actor. It was a reasonable assumption. Devron was an inch over six feet tall, blond, handsome enough, hazel eyes, a good face, wide shoulders and the easy stance of an athlete. He had competed in the Olympics and had taken a bronze medal in the decathlon. He had spent summers on the beaches as a surfer; he was a golden California lad, and that was evident enough. It was not that Barbara despised the emblems he wore all over himself; they were simply emblems outside of her world and of no interest to her. So when he pushed through to face her and introduce himself, she nodded and then went on talking. Afterwards, she could not remember to whom she had been talking. What was clear in her mind afterwards and for a long time to come was the way Devron stood in front of her, firmly stationed there, watching her and smiling slightly.

“Miss Lavette,” he said for a second time, “my name is Carson Devron, and I very much want to talk to you.”

The man to whom she had been speaking slipped away. Devron remained there.

“So you told me. Carson Devron. You're an actor,” for want of anything better to say. She was becoming irritated — by the party, by the boring inanity of it, by this man who stood facing her, by his good looks and his blond hair. It made her rejoinder as inane as everything else that passed in that place as conversation.

“Why do you say that?” he wanted to know.

“You're plastic,” she was saying to herself. “If I told you that — that you're plastic, that you're ridiculous — how would you react, I wonder? Why don't you go away?”

Instead, she muttered something about his looking like an actor.

“I'm not an actor, Miss Lavette, and I wish you would not decide to dislike me until you can base it on something hideous that you have discovered. I know a great deal about you. You know nothing about me.”

“That's true,” she admitted. “I'm sorry. I'm not being very pleasant.” Now the two of them were alone, or at least as alone as two people can be in a room shared with forty or fifty men and women. “I don't like parties.”

“No, I wouldn't think so. But I'm pleased about this one. I mean I'm that delighted to meet you.”

“Why?”

“Because I've admired you for years, because I've read your books and because I think you're quite a person.”

“Thank you. That's very flattering.”

“I don't mean it to be flattering,” Devron said. “Yes, I guess I do. I want you to like me.”

“I don't dislike you. I don't know you —” She was interrupted by Goldberg, who insisted that Devron meet a film star. “I promised her, Dev,” Goldberg said. “Just five minutes, and Barbara can have you again.” With that, he drew Devron away, and Jerry Kanter, the director chosen for her film, the one person in the room, aside from Goldberg, whom she had known before the party and during the few days she had been in Los Angeles, came over bearing two glasses.

“You need a drink,” he said.

“I don't. Thank you.”

Kanter was fortyish, skinny, and a little less than charming. “I see you've met the golden boy,” he said to Barbara.

“Who?”

“Devron.”

“Who is he?”

“You don't know? Of course, San Francisco is not four hundred miles away, it's another world.”

“I'm sorry. When I'm back there, I'll ask them to move it closer to the source.”

“Very good. Very good indeed. All right, I'll inform you. The Devrons created Los Angeles — at least from their point of view. They own most of downtown, and they own the
Morning World.
They have more money than God — oh, I forgot. You're a Lavette. The black sheep, but still a Lavette. Perhaps not more money than the Lavettes, but more money than God, anyway.”

I don't like you, Barbara was thinking. I do wish I could tell you how much I dislike you. But I'm writing a film, and you'll direct it, and that calls for forbearance.

“As for Devron,” Kanter went on, “he's the publisher of the
Morning World.
Got the job last month. Some would say it comes with the family, but what the hell. You don't want this drink?”

“No. I don't want it.”

She started away to avoid him if he returned and found herself facing Devron again. “I can't take much more of this place,” he said. “Neither can you, from the look on your face. Let's slip out. Have dinner with me, please.”

“I can't leave.”

“Of course you can. I know you're the guest of honor, but half the people here don't know that, and the other half don't care. Believe me — I'm an old hand at these stupid parties.”

“Then why do you come, Mr. Devron?”

“I came tonight to meet you, and now that I've met you, let's leave, please.”

And hardly knowing why she did it, Barbara allowed him to take her arm and lead her through the crowd and out of the house. He asked her whether she had a car, and she told him she had come by cab.

“Good. We'll go in my car. Cars are the nightmare of this place. By the way, why did you come with me?”

“To get out of there, I suppose.”

“Then it's not my goddamn good looks,” he said, but so ingenuously that it did not sound trite. “There are women who mistrust good-looking men on sight, and I sort of guessed that you are one of them. I'm not supposed to mention that, am I? But it's like being crippled, believe me. You live with it, but you don't get used to it.” Before she could comment on that, he said, “I'm thirty-six. You're older than that. How old are you?”

“Good heavens,” she said angrily, “what are you — some kind of rich boy idiot? It's none of your damn business how old I am! I barely know you, and I'm not sure that I want to know you any better.”

Now one of the red-jacketed parking attendants — hired by Goldberg for the evening — had brought his car around, a 1952 Buick convertible, and stood by the open door, waiting.

“They'll call me a cab,” Barbara said. “I don't think I want to have dinner with you.”

Her statement demolished him. The face that stared at her uncomprehendingly was the face of a hurt small boy, and he pleaded with her, “What did I say? I'm so sorry. The last thing in the world I wanted is to offend you. Please forgive me.”

For a long moment, she stared at him. Then she nodded, walked around the car, and got in. They started off, driving in silence for about five minutes before he said, “I say things the way I feel them. Can I explain what I mean by that?”

“I'd rather you didn't. Just forget I was angry. It's not your fault. I've been here four days, and I've spent most of them regretting that I ever came. Tonight I felt put upon and degraded, and I don't want to explain that either. It's my fault. I'm not very nice.”

“I think I understand how you feel.”

“Then we'll leave it that way. Where are you taking me?”

“Downtown. Do you know downtown Los Angeles?”

“Not very well.”

“It's as different from Beverly Hills as night from day. I know a good Italian restaurant, near the paper. Do you like Italian food?”

“Very much. I'm half Italian,” she said bluntly.

“I know that. Look, I've been working on the paper for twelve years, and you and your father and your family have always been news. So I'd know a good deal about you and Dan Lavette and your family just in the course of things. As a matter of fact, when Dan Lavette faced down those two muggers at the Japanese Tea Garden, this past August, I did a special box on it for the sports page. My word, it was fantastic — for a man of sixty-nine to be that fit and to have that kind of reflexes. Part of me is an old jock, and I just had to tip my hat at the man.”

He's trying hard, Barbara thought, and said without enthusiasm, “Daddy's not fit. He had a heart attack ten years ago. He did that crazy thing only because one of the men threatened my mother. You would have to know daddy to understand that.”

“I always wanted to meet him — and you too, of course. But I've also read everything you've written. I mean your books. And when you went to prison, I was enraged, if that means anything, and I wrote an editorial about it which they didn't print even though I threatened to resign, which I didn't have enough guts to do, and I know about your husband, who must have been a damned wonderful man —” He broke off and glanced at her. Barbara sat rigid, silent, and for the next few minutes, she said nothing; and then, at last, Devron said almost woefully, “My full name is Kit Carson Devron. You might as well know. I feel ridiculous and I might as well complete the picture.”

“I think you're rather nice,” Barbara said after a long moment.

*

That had been three months ago. Now, in a raincoat over blue jeans and a sweater, Barbara stood at the entrance to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, waiting for Carson Devron. She had been there only a few minutes when he pulled up in his convertible. The car was not an affectation; he was indifferent to what he drove, and one car was as good as another, so long as it moved. Barbara darted ahead of the doorman's umbrella and through the open car door, and then huddled comfortably in the seat as Devron turned westward and then down Wilshire toward the beach.

“How did I save you?” he wanted to know. “And why?”

“I wanted to kill someone. I thought of myself, but I'm not up to suicide yet. Then I considered my producer. That becomes difficult, because the only other Goldberg I ever knew was Sam Goldberg, who was my dear friend and lawyer and we named my son after him. I might kill our director. That would be pleasant. I'm just talking. I can't kill a fly when push comes to shove. Just bloodthirsty thoughts.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Yes. I'm not the type who suffers in silence. I've just been informed by my producer that they're scrapping the screenplay that I wrote and rewrote according to the suggestions of every incompetent idiot who read it. They're throwing it out and giving the job to another writer — my book, my life.”

“Can they do that?”

“They can. When they buy a book, they own it. They can do what they please. Oh, perhaps I could have had it differently if I had known. But I thought it was so wonderful of them, so brave to do a book by a writer who had been blacklisted, that I never questioned the contract. Anyway, there are some silver linings. I'm through with Los Angeles.”

“That's a hell of a silver lining. Look there,” Devron said, pointing westward to where the clouds were breaking up, golden shafts of sunlight burning through. “That's the real thing. This place can be very beautiful if you'd forget about the lousy film business. Anyway, it's not for you. It's not for people.”

They parked the car and walked along Santa Monica Beach. After the rain, the vast stretch of the beach was empty except for the swooping, screaming gulls. Over the headlands to the north, there was still a black thunderhead, shredding and shot through with fronds of sunlight. The beach sand was wet and firm under their feet.

“What we have here,” Devron said, “is too large, too beautiful, and too mucked up for anyone to take it casually. That's why it manages to be hated so fiercely. In New York, they make a religion out of hating the place.”