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    One Man Too Many
    One Man Too Many
    One Man Too Many
    Ebook201 pages3 hours

    One Man Too Many

    By Virginia Coffman

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Shelby Layne was at the top—the very pinnacle of movie stardom. And that was where she intended to stay. If remaining there meant being merciless, that was no problem. Shelby Layne was ruthless by nature, so she didn’t care who got hurt.

    As for the men in her life, they were mere stepping-stones across the river to everlasting fame.

    Her success was assured, her path unimpeded, until one day she came across the ultimate corruption...one man too many.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCandlewood Books
    Release dateJul 11, 2012
    One Man Too Many

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      Book preview

      One Man Too Many - Virginia Coffman

      One Man Too Many

      Written by Virginia Coffman

      Candlewood Books

      ****

      ISBN: 978-1-933630-26-7

      Published by Candlewood Books at Smashwords

      Copyright © 2012 by Candlewood Books, a Division of Harding House Publishing Service, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher.

      CHAPTER 1

      The signora is awake now, Miss Layne, the chubby little doctor said to me as he got into his coat. It was a close thing for your so beautiful mama. These cinema stars, they work so hard to reach the top, the crown of popularity- then...the evil little pills, capsules. Powders. It is only by your quick call that the incomparable Shelby Layne did not die.

      I felt an enormous surge of relief, the greater because for a few minutes, while I walked up and down outside the closed door of Mother’s bedroom, I had wondered what it would be like if Shelby Layne, the Last of the Movie Queens, as they called her, were quite suddenly dead. How many lives would have been changed! For the better? I could not answer that. Maybe I had been her aide de camp, lady’s maid, dialogue coach, and conscience for too long. I hadn’t been able to stop her experiments with LSD, or with a new hallucinatory drug she discovered in Rome which was scarcely known yet in the United States. The things she had done during that experiment, the enjoyment she hinted at were all beyond my ability to control. My perspective on my Mother was all shot, if I had ever really allowed myself to have one.

      You wish my advice? asked the doctor, and went on to give it whether I wished it or not. You will persuade your lovely mother to forget this filming affair. She should enjoy our exquisite Neapolitan scenery, the food, the drink -perhaps boat trips to Capri.

      He need not have told me. I knew how romantic, how unforgettable those Italian nights were. Even while I waited to hear the report on Mother, a part of my senses had been regaled by the tinkling instruments, the pulse pounding sound of Italian voices in the night, which came to our hotel suite from the lagoon cafes seven floors below our balcony.

      We are scouting locations, I explained, trying to catch the thread of his advice. Capri is one of them. For the Tiberius scenes, you know. And a little bayside town a few miles from here. Puteoli. Mother has all her investments, nearly a million dollars, tied up in Queen of Fury, along with the studio moneys. Queen of Fury is about Nero’s mother.

      A singularly unpleasant lady, though beautiful, the doctor said as he wrote out something that I took to be a prescription. Her unfortunate son ended by having her murdered.

      I did not like the way he said this, and anyway I am perverse enough so that such oblique attacks on Shelby’s choice of film or any other attack on her only made me defend Mother the more violently. I suppose the doctor guessed this at last, because he began to give me unadorned orders concerning Mother’s treatment, among them that although she would feel well enough by morning, she should be kept in bed all day. It was obvious he didn’t know Shelby Layne. I told him so.

      He paused. And by the way of another bit of unwanted advice, signorina, if you are to visit Puteoli, you must travel further even than your so capable cinema staff. Pozzuoli has not been called Puteoli since the days of the ancient Romans.

      When he had closed the door, I smiled, reflecting that he had the last word after all. Then, remembering how close Mother had come to death, I felt guilty and went as quietly as possible to her bedroom door. I opened it and looked in. Again I felt such relief that I took a deep breath as I stared at her. I needn’t have worried. Mother was Shelby Layne again, sitting up in her bed with her makeup case on her lap and the bed lampshade turned up to give her face a glare that for anyone else would have been a ruthless disaster, showing every blemish. But then, Shelby had no blemishes. She was forty-six at this time, and her famous face was as flawless as it had been when she appeared in her first film role, as a gangster’s innocent daughter, in I936. Even then, she was already married to and divorced from my Father’s predecessor, who had deserted her in Hollywood.

      Hello, sweetie, she greeted me brightly, without looking in my direction. Can’t you stop that caterwauling below the window?

      I did not argue with her over her description of the music which, almost at this minute, had become the haunting Catari, Catari. Then I realized that the mandolins and other instruments almost managed to drown Shelby’s voice. And that would never do!

      Where did I get this lipstick? Mother went on when I had closed the balcony doors upon the night sounds of Naples. Makes me look like I’d just bit into some live meat. God! How Dracula can you get?

      You look wonderful, Shelby, and you know it. I couldn’t remember ever calling her anything but Shelby without being corrected on it. I think she would have gone into convulsions if I had greeted her with glad cries of Mama.

      She hurled the offending lipstick across the room, missing me by a good foot and a half, and went to work with mascara. I did not bother to suggest that mascara, no matter how lovingly applied, would simply transfer itself to her lower eyelids when she went back to sleep.

      Shelby, please! Never mind the makeup. The doctor said you were to get some rest. Lots of rest. You’ve been through an ordeal.

      Yes, I have, haven’t I? Mother agreed happily as she spread her upper lid until it formed a distinctly Oriental slant, then went to work with lilac eye shadow. Sweetie, layout that darling Fabiana dress and get my lilac moire shoes. As I stared at her, open-mouthed, she made shooing gestures. Hurry, Janet! You know my date is for nine. And that impossible creature waits for neither God nor woman. Nor Shelby Layne," she added as an amused afterthought. I don’t think Gabe Ferrante’s personal attraction had ever occurred to her until she sensed that he cared more about directing his beloved project, Queen of Fury, than about Mother’s own beloved project: herself.

      I saw that it was going to take a lot of carefully applied psychology to keep Mother from killing herself running around the Bay of Naples on a dark and chilly autumn night. One thing I did know about this apparent overdose of Nembutal she had taken: the patient had to remain warm and quiet for several hours after the drug’s effect wore off.

      No attempts tonight to cut into the very In group of Cinecitta swingers who used Naples and Capri to relive certain perversions enjoyed by their ancient Roman ancestors. One of the troubles with Shelby was that she had to live her roles, including all their historical side effects. I couldn’t let Mother, healthy or other- wise, get into the clutches of those new friends of hers who made Sodom and Gomorrah look positively puritan by comparison. Among other destructive effects, she would certainly be blackmailed for the rest of her life.

      Look, Shelby, I began desperately, combing my brain for ideas. You almost died. I know it makes publicity, and we’ll have the photographers and the gossip columnists down from Rome any minute now, but you might have killed yourself.

      For the first time since she became sick three hours ago and then went into that horrible, deathlike coma, I thought she was actually going to listen to me. Her fingers shook a trifle as she shoved away her superfluous makeup. But then she looked across at me, and I saw that she was going to be unpleasant and difficult.

      Janet, my dear baby, I hope you aren’t interested in Gabe Ferrante. Because, believe me, the poor man tells me he’s beseiged by young girls, and frankly-he loathes them. She must have seen my face color suddenly at this low blow, though I stooped to pick up her mascara wand and hoped I would recover before I faced her again.

      Another thing. I’ve been promised some glossy new thrills, doll! Thrills I’ve never known before, and with youngsters. They want me. They begged me to meet the gang tonight. Late. An experience I’ll never forget. That’s what they promised me. Well, that takes in a lot of territory. Because there isn’t much I haven’t experienced.

      She was already out of bed, and she swayed now, grabbing her head as if she thought it would fly off. Despite this, with her fresh makeup, and her hair carefully tumbled around her face, I thought no one would ever believe that within the past three hours Shelby Layne had been near death. The trouble was, Mother didn’t believe it either. I reached out to help her, reminding her at the same time.

      Shelby, those capsules you took knocked you out. You very nearly died. The doctor said you must remain very quiet. Keep warm. All those things. When did you take them?

      Mother had been in the process of releasing herself from my hand when I said this. She sat down abruptly on the side of the bed, staring at me, her world-famous eyes enormous.

      What on earth are you talking about, Janet? The only pill I’ve taken was the silly little Miltown you gave me just before I got sick. She rubbed her forehead and considered me thoughtfully. I got sick, she repeated. Just after you gave me...

      My scalp tightened. I thought for a minute I must be imagining this. But Mother, you asked for that Miltown. You said-

      And don’t call me Mother!

      I know. You do remember, though, saying you felt terrible and wanted a tranquilizer to calm you? She said nothing, and I went rambling on in a kind of desperate effort to cue her memory. You said the water was warm. I forgot to run the tap first. And then you took the tranquilizer and...collapsed.

      I took your precious tranquilizer and passed out?

      Not my tranquilizer. The prescription is yours, Shelby. Yours! And the Miltown only provided the final touch. The doctor says you must have taken four or five Nembutals. Don’t you remember?

      She said firmly, I not only don’t remember, but I did not take any Nembutals. The only pill I took today was the one you gave me... sweetie.

      I winced as I sometimes do when Mother calls me sweetie, but that was not nearly so serious, of course, as the accusation she fenced with.

      All the tensions of the early evening piled up around me so that I just shrugged and said, trying not to let her know how tired I was, Do what you like. Think what you like. But if you drop dead, you’re going to lose the entire million dollars you’ve sunk in this epic.

      Your million, don’t you mean? Yours and Myles’s. Mother!

      Shel-! Oh, never mind. Then, as I felt like taking a handful of sleeping pills myself, she added with one of her mercurial changes of mood, I didn’t mean that, baby. I know you talked Myles into standing still so I could use his trust fund. But both of you kids will get it back and with interest."

      She was almost apologizing. I could hardly believe it, and at once I felt sorry. Sorry for having peeled off what I supposed must be the thin outer skin that covered Shelby’s real and honest feelings. She had always resented the setting up of those trust funds by my Father for me and for Myles, the boy they had adopted. Once in a while, when I least expected it, Shelby showed this human side of herself, and then I felt an odd kind of responsibility for her as if she were the gay, thoughtless daughter and I a scolding, boring mother.

      She seems so innocent, I thought now. So innocent and so corrupt...

      Just briefly, like something seen out of the corner of my eye, I thought of Liam O’Hara, another innocent corruptible of Hollywood, and my first love, before he became my stepfather, Mother’s third husband, and, up to now, her last divorce.

      Janet?

      I looked at her. Just the inflection of her voice when she pronounced my name was different, warm and middle-aged, motherly, the voice I used to dream my mother would use one day, when she stopped being a famous movie star and became Mama.

      Are you feeling better, Shelby?

      She sighed and then yawned and, to my surprise, crawled back into bed and under the covers.

      Sweetie, do me a favor. Go and meet Gabe. Tell him I need my beauty sleep...No! Better just say I-ah-something came up. Let him think it is another date. Do you think you can keep him amused for an hour or two? She added hastily, You needn’t do anything-I mean don’t try to be a femme fatale. You might...Yes. You might talk about the script. Our plans for it. How we see it. Big. Bigger than DeMille. Bigger than Cleopatra. Well, you know what to talk about. You talk very well to men, Janet. Very well, indeed.

      I smiled wryly, knowing what a beautiful woman means when she tells a girl less well endowed: You talk well to men. She means, You are no threat to me.

      But this did not keep me from accepting the chance she offered me, to be her stand-in on a date with Gabe Ferrante, that proud disdainful New York director who thought Art meant the Method and the Theatre, while Shelby thought Art meant proper makeup or else pictures in The Louvre.

      "If you think you’ll be all right for an hour or two, I’ll get ready. And I’d better have someone from the hotel stay there in the sitting room, in case you want anything while I’m gone.

      If you simply must send someone, make it that voluptuous Simonetta girl who hangs around me so much. Trying to absorb my technique, I suppose. Exquisite skin. So soft... I wonder if she is a part of that in group in Rome who do all those marvelously revolting things. She must be. So-enticing... While I stared at her, she went on with wide-eyed innocence, I think I’ll study the script. Make a few little changes here and there. I have some ideas about my role.

      Poor Gabe Ferrante, I thought. He would die if she changed any more of his priceless dialogue and scenes. Or rather, he would not die-he would kill my innocent Mother.

      He would kill her.

      It was the first time I had actually thought of mother’s curious illness as a deliberate attack by someone, to destroy her. Suppose she had not taken the Nembutals absent-mindedly, in order to rest up before her date tonight. It was frightening to think that there really were people in the world who hated mother, who wanted her dead. Not Gabe, of course. With him it would be his artistic integrity that made him dislike her. But Myles, my adopted brother. And O’Hara...

      Where was O’Hara now, this minute of this night? Drunk in some bar on the Sunset Strip? Or wandering the earth, playing on his onetime fame as a movie idol? In what city, in what country, on what continent was he now? Had Shelby done that to him? Probably not. He was destined to end in a drunk tank, or at the bottom of a canal somewhere, from the moment his fame came too fast, too easily....

      But he was such a darling, I thought, as I always did when O’Hara came to my mind.

      Then I went into my bedroom, which was separated from Shelby’s by the spacious sitting room, and before I called down for a woman to sit in the suite in case Shelby called for something, I opened my balcony doors and let the music of the Neopolitan night pour in. There was a continuity about it, a lovely eternal feeling that seemed to wash away present worries and problems. While Shelby Layne and I and the rest of the tourists played at living, that music had been here yesterday and would be here tomorrow. It was a great comfort, except that it made me think of romance, of O’Hara and of life with O’Hara as it might have been, if there had never been a Shelby Layne.

      Then I laughed at my own high flights of imagination. Naturally, if there had been no Shelby Layne there would not have been

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