and terribly efficient that at first I hardly noticed her. In Los Angeles one can become accustomed to thinking of beauty as something languid, sexiness as a quality that adheres only to the slow-moving, self-conscious forms of actresses and professional companions. And while Karen was no odalisque, I began noticing her more and more. Despite the legendary informality of Southern California—the indiscriminate use of first names, the gross overextension of the concept of friendship—it was unusual to encounter someone who could sail straight between the whirlpool of craven servility and the shoals of condescension. Karen did, and I liked her for it. That she was doing more than working for Brode had occurred to me, but my discreet inquiries suggested they were strictly business associates and that Brode was living up to the contract with his father-in-law.
Then I heard Karen say she was looking to rent an apartment for the three months of filming. I thought of Alexis, who had finally thrown the rock manager out, losing several thousand in the process. I figured the studio would pay a bloated-enough rent to make up some of what Hollywood had taken out of her in the old, kissed Karen on both cheeks and ushered us into the upstairs parlor, where she'd laid out a tea service that would've done Claridge's proud. She then took us on a tour, pointing out pictures of herself with the Duke, and Bogie, a signed first edition from Faulkner, a set of candlesticks given to her by Red Skelton, the love seat on which she'd traded confidences (here she winked) with Errol Flynn. Some of this stuff even I hadn't heard before. She was laying it on a bit thick, but Karen seemed both attentive and relaxed. When we went downstairs, I knew Karen was hooked as soon as she saw the big canopy bed floating in the middle of the big paneled bedroom, wreathed in rose-colored chintz. Before Alexis had mixed her second Negroni—“I don't usually drink in the afternoon, but this is an occasion. Are you sure you won't have one?”—it was decided that Karen would move in for the three months and that Alexis would introduce her to the landlord as her niece; the rock manager had been her “nephew.”
When we finally left at six, I asked Karen out to dinner. She said she had a lot of work to do but would love to some other night.
When shooting started, I hung around and visited the set every couple days. Brode flew in most weekends, which surprised me, though he seemed to be taking an excessive interest in the project. Each of his visits managed to make someone miserable. Three weeks into shooting, it was me. Having decided he didn't like the ending, he wanted an upbeat rewrite. I kicked and screamed about the integrity of the story. Then I tried to go through the director; but Brode had worked on him first, and he was impervious to my warnings about what The New Yorker would think of the new ending. Apparently, he was more concerned about his two points of the gross.
“It comes down to this, Martin,” Brode said as he sawed into a veal chop one night at Elaine's. “You write the new ending or we hire somebody else. I'll give you another twenty-five, call it consulting.” I watched him insert half a pound of calf's flesh into his maw, waiting for him to choke on it and die. It occurred to me that he was too fat for anybody to perform the Heimlich maneuver successfully, so I could say to the police officers, Hey, sorry, I tried to get my arms around him, but no go.
I rewrote the ending. For me, it ruined the movie, but the American public bought sixty million dollars' worth of tickets, a big gross at the time.
I visited Alexis frequently and used these occasions to knock on Karen's door. One night, she finally allowed me to take her to dinner. I told her what I'd never told anyone before, about how my ex-New York girlfriend ran off and married my best friend. Karen was appalled and sympathetic. By now she'd adopted the Manhattan uniform of nighttime femininity, looking very sexy in a small tight black dress. At her door we exchanged an encouraging kiss, but when it began to develop into something else, she pulled back and announced she had to be up at five.
A week or so later I went over to visit Alexis.