Read Online Make Believe by Ed Ifkovic - Free Book Online Page B

getting ever since.”
    “Hey, I’m doing all right.” He pointed at Max. “You ruined all our careers, Max.”
    Max started to say something, but Alice put her hand on his knee. He blinked wildly at her.
    “Say good night, Tony.” Ethan prodded him.
    I turned to Ethan. “And what do you think of Max?”
    Ethan deliberated, cool, quiet, steely-eyed, turning from me to glare directly at Alice. He spoke to her. “He married the woman who murdered my brother, Miss Ferber. We just can’t prove it. And on top of everything else, now we learn he’s a Commie. Max is filled with surprises.”
    Silence. An awful silence.
    Ava sidled up to Frank and watched as he poured himself a drink at the sideboard. I didn’t hear what she whispered to him, though Frank, gulping down a drink, spoke loud enough for all of us to share the moment. “Hey, I got friends, too. You did say party. I only party with friends.”
    Ava whispered something else, but he turned away. He caught my censorious eye—a look I’d perfected and executed on even more annoying members of the lesser species—but he simply smiled that charming witchcraft smile. A hard nut to crack, this Sinatra boy, a crooner confident in his power to attract. I figured it was time he met his match.
    The two Pannis brothers huddled in a corner, Ethan whispering in Tony’s ear. The woman who’d followed them in—she’d stood in a corner the whole time—now tucked her arm around Tony’s waist.
    I sat back as Max nudged me.
    “Edna.” Max tried to make a joke. “You don’t look like you’re having fun.”
    “I didn’t expect to.” I sipped my drink. “I’m too old for these shenanigans.” I pointed a narrow finger around the room. “This tinseltown soap opera.”
    “I expect you never liked cocktail parties…ever,” Alice added.
    “Like New Year’s Eve parties, which I avoid like the plague, cocktail parties thrive on forced hilarity and futile dreams of new and unexpected pleasure.”
    “Good God,” Lorena howled.
    “Then what do you do for entertainment?” Alice asked.
    “Well, I go to cocktail parties and New Year’s parties. I like to watch people fail at their dreams.”
    Max shook his head during the abrupt pause that followed my comments. “Don’t believe her, Alice. The people Edna watches will end up in one of her novels. She’s memorizing our scintillating dialogue right now.”
    “Don’t flatter yourself, Max,” I chided. “George Kaufman you’re not.”
    The woman who was hanging onto Tony’s sequined sleeve squealed at something he said, and then apologized. She clung to Tony, sipping the drink he’d handed her, but she looked frightened, as though she couldn’t understand what had just happened in the room. Now she was whispering in Tony’s ear, and he didn’t look happy.
    “Is that Tony’s keeper?” I asked Alice.
    Max, listening, answered. “Liz Grable.”
    “Tell me about her.”
    Max brushed an affectionate hand across Alice’s face. “See, what did I tell you? The novelist.”
    “Is she Betty Grable’s misguided sister?” I wondered aloud.
    Alice smiled as Max spoke in a soft voice. “Her name is Liz Carnecki. A fledgling actress, at least a decade ago. She thought a name change would usher her into stardom.”
    “Did it work?”
    “She’s still trying, God knows where. I was her agent for a split second, a favor to Tony way back when, but I could rarely place her. Nowadays she works in a hair salon on Hollywood Boulevard. Hair Today. Can you imagine? She’s got an efficiency that’s way, way out by the Hollywood Cemetery on Santa Monica Boulevard, where Tony squats these days.”
    Liz Grable/Carnecki was now staring at me, mouth agape, showing too many capped teeth. Had she heard us chatting about her? An impossible woman, I realized, all bamboozle and peroxide, hair so teased and puffed and platinum she looked like cotton candy at a fair. A woman in her forties—those lines could no longer be