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“A picture? A real bonafide European picture? Why, you’re practically Louise Brooks,” Cosmo said, as he pulled what was supposed to be a funny face. But Don was tired of that eyebrow waggle. He didn’t trust it. He didn’t believe that it was telling the truth. “You’re going to have to try hard to remember us little uncouth Hollywood people," he said, and that was it, that was the part, that was the part of all of this that Don didn't like, and he didn't believe that the other two liked it either. The idea that going away or getting married or doing anything together meant that they needed to leave Cosmo behind.
Kathy sighed and picked the contract up again. “It’s only one movie. But I’m not sure it’s much of a honeymoon or really any kind of vacation if we’re making a picture while we’re out there.”
“Honey,” Don said, and nobody was totally sure which of the two he was addressing, which was always the way with Don. “If we’re going to Berlin, we have to make a movie. The city is full of real artists. Just like you. Except they only exist in shadow, and when they open their mouths no sound comes out. But I’m sure Louise Brooks doesn’t have anything to worry about with me.”
Kathy patted her hair, which was short and held in finger waves. She’d never met Louise Brooks, but she knew her from her pictures — the posters almost more than the movies themselves. The blunt bob, her severe gaze. Her arresting mouth.
“Speak for yourself,” she said.
—
Cosmo had helped Kathy and Don decide on the dates of their Atlantic crossings, ocean liner timetables spread out across his favorite desk — a closed baby grand he always kept in Don’s basement, as there was never really much space for it in Cosmo's own bachelor apartment on the fringes of Hollywood.
“How many months do you want to take away?” he asked, in his airiest voice. As if, for all the world, he didn’t care.
“How many months will R.F. be able to give us,” Don mused, spreading his fingers across the piano lid. “I don’t know. Let’s ply him with coffee and liqueur before we request our leave.”
“I recommend the opposite approach,” Cosmo said, thinking of his only steamer trips across the ocean, taken when he was 19 and following Don to perform circus tricks and cheap vaudeville musical acts in shabby English music halls and Parisian theaters. Their only purpose had been to travel a little bit and earn their fare back home. Even still, it hadn’t been much of a break from anything. But it had been worth it anyway.
Cosmo had learned to smoke cigarettes properly in the alleyways of Paris, lighting finicky little matches while performers in burlesque costumes leaned in, and then out again. He'd learned that he wasn't usually interested in the women in burlesque costumes, but the men...
He’d picked up a taste for onion soup there, much to Don’s distaste. "I don't care if it's delicious, Cosmo, it smells bad." As if he wasn't used to all kinds of stink from the road, just like Cosmo was. He didn't complain when it was the best meal they could afford, after a week of striking out with all the theatre bosses in town.
In Paris, Cosmo had learned about other things too. There were afternoons in the cheap matinee seats at the opera, songs he tried his best to master on the violin, and later the piano. It was an education in yearning and heartbreak that he couldn’t have made it through the rest of this life without.
He had to snap out of it. This wasn’t a trip like that one had been. All three of them had money now, even if Cosmo didn't have movie star money.
And Cosmo wasn’t going on the trip at all. If you weren’t getting married, you didn’t get to go on the honeymoon. Wasn't that how it was supposed to go?
“You want to get R.F. to let you go free for six months? You’ve got to make yourselves dispensable. Utterly dispensable. Then you can have as much vacation time as you want. I recommend a poison-pen campaign. Pistols at noon. A public fight with Ms Lamont on top of his favorite bed of azaleas.”
Don frowned, deep in thought, gazing past Cosmo at some particular spot on the gorgeous blue wallpaper. When he spoke, it turned out that his thoughts had nothing to do with whatever Cosmo was saying. “I’ve always wanted to visit Berlin. They make the most beautiful pictures. A hack like me could barely dream of making something like that. Hey, that’s an idea. Maybe we can get R.F. to lend us to a studio out there.”
“I don’t speak much German,” Kathy said. “I’ve got an aunt from Lübeck, sure, but she only thought to teach me the bad words. Won't make me much of a hit in talking pictures.”
“It’s about to be 1929, baby,” Don said. “If we get there quick, they won’t even be wired for sound. Let’s get that beautiful face of yours on the silent screen, if you don’t mind doing a bit of dumb show with us old-timers.”
“I see I’ve made myself utterly dispensable,” Cosmo said, and he wandered off in search of coffee and a violin. He had opera welling up in his lungs again.
—
The ocean liner they booked themselves on (a luxury suite for two, of course) left a few days after Christmas, in the dying days of 1928.
“Why, we’re going to spend New Year's at sea,” Kathy said, marking the projected dates of departure and arrival in the diary she kept in her pocketbook. The paper was crisp and lavender at the edges, set into a deep purple leather case.
Cosmo had helped her pick it out at the end of the previous year, after Don, only having known her for a matter of weeks back then, had bought her for Christmas a great big monogrammed desk pad that nobody could carry around. Kathy had refused to take on a secretary or assistant even when she hit the big time, so Cosmo knew that most evenings before bed she sat up with her desk lamp on, copying over her appointments from one diary to the other. He’d miss her when she was away. He’d miss her two diaries, and the ink on her fingers.
He supposed now Don knew her better, he’d know to get her a more practical gift this year. And not a diary, just so he could write his name in every weekend. With that tragic penmanship.
“How romantic,” Cosmo said, his voice low. He was distracted. “But how will you know when it’s midnight?”
“I guess we’ll have to kiss every hour, just to be sure,” Don said. “Wear our party shoes all night long.”
“I guess you will,” Cosmo said. He was sitting at his piano again, the lid pushed open, glasses resting on top of his head. The studio had a new film that needed a score, a comedy-drama about a young woman accidentally stealing a ring and ending up alone in jail until the new district attorney takes pity on her and posts her bail. Cosmo thought the plot was as stupid as they come, but he thought Lina playing a jailbird could be a scream. He didn’t have any great ideas for the music, but he’d already agreed to be lead composer on the project.
At the time he'd thought it would be Kathy in the lead, and not Lina. Lina was harder to write for. His dramatic themes kept becoming comedic. Comedic became farcical. And then back to drama again, but sadder this time. He ended up with a tragic piece of music to play as Lina laughed.
“Want us to hum something?” Don said, leaning over to look at the sheets of empty paper propped upright on Cosmo’s music stand. “All the music gone from your head?” Cosmo shook his head, having never once found Don's humming useful, but Don was already going, a wedding march on his lips and hands. He sat back down on the couch and spread himself out to let his body sing.
Kathy joined in, but only for a bar or two. She wound up shaking her head. “He can’t start with that,” she said. “These two kids don’t get together until the picture ends.”
“It’s drawn out too long for my liking,” Cosmo said. “Maybe a hint of a love theme here and there earlier on would help.”
“What’s a wedding march got to do with love?” Kathy said. “They’re falling in love or they’re not falling in love. A wedding has nothing to do with it.”
“You’re much cleverer than you look,” Cosmo said. “And you look pretty smart already.”
“A love theme nothing like a wedding march,” Don said, thoughtful. “Hey Kathy, why don’t we elope to Berlin. Run away together tonight, hang the wedding. I'm sure there's a berth in third class going spare.”
“My darling, we are getting married in San Francisco a week before Christmas,” Kathy said. “And my mother is taking the railroad all the way down from Buffalo down for it, so don’t you dare try and change our plans. It’s going to take her six days to get here, with a night at a hotel in Ohio, which lest you forget is her least favorite state in the union, so we’d better make it worth her trip. Or believe me, there’ll be hell to pay. We are not the eloping kind. All I have to say is that I love you, but I won't marry you yet. Give it three weeks.”
“I love you, and I won’t marry you yet,” Cosmo sang, picking out a tune on the piano. “Let's repeat that again. I love you, and I won't marry you yet. I've edited you for the public, of course. That’s a swell theme.”
“You really mean it?” Kathy said.
"Honey," Cosmo said, playing the tune again, "you're a hit."
—
With one thing and another, Cosmo wasn't able to get away with saying Kathy and Don goodbye over breakfast before their journey to New York, or even at dinner the night before that. No, no, they insisted on him taking the train to New York with them so he could wave them goodbye as the ship finally set sail over the great ocean.
Cosmo started the railroad trip in their private carriage, seated opposite Kathy's mother. Half an hour later, he was playing a series of Irish reels on an old fiddle Don had pulled out from somewhere, while Don and Kathy danced around the carriage. Kathy's mother was drinking a soda water, tapping her foot, looking sideways at her husband, who was reading a gigantic newspaper with a very small magnifying glass. When Cosmo paused at the end of a tune, she sidled up to him. "We got married at the courthouse two years ago last October," she said. "And I'm still waiting for my first dance."
Cosmo nodded to Don. "See if he'll show you how it's done," he said. But the next thing was Don taking over fiddle duties, and Cosmo leading Francine Leland (née Selden, née Smith) across a pleasantly rollicking wooden dancefloor. At the end of the dance, he had to concede, he did still know a few steps.
"That's my wife!" Mr. Leland roared, good-naturedly, taking her by the hand. The newspaper was sitting on its own chair, flapping a few pages in the wind. It was pinned down by a brick that somebody had procured from a staff member on board—presumably it was kept behind the bar for just this kind of purpose.
"Go on, go on," Cosmo said, waving to the two couples as he picked up his fiddle again. "I've got a couple more tunes in me. If you don't mind my moving to Scotland by way of the Appalachia mountains..."
—
New York was exactly as breathtaking as Cosmo remembered it, and rather more full of interesting music shops and sophisticated theater. It was quite something to visit as someone other than a jobbing performer hoping for a big break. He bought a new bow, a new violin, a new cello. He had business cards on hand so they could be shipped to the right address. Except Don didn't like that.
"No, no," he said, taking Cosmo's business card out of the shop assistant's hand. "There's no room there. Send them to my place, Cosmo." He then produced a card of his own. Buttery yellow and infuriating.
"Now, Donald," Cosmo said, and he resisted picking up Don's own card and tearing it in half. "Not in front of company."
"You're at mine more than you ever visit your own place. Besides, I employ staff who will accept your packages and keep them safe. Your building's doorman stole the last jacket you had sent to your home address."
"Don't be absurd," Cosmo said. There was a burning in the tips of his ears. "You have no proof of that."
"I saw him wearing it," Don said. "It's a pity. Green is not his color."
The shop assistant looked between them, like a spectator at a game of table tennis. Slightly bemused, and wishing for it to be over. Cosmo conceded defeat on the matter. And tipped the man double his normal rate, for the trouble.
"I can't take you anywhere," he said, taking his hat off in the street. He was looking up at the sky, wondering if it was going to snow. His ears were still pink.
"You can take me anywhere you choose," Don said, matter-of-fact. He flung an arm over Cosmo's shoulder. "Where to next?"
—
Next? Next was coffee at the Hotel Claridge, and buying some new clothes for Don. Kathy was shopping with her mother, who insisted on paying for a few nice summer dresses even though they were travelling in the depths of winter. "It'll still be winter in Europe, mama," Kathy had said, to no avail.
"Try this one," Don said, passing Cosmo a blue coat.
Cosmo motioned to put it around Don's shoulders without questioning the direction. "Not for me," Don said, pulling back. "It won't fit me. Try it for you."
"I don't need anything new," Cosmo said. But he pulled the coat on anyway, and admired the cut and colour. There was some very fine stitching, picked out in darker blue.
—
Cosmo got up early on the morning of their departure. He crammed into the back of the cab with Don, Kathy sitting up front, and smiled the whole way to the docks, even when his mouth started to hurt and he wasn't sure if he had forgotten how to smile normally, like normal people do.
Kathy dragged him onboard. "You've got to see our suite," she said. "You spent so long planning this with me. You've got to see it."
Cosmo didn't know how to refuse Kathy. He let himself be dragged on. The ship was big, and somehow cleaner than the steamer in his memories from fifteen years or more ago.
It was a nice suite. The giant bouquets of flowers on the bedside tables were even nicer. "Kids, you've got it made," Cosmo said. He made a big show of checking his watch. "And I've got to go, or they'll leave with me onboard. And then where will we be?"
But Kathy wanted to show him the bathroom, and the swimming pool, and the dining room, and her new dresses, and Cosmo started to worry that he really was going to end up trapped on this ship, with no way of getting back to shore. He hadn't packed for this.
When they got back onto the open deck, Cosmo could feel more of a wind whipping up. And weren't they further from shore? "Hey!" Cosmo said. "Hey, we're moving! See that, back there? New York, that's where I'm supposed to be!"
"Nope," Don said. "We've got five minutes yet. But if you want to stay, you remember that room across the hall? Identical door to ours? It's yours."
"We thought it might be a nice surprise," Kathy said. She led him over to the side of the ship. "But look, we're still attached."
"And if you really don't want to come, you've got five--" Don checked his watch and then shook os head "—make that four—minutes to get down to your room, pick up the suitcase full of your things, and hightail it back to dry land."
Cosmo caught the key that Don threw to him, but when he got down there, the door wasn't locked. The handle was smooth, and the room was big. Maybe even bigger than his own bedroom in his own apartment, which was — well, Hollywood was plenty in demand these days, but probably not as tight for space as an actual goddamn ocean liner.
The suitcase was yellow and brown, brand new, and full. Cosmo opened it and found that it was full of everything he thought he'd left in his hotel, plus plenty of things he thought he'd left in the spare room at Don and Kathy's place, and what looked suspiciously like a brand new blue coat with fine navy blue stitching.
"Surprise!" Don said, leaning in the doorway. "If you hate it, Kathy is currently bribing the captain to wait another ten minutes so you can leave with dignity. And all of your possessions."
"Dignity," Cosmo said, rummaging through the suitcase. "Says the man who seems to have raided my underwear drawer."
Don put up his hands, as if to say, You got me, I'll come nice and easy.
"Yeah, yeah," Cosmo said. "Nothing you haven't seen before, I'm sure. But do you really think this is a good idea?"
"Of course I do," Don said, his mouth a firm line. "Kathy thinks so, too. She likes it better when you're around. We both do. And four months with you the other side of the world—"
Don trailed off. Cosmo felt both happy and slightly uncomfortable. But he sat down on the bed—his bed—and looked up at him. "Sure, why not. Does this Berlin picture need a pianist playing mood music on set?" He waved his hands in the air.
"I'll go get Kathy," Don said. But before he could leave, Cosmo called back to him.
"You're going to give me the wrong idea if you keep on like this," he said.
"I don't think I am," Don said. And then he was gone.
—
The thing was that Cosmo and Don hadn't slept together since Kathy came on the scene. Whenever Don started seeing a woman seriously — for more than a date or two — Cosmo usually did his best to step back, become his platonic best friend again.
Usually Don called him out on it, told him that it wasn't serious with — Clara Bow, or Norma Shearer, or Norma Shearer's body-double — and then they got back to their routine of casual sex and being platonic life-partners.
But with Kathy that never happened. And Cosmo had known it wouldn't, not from the first time he saw Don chasing after her, not from the first time he spoke to her. And he was happy for them. What had he and Don been doing, really?
Having fun. But not building a life — not in the way that Don and Kathy were doing now.
And if he missed him in his bed, missed kissing him over breakfast coffee and pancakes sometimes — well, he hadn't gone very far. The relationship had changed a bit, but they'd survived that before. Cosmo had survived that before. And he was sure that he could keep on surviving it. No matter the occasional burst of opera in his heart, or the lump in his throat.
So what could Don possibly mean, when he said he didn't think he was giving Cosmo the wrong idea? Did he mean that he was bored with Kathy? Not possible. Or that he knew Cosmo would remain the noble best friend forever? Maybe. But there was something about the tone of his voice.
—
One thing that Cosmo had forgotten about their trip on the steamers back and forth across the ocean, those many years earlier, was just how seasick Don could get. "Let it all out," Cosmo said, clapping Don's back as they stood at the railings.
He was holding onto them for dear life. White knuckles, and sea-spray on his brow along with the sweat.
"It'll be better once you get used to it," Kathy said.
"Don't count on it," Cosmo intoned. Don laughed, but he still sounded like he was in pain.
"What's a week of illness?" he said. "When there's the rest of our lives ahead of us? Do you think I could get the Air Force to fly me home from Berlin? Do I sound pathetic to you?"
Cosmo patted his shoulder, while Kathy threw back her head and laughed. "We could just stay there," she said. "Maybe that's why Louise Brooks never made her triumphant return."
—
There was a theater onboard the ship, but it wasn't wired for sound yet. Cosmo went below deck to watch Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd and Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks — how quickly, it seemed, the public had moved on from what was so great about seeing a beautiful face, expressing what it can through nothing but movement, gesture, feeling.
Not that he'd tell Kathy that, of course.
"Do you think I'd be embarrassing myself if I asked for one of Don's pictures," she said, nudging Cosmo in the ribs and offering him her bag of popcorn. "I'm beginning to forget what my husband looks like."
"He's asleep upstairs," Cosmo said. Which seemed to be the best remedy for seasickness, in the end. He licked the popcorn and salt residue from his fingers. Kathy watched him, thoughtfully.
"Still," she said.
—
New Years was spent on the deck of the ship, drinking in the stars like they were ice suspended in dark, deep black coffee. The sea was sarsparilla. And Cosmo was parched.
The ship's captain announced the countdown to midnight, so there was no need for their watches, variously set to the timezones of New York, Berlin, and Los Angeles ("I thought my trip was going to be over quickly!" Cosmo protested when asked about this. "Besides, mental arithmetic keeps my wits sharp."), and no need for kissing at every hour. Which isn't to say they didn't do it anyway. Even if Don was still slightly woozy from the motion of the ship. It's a good thing he never tried to join the navy.
The third time Kathy kissed Cosmo for a happy new year, around 2am in the eastern stretches of the Atlantic Ocean, he pulled back and said "I'm happy that you're so happy." She gave him a long look and kept her hand on his shoulder. Don leaned in and quickly gave him a peck on the cheek, then the same to Kathy. Cosmo's face didn't so much burn as sparkle.
Slowly, slowly, he was drawing nearer to what he thought was happening. But he wouldn't get there tonight. His mind was iced over. It was enough to move to the violins, and the sound of the water.
In the morning, Cosmo decided not to get out of bed. Kathy had doused their drinks with a flask of gin, and he was seeing stars on the ceiling now. Staying in bed seemed much wiser.
And the day after that, they docked in Southampton.
—
The journey really sped up once they hit the shores of England, and even more as they rode trains and a ferry and more trains and a rented car across the mainland to their final destination. A couple of nights spent in five star hotels where their clothes were steamed and pressed and dried, mornings spent with a cocktail in a private carriage, and snow and sleet and cold winter sun glimpsed upon lifting heavy velvet curtains.
Kathy was flicking through a small German phrasebook, practising phrases on Don and Cosmo.
"Wollen sie eine Zigarette?" She read, delicately.
"Ja," Cosmo said, and patted down his jacket to look for the cigarettes he usually carried, despite being an occasional smoker at most.
"No," Kathy said, stopping him. "I'm asking if you want a cigarette."
"No thanks," Cosmo said. "I'm peachy as I am."
"Very good," Kathy said. "I'm glad we can agree."
"Kathy doesn't have any smokes either," Don said, without looking up from his newspaper.
—
Their hotel in Berlin was discreet and modern, and not far from the river. "I thought we could take a river cruise," Kathy said, as they unlocked their rooms, on opposite sides of the corridor. It took a moment for Cosmo to realise she was teasing.
"I'd be honoured to accompany you, my lady," Cosmo said, and proffered his arm.
"Pah," Don said, intelligently. He waved Cosmo's arm away. "We'll settle for coffee in our room. Make that coffee and donuts. In half an hour. Wear your dancing clothes."
—
The coffee and donuts were followed by a cab ride to a nightclub with a sensational house band. But Cosmo wasn't in the mood for dancing, or cocktails. He was awake and alive and feeling bold.
But Don got there first. "Cosmo, why do you never stay over any more," he said. Kathy was holding his hand, and she reached for Cosmo's too. He turned it over and offered her his palm. They clasped at each other, like they were about to speak to a ghost.
"Your spare room practically belongs to me," Cosmo said. "I might as well live at your house."
"That's what I mean," Don said. He leant forwards and kept his voice low. "Look, we all know what we used to have. Why did you start ignoring my invitations, stop coming up to my room? It's got plenty of room for all three of us."
"If you're interested," Kathy said. Cosmo shook their hands, but didn't part them, and reached for Don's hand to stop him from getting a cigarette out of his own rarely-opened pack. Don grasped back.
"Tonight we are here to contact the spirit of Oscar Wilde..." Cosmo said, and grimaced as Don kicked him under the table. But Cosmo wasn't sure what else to say.
"It's not what most married ladies want to hear about their husbands," Cosmo said. "No offence meant to those present tonight."
Two women were waltzing past their table as they spoke, with short-cropped dark hair and jewels on their ears, at their throats. "Maybe they do things differently in Berlin," Cosmo amended.
"I'm not sure they do," Kathy said. She sat back and freed her hands to call over a waiter and order them each a glass of something delicious and emerald green. "Bottoms up!"
Cosmo took a deep sniff of it, and a sip, and decided he could make this decision sober. He stood up and offered a hand to Don, who had stuck a finger in the drink and was putting it on his tongue.
"Can I have the next dance?" Kathy said, from beneath her unnervingly false eyelashes.
"I'm not so used to dancing with women," Cosmo admitted, his arms now around Don's waist. "You'll have to be very patient with me."
"I think we can manage that," Don said, and tapped Cosmo under the chin with his thumb. "Baby, they're playing our song."
And they turned away, and back, and away again. Kathy drank Don's glass empty, then a glass of water, and turned to watch. And then she was on her feet, and then she was in Cosmo's arms, and Don was draping beads around both of their necks, and kissing them one after the other, and then again. The lighting was dark, and nobody in this club was going to care.
"What a night," Cosmo said.
"What a life," Kathy said. She looked at her watch. "And a month until we have to be on any movie sets again."
"I thought I might read a book," Cosmo said.
"I might learn to ski," Kathy said.
And Don, from his seat a few feet away, rested his head on his hands, and watched them rotate. The beads around their necks glittered in the low lighting. And they had nowhere to be but here.