“It’s actually comic. There was never any serious Red threat in the movies, no matter what Ayn Rand and the rest of them think, and the party never advocated overthrowing the government. The only people who made those kinds of outlandish statements at meetings were FBI spies, stooges who would show up to foment insurrection and collect names. That’s the comic part.”

“But it’s tragic what’s happened to you and Simon and Jerrold and Nelson.”

Max draped his arm over my shoulders. “How can I explain it to you, what it was like twenty years ago in the thirties? Oh, sure, there was a lot of ideological struggling, Trotsky versus Stalin, all that sort of thing, but really, here in Hollywood, the Communist Party was a big social network. That’s where I met Marian. She was a script reader and I was a writer, and we were all very serious, hardworking people who believed we had the right to unionize. Simon and Nelson were always more committed to the party and its principles than I was—Simon was actively raising money for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade fighting in the Spanish Civil War. People forget now that in the thirties, the Communists were the only ones standing up to the fascists in Europe. Here in Hollywood, the Communist Party gatherings were where you went if you had a social conscience, if you wanted to act on behalf of the poor, the disenfranchised, the despairing, if you wanted to fight racism and fascism.” He gave a rueful, halfhearted chuckle. “It’s also where you went if you wanted to get laid. People who went to Communist Party meetings believed that all of us, writers, actors, the men who moved the sets, that we should speak with one voice through a union. I’m not ashamed of that.” He drank the last of his Scotch. “Now all that youthful fervor for social injustice, on behalf of labor’s right to organize, including the right to strike if need be—oh yeah, there were heads and hearts broken over that twenty years ago too—that has condemned me. Condemned us.”

“You still have your self-respect,” I offered, uncertain what else there was to say.

“I don’t regret the choice I made to take the Fifth. But it’s only been one day. I might change my mind.”

“Is there some way I can help?”

“No. Thanks. You always were just the sweetest kid, but I don’t want you involved in this. You’re too young yet to have a past you’ll have to pay for, Roxanne, a past you’ll regret.”

“Well, I’ll get older, won’t I?” The water lisped at the edges of the pool, sibilant, like baby talk. “Oh, Max, when I read Hedda’s column today and all those terrible things she said about you—”