Love Me Read online

  Harry frowned. “I never got any letters.”

  “I was too afraid to send them.” Amanda looked down at her hands, fighting back tears. “But the important thing—the thing that you have to know—is that all of that, it was all over before I met you. Before I ever knew there was going to be a you.”

  “I know,” Harry said quietly.

  His face was close to hers. She looked deep into his dark eyes, breathing in the familiar smell of him, of cigarettes and ink and the fancy lime-scented English soap that was the only expensive thing he allowed himself to buy. “Oh, Harry,” she gasped. “I miss you so much.” The tears she had been struggling to hold back suddenly burst from her eyes, falling thick and fast over her powdered cheeks.

  “Amanda, no,” Harry murmured. “Don’t cry. Please. Don’t cry.”

  But she couldn’t help it. He put out his arms to comfort her, cautiously at first, but at the familiar touch their bodies fell together, fitting as perfectly as they always had. “Don’t cry,” he whispered again, “don’t cry.” She lifted her face and his lips met hers. They were kissing now, the tears still streaming down her face, their lips wordlessly saying all the things that had been left unspoken for the past six months.

  If it had been a scene from a picture, this would have been the part when it faded to black.

  But sometimes, Amanda thought happily as she guided Harry’s warm hands toward the zipper of her gown, sometimes real life is even better than the movies.

  Ten

  God. She’s so beautiful.

  Seeing her bright hair spread in a silky fan across the pillow, her long eyelashes casting soft shadows on her pale cheek, Harry thought, as he often had, that looking at a sleeping Amanda was like being somehow transported into some undiscovered pre-Raphaelite painting. Like being with one of the ethereal, half-magical beauties in the Arthurian legends he had loved to read as a little boy. It was as if the enchantress Morgan le Fay or the Lady of the Lake had materialized in the bed to bestow her favors upon some lucky bastard of a mortal peasant, and the lucky bastard was Harry.

  He’d never felt worse in his entire life.

  Amanda’s eyes fluttered open. “Good morning.”

  “Good morning.”

  “What are you doing dressed so early?” she murmured. A lazy feline smile spread across her face as she wrapped her arms around his waist.

  “It’s not that early. Anyway, I have to go to the studio.”

  Her smile faded. “Today? Who’s going to be there?”

  “Everyone who wasn’t there last night.” Harry extricated himself from her grasp, turning his head away. He couldn’t look at her, not right now. “Besides, I get the most done when it’s quiet. Fewer people around to bother me.”

  “Harry.” Amanda sat up. “If this is about not winning last night …”

  “It has nothing to do with that,” he snapped. “I’m on a deadline, that’s all. Production schedules don’t change just because somebody else went home with an Oscar.”

  “Oh.” She cast her eyes downward, pulling the sheet around herself protectively. “Of course. I understand.”

  Harry felt a sudden stab of remorse. “Do you … do you need a ride home or anything?”

  She shook her head. “I have my own car.”

  “Then, listen, stay as long as you want. And order breakfast—hell, order anything. Champagne, caviar, anything.”

  “For breakfast?”

  “Why not?” He shrugged. “Listen, Amanda … I’m really sorry about this.”

  “What do you mean, ‘this’?”

  He looked down, unable to meet her eye. “About having to run off to the studio,” he said finally.

  “Oh.” The relief in her voice was palpable. “Don’t worry about it, darling, I understand.”

  Darling. He placed a swift, dry kiss on her expectant lips. “I’ll call you, okay?”

  God, could I be any more of a heel? Harry thought as he scurried out the door. I might as well have left fifty bucks on the dresser.

  His head pounded with the ache of last night’s Scotch as he rapped his knuckles on the door at the far end of the hall.

  “Who is it?” came a fearful voice.

  “Ma, it’s me. Open up.”

  “Harry!” There was a symphony of jangling and clicking as Sadie Gorenstein labored to open the collection of locks and latches on the door. From the sound of things, Harry wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d brought some of them with her especially from New York. “Where have you been? I’ve been up for hours. It’s still dark and there I am already wide awake, staring at the ceiling.”

  “It’s the jet lag, Ma.” He kissed her cheek. “Remember, I told you how California is three hours earlier than New York.”

  “Sure, I remember, but I don’t understand. To me, time is time.” She ran her hands self-consciously down the front of her flowered dress. “I’m embarrassed, I don’t have anything to offer you.”

  “It’s okay.”

  She gestured helplessly around the room. “If only you could have found me a place with a kitchen, I could have prepared you something. Made you eggs with belly lox and lots of onions, just the way you like.”

  “I have to go to the studio this morning anyway,” Harry said. “Some rewrites that have to be in by the end of the day, or else.” He’d already lied to Amanda; why not lie to his mother too? “Besides, Ma, you don’t make breakfast in a place like this, you order it. Just pick up the phone and tell them to bring you eggs or toast or anything you want, and to charge it to the room.”

  “A cooked breakfast?” Sadie made a face. “It won’t be kosher.”

  “It wasn’t kosher last night, and you ate.”

  “That was different. With all those people around, I didn’t want to be rude. Besides, with a cooked breakfast, they’ll put bacon with it.”

  Harry sighed. “So have the fruit plate.”

  “Fruit plate? Here?”

  “Yes, here. California has the best produce in the whole world. Believe me, there’ll be such fruit on the plate you never even knew it existed.” Jesus, Harry thought. Five minutes with my mother and already I’m talking like a character from The Jazz Singer. “And after breakfast, go down to the lobby and the driver will take you anywhere you want to go. Shopping, anything.”

  “The driver?” Another face. “You want your mama should be alone in a car with a strange colored man?”

  “His name is Arthur, Ma,” Harry said. “He’s from the studio, and he’s a very nice man. You’ll like him, he’s from the Bronx. And I’ll be back here around six to take you to dinner.”

  “Dinner? Where dinner?”

  “I thought we’d go to the Vendome on the Sunset Strip. It’s a French restaurant, and they’ve got card games in the back, like Pop used to play on Hester Street.”

  “You want I should eat with a bunch of gamblers?”

  “Gamblers know how to eat. It’s one of the best places in town.”

  “But all your fancy-schmancy friends already saw me in my dress.”

  “So buy another one.” Harry kissed her cheek again. “I’ll see you at six. Try to have fun.”

  In the lobby, Harry was suddenly somehow seized by the wild notion of going back and asking Amanda to look after his mother for the day. Why not throw the two inescapable women in his life together and see who made it out alive? But the flames of that idea were soon doused by the ice bucket of reality. He could never introduce his mother to Amanda, not in a hundred years, and certainly not as his girlfriend.

  It wasn’t just because she was a Gentile. Harry assumed that Sadie Gorenstein, like hundreds of other mothers who had lost their bright Jewish boys to the lights of Hollywood, had long ago made her uneasy peace with the fact that it was very likely the girl her darling son brought back to Brooklyn would not arrive e
quipped with her own gefilte fish recipe. She would be a Gentile, with no people, no family, no place. Whatever world had spawned the primordial Amanda, there was, as Gertrude Stein would say, no there there. It was almost laughable, thought Harry, without even a hint of a chuckle, how little he actually knew about the girl who had vacuumed up every speck of his mental and emotional energy since almost the moment he met her. He imagined the two of them sitting stiffly on the enormous antimacassar laid protectively over the velveteen sofa in his mother’s tchotchke-cluttered living room in Flatbush: “Ma, this is Amanda. I don’t know her real name or how old she is. I think she’s from Oklahoma but I’m not sure, I don’t know if she has any brothers and sisters or what her father did for a living, or if he is still living, or if he ever existed at all. I don’t even know where she lives, but by God, I think I want to marry her.”

  No. Harry shook his head. That wouldn’t go over well at all. And that was before you even took into account the one incontrovertible factual thing he knew about Amanda, regarding what she used to do for a living—what she used to be and, as far as he knew, what she still was. Sure, she denied it, but that didn’t explain how she’d looked like a million bucks every time he’d seen her recently. Something—or more likely, someone—was keeping her in Paris fashions and French perfume, and it sure as hell wasn’t a contract player’s fifty bucks a week.

  Well, Harry thought, letting himself into his new corner office in the Writers’ Building on the Olympus lot, she’s not going to make a fool of me this time.

  He still loved her, or at least, he still wanted her, that was clear. Which was why he couldn’t trust himself around her. Last night had been incredible as always, but afterward, as they’d lain in bed, her head nestled against his chest, her smooth arms wrapped around his neck, Harry had started conjuring horrible pictures of Amanda looking the same way at other men, saying the same things, doing the same things, to the point that he’d disentangled himself from her sleeping embrace in disgust. Even now, they swam into his mind unbidden; the harder he tried not to think about it, the more explicit and intense the images became. They’d never go away, he was sure of it. Maybe it was his problem. Maybe he was just too old-fashioned, too chauvinistic. It didn’t matter. That was the way it was.

  And yet, if she materialized right now in his office, her lips parted, her arms outstretched, looking at him the way she always did—as though Harry, shy little Harry Gorenstein with the kinky hair and the crooked nose and clothes that were always just a little bit too big and a little bit too wrinkled, was the only man in the world—he knew he would be unable to resist. And then he would hate her for it. And she would hate him for hating her. And so it would go, on and on, a vicious cycle that would drive both of them crazy and destroy their lives. Unless he put a stop to it.

  Jean, his new secretary, had carefully cleared off and dusted a spot on his end table for the Oscar statuette that just yesterday they had all been so sure was going to be his. The bare polished wood gleamed up at him reproachfully. Told ya so.

  Sighing, Harry reached into his desk drawer for some papers to cover it up and came up with a fistful of typewritten pages with a familiar title:

  An American Girl

  By Harry Gordon

  An American Girl. His masterpiece. The script he had written for Amanda. The movie that was supposed to make her a star and declare his undying love for her at the same time. Currently languishing in development hell, without an actress, without a director, without a chance of being made.

  Harry could never keep his fingers off a sore. With an appetite for pain that was almost perverse, he turned the first page and began to read.

  God, it was good. Heartfelt and gripping, so different from all the anemic little efforts he’d been making since. Too good to sit gathering dust in a drawer, Harry thought. But what to do with it? When the studio first commissioned the screenplay from him, they had intended it to be a musical vehicle for Gabby Preston. Was that still possible? After her incredible performance last night at the Governor’s Ball—a performance that had, quite frankly, shocked Harry, who had always thought of her as no more than a bratty little kid—the producers were certain to be looking for a project for her, and fast. But the best scenes of the script didn’t seem to lend themselves to big production numbers. They were intimate scenes between characters who talked passionately about their hopes, their dreams, their ideas about the world, their plans for the future.

  Just a few people in a small room.

  Suddenly, Harry had an idea. An idea that, if executed properly, could solve everything. He lunged for the phone and dialed the switchboard.

  “Operator, I need to place a long-distance call to New York City. Right away.”

  There was a brief pause as the operator hesitated. “I don’t know if I’m authorized to place long-distance calls from Mr. Gordon’s office.”

  “Dammit, this is Mr. Gordon.”

  “Oh, Mr. Gordon, of course! I do apologize. What’s the number?”

  Harry flipped frantically through his address book. “Gramercy 5-7349.” He rubbed his thumb excitedly over the gilt edges of its pages as he waited for her to connect the call.

  “Group Theater, Harold Clurman’s office. How can I help you?”

  “I need to speak to Har—Mr. Clurman, please. Right away.”

  “I’m afraid Mr. Clurman’s in a meeting, sir. May I ask whose calling?”

  “This is Harry Gordon, in Los Angeles.”

  “Oh!” The secretary’s little gasp gratified him more than was perhaps seemly. “I see. Shall I … shall I go and get him?”

  “No need.” Harry grinned to himself. “Just go in and tell him I have a play for him. Then come back and tell me what he says.”

  “Yes … yes, sir. Right away.”

  There was a rustle of static as she hurried away. Harry slid a stale cigarette from the crumpled pack on his desk and inserted it into his mouth unlit, chewing on the filter until she came back.

  “Mr. Gordon?”

  “Yes?”

  “He asks how soon he can see it.”

  Harry pumped his fist in triumph. “Tell him he can have it, and me, by the end of the week.”

  “You?” The secretary sounded shocked. “But aren’t you in Hollywood?”

  “Not for long I’m not.”

  Now there was only his agent to call. For this one, he actually needed to light the cigarette.

  “Harry, baby,” came the familiar garrulous voice over the phone. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m going back east for a while, Myron,” Harry said matter-of-factly. “You’re the first to know. I need you to take care of my affairs while I’m away.”

  “Now, sweetheart, come on.” A note of concern, or more likely, panic, crept into the agent’s voice. “If this is about last night, believe me, it’s no big deal. It sounds like a cliché, but it really is an honor just to be nominated. We’ll pick it up one of these years, you’ll see.”

  “It’s not that. It has nothing to do with that. It’s business.”

  “And may I ask what business?”

  “Of a personal nature,” Harry said coolly. “Don’t worry, Myron, I’ll be back. It’s only for a few months. The Glass Key can go into production without me. I’ll send any rewrites they need through the wires. In the meantime, please see that all my other correspondence gets forwarded to the Waldorf Astoria.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Only one thing.” Harry blew a smoke ring. It quivered nervously near the tip of his nose before dissipating into the air. “It doesn’t matter how you do it, but it’s very, very important, and it needs to be done by the time I get back.”

  “Anything,” the agent said. “Just tell me what it is.”

  Harry crushed the glowing ember of his cigarette against the desk.

  “By the time I get back, I
want you to have fixed it that I never bump into Amanda Farraday again.”

  Eleven

  All oƒ Hollywood Is Asking:

  Who Is Diana’s Duke?

  The large storybook letters of the Picture Palace headline swirled and twined in and around each other, like something out of a medieval illuminated manuscript. They’d even gone so far as to top the purple W with a delicate engraving of a crown last seen during the coronation of George VI two years before.

  Olive Moore took a long, restorative sip of sherry from her Waterford crystal glass. Then she smoothed the pages back against the dark leather blotter on her desk and began to read.

  In case you’ve been living under a rock in the two weeks since the Oscars— or, like sore-loser screenwriter Harry Gordon, just boo-hoo-hooed yourself all the way back to Broadway—here’s the big scoop on the lips of all the usually nonspeaking Tinseltownspeople: Diana Chesterfield is back! That’s right, America’s Number One Female Box-Office Star, mysteriously missing from our screens and hearts these past twelve months without so much as a postcard to her forlorn fans, has made her triumphant return to the Hollywood stratosphere, and in a fashion appropriate to a thespienne of her caliber:

  Thespienne. Olive had to smile at that.

  a dramatic surprise entrance to present the Academy Award for Best Actor to her frequent costar and erstwhile paramour Dane Forrest. Spectators worried the tongue-tied Mr. Forrest was about to double over from the double shock (believe us, we didn’t expect him to win either!) as he stammered his way through a much-abbreviated acceptance speech in which he failed to thank anyone, most conspicuously his (conspicuously) unnominated and current paramour, Miss Margo Sterling, who may have been swathed in peacock blue but looked like she was all in lemon. Had just swallowed one, that is.

  But the real question is just where has our darling Diana been? Speculation has been ripe among Hollywood’s cognoscenti, and by that, we mean the people who think they know everything about everyone. But there’s only one place that knows the truth, dearest reader, and that’s your own humble Picture Palace, which has the most exclusive of exclusive interviews with the dazzling Miss Chesterfield herself! Turn to page 14 for the whole scoop!