Love Me Read online

  That pink gown. Amanda felt a fist tighten around her heart at the memory. Harry had given her that dress, had chosen it himself to surprise her. She still remembered the sweet, scared look on his face as he presented it to her, eager for her to like it, hoping she’d understand what it meant.

  “That was Mainbocher,” she muttered, unable to look up for fear of crying.

  “Well, these aren’t. But they’re pretty damn close,” Margo said, gesturing for one of Madame Nicole’s frantic assistants to take her demitasse away. “Don’t worry, though. They’re going to give you both a really good price.”

  “Price?” Amanda gasped.

  Margo leaned forward, beaming as though she were about to give them a wonderful surprise. “Well, normally one of these dresses costs about four hundred dollars. But because of all the publicity we’re going to give them, Madame Nicole has agreed to give them to us for two.”

  “Two … two hundred dollars?” Amanda stammered.

  “Each,” Margo added. “Don’t worry. The studio will advance it. They’ll just deduct five or ten bucks out of your paycheck every week until it’s paid off.”

  Now I am going to be sick. Granted, this had hardly been an unusual feeling over the last couple of weeks, but this time, it felt serious. I wonder if Madame Nicole has ever had someone throw up all over her fancy velvet carpet.

  “Well, just you wait until it’s my turn,” Gabby said, tugging at her enormous bow. “I’m going to get you back for this, Margo, and good.”

  Margo snorted. “I’m not holding my breath.”

  “You never know.” Gabby smiled a mysterious smile Amanda knew she was copying from Barbara Stanwyck in The Mad Miss Manton. “It could be sooner than you think.”

  “Really?” Margo perked up, suddenly interested. “Things have gotten that serious with Eddie Sharp already?”

  “Well,” Gabby said, “we’ve been seeing an awful lot of each other. The magazines don’t even know the half of it. Three times this week alone. He’s been taking me everywhere. I’ve met all his friends. And not just on the Strip.” She grinned. “Downtown. Central Avenue.”

  “Downtown?” Margo looked at Amanda worriedly, as though searching for help. “Gabby, I don’t know. Isn’t it awfully dangerous down there? I mean, it’s full of—”

  “Negroes?” Gabby said sharply, her chin tilted pugnaciously.

  There she is, Amanda thought. There’s the Gabby we know and love.

  “I was going to say drugs,” Margo said. “Drug dens and dope fiends.”

  “Well, I can’t speak to that,” Gabby said. “The most I’ve seen Eddie and his friends do is blow a stick or two of gage.”

  “Gage?” Margo’s mouth dropped open. “Gabby, are you talking about marijuana?”

  “I believe that’s another name for it.”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve tried it?”

  “Oh”—Gabby waved her hands in the air, as though batting away a fly—“I’ve done way more than try.”

  “Gabby!” Margo’s eyes darted around the room, as though a fleet of policemen were going to arrive any minute. “How can you? People go crazy from that. Reefer madness is a real thing, you know. You could lose your mind!”

  “You’re assuming I have one to lose.”

  “And then it just leads to all kinds of other things,” Margo continued. “All sorts of pills and needles and powders …”

  “Oh, Margie, please. Don’t be such a square,” Gabby said. “You think that’s anything I haven’t done before? What do you think the things the doctor gives you are? When Viola was a kid, you could buy cocaine by the gram right at the counter of the pharmacy, and she says those little green pills make you feel exactly the same. And opium? Morphine? Heroin? What the hell do you think is in those sleeping pills Dr. Lipkin hands out like candy? You want to see dope fiends, take a look around the Olympus commissary sometime. Reefer is kid stuff compared to that. All it does is make you feel kind of happy and silly and calm, same as having a couple of drinks does. And it makes you feel so sexy.” Gabby lowered her voice to a naughty whisper. “Apparently, it makes things dynamite in the sack.”

  Now Amanda was interested. Gabby had been going on and on about losing her virginity since Amanda had known her, but Amanda had always assumed she’d spill everything the minute it happened. “Gabby, are you and Eddie sleeping together?”

  “Not yet,” Gabby said. “But it’s just a matter of waiting for the right moment. He’s made it clear he’s interested, if you know what I mean. And don’t give me that look, Margo,” she added crossly. “I don’t expect him to get down on one knee and propose first. But he’ll want to. When it happens, it’s going to be so incredible he’ll never want to let me go. I’m going to knock his socks off, believe me. I’ve been studying all the pictures in those dirty books Viola keeps in her underwear drawer for ages. I’m going to show him things he’s never even dreamed of. God knows I’ve been waiting long enough.”

  “But, Gabby,” Margo said, her tone more plaintive than nagging, “what if you get into trouble?”

  “Well, then I’ll call Larry Julius,” Gabby said. “That’s what he’s there for, isn’t it?”

  “Girls!” Florence Pendergast’s smoke-belching cry brought them to attention. “We’re almost ready with the next setup. Now, for this one, Madame Nicole and her attendants”—she gestured to a couple of small women in white smocks, who looked absolutely terrified at the prospect of being photographed—“are going to attempt to show you some other options, but you’re going to act as though you love these dresses so much you couldn’t bear to consider wearing anything else. All right?”

  “They don’t call it acting for nothing,” Gabby whispered to Amanda.

  “I heard that. Now come on, girls, this is for the magazines.” The photographers raised their cameras as Gabby and Amanda smiled. “One, two, three …”

  “Yoo-hoo! I’m here!”

  The famous voice, sultry and strong, was unmistakable. Every jaw in the room dropped to the glass-covered floor.

  Diana Chesterfield. In the flesh.

  She strode regally across the room, smiling graciously, as though surrounded by a coterie of adoring fans swooning over her every move. Amanda didn’t know whether it was because she was currently encased in a wearable cupcake or because Bullock’s Wilshire had finally cut off her last existing line of credit, but she found herself eyeing the movie star’s up-to-the-minute clothing hungrily: the white raw-silk suit with the built-up shoulders and nipped waist that Harper’s Bazaar had deemed “the silhouette of the new decade”; the broad-brimmed flying saucer of a hat; the enormous diamond brooch in the shape of a panther, its single emerald eye winking brightly from its onyx-spotted face.

  Cartier. Wonder who that came from.

  “There’s my blushing bride,” Diana cooed, swooping down to kiss the air on either side of the astonished Margo’s cheeks. “Darling Margo. A million apologies, I’m so sorry I’m late, traffic was such a bore, as usual. Now tell me honestly, how are you?”

  “Diana!” Margo gawped. “Surprised, I guess.”

  Diana let out a silvery peal of laughter. “Isn’t she a doll?” she asked no one in particular. “She’s going to be the most charming bride. Being in love suits her, don’t you think? And, Gabby Preston, you brilliant thing.” She clasped one of Gabby’s small, sticky hands in both of her gloved ones. “I am just in awe of you. Absolutely in awe. The voice of Ella Fitzgerald in the body of Clara Bow. You’re an absolute angel, that’s what you are, sent by God to let us all hear a little of heaven.”

  “Golly whiz, Miss Chesterfield,” Gabby said, for once in her life seeming at a loss for words. “Thank you so much.”

  “Please, call me Diana,” the star replied, smiling warmly. “Now, I know you’ll forgive me, because things have been so busy since I got back, but ever since
that glorious night at the Oscars, I’ve been meaning to ask you to lunch and talk it all over.”

  “Really?” Gabby squeaked.

  Diana nodded seriously. “Absolutely. Now, are they banging down your door with offers? Do you know what your next picture is going to be?”

  Gabby shrugged nervously. “No. … I mean, I know there’s some stuff on the table. …”

  “Well, think about it carefully. I don’t know who you’ve got advising you”—Margo and Amanda both knew the answer to this, which was no one, followed at some distance by Viola—“but you’ve got to be prudent. You’ve got heat right now, heat that could take you all the way to the top, but not with the wrong picture. It has to be quality.” Diana paused, pouting thoughtfully. “There’s a play opening in New York that might be a good fit. An American Girl, I think it’s called. They’ve just started rehearsals, but the writer is Harry Gordon, so I’m sure they’ll be negotiating the picture rights any minute.”

  “Harry Gordon! In New York?”

  The words were out before Amanda could stop them, so seized was she with an irrational, wild mixture of joy and fear. On the one hand, his office hadn’t been lying, and he hadn’t been avoiding her; he really was away. On the other, if Harry was opening a play on Broadway, he’d be gone for months. When will I see him again? Will he even come back at all?

  Diana turned slowly toward Amanda, looking the redhead up and down as though seeing her for the first time. If there was a flicker of recognition in her ice-blue eyes, it was quickly replaced by a look of impersonal appraisal. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” she said coolly.

  So that’s how she wants to play it, Amanda thought. Well, let her.

  “Amanda Farraday,” she said, lifting her chin defiantly. This may be Diana’s show, but I can play my part my own way. She’s the star, not the director.

  “What a lovely name,” Diana murmured. “Sometime you must tell me how you thought of it.”

  “Diana.” Margo had finally found her voice. “I don’t mean to be rude, but … what are you doing here?”

  “Oh my God!” Diana’s hands sprang to her cheeks in a gesture of exaggerated surprise that had the bonus effect of advantageously displaying a diamond ring at least twice the size of Margo’s. “Didn’t Dane tell you?”

  Margo stiffened. “Tell me what?”

  “That I’ve been asked to join the bridal party. Groom’s side, of course.” She smiled sweetly. “You see, Dane dined at my place last night, and I’m afraid I was being such a terrible bore about just how terribly thrilled I am for the both of you and how I wished I could do something to help that he asked me to stand up for him, just to get me to stop flapping my mouth. And for old times’ sake, I suppose,” she added thoughtfully. “Now, don’t worry, darling. I may be the best man, so to speak, but I’m not going to show up in a tuxedo. I mean, really, after Marlene, what’s the point?” She flicked a lazy hand across the tulle of Amanda’s skirt. “I suppose this … is one of the options we’re looking at?”

  Speechless, Margo nodded.

  “Well, this won’t do at all, will it? The guests will mistake us for the wedding cake, and we can’t have that.” Diana poured herself a cup of tea and draped her body languorously across a velvet chaise. “Nicole,” she called, “let’s see something in blue. Something akin to that glorious Mainbocher Wallis Simpson was married in, don’t you think? And bring some champagne. This is a festive occasion, after all.” She let out a merry peal of laughter. “Just look at the three of us. Me, Gabby, and Amanda. A blonde, a brunette, and a redhead.” She struck a pose, the kind that silently invited the flashbulbs to pop away. “Oh my goodness. We’re going to have such fun.”

  Seventeen

  “Unbelievable.” Margo tore into her steak. She ripped off a huge hunk with her fork and shoved it into her mouth. The bloody juice dripped down her chin. “Absolutely unbelievable.” With a grunt, she hacked off another bite.

  “Would you prefer a meat cleaver?” Dane asked over his glass of Scotch. “They don’t usually put them out on the tables at the Polo Lounge, but perhaps they could fetch us one from the kitchen.”

  “I mean, the nerve,” Margo went on, as though she hadn’t heard. It was funny, she thought. She used to hang on Dane’s every word, hardly daring to believe that Dane Forrest, her erstwhile idol, was addressing her. But familiarity had bred if not quite contempt, then a decided lack of awe. It was getting easier and easier to ignore her fiancé. Especially when he’s been drinking like this. “The way she walked into the place? Giving orders to the salesgirls? Shoving herself into the front of every picture? Telling the cameramen how she wanted to be lit? I mean, my God.”

  Dane laughed. “Diana’s been a star for a long time. She doesn’t exactly understand what it is to play the second fiddle.”

  “Well, she better start learning. I’m the bride, and what I say is supposed to go. As far as this wedding goes, I’m Laurence Olivier. The star and the director. I’m in charge.”

  “Darling.” Dane drained his glass and motioned to the waiter for another one. “If you were in charge, there wouldn’t be any wedding.”

  Margo dropped her fork and knife on her half-empty plate with a clatter, her heart dropping into her stomach. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded.

  “Oh, come on, Margo.” Dane rolled his eyes. “Relax. All I meant was that left to our own devices, we might have done things differently. We would have had more time to plan, for starters. Would have waited a little longer. Gotten to know each other a bit better.”

  “We know each other pretty well, if you ask me,” Margo retorted. What is he talking about? Back in Pasadena, girls eagerly accepted proposals from boys with whom they’d shared no more than a handful of waltzes at a debutante ball, whereas Margo had been with Dane for months. What else could he possibly want to know? “Besides,” she added crossly, “if we don’t know each other well enough, it’s not my fault. You’re the one who’s been keeping things from me.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like Diana, for instance,” Margo insisted. “Why didn’t you tell me you asked her to be in the bridal party?”

  At least Dane had the decency to look guilty at that. Finally. “I was going to.”

  “When? The wedding is only two weeks away!”

  “I know, I’m sorry.” Dane looked around anxiously for his drink. “But it just happened. We had dinner, and it seemed to mean so much to her, and I owe her. …”

  “You might have at least asked me first,” Margo said. “I mean, how do you think it will look to have the woman everyone thinks is your great lost love standing there with us at the altar? It’s humiliating! You’re going to look like a bigamist, and I’m going to look like a fool.”

  Dane’s drink arrived at last and he took a long, grateful sip. “Well, Larry Julius thinks it’s a good idea.”

  “Larry Julius?” Margo cried. “You told Larry Julius before you told me?”

  “Margo, please. The naïveté is no longer charming or convincing. And actually, it was Diana who called him. But he was quite impressed with the idea. Thinks it will send a good message to the public that things are really over between Diana and me, that she’s giving her blessing for them to abandon any reservations they might have about you and me. ‘A stroke of genius’ is the phrase I believe he used. And personally,” he continued, after taking another long slug of Scotch, “I think it’s all rather stylish. Wickedly urbane, like something out of a Noel Coward play. Usually that sort of thing appeals to you.”

  “Right, except the separated couple always gets back together in Noel Coward plays,” Margo pointed out. “And the new wife is always some ghastly, undereducated twit her husband can’t wait to be rid of. Is that what you think of me?”

  “Margo.” Dane leaned forward urgently, both palms flat on the table. His green eyes, lately dull with liquor,
burned with their old fire. “Diana is my sister. I thought at least one of us should have some family at the wedding. Real family, that is.”

  Family. It was a word the two of them normally avoided like the plague, and yet here it was, unavoidable, the elephant in the Polo Lounge. As far as Margo knew, the girls Friday in the press office had mailed an invitation to the Pasadena address she had nervously provided just as soon as the thick, cream-colored, gold-lettered cards had come back from the engravers, but as yet there had been no response. Maybe they’re just not coming. Maybe her disowning, which in her more honest moments she had to admit had not been without convenience in the past year, was truly permanent. Maybe they really were never going to forgive her for disobeying their wishes and coming to Hollywood.

  Or maybe, Margo thought, staring down at the blood congealing on her plate, maybe they just don’t care.

  Dane seemed to sense just how deep his remark had cut. “Margo, I’m sorry.”

  “Never mind.”

  “No, that was wrong. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “It’s fine. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Still. I’m sure you’ll hear from them soon.”

  Margo jerked away from his hands as he reached toward her. “I said, I don’t want to talk about it!”

  “Fine, then don’t. That’ll be a change.” Dane sat back, averting his eyes from her as he flipped open his gold cigarette case inlaid with dark jade that matched his eyes. The one Diana gave him. “Finish your steak. It’s getting cold.”

  Obediently, Margo picked up her knife and fork. “Aren’t you going to order something to eat?” she asked.

  “Actually, I’ve got to run. I’m supposed to meet Clark Gable at the Clover Club in half an hour to play cards with some of the fellows.”

  “Gable!” Margo exclaimed, her mouth full of steak. “Isn’t he on his honeymoon?”

  Dane gave her a watery smile. “Honeymoon? Don’t make me laugh. He married Carole in Arizona on a weekend, and Selznick had him back on the Wind set Monday morning.”