Love Me Page 23

  The cheapest kind, thought Amanda, visualizing the rapidly thinning wad of bills tucked inside the lining of her black grosgrain handbag. She was trying to figure out the most discreet way of saying exactly that when she heard a voice call out to her.

  “Red! Hey, Red, is that you?”

  She was so surprised to see the boy bounding toward her, his porkpie hat pushed far back on his dark hair, his shirt open at the throat, that she didn’t recognize him at first. Only when she noticed the battered trumpet case in his hand did she put two and two together.

  “Eddie,” she said, blinking stupidly. “It’s Eddie Sharp, isn’t it?”

  “Sure is. And I know you too, Amanda Farraday. It’s funny, huh? We’ve never been properly introduced—because believe me, sister, I’d remember—and we know each other anyway. Ain’t it the darndest thing.”

  “That’s show business I guess.” Amanda fiddled nervously with the clasp of her handbag.

  “Showbiz, yeah.” Eddie looked at her appraisingly. “Now. Tell me the truth.” He leaned in closer, as though he didn’t want the desk clerk to hear. “What’s a classy dame like you doing in a flophouse like this?”

  Amanda laughed. “Fallen on hard times, I guess.”

  “Ain’t it the truth. You oughta see my usual digs when I come here. They’d put, whaddya call it, Buckingham Palace to shame. But this joint?” Eddie cast a theatrically disgusted glare around the splendor that surrounded them. “Next stop, skid row.”

  “I guess your star must be falling.”

  “I guess so.” Eddie lifted his cigarette to his lips—which, Amanda thought, were almost indecently full. A slow grin spread across his face as he exhaled. “So tell me seriously, what brings you to this neck of the woods. Business or pleasure?”

  “Um …” To be honest, I don’t quite know myself. “A little bit of both, I suppose.”

  “Good answer. I’m doing a little bit of both myself. My band and I are opening at the Palace in two weeks. But until then”—he smiled again—“it’s all about pleasure. So let me know if I can give you a hand with that half of the equation.”

  I bet Gabby would love that. “I don’t think so, Mr. Sharp.”

  Eddie whistled in dismay, although by his expression he seemed in no way deterred. “Wowee zowie, it just got cold in here. Look, sweetheart, I wasn’t suggesting anything untoward. Just that this city can get real lonely real fast if you’ve got no one to see it with.”

  “Who says I don’t?”

  “Not me.” Eddie held up one hand in a sort of truce. “I bet you’ve got truckloads of offers. But if you find yourself craving one of those fancy salads they got here and want someone to eat it with, you know where to find me. In the meantime”—he turned to the clerk—“you take good care of this young lady. Nothing but the best for her, and don’t let her tell you different. This lady is a major Hollywood star.”

  Shamelessly flirty, Amanda thought as she watched him head to the door, but I think he means well. At least the hotel clerk was friendlier, now that Amanda had the official imprimatur of someone he recognized, although when the bellboy opened the door of the suite he insisted was the “only possible option” for a “special friend of Mr. Sharp,” her heart sank. With its Aubusson carpets, gorgeous swag draperies, and magnificent green marble tub that was so deep you had to climb down three steps to get to the bottom, she didn’t even want to think about what it must cost.

  “Is everything all right?” the bellboy asked anxiously, mistaking Amanda’s reticence for displeasure.

  “Yes,” Amanda muttered, struggling to keep down the remains of breakfast suddenly churning at the base of her throat. Don’t be sick, she told herself sternly. Not in front of him.

  “Good.” The clerk gave a little sigh of relief. “And will your maid be arriving with your luggage?”

  “No. No maid.”

  “I see.” The clerk thought a moment. “If I may, we have an excellent personal maid service here at the Waldorf, with several ladies’ maids trained in all the best houses of Europe. Might I take the liberty of selecting one of our more capable girls to attend you for the duration of our stay? It’s a small additional daily charge, of course—”

  “No,” Amanda said too quickly. “No, that won’t be necessary.”

  “Very well.” Clearly, he was miffed. “I’ll leave you, then. Please alert us if there’s anything else you require.”

  Maybe it won’t matter, Amanda thought as she grudgingly peeled off a few dollar bills for his tip. She’d find Harry soon, and when she told him, he’d take care of the bill anyway. Or maybe I’ll just have them charge everything to Eddie Sharp. She giggled inwardly at the thought. After all, he’s the one who got me into this Popsicle stand in the first place.

  Left alone, Amanda stepped out of her dress, slip, and underwear and stood naked in front of the full-length mirror.

  Thoughtfully, she peered at her reflection, running her hands over her pale body, trying to gauge its size. Can you tell? Do I show? Was her waist thicker? Had her hips spread? Her breasts seemed fuller, she noted with approval, feeling the unaccustomed weight of them against her palms. Harry will like that.

  Smiling, Amanda cradled her still-satisfactorily flat stomach in her arms. “Hello in there,” she cooed. “Hello. You can’t hear me, but I know you’re in there. And I’m out here, waiting for you.”

  Then she laughed at the ridiculousness of it all. Look at me. Naked and talking to my stomach. Hastily, she pulled her slip back over her head and went into the bedroom to unpack.

  She’d found out for sure the first morning on the train. She’d slept in and gone to a late breakfast in the dining car, when she suddenly took a turn and collapsed into the aisle, upsetting a waiter with a huge serving platter of orange juice and scrambled eggs. “Fainted dead away,” said the kindly porter who carried her off and summoned the train’s doctor, an elderly gentleman with a faint Southern accent and a white handlebar mustache, who was sitting beside her when she came to fifteen minutes later, sticky with orange juice and studded with scraps of egg, on the cot of an unoccupied sleeping compartment.

  His diagnosis hadn’t come as a total surprise. After all, I’m not an idiot. She knew the signs. But she’d pushed it all to the back of her mind. Somehow, none of it seemed real until the nice country doctor took her hand in his and said, “Mrs. Gustafson”—she’d given him her real name, since they were traveling through Oklahoma at the time; the “Mrs.,” bless his heart, he’d inferred all on his own—“Mrs. Gustafson, congratulations. You’re going to have a baby.”

  A baby.

  Everything she’d hoped for and everything she feared, all wrapped up in a single word. She was two months along. Maybe there really is a God, Amanda thought. Something, some force, had sent her to Harry just as she finally had a way to get him back once and for all—a bond between them that could never be broken. She’d always felt as if Harry were somehow inside her, in her blood, inhabiting her in a way she couldn’t quite explain, and now he really was. It was like a miracle. And not a moment too soon.

  Harry. Amanda hugged herself, tears springing to her eyes. She’d been crying an awful lot lately. On the journey, she’d found herself in floods at the littlest thing, whether sour or sweet: a woman in the club car who’d rudely snubbed her when Amanda had asked to borrow a pen; a child solemnly feeding a bit of stale cake to her much-loved doll. It was normal, the doctor said. Pregnant women felt things more. So do women in love, Amanda had wanted to respond.

  What would Harry say when she told him? It’ll be quite a shock, she reminded herself. Naturally, he’d be apprehensive at first. But then he’d remember all the talks they’d had, the kind that were all the more serious for their playfulness.

  “We’ll have two,” he’d say, “a boy for you and a girl for me, just like the song says. With their father’s brains and their mother
’s good looks.”

  “I like the way you look,” Amanda would insist.

  “Even now?” he’d ask, and pull face after face, crossing his eyes and puffing up his cheeks and forcing his overbite out over his chin until she about died laughing.

  He’ll remember that when I tell him. He’d remember the little black-haired boy or red-haired girl—or would the other way around be nicer? Amanda couldn’t decide—they had both imagined more vividly than either could ever admit, and he’d take her in his arms and look down into her face with that burning gaze that was so warm, so deep, so full of love it almost hurt to look at it.

  Amanda snapped open her traveling case. It’s all going to be wonderful.

  If she could just fit into any of her clothes.

  Twenty-Two

  The Martin Beck Theater was on Forty-Fifth Street.

  “Easily walkable,” said the concierge on duty, helpfully marking out the route on one of the miniaturized foldable maps the Waldorf Astoria handed out to guests. “Only eight blocks away.”

  What he had neglected to mention, however, was that while some blocks in New York City were so short you could see the next street from the corner, others seemed twice the length of a football field. Amanda had to walk three of the short ones and five of the long ones. By the time she arrived at her destination, her feet were blistered and aching, and she’d worn a small hole through the sole of her delicate kidskin pump. The New York girls who whizzed by her wore lower heels, she noticed, the kind of squat oxford lace-ups a glamorous Hollywood starlet wouldn’t be caught dead in.

  Well, this Hollywood starlet may have to reconsider. Amanda gazed up at the marquee.

  THE GROUP THEATER PRESENTS:

  AN AMERICAN GIRL

  She was dressed for battle, having managed to squeeze herself into a black linen suit with the aid of the torturous tight-lacing Mainbocher “cincher” her regular salesgirl at Bullock’s had assured her—presciently, as it turned out—was “absolutely essential” for anyone who hoped to fit into the latest wasp-waisted fashions. The suit had a short-sleeved jacket, which in a sudden burst of inspiration she’d teamed with a pair of black kidskin evening gloves, carefully pushed down at the top. These left her arms totally covered from shoulder to fingertip except for a tantalizing three-inch swath of creamy flesh exactly where Harry would have to touch her if, as was his custom, he took her by the elbow for a private chat. Already, her bare skin prickled with anticipation at the thought of it.

  Harry had never cared for her in hats, but without one her red hair seemed too conspicuous. The velvet Caroline Reboux beret Mildred had coveted seemed to do the trick. Tilted over one eye, Marlene Dietrich–style, it lent the outfit an appropriate bohemian touch.

  Honestly, I couldn’t have costumed myself better if I were Rex Mandalay himself. I hope he’s being half as careful with Margo Sterling’s bridal gown. She felt a sudden pang of guilt, thinking of Margo’s certain panic when she realized that one of her bridesmaids had gone missing three days—or was it two?—before what the copy of Picture Palace Amanda had hastily picked up at the station in Moline was calling “Tinseltown’s Royal Wedding,” but she pushed the thought away. After all, Margo had only asked her to save face after the tabloids had made all those insinuations about Amanda’s—wholly innocent—tête à tête with Dane. Once everything was worked out here, she’d send Margo a telegram to apologize.

  And when Harry and I get married, I’ll ask her to be a bridesmaid and she can stand me up.

  Amanda had expected to have to sneak in the stage entrance, like one of those desperate starlet hopefuls who snuck into the offices of important producers disguised as prepubescent delivery boys or concealed inside enormous packing cases, usually wearing something enticing enough to be issued an invitation to stay—that is, if they didn’t give the poor schmuck a heart attack when they popped out.

  To her surprise, one of the front doors had been left ajar. She slipped under the beige brick Moorish arches that must have seemed the height of exotic chic to whatever gauche vaudeville impresario had built the place back in the twenties and proceeded into the slightly dingy lobby.

  In the box office, a middle-aged woman sat playing a rapid hand of solitaire, a lit cigarette dangling from her lips. “You one of Stella’s students?” she asked, barely looking up.

  “What?”

  “One of Stella’s. Oh, dammit. Not a four of clubs.” The woman groaned. “You can go on in. Just be quiet, will ya? They’re all sitting in the back.”

  The theater was dark. Amanda slipped into a seat in the back row near a group of serious-looking young men and women furiously scribbling notes and all wearing what appeared to be matching pairs of tortoiseshell eyeglasses. On the stage, a young man in shirtsleeves sat at a card table set furnished with a few bare-bones props: drinking glasses, silverware, a couple of empty plates. A blond girl with short curly hair stood in front of him. She wore a plain skirt and sweater and a defiant expression as she spoke her lines toward the audience in a voice raw with emotion.

  “And that day, I made a promise to myself that things were going to be different,” the girl proclaimed. “That no one was ever going to make me feel like a nobody again. That someday, somehow, I was going to be somebody. No matter what it took. No matter what I had to do.”

  A faint sob crept into the actress’s voice. The young people had stopped scribbling, seeming enraptured. Amanda looked around the theater, her eyes adjusting to the darkness. She spied a long table several rows down, near the front of the house, wedged into a small landing between the seats. Three men sat there. They had their backs to Amanda, but on the one on the left she could make out the shadowy outline of a very distinct head of unruly black hair. Harry!

  “Look, I’m not a child,” the actress was saying. “I know I can’t snap my fingers and have every wish come true. But if I can’t get what I want, at least I can be wanted. Isn’t that the only real dream for a girl like me? For a girl like me, that’s the only American dream.”

  She stared out into the audience for a moment, as though daring them to answer. Pens poised over their notepads, the bespectacled boys and girls seemed to hold their collective breath.

  “Okay,” came a voice from the table. “Very good. Let’s hold there.”

  Somebody flicked a switch and the houselights came on. They were dim, but Amanda blinked anyway. The man who had spoken was scrambling over seats to the lip of the stage. With his messy dark hair and untidy clothes, he looked like a shorter, less handsome version of Harry. He must be the director, Amanda thought.

  “Interesting work, Frances.” He was close enough to the actors to whisper, but his voice boomed throughout the theater as though he were performing himself. Perhaps he is, Amanda thought. If the young acolytes around her had seemed transported during the actress’s recitation, they now looked like they were about to take dictation from God himself. “Very interesting. How did it feel?”

  The girl, Frances, scrubbed her hands roughly over her hair, seemingly heedless of her coiffure. Carefully adjusting the tilt of her hat, Amanda watched her with an odd mixture of disapproval and envy. One more difference between Hollywood and the theater. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I suppose I feel … ambivalent.”

  “Good! Good!” the director bellowed. “Let’s explore the ambivalence. And remember, ambivalence is not the same as apathy. It’s merely an acknowledgment of conflict: the very essence, the absolute foundation of all dramatic art, of life itself. Without conflict, without that great chasm between what we want and what we have, without yearning, would we be human? I propose not.”

  Around Amanda, the pens were scratching away, sounding like an army of rats was scuttling between the walls. Her head was spinning. Never had she heard a director make a speech like this. In the pictures Amanda had worked on, she had rarely received direction with any more depth than “That’s fine. Let’s d
o it again with a little more leg.”

  But this guy … this guy sounded like a college professor, or a philosopher, or … Harry, she thought, looking at the head bent over the script on the table. He was writing something down. With the lights on, she could see the back of his neck just above his collar, that sweet patch of skin that had always felt so surprisingly soft against her lips.

  “So, this ambivalence,” the director continued, pressing his palms together thoughtfully, “this conflict: is it arising organically from the situation of the character? Or is some part of your preparation coming into contradiction with the demands of the text?”

  “Um … I think it’s a problem with the text, actually.”

  Amanda could see the glint of Harry’s glasses as his head snapped up.

  “Good,” the director said. “What about the text?”

  “Well, it’s really just the last line of the last speech. ‘For a girl like me, that’s the only American dream.’ It feels like it wants to be a declaration, a manifesto, if you will. A statement of intent. That’s the beat I’ve prepared, but in the moment …” She twisted her hands. “In the moment, my impulse is to play it smaller. An intimate moment, a confession of sorts, between my scene partner and me.”

  “A confession. Interesting.” The director stroked his chin. “Why don’t we ask the playwright? Harry, what was your intention with that line?”

  “My intention?” Harry’s voice, softer than the others, seemed to pierce Amanda’s heart like an arrow. “My intention was for it to be a joke.”

  “A joke?” Off to the side, a small, wiry man with a receding hairline and a fierce expression jumped to his feet. “A joke? But that requires an entirely different preparation. It changes the entire emotional honesty of the scene.”

  “It’s not a laugh-out-loud, ha-ha joke, Lee,” Harry said, with more than a hint of irritation. “I’m not talking about Laurel and Hardy. It’s meant to be ironic, sardonic, whatever you want to call it. There’s a disappointment there, a kind of fatalistic bitterness. But it’s not entirely without humor.”