Love Me Page 25

  “As a matter of fact, I don’t mind if I do. I’ve got more congenial company waiting for me in the private dining room in the Vault tonight. Not quite in Miss Farraday’s league”—his eyes lingered meaningfully over the neckline of Amanda’s dress—“but she’ll have to do. See you two lovebirds around.”

  “What was that all about?” Amanda asked when Winchell was out of earshot. “If you’re worried about the press, Walter Winchell is the most powerful flack in the country. Maybe the world. It can’t pay to be so rude to him.”

  “Ah, he’s used to it,” Harry said, waving her concerns away. “Besides, I didn’t like the way he was looking at you.”

  Flushed with pleasure, Amanda smiled. He cares how men look at me. He still cares. “What was it you wanted to talk to me about?”

  Harry sighed. “I’m not sure how to tell you.”

  “Just spit it out. It’s easier that way.”

  “All right. All right. Here goes.” Harry took another long drink of Scotch, gathering his courage. “Amanda … the whole thing about Olympus dropping your contract … it’s all my fault. It’s because of me. They were only doing what I asked them to.”

  Amanda felt like she’d just been shot through the heart. “You … you told them to fire me?”

  “No! At least, not in so many words.” Harry couldn’t meet her eye. “It was … after that night we … spent together, after the Oscars … I just, I knew I couldn’t control myself around you. I’d been trying so hard to avoid you. I thought if I didn’t see you, I would get over you. That I would get you out of my system. But when I saw you at the Brown Derby that afternoon, and then at the Governor’s Ball, I knew I never would. You’re eating me from the inside out, Amanda. It’s like a cancer; the only treatment is to just cut it out.”

  Amanda flinched, but Harry, looking at a spot somewhere over her shoulder, seemed not to notice. “So I called them that morning after we … well … and I begged them to help me. To fix it so I wouldn’t have to see you anymore, wouldn’t bump into you around the lot, or hear your name mentioned in meetings. And then, just to make sure I didn’t see you around town, I came to New York. But I didn’t know how they were going to do it. I thought …” He fiddled nervously with his glass. “I guess I don’t know what I thought. I’m sorry. I know it must be difficult.”

  Difficult? Amanda didn’t know if she wanted to scream, laugh, or cry. “Why stop at having them drop my contract?” she asked coldly. “Why not just have me killed?”

  “Amanda, please …”

  “Don’t you ‘Amanda, please’ me!” She tried to keep her voice down. God knows I’m conspicuous enough as it is. “What I don’t understand, Harry, is why you have to get over me. You know how I feel about you. You know how hard this has been for me. If it’s been like that for you, then I don’t understand what the problem is. I need you, Harry. We need each other. Why isn’t that enough?” She was almost gasping now, choking with the effort of trying to hold back her tears. “Why can’t we be together?”

  “Because of what you used to do,” Harry said quietly. “Because of what you used to be.”

  “You mean …”

  “You know exactly what I mean. What you did at Olive Moore’s.”

  Of course. Amanda looked down at her hands. They seemed to dissolve before her eyes. Of course.

  “I’m sorry,” Harry continued. “I wish it could be different. I really do. But ever since Gabby told me that night at the party at Leo Karp’s—”

  If Amanda had already suffered one gunshot to the heart, this next shot went straight through her stomach. “Gabby?”

  “Yes, Gabby Preston,” Harry continued calmly, as if the world hadn’t just caved in on itself. “I didn’t believe her at first. I figured she was just angry about losing the part in the An American Girl picture and was making things up to hurt you. But then that sleazeball Hunter Payne confirmed it and, well …” Harry shook his head. “It was like the floor fell out from under me.”

  Tell me about it, Amanda thought.

  “I loved you, Amanda,” Harry continued. “I really did. I suppose in a way, I always will. But I can’t deal with this. Believe me, I’ve tried. I’ve asked myself, what could make it better? What could wipe the past away? And it’s no good. No good at all. I know myself. I know what I’m like. I’m a modern guy. I don’t expect some unspoiled virgin. But this?” He shook his head. “I’d never be able to walk into a room with you without looking at every man there and wondering was it him? Or him? Or him? Which one of you once ordered up my wife like a plate of eggs from room service in a hotel? Or was it all of you? I’d start to hate you, Amanda. And you’d start to hate me. And then it would be the end of the road for us. Better not to go any farther.”

  Wife, Amanda thought. He said wife. But the word bore little hope now. She felt like a marooned islander watching the ship that was supposed to save her disappearing over the horizon. “So you don’t mind me doing it. Only that I got paid.”

  “Amanda.” Harry looked at her reproachfully. “That seems a little unfair. Put yourself in my shoes.”

  Unfair? Amanda wanted to scream. Why don’t you put yourself in my shoes? Did Harry have any idea—any goddamn idea—of what a girl could go through in this world? What could lead her to do what Amanda had done? The hunger, the fear, the cold nights sleeping on the street lying still like a possum, hoping that any predator that came along would think you were already dead? How relieved you were to be warm and fed and clothed and relatively safe, and to find out all you had to do to stay that way was the same thing men made you do anyway?

  She was about to tell him that, and more, when the crowd parted and for the first time, she saw exactly what it was that kept making Harry’s eye wander.

  Sitting at the bar in a tight cocktail dress. With a cigarette in a long gold holder and blond hair set in curls so tight they looked like a devil’s horns. It was Frances, that actress from the play. The actress who was playing the role Harry had written for Amanda. The actress playing me.

  And suddenly, Amanda understood. She understood everything.

  Pain coursed through her body, pain like nothing she had ever known. She felt as if she were splitting in two. She staggered to her feet.

  “Are you all right?” Harry asked.

  She didn’t answer. Instead, she reached into her evening bag and pulled out the packet of letters. All the letters she had written him and never sent, tied with a pink ribbon torn from the dress he’d bought her. The letters of her life, of his life, or their life together. She held them up, taking a long last look.

  Then she threw them into the fire.

  “Amanda! What are you doing? Wait!”

  “No!” she cried, pushing him away. “No. Leave me alone.”

  She pushed through the crowd, pushed past the maître d’. On the sidewalk, she doubled over in agony, letting out a small shriek. It was as if she were being ripped open from the inside, as if whatever was inside her were trying to gnaw its way out. It didn’t matter now. She just had to get somewhere she could be safe, somewhere it would all be over.

  So she ran. Blinded by pain, tripping over her hem, her heels; heedless of the taxicabs slowing at the curb at the sight of the half-crumpled girl in the evening gown clawing at her stomach and running as though every demon in hell were after her. When at last she reached her hotel room, she hurled herself into the bathroom and ripped down her underwear, bracing herself for the torrent of blood she was sure was surging out of her.

  Nothing. Not a drop.

  She collapsed to the floor like a rag doll, but the moment of relief soon gave way to vast, bottomless panic. So she still had the baby. What the hell was she supposed to do with it? What kind of life could she give it? Harry was gone. Forever. That had been made horribly clear. He didn’t love her anymore, would never accept her for who she was—even worse, he was th
e architect of her destruction. To fix it so I wouldn’t have to see you anymore. Amanda clapped her hand over her mouth to muffle her sob.

  And Gabby. That betrayal hurt as badly as if not worse than Harry’s. Amanda had thought Gabby Preston was her friend, someone she could rely on if things went bad. Gabby had welcomed her into her home, held her, patted her back while she cried, listened patiently to every raw detail of her heartbreak.

  And Gabby knew all along. She knew all the time it was all her fault, and she never told me.

  It was too much to bear.

  Olive would take her in, sure. Amanda might even squeeze some more money out of her. But blackmail wouldn’t work forever. Frankly, she’d been lucky to get away with what she had, before Olive realized Amanda couldn’t very well compromise Diana without ruining herself. Besides, pretty soon, Diana’s career would recover so much as to make her untouchable. And then Olive’s hospitality would come with a price. Olive might pay her debts, but she’d see that Amanda paid her back, with considerable interest. “You can work it off,” Olive would say, and Amanda would have no choice but to start back at the bottom of the ladder, seeing the men none of the other girls would. Men with cold voices and frightening desires who thought a fifty-dollar powder room tip didn’t have nearly as favorable an effect on a girl as an unyielding pair of fists.

  And when enough months had passed that Amanda’s condition became apparent, the doctor would be summoned. Some bloodstained sheets, a few shed tears, and Amanda’s “complication,” as Olive liked to call it, would be decidedly less complex. She could be back to work in five days; hell, Lucy had been back on the job in three. And the entire cost of the operation, including pain medication and ruined linen, could easily be added to Amanda’s tab.

  I could say no, Amanda thought. I could tell her I won’t go through with it.

  And she’d be back out on the street before she even finished talking. Back to the fear, the hunger, and loneliness. The terrible loneliness that penetrated her more deeply than any cold night’s wind could. The knowledge that nobody wanted her, nobody loved her, nobody cared if she was alive or dead.

  “I’m alone,” Amanda said to no one. “I’m all alone.”

  The marble tiles of the bathroom floor were cold against her bare shoulder. Shivering, she heaved herself up off the floor and crossed to the big picture window overlooking the street. When God closes a door, somewhere he opens a window. That was something she’d heard Margo say, although she dimly remembered hearing it before in some whitewashed clapboard prairie church a million lifetimes ago. Could this be the window he meant? Norma Mae Gustafson. Born in a hayloft in Arrowhead Falls, died on the pavement of Park Avenue beneath the open window of the penthouse suite in the Waldorf Astoria. In its own way, it was quite an ascent.

  And quite a fall.

  As mechanically as though she’d been hypnotized, Amanda undid the latch and pushed open the window. Could she really do it? The night breeze felt cool and inviting against her flushed face. The streetlamps made the pavement shimmer, like moonlight on a mountain lake. It would be just like diving into a clear pool, Amanda thought. One little jump and it would all disappear. The stacks of unpaid bills, the creditors and the threats. The nightmares of the heavy thud of drunken footfalls on the ladder to her hayloft. The dreams of being in Harry’s arms, and the fresh, searing pain when she woke up to find he wasn’t there.

  Amanda looked around the sumptuous room, at the canopied bed she would never sleep in, at the glossy boxes of dresses she would never wear. She placed her hands on her stomach. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to the child she would never meet, who would never be born. “It’s better this way.”

  Slowly, she slid her leg over the windowsill.

  And then there was a knock at the door.

  Her first impulse was to laugh at the absurdity of it. To have a visitor at a time like this! But the knocking grew louder and more persistent, and for reasons Amanda would never quite be able to explain to herself, she found it impossible to ignore. Maybe God doesn’t open a window. Maybe when he closes a door, he just needs you to open it again.

  “Red!” Eddie Sharp’s tuxedo was just disheveled enough to hint that he’d seen some real mischief that night and was looking to find some more. “They told me downstairs you were in. Thought I’d pop up and see if you were in the mood for a quick nightcap. …” The grin faded from his face as he got a glimpse of hers. “Holy hell, honey, what’s the matter? You look like you’ve just lost your best pal.”

  “Eddie.” Amanda looked up at him through lashes thick with tears. His eyes were dark and trusting. Like Harry’s used to be. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Anything, Red. Anything.”

  “Say you loved a girl. Really loved her with your heart and soul. And then you found out she had … a past. There had been other men in her life. Quite a few men.”

  “If I really loved her with my heart and soul, it wouldn’t matter the least little bit.”

  “Say it was worse than that.” Amanda dropped her eyes to the floor. “Say … say she was a … a good-time girl. Then what?”

  Eddie’s voice dropped low, as quiet and final as the grave. “Well, then I guess she’d know how to show me a good time.”

  Letting out a cry, Amanda threw herself into Eddie’s arms. She felt his astonishment, a tiny moment of hesitation, and then they closed around her, blocking out everything else. The danger had passed. Her mouth was on his, devouring it hungrily, and she took sustenance from a warmth, an ardor that quickly rose to meet her own. Safe, her heart cried out to itself over and over again. This will keep me safe.

  In that moment, it wasn’t Eddie Sharp she was kissing. It was life itself.

  Twenty-Three

  For once, Hollywood was in total agreement: it was the wedding of the year. Maybe even the century.

  That is, they agreed as soon as they recovered their powers of speech. Then everyone in the movie colony was buzzing with all the romantic details, the sheer juiciness of which seemed to elevate the newlyweds to a level that neither had ever achieved on their own. About how it was love at first sight, eyes meeting across a crowded room—in this case, the crowded room of the Waldorf Astoria hotel, although the groom claimed he’d known she was the girl for him the moment she had briefly appeared in the doorway of the greenroom as he prepared to go onstage at this year’s Governor’s Ball. About how their mutual passion had been so strong that he’d paid a delighted cabbie five hundred dollars to drive them to Atlantic City in the middle of the night, where they could get married at one of those twenty-four-hour chapels without a blood test and with two down-on-their-luck poker players as witnesses. About how the bride arrived in a jaw-dropping black tulle evening gown with an unusually daring neckline that Photoplay claimed was “the thing that hooked her man,” although she changed for the ceremony into a demure suit of ruched ivory silk with a matching veiled hat. Both ensembles were rumored to be Hattie Carnegie, although when reached for comment, the couturier would only say: “Miss Farraday makes her clothes her own.” The House of Mainbocher, long associated with the famously chic starlet, offered no official statement from Paris, but as a representative in their Bullock’s Wilshire boutique told Reelplay, “Mrs. Sharp is a cherished client and we look forward to providing her with many exquisite pieces for her new married life.”

  “I’ve never been so happy,” said the radiant bride. “Eddie is everything I’ve dreamed of in a husband, and I’m determined to make him the perfect wife.”

  The dazed and grinning groom said simply, “I feel like the luckiest guy on earth.”

  At Metro, Paramount, and Warner Brothers, Katharine Hepburn, Claudette Colbert, and Bette Davis were all lobbying to star in pictures based on the Farraday/Sharp nuptials—the public frenzy over the elopement would surely translate into big box office, which all three stars could use.

  Larry
Julius was said to be fuming at having somehow been ignored despite his near-sacred jurisdiction over such matters, but ever sensitive to public opinion, he and his staff composed a statement for Olympus chief Leo Karp that was so brimming with “love conquers all” beneficence and fatherly pride in his wayward charges that it could have come from the desk of Walt Disney himself. Every other flack and studio chief in town, however, was in raptures that the Omniscient One had finally been beaten—and by a girl he’d fired. Surely this was a sign that the tide was turning. Old Man Karp was slipping.

  Margo Sterling, whose Wedding of the Year had just had the rug yanked cruelly out from under it—by one of her own bridesmaids, no less!—was diplomatic, but everyone knew the studio was going to make her postpone until she could win back the attention of the public. If Diana Chesterfield didn’t win back the groom first.

  The only comment from Harry Gordon, the bride’s former flame, in whose company she’d been seen the night of her marriage by no less a reliable source than the legendary Walter Winchell, was a retort the editor of Picture Palace deemed unprintable in a family magazine.

  From Gabby Preston, who had been seen keeping company with the groom during the past few weeks, there was no statement, printable or no, on the record or off. This was because just before the story broke to the press, a team of Larry Julius’s goons arrived at the house on Fountain Avenue and, over Viola Preston’s protests, cut the line to the phone.

  It was just as well, really, Gabby thought as she snorted up another one of her crushed green pills from the dashboard of her mother’s car.

  After all, if they called now, what was Viola going to say? That the day it was announced that her underage daughter’s bad-boy boyfriend had eloped with another woman, Gabby had stolen the Cadillac and driven off to parts unknown without so much as a word of explanation—or a license? The gossip rags would have a field day with that one.

  But it’s not like I had any choice, Gabby thought, swerving abruptly into the next lane. Angry honks went up from the car she’d just cut off, but she sped on heedlessly, barely noticing. She could run every automobile in Los Angeles off the road right now, and she wouldn’t care. Gabby was a woman on a mission. The second she’d seen that blurry photograph of the man she thought she loved tenderly lifting the bridal veil of the girl she thought was her best friend, Gabby knew there was only one person she could talk to, only one person who would understand, who would be able to explain just what the hell was going on. Only one person who might actually be my friend.