Love Me Page 4

  She’d written her whole life into those letters; they could fill an entire book. If Harry only read them, he’d understand everything.

  But Amanda had never sent them, not after the first one came back unopened and practically broke her heart all over again.

  Yet she kept writing them, and after a while, she started being less afraid that Harry wouldn’t read them and more afraid that he would. There were some things she wasn’t ready for anyone to know yet. Maybe she never would be. A girl like Amanda needed her secrets to survive.

  Survival. How had she gotten back here again? From the moment, almost a year ago, that Amanda had proudly scrawled her signature on the dotted line of the standard Olympus Studio new player’s contract, she had thought that that part of her life was over. That the scrambling and desperation and shame were things of the past; that for the first time in her nineteen years, she would be free.

  Because she would be safe. Freedom and safety—weren’t they really the same thing?

  But that, she saw now, was about as much a pipe dream as becoming a star. Oh sure, she still had the contract. The checks still arrived every other week at the Olympus post office, smelling of ink and ready for immediate deposit at the Olympus bank.

  But for how much longer? The twelve-month option on her contract was almost up, and soon she would have to face the very real possibility that it would not be renewed. After all, girls like Amanda didn’t get by in Hollywood on their talent—at least, not in the traditional sense. She should have been painting the town red every night at La Maze and Vendome and the Cocoanut Grove, always on the arm of a different man who was famous or powerful or preferably both, getting her picture in the gossip columns and full-color photo spreads in Photoplay and Modern Screen and Picture Palace, until the public expected—rather, demanded—to see her on movie screens as well.

  But falling in love with Harry had put the kibosh on that. He wanted her all to himself, and she’d been only too happy to comply. And I got screwed, Amanda thought bitterly. In all senses of the word.

  Broken heart aside, even if by some miracle the studio decided to pick up the option on her contract, it wouldn’t solve any of her problems. As much as Amanda hated to admit it, her old boss Olive Moore had been right: seventy-five dollars a week was less than nothing when you had hair and nail appointments and needed a new evening gown every time you so much as went out to dinner. Paris fashions didn’t come cheap. An anointed studio princess like Margo Sterling could borrow whatever she needed from an ever-obliging wardrobe department. As for the rest of the hungry young starlets occupying considerably less lofty places in the Hollywood firmament … well, that was what buying on credit was invented for.

  And boy, have I become an expert on that. The pale blue envelopes from the Olympus payroll department were almost crowded out of her P.O. box by notices from Saks and Bullock’s and I. Magnin, informing her that her bills were mounting, her accounts past due, asking in increasingly threatening language when they might expect to get paid.

  At least, she assumed that was what they said. Lately she’d taken to stuffing them, still sealed, into an overflowing hatbox at the bottom of her wardrobe. Or rather, Gabby’s wardrobe. That was one good thing about not having her own place. You couldn’t have creditors banging down your door if you didn’t have one.

  And now there was this: an envelope she couldn’t leave unopened. It had been stuffed under the bedroom door early that morning while she feigned sleep. Even if she hadn’t noticed the way her hostesses suddenly seemed to drop their conversation to a whisper when they caught sight of her, or how Viola fixed her with a Stare of Death every time she opened the icebox for so much as a drop of milk, Amanda was pretty sure she knew what was inside this envelope too. You didn’t live the life she’d led without knowing an eviction notice.

  Sighing, she slipped her finger under the flap and drew out the note.

  Deer Amanda, it read, in Gabby’s childlike, uneasy scrawl that no amount of intermittent government-mandated instruction at the Olympus schoolhouse had been able to correct. I am so vairy sorry to say this, but I gess you knew it was coming some day. Viola says you have been here long enuf and that it is tim for you to find another place to say. I am really sorry and I hope this is okay. I also hope we can stil be frends, if you want. I hope so. Love, Gabby.

  Typically, Gabby had signed her name with a flourish, not so much a signature as an autograph, identical to the one the studio press department stamped on the publicity shots they sent to fans. Amanda almost laughed out loud. Poor Gabby, she thought. Her name was probably the only thing she could write without major deliberation.

  Sighing, Amanda started taking her things out of the wardrobe and laying them on the bed. So many beautiful clothes, she thought, and so much beautiful money. Every piece really ought to be left on a hanger and stuffed with tissue paper to preserve its shape before it was packed, but Amanda couldn’t be bothered. That’s how depressed I am. I can’t even care about my clothes.

  There was a soft rap on the door.

  “Come in.”

  Gabby pushed the door open shyly. In a plaid jumper, twisting a chestnut curl around her stubby finger, she looked about eight years old. Her huge brown eyes followed Amanda’s movements around the room. “I guess you got my note.”

  “Obviously.”

  “I hope you could read it. I’m not a very good speller.”

  “Don’t worry. I got the gist.”

  “Viola was going to write it, you know, but I made her let me. I thought she wouldn’t … well, I thought she might say something that wasn’t so nice.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  Gabby sat down on the bed. “You don’t have to go right now, you know. You can wait a few days.”

  Amanda frowned at the feathered hat in her hand, trying to remember which hatbox it belonged in. “I don’t know. I think it’s better this way.”

  “But where will you go?”

  “A hotel, I guess. Or a friend’s house. Don’t worry.”

  “Maybe the studio will put you up. Maybe you could stay in Margo’s bungalow. She’s at Dane Forrest’s house all the time now anyway.”

  Amanda laughed. “I don’t think anyone had better let the studio know about that.”

  “I’m awfully sorry, Amanda, really.” Gabby looked stricken. “It’s Viola who wants you out, not me. Believe it or not, I like having you here. Like I said, I hope we’ll still be friends.”

  “I know.” If anyone had told Amanda a year ago she’d be hearing these words from that snotty little Gabby Preston, she’d have laughed in her face. But looking at the girl now, gazing up at her with those puppy-dog eyes, Amanda knew she really meant it. That was one of the good things about Gabby; she was too high on the intoxicating cocktail of pills and her own self-importance to say anything she didn’t mean. She might be a self-obsessed, spoiled little brat, but at least she was an honest one. “I know,” Amanda repeated.

  Gabby gave her a smile of heartbreaking sweetness. “Good. I’m glad.” She reached into the pocket of her skirt. “Here. I thought you might want to see this.”

  Amanda took the folded sheet of paper from Gabby. It was a page torn from a movie magazine—Picture Palace, from the typeface—bearing the boldfaced headline:

  Tinseltown’s Most Eligible Bachelors!

  She sighed. “Really, Gabby?”

  “Just read it.” Gabby was already nosing around the wardrobe. Apparently, she felt Amanda’s reassurance of their continued friendship had given her license to rummage through her things. “I didn’t have time. I just saw the picture and ripped it out for you.”

  Smoothing out the creases, Amanda scanned the page. It had been ages since she had picked up a movie magazine. She knew they were designed to distract people from their troubles, but somehow the giddy superficiality, the endless gossip, the breathless Q&A’s w
ith hopeful young stars whose answers were so identical and relentlessly positive—“What do I love most about making movies? Everything!”—because they’d been scripted by a bunch of junior studio flacks in between bourbons at the Brown Derby, made Amanda feel so much worse. How could life go on when her world had been shattered? How could anyone be happy when her heart was so irreparably broken?

  But this story was different. Because of one little thing:

  Bachelor #3: Harry Gordon

  Amanda let out a gasp.

  Recently nominated for his first Academy Award for The Nine Days’ Queen, the flick that made him one of the hottest writers in town, our Black-Eyed Brooklyn Boy ought to be on top of the world, or at least on top of any number of starlets, if you catch our drift.

  Amanda caught it, all right. She winced at the thought.

  “This is pretty,” Gabby said, holding out an old black cocktail dress with a sweetheart neckline and diamond buttons at the back. “Is this Mainbocher? I always wanted a Mainbocher dress, but Viola says they’re too expensive.”

  “Keep it.”

  “Really?” Gabby squealed

  Anything to get you to be quiet. “Sure. I can’t take everything with me.”

  “It won’t fit me now. But it will. I’m going to see how it looks with my red hat.”

  “There’s a black one that goes with it. And gloves. You can have those too.”

  Gabby rushed off to her bedroom with a squeal of thanks, clutching her prizes to her chest. Amanda read on:

  But ever since his trip to Splitsville with Titian-haired Olympus sexpot Amanda Farraday (where’s she been, anyway?), young Mr. Gordon has been seen in a number of Party Palaces for Picture People looking noticeably downcast … and with a noticeably empty escorting arm. Hopefuls of Hollywood, speaking to you as a Starstruck Sister, can’t you find an open spot on your busy dance cards for poor wittle Hawwy? Who knows? Liven up his lonely nights and there might even be a part in it for you … just steer clear of the mysteriously missing Miss Farraday. Redheads have a temper, you know.

  That was all Amanda needed to see.

  Gleefully, she planted a huge smack on the smudged leaf of paper and laid it on her pillow as carefully as if it were a sleeping child. Then she walked back to the wardrobe and took a good, long look in the mirror for the first time in weeks.

  Her figure, always fashionably slim, looked scrawny. Her bright hair was disheveled and desperately in need of a wash. Her once creamy skin was deathly pale, and there were violet bags under her eyes from endless tears and sleepless nights.

  But, she thought as she hauled her battered Louis Vuitton monogrammed steamer trunk from under the bed, all that can be fixed.

  She’d eat a few big meals, rich with butter and cream. Her hair would be perfumed and set. As for her famously gorgeous face, all it needed was a little rouge and powder and a few nights of good sleep.

  And I’ll sleep now. Wherever she wound up that night, she’d sleep like a baby.

  Because everything was going to be all right. The evidence was right there, literally in black-and-white.

  Harry Gordon was still hers.

  And all she had to do was turn herself back into the girl he’d fallen in love with. She’d make him forget all about her past. She’d make him remember that she was the answer to all of his prayers.

  It wasn’t going to be easy.

  But like her old flame Dane Forrest had once told her, “In Hollywood, all the real acting happens offscreen.”

  Four

  “How come you never let me drive?”

  “Because,” Viola Preston said tersely, struggling to pilot the unwieldy Preston family Cadillac along the winding road that led to the gates of the studio. “You don’t know how, and you don’t have a license.”

  Gabby pouted at her reflection in the rearview mirror, smoothing her unruly curls with her hand. “I could get one. I’m sixteen. And I do know how to drive. I had to drive that old jalopy in Farm Fancies, remember? All I’d have to do is go down and take the test.”

  “And when are we supposed to find the time to do that?” Viola shook her head. “You’re scheduled to the hilt as it is. The only time you’ve got free for months is the middle of the night, and I’m pretty sure the Department of Motor Vehicles isn’t open then.”

  “We could ask them. You never know, they might make an exception for an Olympus star.”

  Viola chuckled indulgently. “An Olympus star doesn’t drive herself. An Olympus star has a chauffeur.”

  “I suppose that’s you. In which case, where the hell is your little hat?”

  Viola smiled. “Just remember, Gabrielle, to keep your eye on the prize. We’re just about there.”

  They were turning onto the studio lot now, and Gabby marveled, as she often did, at her mother’s uncannily cinematic sense of timing. Even now, there was something about entering Olympus, about being waved through its glittering pink stone gates with their famous iron doors wrought with an elaborate motif of stars and moons and lightning bolts, that made Gabby feel like it was all happening, like everything was suddenly within her grasp. Like all of her dreams were about to come true.

  Especially today. Today, she was going to sing for the first time with Eddie Sharp.

  It made her laugh now to think what a bitch she’d been about listening to his record. Because the moment she’d gotten over herself and plunked it on the turntable, it was as if her entire world had changed. Gabby closed her eyes for a moment, savoring the memory of the first time she’d heard the plaintive, almost human wail of the clarinet, of the drumbeat that sounded so much like a racing heart. The swinging numbers made you need to dance; the slow ones made you want to weep. It was like the music she’d been waiting for her whole life.

  There was a lot Gabby didn’t know. She had never really been to school, could barely read and write, couldn’t do much with numbers besides figure out how to deduct an agent’s percentage. Sometimes she thought she didn’t really get people very well, didn’t understand why they would tell a lie or why they got so mad when you said something aloud that everyone already knew.

  But Gabby Preston knew music. She understood it the way she understood that she was happy, or sad, or hungry. She could tell when it was right and when it was wrong as effortlessly as telling green from red or as someone—someone who wasn’t her, anyway—might recognize the letter B and know what sound it made. And she could tell that Eddie Sharp understood it that way too.

  So they would understand each other. They were going to be incredible together. Already Gabby had listened to that record, Sharp Turns Ahead, twenty, maybe thirty times, working out harmonies and counterpoints, going crazy over how perfectly the velvety tone of her voice blended with the warmth of Eddie’s clarinet. It was a match made in music heaven. There was a Jewish word she’d heard Mr. Karp use when he was in one of his sentimental moods, saying how something was destined, ordained by God—beshert, she thought it was. He’d been talking about the budget for the latest Jimmy Molloy musical, but it was a good word nonetheless, a good word for how she felt.

  Gabby and Eddie were meant to be. It was fate. He’d see that right away, she was sure of it, and maybe when his band went on tour that summer, he’d take her with them.

  God, wouldn’t that be something? On tour with a band, traveling on her own, playing a million different clubs in a million different cities. Big clubs with women wearing diamonds and men wearing black tie; small clubs that were no more than a couple of field hands drinking corn whiskey in overalls at a splintered table—it didn’t matter. For the first time in her life, Gabby would be doing exactly what she wanted to do, which was sing. No more hideous dance rehearsals that started at dawn and didn’t end until every muscle in her body was screaming with agony. No more hair ribbons and ringlets and frilly little-girl dresses; no more pills to keep her thinner than was human
ly possible. She’d be doing the one thing she could do better than anyone else. She’d be a star, and when—if—she finally came back to the picture business, it would be on her terms, as a woman who’d traveled, had adventures, had lovers (the fact that the picture of Eddie in last month’s issue of Picture Palace seemed to get cuter every time she looked at it didn’t hurt any either). Hollywood would look at her and see a woman who had lived.

  Not, Gabby thought darkly, a girl who has to have her mother drive her everywhere.

  Viola unsteadily piloted the big Cadillac down the narrow brick street lined with jacaranda trees that led to the rehearsal complex behind the studio commissary. A burly man with the build of a gorilla greeted them at the doorway.

  “Miss Preston.” He nodded at Gabby, dropping ash from his cigar all down the front of his spread-collared sport shirt. “They’re expecting you. Go right in.”

  “Thank you.”

  Viola started to follow her through the doorway. The man held up a meaty hand. “Not you. You can’t come in.”

  “What?” Viola’s eyes, lined with the same heavy kohl she’d been wearing since the Roaring Twenties, when the Egyptian vamp look was the bee’s knees, narrowed with rage. “What are you talking about?”

  “Just what I said. This is a closed rehearsal.”