Love Me (14 page)
Authors: Rachel Shukert
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.”
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!
With an impatient sigh, Olive flicked through the pages, past ads for lipstick, hand cream, and a bizarre kind of vibrating belt that promised to reduce the waistline through the magic of electricity, until she found the page with a silvery black-and-white photograph of Diana in full evening dress, lounging incongruously beside an outdoor pool, with an accompanying wall of text. She skimmed the first few paragraphs, which summarized Diana’s beauty, achievements, and all-around star quality, until she found an actual quote.
“I suppose it sounds terribly silly,” says Diana shamefacedly, a blush creeping into her usually porcelain-pale cheeks. “But I really thought I was going to quit the movie business for good, and for the oldest and best reason there is. For love.”
But let’s begin at the beginning, shall we? It seems the madcap Miss Chesterfield decided to take a spontaneous holiday to the Continent just days before she was due to start shooting
The Nine Days’ Queen
, the hit picture that would eventually star her alleged onscreen successor (and romantic rival?), Margo Sterling.
“I had to see about some gowns in Paris,” she murmurs demurely. After all, what’s Olympus Studios when Coco Chanel is waiting?
It was on the Atlantic crossing, however, that she
met a dashing English duke lingering just outside the door of her lavish first-class cabin. “He was quite certain it was his, you see,” Diana says, “and perplexed by how his key didn’t seem to fit in the lock. I think he’d had rather a lot of whiskey just before the dressing gong rang.” When the screen’s most luminous goddess emerged from her chamber to see what all the fuss was about, the tipsy toff thought she was something out of a dream. He insisted on escorting her to dinner, of course.…
“Of course.” Olive sniffed, refilling her brandy glass.
One thing led to another, and by the end of the evening, he declared his intention to make Diana Chesterfield his duchess. “He said he’d throw himself overboard if I refused,” Diana says. “He actually had one foot over the railing. How could I say no?” Madly in love, she disembarked with his lordship in Southampton and in a matter of days was ensconced in his magnificent family seat, ready to begin a new life among the crème de la crème of society … with one condition: that they keep news of their engagement absolutely secret.
Her caution proved to be prophetic. Still reeling in the wake of Mrs. Simpson and the abdication, British society has in recent years become unfairly hostile to plucky young American girls, and pressure from the duke’s family (ever a lady, Diana discreetly refuses to name names) made marriage between these star-crossed lovers out of the question.
So why didn’t the heartbroken Diana come home to lick her wounds? She casts her lovely eyes down toward the white hands trembling in her lap. “To tell the truth, I was too embarrassed. You see, I’m an old-fashioned girl at heart. All I’ve ever wanted is a home and a family of my own. I’ve always said I’d give up the pictures in a second for love, and that’s just what I meant to do. And when it didn’t work out”—she glances up, her sapphire eyes brimming with tears—“well, I suppose I was just too ashamed at what a silly little fool I’d been.”
And what of Margo Sterling, the new blonde on the block, who slotted so neatly into her place, both on- and offscreen? Don’t look for a catfight here. “I truly admire her work in her pictures very much,” Diana says sincerely, “and I’m so pleased to have the chance to get to know her better. I’m just sure we’ll be the best of friends.”