Love Me (25 page)

I need to make more money
, Gabby thought as she slipped quickly into the yellow dress. No more Viola negotiating everything, being so pathetically grateful for any little crumb the studio deigned to toss their way. No. As soon as her contract was up for discussion, she was going to call Myron Selznick herself and tell him it was a thousand dollars a week or nothing, with script approval on a guaranteed three-picture-a-year deal. She’d get a big house in Beverly Hills with a big green lawn, a car of her own, a real housekeeper, and a secretary to answer her fan mail and read her scripts out loud to her to memorize. If Olympus wouldn’t give her that, well, she could just go elsewhere.

And if Viola doesn’t like it, she can go elsewhere too
.

Eddie was in the living room, sitting in exactly the chair she was afraid he’d be in, the one with the dark spot that had been the preferred toilet facility of Piggy, Frankie’s late cat, during the long years of his incontinent decline. “There she is!” he called, jumping to his feet as she entered the room. “There’s my best girl!”

“Hi, Eddie.” It appeared that Viola, Gabby noted with some displeasure, had not offered him a drink. Maybe it was just as well. If she was going to have any chance of being alone with him tonight, the safest thing was to get out of the house as quickly as possible, before Viola could put her foot down and/or invite herself along.
Besides
, Gabby thought as he leaned over to kiss her proffered cheek,
he smells like he’s had a few already
. “You’re early.”

“Early?” Viola’s ears pricked up. “What do you mean? I thought you were going out with Jimmy tonight.”

“
And
Eddie,” Gabby said quickly. “We were all going to see some music, isn’t that right?” She shot him a meaningful look, praying he wasn’t too tanked to play along.

“Uh, sure,” Eddie said. “That sounds right.”

“And Jimmy was supposed to pick me up,” Gabby continued, “but obviously there’s been a change of plan. Anyway, we have to go.”

“Now?” Viola looked pointedly at the clock over the mantel. “It’s not even six-thirty. I thought you weren’t going out until seven.”

“Well, now we have to pick Jimmy up, don’t we?” Gabby said irritably.
Leave it to Viola to make you as grumpy about lying as telling the truth
. “And he’s all the way at the studio, so we better leave now. You know how Jimmy hates it when you’re late.”

“Wait a minute.” There was a suspicious look on Viola’s face that Gabby didn’t like at all. “May I see you in the kitchen, please, Gabrielle?”

“There’s no time,” Gabby whined.

“It’ll only take a minute,” Viola insisted. “Mr. Sharp, you’ll have to excuse us.”

When Viola got that tone in her voice, it meant she was about ten seconds away from causing a major scene. Unless Gabby wanted to risk being led away by the ear like a naughty little kid—in front of Eddie!—she had no choice but to obey.

“I don’t like this,” Viola hissed when the kitchen door had swung closed behind them. “I don’t like this one little bit.”

“And I don’t see what you’re getting so upset about,” Gabby
replied, trying to keep as calm as possible. “It’s just a change of plan. Big deal.”

“Big deal?” Viola’s eyes, fringed with their usual layer of ineptly applied false lashes, were practically popping out of her head. “
Big deal?
I knew it. I knew you’d been sneaking around with that punk behind my back, and now you’re dragging Jimmy into it?”

“Keep your voice down!” Gabby begged. “He’s right outside.”

“You think I care? You think I care what he thinks of me? You know what I do care about? I’ve heard stories about that kid, about the people he spends time with. I care about what Larry Julius is going to say. What Leo Karp is going to say when he finds out you’ve been hanging around that”—she sputtered, trying to think of just the right word—“that
degenerate
. That
drug
addict.”

“Yes, I’m curious about that too,” Gabby said coolly, “since they were the ones who made me into the same thing. With plenty of help from you, of course.”

Viola began to shake with rage, so hard that one of her errant eyelashes came loose and fell to the floor. It lay on one of the white linoleum tiles, curled up like a hairy bug.
“I will not be spoken to that way.”
She was trembling.
“You will not speak to me that way in my own house.”

“Only it’s not your house, is it?” Somehow, the more upset Viola got, the calmer Gabby felt. “It’s my house. I pay for it, and for everything in it.” She looked down at the eyelash, resisting the urge to crush it with the toe of her shoe like the smoldering butt of a cigarette on the sidewalk. “You’re living under my roof, not the other way around.”

“Gabby,” Viola implored. “You don’t know what you’re talking
about. You don’t know what’s best for you. You’re just a child.”

“Only I’m not, am I? A child is looked after by others. A child isn’t expected to be responsible for feeding her family, or clothing them, or keeping a roof over their heads
or
,” she added, unable to resist, “a Cadillac in their driveway. So since I’m not a child and this is my house, I think that from now on I’m going to do whatever I want. And what I want right now,” she said, pushing casually past her gobsmacked mother, “is to go out with Eddie Sharp. Don’t wait up for me.”

“So that’s your old lady,” Eddie said when they were safely in the car, Viola’s forlorn figure in the front yard growing comfortingly smaller as they drove away. “She seems like a handful.”

“Tell me about it,” Gabby said, reaching into the glove compartment for the fifth of Scotch he always kept there.

Eddie held up a neatly rolled joint. “Mind if I spark it up? I kind of need it after all that.”

“Oooh, yes
please
.”

He took a drag and passed it to her. She sucked the smoke, careful not to swallow so much that it set her throat on fire this time.
Let it never be said I’m not a fast learner
, she thought happily, pleased with her expertise.
Old One-Take Gabby. More like One-Toke
. She started to laugh, the smoke billowing from her lungs and settling around her in a sweet-smelling fog.
Green pills, Scotch, and reefer
, she thought happily.
The cocktail of the gods
.

“So where are we going?” she rasped, hoarse from the smoke. “Wherever it is, I hope it has a pay phone so I can call Jimmy and tell him not to come get me. I don’t want him getting stuck as Viola’s shoulder to cry on.”

She giggled, but it wasn’t actually a joke. Jimmy had always been a soft touch for Gabby’s mother. If she got him in the right mood, she might talk him into telling Mr. Karp on Gabby, and that could be real trouble. Leo Karp didn’t like to hear about anyone disrespecting what he referred to as “the sanctity of motherhood.”

Still
, Gabby thought,
motherhood is one thing. Mothers are quite another
.

“That’s the thing, kiddo,” Eddie said softly, steering the car up toward the hills. “We’ve only got a couple of hours.”

“Why?”

“That’s the thing. I meant to tell you … I’ve got a train to catch tonight.”

A train?
“What … what are you talking about?”

Eddie sighed. “Just hang on a second, okay?”

Eddie pulled the car over into a small, secluded dirt drive hidden from the main road by a cluster of cypress trees. They were looking out over the canyon now. The buildings of Hollywood spread beneath them looked as small as toys. Shadows from the tree branches played over Eddie’s face as he leaned over to gently take the bottle of Scotch from the crook of Gabby’s arm. He took a long drink and wiped his beautiful lips with the back of his sleeve.

“Where?” Gabby whispered. “Where are you going?”

“To New York,” Eddie said simply. “We’ve got a gig at El Morocco, and then one at the Stork Club. The studio set it up. Big money, big exposure. Most of the guys left yesterday, but I stayed behind to tie up some loose ends.”

“Like me.”

“In a way.” She’d never heard Eddie sound so earnest before.

Gabby swallowed hard. “Weren’t you going to tell me?”

“I haven’t known that long myself, and there was so much to do. I was going to tell you over the phone, but that … well, that didn’t seem right.” Eddie took another drink. “They’ve got me booked late tonight on the Super Chief to Chicago. I’ll spend a night there with my folks and then hop the Twentieth Century to New York City and start rehearsals right away.”

Gabby looked down at her hands. They were shaking slightly, as they always did from the pills. She clutched the right one in her left, trying to make them stop. “I didn’t know your family lived in Chicago.”

“Well,” Eddie said, looking straight ahead, “now you do.”

This little intimacy, however small, pleased her. She allowed herself a tentative smile. “I suppose Dexter is going with you?”
Odd
, she thought. She didn’t know why Dexter Harrington should pop into her head just now.
I guess it’s just something to say
.

“Dex?” Eddie snorted. “Who knows? He’s supposed to be finishing up with Hawk at the Dunbar and then heading out, but I’ll believe it when I see it. He’s in and out like the wind, that guy.”

“Aren’t you all.”

“Gabs, come on,” Eddie said, laying his big hand over her trembling ones. “It’s no big deal. It’s just a gig. I’ll be gone a couple of months, and then I’ll probably be back.”

“Probably?”

“As far as I know,” Eddie said. He was getting a little impatient now. “That’s the plan. And anyway, it’s not like I’m going off to war. Nothing’s going to happen to me. There’s no need for the grand scene.”

The grand scene
. Gabby didn’t need to channel Margo, or Amanda, or even to hear her own mother’s voice in her head to tell her that was what men like Eddie dreaded most of all: the hurt recriminations, the hot floods of tears that left them feeling guilty and confused and, above all, furious at the person making them feel that way.

Of course, in the movies, all the heroine had to do was cry and the hero would take her in his arms and promise her the moon and the stars and that he would never leave her. Greta Garbo and Norma Shearer and Diana Chesterfield and Margo Sterling turned on the waterworks, and Clark Gable and Robert Taylor and Dane Forrest wiped them away with vows of undying love. But when was real life ever like the movies?

Gabby looked up at Eddie with a brilliant smile. “Oh no, I understand perfectly,” she said sweetly, flashing her dimples. “It’s just that I want to give you your going-away present, that’s all.”

“Oh?” Eddie looked amused. “What’s that?”

This is it
, Gabby thought. Either he’d think it was devastatingly sexy or off-puttingly forward, but she’d never know until she tried. Coyly, she looked up at him through her eyelashes, the way she’d seen Amanda do a million times.

“This,” she whispered. Softly, she brought her lips to his, kissing him, pressing herself tightly against him so there could be no mistaking her intentions. She felt his body clench, and then thrillingly, start to respond.
It’s happening
, she thought, dizzy with happiness.
It’s actually happening
.

“Gabby,” Eddie murmured, pulling away from her. “Wait.”

“What’s the matter?” she breathed. “Don’t you want to?”
It certainly feels like you do
.

“It’s not that. It’s just … well …” He paused carefully. “I guess I don’t know how experienced you are with this kind of thing.”

“I’m not a virgin,” Gabby lied.
He won’t be able to tell, will he?
“And even if I was, it wouldn’t matter. I want to.”

“I don’t mean that.” Eddie looked pained. “It’s just … I’m a musician, Gabby. I’m going on the road. And life on the road, well, it has different rules than regular life. I can’t make you any promises. I can’t let you think this means anything that it doesn’t.”

She put her hand to his mouth to silence him, loving the feel of his warm breath under her fingertips. “Don’t say another word. I know all about that. It doesn’t matter. We can worry about tomorrow later. The only thing I care about is today. Right now. This moment.”

Eddie smiled with his lips against hers. “You’re the best, Gabby. Did I ever tell you that? You’re the best girl.”

I’m the best girl
. And as Eddie’s arms tightened around her, the soft swish of the cypress needles the only music they needed as his mouth moved against hers, Gabby almost thought she believed it.

“G
inger!” Lucy shouted over the blaring radio turned up so high you could probably hear it all the way to Santa Monica. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Amanda’s jaw clenched.
Funny
, she thought.
I was just asking myself the same thing
.

A year ago, she’d walked out of Olive Moore’s house for what she thought would be the last time. She’d been so proud, so sure of herself, secure in her love for Harry and his love for her and her faith in the glittering, glamorous future that was finally hers.

And now I’m back with my tail between my legs
. She remembered what Olive had said to her when she’d first told the older woman she’d won a contract at Olympus, and God willing, would never darken her doorstep again: “Seventy-five dollars a
week? Seventy-five dollars a week isn’t even going to keep a girl like you in lipstick and nylons.”