Love Me (5 page)

“Ugh,” Amanda Farraday said, crumpling the vellum notepaper and tossing it to the floor in disgust. Chewing her bottom lip, she twirled a lock of copper hair around her finger and reached for a new sheet.

No. Amanda started again.

Not right either. With a sigh, Amanda folded the unfinished note and slid it into the bulging packet with all the others.

How many letters were there now? At least a hundred, maybe closer to two hundred. She’d been writing them to Harry Gordon for months, at least one a day since he’d left. Amanda had explained everything in the uneven scribbles on those sheets of paper, things she’d never told another living soul. What had made her run away from her stepfather’s farm in Oklahoma when she was fourteen years old, and why she could never go back. How she’d finally hitchhiked her way to Hollywood with
no more than fifty dollars sewn into the hem of her dress, and just what she’d had to do for them. How she’d lived when she got here. About just what a person could do, if they were scared enough and hungry enough. How long days spent hustling for a scrap to eat and long nights spent searching for a bed could make a certain kind of girl think that working for someone like Olive Moore was like stumbling on a little piece of heaven.

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:

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 with 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:

Amanda let out a gasp.

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: