The Fame Thief (13 page)

“Someone you’ll never meet.”

“Expensive?”

“I can’t imagine,” Dolly said, “why you think you have the right to barge in here and ask me questions. Just trot your extrawide bottom through that door and let me get back to business.”

“Business,” Livvy said. She put the ivory figurine back and threw up her hands in mock-surprise, as though just remembering something. “Oh, right. Las
Vegas
, all those hoodlums. Picking up some spare change, are we?”

“Hard to believe that would even occur to you, considering how
widely
you do it for free.”

“Melly Crain,” Livvy said dreamily. “Louella. Hedda. Doris Lilly.
Hollywood Secrets
. Don’t you think they’d be
fascinated
to know that one of the screen’s great new beauties spends her weekends on her knees under nightclub tables, servicing gangsters?”

“Coming from you? Any of them, even Melly, would consider the source.”

“It’s too good a story to turn down. Hollywood’s sweet new innocent, tugging on Johnny Roselli’s dick. You’d be working as a car hop. Who got you the
Life
cover? Who got you these reviews?”

The phone began to ring.

“Just leave that,” Livvy snapped. “And give me the name.”

Dolly was on her way to get the phone, but she stopped. She tilted her head down a little and gazed at Livvy, thinking. She was right, it was a good story. And, unfortunately, partially true, so there wouldn’t even be a retraction.

“I know why you do that, that thing with your head,” Livvy said. “Lowering it like that. I saw you do it every time
the camera was at eye level. You do it because it shortens your upper lip, don’t you?”

“I tried a mustache,” Dolly said, “but it didn’t come in.”

“The name. You know I can cause you trouble. This is not a point in a girl’s career when she wants trouble.”

“If I tell you, will you leave?”

“I’ll be a streak.”

“Pinky Pinkerton.”

“That little hack? He couldn’t have gotten that cover—”

“You asked. I told you.” She went to the door and pulled it open. “Go away.”

“You swear? Pinky Pinkerton? If I find out otherwise—”

“It’s a nice day out,” Dolly said. She made a little shooing motion toward the door. “Go ruin it for someone else.”

“Oh, Georgie,” Dolly said, leaning against his shoulder. She breathed in the soothing fragrance of the baby powder he always wore on his neck to keep the stiffly starched shirts from chafing him. “I hate myself when I’m with her. She turns me into her.”

“She does it to everybody, Button,” Raft said. “Don’t think about it.”

“She’s such a—”

Raft put a hand on her wrist. He had the warmest hands of any man she’d ever known. “Look around, okay? You see her? She on the plane?”

“No, of course, not.”

“So why are you inviting her along? She’s with us as long as you’re stewing about her. You want to toss her off? Stop thinking about her.”

“All right. But she almost made me late.”

He laughed, showing his beautiful, even teeth. “We ain’t taking off without you, so relax.”

They were the only people in the passenger compartment, which seated eight. Georgie traveled first-class, even when he couldn’t afford it, perhaps especially when he couldn’t afford it.
Through the open door to the cockpit, Dolly watched the pilot reach up to snap a bunch of switches and then press his earpiece against his head so he could hear the instructions from the tower. Cloverfield Airport, out in Santa Monica, was smaller than the new Los Angeles International, but it got busy on Fridays.

The plane shuddered and began to roll forward, and Dolly grabbed the sleeve of Raft’s beautiful suit, wadding it up in her hand. “These little planes scare me.”

“Nothin’ scares you,” Raft said. “That’s one of the things I like about you.” Gently, he pried her hand off the sleeve. “Take it easy on the fabric, Button. These things ain’t free.”

“Okay, I’m not scared,” Dolly said, sitting back. “I just like the cloth.”

Raft reached over and put an arm around her shoulder. “Then go back to leaning on it.” He waved his free hand at the little window to his left. “Take a look at that, willya?”

Dolly leaned across him to look out. The light was mostly gone, and through the eucalyptus and palm trees the sky was the pure, deep blue Dolly associated with sadness, the blue she saw when cellos played slow melodies. A curved, cream-yellow melon-slice of moon dangled just above the treeline, and the first stars were beginning to make their tinny appearances, getting ready to brighten as the sky went to black.

“Beats the pants off Hell’s Kitchen,” Raft said.

“Not to mention Scranton. The night sky in Scranton was like coal. Actually, everything in Scranton was like coal.”

The moon slid sideways across the window and disappeared as the plane pivoted to take its place on the runway. Takeoffs always made Dolly nervous and chattery, and she said, without thinking, “Max Zeffire called me today,” and then wished she could kick herself.

“Really,” Raft said. He pursed his lips and looked down at
the shine on his shoes. “Just called you out of nowhere? He don’t even return mine.”

“Oh, Georgie. He probably figures you’re too big a star for—”

“Yeah, right. What did the little twerp want?”

“He offered me a movie,” she said, glad the cabin lights were dim so he couldn’t see her blush. “With Randolph Scott.”

“Yeah? You’ll like Randy.”

“I probably won’t get it.”

“You’ll get it. If Max wants you, you’ll get it, Button. He owns the place.” The airplane shook and rattled as the engines rose in volume, taxied forward, and then slowed. “I didn’t know he had Randy.”

“He said he did.”

“Coming up in the world, old Max.” Raft turned and stared out the window, and Dolly looked at his hair, seeing for the first time that it was thinning in back. Still facing the window, he said, “Good part?”

It felt like bragging, given what was happening with Georgie’s career, but he’d asked. “I think so. I think it could be great for me.”

“Tell Georgie the story.”

She told him the plot as the plane taxied and slowed again, and when she got to the part where her character was revealed as the hired gun, he whistled.

“Choice. Sounds like Max wants his own
Duel in the Sun
. Who’s directing?”

“I forgot to ask. Livvy was there, and I was mad enough to spit.”

“Save your spit for someone who’s worth it. And forget what I said, that stuff I said, about Max. They’re all the same, the studio big shots. He’s no worse than any of them. Little men in
big suits, trying to act like they deserve what they got, like they don’t wake up every morning and pinch themselves. No, I take that back, Meyer is worse. Making those family movies so he can slide his hand up Judy’s dress.”

“Judy?”

“Garland.”

“Oh,” she said, feeling a now-familiar rush of excitement. This was the world she lived in now, a world where she knew people who called Judy Garland “Judy,” as though she were Judy Karnow, who lived just down the hill from them in Scranton. “Is that true?”

“People say. They say he did it with Temple, too. That’s
Shirley
Temple.” He gave her the smile she liked best, the one that seemed to come out of nowhere.

“I know, I know. But to hear you just say ‘Judy’ like that, I practically get goose bumps. Georgie, can I tell you something and you promise you won’t get mad?”

“Mad at you? Not a chance.”

“All the stars, when I first started to see them up close up, to meet them, I mean?” She put her hand, fingers spread, in the middle of her chest. “They just took my breath away. It felt like they were so bright I should have squinted at them, and I couldn’t have thought of anything to say if my whole life had depended on it. But
you
, my mom never let me see the kind of movies you make, so I wasn’t afraid of you. I liked you right away and I didn’t even find out you were a star until later.”

Raft dropped his heavy lids and looked her in the eyes. “Really?”

“Is that okay?”

He leaned across and kissed her cheek, and the talcum fragrance bloomed around her. “Better than okay. It’s great. You’ll find out when you’re a star. You never know whether
someone means what they say or whether it’s just because—you know.”

“That must be awful,” she said, trying to imagine it. It didn’t sound all that awful.

“Well,” Raft said, “I won’t have to worry about it much longer, not the way things are going.”

“Come on, Georgie, that’s not—”

He held up a hand to stop her, and then he took her chin and turned her face to his. “Nah, nah. Let’s tell each other the truth,” he said. “We always have.”

“But maybe it’s just a slump, right?” She suddenly felt the icy lake of fear at her center, stirred by the notion that anything could happen to throw her—to throw
anyone
—out of this wonderland. “Everybody goes up and down. Don’t they?”

Raft seemed to be studying the wall between them and the pilots’ cabin as though it were a screen and rushes were flickering across it. He reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a cigarette, and lit it. She waved the package away when he extended it to her, and he turned his head to blow the smoke against the window. “Tell you something, Button, but it’s a secret.” He dragged on the cigarette again, its bright orange coal reflecting in the dark windowpane. “You gotta promise me it’s a secret. Nobody except you and me.”

“Cross my heart.”

He leaned back and closed his eyes, and she watched the climbing filigree of smoke. “Meyer—you know, Meyer Lansky.”

“I know who he is. I haven’t met him.”

“Meyer’s made me an offer. I’m getting charity from a gangster. Down in Cuba. He’s going to open a casino and give me a little piece of it, and I’m going to work for him.”

“You mean—quit acting? Leave Hollywood?”

“Acting’s quit me, Button.” He lifted the cigarette to his lips
again and inhaled. “And, yeah, I gotta be in Havana to work in Havana.”

Banished from Eden
, she thought, the chill fear lapping at the bottom of her heart. “But … doing what?”

“Being Meyer’s pet movie star. Meet the gorillas, the high rollers, have a drink or two with them, sit at a table once in a while with a crooked deck, winning for everyone to see. Press the flesh, wear nice clothes. Gleam a little.”

“But Georgie—”

“I’ll make more money down there in a month, off my piece of the skim, than I made here in a year. I’ll do it for a couple years, three, retire rich. The hell with Jack Warner and Max Zeffire and the whole bunch of them, all the big shots and all the Olivia Duponts, too. I’ll be rich, I’ll buy a penthouse in Manhattan and just turn into a rich old man, great clothes and shiny women.”

She looked into his eyes but didn’t see the regret she expected.
If it can happen to Georgie.…
“But people will miss you.”

“They’ll have Bogey.”

“He’s not you.”

He turned to look into her eyes. “No, he’s a
real
star. You know what
I
was, Button? I was the only guy in town who could do what I did, back when pictures were a small business. If they wanted someone like me, they got me. Now pictures are a big business, and there are half a dozen of me.”

Raft returned his attention to the wall in front of them, chewing on the corner of his mouth, and Dolly could sit back and look at him. Georgie was one of only three people she’d ever known who put out colors of their own, not just in their voices, but in the air around them. His was a kind of silvery fog, as though mercury were smoke, and from the moment she’d seen it, it had relaxed her, made her feel safe. But now it
seemed roiled, even stormy. She said, “There’s only one of you for me.”

“Won’t happen for a couple of years. Meyer’s got to build the place first.”

“Still too soon for me.”

“Maybe not, by the time it happens. You’re gonna be a big star. Stars look at other people different, you’ll see. I’ll just be somebody to smile at.”

The engines roared into real life, no rehearsal this time, and the plane rushed toward the end of the runway.

“I’m still me,” Dolly said, grabbing his hand to steady her nerves. “I’m just Wanda Altshuler from Scranton.” And she thought,
Am I?

“Not for long,” Raft said. “Two years from now you’ll barely remember me.” The front end of the plane tilted upward vertiginously and they were climbing, getting side-punched by winds in off the Pacific. He extended a hand, fingers straight, and mimed a smooth ascent. “Like this plane,” he said. “You’re going up. It’s like—like—you know the word, Button. Sounds like a dangerous reptile.”

The rear end of the plane skewed right and then fought its way back again, and the sound of the engines increased. The cold lake sloshed inside her chest. “A dangerous—”

“Yeah, you know.” Raft squinted at the black rectangle of the window. “Says one thing but means something else. Not alligator, but—”

“Allegory.”

“Yeah, one of those.” He reached into the breast pocket of his jacket, pulled out a thin silver flask and unscrewed the top before handing it to her. “Dolores La Marr,” he said, and there was something dangerous in his grin. “Going up.”