The Property of a Lady (51 page)

Rosa sighed. She could just see the way it was going to be with a rooming house full of young hopefuls with no money. Maybe it hadn’t been such a great idea after all.

Hollywood was swarming with eager young people, and within two weeks Rosemont was able to hang the “No Vacancies” sign on the gate. They had the twins, Lilian and Mary Grant, aged nineteen, blond and beautiful with round blue eyes and long curling hair, accompanied by their mother, Mrs. Winona Grant, all the way from Stamford, Connecticut, who told them her daughters were “just brimming with talent. They’ve learned since the age of six at the local Barrymore School of Mime and Dance.”

Then there was Millie Travers, aged twenty, from Des Moines, with a valise full of old copies of
Photoplay
and her pretty red head full of dreams; and feisty young Ben Solomon from Newark; New Jersey, who wanted to be a comedian like Harold Lloyd and who had worked his way across the country playing every small club that would have him. There was forty-year-old Marshall Makepiece, who had played Broadway and San Francisco and everywhere in between in his up-and-down acting career and who thought he recognized something familiar about Missie, but he just couldn’t put his finger on it…. And there were Ruth D’Abo, Marie Mulvaine, and Louise Hansen, who were all fully employed as Mack Sennett Bathing Beauties and from whom at least Rosa knew she could be sure of the rent.

The old weatherboard house brimmed with life and youth. It took Missie’s mind off her fears and Rosa’s off Meyer, and it brought in enough to cover their needs so even if they were not making a fortune, somehow it didn’t seem to matter. And the children thought the boarders were just one big extended happy family.

Eight-year-old Azaylee still missed her pony and her beautiful room at Haus Arnhaldt and the servants and the fuss everyone made of her. And she missed the fact that she’d only had to mention something, a doll, a dress, a game, and it was hers. She had been waiting eagerly for her new stepbrother, Augie, to come home from school to be her companion, but now she couldn’t wait to race
home from school with Hannah and Rachel, her books clutched under her arm, flaxen braids swinging, eager to hear who had got work today and what the Bathing Beauties had been up to. But her real idols were the twins.

Lilian and Mary left for the studios each morning after a dawn breakfast, watched by their eagle-eyed mother, who knew only too well their craving for sugarcakes and honey and Beulah’s apple turnovers. “Think of your figures,” she would chide them as they eyed Beulah’s hot biscuits longingly. “Take care of your complexions,” she would say, pushing away the chocolate cake at supper. “Remember there’s a lot more to being a movie star than just talent.” So, fortified by orange juice, cereal, and fresh fruit, the twins made the rounds of the casting offices, smiling blandly at the women and a little more roguishly at the men, and they returned wearily each afternoon, still jobless, to take their “beauty sleep,” as their mother called it. They were up again at four, for an hour’s dance practice in the sitting room. Mrs. Grant played the piano and Azaylee watched, breathless with admiration, as they stretched and leapt and pitter-pattered around on their toes, until, overcome with excitement, she would dance along with them, copying their movements exactly, her long coltlike legs wobbling as she balanced on tiptoe, her thin body swaying in time to the music.

In no time at all she was accompanying them to their daily classes at the Berkley School of Dancing on Santa Monica Boulevard, and when she was there she just knew she was the happiest girl in Hollywood. All she ever wanted to do was dance.

Life was so busy for Missie and Rosa it was only after supper at the end of the long day that they had time to talk to each other. About serious things, that is.

“So? What do you think Eddie is up to?” Rosa asked three months later as they sat on the porch in the gathering dusk.

Missie shrugged. “I don’t know, and I wish I didn’t care. What do you think he’s up to, Rosa?”

“Looking for you, private detectives, costing him a fortune. He must be going crazy by now.”

“He’s already crazy. Obsessed.” She shivered, even though the evening was a sultry one. “One day he’ll find us, Rosa, I know it.”

“Never.” Rosa scoffed reassuringly. “He would never dream his wife would be running a boardinghouse in Hollywood.” She paused and then added thoughtfully, “Unless …”

Missie’s eyes widened with alarm. She sat up straight in her rattan chair and said nervously, “Unless … what?”

“Well, I was just thinking. I mean, look how easy you found me, just asking at the local schools if the kids went there. What if he were to do the same thing?”

That old familiar sinking feeling grabbed her by the stomach. “My God, how foolish I’ve been!” she wailed. “I thought he would try Ziegfeld, Madame Elise, the New York theater world. I never imagined he might come to Hollywood. But where else would an actress come to find work? He knows I have no money!”

“Why not just change Azaylee’s name?” Rosa said, ever practical.

“Oh, no, I couldn’t do that. Not again.” Missie glanced at her worriedly, “The poor child will begin to wonder who she is. And besides, it’s too late. Everyone knows her. No, I’ll just have to take her out of school, get her a tutor.” She sighed as she thought of the money it would cost. “I’ll manage somehow.”

The very next day Azaylee’s desk was set up in the dining room and five mornings a week a young teacher, who had abandoned her profession for the riskier world of the movies, came to instruct her in arithmetic, English composition and grammar, and the rudiments of history and geography.

“But
why
can’t I go to school with Hannah and Rachel?”
Azaylee stormed, torrents of tears flowing down her face.
“Why
must I be taught at home, all by myself? I miss school and I miss the other kids….
Why
are you doing this to me?”

“It’s only temporary,” Missie said, hedging, “just for a little while. I cannot tell you the reason now, but believe me it’s for the best.”

Azaylee stared at her mutely, her luminous pansy-gold eyes brimming, and then she turned and ran upstairs to her room. When she refused to come down for supper, Missie took her up a tray. She was lying on her bed and when she saw her she turned her head away, staring out of the window.

“Come,
milochka,”
Missie coaxed, “you must eat supper or you’ll be hungry in the middle of the night.”

“I’m not hungry,” Azaylee said distantly.

“But you should eat something,” Missie urged. “If you are to be a dancer you’ll need to be strong.”

“I’m not going to be a dancer,” she muttered, flinging her arm across her eyes so she would not have to look at Missie.

Missie watched her uncertainly for a moment, and then she put the tray on the table and said quietly, “I’m truly sorry, Azaylee. I wish I didn’t have to do this but right now I do. I know that’s hard for a little girl to understand, but that’s the way it is. Meanwhile, please try to eat your supper.” She hesitated, her hand on the doorknob, and added, “Maybe you’ll want to come downstairs afterward. Mrs. Grant has promised to play the piano and the Bathing Beauties are going to rehearse their new act for us.”

Normally Azaylee would have been galvanized into activity by such information, but now she simply turned her face away again and said nothing.

Later, when Missie went in to kiss her good night, the food was still untouched and Azaylee seemed to be sleeping. She stared at her worriedly for a few moments and then carried the tray back down to the kitchen.

Azaylee appeared at breakfast the next morning looking subdued and pale. She drank a glass of milk and drifted listlessly across the lawn to Rosemont’s dining room, where Miss Valerian, her tutor, was waiting.

“All the spirit has gone out of her!” Rosa cried, horrified. “What have we done, Missie?”

She shook her head, scared. Azaylee looked just the way her mother, Anouska, used to look when she retreated into that world of her own where no one could reach her, and from which each time she seemed more and more reluctant to return.

It was the boarders who finally coaxed Azaylee out of her depression, joining in her lessons and making her laugh with their silly pretend-schoolgirl errors. Millie lent her her latest copy of
Photoplay
and the Bathing Beauties showed her their new stills, taken on the beach at Santa Monica with Mack Sennett himself right in the middle between Ruth and Marie. And Lilian and Mary told her they would not go to dance class unless she went too, so of course she went. But Missie knew for certain it had been touch and go and that Azaylee was as capable of great swings in mood as Anouska.

They were sitting around the porch a few weeks later when Dick Nevern tossed aside the newspaper he was reading and said, “Imagine that, a young kid of fourteen inheriting all that money. A fortune—more than I’ll ever make as a director, no matter how successful I am.”

“More than Mary Pickford?” asked Millie Travers, who knew all about the stars’ contracts as well as the details of their domestic lives as recounted by the movie magazines.

“Millions more than Pickford or Chaplin or any of them,” Nevern retorted.

“So, who is he, this fourteen-year-old millionaire?” Rosa asked interestedly. “Maybe he’ll do for my Hannah?”

Nevern picked up the newspaper again and read the
headline: “Son of German Steel Baron Inherits All After Fatal Accident.

“Baron Eddie Arnhaldt was killed yesterday in an automobile accident that also took the lives of his friend, the Countess Gretel von Dussman, and another couple. The car, a new Broadman roadster, was believed to have gone out of control and struck a tree on a narrow road near Deauville. The baron and his friends were said to have died instantly. His only son, fourteen-year-old Augustus Arnhaldt, will inherit one of the world’s major fortunes, including iron, steel, and armaments factories at Essen in Germany.”

Rosa leapt to her feet. “Excuse me,” she said faintly, “I’ve just thought of something very important I have to do.”

Missie was sitting in the kitchen having a cup of coffee with Beulah. “What is it?” she asked, alarmed by Rosa’s flushed face and glittering eyes.

“Arnhaldt is dead!” Rosa cried. “Killed in a road accident yesterday. It’s all in the papers. Oh, Missie, Missie.
All your troubles are over!”

New York

“King” O’Hara surveyed his crowded nightclub with a grin as big as his cigar, counting the noisy, glossy customers with a practiced eye, mentally assessing his take—and his profit. And profit was mostly what it was. King O’Hara’s prices were so exorbitant, everyone knew it must be the best and they fought to get in.

Now he had opened a second club, O’Hara’s Purple Orchid on West Fifty-second Street, with even higher prices and a classier image: cool gray, lilac, and gold decor, the band in dinner jackets, gold champagne coolers imported from France, crystal stemware, and hothouse flowers fresh daily, with a single exquisite, expensive purple orchid for each lady and a specially dyed purple carnation boutonnière for each man. King O’Hara’s counted anybody with enough bucks and enough clout to pay for the cover and the drink as its clientele, but the Purple Orchid was high class. Its customers were the wealthy scions of high society, the leaders of café society, and the cream of the theater world. No one was ever granted membership in the Purple Orchid without O’Hara’s personal say-so, and, pinned to the trailing fox furs of a beautiful, bejeweled young lady, the purple flower had become the chicest accessory in town.

The gold-studded dance floor at the Purple Orchid and the black glass dance floor at King O’Hara’s were packed nightly, and even with the huge payoffs necessary to keep
him from being raided, O’Hara was making a fortune—even more than the Oriconne brothers who had given him his start. And that was his one big problem. The brothers didn’t like their ex-employee muscling in on their territory. They objected to him buying his bootleg liquor from another supplier, especially as he had used their contacts to get it at lower prices than they could offer. And his nightclubs were in direct competition with their own café-clubs in Manhattan, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Chicago.

The nice Oriconne brothers, Giorgio and Rico, had invited him to a nice “family-style” party at Rico’s mansion in New Jersey. It was Rico’s daughter’s sweet-sixteen birthday party. O’Hara had gone to Tiffany and asked for a suitable gift, and young Graziella Oriconne had been thrilled with the slender gold chain with sixteen exquisite pearls interspersed with angelskin coral.

“Never thought I’d see the day when I’d admit you had good taste, O’Hara,” Rico had commented, smiling at his pretty dark-haired daughter’s pleasure, “but I gotta hand it to you, when you adopted a new name—’King’—you bought yourself a touch of class to go with it.”

“Yeah, well, about King O’Hara’s, Rico.” He puffed on his cigar, glancing at Rico through the smoke. “It’s no skin off your nose, me running a place like that. And the Purple Orchid—well, it’s just another nightspot, one among hundreds.”