Or I can tell the truth and potentially get fired.
At this point, I’m starting to see that getting fired might not be so bad. I’ll have a book to publish in the future, one for which I’d most likely make millions of dollars. That could, in turn, get me other celebrity biography opportunities. And then, eventually, I could start finding my own topics, writing about anything I want with the confidence that any publisher would buy it.
But I don’t know when this book will be sold. And if my real goal is to set myself up to be able to grab whatever story I want, then credibility matters. Getting fired from Vivant because I stole their major headline would not bode well for my reputation.
Before I can decide what, exactly, my plan is, my phone is ringing in my hand.
Frankie Troupe.
“Hello?”
“Monique,” Frankie says, her voice somehow both solicitous and irritated. “What’s going on with Evelyn? Tell me everything.”
I keep searching for ways in which Frankie, Evelyn, and I all leave this situation getting what we want. But I realize suddenly that the only thing I can control is that I get what I want.
And why shouldn’t I?
Really.
Why shouldn’t it be me who comes out on top?
“Frankie, hi, I’m sorry I haven’t been more available.”
“That’s fine, that’s fine,” Frankie says. “As long as you’re getting good material.”
“I am, but unfortunately, Evelyn is no longer interested in sharing the piece with Vivant.”
The silence on Frankie’s end of the phone is deafening. And then it is punctuated with a flat, dead “What?”
“I’ve been trying to convince her for days. That’s why I’ve been unable to get back to you. I’ve been explaining to her that she has to do this piece for Vivant.”
“If she wasn’t interested, why did she call us?”
“She wanted me,” I say. I do not follow this up with any sort of qualification. I do not say She wanted me and here is why or She wanted me and I’m so sorry about all this.
“She used us to get to you?” Frankie says, as if it’s the most insulting thing she can think of. But the thing is, Frankie used me to get to Evelyn, so . . .
“Yes,” I say. “I think she did. She’s interested in a full biography. Written by me. I’ve gone along with it in the hopes of changing her mind.”
“A biography? You’re taking our story and turning it into a book instead?”
“It’s what Evelyn wants. I’ve been trying to convince her otherwise.”
“And have you?” Frankie asks. “Convinced her?”
“No,” I say. “Not yet. But I think I might be able to.”
“OK,” Frankie says. “Then do that.”
This is my moment.
“I think I can deliver you a massive, headline-making Evelyn Hugo story,” I say. “But if I do, I want to be promoted.”
I can hear skepticism enter Frankie’s voice. “What kind of promotion?”
“Editor at large. I come and go as I please. I choose the stories I want to tell.”
“No.”
“Then I have no incentive to get Evelyn to allow the piece to be in Vivant.”
I can practically hear Frankie weighing her options. She is quiet, but there is no tension. It is as if she does not expect me to speak until she has decided what she will say. “If you get us a cover story,” she says finally, “and she agrees to sit for a photo shoot, I’ll make you a writer at large.”
I consider the offer, and Frankie jumps in as I’m thinking. “We only have one editor at large. Bumping Gayle out of the spot she has earned doesn’t feel right to me. I’d think you could understand that. Writer at large is what I have to give. I won’t exert too much control over what you can write about. And if you prove yourself quickly there, you’ll move up as everyone else does. It’s fair, Monique.”
I think about it for a moment further. Writer at large seems reasonable. Writer at large sounds great. “OK,” I say. And then I push just a little bit further. Because Evelyn said, at the very beginning of all this, that I have to insist on being paid top dollar. And she’s right. “And I want a raise commensurate with the title.”
I cringe as I hear myself asking for money so directly. But I relax my shoulders the moment I hear Frankie say, “Yes, sure, fine.” I breathe out. “But I want confirmation from you tomorrow,” she continues. “And I want the photo shoot booked by next week.”
“OK,” I say. “You’ve got it.”
Before Frankie gets off the phone, she says, “I’m impressed, but I’m also pissed off. Please make this so good that I have to forgive you.”
“Don’t worry,” I say. “I will.”
WHEN I WALK INTO EVELYN’S office the next morning, I’m so nervous that my back is sweating and a shallow pool is forming along my spine.
Grace puts down a charcuterie platter, and I can’t stop staring at the cornichons as Evelyn and Grace are talking about Lisbon in the summer.
The moment Grace is gone, I turn to Evelyn.
“We need to talk,” I say.
She laughs. “Honestly, I feel like that’s all we do.”
“About Vivant, I mean.”
“OK,” she says. “Talk.”
“I need to know some sort of timeline for when this book might be released.” I wait for Evelyn to respond. I wait for her to give me something, anything, resembling an answer.
“I’m listening,” she says.
“If you don’t tell me when this book could realistically be sold, then I’m running the risk of losing my job for something that might be years away. Decades, even.”
“You certainly have high hopes for my life span.”
“Evelyn,” I say, somewhat discouraged that she still isn’t taking this seriously. “I either need to know when this is coming out or I need to promise Vivant an excerpt of it for the June issue.”
Evelyn thinks. She is sitting cross-legged on the sofa opposite me, in slim black jersey pants, a gray shell tank, and an oversized white cardigan. “OK,” she says, nodding. “You can give them a piece of it—whatever piece you like—for the June issue. If, and only if, you shut up about this timeline business.”
I don’t let my joy show on my face. I’m halfway there. I can’t rest until I’m done. I have to push her. I have to ask and be willing to be told no. I have to know my worth.
After all, Evelyn wants something from me. She needs me. I don’t know why or what for, but I know I wouldn’t be sitting here if that weren’t the case. I have value to her. I know that. And now I have to use it. Just as she would if she were me.
So here we go.
“You need to sit for a photo shoot. For the cover.”
“No.”
“It’s nonnegotiable.”
“Everything is negotiable. Haven’t you gotten enough? I’ve agreed to the excerpt.”
“You and I both know how valuable new images of you would be.”
“I said no.”
OK. Here we go. I can do this. I just have to do what Evelyn would do. I have to “Evelyn Hugo” Evelyn Hugo. “You agree to the cover photo, or I’m out.”
Evelyn sits forward in her chair. “Excuse me?”
“You want me to write your life story. I want to write your life story. But these are my terms. I’m not going to lose my job for you. And the way I keep my job is I deliver an Evelyn Hugo feature with a cover. So you either persuade me to lose my job over this—which is only possible if you tell me when this book is being sold—or you do this. Those are your options.”
Evelyn looks at me, and I get the impression that I am more than she bargained for. And I feel good about that. There’s a smile forming that is hard to keep in.
“You’re having fun with this, aren’t you?” she says.
“I’m trying to protect my interests.”
“Yes, but you’re also good at it, and I think you’re delighting in it a bit.”
I finally let the smile out. “I’m learning from the best.”
“Yes, you are,” Evelyn says. She scrunches her nose. “A cover?”
“A cover.”
“Fine. A cover. And in exchange, starting Monday, I want you here every waking moment. I want to tell you all I have to say as soon as possible. And from now on, when I don’t answer a question the first time, you don’t ask it again. Do we have a deal?”
I get up from behind the desk, walk over to Evelyn, and put out my hand. “Deal.”
Evelyn laughs. “Look at you,” she says. “You keep this up, you might just rule your own part of the world one day.”
“Why, thank you,” I say.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she says, not unkindly. “Sit down at the desk. Start recording. I don’t have all day.”
I do as I’m told, and then I look at her. “All right,” I say. “So you’re in love with Celia, you’ve divorced Don, it looks like your career is down the tubes. What’s next?”
Evelyn takes a second to answer, and in that moment I realize that she has just agreed to the very thing she swore she would never do—a Vivant cover—just so I won’t walk.
Evelyn wants me for something. And she wants it bad.
And now I’m finally starting to suspect that I should be scared.
Gullible Mick Riva
PhotoMoment
February 1, 1960
EVELYN, GREEN’S NOT YOUR COLOR
Evelyn Hugo showed up to the 1960 Audience Appreciation Awards on the arm of producer Harry Cameron last Thursday. In an emerald-green silk cocktail number, she failed to wow like she has in the past. Evelyn’s signature color is starting to seem like a signature bore.
Meanwhile, Celia St. James dazzled in a stunning pale blue beaded taffeta shirtdress, updating the typical daytime look with a glamorous, fresh twist.
But the icy Evelyn didn’t say a single word to her old best friend. She avoided Celia all night.
Is it because Evelyn can’t handle the fact that Celia received the Most Promising Female Personality Award that night? Or is it that Celia’s been nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for their movie Little Women, and Evelyn didn’t get a mention?
Looks like Evelyn Hugo’s green with envy.
ARI DROPPED ME FROM ANY productions within Sunset and started offering to loan me out to Columbia. After being forced to do two forgettable romantic comedies—both of them so bad that it was a foregone conclusion they would fail spectacularly—the other studios didn’t want much of me, either.
Don was on the cover of Life, gracefully coming out of the ocean onto the shore, smiling as if it was the best day of his life.
When the 1960 Academy Awards came around, I was officially persona non grata.
“You know that I would take you,” Harry said when he called that afternoon to check in on me. “You just say the word, and I’ll come pick you up. I’m sure you have a stunning dress you can slip on, and I’ll be the envy of everybody with you on my arm.”
I was at Celia’s apartment, getting ready to leave before her hair and makeup people came over. She was in the kitchen, drinking lemon water, avoiding eating anything so she could fit into her dress.
“I know you would,” I said into the phone. “But you and I both know it would only hurt your reputation to be aligned with me right now.”
“I do mean it, though,” Harry said.
“I know you do,” I said. “But you also know I’m too smart to take you up on it.”
Harry laughed.
“Do my eyes look puffy?” Celia asked when I got off the phone with Harry. She opened them bigger and stared at me, as if this would help me answer the question.
I saw barely anything out of the ordinary. “They look gorgeous. And anyway, you know Gwen will make you look fabulous. What are you worried about?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Evelyn,” Celia said, teasing me. “I think we all know what I’m worried about.”
I took her by the waist. She was wearing a thin satin slip, edged in lace. I was wearing a short-sleeved sweater and shorts. Her hair was wet. When Celia’s hair was wet, she didn’t smell like shampoo. She smelled like clay.
“You’re going to win,” I said, pulling her toward me. “It isn’t even a contest.”
“I might not. They might give it to Joy or to Ellen Mattson.”
“They would no sooner give it to Ellen Mattson than throw it in the L.A. River. And Joy, bless her heart, is no you.”
Celia blushed, put her head in her hands briefly, and then looked back at me. “Am I intolerable?” she said. “Obsessing over this? Making you talk to me about it? When you’re . . .”
“On the skids?”
“I was going to say blackballed.”
“If you are intolerable, let me be the one to tolerate you,” I said, and then I kissed her and tasted the lemon juice on her lips.
I checked my watch, knowing that hair and makeup would be there any moment, and grabbed my keys.
She and I had been taking great pains not to be seen together. It was one thing when we really were just friends, but now that we had something to hide, we had to start hiding it.
“I love you,” I said. “I believe in you. Break a leg.”
When my hand turned the doorknob, she called to me. “If I don’t win,” she said, her wet hair dripping onto the spaghetti straps of her slip, “will you still love me?”
I thought she was joking until I looked directly into her eyes.
“You could be a nobody living in a cardboard box, and I’d still love you,” I said. I’d never said that before. I’d never meant it before.
Celia smiled wide. “Me too. The cardboard box and all of it.”
* * *
HOURS LATER, BACK at the home I used to share with Don but now could say was entirely my own, I made myself a Cape Codder, sat on the couch, and tuned the TV to NBC, watching all my friends and the woman I loved walk the red carpet at the Pantages Theatre.
It all seems much more glamorous on-screen. I hate to break it to you, but in person, the theater is smaller, the people are paler, and the stage is less imposing.
It’s all curated to make the audience at home feel like outsiders, to make you feel like a fly on the wall of a club you aren’t good enough to get into. And I was surprised by how effective it was on me, how easy it was to fall for, even for a person who had just recently been at the very center of it.
I was two cocktails in and drowning in self-pity by the time they announced Best Supporting Actress. But the minute the camera panned to Celia, I swear I sobered up and clasped my hands together as tightly as possible for her, as if the harder I pressed them together, the higher her chances of winning.
“And the award goes to . . . Celia St. James for Little Women.”
I jumped up out of my seat and shouted for her. And then my eyes got teary as she walked up to the stage.
As she stood there, behind the microphone, holding the statuette, I was mesmerized by her. By her fabulous boatneck dress, her sparkling diamond and sapphire earrings, and that absolutely flawless face of hers.
“Thank you to Ari Sullivan and Harry Cameron. Thank you to my agent, Roger Colton. To my family. And to the amazing cast of women that I felt so lucky to be a part of, to Joy and Ruby. And to Evelyn Hugo. Thank you.”
When she said my name, I swelled with pride and joy and love. I was so goddamn happy for her. And then I did something mortifyingly inane. I kissed the television set.
I kissed her right on her grayscale face.
The clink I heard registered before the pain. And as Celia waved to the crowd and then stepped away from the podium, I realized I’d chipped my tooth.
But I didn’t care. I was too happy. Too excited to congratulate her and tell her how proud I was.
I made another cocktail and forced myself to watch the rest of the spectacle. They announced Best Picture, and as the credits rolled, I turned off the TV.
I k
new that Harry and Celia would be out all night. So I shut off the lights and went upstairs to bed. I took off my makeup. I put on cold cream. I turned down the covers. I was lonely, living all alone.
Celia and I had discussed it and come to the conclusion that we could not move in together. She was less convinced of this than I was, but I was steadfast in my resolve. Even though my career was in the gutter, hers was thriving. I couldn’t let her risk it. Not for me.
My head was on the pillow, but my eyes were wide open when I heard someone pull into the driveway. I looked out the window to see Celia slipping out of a car and waving good night to her driver. She had an Oscar in her hand.
“You look comfortable,” Celia said, once she’d made her way to me in the bedroom.
“Come here,” I said to her.
She’d had a glass or three. I loved her drunk. She was herself but happier, so bubbly I sometimes worried she’d float away.
She took a running start and hopped into the bed. I kissed her.
“I’m so proud of you, darling.”
“I missed you all night,” she said. The Oscar was still in her hand, and I could tell it was heavy; she kept allowing it to tip over onto the mattress. The space for her name was blank.
“I don’t know if I was supposed to take this one,” she said, smiling. “But I didn’t want to give it back.”
“Why aren’t you out celebrating? You should be at the Sunset party.”
“I only wanted to celebrate with you.”
I pulled her closer to me. She kicked off her shoes.
“Nothing means anything without you,” she said. “Everything that isn’t you is a pile of dog shit.”
I tossed my head back and laughed.
“What happened to your tooth?” Celia asked.
“Is it that noticeable?”
Celia shrugged. “I suppose not. I think it’s just that I’ve memorized every inch of you.”
Just a few weeks ago, I had lain naked beside Celia and let her look at me, look at every part of my body. She had told me she wanted to remember every detail. She said it was like studying a Picasso.
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo Page 14