Stars Over Sunset Boulevard

by Susan Meissner

  “I was wondering if you might do something for me.” His tone was eager.

  Her heart tripped over a beat. “Of course.”

  “Valentine’s Day will be coming up soon and I’d like to surprise Audrey with something. I was hoping you would help me.”

  A second flicked by before Violet answered that she would be happy to help Bert in any way she could.

  “I know it’s two weeks away yet, but it’s so busy right now. I don’t always know when I will see you.” Bert reached into his pocket and withdrew a handkerchief-wrapped lump. He opened the folds and pulled out a little porcelain bird, painted in soft browns with the faintest rosy pink at its bosom and sapphire blue eyes. It was perched on a porcelain branch decorated with autumn-toned leaves and its beak was open, as though it would sing to whoever held it.

  “It’s a nightingale,” Bert said, smiling.

  “I see you finally found it, then.” Violet took the little bird in her hands and touched the cool, smooth surface of its wings.

  Bert’s grin widened. He liked her little joke. “I was thinking maybe you could leave it at her bedside table while she’s sleeping, so that when she wakes up on Valentine’s Day she’ll see it.”

  Violet considered Bert’s request for a moment. “Audrey is working nights now. Sometimes she comes home after I’m already in bed.”

  “Yes, but she’s still sleeping when you get up, right? You could sneak in there in the morning, put the bird on the nightstand, and then she’ll wake up after you’re gone and see it.” He withdrew from his shirt pocket a small, cream-colored envelope. Audrey’s name was written across the front. “Could you set it atop this?”

  Violet slowly took the envelope from Bert and pondered what she could say. Audrey would think the bird was sweet and the gesture kind, but whatever Bert had written on a note for Valentine’s Day she would surely find troublesome. Audrey wasn’t in love with Bert. She liked him—who didn’t like Bert?—but she was not in love with him. Audrey was after only one thing at the moment: stardom. Bert didn’t figure into that. Bert would never figure into that. And he had no idea Audrey spoke in sultry tones to a man named Vince at late hours.

  Nothing good could come from giving Audrey a Valentine’s Day note from Bert.

  “Don’t you think it will be more fun if she just wakes up and sees the sweet little bird and has to wonder how it got there?” She offered the envelope back to Bert but he didn’t take it.

  “I don’t want her to wonder. I want her to know it was me who gave it to her.”

  “Yes, but sometimes wondering is more . . . fun,” Violet said, careful not to say wondering was more romantic. “It might be . . . better for you if you don’t leave a note, Bert.”

  He stared at her for a moment and then his gaze dropped to the envelope in her hand. The reason for Violet’s reluctance seemed to dawn on him. “She’s not seeing someone, is she?” he finally said.

  Violet hesitated only a second. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe?”

  “I’m not sure. She doesn’t tell me everything. I’ve just . . . I’ve heard her talking to a man on the phone. Late at night.”

  A long moment passed before Bert took the envelope from Violet and slipped it back into his shirt pocket.

  “I still want her to have the nightingale.” A mix of emotions laced his words together.

  “Of course. It’s a sweet little bird, Bert. It really is. Any girl would be thrilled to have it.”

  He nodded slowly, seemingly unconvinced.

  “I know she’ll love it.”

  “And you’ll tell her it’s from me?”

  “Of course.”

  He handed her the handkerchief that had been around the bird. “Don’t worry. It’s clean.”

  Violet laughed lightly, took the handkerchief, and wrapped the bird inside it. She placed it inside the handbag at her feet.

  “Miss Myrick is coming back this way.” Bert’s voice lacked the lift it had moments ago.

  Violet pressed her hand on Bert’s forearm. “Everything will be all right,” she said spontaneously, though she knew those words could sound so empty when it felt like you were losing something you thought was yours. So very empty.

  She watched him walk away. The swirling platform that Rhett and Scarlett danced upon was wheeled back into place so that their waltz would seem charming and effortless. And then Violet’s gaze fell to the little bird resting just inside her handbag.

  Her next move would require some careful thinking. She didn’t want anyone to get hurt.

  Violet knew all too well what it was like to have your deepest affections returned to you unwanted. It was the most devastating feeling in the world. Franklin hadn’t even waited until her stitches turned to scar tissue before telling her he thought they should start seeing other people. He’d told her it had nothing to do with the surgery and her inability to give him sons, but his father’s shipping company had been family owned for a century. Violet knew it had mattered to him. Of course it mattered.

  To offer your love to someone and then have it declined was the worst blow the human heart could suffer. Audrey didn’t love Bert, just like Franklin hadn’t loved her.

  She needed to act in Bert’s best interest. He was a good and kind man who didn’t deserve to have his heart trampled on. If she could help him fall out of love with Audrey before it went too far, then it wouldn’t hurt him so much. That was the merciful thing to do. It was what she wished someone had done for her. Her parents had initially hoped a change of scenery in Shreveport would lift Violet out of the sadness that had enveloped her following her surgery. But the Louisiana landscape hadn’t been the tonic she’d needed. Not even Hollywood had been the salve her soul cried out for. She was finding that time was the only agent that mended a broken heart. Best not to have it broken in the first place.

  • • •

  Violet waited until the day before Valentine’s Day.

  By then Audrey was working the sundown-to-sunup shift, typing up pages of constantly evolving script, over which Mr. Selznick labored while everyone else slept. In the shared hour between the time Violet arrived home from the studio and Audrey left for it, Violet took the handkerchief out of her purse. She and Audrey were sitting at the kitchen table. Audrey was smoking a cigarette and looking at a magazine. After a very difficult day on set, Violet had just made herself a supper of scrambled eggs.

  Mr. Selznick and George Cukor had been at odds. Mr. Cukor was making script and blocking changes without Mr. Selznick’s approval, and he had his own ideas about feel and tempo. Mr. Cukor wanted Melanie’s childbirth scene to be tense and frightening, for example, and Mr. Selznick insisted the mood be subtle and quietly oppressive. Mr. Cukor was also unhappy with the new pages of script that showed up every morning and the fact that the actors had no time to memorize the latest lines. There were rumors floating about that Mr. Cukor might resign. Miss Myrick had told Violet she couldn’t think of anything more upsetting than to see George Cukor go.

  “What’s that?” Audrey said, pointing to the little fabric-wrapped lump.

  “Bert thought you might like it,” Violet said casually, and took a bite of her eggs.

  Intrigued, Audrey set her cigarette down in an ashtray and pulled away the folds of the handkerchief.

  “It’s a nightingale.” Violet looked at Audrey, not at the piece of porcelain in her friend’s hand.

  Audrey’s smile widened in precisely the way Violet had hoped it might.

  “Oh, dear Bert and his nightingales!” Audrey set the little bird down by the fruit bowl in the center of the table and smiled at it.

  “It’s pretty, isn’t it?” Violet did not take her eyes off Audrey.

  “Very sweet,” Audrey replied thoughtfully. “So very sweet.” And then she slowly picked up her cigarette and returned her attention to her magazine.
<
br />   Violet took another bite of her dinner as she reached across the table.

  Her fingers closed around Bert’s handkerchief and she drew it into her lap.

  EIGHT

  Audrey pulled the silk scarf tight around her head as the car she sat in zoomed down Wilshire Boulevard.

  “I told you I could put the top up,” Vince said from behind the steering wheel, as she tucked in the fluttering ends of the scarf.

  “I like it down. It almost feels like we’re flying. Besides, I’ve heard the windblown look is fashionable.”

  “Any look on you is fashionable, Audie.”

  She grinned. “You’re engaged,” she reminded him.

  He laughed. “I’m surprised you could get away for lunch today with all that’s going on over at the studio.”

  “I’ve been working twelve-hour nights for two weeks. I’d say I’m due a long lunch. And, anyway, we’re on a shooting break while Victor Fleming gets up to speed. He and Selznick and some other execs are all headed to Palm Springs to work on the script from hell. It’s actually quiet at the studio today. I doubt I’ll be missed.”

  Vince shook his head. “I still can’t believe Cukor quit. And Fleming taking over for him? To jump into the Civil War after spending the last few months in Oz? That takes guts.”

  “What do you bet the two settings aren’t so different?” Audrey said. “Every movie seems to be the same these days. Some character desperately wants something and has to go through a world turned upside down to get it.”

  “I’m thinking it was all a genius publicity stunt, switching directors like that. Photoplay loves stuff like this. I bet MGM secretly loves it, too, since they’re in this for half the profits.”

  “Well, stunt or no stunt, it hasn’t made for a happy cast. Vivien Leigh loved Cukor.”

  “But Gable didn’t.”

  Audrey turned to him. “And where did you hear that?”

  “This is Hollywood, Audie!” He was about to turn into the entrance of the Beverly Wilshire, an imposing structure of Carrara marble and Tuscan stone, when Audrey stopped him.

  “Wait! I can’t get out of the car with you, Vince!” she exclaimed. “What if Dwyer arrives the same time we do? Let me out up the street and then you double back.”

  “Right.” Vince moved back into traffic. “So, when I see you, you’re an old friend from . . . ?”

  “I am not an old anything. I’m a good friend. We’ve both just been busy and we haven’t seen each other in a while. You want to catch up. You invite me to join you both for lunch. I decline. You insist. You get Mr. Dwyer to also insist. I pretend to mull it over. You signal a waiter to bring another chair and a glass of whatever you are drinking and then you say you won’t take no for an answer.”

  Vince pulled up to the curb on the next block. “And you’re sure you don’t want me to say anything about Pocahontas?”

  Audrey had her hand on the door handle but whirled around. “You have to promise me you won’t say anything about Pocahontas!”

  “Audie, you were cast in a major motion picture.”

  “A major motion picture that was never made. Don’t mention it, Vince. Promise me you won’t unless I do first.”

  “All right, all right. So he’s supposed to just magically assume you’re interested in being a movie star, then.”

  “Did you not listen to anything I told you on the phone the other night? He’s supposed to wonder if I would look good on the screen. If I can be made into a star. If I can make Paramount good money.”

  “And you think he will?”

  “If you ask me the right questions he will. Ask if Selznick tested me for Scarlett, along with half the known world. And when I laugh and say no, ask why not. Mr. Dwyer will wonder if I have star quality because you will have planted the thought. It’s as simple as that.”

  Vince grinned. “You’re good at this acting gig. Ever thought of giving it a try?”

  “Oh, hush.” She stepped out of the car.

  “See you in ten?”

  “Fifteen.”

  Vince drove off, signaled a U-turn, and headed toward the hotel. Audrey took her time walking back in the same direction so as not to be winded. At the restaurant’s host stand she gave her name and said that she had a reservation for a table for one by a window. As the host showed her to her table she gazed about the rest of the room and was relieved to see that Vince had a table not far from the ladies’ powder room, just as they had planned. After she was given a glass of water and a menu, she rose from her chair and began to walk toward the powder-room door. Vince saw her rise. When she was only a few feet away, his eyes widened in mock delight.

  “Audrey Duvall!” He sprang to his feet. “What a nice surprise!” He leaned forward to kiss her on the cheek.

  “Vince, darling, how wonderful to see you,” Audrey replied, employing the smoothest tone to her deep voice.

  Vince turned to his tablemate. “Bernard, this is a dear friend of mine, Audrey Duvall. Audrey, Bernard Dwyer.”

  The man stood. He looked to be her father’s age, maybe a year or two older. She had expected this assistant producer to be a little younger.

  “How do you do?” he said courteously.

  “Pleasure to meet you,” she said.

  “It’s been ages since we’ve talked. How are you?” Vince went on.

  “Very well. And you?”

  “Splendid, splendid. Still with Selznick, then?”

  Audrey saw a flicker of interest in Bernard Dwyer’s eyes. “Yes, I am. Busy time now, as you can imagine.”

  “No doubt.” Vince then seemed to have suddenly come up with an idea “Say. Are you dining alone?”

  “Oh. Well, yes.”

  “You should join us,” he said enthusiastically.

  “Oh, no. I couldn’t.”

  “We insist, don’t we, Bernard?”

  Bernard Dwyer had just retaken his seat. He looked up from the menu. “What was that?”

  “Audrey should join us, shouldn’t she?”

  Dwyer blinked at him.

  “I wouldn’t want to impose,” Audrey said, glancing from one man to the other. “You look like you have important things to discuss.”

  “It’s no imposition. I can have the waiter bring us another table setting.”

  “I actually do have some matters I’d like to talk about, Vince,” Dwyer said. “I’m sure we’d just bore this lovely young woman to death were she to stay. It was very nice to meet you, Miss . . . ?”

  “Duvall. The pleasure was mine.”

  Vince had clearly not thought about the fact that Dwyer might say no. He stared at Audrey.

  “Another time, Vince?” She leaned toward him to give him a peck on the cheek.

  “Sorry,” he whispered into her ear.

  She pulled away. “Good day, gentlemen.” Audrey continued to the ladies’ room, entered a stall, and closed the door. She leaned her forehead against the polished wood, willing it to cool the heat of her disappointment.

  Vince had spent a week setting up this meeting. This had been his best lead, he told her. Dwyer and his scouts were on the lookout for a new brunette they could groom into greatness.

  Audrey resisted the urge to pound her forehead against the door. She had just spent two hundred dollars on new studio photos. And for what? Dwyer hadn’t shown a hint of interest, other than when he heard she worked at a competing studio. He hadn’t asked what she did there. Hadn’t cared what she did.

  Vince would call her later tonight to tell her again how sorry he was. That was a phone call she did not want to suffer through. She would invite friends over. Bert. Jim. The new hairdresser on set. A few others. They could play charades and drink cocktails and she wouldn’t answer the phone if it rang.

  She stepped away from the stall door, reached behind to the commo
de, and flushed it even though there was nothing in it but water.

  • • •

  Twilight had turned the Hollywood sky an ashen azure, and the first stars studded the canvas of the eastern horizon. Though it was damp and a bit chilly, Audrey suggested she and Violet set up the cocktail party out on the bungalow’s patio.

  She grabbed a kitchen chair to take outside and asked Violet to do the same. Violet put her hands on the chair back but her gaze was on the fruit bowl on the center of the table. She paused.

  “What?” Audrey asked

  “I was just . . . I was just thinking I should move the nightingale if it was still on the kitchen table so it wouldn’t get broken tonight. But it looks like you already did.”

  “I put it on that little shelf in the bathroom, the one by the window.” Audrey grabbed a second chair. “I thought it would look cute there, like it had just flown in.”

  Violet lifted the chair and followed Audrey outside with it. “That’s a good place. So, did you have a nice lunch out with your friend?”

  Audrey set the chairs down. “It was all right.”

  “Vince, is it?”

  “Yes.” The less she had to talk about her day the better. “And how were things at your end of the studio? Did you and Miss Myrick find anything to do without the cameras rolling?”

  They went back inside for the last two chairs. “She’s fit to be tied because no one is working on their Southern accents while we wait for Mr. Selznick and Mr. Fleming to get back. Leslie Howard’s drawl is horrific. Mr. Gable still won’t fake an accent of any kind. And Miss Leigh is still mad that Mr. Cukor is gone, so she isn’t working on her lines at all.”

  They grabbed the chairs and went back outside with them. “Miss Myrick spent most of today trying to track down the actors to resume their coaching. But Miss Leigh said what was the use, since Mr. Selznick will come back with a whole new script, anyway.”

  “She’s probably right about that.”

  “Have you . . . have you had a chance to see Bert since he asked me to give the nightingale to you?” Violet asked.