Gwendolyn and Marcus bagelled in silence for a moment. “Do you think Madame Nazimova will come back here?” she asked him.
He sighed. “I sure hope so. I’ve missed her. Why? Don’t you think she will?”
Gwendolyn shrugged but kept her eyes on Marcus. There was a look in his eyes that she saw from time to time and it filled his face now. It was a quiet sadness, like a longing for something he’d lost. He’d never said anything, but she felt she knew what he was thinking. She often thought the same thing.
“Once you’ve left a place,” she ventured, “I don’t think there’s really any going back. Not really. You’d be expecting to return to the same place you left, but you can’t. It couldn’t be the same place. Life has gone on. There’s no going back, and I think Madame is wise enough to know that.”
Gwendolyn silently begged Marcus not to look away. Come on, she thought, you know I’m not just talking about Alla. Marcus’ lips fell slightly apart and his shoulders relaxed as tears filled his eyes so subtly that she might have missed it. She was glad to see them.
The slightest of smiles broke out on Marcus’ face. “Yeah,” he said quietly, “you’re right. There is no ‘until you’ve . . . blah-blah-blah.’”
She shook her head and looked down at her bagel. She’d made her point; there was no need to linger on it.
They sat in silence until Marcus got up from the table. “Well,” he announced, “I’ve got some reading of my own to do. Yesterday I picked up a copy of that book they reviewed in the L. A. Times last week, How to Win Friends and Influence People. I’ve decided not to count on anyone else–George Cukor included–to get me out of this Cosmopolitan-Hearst-Davies hole I’ve fallen into.”
“Is it really that bad?”
“You know what they call it around the studio lot? The yoke of the joke. I want to get somewhere, make something of myself. I want to write real movies, and I’m not going to do it while I’m fluffing up these cotton candy pictures for Hearst’s mistress. I need to get out of there and I figure it might help if I can charm my way out. Wish me luck.”
“You don’t need luck,” Gwendolyn told him. “You’ve got talent. And us.”
He smiled again. “Actually, I meant luck in staying awake. If I’m not going to sleep through this picture tonight, I’ve got to get me some shut eye.” He kissed her on the cheek, whispered his thanks and was out the door.
Gwendolyn spotted Eldon Laird’s business card on the kitchen table. The sight of it made her smile. Of all the things she’d had to endure since she got to Hollywood — falling off billboards, kneeing drunks in the groin, hocking diamond brooches–how funny that everything she wanted could all come down to a little piece of cardboard.
She looked around the villa. It wasn’t often that she had the place to herself. Everyone seemed to be always popping in for a chat or a drink or to borrow a newspaper. She rarely got to enjoy the early peace of a Saturday morning alone. She sat at the kitchen table and watched as the edge of the morning light sidled its way toward her. When it hit the edge of the table she smiled, closed her eyes and tilted her face toward the sun.
THE END
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Martin Turnbull
ALSO BY MARTIN TURNBULL
Book Two in the Garden of Allah novels
The Trouble with Scarlett
It’s 1936 – Gone with the Wind is released by first-time author Margaret Mitchell and becomes an international sensation. Everyone in Hollywood knows that Civil War pictures don’t make a dime but renegade movie producer David O. Selznick snaps up the movie rights and suddenly the whole country is obsessed with answering just one question: Who will win the role of Scarlett O’Hara?
Book Three in the Garden of Allah novels:
Citizen Hollywood
It’s 1939 – Orson Welles, the enfant terrible of New York, is coming to Hollywood to make his first movie. Tinsel City is agog! Can he even direct a movie? What will it be about? Will he scandalize the West Coast the way he’s shocked the East Coast? And, more importantly, who will he bed first and does he kiss-and-tell? When William Randolph Hearst realizes Citizen Kane is based on him, he won’t be happy—and when Hearst isn’t happy, nobody’s safe. Marcus, Kathryn, and Gwendolyn need to go for broke, and the clock is ticking.
Book Four in the Garden of Allah novels:
Searchlights and Shadows
The dark days of Pearl Harbor loom over Los Angeles, and posters warn Hollywoodites that loose lips sink ships. MGM screenwriter, Marcus Adler, needs to come up with a sure-fire hit. Gwendolyn Brick dreams of opening her own dress store, but it threatens to drag her back into the orbit of Bugsy Siegel. Columnist, Kathryn Massey survival depend on a place nobody’s heard of: Las Vegas.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Heartfelt thanks to the following, who helped shaped this book:
My editor: Meghan Pinson, for her invaluable guidance, expert eye, and unfailing nitpickery.
My cover designer: Dan Yeager at Nu-Image Design who totally got what I was going for from the first email.
My Proof Reader Dream Team: Bob Molinari, Vince Hans, and Bryan Jossart, for their objective feedback and keen eyeballs.
My beta readers: Caitlin Crowley and Linda Sunshine who generously guided me through earlier incarnations of this book.
My go-to guys for everything Hollywood: James Parish and Woolsey Ackerman.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
From an early age, Martin was enchanted with old movies from Hollywood’s golden era – from the dawn of the talkies in the late 1920s to the close of the studio system in the late 1950s – and has spent many a happy hour watching the likes of Garland, Gable, Crawford, Garbo, Grant, Miller, Kelly, Astaire, Rogers, Turner, and Welles go through their paces. It feels inevitable that he would someday end up writing about them. Originally from Melbourne, Australia, Martin moved to Los Angeles in the mid-90s where he now works as a writer, blogger, webmaster, and tour guide.
Visit Martin online at:
www.MartinTurnbull.com
Facebook.com/gardenofallahnovels
The Garden of Allah blog
Goodreads
The Garden on Sunset Page 28