“This is,” Margo insisted fiercely. “For God’s sake, Gabby, they make me sound like some kind of predator.” She quoted again from the hateful text. “ ‘Made a beeline for the grieving Mr. Forrest’? Dane was the one who asked me to dance! I didn’t even see him until he started talking to Larry.”
“If you say so. I wasn’t there.” No, Margo thought, you were practically unconscious and had to be carried home with vomit stains all over your dress. “What does Dane think about this?”
“Horrified, probably. I can’t even think about it.”
“Well, who are the flowers from, then?” Gabby jerked her pointy little chin toward the daisies.
“Jimmy.”
“Jimmy Molloy?” Gabby’s forehead wrinkled. “Why is he sending you flowers?”
Margo shrugged. “He seems to think this is a good thing.”
“Well, everyone knows who you are now.” Gabby narrowed her eyes. “Different flowers are supposed to mean different things, aren’t they? What are daisies?”
“I don’t know.” Margo thought back to the interminable flower-arranging sessions in Miss Schoonmaker’s Poise and Presence class back in Pasadena. “Friendship, I think.”
“Oh.” Gabby seemed mollified. “That’s all right, then. But you really haven’t heard from Dane?”
“Not a whimper.”
“Well, it’s still so early. Maybe he hasn’t seen the papers yet. Maybe he sleeps late. Or maybe he’s been up for hours, planning to send you some kind of elaborate and lavish gift that you couldn’t possibly have received yet. Like a diamond. Or a car. Or a horse. Or …” Before Gabby got any farther down the wish list, the doorbell rang again.
“Urgent delivery for Miss Sterling,” said the delivery boy in the doorway. Margo pounced on him, ripping the thin tissue-paper envelope open like a wild animal.
“What is it?” Gabby cried breathlessly. “Is it from him?”
“No.” Margo was pale. “It’s from Mr. Karp’s office. He wants me to come in for a meeting this afternoon.”
Neither girl had to say out loud how serious this was. In the best-case scenario, a summons to the office of the all-powerful studio chief might mean something wonderful, like you’d been nominated for an Oscar. On a day when the biggest movie magazine in the country had chosen to run a scandalous story about you, it was very bad news indeed.
Gabby finally spoke. “Remember. Talk about America. America, and Pasadena, and how much you love it there, and your wonderful mother …”
“Gabby.” Margo silenced her with a grim laugh. “If I could do that, I’d be the greatest actress in the world.”
“Have a seat, dear.” The secretary gestured toward a low stool against the wall, wedged between two miniature palm trees. “He’ll be with you in a moment.”
Feeling meek and small, Margo did as she was told. It was exactly as though she were sitting outside the headmistress’s office at Orange Grove. Anxiously, she wiped her sweaty palms against the scratchy fabric of the pleated plaid skirt she had chosen to wear, a holdover from her old life. If I’m going to be punished like a naughty schoolgirl, she thought, I might as well look the part.
A tall, distinguished-looking gentleman strode briskly through the office door and into the reception area. The secretary sprang abruptly to her feet. “Mr. Payne! You’re finished so soon!” She was practically standing at attention. “Shall I call a car to take you to the airport?”
The man ignored her. Instead, he cast his hooded gaze toward Margo, raking his eyes lazily from the top of her head to the tips of her toes—with a lot of meaningful lingering on certain parts in between. “No need. I’ve got my driver waiting outside.”
“Of course. Of course, Mr. Payne. Have a safe journey, and we’re so looking forward to seeing you again.”
“Hmmm.” The man looked thoughtful. “How I wish I could say the same.”
So that’s Hunter Payne. Now that Margo saw him in person, it all made perfect sense. Hollywood, for all its bluster, was a glittering colony of strivers, scrappy immigrants, and small-town dreamers, but everything about Hunter Payne, from the knife-edged crease in his trousers to the easy grace of his walk, reeked of privileged entitlement, of a man who had never known a moment’s humiliation, heartbreak, or doubt. A man like my father, Margo thought, the kind of man she’d known all her life. No wonder everyone was afraid of him.
The secretary took a moment to recover after he had gone before she turned to Margo. “You can go in now, Miss Sterling.”
Fingering her little gold-and-pearl pin, affixed to the Peter Pan collar of her blouse, Margo took a deep breath and opened the door.
The inner office of Leo F. Karp was furnished to look like an ocean liner. Not a ship’s cabin or even an officer’s quarters, but the ocean liner itself. Since her arrival at Olympus, Margo had overheard a few competing theories as to the reason for the nautical theme. Some said it was meant to evoke the great ship on which Karp had sailed to America as a small boy; other, more cynical types whispered that the studio boss, famously extravagant (at least when it came to himself), had simply resolved to choose the most lavish and ruinously expensive design scheme his designer could imagine, and this turned out to be the winner. But whatever the motivation, there was no denying the grandeur of the place. Long, curving walls were covered in creamy white leather, punctuated by baseboards of inky mahogany. A luxurious white silk carpet, laid in narrow panels, emulated a newly whitewashed deck. The windows were round, like portholes looking out onto the sea. And all the way at the back, behind an enormous white prow of a desk and dressed in a crisp suit of nautical navy, was Leo Karp himself, the fearless captain at the mighty helm. It looked like a fantasy out of a movie, which of course was exactly what it was.
Tentatively, Margo inched forward, wondering what the protocol was. Should she curtsey? Should she wait for him to speak, as one did with the king of England?
To her surprise, the all-powerful head of the biggest studio in Hollywood came barreling excitedly toward her with his arms outstretched.
“My darling Miss Sterling! How marvelous to see you at last!” He seized her hands, planting noisy kisses on each of her cheeks. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you for stopping by on such short notice.”
As though I had a choice, Margo thought. “Of course. I’m thrilled to be here.”
“Let me look at you.” With her hands still clasped in his, he held her out at arm’s length, as though to get a better view. She took the opportunity to conduct an examination of her own. Mr. Karp was short. Very short. Even for Hollywood, where, in Margo’s still inexpert opinion, people were by and large shorter than any grown people had a right to be. Though she was wearing her flat oxfords, he barely reached her nose, and his feet, clad in highly polished spectator wingtips, looked no bigger than a doll’s. But he was solidly built, broad shouldered and barrel chested in a way that almost made you forget his diminutive stature and twinkling eyes. Sure, he looked a little like a teddy bear, but a teddy bear who could beat the hell out of you if he wanted to.
“My latest acquisition.” Mr. Karp sighed with pleasure. “Ah, but you’re a vision. The photographs don’t do you justice.”
Margo flushed. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me, darling. It’s me who should be thanking you. I get to sit here looking at a glorious girl, while you’re stuck staring at my ugly mug.” He gestured to a white quilted leather armchair. “Won’t you sit down?”
She sat, waiting for Mr. Karp to do the same. Instead, he began to pace in circles around her chair, as though she were a suspect brought in for questioning. Was this some sort of intimidation tactic? Was he stalling for time? Figuring out the best way to give her the bad news?
She couldn’t take it anymore. “Mr. Karp …”
He held up a hand to cut her off. “Miss Sterling, please. I know what you’re going to say. A beautiful new player comes to my own studio, joins my orbit, if you will, and I don’t come to m
eet her? Of course, I’m a busy man; of course, I have meetings to attend, pictures to produce, papers to sign, money to make. But still, Miss Sterling, I ask you, what way is this for a gentleman to treat a lady such as yourself? You must be furious with me. Particularly under the circumstances.”
She flushed. What is he playing at? What circumstances? “Mr. Karp, really—I …”
“Miss Sterling—may I call you Margo?” At last, he sat, leaning toward her with a comically grave expression on his face. “Margo, darling, I’m going to speak frankly. Larry Julius told me about how it was that you came to us. The troubles with your mama and papa.”
“I—I don’t—”
“Please, my darling, there’s no need to explain.” He shook his head sadly. “It’s a terrible thing, to have troubles in one’s family. As happy as we are to have you here with us at Olympus, I can’t help feeling in some way responsible. So I hope that what I’m going to tell you will come as a small comfort to you.”
He’s firing me, Margo thought wildly. He’s going to tell me to go back to Pasadena and make peace with my parents.
“I want you to know, lovely Margo,” Mr. Karp continued, “that I look at everyone, every single man, woman, and child here at Olympus, as if he or she were a member of my own family. I hope, in time, that you’ll be able to think of me like a father. Or maybe more of a grandfather; after all, you’re so young.” He smiled. “But if something or someone is troubling you, I’ll do anything, anything, within my power to help, just as if you were my own daughter. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Margo whispered.
“And does that make you happy?”
“Yes.” It was the truth. Even if what Mr. Karp was saying was partially for effect, it did make Margo feel better to hear it. Maybe she wasn’t about to be fired after all.
Mr. Karp walked grandly back over to his enormous desk and sat down, his arms crossed over his chest like a benevolent pasha. “I’m very glad to hear that. Because I’m about to ask you for a rather large favor.” He drew a well-worn script from the drawer and slid it across the desk toward her. Margo read the title page.
THE NINE DAYS’ QUEEN
BY
HARRY GORDON
Mr. Karp peered at her keenly over his glasses, studying her reaction. “You recognize it?”
Margo struggled to locate her voice. “I … it’s … isn’t this the picture Diana Chesterfield was making before she …”
“Before she went on extended vacation, yes,” Mr. Karp said firmly. “And you can imagine how that left us in the lurch. The studio has invested, shall we say, significant resources in The Nine Days’ Queen. Weepy history pictures with female leads are big business right now. This was supposed to be our answer to Marie Antoinette, to Jezebel, to that farkakte Civil War movie David Selznick claims to be making, if he can ever find the right girl, what’s it called, Gone with the Wind. When I first heard that title, I said, what’s the picture about, his bank account? I mean, what kind of schlemiel green-lights a picture and blows through a million bucks in preproduction alone, without a star attached? Some people say, who cares, what’s it anyone’s business if some crazy producer wants to ruin himself? Not Leo Karp. Leo Karp says that when one man does bad business, it’s bad for everyone in the business. If it was up to me, I’d have him run out of town.” He shook his head. “Now, God help me, I feel bad for the poor schmuck. Because you do everything right, get the best directors and designers in the business, real machers who know how to stick to a budget and do it right, you go into production, everything is perfect, solid, you’re on top of the world, and then poof!” Margo jumped as he brought his surprisingly large fists down on the desk, scattering a pile of papers onto the plush white carpeting. “My biggest star is gone. Three-quarters of a mil already gone in preproduction, budgeted, plus ten grand a day it’s costing me to keep it on hold. I say fine, we’ll shut production down, the studio will take a million-dollar loss and Hunter Payne and the banker boys in New York—if you’ll pardon the expression, dear—will have my balls for breakfast, but fine, I’m a big boy, I’ve got deep pockets, I’ll take the hit. And then what do you think happens?”
Margo shook her head in disbelief. Never in her life had she heard someone speak this frankly about money. While money cast its gritty pall over everything and everyone in Pasadena, on the rare occasions when it was actually discussed, it was spoken of in euphemisms, in the same way as death, or illness, or, God forbid, sex. As though it were an unseen force of mystical power, a sleeping dragon better left to lie. Leo Karp, on the other hand, had no such inhibitions, throwing out figures with the fiduciary frankness of a riverboat gambler. She was utterly enraptured.
“I’ll tell you what happens,” Mr. Karp continued furiously. “The screenwriter of this white elephant, Harry Gordon, this little Commie pischer from New York threatens to sue. Breach of contract, he says. He can’t win, but he can make things pretty difficult if he wants to, make me tie up our lawyers, throw even more money down the toilet for a movie I’m not going to make. I’ll probably wind up tripling his salary just to shut him up. And I thought Communists didn’t care about money.” Mr. Karp took a fat cigar from the polished humidor on his desk and twiddled it absently in his hand. “It turns out they just don’t care about anyone else’s. So you see, darling Margo, it turns out we’ve got to make the picture anyhow, and I’m an actress down. We’ve got nobody here who can fill Diana’s shoes, and no one who wants to try, so I go to MGM, I say ‘Let me have Katie Hepburn.’ They get all hoity-toity—‘Oh, Leo, at MGM we never loan out our stars to another studio’—and in the very same breath, they offer me Joan Crawford. I say, you’ve got to be kidding. This character in the picture is a seventeen-year-old girl; Crawford is thirty-five if she’s a day, which means she’s forty. He says, it’s Crawford or nobody, so fine, it’s nobody. Paramount, forget about it, the only girl they’ve got who’s not ready for the nursing home is Lombard, and Lombard doesn’t do costume drama. Columbia, please, who am I supposed to put in a ball gown, the Three Stooges? So I ask Jack Warner to help me out, but de Havilland is unavailable, Stanwyck’s all wrong, and Bette Davis is not interested. Not interested!” His jaw dropped in feigned shock. “What is she, crazy? Not interested in the greatest part out there for an actress since Anna Karenina? But no, apparently she thinks she’s got the Oscar all sewn up with Jezebel this year and she’s not interested in any competing projects.” He snorted. “Well, we’ll show her a thing or two, won’t we, Margo?” Margo hesitated as Mr. Karp paused to light his cigar, unsure whether she was supposed to answer. “Well?” he asked, exhaling a large cloud of noxious smoke. “Won’t we?”
“I … I don’t think I know what you mean, sir.”
“What I mean is, we’ve been reduced to testing unknowns. Just like Selznick, the poor schmuck. Young hopefuls, contract players, extras down at Central Casting. Even a few some scouts picked up off the street.” Or at the lunch counter at Schwab’s, Margo thought drily. “Maybe twenty, thirty girls in all. Kurtzman—Raoul Kurtzman, that is, the director of the picture—isn’t impressed. Says they reflect poorly on the state of the American actress.” His face darkened. “The guy would be in Dachau right now if it wasn’t for the largesse of this great country and its people, but that’s gratitude for you. Turned up his nose at every girl we tested, except for two.” Mr. Karp put down his cigar. “One of them, Margo, was you.”
Margo felt the blood slowly drain from her face. She gripped the arms of the chair. “Me?”
“We already have you under contract. Raoul Kurtzman has named you his first choice to play Lady Jane Grey,” Mr. Karp said. “And we know you have some chemistry with your costar. And therein lies the problem.” With excruciating slowness, Mr. Karp reached into his desk drawer again and pulled out the offending issue of Variety. Very carefully, as though he were holding some kind of forensic evidence, he laid it next to the script. On the bare surface of the white lacquer desk, the headline seemed
written in letters about three feet high.
“Mr. Karp,” Margo began. “I can explain—”
He cut her off sternly. “Darling, there’s no need to make excuses. The only thing that matters is what happens next.” Taking off his glasses, he began to slowly polish the lenses with a soft checked cloth, his eyes boring into hers. “Margo. You will be given the part in The Nine Days’ Queen under one condition: whatever is going on between you and Dane Forrest must come to an immediate end.”
Margo felt the tears well up in her eyes unbidden, threatening to spill. Don’t, she commanded herself sharply. Not in front of Leo Karp. “But there’s nothing going on between us,” she whispered. “Not the way they made it sound.”
“And there never will be,” Mr. Karp said. “Not in the way you hope.”
It was the word hope that did it. The tears started to fall, hot and slick, down her nose.
In a fluid, practiced motion, Mr. Karp plucked the white silk handkerchief from his breast pocket and handed it to her. How many girls has he had crying in front of his desk? Margo wondered as she carefully wiped her eyes.
“I don’t blame you, my dear,” Mr. Karp said. “I know exactly how irresistible a man like Dane Forrest is to a young girl; after all, we designed him this way. As for his attraction to you—how shall I put this delicately?—you’re certainly his type. But the public would never accept it. Not after this”—he seemed to search for the word—“situation with Diana. There would be a terrible scandal. It would sink the movie. It could sink your potential as an actress for good. And on a personal note,” he added gently, “just so you know it’s not all dollars and cents. Dane Forrest is not the boy for you. There are things about Dane, things in his past … well.” With a sigh, Mr. Karp replaced his glasses. “It’s not appropriate to go into specifics in front of a young lady such as yourself. But for your own good, you’re to have nothing to do with him. You’ll star in the picture together. That’s all right, Dane’s a decent actor; there’s a lot you can learn by watching him. But that’s as far as your relationship will go.”
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