* * *
“You must have done something wrong,” Rose said, after I told her about the date.
I held an ice chunk on my thigh where Teddy had pinched off skin. I bled on cheesecloth stuck in my crotch. “He forced me.”
“What did you say to him? I don’t get it.” She held cotton and iodine, and my back was a splash of cuts, bruises, pink iodine dabs. Rose pulled out stucco and paint specks with her fingernails. “You act like it’s the worst that can happen.”
Rose could tape on a bandage, but she didn’t get it. I believed she didn’t get it because not one person did, not my mom or Will, who kept saying, “It’s not like you’re a virgin anymore. Christ, Pen, he’s my best friend. What do you expect me to do?”
No, I wasn’t a virgin anymore. But Rose should have known. She should have said, Penny, I’m sorry. You can cry because it’s the worst thing to happen, ever, nothing is worse, those cuts on your back will scar.
That’s what best friends are supposed to say.
I saved money for eight months. At Godding’s I bought a gallon juice can and drained juice through a slot. I stuffed dollars and change inside. In town I’d see cops and start wheezing. I’d never had asthma before. Cops walked into Godding’s, or I saw them drive by or they’d wave, and each time my throat stopped me breathing. I had to leave Buena Park, had to. I’d go to Hollywood. In Hollywood I didn’t care who got it or who said I agreed to that date, so what’d I expect, a nitey-nite kiss at the screen door?
CHAPTER 33
The surprise of them all, however, is Basil Rathbone, who lives these days for his adopted baby. And when Cynthia needs attention, don’t think Basil wanders off in search of help—he’s Basil-right-on-the-job, reveling in her need of him.
—Photoplay, November 1940
I couldn’t find Stany at Paramount. I walked the back lot and found all the people I didn’t need: Abbott, two Career Girls, a script girl with typewriter ink on her shirt. Abbott took revisions out of the script girl’s hands and didn’t thank her, but a script girl doesn’t wait for thanks. She’s always running.
The two Career Girls stood by Abbott, and he stood by the publicity office on 6th Street near Avenue M. His office sat next to Preston Sturges’s. Both offices had stucco fronts and short sets of stairs to the doors. They looked the same, except Preston’s had a wide canvas awning that shaded his front window. Without an awning, Abbott’s office looked bald. I’d never been in his office. No girl goes there unless she has to. I think the Career Girls had to, because they’d stepped out of his doorway and Abbott patted one—the Career Girl I’d seen talking to Madge in the Zebra—on the shoulder like she’d been upset.
No, she was still upset: I saw tears fall off her nose. She licked them. Abbott talked to her; I couldn’t hear what he said, but he didn’t fire her. If he had, there’d be no pat on the shoulder and no kind talk. She’d be walked out by Joe to the Bronson Gate, and we wouldn’t see her again. So maybe her mother died. Her grandmother died. Her great-grandmother died. Maybe she misplaced her production schedule.
“You,” Abbott said. He pointed at me. “It’s eight-oh-seven. You’re late.”
I ran like a script girl down Avenue L to tiny 11th Street and our sound stage. Inside Stage 10, lighting guys set up reflectors and flipped bulbs on and off. Preston Sturges sat at the piano and played ragtime. The extras and actors smoked and chatted. Two guys moved a set wall forward five feet and then back. Forward and back. The wall flexed when they forgot to move at the same time, and a third guy cussed at them. Normal morning stuff. A whole five minutes later, Stany and Hank came in. I’d never talked to Hank. He scared me the same way that Bob Taylor did. When a man’s too beautiful, there’s an invisible girl line all around him, and only special girls can cross it, like Rose or Stany. I’d never tried.
“Ssssst. Ssssst.”
Stany didn’t hear me.
“Ssssst,” I said.
“You’re being called,” Hank said. He took a match from his gray plaid suit and flamed it with one scratch on a prop table. He raised the match to his mouth and lit a cigarette.
Stany tried not to look at me. She saw Hank and Preston, and Eugene Pallette, who sat in a tux and played drums on two overturned pots, and a group of girl extras pushing each other close to Hank, but then she’d turn her head to me and raise her eyes up and over my body like I was a room she avoided.
“Ssssst. I have something to say.”
“Say it, then.” She watched Preston, who wore two hats, one on top of the other. Clinkety clinkety, ragtime.
“Not near him.” I meant Hank, but I couldn’t say Hank because he’d hear, and I’d never been introduced. How stupid—he knew everyone recognized him; he was costar of the picture. He was Hank Fonda, but I couldn’t say his name. I couldn’t say Hank.
“Hey, there’s Wally,” he said. “I need to ask him. Hey, Wally.” He disappeared, so polite.
“What is it?” Stany said. She picked at her gold blouse. She watched Preston’s fingers on the piano. She watched the two Career Girls come in the stage door.
“I read the transcript of Rosemary’s autopsy.”
“And?”
“You lied to me, Stany.”
“And?”
“That’s it. You lied. I asked you—remember me asking? We sat in the Pig ’n Whistle and I asked you right out what happened to her thumb, and you said it was cut off.”
“So it was.”
“Bullshit,” I said.
She looked at me now. A mean look. “Don’t cuss. Not at me.”
“Or what? You’ll get me fired? Look around, Stany. Nobody talks to me here. Not the extras or Preston. Abbott has it out for me. I’ll never make contract player because I’ve got a record. You don’t get Paramount contracts with a mug shot. So what do I care?”
“Your brother’s a burglar.”
“Another reason I’ll never be hired. So he’s a burglar. You never stole in your life? Miss Hard-Time from the Bronx?”
“Brooklyn.”
“You knew Rose had been tied up. I didn’t know. I didn’t tie her up. I couldn’t have. Where would I keep her? My dorm room? You knew, and Conejos knew, and nobody said a thing. I got arrested and fingerprinted and—and measured and turned side to side for mug shots, and you both knew I didn’t kill her.”
“I told you all along I didn’t think you killed her. I never lied about that.”
“Gracious of you,” I said. “What a lady.”
Preston banged the piano keys and stood up. He clapped his hands and his hats wobbled. Time to work.
“Listen,” Stany said, just for me, under the shout and clang of cameramen. “What was I supposed to do? What if Bob really killed her?”
“God. God, Stany. You mean you’d see me go to jail to protect your husband?”
A lighting guy fixed a spot past Stany and clicked a switch. Stany’s hair glowed orange. “You bet. I’d put myself in jail if I had to. I’d put anyone in.”
Her face got tight. She loved him too much. She thought Bob might murder a girl, that’s how much she loved him. She squeezed her lips together, and across the room, Wally yelled, “Missy! Your lip lines!”
Stany waved at him. Sure, Wally. Anything for you. “Besides,” she said to me. “I got you a lawyer.”
“A divorce lawyer.”
“Well, I paid for him.”
Here was the time I could have told her. Here was the moment to throw Marty up, to tell Stany about Marty’s night job in the backyards of the famous. No reason to hide what I knew, with Will already in jail. Plus, I didn’t need Marty now that I’d read about Rose. I didn’t need a lawyer. Maybe right now Joe was telling Conejos to drop my murder charge. I could tell Stany about Marty Martin.
But I didn’t. I opened my mouth, but that’s all. No words or sound. I kept picturing Rose on Sunset with her good hand holding scraps of cloth on the cut hand, and the cars racing by. Dark out, except for those cars. She’d wave the
good hand: Stop! Then she’d breathe hard and almost fall. She’d get dizzy. The cars racing by. Will already gone on the highway to Buena Park, bastard.
Then one car stops, and it’s Marty returning to Sunset, and he calls to Rose, and she runs to the car. The blood’s soaked through all the cloth scraps and drips as she runs. He drives her a few miles, passes some hospitals so nobody connects him with Rose, and Rose with the broken glass at the Stanwyck place. He’s still Marty, after all. He wants distance. But he walks her into the receiving hospital. He helps her sit down, he finds Dr. Ostrander, and then—after she’s safe inside, after she’ll be seen by a doctor—he leaves.
“Extras are excused,” Preston said. He stood on his piano bench. “Today’s scenes involve Hanker and Barbs kissing, and I’m sure no one wants to stick around for that.”
Groans and hoots. We don’t get paid if we’re excused, and we don’t get to watch the kissing, either.
“Come to dinner,” Stany said.
“She bit off her thumb. You didn’t think that was important to tell me?”
“Your mark, Barbs,” Preston directed from under his two hats.
“I have to work.” Stany walked to her mark.
I followed her. “She bit off her thumb.”
Across the set, people stopped: extras crowding the stage door, Wally and Preston and half a dozen cameramen, Hank and his cigarette. They gave the hush-hush of people who know something’s happened. I’d followed Stany on set to her mark.
“And if I tell—”
“Shut up!” Stany grabbed my arm. “Everyone’s listening.”
“If I tell,” I whispered. “The great Missy thinks her husband’s a killer. What’ll Bob say?”
“I’m not the one who robbed my house.”
“I didn’t, either.”
“You were there,” she said. “You lied about it. Get off my mark.”
Then Hank said from across the room, “Well, look here. My shoe’s in my hand. Gosh, it’s heavy. I better throw it and break up this cat fight or we’ll never finish our scenes.” He tossed the shoe, and it hit the piano bench.
Laughing, and the talk started up and the whole sound stage moved again, toward the door and cameras and the spotlights.
“We’re both liars,” Stany said. She let go of my sleeve. “I’ve got to work.”
“Both liars. Yeah, we are.”
“We’re even. You lied to me, and I lied to you,” she said.
“But aren’t you sorry you lied?”
“Are you? Of course I’m not sorry. I’d do it again. Get off my mark.”
“I would, too, Stany. I’d do it again.”
“I’d lie to you,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean we’re not friends. Will you get off my mark?”
I stepped backward, out of the lights. Without Hank tossing his shoe I might have kept yelling and not understood that I lied, too. Both of us liars, like Stany said. Stany lied about one thing. I lied when Rose’s body was found. Keeping silent is lying, in a way.
“Wait,” she said. “Come to dinner Saturday. I’m throwing a good-bye party at Ciro’s. Bob’s leaving. No, not that kind of leaving. Utah, for filming. What is it—Wild Bill, Billy Goat—no, Billy the Kid. That’s it.”
“Saturday night I’m filming at the Gardens. I play a bull. It’s a promotion.”
“Oh, Pen. A bull?”
* * *
I joined the extras and set guys and the coffee girl at the stage door. We crowded 11th Street. No rain since last night, but the streets in the back lot smelled greasy and held little tidepools in cracks and drains. Bits of junk floated in them and stuck to the road. Joe waved me over from where he leaned against the back lot’s rear wall.
“I had this dream,” I said. Yelled, through people. “You sat in Conejos’s crappy little office and told him how innocent I am. He has a crappy office, doesn’t he? He must have.”
“I haven’t seen Conejos. I had to work here today,” he said. “I do have news, though. Your brother’s been moved to the Lincoln Heights Jail.”
“How many bus transfers will it take to get there?”
“A lot. But not now. You’re wanted in someone else’s crappy office. I came to escort you.”
I knew what came next. I held out both arms, wrists forward. Nobody in the crowd noticed. They’d seen me do it before.
“What are you doing?”
“Go ahead, put them on.”
“Funny. No handcuffs, Penny.” Instead he walked beside me down Avenue L, past Bing Crosby’s long dressing room, and stopped in front of a building I’d never been in. From outside it looked like another sound stage; it looked like nothing, but a big nothing, as wide as Stage 10 and painted beige. No red lightbulb mounted over the door.
Joe set his hand on the doorknob. “You okay?”
“Sure.”
“I mean last night. You were upset. Last night you mentioned a hospital. How did you know Rosemary was at a hospital? Which hospital? How did you know?”
“Fine,” I said. “I’m fine. Really fine, thank you.”
The knob turned, the door opened, and Joe stepped away. Abbott came out. He stopped when he saw me, but he didn’t say anything. He frowned, like he does, and then he shook his head. He walked back the way we’d come, toward Stage 10.
“You need to watch him,” Joe said. “He doesn’t like you.”
The door had shut again. I turned the knob and pulled it open. When I entered, a secretary smiled at me from her desk. This wasn’t a sound stage, and Joe didn’t come in. He waved at me from the street. I shut the door, and the secretary said, “Mr. Zukor’s waiting for you.”
* * *
Oak paneling, oak chevron floor, tall orchids, probably real, a second secretary typing on her old Corona from shorthand that looked like ink dribble to me.
The secretary glanced up, pretended not to notice me standing in front of her, typed more, and at last stood and knocked on a door in back. She opened the door, and inside Mr. Zukor rose from behind a huge carved wood desk. He looked like a nice grandpa. High collar, red handkerchief poking from a black suit. He had thin grandpa hair and a long face, cigar between fingers, and he pronounced his W like a V. He didn’t look powerful, or maybe he didn’t look mean. He ushered me in, then closed the door behind me. I liked him.
He sat, leaned back, and tapped his cigar in a plate. “We at Paramount are a family. Do you have a family, Miss Harp?” Vee at Paramount are a Vaa-mily.
“Sure.”
“And in your family, do you take care of each other?” Sometimes we did. Will sat in jail for me, so I guess we took care of each other.
“Sure,” I said.
“We take care of each other here at Paramount. I’m prepared to offer you a two-year contract. One hundred fifty dollars a week.”
“A contract.”
“Do you have a boyfriend, Penny?”
“No,” I said. “Not at all.” Joe didn’t count. He wore a uniform, just like Teddy.
Mr. Zukor swiveled his chair. “Please keep it that way. Lana Turner is a nightmare for MGM. I don’t want a nightmare here. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” I didn’t understand. A contract.
“You’ll be a studio player, scene-setting, like that. Small parts. Baby steps. You’ll start small and see what happens. You’ll need lessons. In everything, I understand. We’ll train you to act and talk. We’ll show you how to dress. Do you sing?”
“I can, but you won’t like it.”
“Too bad. We need a Deanna Durbin. Universal is cleaning up with her.” Then he said, “When you work for my studio, I speak for you. People look at you, but what they see is this studio. They see me. They see Mary Pickford at nineteen and what she means to this country. Every time you are in public you are the best of Paramount Pictures. You are happy and gracious. If a dog pisses on your leg, you are smiling. You pet the dog. If you are the worst of Paramount Pictures, you are both a liar and in breach of contract. Do you und
erstand?”
“Sure.”
“I will insert a confidentiality clause in your contract, but I want all details clear.”
“Details?”
“It’s simple,” he said, not a grandpa at all. “You forget what you saw at Miles Abbott’s office this morning. You forget about Jim Ostrander and anything overheard at that hospital. That’s all. You would do this, wouldn’t you, for two years at Paramount Pictures?”
“Yes.” My voice said it, not me. I still thought, contract? I couldn’t say anything. My voice talked, not me.
“Stills next week,” he said. “Have my girls set it up. And your hair. Yes, hair. Stop touching the sides. Can’t you puff it? You work on the hair.” He held up his cigar like it was a finger: Hold on. He pressed a button. “Shirley, who sets Dottie’s hair? Good. Call him about the new property.” To me: “You’re off the Sturges set.”
“Why?”
“You sign and you’re no longer an extra. I don’t want more scenes we have to cut. We’ll call when the contract’s ready.”
“What’s my job until then?”
“Stay off the lot.”
* * *
I left Zukor’s office, left his hallway and building, and saw Joe across Avenue L leaning against a vent room wall. Two Gower Gulch cowboys rode past him on horses. Joe flicked a cigarette into the street.
“I’m to walk you out the gate.”
The Glamorous Dead Page 19