“I’ll have the bellboy do it and take them to eleven.”
“Wonderful, thank you.” She paused on her way to the door. “Lyle, you have a little something right here.” She touched her index finger to the left corner of her mouth.
He rapidly produced a handkerchief and wiped his face. “Did that get it?”
“Yes,” she lied. “Much better.”
“That would have been embarrassing,” he said, adjusting his sanitary-pad belt.
“Glad we avoided that!” She saluted him as she turned to leave.
*
After checking in, Violet unpacked, showered, and changed into a light blue frock. She then fed Clitty and bathed him in the sink, and he was nearly dry when she heard a car pull up outside. Thankfully a well-built chauffer driving a red Cadillac Fleetwood appeared, rather than monosyllabic Shep.
He opened the rear door for her, and she and Clitty bounded into the backseat. “How are you?” she asked as he nodded politely, closing the door.
He slid into the driver’s seat and started to pull out into the street.
“Does Mr. Walter live far from here?”
“His home is up in the Hollywood Hills.”
“Uh…and where are we now?”
“Sherman. Don’t worry, it’s not far.”
As the car wended its way into the hills, dusk began to settle over the scenery, and Violet took it all in with moderate awe. Everything she had seen of California so far was impressive, and the beauty of the undeveloped hills certainly fell into that category too. She had never lived outside the city, and so much unspoiled countryside made her feel as though she were in a foreign land.
How high would this winding road take her? They seemed to have been heading straight up for quite some time. At a certain point, the dirt road led them to a set of elaborate, heavy iron gates with a large filigree W inscribed into them.
“Does the W stand for ‘What the hell?’” she joked.
“Close.”
“You fellas aren’t big on the chitchat out here, I’m noticing.”
He glanced in the rearview mirror and their eyes met for a moment. “We’re the hired help, miss.”
“What’s your name?”
“Fitzhugh.” He slowly pulled up the long, circular driveway.
“Well, Fitzy, don’t let them treat you like shit. I have yet to see money make someone a better person. In fact, it seems to do the opposite.”
He politely declined to comment as they slowed to a halt in front of a massive Tudor-style mansion. He exited and came around to open her door.
Clitty trotted out and went to sniff the grass, and Violet rose and stepped out. When Fitzhugh refused to make eye contact with her, she kissed him quickly on the cheek.
He smiled ever so slightly. “Don’t let him get the better of you, miss,” he whispered.
“No chance of that, Fitzy.”
She approached the mammoth double doors, scooping her dog into her arms on the way up the steps. Before she could ring the bell, the wood creaked open and an older, balding butler appeared.
“Please enter, miss,” he croaked.
“Thanks.”
“Mr. Walter is entertaining in the parlor. Follow me.”
She did so, scowling at his humorless demeanor. She hoped this wouldn’t be the general mood of the evening, but she supposed they could be as grim as they pleased. That certainly didn’t mean that she had to be that way too.
At the butler’s direction, she entered and he announced her arrival loudly. Three people sat inside the lavishly decorated room, drinks in their hands. One she immediately recognized as an actress—a petite ingénue who was a crowd favorite. The other two were unfamiliar gentlemen.
“Hello,” Violet said, approaching them. She set Clitty down on the rug.
“Hi there, I’m Sylvia King,” the woman said, rising. She wore a shiny cream-colored silk gown and held a long ebony cigarette holder in one hand and a glass of booze in the other. “This is director Henry Childs, and this is the leading man of my next picture, Rex Kelly.”
Violet nodded politely. “Nice to meet you all.”
“Goodness,” Sylvia said. “Is that your little dog?”
“Actually,” Violet replied, “he’s the talent. I’m just tagging along.”
“Oh?” Rex asked curiously.
“He’s a ventriloquist,” she answered. “He’s actually doing all the talking. I’m just moving my mouth.” She walked over to the bar and poured herself a drink.
Rex appeared offended. Sylvia looked confused and kept glancing back and forth between Violet and Clitty. Henry was the only one of her three new consorts who looked amused at all.
She took a sip of scotch and sighed. This might prove to be a very long evening.
“Not so fast,” Henry said, approaching her and pointing at her with his cigar. “I saw you on Broadway in The Green Hat. You were wonderful.”
“Thanks. And I saw your film Never Too Late, which was marvelous.”
“Ooh,” Sylvia said shrilly. “A Broadway actress. Well, la-di-da.”
Violet looked at her and blinked. “And I saw you in The Foreign Legionnaire. You should probably stick to comedies.”
“What?” Sylvia barked, her once-delicate face now twisted into an angry sneer.
“Just my opinion, dear,” Violet said, feigning a smile. “You have such a comic gift.”
Henry tried to stifle his laughter with his martini glass.
Before anyone else could comment, T. Z. Walter swept into the room, wearing a monogrammed maroon smoking jacket. “Ah, I see you’ve all been getting acquainted.”
He looked like Violet had imagined him—stout, spotty, and balding. She also assumed he was one of those men who felt that scads of money would counteract any and all shortcomings and character flaws.
“Good evening, T. Z.,” Sylvia cooed, her anger instantly replaced with consummate bootlicking. “It’s swell to see you.” She kissed him on the cheek.
“Sylvia, you’re looking lovely tonight.” His eyes traveled to Violet. “You must be Violet London.”
“I am,” she replied with a genial smile.
“I hope you’re worth what we’re paying you,” he said, snorting in amusement.
Violet’s inclination toward pleasantries quickly evaporated.
Sylvia rolled her eyes. “If it’s more than a nickel and a stick of Juicy Fruit gum, I’d say you got rooked, T. Z.”
Violet fixed her with a look of utter insincerity. “Everything they say about you is true. What a pity.”
Rex exhaled cigarette smoke through an expression of derision. “Be happy you don’t have any scenes with her where you have to pretend to be in love with her.”
“Thanks for the perspective,” Violet said.
T. Z. was clearly amused. “Are we ready for dinner?”
Violet’s host certainly wasn’t very interested in keeping the peace. “If it’s going to move this evening along, then absolutely.”
As they walked to the dining room, T. Z. noticed the terrier following Violet closely. “What’s your dog’s name?”
“Clitty.”
He looked baffled. “That’s an unusual name. Is it Norwegian?”
“Yes, it is. He’s half elkhound, actually.”
T. Z. cocked an eyebrow. “Really?”
These people were so wonderfully gullible. “On his father’s side. His mother was a hamster.” She paused for effect. “It was a very difficult breeding, as you can imagine. A bit like trying to thread a needle with a sausage.”
All three gentlemen laughed, but Sylvia crinkled up her nose in disgust. “Animals are filthy.”
“Yes,” Violet replied. “But we’ll let you eat with us anyway.”
“T. Z., are you going to let this guttersnipe speak to me like that?” Her hands moved to her hips indignantly as she reached the dining-room table.
“If the conversation stays this funny, I will.”
Sylvi
a looked upset, but clearly not enough to challenge the head of the studio. She meekly sat and spread her linen napkin across her lap.
A server appeared and began pouring wine for everyone.
“So, Violet,” Henry said. “I’ll be directing you in Manhattan Rhapsody come next week.”
That was the best news she had received since she arrived in California. Henry was the least offensive person in the room. “That sounds wonderful. I assume the male lead has been cast.”
“We tried to get Gary Cooper, but he was already committed to another picture.”
Violet breathed a small sigh of relief. Cooper’s acting was rather wooden and stilted, and a production was only as good as the weakest link. She didn’t need to be filming the majority of her scenes with someone whose acting might distract her from her own performance. After all, she had a lot riding on this first film. “So who did you get?”
“Rex here,” T. Z. answered.
“What?” Sylvia looked very unhappy. “Rex is supposed to be filming Love Comes Running with me in two weeks.” She looked across the table at the actor. “Rex? Do you know anything about this?”
He gazed back at her through half-lidded eyes and sipped his glass of wine. He appeared to loathe her, and Violet understood that feeling completely.
“Rex?” she implored again. “Answer me.”
“Sylvia,” T. Z. said, ringing the bell to signify they were ready for the first course. “Rex will make Manhattan Rhapsody with Violet.”
She looked as though she would weep. “So who’s starring in Love Comes Running with me?”
“Frank Thatcher,” T. Z. said calmly. The server appeared and started ladling out creamy bisque.
“Frank Thatcher?” she snapped. “That mook? He looks like a harelip troll!”
Violet was amazed at how this young woman carried on. The New York theater scene would swallow her alive. “Now, now. I’m sure poor Frank is just as unhappy about the whole thing as you are, Sylvia. Have a little sympathy.”
Sylvia’s eyes flashed. “Look here—”
T. Z. calmly held his palm up. “Sylvia, you’ll make this picture with Frank. That’s how it will be. And if I say you’ll do thirty more with Frank, you’ll do that too. Now eat your goddamned soup.”
The air was filled with nothing but the sounds of clinking spoons on china and slurping. Violet grinned mischievously. “This is good, ” she said, pretending to be talking about the soup.
*
As the butler held open the front door, Rex, Henry, and Violet, with terrier in tow, walked outside.
“So, Rex,” Violet said, “I suppose I’ll see you at the studio in the morning for wardrobe fittings.”
Rex blew cigarette smoke out his nostrils and tossed the lit butt on the ground. “Yes.”
Sylvia walked briskly past them all, clearly still irritated. “Well, enjoy that. Good night.” She stepped into her waiting car, and they watched it drive away down the winding road.
“What an absolute festering cunt,” Violet said, unable to keep her feelings to herself any longer.
Henry chuckled. “She’s just as pleasant to direct, let me tell you.”
“Whenever I have to kiss her,” Rex added, turning up the collar of his jacket against the evening breeze, “I imagine that I’m actually strangling her. It makes being that close to her much more bearable.”
“You’re my hero,” Violet said, brushing his shoulder.
For the first time all evening, Rex smiled.
“We should have a good time on this picture,” Henry said, walking toward his car. “I’ll see you at the studio in the morning and give you the newest revision of the script, Violet.”
“See you then.”
Rex walked to where his driver stood with the car door propped open. “Good night.”
She strolled over to Fitzhugh, who dutifully stood near the Fleetwood. “I understand you are to be my driver, Fitzy. You didn’t tell me that.”
“Yes, miss.” He closed the car door once she and Clitty were safely inside. “I work for the studio, and you’re my assignment. So I’ll be chauffeuring you around until they tell me otherwise.” He got into the front seat and started the car.
“Good. I have to be at the studio at nine in the morning.”
“Very well,” he said, pulling out slowly from the circular drive into the street. “What time shall I collect you?”
“How about seven thirty?”
She could see his look of confusion in the rearview mirror. “The studio is closer than that, miss.”
“Call me Vi, Fitzy. I was thinking we could stop somewhere and have breakfast on the way.”
“Breakfast?”
She took a deep breath. “Look, it seems I’m in for one hell of a roller-coaster ride. It would be nice to have someone come along with me.”
The silence was palpable as he maneuvered the hilly dirt road.
“There’s a little place right up the road from where you’re staying that poaches a mean egg,” he said softly.
“Sounds wonderful. Now let’s talk about where to find some booze.”
Chapter Four
Violet’s first day at the studio was tiring, but interesting. Henry, true to his word, delivered a finalized script to her just after she arrived. And praise the gods that he had, because she had so much downtime in between the wardrobe fittings and the hair and makeup tests that she was well on her way to memorizing most of it.
Fitzy had dropped her back off at the Garden of Allah in the late afternoon, and while he was apparently warming to her, he was still far too concerned with propriety and decorum—two words that Violet had little use for.
Oh, her family had tried to get her to curb her natural enthusiasm for both eccentricity and the consecrated wonder that is the female breast, to settle into a life of mundane heterosexual tedium. They had put a great deal of effort into that endeavor, but had ultimately failed. Both of her parents had made it abundantly clear that while she continued to indulge in what they deemed her unholy excesses, they would neither accept nor acknowledge her.
They had magnanimously appended their condemnation by assuring her that once she repented and came crawling back, ready to renounce her religion—Our Lady of the Miraculous Jugs—and her lifestyle, and accept instead their more upstanding credo filled with temperance, obedience, and feigned orgasms, they would again welcome her into their home. What a horrible fucking place to live. She shuddered at the thought of returning.
Bored by the script and craving something engaging, she walked Clitty around the grounds. Ginger was playing Ping-Pong by the pool with another young woman.
Violet waited until the point was over. “Hi, Ginger. Are you winning?”
“Hey, Violet. I am now. This is Mabel, from bungalow fifteen. Mabel, this is Violet London.”
“Nice to meet you,” Mabel said with minor interest.
“You playing the winner?” Ginger asked.
“Hmm, I suppose it’s not bad exercise.” Violet spoke her thought aloud.
“I’m working up a sweat,” Mabel complained.
“Then it’s definitely out,” Violet said. “The last time I did something that was good for me, I regretted it for weeks. I’ll just watch from an unhealthy distance, thanks.”
“Suit yourself.” Ginger served the ball.
Violet ambled over to the very large and odd-shaped swimming pool and tried to make out what it resembled. She tilted her head to the side as she took it in.
“It’s supposed to be the Black Sea,” someone behind her said. She turned to see a man lying in a deck chair by the pool regarding her with what seemed to be amusement. He looked to be of an imposing stature, but reclined as he was, he was anything but. His terry-cloth robe was pulled closed tight, all the way to his neck.
“And how do you know that?” She took a few steps closer to him.
“The woman who had it built told me.” He sipped something from a martini glass. “Do you know who
that is?”
She shook her head.
“Alla Nazimova.”
Violet studied his elaborately waxed mustache as it curved upward in a friendly way. She was both impressed and surprised to hear the name of such a renowned thespian. “Really?”
“It’s true. This used to be her home. When she went broke in the Crash, she sold it and they turned it into a hotel.”
Violet mulled on that notion for a moment, saying nothing.
“You can walk all the way over here,” he said, apparently mistaking her silence for apprehension. “I’m quite harmless.”
“That’s what they all say.” Violet raised an eyebrow. “I’m beginning to question whether anyone in Hollywood is harmless.” She closed the distance between them.
“Well, luckily you have a guard dog with you.”
Violet glanced at Clitty, who had chosen that very moment to sit rather indelicately on her left foot and stare up at her adoringly. “He’s not my guard dog. He’s my agent. He told me to pack up my things and head west, and here I am.”
“You always take his advice?”
“Absolutely. He hasn’t steered me wrong yet, unless you count the time he talked me into perpetrating the St. Valentine’s Day massacre. That may have been a little”—she stopped and whispered the rest, as though to be discreet—“well, heavy-handed, if you ask me.”
He smiled. “You know, I do remember thinking that those killings were so dark and grisly that only a woman could have committed them.”
“Someone sounds married.” She sat on the deck chair beside him.
He sighed. “Guilty as charged. Peter Easton.” He offered his hand.
“Violet London, and this is Clitty.”
“So not only is he a very sadistic dog, but he’s a naughty one as well.” He rubbed the dog between the ears.
“I actually may have him beat in the naughty arena, but we try not to be too competitive. So you live here with your wife?”
His expression immediately darkened. “Good Lord, no. Hollywood is a cesspool of sin and depravity. My wife and children are back in Boston, amongst good God-fearing folk.”
“But the sin and depravity—”
“Are just fine for me, yes. Martini?” He pointed to a cocktail shaker beside him and a couple of empty glasses on a tray.
Seduction of Moxie Page 7