Girl About Town

by Adam Shankman

  “She must have thought of a doozy to faint like that.”

  “Her face looked like chalk!”

  “Poor thing!”

  Then another voice, harsh and dismissive. “The little twit just passed out from stage fright. She’ll never get anywhere at that rate.”

  Lulu saw a pinprick of light, which slowly expanded until her vision was clear and she saw the last speaker: the dark-haired girl with bee-stung lips and cynical green eyes. She gave Lulu a superior smile.

  Vasily, kneeling over Lulu, produced a little bottle of eau de toilette and dabbed it at her temples. When the room stopped spinning, he helped her to her feet. She expected a rebuke, but he looked at her with something like awe on his face. He stood behind her with his hands lightly on her shoulders, like a velvet cushion displaying a fine jewel.

  “Learn from her, my students. Lulu did not just feel afraid. She became fear itself  !”

  The dark-haired girl blew a raspberry and powdered her nose ostentatiously with her compact.

  Later, Vasily paired the students up to practice improvising realistic dialogue. Each pair was provided with a short script. Their task was to come up with what the characters would talk about before that, the period off camera.

  Lulu was paired with the dark-haired girl. Up close she noticed she had a tiny heart-shaped beauty spot at the curl of her mouth, in a most disconcerting position that made Lulu keep thinking it was a crumb and longing to brush it off. She forced herself not to stare at it.

  The girl introduced herself as Ruby Godfrey. After her earlier heckling, Lulu expected her to be impossible to work with, but to her surprise, Ruby buckled down and proved to be a good actress. Far better than Lulu, who stammered and couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “Lulu, we’re supposed to be friends,” Ruby said.

  Lulu raised her pale eyebrows.

  “In the script, I mean.” Ruby laughed. “All actresses hate each other, so don’t take it personally,” she added with disarming frankness. “I just don’t have time for amateurs, or anyone who might get in my way.” She looked down her pert nose at Lulu. “Not that I think I have anything to worry about with you. What are you, fresh from a Kansas cornfield? Some two-bit businessman’s tramp? Better make your way before he finds a younger, prettier model to bankroll. Town’s full of ’em.”

  Lulu couldn’t tell if Ruby was being insulting or was honestly trying to give her advice. Before she could figure it out, Ruby was back in character, pretending to be Lulu’s childhood friend whom she just ran into in a café. After a while Lulu became more comfortable with the charade. For half an hour they chatted like old friends, and for that small space Lulu felt almost as if Ruby really were her chum.

  It was just the power of acting. Vasily rang a little bell, and Ruby broke character midlaugh, checked her nose for shine again, and flounced off without a word.

  Near dusk, when all the students had left, Lulu was still waiting for Veronica to pick her up. “You can wait in the sunroom,” Vasily had told her. “I need to freshen up.”

  Lulu had been twiddling her thumbs when the front door opened. Ruby slipped in, a secret, soft smile on her face. She didn’t notice Lulu in her darkened perch.

  “Vasily,” Ruby called in a sultry voice. “I have a question for you.” Her voice grew fainter as she walked toward his bedroom. Lulu stood and leaned into the hallway to hear better. “A very special question only you can answer. Oh, Vasily! Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

  “Who’s there?” Lulu heard the acting coach ask from his room.

  “You’ve trained me well, Vasily. I can be whomever you want me to be.”

  Lulu gasped and covered her mouth when she saw Ruby unbutton her blouse and let it slide to the stone tile floor. She entered his bedroom.

  “Ruby!” came a startled shriek that lacked any trace of a Russian accent. “What are you doing? Put that back on at once.”

  “Oh, Vasily.” Ruby sighed. “How I long to kiss you.”

  Lulu heard a muffled mmmph and another high-pitched cry of protest. “Ugh! Don’t do that! Go away!”

  “But I only want to show you how much you mean to me,” Ruby said. Lulu could hear the confusion and hurt in her voice.

  Vasily had recovered enough to resume his Russian accent. “My dear girl,” he said, “I assure you I have no desire to kiss you. The fault lies not within you, but . . . Well, yes, it does lie within you, in that you’re a . . . That is to say, you’re not a . . .” He sighed deeply. “You are a very charming girl, Ruby. It’s just that I prefer people who aren’t girls.”

  “Oh! Why you . . . you . . . !” She scrambled out of his bedroom, scooping up her blouse and clutching it to her chest as she ran.

  Lulu didn’t manage to duck out of the way in time, and Ruby spied her. She stopped dead. “Lulu, what are you doing here? We . . . we were just rehearsing a part. A farce, for a new . . .” She couldn’t keep up her bluff. Lulu could see tear tracks on her cheeks, silver in the dim light. “If you ever, ever dare breathe a word of this to anyone, I’ll ruin you! I swear I will!”

  She stormed off into the night.

  TEN

  Frederick stopped paying attention to state lines and city names. He was in a different place every night and thought of the vast interior of the continent simply as “the middle.” His life had been in New York and eastward.

  West was escape for Frederick. If anyone came looking for him, they might think to scour the fashionable hotels of Paris or even Prague. It would not occur to them to seek him in a place like Nebraska.

  It was in Nebraska that they found the chicken.

  It was the hen’s opinion that she had found them. Frederick and Ben had been camping a little ways off the road in a desolate stretch of nowhere, surrounded by dry empty fields of corn stubble. There wasn’t a farmstead in sight—and they could see for miles across the flat, featureless plain.

  Frederick was awakened at dawn by a low, homely sound. “Brrock-bock-bock-bock.” He opened his eyes to find himself confronted by one beady yellow eye and an intimidatingly sharp beak inches from his face.

  Frederick sat up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes, leaving grimy streaks. He hadn’t had a proper bath since running away from home. But then, he hadn’t seen a mirror either, so he didn’t mind so much.

  “Hello,” he said to the hen, and immediately felt foolish. The hen cocked her head at him, then pecked at his shoe. “Sorry, I don’t have any food for you.”

  “You don’t feed it, youngster,” said Ben from his bedroll. “It feeds you. Been a long time since I had a chicken all to myself. Well, half a chicken, anyway. Tarnation!”

  “What?” Frederick asked.

  “No wood.” Ben gestured to the barren landscape. “So no fire.” The corn stubble would burn, but it couldn’t make a fire lasting or hot enough to roast meat. “We have to wait until we find a tree, which might not be till we hit Colorado.”

  “Where do you think she came from?” They hadn’t seen a farm for miles.

  Ben shrugged. “She’s taken a shine to you.”

  “Maybe she misses people.” The chicken seemed profoundly content to be scratching the dust near his feet. Frederick reached down to touch her and she scooted away just out of reach but didn’t seem scared.

  “They’re sociable birds. If her people moved, she’s looking for a new home. She’s plump for a stray. Make for good eating, once we can cook her. Best not to kill her now, though. Might spoil before we can get fuel for a fire. Grab hold of her, youngster. We can carry our dinner with us.”

  She was hard to catch, but once she was tucked securely under Frederick’s armpit, she settled down, making clucks and coos against his chest.

  They walked along the dusty road through endless abandoned fields until dusk. They didn’t see a single fellow traveler. The only sign of life was a hawk wheeling through the cloudless blue. The hen looked up at the hawk with mild interest, then closed her eyes when Freder
ick stroked her neck.

  “Ben,” he began, his brow creased. “Do we have to . . . ?”

  “I knew it!” Ben shouted, whipping off his hat and slapping it against his leg. “I placed a bet with myself for a million bucks that you’d make friends with that fowl and not have the stomach to kill it. Is that what you were fixin’ to say?”

  Frederick admitted sheepishly that it was.

  Ben sighed. “Well, my stomach doesn’t have the stomach to miss another meal. Aw, don’t look at me like that!”

  “Like what?” Frederick asked innocently, laying on the puppy-dog eyes even thicker.

  Ben considered for a while. “Tell you what,” he said at last. “If you can hold on to that chicken until we find a farm, we can trade it for a meal. That way your little friend will live long enough to lay a few more eggs. Will that do you?”

  Frederick just grinned and patted his hen.

  Toward evening they found an abandoned barn next to the charred remains of a farmhouse. Ben gave Frederick a piece of twine to secure the hen and wandered off into the fields to forage for something to tide them over.

  Frederick settled down, laying his head on his balled-up jacket with his feet propped up on a crate. His muscles, always hard from rowing, lacrosse, and fencing, had grown longer and leaner from hours of nonstop trudging and the backbreaking day labor he and Ben sometimes picked up. He was tired, but he also felt as if his body had become some new kind of machine capable of perpetual motion. In time, he knew, too much work and not enough food would break him down. But for now he felt strangely invincible.

  A little while later, Frederick heard footsteps in the darkness. Good. He’d started to get a little worried about his traveling companion.

  Frederick smiled at the barn door in relief. But it wasn’t Ben who crossed the threshold; it was a big man in overalls, followed by another, smaller and shifty. The second man had a piece of board in his hand. Three rusty nails protruded from near the end.

  “Hello, fellows,” Frederick said affably, even though he had a sick feeling in his gut that he knew exactly what was coming.

  He could tell it from their eyes, from the belligerent set of their bull shoulders.

  “You’re in my house,” the biggest, meanest one said.

  Frederick scrambled to his feet. “Forgive me,” he said in his drawing-room voice. “I thought this place was derelict. I didn’t realize it belonged to you.”

  “Wherever I am, it belongs to me,” the man said. “Give me your money.”

  Frederick smiled. “Right to the point, aren’t we?” Mugsy had taught him to box, and he was pretty sure that in a fair fight he could take on one person, however big and mean. But there were two of them, and there would be nothing fair about it. Absurdly, he worried for his chicken, as if she were a damsel in distress he had to protect.

  The man held out his hand. “Now.”

  “Sorry, old chap, I seem to be out of the ready. I’d be happy to offer you an IOU for the day when I’m in a more felicitously pecunious position, but I’m afraid today . . .”

  The man slugged him in the jaw.

  Frederick staggered but didn’t fall. He’d managed to flinch in time to deflect the worst of it. The man was strong, but Frederick could tell he hadn’t trained as a fighter.

  “Do you really think I’d be squatting in a barn in the middle of nowhere if I had anything to rob? Use your head, friend.”

  The man seemed more inclined to use his fist again. Frederick dodged this blow but didn’t strike back.

  “Take off your clothes,” the little man with the spiked board said.

  “What!”

  “They’ll fetch a pretty penny in pawn.”

  “My good man, if you’ll just wait until my friend returns, I’m sure we can find a way to share this barn harmoniously.”

  “Your friend? That’s a good one. Bet he’s a six-foot bruiser and packing a roscoe to boot. You ain’t got no friend here. Now hustle.” He slapped the board against his palm, as his big partner moved closer.

  Frederick’s heart pounded wildly. I can’t let them get away with this. It isn’t fair. It isn’t right. But he was afraid, and almost without his volition, his fingers started unbuttoning his vest.

  Feeling like a helpless little boy, he stripped it off and started unbuttoning his shirt. Then the big man spied the chicken.

  “Lookee here,” he said. “Dinner.” In an instant he’d snatched up the sleeping chicken and twisted her head clean off.

  “No!” Frederick shouted, and launched himself at the big man. Rage filled him, and that, along with the surprising suddenness of his attack, gave him a momentary advantage. He bowled his opponent over and scrambled on top of him, pummeling his face. He forgot all of Mugsy’s teaching. These were caveman blows, wildly swung with all the force of his fury and disillusionment in the human species. Blood spurted from the big man’s nose, and Frederick had the satisfaction of seeing a second of panic on his face.

  Then the smaller man hit Frederick across the head with his board, and the world pulsed with red and black pain. He managed to wrench the board out of his attacker’s hand and fling it across the room, dimly aware that, whether through intent or carelessness, he’d been hit with the side without nails. Clawing his way out of the darkness of unconsciousness, he tried to block the punches and kicks that rained down on him. After a while he wished he’d just let himself pass out. When the time came that he couldn’t even feel the blows anymore, he knew he was in real trouble. He could hear the wet-sounding thwacks, like something in a meat plant, but he was drifting away from it all. . . .

  There was another thwack, louder and different, and the rhythm of the blows changed, then stopped. Through a red haze Frederick saw Ben with the board in his hand. The smaller man was on the ground, groaning. The next second, in horror-movie slow motion, Frederick watched Ben haul back and hit the big man with all his strength. Nails first. The board embedded in the big man’s head, and he fell to his knees.

  Ben pulled Frederick to his feet and snatched up the dead chicken. Then they staggered out into the night.

  ELEVEN

  Veronica had called Lulu’s new place an apartment, but she might also have called it a dormitory. Though the ten-story building (with an elevator!) on a pleasantly bustling street was officially an apartment building that was open for public rental, the flats were all occupied by people associated with Lux Studios. Most of them were actors and actresses, young and just getting started in careers that might explode or fizzle at any moment. Like a very glamorous raven-haired girl named Dorothy Lamour, who had been crowned Miss New Orleans just the year before. There were a few older stage actors there too, trying out this relatively new way of expressing their art. The remainder of the apartments were occupied by midlevel Lux Studios staff, including, to Lulu’s delight, Veronica Imrie herself.

  Veronica handed Lulu the key and let her open her own door for the first time. “You’re right above me. So you can just stomp if you need anything. And if your parties get too loud, I’ll whack the ceiling with a broomstick. Of course, mine is just a studio. Still, it’s handy on groggy mornings having the coffee percolator within three feet of my bed. You, on the other hand, have a nice little suite. Furnished, too. Everything used to belong to Jean Arthur.”

  “Jean Arthur!” Lulu whipped around, her heart racing. “She was so wonderful in The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu! Did she really live here? Where did she go?”

  “It seems she was all wet here. Story is her little romance with David O. Selznick, the studio chief at Paramount, didn’t go over so well with Mrs. Selznick, and her career took a nose dive. She packed up and is headed for Broadway. In any event, the lovely Miss Arthur’s departure has opened up a charming place for you to squat for the time being!”

  Lulu gulped and followed Veronica inside.

  Lulu stopped in the entranceway and simply stared. It was the most beautiful place she had ever seen. The hotel had been nicely furnished, bu
t this was different. Maybe because these thing were to be hers, at least for the time being. She had never seen furniture like this before. At home, good furniture meant heavy wood that might look ugly but could withstand the ravages of rot and was too unwieldy to easily pawn.

  This room, though, had not only wood carved into delicate curves, but materials she’d never thought of for furniture—shining chrome and verdigris copper, burnished leather, icy glass, the pelts of unknown animals, those disparate elements all melding into an organic whole that spoke of luxury and optimism. The room positively shone, the surfaces reflecting light from the big windows and the many electric fixtures.

  “Art deco is already getting a little old-fashioned for my taste,” Veronica said, looking around critically. “Still, it’s not a bad place to start, and in a year, if all goes well, you can move to your own house away from the eagle eyes of your Lux minders. Mrs. Fox, the concierge you met downstairs, is one of the best-paid spies in the country. Louella Parsons alone compensated the old bird enough to buy a country house.”

  “Who is Louella Parsons?” Lulu asked.

  “Who is . . . ? Why, you green little innocent! She’s the head-honcho gossip columnist. If she likes you, she’ll give you good press and do anything to hide your scandals. Louella Parsons is the one you have to impress if you want to make it big here.”

  “I thought you said Vasily was the one I had to impress.”

  “Kid, you have to impress everyone out here. It’s a full-time job. Get a good night’s sleep, because tomorrow we’re meeting Mrs. Parsons herself. The three of us are going to decide exactly who you are.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your persona, your back story. I’m thinking something posh, like a Swiss finishing school, but we’ll see what Louella thinks. It’s technically my job, but since realistically she’s the one who decides what goes in ink about you, we might as well make her happy from the get-go.”