Girl About Town

by Adam Shankman

  “But then won’t she know it’s all made-up?” Lulu asked.

  Veronica only laughed.

  Alone that night, Lulu allowed herself to breathe her first small sigh of relief. It was real. Veronica had showed her her bank deposit book with a receipt for her first week’s pay of one hundred dollars. She was making her own way, and that way was far, far from Sal Benedetto. People kept saying that she had to have someone big behind her, giving her a push. But that’s all it was, right? Sal had gotten her safely out of the way, paid her off, and she never, ever had to see him again.

  Someday, she told herself, I won’t even have to think of him again.

  But tonight wasn’t that night, and she woke to nightmares over and over, tossing and turning until dawn.

  “What a lovely little thing!” Louella Parsons exclaimed when they met the next morning, clapping her hands like an excited child given a sugary treat.

  Lulu wasn’t sure she liked being called a “thing.” She looked shyly at the thick-boned woman with even but unexceptional features and a small but extravagant hat perched on her dark hair.

  “Call me Lolly, dear,” Mrs. Parsons said in her syrupy little-girl voice. “Everybody does.”

  Veronica gave Lulu a look behind Lolly’s back that clearly said people called her much, much worse when she wasn’t listening. On the drive over to Lolly’s house, Veronica had told Lulu how dangerous the gossip columnist could be. She might have made dozens of careers, but she’d ruined hundreds.

  “Like whose?” Lulu had wanted to know.

  “I could tell you their names, but you wouldn’t know them—thanks to Louella. She’s going to ask you about your past. Just make sure that if there’s anything you don’t want everyone to know, don’t breathe a word to her. She might keep your secret for years, but if you ever cross her, your blackest deeds will come out.” Veronica had laughed. Lulu could tell she didn’t think the new young actress was capable of any deeds darker than pale gray.

  Now Lulu held out her hand to the woman who might be an ally or adversary. Lolly didn’t let her hand go, but tucked it under her arm and drew Lulu to a sofa. “Lulu and Lolly,” the older woman said. “We could be sisters.”

  Lulu smiled, but Veronica made a choking sound she quickly covered with a loud cough.

  “Now,” Lolly continued, “tell me all about yourself.”

  A lie of omission wasn’t really a lie, Lulu decided. She stuck scrupulously to the truth when talking about her family, telling about her shell-shocked father and hardworking mother, her no-good older brothers, and her innocent younger siblings.

  “I knew I had to do something to help them,” she said, beginning to veer from the righteous path. “So I did extra jobs on the side, scrimped and saved, and finally had enough money for a ticket to California.” She opened her eyes wide and let her lips part softly, just as she had on the witness stand not long before. The judge had believed her. Maybe Lolly would too. “Since I got here, everyone has been so kind and helpful. Hollywood really is a magical place.”

  “Isn’t it?” Lolly gushed. “And how clever of you to make such a fast start! Screen test to your first role in three days? I think we have a star on our hands, don’t you, Veronica?” Lolly leaned in to Lulu and lowered her voice to a gooey squeak. “But tell me, just between us girls, didn’t you have an eensy-weensy bit of help on the way? A girl as pretty as you has to have a boyfriend. Didn’t he help you out, hmm? What’s his name?”

  “I . . . I don’t . . . ,” Lulu stammered.

  “Off the record, of course.” She mimed locking her lips with a key and tossing it away. Lulu noticed that even in pantomime, Lolly paid attention to where the imaginary key landed.

  “I don’t have a boyfriend,” Lulu insisted. All I have to do is not tell her, she thought. Why do I feel like a mouse under a cat’s paw?

  Lolly dropped the girls-together act and narrowed her eyes. “Of course, only adolescents have boyfriends. Women like us have lovers.”

  “He wasn’t my lover!” Lulu blurted out, then slapped her hand over her mouth . . . while Veronica slapped her forehead in exasperation.

  Lolly sat back against the cushions, smug and satisfied. Strangely, she didn’t seem inclined to pursue it any further. “Well, my dear, there’s plenty of time for us to chitchat about that later. Now, on to business. I know who you are. Who do you want to be?”

  There followed a conversation about Lulu’s future in which Lulu herself played only a very minor role.

  Veronica offered up her idea of a Swiss boarding school.

  “But she can’t speak French, and all Swiss-boarding-school girls speak French.”

  “Not Swiss?” Veronica asked.

  “No, definitely French. MGM used that one for a little Cajun morsel last year, though I don’t think girls from Swiss finishing schools eat crawdads with their fingers.”

  “We can use her real story,” Veronica suggested.

  Lolly cocked her head, pondering. “No. That will give young people the idea they can run away to Hollywood and save their families. It’s bad enough as it is! We don’t want to give people hope—we want to sell them a dream!”

  In the end, the story they concocted was pure fantasy. Inspired by the Irish name and a trashy novel she’d recently read, Lolly decided to take Lulu’s history back several thousand years.

  “She can be a descendant of Étaín, or Isolde, or one of those old Irish beauties! Her ancestors were kings, and her great-grandfather was a chieftain, cruelly driven from his lands. Here in America her family made their fortune in . . . Oh, I don’t know. That doesn’t matter. Potatoes, I suppose.”

  “More likely they’re bootleggers,” Veronica interjected.

  “We can hint at that. Very glamorous, very mysterious. Yes, so Lulu is a tempestuous Irish vixen. You know the type. Flashing eyes. Rides unbroken horses.”

  “I can’t ride,” Lulu said.

  “Never mind that. We can tie you on an old gelding for a photo shoot. You’ll be tied to plenty of old geldings in this business. Where was I? Oh yes. So your father sends you to an exclusive all-girls boarding school in Oregon, to remove you from all the temptation and fortune hunters of New York City. But you, free spirit that you are, couldn’t take the uninterrupted company of your own sex and all those stodgy rules, so you stole a horse from the stables and rode all the way down to Los Angeles . . . where the head of Lux Studios spotted you, wild and lathered, on Hollywood Boulevard, and promptly offered you a contract.”

  “But will anyone believe that?” Lulu asked, incredulous.

  “My dear,” drawled Lolly, “my twenty million readers believe every damn thing I tell them.”

  When they left, Lulu—now expert horsewoman and Irish princess—asked Veronica if she’d done all right.

  “You did fine,” Veronica reassured her. “Don’t worry about that slip about your boyfriend, whoever he might be. Everyone has a past.”

  “Will she try to find out who he is?” Lulu asked. “I mean, I don’t have a boyfriend, but . . .”

  Veronica laughed and held up her hand, stopping her. “You don’t have to tell me, kid. None of my business. But no, I don’t think you’ll have to worry. If you really get on her bad side, she might try to dig him up, but barring that, she’ll assume he’s just a boring banker or a fellow who owns a chain of drugstores. There’s no story in that. As long as you’re not shtupping Herbert Hoover or Al Capone, you should be safe from Lolly’s investigations.”

  TWELVE

  Adrenaline numbed Frederick’s body and pushed him through the first mile of their escape.

  “Is he dead?” Frederick asked Ben over and over again as they ran. “Did you kill him?”

  “Not important,” Ben answered him. “Past a certain point, it only matters that you’re alive. Forget them. They were asking for it. They just didn’t realize exactly what they were asking for.”

  “If he’s alive and hurt, he needs help.”

  “You�
�re not talking sense, boy. They was aiming to kill you. You don’t have any obligation to think of their health and happiness.”

  Maybe Frederick had been hit in the head too hard, but he was filled with confusing and conflicting ideas of duty and obligation. Badness had to be stopped. Wrongs had to be put right. But people had to be helped too. He’d wanted to kill that man for killing his chicken . . . which he knew in his heart was foolish. The chicken was born to be eaten.

  He stumbled, and Ben dragged him up again. “A little farther, youngster. Then you can rest.”

  Stop bad people . . . save good people . . . change bad to good . . .

  It was a juvenile morality of black hats and white hats, of princes and scoundrels. Yet there was something at the heart of it, a simplicity that made it true.

  At last Ben let him flop down in the tall grass. “I don’t think anyone will come looking for us, but if they do, reckon they won’t look here.”

  As soon as Frederick lay down, all the pain that had been kept at bay during his flight flooded back into him. His mind felt thick and cloudy, yet floating somehow.

  “I have to fight,” he muttered, rocking his head back and forth as sparks seemed to dance behind his eyelids.

  “Easy there,” Ben said, soothing him. “No one left to fight.”

  Deliriously, Frederick moaned, “Fight them all. Fight them, fight for them.”

  “Your head’s still ringing, youngster. Close your eyes for a spell. Everything will be clearer come morning.”

  It was. When Frederick’s eyes opened to the golden sun in a cloudless sky, he understood his future completely. Somehow—and he wasn’t sure how—he would be a crusader. It wasn’t nearly enough to walk away from evil, as he had walked away from his father and his money. And it was wrong to let bad people get their way, even if it prevented pain, as he had tried to do when the two drifters in the barn demanded his money and his clothes. He realized it in that white-hot rage he’d felt at his hen’s murder.

  From now on, he decided grandiosely, I will be a hero. I will always, always do the right thing, no matter how hard it is. I will help anyone who needs help, no matter what the consequences.

  As soon as Frederick could manage it, they wandered slowly across the desolate dusty fields, resting often, until they found another road. Ben’s cough was worse, and he hobbled almost as painfully as Frederick. They were lucky enough to flag down a delivery truck, and for the price of one (almost) freshly killed chicken, the driver carried them to the next big town.

  “I’m in bad shape, Ben,” Frederick said when they climbed down from the truck. “I think my ribs are broken. It’s getting a little hard to breathe.”

  “Nothing you can do for broken ribs ’cept rest them,” Ben advised. “So let’s find you a nice little alleyway to heal up in. I’ll go look for a breadline or a job of work.”

  “But you can hardly walk yourself,” Frederick protested.

  Ben gave a wet cough but waved away his friend’s objections. “You rest here. I’ll bring you supper soon as I find any.”

  “Bless you, Ben,” Frederick said weakly.

  “Hogwash,” Ben said, and hobbled off into the bustling city.

  Frederick shifted his sore body onto a makeshift bed of newspaper in the alleyway and watched the world go by the thin wedge of his vista. It was a smartly paced town and looked like it had suffered a little less than other places. He thought he smelled the telltale pulp and sulfur scent of a paper mill. A paper factory would be enough to keep a town relatively prosperous.

  Still, it was a far stretch from New York. The people he saw were all dressed in the louder, more boisterous cuts and colors of the twenties instead of the more sober hues of Depression austerity. Their clothes, slightly threadbare, still announced the promise of yesteryear—but only because they couldn’t afford the clothes of the new dire reality.

  Though he knew it would be a while before he was capable of hard labor, Frederick had high hopes for this town. Where were they? Colorado, maybe? From the glimpses he could catch of its citizens, it seemed like the kind of place that appreciated hard work and determination. As soon as I don’t look like one of Mugsy’s opponents, he thought, I’ll look around for a real job.

  He was still asleep when the police found him.

  “What’s your name, boy?” There were two of them, one hulking, one smaller with sergeant stripes, reminding him uncomfortably of the men he’d met last night. Were they here because of that? Did the man die?

  He waited too long to answer, and the little one kicked his foot.

  “Jack,” he finally said. He should have worked out a fake name before, but Ben hadn’t pressed him, and no one else ever asked. Sonny, kid, youngster, mister . . . On the road it was like he was part of a club that welcomed you no matter who you were and didn’t ask too many questions.

  “You got anything to prove that, Jack?”

  Of course he’d left all his identification behind: his passport, driver’s license, club memberships. He thought of the cavalier way he used to whip out one of his cards, black writing with a touch of gold on heavy ivory stock. “Here you go, old man. Have your secretary call my butler and arrange a lunch.”

  “You answer when I’m talking to you,” the sergeant said, low and dangerous. The bigger one didn’t say anything, but the breadth of his shoulders spoke volumes.

  “No,” Frederick answered as politely as possible. “I don’t have any identification.”

  “You a troublemaker? How’d you get so beat up? Someone catch you stealing a chicken, huh?” He spat on the ground next to Frederick’s feet.

  The mention of chicken riled him. He looked the sergeant defiantly in the eye. “I’ve never caused any trouble for anyone, sir. I’m simply looking for a job.”

  “Listen, boy, you get out of town, and you get out quick. This here’s no place for a dirty, thieving bum like you. There ain’t no work, and there ain’t no breadline. There’s only this.” He pulled his truncheon from his belt and smacked it against his hand. At least this one doesn’t have nails in it, Frederick thought.

  “I’m just waiting for my friend,” he told the sergeant. He was relieved. At least they weren’t saying anything about last night’s incident. “He’s sick, and he needs my help. As soon as he comes back, I’ll leave. I promise.”

  “You promise? You hear that, Moe? He promises. That’s a laugh. Get walking.” He shoved Frederick out of the alleyway. “Second thought, get running.” He aimed a blow at Frederick’s backside.

  “I can’t leave without my friend. He won’t know where to find me.”

  “If you don’t hightail it pronto, he’ll find you in the hoosegow.”

  Ben was getting weaker by the day. Once Frederick’s injuries healed, he planned to support Ben as best he could. “Just let me find my friend and I’ll . . .”

  The sergeant shoved Frederick against the wall and pressed his billy club to the side of his throat. The big one gave him a look that told him he better not dare resist. “That’s it, boy,” he growled, spittle flying onto Frederick’s face. “A few days in chokey for you. And don’t think it’s all hot showers and free meals. We got us a chain gang going.”

  Suddenly the pressure on his throat was relieved. He saw Ben tugging at the officer’s arm. “Can’t you see the youngster’s hurt? Let him go!”

  The big policeman didn’t hesitate. He picked Ben up off the ground by the lapels of his coat and slammed him back down sideways on the pavement.

  “Ben!” Frederick screamed, and lunged for his friend. The officer rammed his truncheon into Frederick’s stomach, and he doubled over.

  “You want the old one too, Sarge?” Moe asked. Ben wasn’t moving. He looked like a heap of rags someone had tossed out.

  “Nah. He’ll keel over on a chain gang. No work left in him. Throw him in the wagon and haul him to the city limits. He can be the next town’s problem.”

  “I’ll find you, Ben!” Frederick called as the office
rs locked cold metal handcuffs around his wrists and dragged him away. “I promise!”

  Tell them, a voice screamed in Frederick’s head. Tell them!

  He longed to tell his jailers who he was. From the first humiliation, when he had been ordered to strip, was nearly drowned by a fireman’s hose of freezing water, dusted with lice powder that burned his lungs, and given a set of oversized black-and-white-striped prison clothes that smelled of mothballs, rats, and other people’s sweat, to this last hour of his confinement, he had to fight himself not to win his freedom by confessing.

  I’m a millionaire, he could tell them. It would be a lie, really, but only because he knew that to say “billionaire” would invite too much incredulity. I’ll give you a thousand dollars if you let me make a phone call. Then Mugsy would fly in and set him free and he could get Ben to a proper hospital.

  Frederick thought of his friend constantly. Where was Ben? Was he in trouble? His bad lungs had nearly done him in, and that attack from the policeman . . . What if Ben was unconscious? What if he was dead?

  The months on the road had been hard, but his time in jail and working on the chain gang was something out of a nightmare. The random, malicious taunts and blows of the jail screws, the terrible nights lying awake on his cot, barely breathing, hearing but not seeing the things that were happening to other prisoners, hoping they wouldn’t happen to him.

  Now that he was free, the only thing on his mind was to find Ben. On the road he’d seemed hale and unstoppable, despite his hacking cough. But he’d looked so broken after the officer’s assault. Could he have even made it to the next town? Frederick couldn’t imagine traveling without Ben by his side. They were a team.

  He trudged on, searching for his friend, the loose soles of his shoes slapping out a slow rhythm on the pavement. He found Ben at last in the next town. It took only a few inquiries among the street people to find out that a derelict old man spitting up blood had made camp in the lee of a trash bin behind the five-and-dime.