Girl About Town

by Adam Shankman

  Freddie had a hundred reasons, some of which had to do with him, some with her. He settled on the one that made the deepest impression.

  “That fellow from the breadline, Rocco. He’s a bully and a swindler and probably worse. But you felt sorry for him when he was down. You saw that he could be better. So you gave him that bracelet. That’s enough for him to get a room for a month, a good set of clothes, hot food. You gave him a chance.”

  He saw her lip tremble, but she bit it and then said, “So what? That was nothing to me—like giving a nickel to a beggar.” She tossed her head like he’d seen her do on set when she was playing Jezebel. But now her hair was slicked back and wet, and a lock only snaked free and hung, damp and infinitely charming, against her cheek. With a supreme effort, Freddie didn’t tuck it behind her ear.

  “What do I care if that sap gets a few of my things?” Lulu added. “I’ve got a ton of jewels—a jewelry box full of ’em.”

  “No, you haven’t,” Freddie said softly.

  “What would you know?”

  “I went through your jewelry box.”

  “Why, you—”

  “A little gold cross, a couple of combs set with aquamarine, and an old-fashioned cameo brooch I bet came from your mother.”

  Very quietly, Lulu whispered, “My mother never had any jewelry. Not one piece. But the woman in the cameo looks like her, a little. I found it in an antiques shop.”

  “You don’t have all that much money, Lulu. Giving Rocco that bracelet wasn’t nothing. They probably pay you well at Lux, but this house costs a pretty penny, and I bet you send plenty back home. Almost everything in this ‘roost’ of yours is rented and could be gone tomorrow. And you don’t accept gifts from men. There’s a dozen who would load you up with diamonds if you let them, but you don’t take them up on their offers.”

  “How dare you! You don’t know me, Freddie,” she said, sad and bitter, with an undercurrent of hope. “I don’t have a heart of gold.”

  “Never said you did. Gold’s soft, Lulu. You strike me as stronger . . . and more precious.” Freddie finally gave in to impulse and curled the stray tendril behind Lulu’s ear. “I think maybe you have a heart of platinum.”

  Lulu was feeling tender and a little breathless when Veronica and David showed up a moment later with a smorgasbord of smoked salmon, thinly sliced dark brown bread, and capers.

  “I thought maybe you’d be too balled up to feed yourself,” she said, barging into Lulu’s house in her familiar, proprietary way. Veronica had become Lulu’s best friend in Hollywood, and even when the publicist wasn’t scheming to bring her greater glory, they often palled around, with or without David. “Besides, since it’s two days until payday, Mandelbrot and I needed a cheap date. And, of course, we had to satisfy our curiosity about . . .” She suddenly caught sight of Freddie and performed a staged double take. “Oh. Well, what d’ya know? Curiosity satisfied.”

  Lulu went pink, looking utterly abashed at being discovered in her feathered dressing gown alone with a man.

  “Lulu, my pet, are you sure you want to invite the vulturelike glee of the paparazzi by having an unknown, unattached young man in your house?” Veronica asked archly. “Especially one so handsome and young you can’t possibly pass him off as an uncle.”

  “Veronica!” both Lulu and David protested at the same time.

  Veronica winked at Lulu but answered David. “Well, he is handsome. There’s no denying that. If I own a pooch, I can still be a judge at a dog show, can’t I? I don’t complain when you ogle starlets’ chassis while they sign their contracts, do I?”

  “I’d never . . . ,” he began, but didn’t have a chance. Lulu loved watching the exchanges between Veronica and David. Someone who didn’t know them so well might think that Veronica was domineering, David henpecked, and make dire predictions about their future happiness if they ever got married. But Lulu could see the beautiful dynamic in the way Veronica teased and David protested, the way Veronica seemed to sometimes carry both sides of the conversation, leaving David with scarcely a word, but with so much that was devoted and loving passing unspoken between them in the slightest glance. They understood each other completely and perfectly. Lulu could clearly see them sixty years from now, still together, David offering Veronica his arm as they hobbled to the neighborhood deli, Veronica finishing all of his sentences for him to save him the trouble. They were happy, and they would be happy, no matter what, as long as they had each other.

  Lulu could only dream of a relationship like theirs. Every other love affair she saw in Hollywood seemed to be just that: an “affair.” Either there was something clandestine and illicit about it, as if love were a decadent treat best eaten on the sly, or it was an event, a big premiere carefully planned and orchestrated with the perfectly curated guest list.

  They sat around Lulu’s kitchen table, planning a strategy and going over the suspect list again and again, trying to see who could possibly have a motive to either shoot Ruby or frame Lulu.

  “Well,” Veronica said, “I’m just going to assume for the time being that neither of you are guilty of anything but being in the wrong place at the wrong time, though I know you, my favorite client and pal of pals, wouldn’t shed much of a tear if Ruby was out of the picture, and Mr. Face over here, well, I’m sure if I investigated enough, I could come up with some sort of secret, not that I’d mind probing—”

  “All right. Knock it off, Veronica, will ya!” David said. “We get it already. The kid’s got a nice mug!” David moaned as Lulu finally laughed, and Freddie’s cheeks flushed with color.

  “Fine,” Veronica went on, running her finger down the list, “but I just don’t get it. Why would any of these people want to actually off Ruby? Or take you down, for that matter?”

  “I can’t for the life of me think of anyone in Hollywood who even likes Ruby,” said David. “I’ve seen her be a real monster to pretty much every person she’s come into contact with!”

  “As far as I can tell, the question is, who didn’t want to see her gone!” Freddie chimed in.

  “Well, Blake certainly can’t stand her,” Lulu said. “He practically turns purple every time she walks into a room. It’s always obvious. He’s not that good an actor.”

  “And how!” Veronica guffawed. “And why would Vasily or those crew people go that far?” Lulu suddenly remembered that Ruby knew more about Vasily than perhaps Vasily cared to have anyone know. But Lulu knew it, too, as did Veronica. So it couldn’t be too much of a secret. Of course, she’d come to understand the difference between what everyone in Hollywood knows, and what everyone knows.

  “It doesn’t add up,” said David.

  “And who’s this guy in the suit that you’re so afraid of?” Veronica asked Lulu, all eyes turning to her.

  “No one!” Lulu said, holding up her hands. “I have no idea who Freddie is talking about. Must have been a figment of his imagination—or mine. I never know what I’m thinking when I’m acting. You know how goofy I am like that!”

  Veronica and David just nodded, and David started work on another slice of brown bread and salmon as Lulu jumped up to fetch some more coffee. Freddie looked at her suspiciously, wondering why, in this dire moment, she would choose to lie to the only safe people in her life. There must be some secret. Some terrible, frightening secret, he thought. He understood such secrets, though, so he chose not to press her.

  As they talked, Lulu kept a sidelong watch on the perplexing young man who had entered her life so suddenly and so completely. He was at ease with lively, verbose Veronica, matching her quip for quip. He brought David out of his natural diffidence, and for a while a surprised Veronica fell uncharacteristically silent while Freddie and David talked politics.

  Lulu was mostly quiet, exhausted from the upheaval of the past day. Freddie didn’t try to bring her into the conversation, but his eyes were attentive and eloquent. He looked at her often, sometimes openly, sometimes with a secret glance that the others didn
’t see. It was a look just for her, caring, concerned . . . and something else, too. These looks made her heart flutter.

  When David and Veronica finally left, there was a long, heavy silence between the actress and her vagabond savior. Abruptly, Lulu told him, “You can stay here tonight.”

  Then she fled to her room before she lost her nerve, and didn’t emerge until the next morning.

  TWENTY-TWO

  They say as a place to be invited, Pickfair is only slightly less important than the White House,” Lulu said as she and her maid, Clara, put the finishing touches on her coiffure.

  “And Pickfair is a lot more fun, I bet,” Freddie said, peeking into Lulu’s boudoir in time to see the maid pin a feathered fascinator onto Lulu’s carefully arranged waves. “Some of those White House parties can be deadly dull.”

  “And you’ve been to so many, I’m sure.” Lulu still didn’t know what to make of this strange young man, but with each passing hour she was becoming more and more attached to him. He simply fit her, like a sublimely comfortable pair of shoes that she just never wanted to take off. She was getting used to him, and that made her nervous. But not so nervous as to send him away.

  He didn’t talk about his past, but she had him pegged for a teacher’s son. Maybe he had a decent background and was orphaned before he could make a start in life. Or his parents had lost everything in the crash, a common enough story. He was clever, and he’d obviously read enough newspapers and books to make all those jokes about speaking Latin and mingling in high society sound convincing. He might always seem as if he was making fun of her, but she found she didn’t mind as much as she should. And she gave as good as she got.

  “Too many,” Freddie said. “Herbert was always a bore, talking about his Stanford days as if they were yesterday. Lou was a treat, though. She taught me a little Chinese.”

  “Herbert and Lou Hoover? Of course you’re on a first-name basis.” She laughed and stood, smoothing the skirt of her crushed strawberry gown.

  It was the day after Lulu’s release from jail. Clara had been called at home and offered double her usual pay to stay. It wouldn’t do to have male company overnight without a chaperone who could vow to the tabloid journalists that absolutely nothing happened.

  Throughout the day Veronica called Lulu every half hour, updating them on the investigation. Ruby was still unconscious. Sometimes the doctors thought she might pull through. Other times they weren’t so sanguine.

  The police were continuing to interview everyone who had been on the set, and Veronica was asking plenty of questions herself, but so far there were no solid answers. They’d pulled the day rushes, but though the rough film clearly showed who handled the gun during the takes, the cameras weren’t rolling beforehand, so there was no evidence to be found there. Nothing revealed who had opened the cylinder and inserted the bullets.

  Tonight Lulu was scheduled to attend a gala event at Pickfair, the lavish home of Hollywood’s most glittering couple, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. Usually the studio arranged for a suitable escort—one of the unattached young male stars in the Lux stable, or maybe a handsome older actor, recently divorced, whose arm she would cling to and laughingly insist they were “just very, very dear friends.” But the studio informed her that her date had the flu and suggested that perhaps she’d like to stay home to nurse him. Lulu suspected they might try to spin the Florence Nightingale bit into a publicity ploy to show Lulu’s good character and get the public’s sympathy. Maybe they’d even send cameras into the sickroom. Lulu declined their offer.

  They couldn’t quite uninvite her—that was up to Mary Pickford—but they made it clear that due to her current suspect state, she might do better to keep a low profile.

  “Nothing doing,” Lulu had said, and promptly invited Freddie to accompany her. “I can tell the press that we’re ‘just very, very dear strangers,’ ” she’d told him. “Some of the suspects will be there, and I want to look every last one of them in the eye. Blake Tanner will be there for sure. He finagles an invitation to every major party. And believe it or not, I know for a fact Roger King will be there.”

  Freddie had looked at her blankly.

  “The head of props. He’s married to Velma King, who has been making wigs for Mary Pickford and everyone else in this town for years. Mary invites her everywhere so she won’t ever mention that little bald spot.”

  “But you know about it,” Freddie had pointed out.

  “Oh, there are no secrets here. Only in Ohio and Kansas. We can know all the dirt, as long as they don’t.” She made a sweeping gesture eastward to include all of America and the rest of the world.

  For Freddie’s clothes, Veronica came to the rescue, borrowing a complete white-tie ensemble from Lux wardrobe on the pretext of a photo shoot. He was worried about dressing in something so fancy, knowing it increased his chances of being spotted. But he felt he had to risk it.

  Now, as they were about to leave for the party, Lulu looked him over.

  “Your tie isn’t straight,” she said, cocking her head.

  Freddie bristled. All his life people had been telling him to straighten his tie. He had taken it from Mugsy, who’d had only his best interests at heart. His fiancée had gone so far as to straighten it herself. It should have been a loving gesture, but it had always grated, having other hands trying to paw him into perfection.

  He braced himself for Lulu’s interfering touch, but she only said, “That’s good. Casual. You want to look like you don’t care what you’re wearing. Some of these actors, they run to the powder room to make sure their hair is perfect and their tie is straight, just in case someone snaps a photo. It makes me sick.”

  Freddie let out a sigh from the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

  “Isn’t it your job to care about how you look?” he asked.

  “That’s just what it is—a job. It isn’t me.”

  The taxi pulled up to the mock-Tudor house near eight. “It’s not as grand as I’d imagined,” Freddie said.

  “Wait till you see the inside. They enjoy playing at country life, like Marie Antoinette, with geese in the swimming pool and romping Alsatians on the lawn, but inside it’s all gold leaf and floor-to-ceiling mirrors.”

  Freddie handed her out of the car, and they walked together to the front door.

  “Wow,” Freddie breathed as they stepped into the otherworldly splendor. The walls were paneled in deeply burnished mahogany. They shone in the glitter of electric lights and reflected ghostly images of the mingling guests so that Charlie Chaplin had a wraithlike double on the wall behind him and Joan Crawford’s wide-set eyes flashed in duplicate, all-seeing. The Barrymores didn’t need artificial multiplication—there were already so many of that famous acting family in attendance. Freddie saw people he recognized from movies—Jean Harlow, Norma Shearer, Gary Cooper, Spencer Tracy—but luckily, no one he knew personally. That was fortunate. His father loved having the Hollywood elite around him, and the van der Waals’s parties were usually glittering with stars.

  Lulu smiled at him in sympathy as she saw him look around in apparent amazement. She remembered what it was like to be a kid from the slums suddenly thrust into all this splendor. Freddie might come from a slightly higher social strata than her, but it still must be almost overwhelming to him to see these riches.

  “They’re just people,” she reassured him in a whisper. “Most are nice, some aren’t very smart, and a lot of them aren’t even all that good-looking when you see them close-up in real life. Don’t worry. Just stick with me.”

  She was wrong about his amazement. Freddie was thinking that after a year on the road, after all the hardships and heartache, here he was again, in white tie, surrounded by glitter and money, with a waiter (who hoped one day to be an actor) handing him a flute of champagne. I might as well be home again, he thought.

  But no, these weren’t crooks and industrialists, bankers and businessmen who had made their fortunes on the sweat
and misery of the poor. They were today’s Scaramouch and Harlequin and Columbine—entertainers paid to delight. For all their foibles, it was as innocent an occupation as being a brickmaker or a ditchdigger. They produced a product the world needed, and were paid for it. Acting, for all its inherent falseness, was an honest trade.

  Five steps into Pickfair, he felt like he belonged there.

  Not just here, he thought. In this town. In this business.

  He looked at the girl on his arm.

  With her.

  Lulu made her rounds as blithely as if she’d not recently spent a night being interrogated in jail. Though she knew that everyone at the party knew, and watched her in curious fascination, she laughed and chatted, flitting here and there with butterfly grace and just as fleeting an attention span, making sure she said hello to everyone. Freddie was introduced simply as a new Lux actor. He got a few admiring glances, but no one treated him like he didn’t belong.

  He enjoyed a particularly amusing conversation with a wild actress named Tallulah Bankhead and her date, director George Cukor. They had just had success together with Tarnished Lady and were regaling Freddie with stories, before inviting him to a small after-party at Tallulah’s house on Stanley Avenue. As they walked away, Tallulah gave him a dangerously flirtatious glance and mouthed, “See you later.”

  Before moving away, Cukor whispered in his ear, lips brushing against Freddie’s flushed cheek, “Beware. Tallulah’s parties have no boundaries, my handsome young fellow.” Lulu swooped in, took Freddie’s arm, and pulled him protectively toward her, knowing full well that these two lions were both licking their chops for a taste of the fresh meat before them.

  “There’s Vasily,” Freddie said, pointing discreetly. A golden-haired young man was talking to him in a dim corner. Lulu recognized him as one of Vasily’s students. The young man seemed to be importuning the acting coach, while Vasily demurred, gently at first. Lulu wasn’t close enough to hear what they were saying, though, and took Freddie by the arm to angle closer.