City of Flickering Light

by Juliette Fay

  “We’ll go to a deserted island until the run is over.”

  “That sounds kind of nice,” she said. “Maybe we should go anyway.”

  He tugged her in closer, burying her in his chest, the sweet warm scent of him enveloping her. “Irene Van Beck. The girl I couldn’t forget.”

  “Dan Stars Lying Down Russell. I hope you never do.”

  For the first time in three months, Irene had absolutely no interest in getting out of bed. The birds sang in the jacaranda tree behind The Hillview Apartments, and she could have lain there all day long, entwined with Dan.

  He tickled his fingers along the small of her back. “How serious is this business about Henry getting married? Was Sharp just making idle threats?”

  “I’m not sure. But we both know the studio pushes people into marriage, especially if they’ve been sleeping in the wrong beds. Eva told me they were gearing up to give Fox Trot on the Congo the full treatment, a huge national push, so they must think Henry is worth the effort.”

  “Hate to say it, but it’ll probably be a huge hit, now that it’s famous director Edward Oberhouser’s last picture. Especially with the way he died.”

  “Except if there’s some scandal involving Henry. That could kill it entirely. So if I had to bet money, I’d say Henry’s getting married, unless he wants to get out of the flickers altogether.”

  They lay in silence for a few moments, and Irene wondered if Henry might actually want to get out. It would be excruciating to go on as if Edward’s death meant nothing to him, which is exactly what would be required. But what could he do—go back to standup comedy? Laying bricks? He was fairly recognizable now, after Husbands for Sale. There was nowhere he could go and lead a normal life.

  She would marry him if it would keep him from going down an endless road of misery. She’d been on that road after Ivy died, and she wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Except maybe Wally Walters, that bastard. Or Chandler. Or Barney. She hoped they were all begging for change together in Tijuana.

  “Please don’t marry Henry.”

  She looked up at him. “What? Why not? It wouldn’t be real, Dan. We could still be together.”

  “It’d have to look real, though, wouldn’t it? Real enough that we’d have to sneak around. If you’re the wife of a famous movie star, we couldn’t so much as grab dinner at The Cottonwood without him being there as your official date.”

  “I guess you’re right about that.”

  “Also . . .”

  She waited, worried.

  “I don’t want you to be another man’s wife.”

  45

  Being a movie star, and this applies to all of them, means being looked at from every possible direction. You are never left at peace, you’re just fair game.

  Greta Garbo, actress

  Henry knew he’d have to give a statement to the police. Carlton Sharp had warned him about that, but he thought it would be the next day, not at ten o’clock at night. Sharp came to the door and told him to put on his best suit and tie, and for godsake get his hair in order.

  “We can’t go in the morning?”

  “We can if we want the entire city of Los Angeles to see you walk in, and for there to be pictures from every angle on the front page of every newspaper in the entire country just in time for the evening edition.” He looked at Gert. “Miss Turner. I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Carlton Sharp, head of publicity. I’ll have my driver take you home.”

  “Thanks, but I’ll stay. I don’t want Henry to face this alone.”

  He eyed Gert, and she eyed him right back. “You’re his alibi,” he said.

  “Alibi? But I wasn’t with him when it happened.”

  “Where were you?”

  Gert looked at Henry, but Henry could barely think straight. “You were at the Studio Club, right?”

  Sharp shook his head. “Unfortunate. We need someone whose whereabouts wouldn’t have been known by others.”

  “Do I need an alibi?” said Henry wearily. “Can’t I just say I was home in bed?”

  “You can. How do you feel about a first-degree murder charge?”

  “I wasn’t at the Studio Club,” said Gert. The two men turned to look at her. “I was out.”

  “Out where?”

  She cut her eyes at Henry again, looking for help, but he could barely button his shirt properly.

  Sharp drummed his fingers on his thigh. “Actually it doesn’t matter where you were, so long as whoever you were with won’t show up at the LAPD at any time in the future and say, ‘No she wasn’t with Henry Weston on the night of the murder, she was with me.’ ”

  “Oh, he won’t,” said Gert. “Trust me on that score. He wouldn’t go anywhere near a police station.”

  Sharp raised an eyebrow. “And no one else saw you? Not one single soul can place you with this . . . whoever it was?”

  “No. We’re good at finding places to be alone.”

  “Aren’t you all,” muttered Sharp, “until you aren’t, and then suddenly I don’t have five minutes to so much as go to the john.” He let out a long breath. “Okay, I’m going to ask you both questions, and we’re going to come up with answers that match, and you’re going to memorize them so thoroughly that by the time we get to the station, you’ll think it’s all true.”

  It was midnight by the time Sharp thought they were sufficiently prepared, and the streets were, in fact, almost empty. Sharp sat up front with his driver, and Henry sat in back with Gert.

  “Henry,” she murmured. “Listen to me. I know just saying Edward’s name will make you want to lay down on the floor and weep.” She took his hand. “But if you do that, they’re going to put two and two together, and then they’re going to jump to the conclusion that it was a crime of passion.

  “He was a good friend, someone you admired and enjoyed working with. Also, hush hush, but you’re having an affair with me. Those times you visited Edward late at night were when you and I were on the outs, and you needed the shoulder of a friend. If they get a whiff that any of that isn’t true . . . well, it’s not what Edward would want for you. You need to make him proud tonight. Use what he taught you, and give the performance of your life.”

  46

  He smiled and gurgled, and I smiled—and that was all. I didn’t have any idea of adopting a baby when I went there, but something about him just made me pick him up—and then I couldn’t bear to go away without him. So that very afternoon I cut through all the red tape and adopted him.

  Barbara La Marr, writer, actress, on “meeting” her biological son at a Dallas orphanage

  Millie was apoplectic about not going to the wedding. As if the stupid little backwater town of Las Vegas, Nevada, wasn’t punishment enough! Not that she got to see much of it in the three and a half long, boring months she’d been here. Nurse Johnson, in whose rambling farmhouse she was living, had strict orders that unwed, pregnant starlets were not to be visible to anyone, lest they be recognized and revealed. The population of the few dusty streets they called a town wasn’t even three thousand people, and there was only one movie theater, The Majestic. By the time A Baby’s Cry made its way to this Podunk berg, Millie figured she’d be a grandmother. How she could be “revealed” was a mystery.

  The Johnson property was a cattle ranch about five miles outside of town, and Nurse Johnson and her husband took in as many as three “studio girls” at a time. At the moment there was only one other girl, a well-known actress of the stage and screen, whose husband was a navy man—oh, how the movie magazines loved to print pictures of her with her husband in his starched dress whites! Unaccountably, he’d been on a ship for three months before and after the probable date of conception, so the great lady had suddenly developed a “lung condition” and been whisked away to the desert to improve her breathing.

  I’m having trouble breathing, too, thought Millie, now eight and a half months pregnant, the baby pressing so hard in every direction she thought a foot might pop out of her mouth one o
f these days. But at least I don’t lock myself in my room with all the copies of Photoplay in the house and insist my dinner be brought to me.

  In fact, Millie’s sole enjoyment was working in Nurse Johnson’s herb and vegetable garden. She had already decided that when she bought her own house, which she planned to do when she returned to Hollywood to make room for the baby and a nursemaid, she’d have a little garden in the yard.

  But even the garden couldn’t distract her on December 16, when she knew the wedding was taking place without her.

  I could come back in disguise! she’d written to Irene.

  You’d have to shave your head, wear fake whiskers, and dress as a potbellied old man. And even then, you’d be taking chances. It’s not worth it, Millie. It isn’t even a real wedding.

  Millie had been writing letters to both Henry and Irene at least once a week since she’d come to this godforsaken outpost; they were generally short, “as nothing, absolutely nothing, ever happens here.”

  But when she learned about the terrible loss Henry had suffered—of having to keep such a loving relationship secret in the first place, and then to have that love snuffed out so violently—she knew a different kind of letter was in order.

  Dear, dear Henry,

  We go back to the dark ages, you and Irene and I, and the only way we got through was that we had each other. Well, you are having a very dark age right now, and I am sorry that I am not right there next to you where I should be.

  You are so brave, Henry. You had the courage to accept love where you found it, even though it was in a place that some people don’t understand. And it’s still there, inside you. Real love changes us, makes us kinder, better, braver.

  Your love, and Irene’s, even made me smarter! You each taught me things and even loved me when I was foolish sometimes. You loved me into a wiser Millie. Thank goodness!

  We will love you with all our might through this dark age you’re in, Henry, because you are ours and you are so easy to love.

  Holding you in the warmest,

  brightest part of my heart always,

  Millie

  She’d thought a lot about Henry and Edward since then. She imagined it was the way she felt about Irene (except with sexual attraction), and the idea of it always made her teary. And now the studio was making him marry someone for whom he’d never feel any desire. It all seemed terribly wrong and unfair. Still, she wanted to go to the wedding. She felt she should be there for him, to be a loving face, a face that knew him, in the crowd of mere stargazers.

  The engagement was announced a week after Edward’s death, and the studio pushed up the premier of Fox Trot on the Congo to the day before the wedding. Irene had gone back to the cutting room to edit it herself so it would be ready in time. She said Carlton Sharp was earning his silver by whipping up a froth of publicity, putting pictures in all the movie mags of the happy couple spending time together before the ceremony. He’d even chartered a yacht to take them out to Catalina with a photographer to capture the love. Apparently Henry got seasick. He says from now on he won’t even float a boat in the bathtub, Irene wrote. But the pictures were beautiful—Millie had seen them in Photoplay herself, before the other pregnant “studio girl” had gotten her claws into that and every other issue.

  Irene said they’d spent a lot of time house hunting and considered Beverly Hills, which had become quite popular since Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford had moved there in 1919. But they’d very quickly learned that the entire town fell under something called a “restrictive covenant”: no Jews or colored people allowed. They ended up in Laurel Canyon. Henry said the place was special to him, and it was out of the way enough for them to just be themselves.

  Just be themselves. Millie pondered this concept as she slid her trowel around a sage plant to transfer it to a pot and take it inside before the desert nights got too cold. In many ways Hollywood was uniquely a place where people could be themselves. But then there came a point when even Hollywood couldn’t hide you, and you ended up having to do something drastic like marrying someone you would never kiss.

  She felt the tightening in her belly and knelt down between the rows for a minute until it passed. This had been happening off and on for a week or so, and Nurse Johnson had been plainly unimpressed. “It’s just false pains,” she said. “You’ll know when it’s real. It’s the difference between a clap of the hands and a clap of thunder.”

  For the last day or so, these pains had been more like a full house round of applause, and as she knelt there in the sandy soil in the middle of nowhere, it felt like thunder—far off but approaching.

  Then she peed herself. So embarrassing. She’d gotten her drawers damp straggling to the bathroom half asleep more than once. By the third or fourth time in the course of a night, she sometimes found the decision of whether to haul herself to the privy or just soak her own bed a difficult one to make. But this was in the middle of the day, and she hadn’t realized she even had to go.

  Nurse Johnson came out to hang some washing. “How’re those plants coming? Don’t even bother with the thyme—it’ll come back in the spring on its own.” She peered at Millie an extra moment. “Did you tip the watering can on yourself?”

  Millie shook her head.

  Nurse Johnson heaved a great sigh that made the waddle under her chin quiver. “All right then. Go on in the house and get out of those clothes. I’ll finish hanging these britches and be along directly.”

  It was a long day and an even longer night. By dawn, Millie was sweating and calling for Irene.

  “Hush that squawking!” said Nurse Johnson. “The hens won’t be able to lay their eggs from fright.”

  Millie gritted her teeth. “Are you even a real nurse?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “Where did you train?”

  “At my mother’s elbow.”

  “Irene!”

  It’s an earthquake, Millie thought as her body shuddered and strained as if it might split in two. A human earthquake.

  And then it was over—finally—only the trembling aftershocks rippling through her body.

  She waited.

  Please. Oh, please, God.

  A quivering squawk, like the newborn lambs on the farm where she’d worked. Lifetimes ago now.

  “Girl,” said Nurse Johnson matter-of-factly.

  “Give her to me!”

  “I’m cleaning her up, so you’ll have to wait until—”

  “I don’t want her cleaned up! I want her just as she is!” Millie thundered. “Give me the baby!”

  Nurse Johnson plunked the tiny human, hastily wrapped in a piece of old bedsheet, into Millie’s arms and harrumphed, “She’s a mess.”

  But she wasn’t. She was damp, yes, and ruddy from the journey—Millie was a bit damp herself. But this baby, with her tiny nose and waving arms and ears like the most delicate pink shells . . . this baby was perfect just as she was. Whoever she was, and whoever she might grow up to be.

  47

  To me, love has always meant friendship.

  Jean Harlow, actress

  “Ihave the best news!” Irene sat at Henry’s kitchen table. She’d taken to going over to the house in Laurel Canyon in the mornings, knowing how hard the first hour of the day could be when you woke and had to remember all over again that your life had shattered into a thousand shards of pain.

  He was grateful to have someone to talk to who understood his grief, with whom he could be fully himself. Surprisingly, she found that she could be more open, too, revealing parts of herself that she’d kept carefully locked away. In those early struggling days when they’d first arrived in Hollywood, she’d grown to love him, but she hadn’t realized how little they’d actually known each other.

  He’d slept a lot after Edward’s death and was just now getting back to work. Fox Trot on the Congo had been a solid hit, and the studio had decided to reprise it with Charleston in China—same basic story with the same stars, but set in Asia, of cour
se.

  At the moment he looked like a little boy, with his hair all sleep tousled and his pajamas creased and crooked. The kitchen was open and sunny, and the light set off hollows below his cheekbones that hadn’t been there before the loss of Edward. She would have to mention it to Gert. Maybe they could plan some dinners together with lots of rich food.

  He sipped at a cup of coffee. “Tell me the news.”

  “Millie had the baby!”

  “What? Isn’t this early?”

  “A couple of weeks, yes, although you never can know for certain with these things.”

  “It went well?”

  “I’ll spare you the excruciating details. Suffice it to say, she’s likely never to get herself into a similar situation.”

  Henry smirked at this.

  “Yes, I know,” said Irene. “It’s Millie. Anything could happen.”

  “Boy or girl?”

  “A squalling pink baby girl.”

  “Name?”

  Irene had cried when she’d first read the letter yesterday. This morning she promised herself she was done shedding any tears over it, but her eyes went shiny all the same. “Ivy.”

  “Oh, Irene.”

  “Yes, well the poor thing’s middle name is Sage, because that happens to be the plant Millie was digging up when the pains started. Imagine if she’d been pulling turnips!”

  Henry let out a full belly laugh, a first since his terrible loss two months before.

  “When does she bring little Ivy Sage home?” he asked, still smiling.

  “Oh, not for a while. Apparently if you show up with the baby right away, it’s far too obvious. She’ll stay there and nurse for a month or two, get her shape back, and then come home. Carlton Sharp will cook up some story about Millie meeting the baby on location, and we’ll get our little bundle of love in six months or so.”

  Gert came down the staircase, tying her robe around her waist and pushing blonde locks off her cheeks. She squeezed Henry’s shoulder as she went by. “More coffee?”