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ONE
“Hey, sweetheart, you gonna pay for that?”
The rough voice startled Margaret out of her skin. She tipped forward off the vinyl-­covered stool, just managing to grab her glass of chocolate ice cream soda before it deposited its half-­melted contents all over the freshly mopped floor of Schwab’s Pharmacy.
“I’m . . . I’m sorry?” she stammered. “Pay for . . . what?”
The soda jerk tipped his peaked paper cap a few inches back from the expanse of his sweaty forehead. “That rag you got there,” he said, angling his bristled chin toward the open copy of Picture Palace in front of Margaret on the white Formica lunch counter, where the Technicolor visage of Diana Chesterfield gazed serenely from its glossy pages. “I ain’t running no lending library around here, see? You read, you buy. Store policy.”
He leaned over the counter for a better look at the magazine, so close that Margaret could smell the sour milk and stale whiskey on his breath. Her hand flew to the gold circle pin fastened to the collar of her sweater. A family heirloom, her parents had presented it to her for her sixteenth birthday the year before, and Margaret soon found herself worrying its little cluster of pearls whenever she got nervous. Somehow the feeling of their smooth, cool surface under the tips of her fingers always seemed to calm her down. “Who you got there? Diana Chesterfield?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Always liked her.” The man gave an approving nod. “Nice girl.”
Margaret gasped. Getting into a conversation with the soda jerk was the last thing she wanted to do; still, she couldn’t keep herself from asking. “You don’t . . . you don’t actually know her, do you?”
“Sure do. She’d come in for an egg salad sandwich with french fries every other Tuesday, strict as clockwork. Used to make up her order myself, right here at the counter.” His sharp face took on a dreamy look. “She liked my egg salad, Miss Chesterfield. Perfect ratio of mustard to mayonnaise. That’s the key, see. You gotta get the proportions right.”
“She told you that herself?”
“Well, not exactly. She’s one of the quiet ones, you know. Keeps to herself, like. Most of the time she’d send her driver in while she sat pretty in one of them fancy cars of hers. But every so often she’d come in herself with her sunglasses on and sit right on that stool where you’re sitting now.”
Margaret couldn’t suppress the excited shiver that ran down her spine, despite the soda jerk’s too-­appreciative gaze. When she’d decided that morning to play hooky from her afternoon classes to have a sandwich at Schwab’s, she’d hardly supposed she’d be receiving intimate information about the sandwich preferences of her favorite movie star.
Although Margaret had to admit that after the events—­or lack thereof—­of the premiere at Grauman’s, it was decidedly unnerving to hear Diana referred to in the past tense.
“I take it you’re a fan of hers?” the man prompted.
A fan? Margaret knew practically everything about Diana Chesterfield. She knew her middle name (Constance), her birthday (December 10) and her birthplace (Hampshire, En- gland). She knew her favorite color (lilac); her favorite meal (steak Diane—­bien sûr—­with potatoes dauphinoise); and obviously, her romantic status. Before Margaret had started high school and thus become far too mature for such things, she’d even been the president of the Official Bellefontaine Street Diana Chesterfield Fan Club. True, the only other member was Doris, who had served as a kind of vice president/secretary hybrid, but she had sent away to Olympus Studios for a special Diana Chesterfield Fan Club President badge, which she kept tucked away in her top dresser drawer, along with her film star scrapbook, the dried corsage from the Christmas dance last year when she’d kissed Phipps McKendrick, and Florence the rag doll, whom she hadn’t slept with since grade school but couldn’t bear to give away. But none of this was anything the soda jerk needed to know about. After all, this was Schwab’s, the unofficial canteen of the Hollywood colony. He might be a working stiff who dished out french fries and strawberry phosphates for a living, but he was serving them to some of the biggest legends in the movie business.
Margaret decided to play it cool. “Yeah, I guess,” she said. “I mean, I’ve seen all her pictures.” And studied her voice, her walk, her wardrobe, her makeup, and her hairstyle, and can recite every single one of her famous movie moments from memory . . .
“The latest one too? Manhattan Mammary or whatever?” He leered.
Margaret ignored the soda jerk’s crudeness, as she imagined the famously genteel Diana Chesterfield herself did on her infrequent sojourns among the little people. “Manhattan Memories. Yes, I have.” Three times. “Actually, my good friend and I even attended the premiere.”
“Oh, pardon me.” The soda jerk held up his hands. “I didn’t realize I was speechifying in front of a . . . whaddyacallit . . . a premiere attendee. Don’t tell me you’re an Oscar winner too.”
Margaret blushed. “No. I mean, we weren’t guests, exactly. We were just standing in the crowd on Hollywood Boulevard.”
“I heard about that.” The soda jerk smirked. “Nice of her to show up, wasn’t it?”
“Well, like you said, she’s known for being private,” Margaret said defensively. Plenty of fans grumbled about Diana’s legendary reclusiveness, which the tabloids claimed had grown even more pronounced of late, but not Margaret. In fact, the star’s lack of accessibility was one of the main reasons Margaret admired her. Diana’s mystery made her so glamorous. “Still,” Margaret continued, “it is unusual to miss a premiere like that. I suppose she must have been terribly ill.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“Whatever do you mean?” With a thrust of his nose in the air and an exaggerated flutter of his eyelashes, he mimicked Margaret’s prim private school elocution. “I don’t mean to be coarse, but let me put it this way, sister: I ain’t expecting Diana Chesterfield to nibble on my egg salad again anytime soon, see?”
“No. I’m afraid I don’t,” Margaret told him.
“Look. A job like this, you hear things. Someone’s getting hitched, I hear about it. Someone’s headed for Splitsville, I hear about it. Someone’s cracked up or stepping out or headed for the big house—­”
“You hear about it.”
“You bet. And what I heard, girlie, is that Diana Chesterfield, Our Lady of the Weepies, went missing the day of that premiere.”
“That’s not fair. She makes comedies too.”
“You dumb or something, girlie? I said, Diana Chesterfield is missing, and has been ever since that runner she pulled at the premiere of Manhattan Melodies.”
“Memories,” Margaret corrected him stubbornly, although she had to admit it was an awfully generic title. “But that was weeks ago.”
“Yup, and I’m telling you she ain’t been seen since. Not here, not at the studio, not nowhere. Think about it, sugar. A dame like Chesterfield, sure, she ain’t exactly a—­whaddyacallit—­a social animal. But with a new picture out, it’s a different story. She’s out dancing, dining, you know, living it up. Believe you me, she gets around plenty when she needs the press. But the past six weeks, zip. Nada. A feature in Picture Palace, sure. They probably put that to bed months ago. But not so much as a mention in the comings and goings. You’re such a big fan, you musta noticed. And if you don’t think something smells fishy about that, then I got a piece of the Pacific Ocean to sell you. It smells plenty fishy too.”
He’s right, Margaret thought with a start, her hand flying back up to the comforting smoothness of her little pearl pin. Diana has been awfully absent from the gossip columns lately. That was one of the more infuriating things about the picture rags. You’d blow your allowance in anticipation of an exciting new cover story about one of your favorite stars and then realize it was exactly the same article you’d read three months ago, just with the name of the old movie swapped out for the new one. “You don’t . . . you don’t think something’s happened to her?” Margaret asked.
“I don’t think,” the soda jerk said. “I listen. And there ain’t been a word from the studio to listen to, which, let me tell you, says a whole hell of a lot.”
“Such as?”
“Such as Leo Karp himself don’t have a clue where on God’s green earth she is. . . .”
“Anything else?” Margaret was starting to worry.
“Or they’re hiding something so bad even the very best liars in the business ain’t got a matchstick’s chance in hell of figuring out how to cover it up. And if they can’t cover it up, it’s because that something . . .” Looking around, he leaned in closer. Margaret, steeling herself against the rotten-­milk breath and the pale eyeballs all but burning a hole in the front of her sweater, edged toward him. “That something is irreversible. Something like . . .”
Gravely, the soda jerk drew a chocolate-­flecked index finger across his Adam’s apple.
“All right, Wally, I think you’ve scared the poor girl enough.”
In her terror—­when she glanced down, she noticed that her knuckles had turned white from clutching her pearls—­Margaret had failed to notice the man sitting at the other end of the counter, calmly smoking a cigarette behind the latest Variety, so crisp and fresh you could probably still smell the sharpness of the ink wafting from the pages.
“Mr. Julius!” Wally the soda jerk’s face turned as white as his apron. “I . . . I didn’t even see you there.”
“So I gathered. I was wondering what a fella had to do to get a cup of coffee around here. I was beginning to worry I’d have to turn myself into a beautiful blonde. And I’m afraid peroxide wouldn’t do a thing for my complexion.” The man grinned, a diamond pinky ring flashing as he brought a hand up to his swarthy cheek. Margaret suddenly had the feeling she’d seen him somewhere before. She was sure he wasn’t an actor, and with his heavy features, pencil-­thin mustache, and wide-­shouldered double-­breasted suit, he hardly looked like the kind of fellow she’d see having after-­tennis cocktails with her parents at the Pasadena Country Club. But judging from Wally’s panicked reaction, the man was clearly a “somebody.” The only question was which “somebody” he was.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Wally gasped. “One coffee, right away, sir. Only . . .” Pressing his thin lips together, he stole a last desperate glance at Margaret. “Only she has to pay for that magazine, see! I ain’t running no—­”
“Lending library. So I heard.” With a chuckle, the man dug a handful of change from the pocket of his gray silk suit pants and deposited it on the counter with a dull thud. The pile of silver was so bright and sparkling new Margaret suspected you could almost see your face in it. She reflexively averted her eyes, as her mother had taught her to do in the “most unladylike” presence of cold hard cash. But she’d counted at least five silver dollars.
Poor Wally, she thought, watching from the corner of her eye as the soda jerk frantically scooped up the coins before the high roller could change his mind. That’s probably more than he makes in a whole week.
Before she could utter so much as a thank-­you, the man put down his paper and moved a couple of seats over until he was sitting next to her. “You mustn’t mind Wally. He’s harmless enough. Just looking to pitch some woo your way.” His tone was pleasant, but his eyes were hard. Not cruel, exactly, but something about the unsentimental shrewdness of his expression made him seem as though he’d be tough to shock. Or, for that matter, to impress.
“Pitch some . . . woo?” she repeated, bewildered.
“Sure, kiddo. You know. Float you some sweet talk. Hit you with the big come-­on.” The man cast a nonplussed glance over at the defeated Wally, who was desultorily flicking a wet rag against the malt machine at the other end of the counter. “But look, I can’t say I blame the poor sap for trying. You’re quite an eyeful. A real knockout, if you know what I mean.”
“I’m not sure I do.”
“Oh, you don’t need to put on that modesty song and dance for me. You may be young, duchess, but I can’t believe you don’t get that sort of thing all the time.”
Twisting her pearl pin, Margaret blushed furiously. Unlike most of the other girls she knew, she wasn’t particularly vain. She had never asked for charge accounts at I. Magnin or Saks Fifth Avenue, and according to the inimitable Miss Schoonmaker, in whose odious Poise and Presence class at the Orange Grove Academy for Young Ladies she would be prancing around with a stack of books balanced on her head right now if she weren’t playing hooky at Schwab’s, she usually went around looking as though she “wouldn’t know a curling iron from a five iron.” Yet to plead ignorance of the simple fact of her beauty—­the buttery hair that fell sleekly to her shoulders; her wide, silvery-­blue eyes; the sculptural cast of her sloping cheekbones—­was disingenuous at best. She might deny she was beautiful, but there would still be the stares to deal with: the knowing winks from boys whose tongues would turn to wood when she tried to talk to them; the guilty leers from her father’s stodgy friends and the subsequent chilly smiles of their disapproving wives. But this flashy, fast-­talking stranger sitting uninvited beside her, casually lighting another cigarette from the still-­burning end of his last, talked about her looks in the same tone he might use to talk about the weather. His disinterest was strangely comforting; it made her feel she could trust him.
“Well, he’s got a pretty morbid way of doing it,” Marga- ret said.
“You’ll get no arguments from me. But at least now I get to be a hero.”
Is this a come-­on after all? The soda jerk was one thing, but this man was old enough to be her father. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“What I mean, duchess, is that I’m delighted to inform you that good old Wally, the Mata Hari of the Malt Machine, is one hundred percent wrong as usual. Your Miss Chesterfield’s not been bumped off or knocked off or shuffled off or any other off. Aren’t you relieved? Now go on. Smile. I bet a smile from you would be something to see.”
“But if no one’s seen her in weeks . . . ,” Margaret began, “I mean, how can you be sure?”
“Perhaps I ought to be a gentleman and introduce myself,” the man said, putting out his hand. “Larry Julius. Director of the publicity department at Olympus Studios.”
“You!” Margaret suddenly realized where she’d seen the man before. “From the premiere! You made the announcement about Diana.”
“Don’t hold that against me. I’m not much of an orator.”
“But . . . you must know where she is! You do, don’t you?”
“Maybe.” Larry Julius looked thoughtful. “If you were Diana Chesterfield, where would you be?”
“In New York, rehearsing a glamorous new play on Broadway,” Margaret replied dreamily. “Or in Paris, shopping for all the latest couture fashions. Or in England, at the stately home of a handsome and fabulously rich duke who wants to marry me but I’m not sure I want to give up my career.”
Larry Julius laughed. “That all sounds lovely. I’m sure she’s doing one or all of those things.” He knows, but he’s not telling me, Margaret thought, but something sharp in his tone warned her not to press any further. Stubbing out his cigarette, Larry gazed pensively at Diana’s photo in the still open copy of Picture Palace for a moment before looking back at Margaret.
“You an actress, kid?”
“No,” Margaret said, eyes wide with surprise. “I’m from Pasadena.”
Larry Julius’s hoot of laughter was so loud and startling that Margaret almost knocked over her chocolate soda again. “ ‘I’m not an actress, I’m from Pasadena!’ That’s good. I’m going to have to remember that one.” Still chuckling, he reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket, extracting an engraved gold case, which he opened with a smooth click. “I’ll tell you what, kiddo. I like you. You got something, some fire under all that finishing-­school class. Maybe this is crazy, but if you ever get a yen to see how that little mug of yours would hold up in front of a camera, you let me know.”
If nothing else, a childhood of interminable Rotarian dinners and country club dances had taught Margaret how to tell when a business card actually meant business, and the one Larry Julius pressed into her hand was about as business as it got. Cream-­colored, almost too thick to bend. The name embossed richly in swooping black Aviator typeface. And at the very top, engraved as deeply as if it had been carved by the finger of God himself, a picture of a lightning bolt crowned with a wreath of laurel. The same one that swooped grandly across the screen, accompanied by a majestic fanfare of trumpets, every time the lights came down for a picture starring Diana Chesterfield or Dane Forrest or Jimmy Molloy.
The logo of Olympus Studios.
“You think I could be in the pictures?” Margaret squeaked. “Me?”
“Well, let’s not get carried away.” Larry Julius held up his hands. “All I’m talking about is a test. You call up my office, say, ‘Hello, this is . . .’ ”
“Margaret. Margaret Frobisher.”
“Frobisher?” Larry Julius made a face. “We can fix that. You call that number and we’ll take it from there. I’m not making any promises. But from the looks of you, unless the camera magically reveals you’ve got a set of antlers and no arms or legs, I think you’ll be all right, kid.”
Margaret suddenly felt dizzy. This was the sixth time so far this school year she’d worked up the courage to skip out on her afternoon classes and make the long journey by streetcar from Pasadena to Hollywood. She’d get off at the Hollywood Boulevard stop and find a ladies’ room somewhere to change clothes. She’d go in looking like a schoolgirl in the navy boiled wool uniform of Orange Grove (which was based on those of its sister academy in Scotland and which no one had ever thought to adapt to the Southern California heat) and emerge a sophisticated starlet in the outfit she’d stashed that morning in her schoolbag: a snug cashmere sweater, a slim pencil skirt, a healthy pucker of the Helena Rubenstein Chinese Red lipstick her mother had strictly forbidden her to wear. She wouldn’t do anything special, just sit around at the soda fountain at the Formosa or Schwab’s or John’s Cafe drinking Cokes and reading magazines until she ran out of money, or walk up and down Highland looking at the palm trees. Sometimes she’d even spot a movie star in the flesh: George Brent working his way through the tuna salad platter at Schwab’s, Jackie Coogan reading comic books off the rack, Ann Sheridan combing her famous red hair in the backseat of a car.
But the whole time, in a deep, dark corner of herself she scarcely dared visit, Margaret was hoping that someone would notice her. That someone important would see that she was more than just some silly teenage fan, staring and squealing and trying to get up the nerve to ask for an autograph in the little yellow leather album Doris had given her for Christ- mas. That just like Ann Sheridan or Joan Crawford or Diana Chesterfield, Margaret Frobisher could be a star.
“Do me one favor, huh, kid?” Larry Julius was saying, draining the last of his coffee. “Now I’ve put the idea in your head, don’t go waltzing off to Paramount or MGM, seeing if they’ve got an eye out. You’re a lady, aren’t you?”
“I hope so.”
“Good. Because every girl we got at Olympus is a lady, and if she isn’t, we turn her into one. And we’ve got a saying: ‘A lady leaves the dance with the one that brung her.’ You got me?” He peered at her intently. “Say, duchess, you look pale. You feel okay?”
“Yes. I mean . . . it’s just . . .”
“Spit it out, kid. You ain’t cracking up on me, are you?”
Margaret squeezed her eyes shut tight for a moment, trying to collect her thoughts. “It’s just . . . it can’t happen like this, can it?”
“Like what?”
“Like this.” Margaret gestured toward the counter. “I mean, you can’t be a schoolgirl drinking a chocolate soda one minute and a star the next. Things like that don’t happen in real life. Things like that only happen in the movies.”
Larry Julius put on his hat. “This is Hollywood, kid. Who the hell knows the difference?”