Читать книгу Platinum Doll - Anne Girard - Страница 11

Chapter Four

“Breakfast in bed, milady,” Chuck said with a gallant nod as he set the tray on her lap one morning after they had been out late the night before with Rosalie and Ivor.

He was barefoot and wearing only a pale blue pair of pajama bottoms.

Harlean struggled to sit up as she brushed the hair back from her face. “What’s this for?” she sleepily asked.

“Just for being you. I brought all of your favorites—hard-boiled egg, orange juice, coffee and toast with marmalade. Look, doll, I know I’m not the easiest person sometimes, so I have to work that much harder at things.” There was a single pink rose in a bud vase beside her coffee. She leaned in to smell its sweet fragrance before she looked up at him.

“You’re perfect just as you are, Chuck.”

He drew back the draperies and morning light flooded their bedroom. His expression was calm and she could see that he was totally at ease. “If only that were true.”

Harlean pushed away all thought of the hidden note and pressed a happy kiss onto his cheek. “I’m starving.”

“I knew you would be.”

He sank onto the bed beside her and propped himself back against the headboard as she took a sip of coffee. “I have something for you,” he said.

And with that, he drew from his end table a small leather volume and gave it to her. He was awkward with it, this humble offering, one he did not fully appreciate, but it was an offering nonetheless to the woman he loved—an early volume of Keats’s poetry. Harlean gasped seeing it. Tears brightened her eyes.

“How did you know?”

“I’ve listened to every word you’ve ever spoken and I’ve heard them all. Read me one,” he bid her.

“Are you sure?”

In response he very tenderly said, “I’m not going to pretend I understand any of those poems, but read me a bit of something and I promise to try.”

And so she read him her favorite poem by John Keats, taking time with each exquisite line, because it was the one that had always reminded her of love, of marriages, and how they came apart sometimes, as her parents’ marriage had. It also made her the more insistent that her own never would.

Afterward, she kissed him again but more deeply this time. Her heart was so full of love for this complicated, tender young man, and it made her worry for him. She so wanted him to be happy here. Then she asked him about his new world here, and how his golf game with the others was coming along.

Chuck had been disappearing from the house for hours at a time when she and Rosalie were off shopping for furniture. She knew he was working to be included in the group of young men in the neighborhood. But for now the saving grace in Harlean’s mind was seeing him carefree, his demons hopefully put to rest. Winning them over was at least an objective and she decided that it was better for him to have some sort of goal than none at all.

As she had predicted to him over dinner one evening a few days earlier, he was eventually invited to the country club to join them for a game of golf and then for tennis. Their days of sporting routinely ended with drinks at the country club bar in a private room where a blind eye was turned to the dictates of Prohibition.

“I’m pretty pitiful at it really,” he said of his golf game. “But my aim at this point is to charm them sufficiently so that they don’t care.”

She pressed another breezy kiss onto his cheek, rose from the bed, then yawned and stretched in a long butter-yellow ray of sunlight. “If you haven’t won them over yet, you will soon enough.”

“You really do believe in me, don’t you, doll?”

“One hundred percent. I just want you to be happy. And thank you for the book.”

“You really like it, then?”

She heard the familiar catch in his voice, just a note—but it came from that fragile need for reassurance. “You knew I would. It’s incredible. It’s a very rare volume, you know.”

“I’d like to think I’ll always know what you like.”

“You sure don’t have to win me over like that with things, Chuck. You know I adore you already. I always will.”

He searched her face for a moment and when she saw him finally give away just a hint of a smile, she knew that he did.

Later that day they decided to go to the pictures. Harlean was thrilled that Chuck was willing to sit through a romantic comedy because she knew he disliked them. He didn’t even complain about this one, though, and he told her he actually enjoyed it as they walked back to their car. Marriage was give-and-take, and it was so good to feel that they were both doing their part. Harlean couldn’t imagine anything that could be better than what the two of them had together right now. She loved decorating their home, and learning to cook. Even thoughts of writing a novel began to fade from her mind. The only thing lacking was that she missed her family more every day, her mother most especially, but she tried her best not to think too much of that.

* * *

Over the next few days, Harlean relished seeing how happy Chuck was here in their lovely hideaway, and how at ease he was when they were together, cooking together, or when she was trying to teach him about poetry. Please let things stay just as they are, she found herself thinking. She repeated that to herself daily until it became almost like a mantra. Coming to California had been good for him. He had left everything behind in the Midwest just as she had. She said it to herself even that evening a few days later, when his new set of friends delivered him back home, propped up between them after an afternoon of carousing.

“Ol’ Chuck sure is the life of the party. He was dancing on tables over at Musso and Frank’s an hour ago.” Blake Kendrick who lived next door gave Harlean an apologetic shrug as he handed Chuck over to her.

Harlean did her best not to show her disappointment. Damn, why did he always have to drink so much?

She thanked them with a believable smile and, after they’d gone, she dutifully tucked him into bed, kissed his forehead and turned out the light.

An unsettling concern pressed in on her again as she leaned against the closed door and let out a heavy sigh. She needed for him to stay just as content as he had been at first. Everything for her depended on that. They were alone here after all, and with Chuck gone so often lately, she had begun secretly to feel the greater pull of homesickness every day. Of course, she couldn’t tell Chuck that because he always said they were each other’s family now. For his sake, she tried very hard to make that true.

A few moments later, she went to the telephone and quietly dialed the number, hoping he was too sound asleep to hear. It wasn’t Sunday yet but, tonight especially, she just needed to hear her mother’s reassuring voice on the other end of the line.

* * *

Once the house was fully furnished, Chuck insisted on organizing another party. He planned on inviting everyone they’d met so far in Beverly Hills. It seemed a huge undertaking, but helping him gave Harlean a way to keep busy as the shine of the housewives’ world was fading by the day for her.

He planned to grill hot dogs, since he knew they were Harlean’s favorite food, and he had a florist fill the house with orchids and fragrant roses.

“I’ve put out the rest of the hootch we brought with us from Chicago. I hope it will be enough,” he said as he set clean glassware onto the kitchen counter next to bootleg bottles of gin and whiskey.

“Will you stop your worrying? Everything will be great.”

“So many of them have houses that are so much larger than ours. Maybe we should have bought a bigger place.”

Harlean went to him and twined her arms around his neck. She was wearing her favorite unstructured beige trousers, sneakers and a crisp white polo shirt, the way she had seen Joan Crawford do. Although, she didn’t think she could look quite as chic as the young star it was certainly fun to try.

She pressed herself against Chuck’s taut chest, and tenderly kissed him. In response to the gesture, he took her face in his hands.

“I love you like this, without makeup or anything. You have such lovely skin,” he said as he reached around and pressed his hands against her spine, drawing them closer together. “But I do wish you would wear a brassiere.”

She turned her lip out in a pout. “You know how I hate them, and my breasts are so small no one notices anyway.”

“Oh, they notice, all right.”

“Just to make you happy, I’ll put one on, then,” she said with a seductive half grin. “And I was going to do up my face for the party.”

“Then good thing that’s not for a while, because I have plans for you first, Mrs. McGrew.”

He pulled her more tightly, murmuring the words into her hair, and she felt a delicious shiver of anticipation. “Do you now, Mr. McGrew?”

“Oh, yes, indeed I do.”

“Anything I should be warned about?”

His smile was fox-like and adorable to her. “Not a chance. That would ruin all the fun.”

An hour later, the house pulsed with the sound of boisterous laughter. Music rolled and spilled out into the backyard where one of the guys was just lighting the BBQ. Harlean allowed herself a gin and soda with some of the girls. Then they wanted her to play the upbeat Louis Armstrong tune, “Weather Bird,” on the gramophone so they could dance.

She went back inside to change the music and paused at the kitchen window. She glanced out, and was surprised and happy to see Chuck looking like the life of the party, a real part of the group as he told a story, and everyone looked rapt.

She turned back around and saw Rosalie and Louis B. Mayer’s dignified and rail thin daughter Irene dancing the Charleston in the living room. Rosalie proudly explained earlier that she had met the MGM boss’s daughter one afternoon after she had weaseled her way into the studio commissary after a casting call and they had become friends. Irene brought her boyfriend David Selznick with her tonight and was intent on showing him off since he was an up-and-comer in the industry.

The story of how Irene and Rosalie met hadn’t surprised Harlean after their escapade at the Brown Derby. Clearly, Rosalie had perfected the art of looking like she belonged, and Harlean could stand to take chances like that, as well. Harlean had gone to school with Irene when she was in California the last time, but if Irene remembered her, she didn’t show it.

“Come over and dance with us, Harlean!” Rosalie called out to her happily.

“Yes, come on!” Irene seconded, her face already glistening as they all did the animated steps of a flapper.

Harlean finally joined in and shimmied to the end of the tune, when they all collapsed back onto the sofa. Irene introduced her friend then, a dark-eyed and exotic-looking girl named Katie. Her father was a powerful director, Cecil B. DeMille. As they were introduced, Harlean tried hard not to gape at the two spirited girls whose fathers practically owned Hollywood.

“Well, there are certainly no dance stars among the lot of us!” Katie DeMille sighed as she dabbed her face with the back of her hand.

“Probably no stars at all,” Irene added.

“I don’t know if I’d say that’s true,” Rosalie countered. “Last week, Harlean here got a personal letter of introduction written to the head of Central Casting from two Fox executives, and she wasn’t even trying. She was just sitting in the car waiting for me to check the rolls. They said she had ‘the look.’”

“They did not!” Irene exclaimed.

“Dave Allen is the head of Central Casting, I know him quite well. He’s a close friend of my father’s,” said Katie DeMille as her smile gave way to a more measured expression. “Dave is not easily swayed. What’d he have to say when you got there?”

“I didn’t go.”

“What do you mean, you didn’t go?” Irene Mayer gasped. She perked up and sat forward on the sofa. Her eyes grew wide. “That’s absolutely crazy!”

“He wouldn’t hire her right off the street like that anyway,” Katie blandly countered.

“I bet you wouldn’t have the nerve to go and see,” Irene added. “Especially since you’ve waited all this time, it would just be awkward now.”

“That’s probably true,” Rosalie chimed with a laugh. Harlean could tell she was trying to keep things light. “And casting offices are busy places. They’ve probably forgotten all about you by now.”

Harlean huffed in response to being ganged up on. Faced with condescension, it ignited her fighting spirit. “What would you like to bet?” she asked Irene.

Katie and Rosalie exchanged a glance. “We were only teasing,” Rosalie said.

“You mentioned a bet, let’s bet.”

Even though Harlean was smiling she could tell that they all felt the shift in her tone.

“All right,” Irene cautiously replied. “What do you want if I’m wrong?”

She glanced up at the lovely pearl brooch attached to Irene’s collar. “How ’bout that?”

Mayer’s eyes widened just slightly. Beyond that, she hid her surprise well. “You’ll never go through with it, so sure. But the brooch it is. And if I’m right and you don’t find the nerve, one of those beautiful orchids, hand delivered by you to my doorstep once a month for a year.”

Harlean fought a smile. Irene didn’t know what a poor choice it was to bet against her. She wouldn’t really take personal jewelry even after she had won the wager, she wasn’t that cruel. But she might borrow it for a day or two just to make a point. One thing was sure, she reveled in the moment where Louis B. Mayer’s daughter couldn’t be quite sure.

After the evening was at an end, and the guests happily stumbled out to their cars, Ivor and Rosalie followed Chuck and Harlean back inside. Chuck had invited them to stay for a nightcap. At least that had been his proposal before he realized they were out of alcohol. As Harlean and Rosalie took stock in the kitchen, they found that every last morsel of food, and every drop of liquor, had been consumed.

“Man, those boys can drink,” Chuck sighed, turning over a bottle of wine left on the kitchen counter to see if there was even a drop left inside.

“We held our own,” Ivor returned with a snicker as he slung his arm fraternally over Chuck’s shoulder.

“You sure did,” Rosalie added. “You’re both more than a little drunk.”

“Aw, don’t be a spoilsport, Rosie. We were all just havin’ fun,” Ivor replied with a smile as he smacked a breezy kiss onto her cheek. “Besides, Chuck and I can’t have those boys thinking we can’t keep up.”

She frowned at him in response and pretended to wipe his kiss away but she did not try to conceal her real affection for him.

Harlean walked back into the living room to begin cleaning up, and Rosalie followed her. There were dirty dishes and glassware scattered everywhere. The pungent odor of cigarettes was strong.

“I can’t believe you started that whole thing,” Harlean said as she collected the plates and Rosalie gathered up the glasses.

“Started what?”

“The challenge.”

Rosalie bit back a smile. “I didn’t. Irene did. But obviously that was an opportunity not to be missed. Besides, it’d be worth it just to see the look on Katie DeMille’s face if you went through with it, since she claims to know Dave Allen so well.”

“You don’t think I’ll do it, do you?”

“I don’t know. Will you?”

“Chuck wouldn’t want me to, I know that. He always thought my mother had been foolish to try to break into Hollywood.”

“Well, he wouldn’t even have to know.”

Harlean took the plates back into the kitchen and set them on the counter. When she glanced through the window over the sink, she saw Chuck and Ivor on the patio now. They were looking up at the sky and talking. “You think I should lie to my husband?”

“It’s not like he always tells you the truth. Weren’t you just telling me you have no idea what he does all day when he leaves the house?”

“I assumed he was with Ivor.”

“Not all the time.”

“Chuck wouldn’t cheat on me.”

“Of course not, honey. Any fool can see he’s crazy about you. I only meant, even married people have their secrets. It keeps things fresh.”

She turned on the tap, feeling a sudden flare of anger and doubt. She was trying to learn from Rosalie but Harlean, who was still only seventeen, wasn’t as confident as she knew she could make herself appear, and she hated other people knowing it. Mother always said, Look confident, Baby, and you will be confident.

“What’s the point, anyway? It’s not like I actually want to be an actress.”

“There’s always a point to accepting a dare. Be bold, be daring!” Rosalie exclaimed, and her brown eyes glittered.

Outside, Chuck and Ivor laughed suddenly about something the girls couldn’t hear.

“They have their little secrets, we should have ours,” Rosalie declared.

“All right.”

“You’ll do it?”

“Why not?”

And that really was the point. Harlean couldn’t think of any good reason not to do it. She certainly didn’t have anything else interesting to do with her days. It was crazy, surely. But, who knew, maybe it would be fun. And it would be great to win a bet with Louis B. Mayer’s slightly condescending daughter, and shock the daughter of Cecil B. DeMille, both at the same time. But more than that, this might just be an occasion to see if a bit of Rosalie’s awe-inspiring self-confidence had rubbed off on her. Her proclaimed disdain for the Hollywood studio system was from her mother’s experience, her fear of what it did to young women belonged to Chuck. Having a secret for a while might just afford her the ability to challenge herself and, for the first time, decide on her own how she actually felt about it all.