A Touch of Stardust (4 page)

“The publicity office at the studio. And have your wits about you this time, kiddo.”

He got out of the car, came around, and opened her door.

“And by the way—you are pretty, you dope,” he said after walking her up the path; he was watching as she turned her key in the lock of the rooming house on Fairfax Avenue. His smile this time was almost mischievous. “How could you not know it?”

She slept well that night.

The next morning, Julie arrived early. She walked slowly up the drive of Selznick International Pictures in Culver City, savoring the beauty of the gleaming white building with its graceful pillars. Selznick’s mansion was supposed to be a replica of George Washington’s Mount Vernon, but she imagined it as Tara, and played with the idea that she was walking toward home, feeling the gentle swaying of her skirts, hearing the bustle of the plantation.…

A sudden sharp honk blared, and she jumped away from a fast-approaching car. It passed unnervingly close, close enough for her to catch a glimpse of the man she had so stupidly not recognized yesterday on the platform. Clark Gable did not look happy. Julie caught a quick flash of a blond head next to him, but whether it was Carole Lombard she couldn’t tell.

Voices were muted in the crowded publicity department. That was because there was a great deal of shouting coming from Selznick’s office down the hall, and all were pretending not to hear. But the voices were reverberating too loudly through the main corridor for the pretense to work.

The only person who looked unconcerned was Andy. He sat casually on a desk, twirling a pencil in his fingers, talking to a smiling woman with long legs and dark hair pulled back in lush, sculpted waves. Julie had tried for that style, but she couldn’t make it work—her hair was too thick. She knew instantly this was Doris, and she had better stop thinking about her hair if she wanted to make a decent impression.

Andy looked up and beckoned. Doris swiveled in her chair and met Julie’s eyes with a cool gaze that told Julie all she needed to know. This woman was not her friend.

“Well, hello there. You’re the girl who got in trouble with Selznick yesterday? Good thing you met his favorite protégé—our golden boy here.” She tossed a grin at Andy.

“She’s got more going for her than I do,” Andy cut in as the
shouts from Selznick’s office grew louder. “Lombard is in her corner. Doris, meet Julie, and vice versa.”

They stared at each other. Doris blinked at almost the same time Julie did.

“Well—” Doris began.

The door to Selznick’s office suddenly blew open, slammed back with enough force to crack the plaster. Gable straddled the entry, his physical presence stopping all conversation. Nothing quivered on the man except, oddly, his pupils. They seemed to be part of the audience to his indignation, just like all the other eyes in the room. He strode out, his face registering fury, which only made his presence in the room more powerful. Julie drew in her breath—could there be a more masculine man than this one? Probably every woman in the room would consider succumbing, even now—when he looked ready to kill somebody.

He strode past them, head up, moving toward the front door. Behind him, framed in the doorway, Selznick stood with arms folded, watching coldly—the man in charge, made of stone. Next to him, Carole Lombard, dressed again in flowing pants and what looked like the same wrinkled shirt from yesterday, stared after Gable.

“Hey, Pa!” she yelled.

Gable stopped and looked back.

“Sweetie, you’re the King,” she called out. Her voice was so huge, so soothing, it swallowed the air in the room. Even the phones, respectfully, went silent. “And every fucking person in this building knows that,” she continued. “Not to mention everyone in the fucking country. So why don’t you come on back here, and we’ll work this little squabble out? Come on, Pa. For me.”

Gable paused near the door, the muscles of his handsome face working. Pulling himself up straight, he slowly pivoted, a full theatrical turn. He glared at Selznick, then walked with measured steps through the silent room back to the producer’s office. Lombard reached out and tweaked his ear, grinning. Turning, all three retreated and closed the door.

A collective sigh of relief stirred movement, followed by the hum of business as usual. The phones were ringing again; permission had somehow been granted to resume.

“Same problem?” Andy asked, looking singularly unimpressed.

Doris leaned back in her chair, picked up a nail file, and drew it sharply across a broken nail. Julie winced at the sound.

“Same as before. He isn’t getting the royal MGM treatment here, and he’s afraid he isn’t up to the part,” she answered. “And you never heard it from me.”

“He wouldn’t derail this movie.”

“Of course not. But he’s still scared, and he doesn’t want Cukor.”

“We both know why.”

“Well, the
public
reason is that Cukor is masterful at directing women, not so good at directing men.” She paused, then added, “Gable needs Lombard more now than ever.”

“When is his divorce final?”

“When his wife finally gets the money she wants and settles. MGM is sweetening the pot. Couldn’t be soon enough for Carole.”

They both chuckled companionably, and Julie felt frustrated.

“Excuse me,” she began.

Doris looked up with a faint smile, and Julie had the distinct impression she hadn’t been forgotten at all. “Well, since you’re such a favorite of Lombard’s, we’ll have you escort her to this afternoon’s interview,” Doris said. “You go with her and we’ll see how you do. There’ll be someone with you to show you the ropes.”

The “someone with you” turned out to be Rose, her roommate and partner in the mimeograph room. Rose was just as bewildered over what “the ropes” were as Julie was.

“Just you and me?” she said with astonishment. “What are we supposed to do?”

Julie had no answer. She and Rose shared a mutual low-grade desperation because neither was good at her job, but this was worse.
Rose could type a little, though she was always dabbing correction fluid over her pages, and when Julie copied them, the corrections turned black and looked terrible.

“Kind of moth-eaten,” Rose had admitted one day when Julie showed her a particularly messy page. “They’re going to fire me, I know.”

“Retype it and let’s try again,” Julie said. This was one way to forge a friendship, and it worked.

But now they were at a loss.

Andy was heading out the door of the studio office when Julie grabbed him. “What do I do?” she asked. “What do they want?”

He looked a little surprised. “You’ll figure it out,” he said. “You’re there to keep the reporter on his toes—just look stern and clear your throat once in a while.”

“Andy, please, be serious.”

He now looked fully astonished. “What are you worried about? You’ve got access to Lombard, so now figure out how to make the best of it. Dinner tonight?” He plucked his hat off the rack by the door, adjusted the brim, and put it on.

“I’ll think about it,” she said.

“Suit yourself.”

Was that a flicker of disappointment in his eyes? Well, if he couldn’t give her a little more support, it was too bad.

He turned the door handle and was gone before she could change her mind.

Julie and Rose made their way past the scorched back lot to get to Lombard’s dressing room, an opulently outfitted trailer, which was on the far side of the studio grounds. Dozens of trucks filled with brick dust were lumbering one by one onto the field, dumping their loads as crews on the ground armed with rakes combed the coppery-red silt into the scorched soil.

“Someone told me it’s to make it look like Southern clay,” Rose said. “Mr. Selznick wants every detail to be perfect. He’s amazing.”

“How can they work so fast? And to start building Tara on top of this tomorrow …” Julie shook her head, squinting into the afternoon sun as they walked along the edges of the lot, steering clear of the powdery brick dust curling into the air.

“It is kind of magical, isn’t it?” Rose said shyly. “Aren’t we lucky to be here?”

Julie nodded, grateful that Rose felt the same thump of excitement in her breast. Maybe they were just starstruck newcomers. Maybe seeing the mechanics of it all might eventually drain the magic out. But they were here, right now, part of the movie world—albeit on the edge. Anything could happen.

“Afraid we’ll get disillusioned?” she asked, thinking of Andy’s wry, almost mocking take on his own world.

“Not me,” Rose said firmly. “Anything I don’t want to see, I’ll just close my eyes.”

Julie pondered that briefly, wondering if she could do the same.
And there they were again, the two voices inside of her, one arguing for reality and the other for dreams. She had to fly
somewhere
.

She glanced at Rose with a touch of envy. Rose might look fragile, but she probably knew how to set boundaries and lock gates better than Julie did.