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EILEEN OOUDGE

hand on hip, posing in front of Sleeping Beauty’s castle at the just-opened Disneyland. Eve, crouched down in front of Grauman’s, hands planted in wet cement. Eve, flashing an Ipana smile, at the wheel of the brand-new Bel Air convertible presented to her by Universal.

A goddamn museum, she thought. Eve might have walked out on Syd, but he sure hadn’t let go of her.

Dolly stared at him. The kind of handsome MamaJo would’ve called “slick as snake oil” … except he was starting to dry up a little around the edges, gray at the temples, a row of tiny pleats along his upper lip. Right now, with his feet propped on an open desk drawer, long legs clothed in gray tropical-weight serge, his brown eyes boring into her, Dolly felt as if she were staring down the twin barrels of Daddy’s twelve-gauge Winchester. Syd’s eyes, set alongside a jutting Roman nose, seemed almost gleeful.

Definitely a grade B agent, maybe not even that, but still she couldn’t in all fairness blame him for the lousy turn her career had taken-the halfway decent box office of Dames in Chains notwithstanding. Judging him as a man, she’d as soon sleep with a side-winder.

But her feeling toward him at this particular moment was much stronger than mere distaste. Clutching the horrid document he’d placed in her care, Dolly hated the son of a bitch across from her-grinning like an egg-suck dog in a henhouse-for knowing her heart the way a local boy knows the hidden back roads of his hometown. And for giving her a choice she never should’ve had.

Why didn’t she just stand up and walk out?

But he’d said he had something important to tell her. She’d come this far; might as well stick around to hear the rest.

“Why me?” she pressed. “Why send that thing to me when you could’ve been the big patriot and presented it personally to Senator McCarthy … if you hate Eve that bad?”

“You got it all wrong, this is business, your business, nothing personal on my end,” he said evenly, betrayed

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only by a cold flicker of his eyes. “Now you’re ready to talk, am I right? Are we having a conversation here?”

She leaned forward, trembling a little, bracing her elbows against her knees. Her stomach was rolling again.

“Okay, but don’t you forget she’s my sister, for God’s sake!” Dolly thought of her niece, too, Eve’s little Annie. Both of them her flesh and blood.

“First, hear me out,” he said, his tone reasonable, soothing even, “then you make up your own mind.” He waited until she’d settled back against the spongy sofa. “That’s better. Dolly sweetheart, you know what’s wrong with you? You’re nice. And in this business, nice is just another word for stupid. Nice and a nickel will buy you a phone call. What it won’t get you is the lead in Devil May Care.”

Dolly saw his mouth move, heard the words, but there was an infinite lapse before she made the connection. Then it hit her like a double bourbon straight up. Devil May Care: Maggie Dumont, the part every star in town was angling for. But Eve had it sewed up.

Anger flashed through her. The bastard! Where did he get off dangling this in front of her? How dare he suggest even for one second that a plum like that could possibly be within her reach?

Then she saw that he actually looked serious.

“What are you saying?” she asked.

“I’m saying that if you want it, I’m eighty-eight percent certain I could get it for you.”

Dolly felt something snap like a sprung garter inside her, an almost dead hope kicking to life. Then it came to her-Devil was Preminger’s. And last year it was Eve starring in his picture that had gotten him that Best Director Oscar. I

“Even if Eve got knocked out of the running, what makes you tnink Preminger would consider me?” she demanded. “I was up for Storm Alley too, remember? You were even negotiating terms. And Eve somehow got it, and for probably a hundred times what they would have paid me.”

“Exactly my point. Preminger, he’d turn handstands

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for Eve Dearfield. He’s crazy about her. In his mind, she is Maggie Dumont. Think, Dolly, sweetie. Put yourself in Otto’s shoes. If he can’t have Eve, what’s the next best thing?”

Could that be true, Dolly wondered? No question, she and Eve did look alike. But if she could pin her downfall on any one thing, that would be it. Only sixteen months apart, practically twins, except that Eve was beautiful, and she was … well, okay, pretty. In the framed photo above Syd’s head, she saw Eve’s hair, naturally blond, almost platinum. Hers, under its honey-colored dye job, was just plain dishwater. And where Eve’s eyes were a deep, startling indigo, Dolly’s were the washed-out blue of faded denim. It was as if an artist had done a rough sketch, then seeing where he could improve, had painted an exquisite portrait. I’d have been better off ugly … that way there’d have been no comparing. The only thing she had over Eve was her tits-a perfect 38D. Until senior year at Clemscott High, she was the one who had all the boys chasing after her like goats in rut.

No, she thought. No way would Preminger cast a Bmovie lookalike when he could have the real thing. But if Eve were out of the way …

Suppose Syd was right. He wouldn’t be sitting here without taking two dozen phone calls if he hadn’t put out some feelers and gotten some solid feedback. Why else would he be spending his valuable time with her? He might not be loaded with hot properties, but he had clients working all over radio and TV. Even so, a deal like this, in addition to the cash, would put them both on the front page of the trades; and it could just turn out to be her big break. Syd had a decent enough client list, he had moxie to spare, but what he didn’t have was a star.

So, yeah, sure, Syd was looking to make a buck, make a splash … but he also had to be remembering how Eve had dumped him like a load of cowshit off the back of a pickup.

“I could pretend I never saw this.” She swallowed hard, and tapped the envelope against her stockinged knee. The tadpole in her stomach had become a bullfrog,

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huge and feisty. “What’s it to me if Eve joined some pinko club way back when? She probably thought she was helping save the world-settin’ around some smoky back room listening to a bunch of wet-eared wingers. She’d have gotten tired of that real fast.” Dolly felt a thin layer of frost form over her heart. “Eve’s for Eve, and you can take that to the bank.”

She thought of Val, surprised by the keenness of the ache she felt. It had happened almost a year ago, and she hadn’t known him more than a few weeks to begin with… certainly not long enough to go around moaning about a broken heart.

It was Eve who had hurt her, she realized. Not Val’s double-crossing.

“You could do nothing,” Syd answered, as if coolly thinking it all over. His swivel chair gave a little squeal as he leaned back even farther, hooking his long hands behind a head of hair so lush and springy it looked as if he must fertilize it with manure … which, considering how full of it he was, wouldn’t be too hard. “You could, but I don’t think you will.”

Dolly felt a tightening in her gut. “I still don’t get it. Why go to all this bother? Why don’t you just send your thirty pieces of silver to Washington yourself? You don’t need me.”

“You’re right, baby doll. I don’t need you. It’s you who needs me.”

She found herself standing up, the envelope fluttering from her lap onto the beige carpet. To hell with him; for all the good he was doing her, she might as well be on her own.

“I need you, Syd, like I need two assholes.”

The grin was back, but this time cold enough to make her shiver. Ha hunched forward, palms flat against the desktop, fingers splayed. Heat from his fingertips fogged the spotless glass.

“Dolly, sweetie. You still don’t get it, do you?” He spoke softly, but each word hit her like a drop from a melting icicle. “All this time, you thought it was Eve, didn’t you? That Eve was better-looking and more

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ented? But that’s not it, baby. What Eve has that you don’t is fangs. She’d kill to get a part, any part. You, Dolly, you’re too soft. In this business, you’ve gotta think like a barracuda. Take it where you can get it. Shit, you don’t think Jane Russell was fucking Howard Hughes for his dick, do you?” He paused, waiting for her to absorb all this; then he got up and walked around to where she’d dropped the letter. He picked it up and handed it back to her. He wore a gold signet ring on his pinkie, she saw; in the golden, dusty light that slanted through the Venetian blinds, it seemed to be winking at her. “Show me how much you want this, baby. Show me you’d do anything, and you’ll be halfway there. Then”-he smiled-“if something should happen to Eve, like she gets sick all of a sudden, or runs off to Acapulco with that stud of hers … or, say she just happens to get blacklisted-well then, what do you think Otto’s gonna say when you walk into his office looking damn near enough like Eve to be her twin?”

Dolly only half heard him. Her mind suddenly was elsewhere. Clear as a Technicolor movie, she was seeing two bleary-eyed, scrawny girls stepping off a Greyhound bus-Doris and Evie Burdock, come all the way from Clemscott, Kentucky-lugging a single battered cardboard suitcase between them, giggling, punch-drunk with exhaustion and high spirits. She could hear Eve’s high sweet voice ringing across the years: It’s just you and me from now on, Dorrie, like Mutt and Jeff. We’ll always have each other … nothing will ever come between us… .

Though they didn’t have a hundred bucks between them, things were different back then. Better, in a way she couldn’t have explained. Dolly thought of the stuffy one-room apartment they’d shared, overlooking the tarpits, which smelled all summer like the flatulent back end of a bus. No phone even; they’d had to use the super’s.

And then, when they’d finally scraped together enough for a deposit on their own phone, the first time it rang, who was it but Syd calling to tell Eve she’d landed a small part in a low-budget picture called Mrs. Melrose. Eve, so excited she was practically jumping out of her skin,

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had splurged on two bottles of pink champagne, and they’d sat up all night, hugging each other, talking, spinning tipsy fantasies about how in just a couple more years they’d both be big movie stars, their names a foot high on marquees all over the country.

And even when times weren’t so great, they’d struggled through them together, one week pooling the piddling change she earned waitressing with Eve’s salary as a salesclerk in Newberry’s to buy one good dress for the two of them for the really important auditions.

Except, come to think of it, wasn’t it Eve who always ended up wearing that damn dress?

She squeezed her eyes shut, a pulse throbbing over one eye.

Yeah, she thought, Eve could be fun and sweet… and even generous at times. The trouble was, however much she gave, she needed to get double. And the things that were out of reach were what she wanted most of all. Eve could no more resist a challenge than the tides could resist a full moon.

Dolly opened her eyes, and saw that Syd was eyeing her with something close to sympathy. That, she decided, was worse than him ranting at her. She stood up.

“I’ll think about it,” she said.

“You think too much. Anyway, it doesn’t have to be the end of the world, you know,” he urged, lazily unfolding his lanky frame from the swivel chair, clasping her hand in a moist handshake that made her itch to wipe her palm on her skirt. “This whole McCarthy scare’ll probably blow over in a month or two. She might lose out on a few pictures, but knowing Eve, she’ll be back on her feet before you can say ‘That’s a wrap.’ “

Maybe he was right, Dolly thought … but what if he wasn’t? How would she feel knowing she’d ruined Eve’s career, and maybe her whole life? No, let him find someone else to take Eve’s place, to stick the knife in her back.

Not until she was outside, and halfway to Sunset, did Dolly realize she was still clutching the letter. She thought about tearing it up, and tossing it in a trash can.

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EILEEN OOUDGE

But she didn’t see one, so she shoved it back into her purse and kept walking.

“Dolly, how did that crack get there?” Annie sat

on a high stool in the kitchen of Dolly’s Westwood bungalow, swinging her little feet back and forth between its rust-speckled chrome legs.

Dolly, stirring a saucepan at the stove, looked over at her three-and-a-half-yearold niece, then up at where Annie was pointing, at the dark jaggedy spine of a plastered-over crack that bisected the ceiling. In the middle of it was a single bare light bulb that cast an uneven glare over the cramped kitchen nook.

“That? Why, honey, that’s what you call history. This old place is a map of every earthquake to hit Los Angeles County since the walls of Jericho came tumbling down.”

Eyes glued to the ceiling, Annie licked her lips, a pink sliver of tongue neat as a cat’s. “Is it gonna fall down on us?”

“Just don’t breathe too hard,” Dolly told her with a little laugh, turning her attention back to the stove. But when she looked around again, she saw that Annie’s small face wore a look of pinched concern.

Dolly went over and hugged her. “I didn’t mean that, honey. ‘Course it’s not gonna fall down. It’s stayed put this long, it oughta hold us at least through dinner.”

Looking at Annie now, Dolly saw, not a child, but a grownup in a three-year-old’s body, a somber little lady with her mother’s indigo eyes and her father’s olive skin and dark, straight hair. She was dressed in a polkadot pinafore with a white Peter Pan collar ironed stiff as cardboard, and ruffled white socks that clashed oddly with the heavy black orthopedic shoes she wore to correct pigeon toes. Poor thing, she’s had enough fall down on her head to know to duck. Her father getting killed in that plane crash last year, and Eve taking off for Mexico to film Bandido before the flowers on Dewey’s grave had hardly wilted. Annie had been raised mostly by nannies-six, or

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