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Allison was soon able to spot an agent by the way he walked, and could tell at a glance whether a man was an unemployed writer or a director waiting for an assignment. In a very short time she had learned all the gossip and knew, as the waitresses in the dining room knew, why the famous star was
really
getting her divorce, and who the other man
really
was.

Lewis called Allison every evening. They spoke for five or ten minutes and hurried to say all they wanted to say to each other, spoke of their love and their plans and what each had done that day. Until the day finally came when Allison was able to say, “Oh, Lewis, tomorrow is the last day, and I can come back to you!” She had her reservation for six o'clock the next evening, she would be in New York, with Lewis, in the morning.

The night before she left, Arthur Tishman gave a party for her. He wanted her to meet Rita Moore, especially, knowing she was a favorite of Allison's.

Brad had returned to New York at the end of the first week. Allison rode alone in the back seat of the studio limousine, her elbow on the arm rest, smoking a cigarette. She smiled. I'm acting as calmly, she thought, as if I've done this sort of thing all my life.

She wore a simple, sheathlike black gown; her hair was drawn back; a small diamond clip was her only ornament. It was the only jewelry she had bought herself, thus far, with her new money. She always referred to it, to herself, as new money. She had seen the clip one day in the window of a Beverly Hills jeweler and walked in and bought it. She knew that whatever might come in the future, this clip would always be her favorite, because it was the first and because it had been bought with money made from her first success. As the car drove up the graveled drive to Arthur Tishman's house, she touched the clip; it gave her assurance.

Tishman's house was one of the great old houses. It was not California modern; it looked like one of the houses in an old Long Island suburb. It was an extravagant relic, a dinosaur from the ice age of Doug and Mary; it was a proud reminder of Hollywood's regal past.

Architecturally, it was part Spanish, part Tudor; yet this did not, somehow, result in a hodgepodge. As is so often the case with early twentieth-century American houses, the architect's vulgarity had, over the years, become charming. It was a place, Allison decided, that she would enjoy living in. It had not the look of post-war houses; she thought them mean and inhospitable with their functional little rooms and uncomfortably low ceilings.

The car came to a stop at a graceful flight of stone steps with low risers and a carved balustrade. Arthur came down the steps and helped her out of the car.

In five minutes she had had two drinks, was holding her third and had been introduced to twenty people. She remembered the names of none except those actors she recognized. There was one she had had a crush on when she was fourteen. He had sallow skin, thinning hair and an obscene little belly. On the screen he still looked as handsome as ever.

She had quickly gulped down her first two drinks in an attempt to get over the nervousness she felt at being with these people. But all she succeeded in doing was to make herself a little lightheaded. She looked around for Rita Moore but did not see her.

Conversation swirled around her. She put down her drink and stepped out the open doors to the terrace. She took a deep breath of air. I must clear my head, she thought. She walked to the end of the terrace, her heels making a satisfying noise on the terra-cotta tiles. The brightly lighted living room gave way to a dark wing of the house.

In one room an amber light glowed and Allison, peering through the french doors, saw it was the library. She tried the door. It opened, and she entered. It was a high-ceilinged room, vaulted, with a deep stone fireplace. The walls were lined with books, beautifully bound.

They even look as if they've been read, Allison thought.

She took a step toward the books when a head popped up, peered for an instant over the top of the leather sofa and disappeared. But that moment was enough for Allison to recognize Rita Moore's famous face.

“Are you real or are you the ghost of Norma Talmadge?” Rita Moore asked from behind the sofa.

“I'm real enough,” Allison said. She walked around the sofa and looked down at Rita Moore. She smiled at Rita and said, “I'm glad to see you have a body and aren't just a voice.”

“I
used
to have a body,” Rita said, looking down at it. “Christ, did I have a body! When I see myself in old movies on the telly, it breaks my ever-beating heart.”

“You're still the greatest, Miss Moore.”

Rita's mouth curved in a mirthless smile. “Thanks a whole lot. You could have it for one small farthing if I could have your youth.”

She reached for the cut-glass brandy decanter on the small table, but could not quite reach it. Allison picked it up and tilted some of the liquid into Rita's glass.

She drank it down like medicine, like something she had to take because it was good for her. She grimaced and said, “Christ, I'm tired! I'm just plain body tired, and I'm most of all tired of parties like this. When I come to a place like this, the first thing I do is look for the exits. After twenty years in this town I've learned the library is the best place to be alone in. Most of us out here are afraid of books. Reading a book is a sign that we've been alone for a few hours. And out here, to be alone is a phrase that strikes a fear unknown since the black plague swept across Europe.”

She filled her brandy glass again. Her soft, silver-blond hair caught the light and shimmered like a jewel. She had high cheekbones that made a diagonal of shadow in her cheeks, like smudges made by her thumbs. Her eyes were sea green and her dress was a deep green embroidered in gold. It clung to her body like a second skin, and where her breasts swelled out of the top her flesh was like heavy cream.

“You must be Allison MacKenzie,” she said. “You must be, because I've never seen you before and because you are the only one here who looks bright enough to have written a novel. Especially a novel as good as
Samuel's Castle.
”

“Thank you,” Allison said.

“Please don't say thank you, dear. It reminds me of my second husband. My second husband was the kind of man who was always saying thank you. He was humble—in an arrogant sort of way.”

Allison smiled, but not because she felt like smiling; she smiled because she had the feeling she was expected to.

“My second husband seduced me with Brahms and Scotch,” said Rita at last. “The poor bastard.”

“Why do you say that?” asked Allison.

“Because that was all he knew how to do,” replied Rita. “Seduce women to a sad violin and the tinkle of ice cubes. He was good at it though, I'll say that for him.”

“How many husbands have you had?” asked Allison.

Rita laughed. “Don't you ever read the fan magazines?” she asked.

Allison smiled and shook her head. “Not any more,” she said. “But I used to. When we were in high school, Selena Cross and I used to buy every issue of
Photoplay
and
Silver Screen.
Then we'd cut out the pictures and make scrapbooks. I wonder if kids still do that.”

“In Hollywood, we hope so,” said Rita. “Anyway, it's four.”

“Four what?”

“Husbands,” said Rita. “Isn't that what you asked me?”

“Four!” said Allison. “Good Lord!”

“Well, at least I married the men I fell in love with,” said Rita with a little pout. “I know plenty of women who will jump into bed with just anybody. At least I always kept it legal.”

“I don't think I'll ever get married,” said Allison.

Rita poured more liquor into her glass. “Why not?” she asked. “What have you got against marriage?”

“I want everything to stay just the way it is right now,” said Allison, an unaccustomed toughness in her voice.

Rita glanced at her sharply, then said, “Well, aren't you a smug little punk kid.”

Allison's head snapped up in surprise. “What do you mean by that?” she asked.

“Just what I said,” replied Rita belligerently. “You think you know it all, don't you?”

“For Heaven's sake,” objected Allison. “What in the world did I say?”

“You love having things the way they are now,” said Rita. “You love being a success, being way up on top where very few people ever get. You love all that lovely money that rolls in day after day, and you love the idea that it's yours, all yours.”

“And what's wrong with that?” demanded Allison. “You're in the same position yourself. Don't tell me that you hate being successful.”

Rita looked down into her glass and thought for a moment.

“I don't know,” she said. “I don't know whether I hate it or love it or just don't care any more.”

Allison laughed. “I know a fellow in New York. His name is Paul Morris and he's quite well known in his field so you've probably heard of him.”

“I've heard of him,” said Rita.

“Well, Paul told me once that successful people who complain about being successful are nothing more than lousy poseurs. If they didn't glory in it, they'd run and bury themselves where no one had ever heard of them.”

Rita gave a short, humorless laugh as she poured herself another drink.

“I'll tell you about success,” she said. “And believe me, I can tell you a helluva lot more about it than your friend Paul Morris. He never made it except as somebody else's shadow.” She leaned back and sipped at her drink. “I think that you have to decide when you're very young that you want success more than anything else in the world,” she said.

“Well, I certainly didn't,” said Allison angrily.

Rita looked at her. “Don't kid me, love,” she said. “I know about you, Allison. I've heard enough. I can figure you out like you were my twin sister. When you were a kid you didn't think you were good looking. You were the odd one who couldn't fit into the group, and you resented everyone who did belong. Without even knowing it you began to think in terms of ‘I'll show them all,' and you did.”

“All you need is a framed diploma and a couch and you could go into business,” said Allison, and she poured a glass of brandy for herself.

“Don't get wise with me, sweetie,” said Rita. “I've been there, and I know. Where the hell do you think I sprang from? Well, I'll tell you. From a lousy shack in the backwoods of Georgia. My old man was a sharecropper and my mother was worn out and tired before she even married him. Her father had been a sharecropper, too, and all she ever knew was work, work and more work. And kids and filth and no money and a constant hole in your belly from being hungry. I never had a pair of shoes on my feet until I was fourteen, and even then they were discards, but my mother sent me to school anyway.”

She paused and drank deeply and refilled the glass. “I don't know what sets anybody else off,” she said. “But I know what it was with me. We had a teacher at school who was a real old bag. She didn't have any more business teaching than I'd have, but with her shape and face I guess she couldn't do anything else. She reminded me of a wrinkled-up old prune, but she taught us geography. One day she was telling us about Paris, and she got a kind of look on her face that made her almost good looking for a minute. She showed us pictures, too. The most beautiful pictures I'd ever seen in my life, and she told us about the trip in a ship that got you there.”

She leaned her head back and looked up at the ceiling, as if to look back into the past more comfortably. “Right then and there I made up my mind that I was going to Paris, but I was still a kid and too dumb to keep my mouth shut about it. I told her and she laughed at me. She told me that sharecroppers' kids never got out of Georgia, let alone make trips to Europe. But I knew better. I was going to Paris. And I did, too. Five years ago. With four trunks and sixteen suitcases and two maids and a poodle. I stood under the Arc de Triomphe and thought of that old bitch back in Georgia and thumbed my nose at her. I'd made it and I'd come first class all the way. I was with my third husband then. Jay Keating. You've heard of him, I suppose.”

“Yes,” said Allison. “I've heard of him. He's an English actor.”

“English my foot,” said Rita. “He was born in South Dakota. He was a pansy on top of everything else.”

“A what?” asked Allison.

“Pansy,” said Rita. “A real fruit. I caught him in my stateroom with the ship's purser on the trip home. But you never would have read that in any fan magazine. We called it incompatibility and I went to Reno for a divorce. Heigh-ho, and so much for number three.” She raised her glass. “Here's to success. It's what you tell yourself you have when it dawns on you that you haven't got anything else.”

“It doesn't have to be like that,” said Allison. “I've heard of plenty of people who are successful and happily married besides.”

“Maybe,” said Rita. “If the man is as successful as the woman. It doesn't work if the woman is the big name. Not once in a million times! It didn't work with me, and I guess I knew it wouldn't right from the beginning. I was married when I first began to be somebody. My first husband. Alan. A real, sweet kid. He worked for the Los Angeles Telephone Company and I married him because I kidded myself into believing I really loved him. What I was was hungry. And lonely. So Alan fed me and kept me company. When I was around. But I was going to make it and make it big and I didn't want a husband around who was going to make the road up any rockier than it was to begin with. I had a shape back then, too, and I wasn't particular who I showed it to as long as there was something in it for me. Alan didn't like the pictures he saw of me wearing a little more than a G-string and two sequins, but not much more. He crabbed when I went out with my agent and he couldn't understand that I had to be seen in the right places. He wanted me home and I wanted out. So that was the end of that.”