Stars Over Sunset Boulevard (9 page)

A
udrey pulled the silk scarf tight around her head as the car she sat in zoomed down Wilshire Boulevard.

“I told you I could put the top up,” Vince said from behind the steering wheel, as she tucked in the fluttering ends of the scarf.

“I like it down. It almost feels like we're flying. Besides, I've heard the windblown look is fashionable.”

“Any look on you is fashionable, Audie.”

She grinned. “You're engaged,” she reminded him.

He laughed. “I'm surprised you could get away for lunch today with all that's going on over at the studio.”

“I've been working twelve-hour nights for two weeks. I'd say I'm due a long lunch. And, anyway, we're on a shooting break while Victor Fleming gets up to speed. He and Selznick and some other execs are all headed to Palm
Springs to work on the script from hell. It's actually quiet at the studio today. I doubt I'll be missed.”

Vince shook his head. “I still can't believe Cukor quit. And Fleming taking over for him? To jump into the Civil War after spending the last few months in Oz? That takes guts.”

“What do you bet the two settings aren't so different?” Audrey said. “Every movie seems to be the same these days. Some character desperately wants something and has to go through a world turned upside down to get it.”

“I'm thinking it was all a genius publicity stunt, switching directors like that.
Photoplay
loves stuff like this. I bet MGM secretly loves it, too, since they're in this for half the profits.”

“Well, stunt or no stunt, it hasn't made for a happy cast. Vivien Leigh loved Cukor.”

“But Gable didn't.”

Audrey turned to him. “And where did you hear
that
?”

“This is Hollywood, Audie!” He was about to turn into the entrance of the Beverly Wilshire, an imposing structure of Carrara marble and Tuscan stone, when Audrey stopped him.

“Wait! I can't get out of the car with you, Vince!” she exclaimed. “What if Dwyer arrives the same time we do? Let me out up the street and then you double back.”

“Right.” Vince moved back into traffic. “So, when I see you, you're an old friend from . . . ?”

“I am not an old anything. I'm a good friend. We've both just been busy and we haven't seen each other in a while. You want to catch up. You invite me to join you both for lunch. I decline. You insist. You get Mr. Dwyer to also insist. I pretend to mull it over. You signal a waiter to bring
another chair and a glass of whatever you are drinking and then you say you won't take no for an answer.”

Vince pulled up to the curb on the next block. “And you're sure you don't want me to say anything about
Pocahontas
?”

Audrey had her hand on the door handle but whirled around. “You have to
promise
me you won't say anything about
Pocahontas
!”

“Audie, you were cast in a major motion picture.”

“A major motion picture that was never made. Don't mention it, Vince. Promise me you won't unless I do first.”

“All right, all right. So he's supposed to just magically assume you're interested in being a movie star, then.”

“Did you not listen to anything I told you on the phone the other night? He's supposed to wonder if I would look good on the screen. If I can be made into a star. If I can make Paramount good money.”

“And you think he will?”

“If you ask me the right questions he will. Ask if Selznick tested me for Scarlett, along with half the known world. And when I laugh and say no, ask why not. Mr. Dwyer will wonder if I have star quality because you will have planted the thought. It's as simple as that.”

Vince grinned. “You're good at this acting gig. Ever thought of giving it a try?”

“Oh, hush.” She stepped out of the car.

“See you in ten?”

“Fifteen.”

Vince drove off, signaled a U-turn, and headed toward the hotel. Audrey took her time walking back in the same direction so as not to be winded. At the restaurant's host stand she gave her name and said that she had a reservation for a table for one by a window. As the host showed her to
her table she gazed about the rest of the room and was relieved to see that Vince had a table not far from the ladies' powder room, just as they had planned. After she was given a glass of water and a menu, she rose from her chair and began to walk toward the powder-room door. Vince saw her rise. When she was only a few feet away, his eyes widened in mock delight.

“Audrey Duvall!” He sprang to his feet. “What a nice surprise!” He leaned forward to kiss her on the cheek.

“Vince, darling, how wonderful to see you,” Audrey replied, employing the smoothest tone to her deep voice.

Vince turned to his tablemate. “Bernard, this is a dear friend of mine, Audrey Duvall. Audrey, Bernard Dwyer.”

The man stood. He looked to be her father's age, maybe a year or two older. She had expected this assistant producer to be a little younger.

“How do you do?” he said courteously.

“Pleasure to meet you,” she said.

“It's been ages since we've talked. How are you?” Vince went on.

“Very well. And you?”

“Splendid, splendid. Still with Selznick, then?”

Audrey saw a flicker of interest in Bernard Dwyer's eyes. “Yes, I am. Busy time now, as you can imagine.”

“No doubt.” Vince then seemed to have suddenly come up with an idea “Say. Are you dining alone?”

“Oh. Well, yes.”

“You should join us,” he said enthusiastically.

“Oh, no. I couldn't.”

“We insist, don't we, Bernard?”

Bernard Dwyer had just retaken his seat. He looked up from the menu. “What was that?”

“Audrey should join us, shouldn't she?”

Dwyer blinked at him.

“I wouldn't want to impose,” Audrey said, glancing from one man to the other. “You look like you have important things to discuss.”

“It's no imposition. I can have the waiter bring us another table setting.”

“I actually do have some matters I'd like to talk about, Vince,” Dwyer said. “I'm sure we'd just bore this lovely young woman to death were she to stay. It was very nice to meet you, Miss . . . ?”

“Duvall. The pleasure was mine.”

Vince had clearly not thought about the fact that Dwyer might say no. He stared at Audrey.

“Another time, Vince?” She leaned toward him to give him a peck on the cheek.

“Sorry,” he whispered into her ear.

She pulled away. “Good day, gentlemen.” Audrey continued to the ladies' room, entered a stall, and closed the door. She leaned her forehead against the polished wood, willing it to cool the heat of her disappointment.

Vince had spent a week setting up this meeting. This had been his best lead, he told her. Dwyer and his scouts were on the lookout for a new brunette they could groom into greatness.

Audrey resisted the urge to pound her forehead against the door. She had just spent two hundred dollars on new studio photos. And for what? Dwyer hadn't shown a hint of interest, other than when he heard she worked at a competing studio. He hadn't asked what she did there. Hadn't cared what she did.

Vince would call her later tonight to tell her again how sorry he was. That was a phone call she did not want to
suffer through. She would invite friends over. Bert. Jim. The new hairdresser on set. A few others. They could play charades and drink cocktails and she wouldn't answer the phone if it rang.

She stepped away from the stall door, reached behind to the commode, and flushed it even though there was nothing in it but water.

•   •   •

Twilight had turned the Hollywood sky an ashen azure, and the first stars studded the canvas of the eastern horizon. Though it was damp and a bit chilly, Audrey suggested she and Violet set up the cocktail party out on the bungalow's patio.

She grabbed a kitchen chair to take outside and asked Violet to do the same. Violet put her hands on the chair back but her gaze was on the fruit bowl on the center of the table. She paused.

“What?” Audrey asked

“I was just . . . I was just thinking I should move the nightingale if it was still on the kitchen table so it wouldn't get broken tonight. But it looks like you already did.”

“I put it on that little shelf in the bathroom, the one by the window.” Audrey grabbed a second chair. “I thought it would look cute there, like it had just flown in.”

Violet lifted the chair and followed Audrey outside with it. “That's a good place. So, did you have a nice lunch out with your friend?”

Audrey set the chairs down. “It was all right.”

“Vince, is it?”

“Yes.” The less she had to talk about her day the better. “And how were things at your end of the studio? Did
you and Miss Myrick find anything to do without the cameras rolling?”

They went back inside for the last two chairs. “She's fit to be tied because no one is working on their Southern accents while we wait for Mr. Selznick and Mr. Fleming to get back. Leslie Howard's drawl is horrific. Mr. Gable still won't fake an accent of any kind. And Miss Leigh is still mad that Mr. Cukor is gone, so she isn't working on her lines at all.”

They grabbed the chairs and went back outside with them. “Miss Myrick spent most of today trying to track down the actors to resume their coaching. But Miss Leigh said what was the use, since Mr. Selznick will come back with a whole new script, anyway.”

“She's probably right about that.”

“Have you . . . have you had a chance to see Bert since he asked me to give the nightingale to you?” Violet asked.

“I saw him this afternoon when I got back to the studio. I went over to wardrobe to invite him over tonight.”

“Right. Of course.”

“Did you think I wouldn't thank him for it?” Bert had seemed happy that she liked the little nightingale. She had asked where he had found it.
A little gift shop near my mom's place in Santa Barbara,
he'd said and then promptly changed the subject.

“No. No, of course you would. I just wanted to make sure he knew I had given it to you.”

Audrey laughed. Violet was a little odd sometimes. But in a nice way. “You and your Southern good manners never cease to amuse me. If someone asked you to ride a camel for them, backward while wearing a tutu, I've no doubt you'd do it twice, just to be nice. Wouldn't you?”

Violet grinned back and said nothing.

•   •   •

The six guests at the impromptu party were all Selznick International employees and party talk on the patio naturally drifted to Cukor's leaving, the script that everyone and his brother seemed to be writing, and Vivien Leigh's scandalous and supposedly secret love affair with Laurence Olivier.

“No more work talk!” Audrey finally announced, an hour after the get-together began. “Let's play a game.”

“And let's move indoors,” one of the women said. “It's too chilly out here.”

The chairs were brought back into the kitchen, drinks refilled, and everyone began to move into the living room. Audrey noticed Bert wasn't inside.

She went back outside and found him looking up at the branches of the massive jacaranda that kept the little backyard in perpetual shade and sprinkled the patio with lavender confetti every June when its blossoms fell.

“Coming, Bert?” she asked.

He nodded without looking at her. “You've got a pair of mourning doves in that tree.”

She looked up into the trees' limbs and saw nothing. “I'll take your word for it.”

He turned to her. His features were barely distinguishable in the moonlight. “Are you all right, Audrey? You seem sad tonight.”

She looped her arm through his. There would be no talk of life's disappointments.

“I'm fine. Let's go in and you can pour me another drink.”

Hollywood

March 9, 2012

C
hristine pulls into her parents' Bel Air driveway and presses the code for the wrought-iron gate. It slides quietly on oiled rails.

Her mother, Glynnis, answers the doorbell, two long-stemmed goblets in hand. She hands one of the glasses of Chardonnay to her daughter. Then she points to the hatbox, the handle of which is over Christine's arm. “Come on in and let's have a look!”

They enter the expansive kitchen and Christine sets the hatbox on the marble-topped island in the center of the room.

“Your text message was very intriguing,” Glynnis says. “You know, I just drove past our old neighborhood the other day. I have a listing up in Hollywood Hills. Right next to the Bela Lugosi house.”

“So do you remember the name of the woman next door who babysat me?” Christine sips from her glass.

“Her last name was Redmond, I think. She was a widow—I remember that. And I think she had a daughter who lived in Europe somewhere. I can give you the address of the house we lived in, if you want to swing by on the very slim chance she is still there.”

“Slim chance?”

“She was elderly then, Chrissy. And that was twenty-five years ago.”

“I suppose you're right.”

“Can I see it?” Glynnis says.

Christine pushes back the lid on the box. She lifts out the hat and extends it to her mother, who turns it over to look at its underside and the label.

“So you really think this hat is a costume piece from
Gone With the Wind
?” her mother asks.

“It looks exactly like it. I looked it up on the Internet. The thing is, the hat is supposedly at a university in Texas. I looked that up, too. So now I don't know what to t
hink.”

“But the owner very much wants this hat back.”

“Yes.”

Glynnis walks over to a desk area in the kitchen and takes out a notepad and pen. She sits back down and begins to write.

“This was our address back then. Mrs. Redmond lived on the right as you face the houses across the street.”

Christine takes the paper. “Thanks.”

“You were pretty smitten with Mrs. Redmond. You liked going over to her house even when your dad and I were home. She always had her television on, which I didn't really care for. And she always had it set to reruns of shows from the fifties and sixties. No wonder you like the vintage look.”

Flashes of old black-and-white episodes flutter in Christine's mind. “I do remember that.”

“Even after we moved you'd want to watch
I Love Lucy
and
The Dick Van Dyke Show
when you had friends over, instead of
Saved by the Bell
and
Full House
. Drove them all crazy.”

They laugh and then finish their wine. Christine leaves a little after seven. She checks her phone as she gets into her car to see if Mr. Garceau has tried to reach her. He hasn't.

On impulse, Christine drives the ten miles to the neighborhood that she hasn't thought about in more than a decade. Starlight shimmers down on her as she pulls up to the curb.

The house she lived in all those years ago has been extensively remodeled and is barely recognizable.

The little bungalow next door looks exactly as Christine remembers it.

But every window is dark.