The Fame Thief (16 page)

“I didn’t want to talk about this until later, until we were
there
and the trip was behind us.” Her mother’s hands were folded in front of her as she walked, a deceptively meek pose that, Wanda knew, didn’t usually last long. “It’s your father,” she continued, and Wanda had to get a step closer to hear her. “He’s going to be looking for us.”

“He’s in Scranton.”

“He’ll have the police after us.”

“Why? How could he? What did we do wrong?”

Her mother stopped walking. Wanda stopped, too, but moved away a little in case this was the first sign of an explosion, but then she heard an engine, and a big car backed out of a driveway right in front of them. The woman at the wheel took off in the same direction they were walking in, without a glance at either of them.

“He could say I abducted you.”

“But I wanted to come. How could you abduct me if I wanted to come?”

“He doesn’t know that you—”

“Sure, he does. I left a note.”

“You left him—”

“All it said was that I love him and that he shouldn’t worry about me. And that I’d call him sometime soon.”

Her mother lifted her eyes to the sky and blew out a ragged puff of air. “And you think
that
helped?”

“Well, sure, I mean, at least he’ll know I wanted to go, and.…”

“He doesn’t care about that. He knows you wanted to come.”

“Then why would he tell the police that you—”

“Because
he
didn’t want you to come.”

Wanda turned up the collar of her coat, threaded her finger through some hair that had blown into the left corner of her mouth, and pulled it free. “But then what’s the
crime
? Betty’s mother left her husband and took Betty with her, and the cops never—”

“He’ll claim something else,” her mother said. “This is the last way I wanted you to learn about this.”

“I know he didn’t want me to come. Why else would we have snuck out in the middle of the night? But still, what’s the crime?”

“All right, all right.” Wanda’s mother stared down the street as the woman in the car turned a corner, and then all Wanda could hear was the wind over the dry, dead grass. Without turning to face her daughter, Wanda’s mother said, “Have you ever heard of the Mann Act?”

“No.” Looking down, she rubbed the sole of her loafer over the rough sidewalk. She was trembling, but it wasn’t entirely the cold.

“It punishes people who take someone across state lines for—for immoral purposes.”

The tremble centered itself in Wanda’s abdominal muscles. “But you’re not—”

“It’s what he
thinks
that matters.” They had still not looked at each other: Wanda’s eyes on her shoes and her mother’s looking down the empty street.

“And what,” Wanda said, her voice grating oddly in her ears, “what does he think?”

“Let’s walk,” her mother said, turning to take Wanda’s arm. “This way.” They went on in the direction they’d already been taking.

“Who could live here?” Wanda asked.

“What’s the difference? Scranton is better? Most people
spend their lives in shitholes, sorry for the French, honey, and even though they
know
they’re living in a shithole they stay there because it’s familiar. Because they’re afraid of anything new. But you and I—”

“What does Daddy think?”

“He thinks he knows how Hollywood works. He thinks no actress gets into a movie unless she’s nice to the men in charge.”

“Nice,” Wanda said, although she knew what her mother meant.

“Do—favors for them. Be nice to them.”

“Sleep with them,” Wanda said. “Is that what you’re saying, sleep with them?”

“It’s not me, it’s your father. That’s what he’ll tell the police, that I took you to Hollywood so I could make money by—you know.”

Wanda took her arm back and walked beside her mother. She began to count the cracks in the sidewalk. If her mother didn’t say something by the tenth crack, she decided, she would turn and run in the other direction.

Seven. Eight. She raised her head.

“Yes,” her mother said. “Sleep with them.” Both of them kept their eyes forward, looking at where they were going.

Three steps later, Wanda said, “But.”

“Of course not,” her mother said, and once again her voice had that peculiar tobacco-yellow color. “It’s just your father. He doesn’t know how things work out there.”

“But you do.”

“I’ve been thinking about this for years, since the first time I realized what a beautiful baby I had.”

“So I’m not going to have to sleep with them.”

“Oh, sweetie,” her mother said, her voice the color of fouled beeswax. “How could you even ask?”

There was a rattle from behind them, and the boy cruised by on his bike again, staring openly at Wanda, taking the bike up a driveway in front of them and then across the lawn and back to the street so he could circle them once and then twice. The dog lagged behind, its tongue hanging out of one side of its mouth too, its eyes—also on Wanda—the same corrupted yellow-brown as her mother’s voice.

“Then,” Wanda said, “what am I going to have to do for them?”

“Wait until we’re there,” her mother said, taking her by the arm and turning her back to the car and never, not then, not at any time during the journey, saying what she meant, even though Wanda knew what it was. What her mother didn’t say was,
Whatever they want
.

Five days later, there was the dazzle of sunlight, the sprawl of Los Angeles, the big Chinese- and Egyptian-looking theaters, the iron gates of the studios, closed as they drove by; and then the eye-ringing gleam of oranges peeking out from dark leaves.

Then there were new clothes for Wanda from big, gleaming stores and men with suits and ties and offices, men with eyes that swallowed her whole, indifferent most of the time and sometimes a little too interested. And sixteen months after they arrived, Wanda had given Max Zeffire what he wanted on the couch in his big white office. When she thought back, later, on that confused, embarrassing, and sometimes painful transaction, what she remembered most clearly was the dirty-yellow sound, through the closed office door, of her mother laughing at something Zeffire’s secretary had said.

Her father
,
Dolly
thought. She hadn’t spoken to her father in years. Even after the
Life
cover, he’d hung up on her whenever she called.

Motion reflected in the airplane window snatched at her attention, and she turned to see Georgie yawning and rubbing the back of his neck. And the plane banked to the left, and below them the lights of Las Vegas spilled out across the desert.

“Landing,” Georgie called across the aisle. He glanced down at the flask as though surprised to see it there, picked it up, and shook it. What he heard prompted a satisfied nod. He unscrewed the top and said, “Come on back over here, Button.”

As she sat, he tilted the flask vertical and swallowed whatever was left, then lowered it and put the top back on. He took a perfectly folded display handkerchief from the breast pocket of his jacket, ran the lowest fold precisely around the bottom of the flask’s cap, and dropped the flask back into his inside pocket. Then he scissored his long index and middle fingers over the still-folded handkerchief and slipped it back into place, and Dolly saw that it had the same ornate
GR
monogram as the flask

“We need to talk,” he said. “I know I got you into this, but you gotta quit with these guys, these gunsels.”

“Listen to you,” Dolly said. She took the perfect Windsor knot in his tie between her fingertips and centered it. “You sound like Livvy.”

Georgie automatically fingered the knot to confirm that it was in the right place, and she slapped the back of his hand. “Whaddya mean?”

“Livvy says one day I’ll wake up and the whole world will think I’m a moll.”

“Button, if
Livvy
knows, too many people know. Much as I hate to say she’s right, she’s right.” He tapped the flask through his jacket as though hoping to find it refilled. “But that’s only half of it.”

The plane shuddered as it descended into an updraft, hot air from the desert floor. “What’s the other half?”

He touched his index finger to the tip of her nose and leaned in, close enough to kiss her. “The other half is sooner or later you’re gonna hit the sack with one of these guys, and everything will change.”

Dolly pulled her head back and looked down at her lap, feeling the heat in her face. Georgie didn’t know, she thought, there was no way he could know. And anyway, he wouldn’t toy with her, he’d just slap her one and say
knock it off
. She said, “Why? What would change? I mean, I’m not going to do that”—her voice sounded thin, badly recorded, in her ears—“but if I did, what would change?”

“Think about it,” Raft said. “Right now, there’s you and then there’s all the other girls. The minute you fuck a guy, you’ll become one of
all the other girls
, just another punchboard. And then there’ll be jealousies and all that, guys trying to use you to score on other guys, and you’ll become a way for people to get to whoever it is that you’re
shtupping
.” He made a rolling motion with his hand, looking for the word. “Not a lever but the other thing, the thing you put the lever on—”

“The fulcrum?” The plane slowed suddenly and dropped quickly enough that if felt as if Dolly’s stomach was floating in the air.

“Yeah, like that,” Raft said. He took a quick look out the window. “You’ll be a weak spot, you’ll be a weapon. You gotta remember, just because they’re all sitting around a table together tonight, drinking and telling jokes, that doesn’t mean they won’t try to kill each other tomorrow. These are nervous guys, dangerous guys. They’re going to look at you, they’re gonna see an opening in your boyfriend’s armor.”

“I’m not going to go to bed with any of them,” she lied.

“See that you don’t.” He put a hand on her arm as though to strengthen the connection between them. “Do yourself a
favor, Dolly. Finish up with them, once and for all. It wouldn’t be good for you if it got out. There’s too many pictures of you with them already.”

“All right.” She wanted to tell him her secret, but she couldn’t. It wouldn’t be safe for him. “I don’t even have to do this thing tonight,” she said. “I can take the plane back without even getting off.”

“You promised,” Raft said. “No point in pissing the guys off. Just go, have a good time, and go home. Then have your publicity guy put it out that you’re getting serious with some pretty little movie boy, and you can use that as an excuse not to come back.”

The pressure inside the plane increased, and Dolly opened her mouth wide to try to get her ears to pop. Outside the window, the lights rose up to meet them and the wings tilted left and then right again as the plane homed in on the end of the runway.

“Takeoffs and landings,” she said, taking his hand. “Flying would be swell if it wasn’t for takeoffs and landings.”

“Much smoother,” Raft agreed. “Course, you’d never get anywhere.” The plane bumped down with a squeal of rubber, bounced, and then bounced again. “There,” Raft said. “You landed three times, and you’re still alive.”

The unease at her center had intensified. “Maybe I
should
go home. This doesn’t feel right.”

“Gonna be tough,” Raft said, looking out the window. “We got a welcoming committee.” He cupped a hand to the window to get rid of the reflected cabin lights. “Got a photog and everything. Looks like Pigozzi and a couple of his guys. They got flowers and champagne, Button. Ain’t for me.”

Dolly pulled out a mirror and gave her hair a few strategic tugs. Her makeup seemed okay. “I don’t know Pigozzi.”

“He’s a tough guy,” Raft said. “Roberto Pigozzi. Bobby Pig. Supposed to be on the rise.”

“I don’t know.”

“Listen to me. You’re here, and you can’t turn around without making a scene. Anyway, the plane’s probably got somewhere else to go. I don’t own it, you know.” He got up as the plane slowed its taxiing and smoothed the wrinkles out of his suit, put his fingers on the perfect knot in his tie. “This thing really straight?”

“Perfect,” she said, and the plane stopped. George eased past her and went to the rear of the cabin, where the crew had stored the bags. When he came back he had a suitcase in each hand and a beautiful, pale brown cashmere coat draped over his shoulders. The silvery smoke around him had settled, just gleaming softly in the air.

“Isn’t it a little hot for the coat?” The pilot popped the door open, and she heard the stairs being wheeled into place.

“It’s not a coat,” Georgie said. “It’s money. Never go into a negotiation looking like you need anything. Meyer’s a friend, but the first thing he’s gonna do tonight is guess how much this coat cost.”

She started down the aisle. “That’s smart, Georgie.”

“Nobody ever calls me smart,” Raft said, and as Dolly approached the open door, a man pushed his way through it, a wide, dark man with the heaviest eyebrows she’d ever seen. Two other men crowded in behind him, but they were just there to carry an enormous all-white bouquet and a bottle of Champagne four times the usual size.

The wide man had jet-black hair slicked back, tight against his head, from a sharp widow’s peak. From beneath the caterpillar eyebrows, his eyes were hard enough to be bulletproof. He spread his arms and said, “Here she is.” He cupped his hands over his heart and said, almost singing it, “The face that launched a thousand ships.”

His voice was the oily green she sometimes saw on spoiled beef in the supermarket, and her lungs were suddenly tiny. She was sure he could hear her wheeze as she fought for breath.

Bobby Pig drove an elbow into the man to his left, and there was a tremendous
bang
. Dolly’s knees gave way, and she grabbed onto the top of the nearest seat as the Champagne cork slapped into the cabin wall and bounced off.

“Dolores La Marr,” Bobby Pig said, baring tiny, uneven teeth. “Have we got plans for
you
.”