Love Me (12 page)

No applause came. Eddie stared at her, his mouth half open. The rubber ball of nasal spray fell to the ground with a forlorn little bounce or two before it came to rest by the leg of the piano.

“Well?” Gabby panted. “Say something.”

“That … that was incredible,” he stammered finally. “Why can’t you just do
that
?”

Crabbily, Gabby tugged her unruly skirts back down over her newly sweat-dampened thighs. “One, because solo tap numbers look ridiculous from anyone who isn’t Fred Astaire. Two, I don’t have any tap shoes or a short dress. Three, even if I was willing to go out there with my skirt bunched up and dance around looking like some kind of swami who just dropped a load in his pants, the stage is about eight inches too high for anyone to see what I’m doing. Four—and finally—that song won’t do anything for either one of us.”

“What do you mean?” Eddie asked.

“I mean, I can sell a cutesy dance number, sure. You can take
some tired novelty number, jazz it up, and make it hip. And Leo Karp knows it.”

“Of course he does,” Eddie said smugly. “That’s probably why he signed me to a seven-year contract.”

“With a six-month option, right?” Gabby was getting irritated. “Olympus has five thousand people on the payroll. It’s no skin off Karp’s nose to pick a few extra horn players for what … one fifty a week?” Looking around the room, Gabby saw from the men’s faces that it was probably a whole lot less than that. “For all you know, he signed you just to make sure nobody else did. And then in six months, maybe a year, he’ll drop you again, and there won’t be any more contracts, or any more magazine covers, or any more checks waiting at the studio post office. Unless you show him you can do whatever Artie Shaw or Glenn Miller or Tommy Dorsey can do—or do it better.”

Eddie snorted. “I was asked to give a performance, and that’s what I’m going to do. I’m all through auditioning.”

“Oh, give me a break.” Gabby was getting mad. “Of course you’re auditioning. You’re never done auditioning. Never. I’m auditioning. You’re auditioning. Everybody upstairs who just lost one of those little gold men is auditioning to get one next time, and everyone who won one is auditioning for the part that will get them another. For God’s sake, even the studio bosses—
even Leo Karp
is auditioning.”

“Oh yeah? For who?”

“For the money guys in New York who could pull the plug on the whole operation at any minute!” Gabby was shouting now. “For Jock Whitney and Nick Schenck and Hunter Payne. For the new talent they need to attract, and the old talent they need to stay. You want to be in the picture business, you better
get used to auditioning every day.
Every single day
. Until you die, or you’re the last man on earth, whichever comes first. Otherwise, you can pack up your horns and go back to the Savoy to back whatever girl singer is coming up next.”

The room was silent. The only sound Gabby could hear was her own short breath. Eddie Sharp stared at her, his face hard, his lips white. Defiantly, she brushed a sweaty chestnut curl off her forehead and stared right back.
Go ahead
, she thought furiously.
Walk out. You know I’m right
.

It was Dexter who spoke first. “What do you think we should do?” he asked quietly.

It’s now or never
. “Do you know ‘I Cried for You’?”

“The Billie Holiday song?” Dexter said, stealing a glance at a stony-faced Eddie. “Sure.”

“Well,” Gabby said quickly, “it’s actually the Arthur Freed song. He wrote it. Arthur Freed, who is sitting out in the audience tonight. Arthur Freed, who has just been tapped to head up a new musical unit at MGM.”

Eddie frowned. “But we’re at Olympus.”

“Do I have to explain everything? These guys are only interested in having what they think somebody else wants. It’s the first rule of Hollywood! Why the hell do you think people get divorced so much out here?”

A couple of the musicians looked like they were about to laugh, which somehow just made Gabby madder.

“I’m serious!” she shouted. “If Karp thinks Mayer might have a use for us, he’ll do anything to keep us. The sky’s the limit!”

Eddie Sharp wasn’t laughing. “How would you arrange it, Dex?”

“You open it slow,” Gabby blurted out before Dexter could answer.
“Show them we can do a good old-fashioned torch song.” She sang a couple of bars a cappella to demonstrate. “Then, just when everybody’s so heartbroken they’re practically killing themselves, we suddenly bring it up tempo. Just like that. Remind them there’s something worth living for. They’re going to go crazy.”

“Torch, then swing,” Eddie gave her a wry smile. “Like Judy Garland’s doing with ‘Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart’?”

“No,” said Gabby, lifting her chin. “Like Gabby Preston doing ‘I Cried for You.’ ”

Eddie looked thoughtful for a moment.

“Okay,” he said finally, with a decisive nod. “Let’s do it.”

“Really?”
Gabby squealed.

“We’ll run through it a couple of times first. A-flat, right?”

She nodded, speechless.

“Thought so. It needs an instrumental solo in the intro. Trombone.”

“I was thinking clarinet, actually.”

“Clarinet.” Eddie snapped his fingers. “Better.” He turned to the waiting crowd. “All right, fellas, you heard the lady. ‘I Cried for You’ in A-flat. Make
me
cry.”

It’s all happening
, Gabby thought jubilantly, watching as the musicians scrambled to their places around her.
I won
. Somebody actually
listened
to her for a change. It was a thrilling sensation.

Also new, and even more thrilling, was the way Eddie Sharp was looking at her. Not just with desire, the way she’d seen men look at other girls and longed for them to look at her that way. There was something else in his admiring expression, something even better.
He’s looking at me with respect
.

“Gabby!”

Oh no
.

At the friendly trill of that familiar voice, Gabby’s heart sank like a stone. Standing in the doorway, as though conjured from midair by some vengeful fairy godmother, was Amanda Farraday, looking … well, pretty much looking the way Amanda always looked, only more so. She was wearing a dark green velvet gown that clung to every dangerous curve, cut low to expose a generous swath of décolletage. Her red hair, shining like satin, tumbled loosely over her creamy shoulders in a way that somehow seemed positively indecent outside of the boudoir.

Oh no, oh no, oh no
.

“Jimmy said you were down here,” Amanda said breathily. She seemed not to hear the low wolf whistles coming from the horn section. If you looked like Amanda, Gabby thought, after a while you probably just stopped noticing. “I just wanted to tell you to break a leg.”

“Thank you,” Gabby said stiffly. “I didn’t know you were going to be here.”

“Oh, it was sort of a spur-of-the-moment thing,” Amanda replied. In her flushed face, her eyes looked uncharacteristically, almost unnaturally bright. Something was lighting her up inside.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think she’d been at the green pills
. “Say, you haven’t seen Harry anywhere, have you?”

Gabby shrugged. “Not since the ceremony.”

“Oh.” Amanda’s face fell, which somehow made her look even more gorgeous.
Like some kind of tragic heroine
, Gabby thought.
God, I hate her sometimes
.

“Well, I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Amanda continued. “I just wanted to say hi, and that I hope you knock ’em dead out
here. And, um …” She leaned forward slightly, giving everyone a nice view. “If you
do
happen to see Harry, don’t tell him I asked about him, okay?”

The men seemed transported as she turned and walked away.
So predictable
.

“Friend of yours?” Eddie asked when everybody’s tongues were safely back in their mouths.

“Why? You want me to call her back in here?”

“That depends.” A small smile played across Eddie’s beautiful mouth. “Can she sing?”

“Not a note.”

“In that case, tell her never to interrupt rehearsal again. Now come on, boys. Let’s take it from the top.”

A
manda knew Gabby Preston about as well as anyone could. After living—or rather, existing—in her spare room for months with a ringside seat to the rages and tantrums and equally frequent fits of wild jubilation that most people experienced only at moments of life and death but that for Gabby were just another day. Amanda didn’t think there was much her mercurial friend could do to surprise her.

But she’d never seen Gabby the way she was onstage tonight. She was absolutely on fire.

It wasn’t that she was doing anything particularly special—Amanda had heard “I Cried for You” sung dozens of times, sometimes even by Gabby herself. It was something about the
way
she was singing it. The lyrics were addressed to a faithless lover, telling him that the singer was over him, thank you very much; she’d found somebody else, and now it was his turn
to cry. But Gabby’s rendition—the velvety throb of her voice haunting yet powerful, her huge dark eyes glistening with unshed tears—made it all seem like a lie. Like she was putting on a defiant front while she was falling apart inside. The wounded bravery made it all the more heartbreaking, so much so that when she suddenly gave a little stamp of her foot and the band broke into a joyful up-tempo Dixieland swing, the audience gasped with relief. Maybe her heart was broken, but she was going to be okay. And if she was lying about how happy she was, at least she was doing it with style. It was the kind of lie Hollywood could appreciate.

Gabby belted the final, glorious note, and the audience leapt to its feet, roaring its appreciation. Cheering along with the others, Amanda looked reflexively toward Mr. Karp’s table, to see if he was paying attention to her friend’s triumph, and caught a glimpse of a familiar figure leaning against the doorway. His hands in his pockets, a thoughtful expression on his face. The person she’d been searching for since she came in.

Harry
.

Feeling her gaze on him, he looked up, and their eyes locked. Amanda’s heart stopped, just as it had that afternoon at the Brown Derby that had filled her with such desperate hope. She gave him a small smile, lifting her hand in the tiniest of greetings.

Harry turned and fled.

I have to go after him
, Amanda thought.
I have to talk to him
.

It was the whole reason she’d come here, to this party where she didn’t quite belong, in this dress she definitely couldn’t afford. She couldn’t let him slip away. Not this time. Not like this.

Wildly, she searched the room, trying to see if anyone had
noticed the silent scene between them, but all eyes seemed fixed on Gabby, who was basking in the attention with the graceful delight of a great star. For once in Amanda Farraday’s life, no one was looking at her. It couldn’t have happened at a better time.

Gathering up her skirt, she bolted through the door and down the hall. The black flap of a slightly too-large tailcoat disappeared around the corner.

“Harry!”

If he was trying to get away from her, he wasn’t doing a very good job of it. The hallway he had chosen came to an abrupt dead end. Harry stood against the wall, scratching his head and staring at an enormous potted rubber plant with such a quizzical expression that Amanda had to laugh.

“What are you going to do? Hide in that plant?”

Harry studied the dark green leaves, as though he expected them to spring to life and give him instruction. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Well, don’t. You’ll get dirt all over your tailcoat and the rental place will charge you extra.”

At the mention of his legendary frugality, even Harry had to smile.

“You’re right,” he said quietly, looking at her for the first time. “Hello, Amanda.”

“Hello.”

“Hello.”

They laughed again and stood staring at each other, unsure of what to say next. “Wasn’t Gabby terrific?” Amanda tried, feeling awkward.

Harry scratched his nose. “I only caught the very end.
I was …” He pushed his glasses back up. “I was putting my mother to bed upstairs.”

“Your mother,” Amanda said. “I thought that must be her.”

How many times had Amanda dreamed of being introduced to Harry’s mother? Of Harry ushering her into the cramped but fastidiously clean Brooklyn sitting room he had always described in such vivid detail? Of him saying, “Ma, this is my girlfriend, Amanda. This is Amanda, my fiancée. This is Amanda, the girl I love”? In these fantasies, Amanda always imagined Harry’s mother—a squat black-and-white blur, from what she’d seen in photos—wrapping her plump arms around her in a lilac- or lily-of-the-valley-scented embrace before pulling out the cracked leather photo albums of Harry as a baby. Together, as allies, they’d laugh over his tightness with a dollar, his irrational hatred of mushrooms, the way, like Hansel and Gretel with the breadcrumbs, he seemed to leave a trail of crumbled tobacco and crushed potato chips wherever he went.

“And have you noticed,” Amanda would say, “how when he’s nervous, he plays solitaire, only without any cards?”