Love Me (26 page)

And actually, it had been more like fifty dollars, all told. The concept of payroll taxes had never occurred to Amanda, who had spent her whole life working under the table—sometimes literally.

Not that the extra twenty-five bucks would have made a damn bit of difference
. If a girl with a picture contract wasn’t going to actually be in the pictures—and Amanda, if she was being honest with herself, had to admit that the looks that had the power to stun a room into silence in person didn’t quite seem to have the same power on camera—then the best she could do was get photographed, and to accomplish that, she had to make sure she was something to see. She needed the hair, the makeup, the jewels, and enough suits and cocktail dresses and evening gowns to make a duchess weep. If she wore the same outfit twice, she wouldn’t be photographed, and if she wasn’t photographed, she might as well stay home listening to the radio in her bathrobe and bunny slippers.
And if you’re going to be photographed
, Amanda thought bitterly,
you sure as hell better be wearing the very best
.

So she might have come by her expensive tastes honestly. That sure didn’t make them any cheaper. She’d been braced—albeit lightly—for the eventuality of being unceremoniously released from her Olympus contract without so much as a penny to show for it. What she had
not
been prepared for was the letter she had received this morning by special delivery. It bore the postmark of the Olympus Studios post office, and she had assumed it was a check for her last two weeks’ salary—a modest
severance. It wouldn’t do much in the way of clearing the overdue balances on her charge accounts at Saks and Bullock’s Wilshire, but it would at least ensure that she could pay the back rent on her room at Mrs. O’Malley’s boardinghouse and keep a roof over her head for the next couple of months, until she figured out her next move.

Instead, Amanda opened the pale blue envelope to discover a letter on legal letterhead informing her politely that no such check would be forthcoming. In fact, official payroll records showed that she had taken out so many advances on her salary over the eighteen months she’d been under contract that she was currently in debt to Olympus Studios to the tune of one thousand dollars. She was advised to settle with a single lump-sum payment, if possible; if not, she should contact the financial office immediately to work out a monthly installment plan at a special rate of 4 percent interest.

A thousand dollars
. They fired her, and she owed
them
a thousand dollars. On top of all the money she already owed.

It was so absurd that Amanda’s first impulse was to laugh. So she did. She threw her head back and let loose with a big, ugly, unhinged cackle that quickly devolved into heaving sobs that racked her body as she crumpled into a fetal position on the unswept floor of her crowded little room. Images flashed through her mind, images of Chanel suits and Caroline Reboux hats and enough tens and twenties surreptitiously slipped to buy the silence of hundreds of doormen and bellmen and lavatory attendants to form a pile for a gleeful gangster’s moll to roll around in. “It costs a lot to be me,” she used to say with a shrug when Harry or Gabby or Margo Sterling would question her extravagance, but she’d never stopped to think exactly how much.

It all seemed like such a good investment
, Amanda thought, remembering the horrible day a decade ago when the stock market crashed and the cold gusts of the Depression began to blow. She’d been just a little girl then, no older than eight or nine. Her stepfather had gotten even drunker than usual that night. He hadn’t yet started bothering her the way he would when she was older, creeping into her bedroom and trying to force his way under the covers before she woke up, but he could still hand out a beating when the mood struck him. That night, he seemed like he was in the mood to take a horsewhip to somebody, so Amanda—Norma Mae, as she was called then—had sneaked outside to sleep in the hayloft, figuring when he got back, he’d be too drunk to climb the ladder. In the morning, when she brought him his cold compress and his coffee with the slug of whiskey—“hair of the dog,” he used to call it—she asked him what had happened that had made everyone so terribly angry.

“Bunch of damn fools up in New York City,” he growled, the odor of the previous night clinging to him as tenaciously as if he’d just had a bath in gasoline. “Lost their shirts, along with everyone else’s. Now the bastards are jumpin’ out windows rather’n face the mob. Black Tuesday, they’s callin’ it.”

Well, today’s my Black Tuesday
, Amanda thought,
and I guess I’m jumping out a window too. Here’s hoping I land on my feet
.

“I need to see Olive,” she told Lucy.

“What?”

“I said, I need to see Olive!”
Amanda shouted.
“Is she here?”

“Hang on, hang on,” Lucy said. “Let me turn down the radio.”

The jade-green silk train of her lounging kimono trailed behind her like a dragon’s tail as she shuffled across the scrolled
carpet to a large rosewood cabinet inset with an elaborate pattern of mother-of-pearl.

“Isn’t it swell?” she asked, making a big show of fiddling with the dial. “The cabinet is antique, but the radio is brand-new. Absolutely state-of-the-art. It’s got, you know, the most powerful speaker
in the entire world
. It’s a Zenith,” she added proudly. “It’s not even in stores yet. Olive had it shipped straight from the factory in Chicago. We might be the first people in California to even have one.”

Olive must be doing well
. “Is she here?”

“Who, Olive?”

“Who else?”

Lucy pouted. “Really, Ginge, you might at least try and make small talk before you go charging upstairs. Ain’t I always been a friend to you?”

Amanda felt a pang of guilt. Not only had Lucy always been kind to her during their time together in Olive’s stable of beauties, she’d never revealed the truth about Amanda’s past to
Confidential
or
Broadway Brevities
or any of the sleazy gossip rags that would have paid a pretty penny for a scoop about how the girlfriend of the hotshot young screenwriter Harry Gordon could have once been your girlfriend too, as long as you had the dough.

“I’m sorry, Lucy,” Amanda said. “We’ll have a good catch-up soon, I promise.”

Lucy wrinkled her pert nose. “That’s what you always say, and we never do. You’ve never even come by here in all this time, let alone invited me over to your mansion.”

“My mansion?”

“Sure.” Lucy shifted her weight from one leg to another. “I’ve
taken the bus tour of the stars’ homes. Not to mention having seen quite a few of ’em from the inside myself, if you know what I mean.”

Oh boy, do I
. Amanda winced. This was hard enough without Lucy reminding her just what she was getting herself back into.

“I know how picture people live,” Lucy continued, oblivious to Amanda’s discomfort. “The least you could have done is had me over for a drink. Let me walk in the front door, like a lady. But I guess that’s how it is in this town. You hit it big, you forget all your old friends.”

“Lucy.” As surreptitiously as she could, Amanda glanced at her watch. Time was running out. “I promise, promise, promise we’ll get together very, very soon. Maybe not at my mansion …” She stopped herself. There was no need to go into any of that. “…  but somewhere equally good. I just really, really need to talk to Olive right away. We’ll make plans soon, okay?”

“I don’t believe you,” Lucy said, but she looked mollified. “Olive’s upstairs. But I wouldn’t go up there if I were you. Something’s up. She closed the whole house up today; nobody who’s got a date is supposed to bring them back here tonight.”

“Good thing I don’t have a date, then.”

“All right, it’s your funeral.” Lucy shrugged, turning back to the radio. “But find me on the way out, will ya? I want to hear all about that snobby girl, Margo Whatserface, who got her hooks into Dane Forrest.”

Amanda walked through the empty rooms to the big curving staircase at the back of the house. Devoid of its usual signs of lascivious life, Olive Moore’s place looked more like a museum than ever. The flocked red wallpaper, the gaudy gilt sconces,
the saucy Victorian engravings to put patrons “in the mood” on their way to “somewhere a little more private” were unchanged since she’d seen them last, as though they’d been preserved in amber.
Foolish
, she mused, her hand grazing the polished surface of the mahogany banister,
to think that just because you try to forget about a place, it will somehow go away
. It was like that French phrase Harry always liked to use when he’d had a couple of drinks and was feeling particularly urbane:
plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
. “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

The door to Olive’s office stood slightly ajar. Amanda rapped her knuckles against it lightly, calling out to her.

There was no reply.

Gingerly, Amanda pushed the door open a little farther and took a step inside. The lamps were lit. The big leather ledger books were spread open on the table. A cigarette smoldered in a cut-glass ashtray, and a mouthful or two of amber sherry glittered in a lipstick-marked glass.

“Olive?” Amanda ventured, her voice quaking. Why did it feel so spooky in here? “Are you there?”

“Amanda.” Olive Moore suddenly materialized from behind one of the heavy velvet curtains that hung all along the back wall of the office, like the masking on the wings of a stage. “What on earth are you doing here?”

Her voice was low and her diction precise as always, but Amanda couldn’t help feeling there was something off about her appearance. She was dressed in a neat, dark, expensive-looking suit, looking more like a soignée socialite matron than the movie colony’s leading practitioner of what she primly liked to refer to as “a highly specialized concierge service,” but the
shoulders of her jacket seemed somehow askew, her makeup slightly smudged. A lock of hair had escaped from its lacquered chignon, dangling alongside the mysterious pink scar that ran the length of one cheek.

Oddest of all, she wore no visible jewelry, not even the little circular gold-and-pearl pin like the one Margo Sterling had that Amanda had always loved, the pin that in all the years she’d known Olive, she could never recall seeing her without.
Olive Moore without jewelry
, Amanda thought.
It’s almost like seeing her naked
.

“Well?” Olive sounded impatient. “Is there something you need?”

“Money.”
Why beat around the bush?
“I need money.”

Olive’s ice-blue eyes narrowed as a wide, Cheshire-cat grin spread across her face. “Well,” she said. “Why don’t you have a seat?”

“I’d rather stand, thank you.”

“Oh, Amanda, don’t be ridiculous.” Olive sighed. “Sit down.” Hating herself, Amanda did as she was told. There was no point in grandstanding now.

“Sherry?” Olive asked, refilling her own glass.

“No, thank you.”

“Suit yourself.” Olive took a sip, her mouth puckering slightly from the dryness of the liquor. “Now,” she said, putting the glass back down on the desk exactly where it had been. “Let me guess. The studio dropped your contract.”

Amanda had told herself she wouldn’t show any surprise in front of Olive. She swallowed hard. “How did you know?”

“Amanda, dear, let’s face it. You certainly take a nice picture, but you haven’t exactly been burning up the screen.” Olive lit
herself a cigarette from the gilt-edged box on the desk. “But you’ve been spending more than they paid you, and now you’re into the studio for money and you’ve got no way to pay them back, is that right?” She sat back, arms crossed over her chest in triumph, puffing away.

Amanda looked down at her hands, her face flushed with shame.
How the hell does she know?
Olympus had promised not to make her termination public for a few more weeks—“to give you some leverage should you seek placement at another studio,” the employment secretary had said benevolently, as though she were bestowing on Amanda some great kindness. Gabby, bless her self-obsessed little soul, had never bothered to follow up about the results of the meeting that had filled her friend with such terror that day on the Olympus lot. Harry was unreachable, Margo was remote. Dane … well, Dane Forrest knew. He hadn’t offered any help, and she hadn’t expected him to. But she’d never expected him to go blabbing it all over town.

Just goes to show you can’t trust anyone
.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Olive said, as though she could read Amanda’s thoughts. “Nobody’s betrayed you. It’s just such an old story. So predictable that if it were a picture they’d send it in for rewrites. For a few girls, a studio contract is a winning lottery ticket; for most, it’s a shell game. You come out worse off than you went in.” Her words were hard, but her voice was not unkind. “How much are you in for? It must be quite a lot if you came to me.”

“Six thousand dollars.”

“What?”

“Six thousand dollars,” Amanda said. Just saying the number aloud made her blush with shame. “And change.”

“My God.” Olive shook her head. “You’ve really gotten yourself into a pickle, haven’t you?”

“I guess so.”

“Well, I don’t give gifts, Amanda. You’re going to have to work for it. I want you back on the books immediately, and back in the house, where I can keep an eye on you.”

“Fine.”

“I’ll give you a small allowance, for necessities. We’ll deduct it from your earnings each week, and you’ll be on every night until the debt is clear. And I don’t want any complaints this time. You’ll go with who I tell you to, and you’ll do whatever they want.” Olive’s eyes glittered. “
Whatever
they want. Is that clear?”

Amanda swallowed hard, forcing back the bile that rose to her throat at the thought of exactly what Olive meant. The endless string of dingy hotel rooms; the sour breath and wandering hands. The smug, cruel smiles of men who thought they knew exactly what they were owed.

And worse—maybe worst of all—the expressions of everyone who saw her, their looks of disapproval and pity and disgust. The looks she wanted to punch right off their faces, the looks that made her want to scream and cry and spit
You don’t know who I am! You don’t know what it’s like! You don’t know what I’ve been through. You don’t know anything at all!