Starstruck (13 page)

God! Wouldn’t that be something! Entering her debutante ball dressed all in white silk, on Dane Forrest’s arm, practically like a bride—which, obviously, would be the next step. Her parents would be terribly against it, of course (not only was Dane an actor, but Margaret remembered reading something a couple of years ago about him giving a speech at a rally for FDR), but when they saw how charming and well bred and wonderful he was, they’d soon come around. And Doris and Diana Chesterfield would be her two maids of honor in lilac dresses, and Evelyn Gamble would be … well, what was greener than a pea? Broccoli. Evelyn Gamble would positively turn into a great big stalk of broccoli.

Speaking of green, it was nearly St. Patrick’s Day, and the Olympus commissary was absolutely swathed in it: green tablecloths, green flowers, green bunting.
Picture Palace was right
, Margaret thought delightedly.
They really do decorate for everything
. At the entrance, a child dressed as a leprechaun offered her a shamrock corsage.

“Oh, thank you!” Margaret cooed. “Aren’t you adorable!”

“Cut the crap, lady,” said the leprechaun, in a surprisingly deep voice. On closer inspection, she could see a distinct tinge
of five o’clock shadow beginning to sprout beneath his heavily rouged cheeks. “You think I’m thrilled about this? I know I’m practically the only little person within a hundred-mile radius not working on the MGM lot for
The Wizard of Oz
, so just put a sock in it, will ya?”

“Oh! I’m terribly sorry,” Margaret began, but the leprechaun had already returned to the cigar butt he had left smoldering in the ashtray behind the cash register.

Margaret blushed for what felt like the millionth time that day.
Maybe this was a mistake
, she thought. What did she think she was going to do? Sit alone in her too-fancy suit, as if she were playing hooky at Schwab’s? Besides, Dane Forrest was nowhere in sight. She didn’t know anyone and they didn’t know her.
I don’t belong here
, Margaret thought gloomily.
I should just catch the Red Car back to Pasadena before anyone notices I’m gone
.

“Hey!” Just as she was about to slink away, she noticed a small but unmistakably familiar figure waving frantically in her direction.

“Hey! Hey there! You, in the blue!” With the bottom of her hair in curlers and wrapped in a pink flannel bathrobe to protect her dress, Gabby Preston looked like the world’s youngest housewife finally settling down to breakfast after her brood had left for the day.

“Me?” Shyly, she took a small step toward Gabby’s table.

“Yes, you! I know you! Hannah, right? You were in the chorus line at the Palace Theater in Newark, isn’t that right?
Pretty Babies of 1936
? You remember, when that Polish girl, Gertrude or whatever her name was, caught bedbugs from that stage-door Johnny with the limp and passed them on to the whole rotten dressing room.”

“I … I think you must have me confused with someone else.”

“Oh.” Gabby shrugged. “Well, never mind. Come and sit with me anyway.”

“I wouldn’t … I wouldn’t want to impose.”

“You’re not meeting anyone, are you?”

“No …”

“Then sit.”

“Well … if you’re sure you don’t mind.” Margaret sat, hoping Gabby wouldn’t notice her obvious relief.

“Don’t be ridiculous. There’s positively no one amusing in here today, and I simply detest having lunch alone, don’t you?” Gabby didn’t wait for an answer. “Normally, I lunch with Jimmy, but he’s gone off to the Derby with some agent or other, Selznick, I think, promising him the moon and the stars if he only gives him ten percent for life.”

Jimmy Molloy at the Brown Derby with Myron Selznick
, Margaret thought, with a shiver of delight. It felt deliciously insider-y to know that right at this very moment, Olympus’s biggest box-office star was eating Cobb salad at Hollywood’s swankest eatery with the most powerful talent agent in town.

“Anyway, he’s left me here high and dry with positively no one to talk to,” Gabby continued, “and once you’ve been
seen
in the Olympus commissary, it simply doesn’t do to leave it. So I’m quite glad you turned up unclaimed or I’d have had to sit here chattering to myself and everyone would think I’d properly gone crackers for good. Oh! My name is Gabby, by the way.”

“I know who you are.” It probably wasn’t a very sophisticated thing to say, but Margaret couldn’t help herself. “I saw you in
No Time but Swing Time
.”

Gabby waved her hand dismissively, but Margaret could tell she was pleased. “Oh, that. That was just a short.”

“Well, I thought you were swell. Although I wish they’d had you sing a ballad. I heard you doing ‘But Not for Me’ the other day on
Gussie Gilmore’s Radio Spectacular
and it was absolutely beautiful.”

“Gershwin.” Gabby smacked her lips. “I guess you’ve got taste, then. What’s your name, anyway?”

“Mar … go,” Margaret said.
Why not?
The new name made her feel deliciously undercover, as if she were Mata Hari. “Margo.”

“Margo? That’s pretty. And you’re contract?”

“Excuse me?”

“Are you under contract to the studio? As an actress?”

“Oh.” Margaret shook her head. “No.”

“You’re not a writer. I haven’t seen many writers who look like you.”

“Oh, no, no.”

“Don’t tell me you’re an extra. Well, don’t worry. You’ll get noticed soon enough. Just show a little leg when the casting guys come around, but don’t believe a word they say if they promise you anything. It’s like Viola always says, why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?”

“I don’t know,” Margaret said, startled by Gabby’s frank implication. “Maybe so you can slaughter it and turn it into steaks and handbags?”

Gabby laughed with wide-eyed surprise. “Hey, that’s funny. Maybe you should be a writer after all.”

“Actually”—Margaret leaned forward shyly—“I’ve just finished filming a screen test.”

“What? Now? Your first one?”

Margaret nodded. “I’ve only just come from the soundstage.”

Gabby let out a little shriek. Her huge chocolate-colored eyes, wide with excitement, seemed to take up half of her small face. “Congratulations! That’s marvelous!”

“I don’t know.” Margaret shook her head. “I wouldn’t congratulate me just yet.”

“Trust me, doll, if you can still stand being around this when it’s over, it went just fine. Who’d they get to direct it?”

“Mr. Kurtzman.”

Gabby’s eyebrows shot up about three inches, which, in a face as small as hers, meant they practically touched the top of her head. “Raoul Kurtzman?”

“Yes. Is that good?”

“It’s interesting,” Gabby said. “Let’s just say usually the kind of guy they get for that sort of thing is some no-name hanging around reading comic books at Schwab’s, desperate to be picked as a runt when they’re choosing up sides for football. Not someone like Raoul Kurtzman.”

“Well, I’d never heard of him.”

“That’s because he’s only been out here for about a year. But before that he was one of the most famous film directors in Germany. A real
artiste
, so to speak.”

“Why’d he leave, then?”

Gabby looked at her as if she were crazy. “Why do they all leave? Hitler.” She shrugged her small shoulders. “Although I can’t for the life of me understand why so many people are so afraid of some crazy guy who looks like Charlie Chaplin. But I don’t know anything about politics. Studio politics, yes. And
politically, for Raoul Kurtzman to direct a screen test, well, that’s very interesting. Very interesting indeed.”

“Well, whatever they’re looking for, it started out horribly,” Margaret said. “The lights were so hot, and I couldn’t find my ‘mark’ or whatever it’s called …”

“And they put you in some horrific dress and kept shouting through that ghastly megaphone,” Gabby finished. “Believe me, I know. I’ve been here six months now, but I’m still practically in the same boat as you. I mean, I’ve gotten used to the camera and the lights and all that, but still, the famous directors, the Kurtzmans and the Toynbees, they’re the worst. You miss a dance step or a music cue, or you’re so much as five minutes late for morning call because you were rehearsing until three in the morning the night before, and they look at you like you’re something they just stepped in. Because they’re the artist, you see, and you’re the one ruining their artistic perfection.” She gave a rueful giggle. “And that’s not even counting all the gorgeous glamour girls swanning all over the place, making you feel about four feet tall. Of course, I
am
only about four feet tall.” Gabby nodded in the direction of the scowling leprechaun at the door, swigging liberally from a flask of something before he welcomed the next party. “If I were any smaller, they’d have me dressed up like Barty. Of course,” she continued, “that won’t be a problem for you. You’re not an ugly duckling like me. You know what they say about ugly ducklings in Hollywood?”

“What’s that?”

Gabby grinned. “They turn into even uglier ducks.”

“Oh come on,” Margaret said. “You’re hardly an ugly duckling.” It was true that Gabby was certainly no classical beauty,
but with her huge sparkling eyes and bouncing dark curls, she was undeniably adorable. The first time Margaret had seen her picture, she’d thought Gabby looked exactly like Esmeralda Annabel, who had been Margaret’s favorite childhood porcelain doll until Emmeline knocked her off the shelf when she was cleaning and cracked her face in two.

“Oh, I wasn’t fishing,” Gabby said matter-of-factly. “I’m cute as a bug’s ear, or so everyone keeps telling me, but around here I sometimes feel like something they dredged up from the pond. If I couldn’t sing, the closest I’d get to this place would be working as a washerwoman. Or a script girl, I suppose, although then I’d have to be able to read.”

“You mean … you can’t …” Margaret tried not to look shocked, but she was unaccustomed to anyone revealing such personal information so early in an acquaintance.

“Oh, I’m exaggerating. Of course I can, a little. But everything I know my sister Frankie taught me. You see, there just wasn’t any time for proper school. Traipsing all over creation doing vaudeville from the time you can walk doesn’t exactly turn you into a scholar.” She slumped her head dramatically down on the table and sprang back up with a start. “Ow! I forgot I was wearing these stupid curlers! My poor head.”

A green-jacketed waiter, of normal height but with an enormous shamrock in his buttonhole, approached the table. “Are you ladies ready to order?”

“I … I haven’t even seen a menu,” Margaret said.

“There isn’t one,” Gabby said. “And if there were, no one would order off it. Everyone in Hollywood is always on some crazy diet. Just order whatever you want to eat, and they’ll make it. This is the Dream Factory, after all.”

“Oh, I see. Um … do you have egg salad?”

Gabby rolled her eyes. “Margo, I told you, they have everything. Just go ahead and order. Be as big a pain as you can be.”

Margaret took a deep breath. Her mother had always told her it was unladylike for a lady to be too particular about her food in public; actually, in public, a lady was scarcely meant to eat at all. But as long as they were offering, why not go for it? “In that case, I’ll have an egg salad sandwich on rye toast. Don’t make the toast too dark, please. Iceberg lettuce on the sandwich, no tomato. The tomato I want on the side, with just a sprinkle of salt and pepper. And to drink, I’ll have a Coca-Cola … no, wait, a seltzer water, with lime. But the lime cut crosswise, not lengthwise. If you don’t mind.”

Gabby nodded approvingly. “You’re a natural. The crosswise-cut lime is an especially nice touch.” She turned to the waiter. “For me, Tony, I’d like a cheeseburger, please. And a dish of french fries, with lots of ketchup. And two—no, make it three pieces of fried chicken, and some mashed potatoes with gravy. Give me a pork chop too, if you have one, with applesauce. Oh, and a hot fudge sundae, with chopped nuts and two cherries on top, please. You can bring it all out at once.”

It was an outlandish lunch order for a girl who had just given a long interview in
Picture Palace
about her latest slimming regime, Margaret thought, but it would obviously be the height of rudeness to point it out. She changed the subject. “My friend Doris bought the recording of you singing ‘Zing Went the Strings of My Heart.’ We listened to it again and again. We couldn’t believe how it sounded
exactly
like it did in
No Time but Swing Time
.”

Gabby laughed. “That’s because it was exactly the same recording.”

“You mean—that wasn’t …”

“Me singing live? God, no. You go in and record the song in a booth, with the orchestra, and then they play it back when they shoot the scene and you just mouth along. Otherwise, you’d have to pay the musicians a fortune to sit there while they fuss around with the lights and the set and powdering all the actors every five seconds like we’re babies with diaper rash. Honestly, isn’t making pictures just the absolute dullest? Give me a live audience any day. But vaudeville’s dead, and Viola doesn’t fancy me doing eight shows a week for pin money and Broadway, and anyway, she says the cold bothers her sciatica.”

“Who is Viola?” Margaret asked.

“My old lady. The old ball and chain.”

“Your … your
wife
?” Margaret asked, confused.

Gabby hooted. “My mother.”

“You call your mother by her first name?”

“What else am I supposed to call her? Darling Mama? She’s not exactly the type. Although she turns it on for Karp. We both do.”

“Leo Karp? You mean the head of the studio?”

“The very same. He’s a hard-nosed businessman, but there are two things that get him right in the gut: patriotism and motherhood. Listen, kid, you ever run afoul of old Karp, you just get a tear in your eye and talk about how much you love your mother and your country, and he’ll turn to mush so fast you can eat him with a spoon. But I’ll tell you what, Viola doesn’t exactly inspire sonnets. Ugh. Mothers. Am I right or am I
right?” The arrival of Tony the waiter with her egg salad and seltzer, prepared exactly as requested, saved Margaret from having to respond. In front of Gabby, he unceremoniously plunked down a bowl of unadorned chicken broth. Not a French fry or an ice cream sundae in sight.