The Fame Thief (36 page)

Life is just there, to be made the best of, until it isn’t. And that’s all right, too.

Another of the good things about being where I am now, especially for people who were beautiful once, or just healthy and without pain, is that you can decide which person you want to be, out of all the people you’ve been in your life. You could choose childhood, if you’d like. You don’t actually have a body, of course, but it’s kind of like it was when you were alive and doing something, when you weren’t thinking about being you, but you knew your body was there, behaving itself, and you felt good about how it looked, or worked. So Dolly’s young and
light and beautiful again, and it thrills her. Although she’ll forget about it, over time.

And me? I don’t even have an accent.

That nice burglar boy came by after the police were finished with the apartment, and he did the sweetest thing. He stood in the middle of the living room and invited me to go to his place, down on the third floor. He didn’t know the rules, he said, but he thought maybe I could leave here and go somewhere else if I was invited. And he was right, I could have. He said he didn’t live there all the time, but if I went down there, maybe I wouldn’t be so lonely.

But lonely is what I’m not right now. Dolly and I have so much to talk about, now that we’re both on this side of the window. I had been alone for so long—Dolly was here, but we could only really see each other’s shadows. And she’d been alone, too, and now she isn’t. So I said, No, thanks, to the nice burglar boy. We’ll stay right here, Dolly and I.

And now new people are moving in, a family with three children. Neither Dolly nor I ever had children, and we’re like a couple of maiden aunts. It will be so lively here.

Of course, children are open to things adults miss. Just yesterday the baby—he’s about a year old—was in his bassinet while his father was measuring for carpets to cover all that awful black wood, and the baby looked right at Dolly and gave her the biggest smile.

He thought she was
so
pretty.

Writing this book
was almost illegally enjoyable. I can only hope it’s fun to read, too.

Although Dolores La Marr and most of her Hollywood are fictional, there was a real-life model for Irwin Dressler, the legendary Sidney Korshak. Korshak ran most of Hollywood on behalf of the Chicago mob for decades—studio moguls actually did talk to him daily—and also oversaw the creation of much of modern Los Angeles, including several now-respectable banks that were originally set up to launder money. Dressler’s private personality is a product of my imagination, but anyone who’s interested in the extent to which the mob—often through Korshak—participated in the shaping of Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and the entire state of California might want to read
Supermob
by the investigative reporter (and Pulitzer nominee) Gus Russo. An amazing book.

I used to see Korshak almost daily at his famous table at a Beverly Hills restaurant, where he accepted the obeisances of stars and power-players alike in between calls on his personal telephone, which was swept for bugs and taps several times a day.

Lots of good music went into this book, courtesy of my
exploding iPod. Some of it was from the forties, especially Benny Goodman and the Andrews Sisters, but also Margaret Whiting, Glenn Miller, and Duke Ellington. More contemporary artists who made contributions to my energy fund include The Wombats, the lamented Amy Winehouse, The Raconteurs, Jon Fratelli, Adele, Arctic Monkeys, Rufus Wainwright, Bonnie Raitt, Neil Young, and The Decemberists, among thirty or forty others. Anyone who wants to suggest music to me is invited to do so through the
CONTACT TIM
button at
www.timothyhallinan.com
.

My thanks to my demonically energetic editor, Juliet Grames, and all at Soho for plucking Junior out of the ebook ether and slapping him onto the page; to my agent, Bob Mecoy; and to my first listener and most patient audience, my wife, Munyin Choy-Hallinan.