The Memoir of Johnny Devine (3 page)

Even if people
want
ed to forget the kind of man I once
was, they couldn’t. The tabloids made certain of that.

~
The Devine Truth: A Memoir

The bus left downtown
Berkeley and climbed into the east hills. The neighborhoods north
of the University campus differed from the rest of the city. The
homes here were
larger, finer, and set
farther apart. But what stood out most was how vastly different
each home was from the others in design and character, nothing at
all like the uniformity of her east Oakland
neighborhood.

The bus let her off at Beechwood Lane. It
was a good ten-minute walk to the address the agency had given her,
which turned out to be the last home on the dead-end, tree-lined
street. At least, she assumed it was a house, since she couldn’t
see any part of a building. A hedge of evergreens formed a tall
screen along the front of the property and ended at two thick stone
columns supporting a barred, metal gate.

Eliza tugged the hem of her jacket, smoothed
her skirt, and pushed the call button. She’d never encountered a
locked gate at a residential job before. Tucking a wayward curl
behind her ear, she looked over her shoulder at the quiet lane.
Only two cars had passed during her walk, another stark contrast to
her busy neighborhood. It was almost as if she’d stepped into
another world.

The speaker box beside the gate crackled.
“Yes?” The female voice was nearly lost in the static.

“
Hello,” Eliza said,
wincing at the natural softness of her voice. She spoke up. “My
name is Mrs. Saunderson. I’m here for an interview.” She pushed her
glasses higher and peered closely at the tarnished brass plaque
above the speaker box.
Vincent
.

“
Come up to the door and
wait,” the tired voice said.

The gate buzzed, then opened slowly with a
humming, metallic sound.

Eliza stepped onto a cobbled stone
drive.

The gate closed on its own.

She followed the drive as it curved to the
right, bordered on either side by an overgrown hedge bursting with
white blooms. The sweet fragrance reminded Eliza of her mother.
Somehow, the passing years had made Mama’s favorite scent easier to
remember than her face.

Still, the blooming hedge was a good sign.
Anyone who would surround their home with the scent of gardenias
couldn’t be all bad.

Weeping willows obscured Eliza’s view of the
dwelling until she rounded another bend in the drive. There,
nestled between flowering shrubs and trees, stood a house Eliza
could only describe as something from a storybook. Dark, decorative
trim adorned the white stucco walls, matching the weathered shakes
of the roof. Leaded glass windows made up of small, square panes
faced west, and smooth, round stones of varying sizes formed an
arch above the door.

What really drew
her
attention was the
turret above the entryway, a column rising from the place where two
angled parts of the house met in the center. A cone-shaped roof
topped the tower, coming to a point like a witch’s hat. The
turret’s narrow window glittered from sunlight hitting the tiny
diamond shapes. A small balcony jutted out beneath the
window.

Eliza had never seen such
a charming villa anywhere but in a book, and certainly not in the
middle of a swanky Berkeley suburb. This home looked more like
something from
The
Hobbit
. Surely a bearded dwarf would round
the corner any minute, and then perhaps a hobbit with a long pipe
would throw open the tower window and shout a friendly
greeting.

To the right of the house, beyond the drive,
the grounds ended at a line of dense trees partially obscuring a
stone wall. This homeowner clearly valued his privacy.

She couldn’t really blame him. Who wouldn’t
want to keep such an enchanting place tucked away from prying
eyes?

From midway along the drive, a moss-entwined
stone path cut across the lawn and curved around the left of the
house toward a secluded garden, daring Eliza to slip off her pumps
and test the cool, green carpet and smooth stone with her
stockinged feet. A trellis dripping with clusters of wisteria
formed a canopy in the center of the garden, and beneath it, two
white, wrought iron chairs and a table beckoned her to come sip tea
and spend a leisurely afternoon basking in sweet-scented
seclusion.

Hopefully no one was watching her from the
house as she paused a moment longer, drinking in the charm with a
smile she couldn’t contain.

This would be no ordinary typing job.

She followed the path to the house. On
either side of the front door, windows overlooked lemon-scented
shrubbery and a shaggy lawn.

The front door opened, and
a
small, colored woman wearing a starched
gray-and-white maid’s uniform stepped out. She peered at Eliza
through round glasses. Her sparse gray hair, pulled back from her
creased forehead, tufted in places like a fine mist. Without
speaking, she looked Eliza up and down.

“
Hello.” Eliza offered her
most professional smile. “I’m Mrs. Saunderson. The agency sent
me.”

The old woman planted fists on her hips and
studied Eliza’s shoes, then her two-piece navy suit—another
hand-me-down from Betty, chosen to accentuate Eliza’s dark-blue
eyes—then peered up at Eliza with a narrowed gaze. “Ma’am, how old
are you?”

Not once had she been asked her age for a
typing job. “I’m thirty-three.”

The woman continued her scrutiny. If not for
the incredible pay and the amount of borrowed bus fare it had taken
to get here, Eliza might have turned around and caught the next bus
back to Oakland. But perhaps people who lived in enchanted
estates—or at least their help—could be expected to be a bit
eccentric.

“
Do you … want to know my
typing speed or see my portfolio?”

“
No, ma’am. I ’spect you
type just fine.” The maid studied her face again.

Eliza got the feeling the old woman was
trying to decide if she knew her.

Finally, the woman nodded. “All right then,
come inside.” Leading the way with a steady hitch in her step, the
woman took Eliza through a small sitting room filled with an
assortment of antique furnishings, past a narrow, curved staircase
with a hallway beside it, and into a long parlor. The room was more
of a library, the walls inset with dozens of shelves and papered in
gold and crimson. The golden glass and wrought iron sconces and
quaint furniture looked like they’d been here for half a century,
but were spotless and well-kept.

“
Have a seat,
ma’am.”

Eliza sat on a velvet settee facing the
front windows and the picturesque view of the bay with the
silhouette of the Golden Gate in the distance.

The maid peered at her again, hunched
shoulders bringing her face nearly level with Eliza’s. “Do you know
who live here?”

“
I’m afraid I
don’t.”

“
Well, he be the one you
discuss the typin’ with. But before he come, I need to know how you
behave around famous folks.”

“
Famous? I don’t know if
I’ve ever—”

“
Last girl didn’t even
make it through her first day.” She let out a huff and shook her
head. “I knew that red-faced woman gonna be trouble the minute I
seen her.”

“
So, your employer is … a
celebrity?”
Eliza
scrambled to think of anyone famous with the last name of
Vincent.

“
That’s right. He been in
many pictures, but I ’spect you was just a schoolgirl
then.”

“
Pictures?” Eliza smiled.
“How exciting.”

The maid’s narrowed gaze told Eliza this was
the wrong response. “You ever see a celebrity up close?”

Eliza had to think about it. “I saw Eleanor
Roosevelt at a press conference once. But I was in a large crowd
and didn’t get close enough to speak to her.”

The maid nodded. “I like Miz Roosevelt. She
a smart woman.” She studied Eliza as she spoke. “But movie stars is
different.”

Eliza’s curiosity was now fully engaged, but
she kept it to herself, since the woman clearly took her screening
job very seriously. She looked the old woman squarely in the eye.
“I can assure you that I will behave as sensibly with your employer
as I would with any other.”

“
Humph. I be the judge of
that.” The woman’s wrinkly face softened. “I’m Millie.”

“
I’m pleased to meet you,
Millie. Please, call me Eliza.”

A buzzer sounded from somewhere across the
library.

“
Beg your pardon, ma’am.”
Millie shuffled to a doorway at the far end of the room and picked
up a telephone receiver. She spoke in low tones for a few moments,
then hung up and came back to Eliza.

“
He see you shortly.”
Millie turned away.

“
Oh, wait—before you go,
can you tell me who he is?”

Millie shook her head. “No, ma’am. You know
soon enough. Besides, I ain’t goin’ nowhere.” Millie tottered to
the stone fireplace and stood beside it like a tiny, gray sentinel,
her knobby hands clasped in front.

A twinge tingled along Eliza’s nerves. How
would she react to meeting a famous movie star face to face? Would
she get weak in the knees? Tongue-tied?

If it meant getting the job, she could
certainly act calm. Though pretense was despicable, it was,
unfortunately, something she’d become quite good at. If she could
spend three years pretending to be serene and unaffected while a
storm of humiliation and hurt raged within her, she could certainly
conceal being a little star-struck.

Had she and Ralph only been together three
years before he had left for war? It seemed so much longer—long
enough to leave his voice forever ringing in her ears …

A real woman knows how to keep a man happy.
And I’m stuck with one who can’t even get one thing right.

Eliza tried to tune out the memory before
the last part could—

Should’ve just gotten a dog.

Something thunked against wood.

Eliza shook off the memory and prepared to
meet the employer.

The thunking sound grew louder until a tall,
dark-haired man in charcoal tweed slacks, a crisp white shirt, and
a tie appeared in the parlor doorway.

Eliza gasped in spite of herself and stood,
almost too numb to move. Millie was right—there were probably few
who wouldn’t recognize Hollywood’s legendary Johnny Devine.

He leaned on a cane, but straightened to a
full six-foot-plus when his gaze found Eliza.

Her heart thudded. The silver screen had not
done his looks full justice.

“
Mr. John,” Millie said
from her post. “This is Mrs. Saunderson.”

“
How do you do?” Johnny
Devine asked in that trademark voice that made far too many
sensible women swoon. He eyed Eliza carefully, waiting.

Still numb, Eliza couldn’t answer.

Millie’s description of
her employer as “famous” was an understatement.
Notorious
was more accurate. Louella
Parsons’s Hollywood gossip column had been the first to dub him
“Devilishly Devine.” From all accounts, Johnny Devine was extremely
fond of women—young or old, rich or poor, married or single, loose
or chaste. Rumor had it he could seduce anything in a skirt quicker
than he could hail a cab.

Johnny turned to Millie, and the old woman
gave him a single nod. He returned his attention to Eliza and
studied her for a painfully long moment.

“
Mrs. Saunderson,” he said
finally. “Won’t you please be seated?”

Reminding herself to
breathe, Eliza found her seat.
He’s just a
man. Just a regular man.

While Millie held her place, Johnny Devine
limped to the other side of the fireplace and lowered himself onto
a chair, squeezing his cane in a white-knuckled grip as he sat. He
drew a deep breath and faced Eliza. Then he smiled.

Oh … my … stars …
On screen, that smile was a heart stopper. But in
person? It could melt the stockings right off a girl.

“
I’m writing a book,” he
said. “A memoir, actually. It’s under contract with a New York
publishing house, Covenant Press. I have the first three chapters
here—”

He began to rise, but Millie tut-tutted at
him and retrieved a manila envelope from the fireplace mantel. She
tottered over and handed it to Eliza.

Memoir
? Eliza stared at the tan packet on her lap, wishing she
didn’t have to touch it.

“
After going over those
first few chapters,” he said, pointing at the envelope, “my
publisher suggested I hire a typist with strong editorial skills.
You can see his marks for yourself. He likes the content but wants
me to find someone who can do the edits on those chapters and get
the project back on schedule by sorting out any other … grammatical
issues that arise as I write the rest.”

Eliza stared at the envelope, thoughts
whirling. The last thing she wanted was to read three hundred pages
of him boasting about his dressing room adventures, much less fix
the grammar. But the pay was so unbelievably good.

And yet there was also the
issue of working
with
him. In his home.

Eliza stole a glance at him. He was surely
older than he’d been in his last picture that she’d seen, but every
bit as attractive. In fact, he was more handsome than a man had a
right to be.