A Touch of Stardust (12 page)

There was a restlessness on the set. Crew members fiddled with equipment, casting wary glances at the figure of a woman sitting alone on the staircase landing. Julie had to glance more closely to recognize Vivien Leigh. The actress looked tight and distraught, rocking back and forth, whispering to herself.

Right then, Cukor emerged from the shadows and walked slowly up the stairs to where she sat. He was not a tall man, somewhat settled and rounded, with dark-rimmed glasses that kept falling over his nose. But when he knelt down before Leigh, took her
hand, and began talking, she seemed mesmerized: Listening, nodding. Finally, smiling.

“There he goes, working his magic again,” whispered a cameraman. “That guy knows women.”

After a few moments of Cukor’s soothing assurances, Leigh stood and smoothed down her gown and slowly took position at the foot of the staircase. Her expression changed. She leaned into the banister, exhausted and defeated.

It wasn’t the actress standing there, it was Scarlett; Vivien had once again disappeared.

Cukor signaled for silence, and the cameramen crouched behind their cameras. A technician lifted the clapperboard high and looked to Cukor. He nodded. The sharp sound of the boards hitting made Julie jump.

Scarlett, her dress both torn and dusty from the streets, starts up the staircase, her shoulders heavy with the weight of the horror she is witnessing. Atlanta is falling. Melanie is about to give birth, but the busy doctor has refused to come. Scarlett tells the maid, Prissy, they will have to deliver the baby themselves
.

Playing Prissy, Butterfly McQueen reacts with horror. “Oh Lordy, Miss Scarlett! We’ve got to have a doctor!”

Scarlett grabs her, sweat glistening on her face. “What do you mean? You told me you knew everything!”

“I don’t know why I lied!”

Scarlett is furious. Propelled by despair and fear, she raises her hand high to slap the boastful maid. Her hand comes down with a swift swing to Prissy’s bandanna-covered head. The girl lets out a spiraling, frantic scream
.

“Cut,” ordered Cukor loudly. “Good, deep-throated yell, Butterfly. We’ll dub in the sound of the slap later.”

Butterfly McQueen nodded, patted her bandanna back in place, and sat down in a canvas chair off set. Vivien Leigh said something to her, lowered herself into the adjoining chair, and took a glass of
water offered by the script girl. She and Butterfly began chatting about the weather.

It was such a switch to normalcy, Julie felt a bit dizzy.

“So did you think Scarlett was really going to whack Prissy over the head?”

A familiar voice. Julie turned, suddenly flustered. Andy stood next to her, looking his usual wry, relaxed self. His shirt was rumpled, unbuttoned at the neck, with no tie. His hands were shoved into his pockets, his eyes steady on hers.

“I thought she was about to.”

“McQueen told Cukor flat out that she wouldn’t scream if she really got slapped. She hates the weak-minded part of Prissy anyway, and she wasn’t going to stand for suffering that indignity, even for the role. Easy call, don’t you think? Especially when Cukor will redo this scene another dozen times or so. Poor girl wouldn’t have a brain left in her head—and right now, I’d say she’s one of the smartest people on the set.”

“Andy—”

“I know. Maybe you’re thinking you overreacted?” He raised a finger to stop her from responding. “Okay—I accept your apology. Will you accept mine?”

She looked into his eyes and saw a flicker of something—humor? She wasn’t sure. Andy had a way of dancing around with jokes when he was totally serious.

“I don’t know what to say. I didn’t overreact.”

“Okay, I’ll concede that. It just makes my apology more sweeping than you might expect. It’s for everything that I have done or will do in the future to embarrass or hurt you. Is that covering enough ground?”

He reached out his hand and touched her cheek.

“I don’t see a loophole in that contract,” she said, heart thumping.

“There is one out—I may well make you angry, even furious. Neither hurt nor embarrassed, you may still at some point want to kill me. You okay with that?”

She nodded; no words seemed needed right now.

A cameraman whistled in their direction, then laughed.

His hand dropped away. “I can’t kiss you here, Miss Crawford,” he said. “But I will tonight, if you let me.”

His house, all dark wood and sweeping glass, sat perched on a cliff in the Hollywood Hills, overlooking the night lights of Los Angeles. It had a stark, almost spartan façade, but Julie had been out here long enough now to know many homes balanced on the cliffs were deliberately built to vanish visually into the hillside.

She stepped inside, onto a sleek marble floor, curious to see what Andy’s home might say about him.

It was small and spare, but arrestingly furnished—a black suede sofa, a dark oak writing desk, lamps with bold geometric shapes. Julie was drawn to the desk, tracing its clean, polished outline with her hand.

“Le Corbusier dubbed the style ‘Art Deco,’ ” Andy said.

“It’s beautiful,” she said. “Very modern.”

“Thanks.” He moved across the room to a small, mirrored bar, looking a little uncomfortable, and took a crystal flask of brandy from one of the shelves. “You’ll have one with me?” he asked.

She nodded. Feeling less awkward in motion, she moved over to the window and stared out at the city below. She had imagined him in something like this: something touched with Hollywood sophistication; something that spoke of intellect and style; something different from the antimacassars pasted over the backs of chairs and the brocade drapes, hung so heavily they shut out light, that spoke of home. She glanced around for photographs, seeking something personal, and saw nothing except a strikingly beautiful painting of a girl in blue holding a mandolin. The lines were bold, spare, and yet sensual. “Who did that?” she asked, pointing.

“Tamara de Lempicka,” he said. “Polish, lives here. A Hollywood favorite. They call her ‘the baroness with the brush,’ so you can see, this little number of mine is already a Hollywood cliché.”

“Not to someone seeing it for the first time,” she said, taking the glass of brandy he was handing her.

His glance flickered. He liked that. As she looked around, she noted a very sober-looking magazine on a side table. It was clearly not a copy of
Photoplay
.

“
Contemporary Jewish Record
,” she read out loud with a touch of surprise.

“You don’t think it fits the atmosphere?”

“It fits this atmosphere if it reflects you.”

“It does. You do remember I’m a Jew?”

There was a slight challenge in his words, though spoken lightly.

“You don’t have to ask that.”

He picked up the magazine, flipped its pages, and put it down again. “It keeps me up to date on what’s happening in Europe.”

She thought of the grumblings at home, the rallies at Smith, all centered on the worries that the United States might be pulled into one more European war. “You’ve been there. You’ve seen more than most of us,” she said.

“I’ve seen only a quick glimpse of what’s going on.”

“What happened when you went back?”

He stared out the window, taking a moment before answering. “Something was slipping away and being replaced by something else,” he said. “You could feel it in the air—you couldn’t smell it or taste it, but it was behind all the smiling faces. Then it got plenty tangible.”

He was riding his bike on a sunny day in Berlin, he told her. Turning a corner; a group of Hitler’s storm troopers swaggering up the sidewalk. People moving out of their way. The bullies his grandparents deplored, the thugs in dirty brown shirts—they were always roaming the city, shoving people, mocking them, forcing them to give the Nazi salute. An old man approached, eyesight and instincts dulled as he blinked into the sunshine. They tripped him. And laughed. Stopping his bike, ready to confront the pack. Bullies, just bullies, his grandparents said. They don’t like Jews—stay out of their way. But they go after anyone with a big nose, so be careful.

“They had their sport, then laughed and walked on. I stood there, a stupid American.”

“Why didn’t—”

“Why didn’t I go after them?” He shot her a melancholy smile. “Because nobody around me reacted. Oh, I ran over and helped the man up, walked him home. People hurried up and down the street, barely glancing at what was going on. Including a few cops. Just a normal street scene.
Nobody thought it unusual
.”

“What about your grandparents?”

“I tried to get them to come back to the States with me. They said I was overreacting—the government was reining in the Brownshirts—and Berlin was their home.” He looked down at his drink. “They’re still there. And my brother said there was no problem like that in France, so he’s still there, too.”

She reached for his hand, remembering the friendly but fervent exchanges at the Mankiewicz dinner party and realizing that Andy had stayed silent during most of it. “What do you think should happen?”

“Look, I know you don’t mean it, but, please, don’t give me a politely guarded question,” he said quietly. “I’m sick of them. Jews are being evicted from their homes; they’re losing their jobs. The Nazis are ordering boycotts of their stores. Breaking windows, clubbing anyone out too late at night—the usual thing. It’s getting worse.”

“Are you saying Roosevelt should declare war on Germany?”

“Hell, yes. Hitler will take over Europe. I wish I could protect my grandparents.”

“Any chance of that now?”

He smiled a bit wearily. “Sweet Julie.”

“Please”—she was stung—“don’t dismiss my question.”

“I’m sorry. Okay, it may be too late. But I’m hoping to get my brother out of France. I can get bribe money to Vichy officials and sign affidavits of support for his family, but getting the United States to issue visas for Jews is tougher and tougher. Nobody wants to face what’s going on. What makes me angry are the Jews in this town
who don’t want to talk about it. People like Mayer want to pretend they aren’t Jewish—might hurt business.”

“That’s shameful.”

“The sad part is that it’s pretty sensible. It’s not just the Jews in Europe who are disliked—we’re disliked here, too. Americans just hide it better.” He pulled a cigarette out of a pack in his breast pocket, lit it, and inhaled deeply. “And I’ll bet that doesn’t surprise you one bit.”

He wasn’t looking directly at her, which was just as well. She feared that her memories of all the comfortable jokes about Jews she had heard through her life, even at her family dinner table, might show on her face. She felt a sting of shame.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to give a speech.”

“You didn’t. You were just giving me facts I should know anyway.”

“Your parents wouldn’t approve of us, would they.” It wasn’t a question.

“Andy, please—I’m me, not my parents.”

He sighed. “Julie, Julie.”

They both fell silent for a long moment.

“Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to bring you here,” he said. He sank down into the sofa and took a deep gulp of his brandy.

She sat down next to him. “Why not?”

“Too much exposure.”

“Of what—or whom?”

“My house tells secrets I prefer to keep.”

Julie answered carefully. “It says you like modern living, and it says that you like simplicity, and”—she rubbed a finger over the black suede—“you like good fabric, and you don’t have a dog.”

He raised an eyebrow. “How do you know I don’t have a German shepherd sleeping in the kitchen?”

“No dog hairs.”

He laughed. They were both relaxing a little.

He added slowly, “It also says we’re different, and we live in different ways.”

“We’re not here to eat dinner, are we?” She could stop avoiding as well as he could.

“Would you be disappointed if we were?”

She didn’t want to keep playing; it was too tiring. “Andy, we’re not reading lines for a movie. Please, kiss me, and mean it.”

He let out a sharp sound, and pulled her close. His kiss was slow and searching, a leisurely invitation to a tantalizing and unfamiliar kind of lovemaking. When his hand slipped down her throat to her breast, cupping it, she wondered if he could feel her heart pounding. She wound her arms tighter around his neck and hoped he did.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

Yes, yes. “You are so polite.”

“What happened to the proper girl from Indiana?”

“She packed her bags and left.” Julie arched her back, moving closer.

“Then who’s here in my arms?”

“Me.”

Gently he pushed her down into the soft pillows of the sofa, his hand moving inside her blouse. He was on top of her now. She could smell the sharp scent of his aftershave, feel the smoothness of his skin. Somehow her blouse was unbuttoned; she felt his mouth close over her nipple. He moved slowly, still inviting her consent, as she blocked out the echoed warnings of her parents and home.

His hand slipped farther down her body. She had no interest in objecting.

“Okay, I guess you mean it. Let’s go.” He stood and picked her up in his arms, and walked toward the bedroom.