A Touch of Stardust (13 page)

Julie shut her eyes; her heart was pounding so hard now, she felt it trying to jump from her chest. This was Andy, and she knew what she wanted; it had been true since their first dinner at Chasen’s. Everything felt blazingly hot and delicious. Would it hurt? It didn’t matter—she didn’t want to be a virgin anymore.

The sound of the ringing phone slowly penetrated sleep, first as a buzz in her ear. Emerging to consciousness, she savored the feel and taste of Andy’s skin, the heaviness of his body on hers; slowly, slowly, rising from a peaceful fog.

“Andy, your phone is ringing,” she said.

“Sure.” Groggily, he reached out for the phone on the table next to the bed.

“Hello?” he said.

“It’s done,” a familiar voice replied, loud and clear enough so Julie could hear it, too. Doris? Suddenly Julie felt wide awake.

“Shit,” Andy said quietly.

“What’s done?” Julie whispered. She clutched the sheet tight to her naked body, feeling oddly vulnerable to that confident, harsh voice crackling over the phone line.

“Somebody with you?”

Andy ignored both questions. “What happens now?” he said.

“Production shuts down in the morning. There’s no way Gable didn’t know this.”

“Probably not.”

Andy was making no attempt to move the phone away from Julie. But he was making no effort to include her, either.

“Well, I’ve got a lot of work to do,” Doris said. “The
Examiner
will be on the streets with the story in a few hours, in time to spoil everybody’s breakfast. Then probably a slew of heart attacks at the studio.”

“To be expected,” Andy said with a shrug.

A sharp cackle from the other end of the line. “Selznick will have his next hire in pretty quick.”

“Firing is a habit of his,” Andy said with a quiet chuckle. “You and I know that. See you at the office.” He hung up the phone and stared for a second at the ceiling.

Julie sat up, flustered. He seemed to have forgotten she was here. “What happened?” she managed. “Why is Doris calling so late? Don’t you get any private time?”

He ignored her tone as he reached for a cigarette and lit it, then sat up next to her. “Cukor’s been fired,” he said quietly.

“Oh my goodness,” Julie said, genuinely shocked. “What happens to the movie?”

“We’re about to find out.” He touched her hair and kissed her lightly on the forehead. “Let’s get dressed,” he said. “I’m taking you home, kid.”

She couldn’t sleep that night. Andy had been kind, but obviously preoccupied when he dropped her off. Rose was sound asleep. So Julie was left alone to think about her evening in Andy’s bed. She shivered with a mixture of delight and awe, remembering. When she shut her eyes, she could hear her mother telling her the perils of not keeping one’s virginity. When she asked, “What does sex feel like?” her mother had pursed her lips, obviously struggling to find an answer that would neither disgust nor tempt Julie, and finally said, “You will feel fully that you are a woman.”

So she had retreated to erotic novels about bohemians in Paris to find the answer instead.

What
did
she feel right now? Daring, fulfilled, delighted? Had she expected something glorious that would take her to heights of ecstasy? She buried her head in the pillow. Be honest—it hadn’t been like
that
. She felt admitted to some new place, but she must make her way in it awkwardly. The language was foreign. The thought of Andy holding her, the feel of him touching her body, that was wonderful, and he had been tender. But it had hurt—well, just a little. Had it lived up to those delicious descriptions of sex in the novels she read so hungrily in high school? Well, maybe not.

Maybe she could admit she was a little disappointed—not that she wouldn’t do it again, with Andy, in a minute. She tossed, then turned, wondering if her feelings about the first time were normal. The only person she could imagine talking to about that was Rose. But, then again, Rose might be shocked.

Whenever her thoughts turned to Doris, she forced them out of her mind. Too much. Dutifully, around six in the morning, she began thinking about George Cukor.

Julie’s eyes were stinging and her head throbbed the next morning as she dragged herself from bed and made her way to the bathroom. She stopped, toothbrush in hand, staring at the windowsill of the common room. Shoved up against the glass was an old Standard Corona typewriter someone had decided to discard. Its keys were yellowed and the return bar was hanging by a single screw, but it sat tall and unbowed in worn dignity, waiting to be picked up by the trashman.

It was like getting a late Christmas present. She reached out and punched a few keys. The ribbon, though faint, still had ink. There was a desk below the window, and, tentatively, she opened a drawer. Yes, paper. Bright, shiny, empty white paper. Very carefully, she rolled a sheet into the typewriter, stared at it for a moment, and then began typing. Slowly.

An hour passed before, with a start, Julie checked the time. Lord, she was late; she still hadn’t brushed her teeth or showered.

But, even hurrying for the bus twenty minutes later, she had to force herself to push away her own thoughts and try to focus on the latest travails of
Gone with the Wind
. Pay attention, she told herself. This might be Selznick just getting rid of Cukor to please Gable, but the ramifications were huge. Unless Selznick named another director quickly, there were going to be some decent people fired today, people without the high salaries of actors and actresses—secretaries,
script girls, gaffers—all of them in jobs that put food on the table for families no moviegoer would ever know.

She walked up the driveway to the antebellum headquarters of Selznick International, seeing small knots of workers clustered together on the grounds outside, some glancing over their shoulders, as if waiting for a blow. Several women held handkerchiefs to their eyes.

Inside the central publicity office, everyone moved back and forth aimlessly. Through Selznick’s open door, Julie saw Olivia de Havilland and Vivien Leigh standing in front of the producer’s desk, alternately crying and pleading for Cukor. Both were dressed, head to toe, in black.

“They heard the news while getting ready to film the scene in the Atlanta Bazaar,” Rose whispered. She made no mention of Julie’s late arrival; it occurred to Julie that her friend might not have been fully asleep when she tiptoed in late last night.

“David, David,
we need George
,” Olivia said, weeping, raising her voice so all could hear. She tore off her somber black bonnet and threw it on Selznick’s desk. “We thought we were dressing for a movie scene, and now we find we are mourning our
director
? For God’s sake, David—George is the heart and soul of
Gone with the Wind
! You can’t fire him!”

“I believe I have that prerogative,” Selznick responded dryly. He walked to the door and shut it, gently but firmly.

“He won’t budge,” Doris said. She was sitting at her desk, staring at the door, a tight smile on her face. “They can plead all they want; nothing will change. He’s shutting down production for now. Just to scare everybody.” She turned her head; Andy was standing behind her. “So who do you think?” she said.

“That’s easy. Fleming. He’s wrapping
The Wizard of Oz
.”

Doris nodded, satisfied. “My call, too.”

“Want to bet how soon?”

“Two weeks. Ten gets you a hundred.”

“And a side one on whether Vivien and Olivia donned that funeral garb purposely to make their plea more dramatic?”

Doris laughed. “Yeah, I thought of that.”

Julie felt suddenly impatient with their insider smugness. “Well, may the best man win,” she said. “Obviously, you don’t need me for this conversation.” She turned to leave, and made it to the front door before Andy caught her by the hand.

“Hey, what’s the matter?” he said.

“I’m tired of being ignored by the two of you.”

A slow smile spread across his face. Making a fist, he gently tapped her chin. “What’s this? A little jealousy?”

She flushed. She tried to tell herself she had no claim on this man. But her eyes filled. “We shared something.…” She stopped.

He stared at her reflectively, his eyes traveling over her face. “You are a decent kid,” he said.

She could think of nothing to say.

“Listen, I’ve got an idea,” he said. “Let’s get out of here for the afternoon. I want to take you somewhere, somewhere special. Anything on your list?”

“You’re serious?” Carole had told her she could take the day off.

“They don’t need me here for the lamentations. George will survive. So will the movie. Give me some glamorous destination and I’ll take you there. Lawry’s? Du-Par’s? Brown Derby? Malibu? Gilmore Field? It isn’t officially open yet, but The Hollywood Stars are practicing today. Somewhere you haven’t been before. What do you say?”

“Okay.” She loved his sudden animation. Her uncertainty began to lift. “Let me think.…” But she knew. “You’re going to laugh,” she warned.

“No, I’ll hide my amusement, I promise.”

“The sign. The one on the hill that says
Hollywoodland
. Can we get close to it?”

For an instant he looked surprised, then wary. “Is that really what you want to do?” he said.

“Yes. I want to see it up close.”

Was it her imagination, or did he seem to waver? “You wanted me to choose Gilmore Field?” she teased.

“It’s more impressive than the sign,” he said.

“But not as glamorous a place to a girl from Indiana.”

He hesitated a beat or two longer than she expected before reaching out and taking her hand.

“Okay, kid, your choice. Let’s go.”

Within an hour, they were winding and twisting up a hillside, along Beachwood Canyon, into the Hollywood Hills. “If I’m your tour guide, want some statistics?” he asked. He seemed to be forcing an effort to exhibit his earlier buoyancy.

She nodded. She was catching glimpses of the sign as they rounded curves, and realized already that it was larger than she had expected. Maybe she was showing her provincialism, but it was a thrill to get up close to this Hollywood icon.