Billy poured himself another drink. “I’m glad you passed the test. You were bound to face something like that sooner or later. Some girls have tried to play along with the likes of Barbara to further their careers. It’s a sad way to stay in show business.”
“As she left she told me she’d finish me at the studio,” Nita said.
“She’ll do what she can to hurt you,” Billy agreed. “But you have a legal contract with Lew Meyers, and I think he believes in your talent. So he’ll not likely let you go.”
“I don’t care,” she said unhappily. “I’d rather go back to vaudeville than get caught up in anything like that.”
Billy smiled. “You can always come back to two-reelers. I’ll see there’s a job for you.”
“What about you?” she worried. “I heard you’d been ill.”
He sighed. “I drank a little too much one night and they took me to the hospital.”
“They say you’ve been warned that you’re drinking yourself to death.”
“Let it be my road, then,” he said.
She went to his chair and knelt by him. “You mustn’t! It’s such a waste of talent! Of a fine human being!”
He smiled down at her. “Other talents will come along.”
“I need you!” Nita cried.
He raised an eyebrow. “Now there’s an excellent argument for sobriety.”
“I do need you, Billy!” she said tearfully, her head on his knees.
“But not enough to marry me.”
She looked up at him. “You don’t really want that. I know you’d be tired of married life in a few weeks.”
He stroked her hair. “You’re lovely and you’re smart! You’re right, I don’t want to marry, but if I did, it would be you.”
“Take care of yourself for me,” she begged him.
“I’ll try,” he said. “What about that doctor you’ve been out with so often?”
“He’s in San Francisco for a few days.”
“So I’m a surrogate doctor?”
“No!” she protested. “I would have come to you first anyway. I couldn’t have talked to him about that awful business.”
“I’m sure he knows more about it than you guess. Or than he’s told you.”
“Probably,” she agreed.
“Now go home and try to get a good night’s rest. I’ll come by tomorrow afternoon and we’ll drive somewhere and have a nice dinner. Somehow we must save your weekend.”
She reached up and touched her lips to his, ignoring the whiskey fumes and his stubble of beard. “You really are a darling,” she said.
It was late when she reached her cottage. Nita unpacked, took a sleeping tablet and went to bed. Since she rarely used sleeping aids the tablet did its work and she slept soundly. She felt better when she got up the next morning, so she decided to try to put the entire incident out of her mind.
She fixed breakfast and then read the Sunday paper for a while. Billy would not come by for her until later in the afternoon so she would have plenty of time to bath and dress later. She was still in her dressing gown she she heard a knock at her door. Thinking it might be one of the neighbors, she went to the door and opened it.
A contrite Eric Gray in white sweater and flannels stood in the doorway. He said, “Can I speak with you for a few minutes, Nita?”
She said icily, “I don’t think we have anything to discuss.”
“Please!” he said. “I know what happened with Barbara last night and I’ve come to say I’m sorry!”
“Don’t tell me your leaving with your boy friend wasn’t planned,” she said sharply.
He looked guilty. “Don’t judge me too hastily or too harshly. I beg you to listen to my side of it.”
There was something in his manner that forced her against her will to feel sorry for him. He gave all the evidence of being sincere.
With a sigh, she said, “Very well. Come in.”
Eric smiled his gratitude. He said, “It’s nice and cosy here.”
“Hardly an item for a Hollywood sightseeing tour,” she said grimly. “But I could skip some of the mansions that are.”
“I know what you mean,” he said, standing before her awkwardly.
“Would you like coffee?”
He nodded. “Yes. I would.”
“Sit down,” she said. “I’ll make some.”
He was glancing at the paper when she came back in. He said, “Wallace Reid is very ill in a sanitarium.”
She put the coffee tray down, shocked. “I didn’t hear anything about it.”
“It’s a front page story,” he said, showing her. “Pneumonia, they say. Actually, it was complicated by drug withdrawal.”
Nita was trembling again. “So he really is deep in drugs?”
“Has been for a long while. And there are others,” he said with a deep sigh. “He’s been treated before, so he may pull through.”
She poured their coffee and let him help himself to cream and sugar. Then she sat down near him. She was thinking of Thelma in New York and how the news would effect her. And she was worrying about the change in Thelma’s appearance and wondered if her new frailty might also be due to drugs.
She said, “What do you want to tell me?”
“I’m sorry your weekend was ruined.”
“It doesn’t matter. I have a friend coming to take me out later.”
“I’m glad,” Eric said. A frown crossed his handsome face. “I’m unhappy about what happened. That Barbara so forgot herself.”
“Didn’t you expect it?” she said. “I had the idea I was being set up.”
“Never!” he said vehemently. “I’d not be a party to that.”
“You went off with Richard Wright swiftly enough,” she said.
His cheeks crimsoned. “Yes.”
“It seems to me you and your wife are two of a kind. I don’t mind that as long as you don’t menace others. There must be many innocents like me.”
Eric sipped his coffee. “It’s very complicated, Nita. Let me say first that I really like you. I was attracted to you when we first met on the set.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” he said earnestly. “And I have known and loved many women in my time.”
“I understand that men are your preference.”
“Not so,” he retorted. “I have tried to fight that side of me, I really have. But it’s not easy. It’s worse than being a drunk like Billy Bowers. It’s something deep within me and often I let down my guard as I did last night.”
“What has this to do with me?”
“I want you to understand,” he said. “I married Barbara knowing she was a lesbian. I thought we could help each other. But she soon let me know she had no intention of changing her ways. And her shocking behavior drove me into seeking satisfaction with my men companions.”
“You’re telling me you’re an unwilling homosexual?”
“Believe it,” he insisted. “Had Barbara been the right sort of wife, I might have put that other life behind me.”
“I find that hard to accept,” she said.
“You have never been in my place,” he told her soberly. “You can ask Lew Meyers if you like. He knows! I really wanted to lead a normal life. I still want to!”
“But you keep returning to friends like Richard Wright,” she pointed out.
“These things are not easy to break off.”
“If what you say is true, I’m sorry for you,” Nita said. “But I have problems enough of my own without yours.”
He put aside his empty coffee cup and leaned forward to her. “I think if I had married you instead, you might have helped me. I’m sure of it.”
She smiled thinly. “Your wife tried to seduce me last night, and now it’s your turn.”
“Nothing like that!” he argued. “I want a chance to prove myself to you. You could help me more than you realize. My liking for you had nothing to do with Barbara.”
“All right,” she said. “I’ll take your word for that.”
He offered her his hand. “Can we still remain friends?”
“Yes,” she said, shaking hands with him.
A shadow crossed his face. “You must be on guard against Barbara. She does not forgive easily. She’s going to be looking for a chance to harm you.”
“She made that clear.”
“I’ll do what I can to prevent it,” Eric said. “But she’s truly wicked and she acts on her own. So you must be wary.”
“I understand,” she said.
“Lew Meyers knows what she is and all about her tricks,” he went on. “He doesn’t approve of her, but sometimes she forces him to accede to her will because she is his single biggest box office draw. And she never hesitates to use that power.”
“I expect my option at Master won’t be picked up,” she said.
“I hope it will. You have talent. The studio can use you.”
“Thanks,” she said. “And thank you for coming to apologize.”
“I had to do that,” Eric said. Then he asked, “Are you still seeing Dr. Watters?”
“We’re friends,” she said.
“Nice fellow,” Eric said with a sign. “But not for anyone who loves our business. I think he’s only marking time until he can get away from show people and Hollywood.”
“That’s probably true. I’m not sure I don’t agree with him.”
Eric smiled sadly. “Don’t say that! You’re too near the top to give up now.”
“I wonder,” she said.
His reply was to suddenly take a step forward and embrace her. His kiss was ardent and, taken by surprise, she found being in his arms a not unpleasant experience. As he let her go, he smiled and said, “Just to convince you I do care!” The next second he had gone.
She watched from her cottage window as he stepped into his long cream sports car and drove away. His kiss was still tingling on her lips, as she thought ironically that surely he was the ideal image of a stalwart Hollywood hero. So much for Hollywood heroes!
When Billy came by later she told him over the dinner table of the strange aftermath to the weekend. She said, “It was the last thing I expected. There he was in my doorway!”
Billy, shaven and pale, looked more like himself than he had the previous night. He said, “I think he was being truthful with you.”
Nita stared at him. “You’re saying he may truly be interested in me?”
“Yes.”
“How could he be?”
“He had at least one bona-fide affair with Clara Bow,” Billy said. “And any girl who cheerfully takes on a football team plus the coach isn’t going to be satisfied with a pale imitation. I’d say he proved his virility with her.”
“But since then he’s turned to men again,” she pointed out.
“Would you say being married to a creature like Barbara was apt to help him?”
“No.”
“Then there’s your answer. People like Eric live a difficult and dangerous existence. If the truth about him or Barbara comes out it would ruin them in films.”
“I pity the people taken in by their facade.”
“It happens in many areas of life,” Billy said. “But I think the important point Eric made is that he wants to straighten out his life and Barbara doesn’t.”
“You think so?”
“What other reason would he have for coming to you as he did? He made no plea for Barbara but only for himself. And he’s important enough in this town not to be worried about your opinion of him unless he really cares for you. So I think he does.”
She smiled. “You make a very persuasive argument.”
“I think I’m right.”
“I don’t want to try and reform another actor. I had little success with Marty.”
Billy reminded her, “You said he had improved in his last months.”
“After we lost the baby,” she said. “I didn’t tell him I couldn’ve have another. But I think he may have guessed.”
“Still, you wanted to be in this business. So you have to be prepared to deal with the people in it. We’re all rather complicated, I fear.”
“I’ve recently learned that,” she agreed with a small smile. “You’re surely no exception.”
Billy gave her a teasing look. “I think I know where your heart lies. With the good Dr. Phillip Watters.”
“That could very well be,” she said thoughtfully.
Within a few days two events happened which were to make an unexpected chance in Nita’s plans for the future. She was home on a short holiday from the studio when she picked up the morning paper to the confronted by huge headlines: “LATEST FILM ROMANCE, Film Star Sally Stark and Dashing Dr. Phillip Watters!” She could hardly believe her eyes when she saw the smiling photos of the two standing with their arms around each other.
The story went on to tell of their secretly dating for some time and that they had recently spent two weeks together in a hideaway on the outskirts of San Francisco. Sally and the handsome doctor insisted her mother had been along as chaperone, but did not deny there was a possibility of marriage in the offing. The story gave other details about the two, indicating that the vivacious Sally felt this new man in her life was the one she’d been waiting for. Her two previous marriages had ended in divorce.
Nita threw the paper down with a feeling of despair. She knew now that she cared for Phillip a great deal more than she’d been willing to admit, but had been so intent on her career she’d let them drift apart. He had been away several times and she had not thought anything about it. Now it became clear. He and Sally Stark had been having an affair.
No doubt the newspapers had managed to get onto the story and the studio had made Sally indicate that marriage was in the offing, whether it was or not. Sally Stark was still one of Master Films’s biggest grossing stars but she was known to everyone as a woman of flagrantly loose morals. Her affair with a handsome prop man had been mentioned in the gossip columns, as had numerous other affairs.
There had been times when Nita had speculated about agreeing to marry the young doctor. Now it would clearly be impossible. The studio would likely put pressure on the Phillip to marry Sally, thus avoiding further scandal. Nita felt that the handsome Phillip had degraded himself in getting involved with a person like Sally Stark.
She was moping about the cottage when the phone rang. Phillip was on the line. He sounded worried. “I’ve been trying to reach you,” he said. “I thought you’d be at the studio.”
“I’m waiting for a new assignment,” she said. “And I see you’ve found one.”
“That newspaper story!” he groaned. “You mustn’t believe any of it!”
“I thought you both looked charming. So adoring!” she said.
“I want to talk to you,” he insisted. “Let’s go out to dinner tonight.”
“I don’t think that would be wise,” Nita snapped. “You’d better not be seen with anyone but Sally Stark.”