His Girl Hollywood

Chapter 16

Arlene had been outside for over a half hour, and Don hadn’t stopped thinking about her since. Something he’d said had flustered her. But he’d let her have the space she clearly needed. Now with the dishes done and her brother and his family saying their goodbyes, he stole out the back door, the memories of all the sunny afternoons and sleepless nights he’d crept out this very door flooding his senses.

Arlene was sitting in the middle of the grass in an Adirondack chair that looked like it hadn’t been painted since he’d left. She was wordlessly humming a tune and looking up at the night sky. Don stood in the shadows behind the house for a moment, watching her. She was perfect like this—still and serene in the moonlight, lost in her thoughts.

Why had he never noticed before? How beautiful she was. How alive. The fire inside her that burned steady and true. The way his had done. Until Frankie tried to douse it.

He wandered over and slid into the chair next to hers, hoping an unexpected splinter wouldn’t find its way into his slacks. She didn’t look at him. Didn’t move. Just whispered, “I’m sorry about them.”

He shrugged. Honestly, it hadn’t bothered him. The Morgans had every right to be upset with him. He’d disappeared from their lives and never looked back. They didn’t know that he’d thought about them constantly, missing them, clinging to Arlene’s lucky penny like it was a talisman. He’d yearned for years to find a way to set things right. But at a certain point, everything had seemed too late.

“That’s all right. I’m lucky your mother had me over for dinner at all—the way I ran out on you all.”

Arlene did look at him then and swallowed. “They… I missed you.” He met her gaze and was startled to find a gloss of tears covering her distinctive green eyes.

“I know you won’t believe me. But I missed you too.”

Arlene didn’t look at him. Instead, she tilted her head toward her lap, and something inside him cracked as he watched a single tear slide down her cheek. He had made her cry. God, what a louse he was. He reached out and brushed the tear away with his finger. She still wouldn’t look at him. “You abandoned me. You abandoned us,” she whispered.

“I didn’t mean to.” He swallowed, struggling to find the words to explain. “I couldn’t come home. You know my parents thought I was a fool. They told me if I got on that train to New York to never bother coming back.”

“You really think they meant that?” She gave him a hard stare.

He wanted to say yes. But he thought of his mother, the care packages she’d sent to New York. He’d always wondered how she’d gotten to the post office without his father knowing.

“Even if they did, what about me?” Her voice cracked on the last word and it nearly broke his heart.

A wave of guilt rushed over him. All the times he meant to write, to give her a call, and he hadn’t. He couldn’t. He’d passed the Western Union office on his way to auditions every day for a year, each time thinking he should pop in, send a wire, let her know how things were in New York.

And each time he’d walked past without going inside, promising himself he’d write once he’d made good. The excuse had changed every time. He’d write after he got his first check for dancing. Once he had a manager. Once he was dancing full-time. The finish line never got any closer because things only got more complicated, humiliating, and dangerous as he went along. What should he write? Hey, I finally got a manager. He’s a bootlegger and he’s only booking me gigs at speakeasies. Work was work, he’d told himself. Frankie and his sketchy watering holes were merely stepping-stones. But they were filthy rocks that the folks he cared about back home didn’t need to know about.

But as the years had passed, he hadn’t been able to shake off the dirt. He’d become ever more mired in the muck. The possible wires he could’ve sent over the years spiraled through his mind. Dear Arlene, The weather is beautiful from this holding cell. This marks my second arrest in a month during a police raid . Or how about: Finally got to dance for a real bigwig this week. Ever hear of Lucky Luciano? Yes, his eye really is that droopy. How could he crow about his success when it came in exchange for parts of his soul? He’d traded decency for fame. Integrity for success.

Then, Mabel had happened—and his guilt and his shame had twisted into paranoia and fear. He’d convinced himself that any relationship that wasn’t strictly professional was dangerous. When a moment had finally arrived where it was imperative that he write, he had been choked with dread. Anxious he would only inflict worse harm. When Don received word that Patrick Morgan had died, he’d so desperately wanted to reach out. Send flowers. A note conveying his sorrow. Anything. But his fear had stopped him.

Frankie wanted to control every aspect of Don’s life, direct Don toward one aim only—keeping Frankie’s pockets flush with cash and Cosa Nostra creditors off Frankie’s back. Looking at Arlene, seeing the ways he’d hurt her and her family laid out so starkly before him, Don realized that he’d let Frankie win. That in never writing, never reaching out, he was no worse than a puppet dancing on strings pulled by Frankie Martino. But how could he fix it? He didn’t know how to paper over the years of hurt and estrangement, didn’t even know how to start. But if he was really here to free himself from Frankie’s yoke, he had to try. He nearly jumped when Arlene reached out from her chair and grasped his hand in hers.

“There’s no excuse for what I did,” he said. “You’re right. But I thought you all were better off without me.” He squeezed her hand in a gesture of assurance, as much for himself as for her, as he tried to find the words to explain. “I lost sight of myself in New York. Became someone I didn’t recognize and somehow I got stuck. But I’m trying to fix it, Arlene. I’m trying to start over.”

She huffed, an airy hint of a laugh. “By trading Broadway and its footlights for the spotlights and glamour of Hollywood?”

Shit. That hadn’t been what he’d meant. But it looked that way to her, didn’t it? That he was trading up for an even greater level of fame and success. If she only knew how precarious his situation really was. “Well, when you put it like that, I sound like a real cad.”

She’d left him a clear opening. All he had to do was tell her the truth about Frankie. He opened his mouth and found his throat choked with an unholy cocktail of shame and fear. Shame because he knew Arlene would’ve been far too smart and far too good to ever find herself in a situation like this. Fear because he knew she would be all indignant rage on his behalf. The same way she’d been when he was a boy and his father had roughed him up. She wouldn’t heed Don’s warnings if he told her the truth; she’d rush headlong into danger. Or, whispered a vicious voice in the back of his head, what if she doesn’t? What if after all this time she decides you deserve to lie in the bed you made for yourself?

She stood, shoving her hands into the pockets of her simple lilac gingham dress. He suspected it was one her mother had made, an old favorite. Crossing the yard, she started pacing under the camellia bush. Watching her helped banish that terrible internal voice that sounded like his father. A memory of falling from that tree and breaking his arm when he was eight years old sprang to mind, and he chuckled.

“What’s so funny?”

“That tree—it was once my greatest enemy.”

She giggled. “You howled like a wounded animal when you fell out of it. And your mother was so mad. She’d told you to stop climbing the trees back here. That you were bound to get hurt.”

“You didn’t leave my side the entire time I was in the cast. You were my right arm. Literally.”

He stood up then too. He had too much nervous energy to stay seated. He looked up and took in the stars. They were dim and twinkly, obscured by the lights of the apartment buildings and duplexes lining their block. Houses that contained lives he’d once believed were too small to contain him and his dreams. But the houses hadn’t been the problem. It had been him and his cocky arrogance, his belief he was too good for the world he’d been born into. Too big for the box his father wanted to keep him in. Yet, Arlene had found a way to build the life she’d dreamt of without ever letting go of the people who mattered most to her. He wished he’d known that was even possible. Instead, he’d traded one suffocating box for another.

Arlene walked to meet him in the middle of the grass and gently bumped her shoulder into his. “Remember how we used to lie in the grass and look at the stars? You know, after you left, I still did it. Every night for a year. Did you keep looking at them? In New York?”

“I was too busy to bother to look up.” He grimaced. “I didn’t mean… That came out all wrong. What I mean is that somewhere along the way, I lost track of what really matters, the small beauties this world has to offer, the support of a friend.”

“Did you mean what you said in there—that you came here because you wanted to work with me? As your director?”

He was surprised by the question. That she would doubt the truth of that. “Of course I was. I told you that first night on the soundstage that I was here for you. For us. To make good on the dreams we’d spent hours in this backyard weaving. Hollywood was an opportunity—to escape, to start over. But knowing you’d be here making sure every step I took was a sure-footed one, it gave me the courage to say yes.” This time he reached out and grabbed her hand, tangling his fingers in hers. “I’d like to be friends again, Arlene. Please.” There. He’d said it. Frankie and his threats be damned.

She bit her lip and nodded. “I don’t know if you know this, but I don’t exactly invite people I dislike over to my parents’ house for dinner.” She was still nervous, he could tell. He squeezed her hand to reassure her.

“Someone you don’t dislike isn’t exactly a bosom friend, but I’ll take it.” That made her laugh, and he loved the way it made her face look, free and open, unencumbered by the stress etched into it on set. She turned to look at him and giggled further, reaching for his waist. His eyes widened in shock and his throat went dry, before he realized she was reaching for the flowery apron he’d tied on to help her mother with the dishes. “I see Mama recruited you.”

“I seem to recall she likes a man who knows his way around the kitchen.” They were both quiet then, remembering Arlene’s father, his booming laugh, and the warmth of the kitchen when both the Morgans were home. Her father praising her mother’s cooking, Pauline swatting at him with a dish towel, saying he was distracting her and going to ruin their supper.

“You remember?” Arlene whispered.

“How could I forget? It was like their own little pantomime, standing side by side at the sink, washing and drying in a rhythm only they knew.”

Arlene bit her lip, clearly overwhelmed with emotion, and nodded. She swiped at her eyes, before giggling, the burble of a bittersweet memory in her voice. “We used to call it the Morgan waltz.”

He nodded. “I wanted to learn it so badly. To be a part of a home with that much love, that much happiness.” God, now he was getting choked up.

“You always were,” she whispered, her voice like a prayer before bedtime. “You left us. But you were always welcome here, always part of the Morgan family.”

He struggled to get the next words out. “I see that now. And I’m so sorry to have missed Patrick’s—”

“It was a lovely service.” She stopped him, squeezing his hand a little tighter. “We spread his ashes in the ocean, from the bow of his boat, like he always said he wanted.”

“I should’ve written, sent flowers, something.”

She scrunched her lips into a moue of regret. She nodded, taking a breath before she spoke, as if she were deciding something. “You should’ve. It would’ve meant a lot. To Mama…and to me.” He spoke to apologize again, but she cut him off. “But that’s in the past. And I might’ve said that we can’t pick up where we left off. But that doesn’t mean we can’t start over.”

“I’d like that.”

“And maybe if you play your cards right, Mama will teach you the Morgan waltz.”

He laughed then and dropped her hand, breaking into a silly impromptu dance and clicking his heels together. He grabbed the apron, untying the haphazard knot behind his back and making it into a dance prop—first, a veil over his head. Then, turning the long ties into the arms of a lady and dancing with her.

Arlene broke out into a peal of laughter. He loved that sound. It sent a thrill of delight and excitement down his spine the same way the first notes of an overture did when he heard them from the wings. He wanted to make her smile, laugh, forget the sadness that had pervaded the yard only moments before. A sadness he’d made worse with his absence. He hammed it up for her, holding out his arms in the shape of a very curvaceous lady and then reaching for his foot. “Ow, she stepped on my foot.”

He winked at Arlene before turning his hopping motion into an elegant kick ball change. Then, he executed a series of turns and jumps across the grass, coming into an ending pose on his knees, directly in front of the rusted metal pole that made up one end of the clothesline.

Arlene applauded. “Bravo, bravo, encore, encore.”

He stood and took a series of mock bows, before his eyes caught on a large puddle on the cement creating a perfect reflection. He turned and faced it, raising his arms and beginning to improvise a dance with himself. He swayed and made faces, enjoying the response of his body in the reflection, slightly distorted and watery. It created an avant-garde effect, and he splashed at the edge of the puddle with his toe, further abstracting his reflection.

Arlene had walked across the yard and come around to face him, studying the reflection and his movements. “Go up on your toes.” He did as she asked, springing onto his feet and executing a pirouette.

Arlene whistled in admiration. He extended his leg, pointing his toe, watching his reflection execute the same move. “Hold that,” said Arlene, her voice breathless with excitement.

She circled him, sizing up his body and taking in the scene before her. He could feel her eyes climbing up his spine, each flit of her gaze sending a lick of heat down his back.

“That’s it,” she declared. He relaxed, taking the lazier posture he preferred when he wasn’t dancing, and turned to face her.

“What’s it?”

“Our secret weapon,” she breathed. “You’re going to turn that into a number for the movie. A third-act showstopper.”

“What? How?”

She was off now, talking a mile a minute. “We’ll use trick photography. You’ll be walking home late at night, feeling rejected, and you’ll come upon an empty storefront that will show you your own reflection. It—he will start to dance, and you’ll dance together.”

He could see where she was going now. And damn if it wasn’t brilliant. “Okay, but what if, halfway through, my reflection jumps out of the window and dances alongside me?”

Her eyes lit up, brighter than any star in the sky. “Yes! And, and, you could face off against each other because he could be your alter ego, the materialization of the devil on your shoulder. You’ll dance until you banish him.”

Her brain was moving almost as fast as his feet, as he was starting to trace out a preliminary set of steps. An energy and enthusiasm pulsed through every one of his muscles. It was something he hadn’t felt in years—a joy in his work, in dance, that he’d lost somewhere along the way. A bliss he’d always been able to find in this backyard. With Arlene. Without her and her ideas, he’d been going through the motions. Caught up in proving why he and dancing were worth something, instead of loving it for the sake of itself. It had taken coming back here to realize that.

She clapped her hands as he marked his way through a series of turns and sweeps of his arms. “That’s it, that’s it.”

He smiled. “It’s genius, Arlene.”

“It’s you. You inspired me.” She was a bit breathless.

He smiled. “Just like when we were kids.”

He grabbed her in his arms and twirled her, sweeping her into a mock waltz as they moved across the grass. They were both out of breath, and she clung to him as they stopped, pressing her face into his chest before seeming to remember herself and pulling away. She rubbed at her upper arms as if she was cold and a dark cloud crossed over her face.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean… I got carried away by the number. But it’s good, Don. It’s really good. You should show it to Eleanor when you get home tonight.” That was…not what he’d been expecting her to say.

“Wh-what?”

“Well, she’s your dance partner,” She shrugged, still looking small and uncertain, like she’d stepped through a portal and become the girl of their childhood once more. “And…I would assume you talk to her about your career when you go home at night.”

“Eleanor isn’t staying with me.”

Don could see Arlene’s cheeks redden in the purple shadows of the evening. “But that night, when I came to talk to you at your hotel, I saw her…” Her voice trailed off, and he could tell she was embarrassed. He remembered now that she’d told him at Musso’s the other night how she’d seen Eleanor at the Starlight Inn, and decided not to stop by to give him acting notes.

“No, no, that wasn’t… She doesn’t… She’s not staying there… She needed my help, that’s all.” He struggled to explain as that needling voice returned, the one saying that telling Arlene the truth would only lead to one of two outcomes—her disgust at his choices or her dismemberment at the hands of Frankie’s goons. Perhaps even both. Don couldn’t bear the thought of it. Not with the way Arlene had looked at him while they’d worked out the dance. Not with how, for one moment, she’d pressed herself tenderly to him.

It was dangerous to want her so badly, but he didn’t know how he could live if she didn’t keep looking at him that way. That look made him feel like he was being kissed by the sun, warm and oh so happy. What if Frankie did something to make it so Arlene could never look at Don, or any man, that way? Don shuddered, imagining a scar covering Arlene’s face, a twin to the one Mabel had sustained. Only instead of Mabel’s tearful, haunted visage, he imagined Arlene completely still, her eyes lifeless and cold.

She nodded. “Right. Your help .” The way she said it implied something untoward.

“Oh God, no,” he retorted before he could catch himself. “Not that kind of help. I’d rather wrestle an alligator.”

She gave him a look of bemusement, her eyebrows knit together in a way he suddenly found to be the most adorable thing he’d ever seen. “That hardly seems chivalrous.”

He scoffed. “Why? Like I said, she’s my dance partner. There’s no law that says I have to like her. No clause in my contract that insists I make love to her.”

Arlene’s bemusement passed into downright befuddlement. “But don’t you, aren’t you… Every story in the papers is about how deeply in love with each other you are.”

Oh hell. That was why Arlene reacted violently every time Eleanor was mentioned? He’d thought Arlene’s dislike of Eleanor stemmed from her concerns that Eleanor was distracting him from the picture. Not…whatever this was. Did he dare call it jealousy?

For so long, he’d let Frankie peddle nonsense about Don and Eleanor to the papers without thinking twice. He didn’t dare get close to anyone outside their mobbed-up circle, so what did he care if Frankie fed the press stories of their phony relationship, photographs of them out together at nightclubs, tales of their wild nights on the town? Honestly, most days he forgot that he was supposed to be in a long-term relationship with Eleanor Lester. But it had been years since there had been a remote possibility anyone he actually cared about might believe the charade. If it wasn’t another symptom of Frankie’s total and complete control, he would laugh. Imagine, thinking Don Lamont was gaga for Eleanor Lester. It was absurd.

“No, Arlene, I’m not. Eleanor and I are not in love with each other.” Arlene worried her lip between her teeth, and he was seized with the sudden desire to smooth it with his mouth. “We barely even like each other. That’s all an act.”

She looked dazed at the news. As if something had knocked her upside the head. “You’re not… It’s not… It’s an act,” she murmured in astonishment. “But you, you were out with her the other night—at the Clover Club. You told me yourself.”

“Because our manager booked us a gig there. We didn’t have much choice.” He realized now how it must have looked to Arlene. What she must’ve thought when Eleanor had been waiting in his dressing room that day on set. He’d assumed Arlene had picked up on the fact that there was no love lost between him and Eleanor. But why would she have? And why did she even care? Until Friday night, he’d barely been able to get a civil word from Arlene that wasn’t a piece of direction. “Arlene, Eleanor and I—we’re not together. We’ve never been together.”

She nodded, still putting the pieces together in her mind. She spoke slowly, more to herself than to him. “But the pictures…and your career. She’s your muse. She’s your partner. She makes you better.”

Her cheeks were still pink, though whether it was from embarrassment, the lingering effect of the breathlessness of their spin across the yard, or something else he couldn’t say. All he knew was that standing there in the purple dusk of the evening, tendrils of her hair springing around her face, mussed from their dance, with wonderment and uncertainty mingling on her face, she looked positively irresistible. He couldn’t believe what a monumental idiot he’d been. It was Arlene. It had always been Arlene. He simply didn’t work without her. “No.”

“No?”

“No, Eleanor doesn’t make me better. The only person, the only woman I’m better with is you, Arlene. I’d forgotten, but that’s always been true.”

She bit her lip, and it filled him with a rush of want. “Lena,” she whispered.

“What?”

“Call me Lena, Don. Please.”

He met her eyes and was surprised to find pure lust there. “Okay” was all he said before her lips were on his. He was startled at first, but then he met her kiss for kiss, sliding his hands along her jaw and tilting her head to get purchase on her mouth. He ran his tongue along the seam of her lips and smiled against her face as a little sigh escaped her. When she opened for him, he sucked at her bottom lip before sliding his tongue into her.

She wrapped her arms around him, grasping at his back as if she were a woman dying of thirst and he was her desert oasis. He sank more deeply into the kiss and everything vanished—the yard, the memories, Mabel and her scarred face, the reminders of how he’d let Arlene and her entire family down. The only thing that mattered was her, soft and pliant beneath his mouth, her small whimpers as he kissed and sucked, sending jolts of desire straight down his spine. He broke away, his fingers still tangled in her hair, and began dotting her face with kisses. This face he knew almost as well as his own.

He’d thought there was nothing more she could do to surprise him. Inviting him here tonight, kissing him… She had already caught him off guard in so many ways. But then she kissed his neck and pressed her cheek to his and breathlessly asked, “Come home with me?”

It wasn’t so much a question as a prayer, one he was all too happy to answer. He should say no. Some part of him knew that. That if he truly cared for her, he’d say no. Keep her safe at any cost. But their eyes met and he could’ve made love to her right then and there in the yard, as intoxicated as he was by the haze of desire in her eyes, the disheveled pouf of her hair, and the pink blush of want in her cheeks.

“Yes.” He kissed her fiercely on the mouth. “Yes, Lena, whatever you want.”

“You,” she murmured in between kisses along the curve of his jaw. “All I’ve ever really wanted is you.”