Chapter 22
Chapter 22
The gown waited for her in one of the studio dressing rooms, and it was beautiful, as Shirley had said. Lena had designed it originally in tangerine and had loved it in that color, but of course she couldn’t wear something so ostentatious. She’d had it made in gray draped silk, gathered to cling about her hips and waist and breasts, a very Grecian style. Narrow panels fell over her shoulders and down her back in two narrow trains. Black and silver flowers and vines embroidered beneath and between the breasts, at the hips and the shoulders, and then again at the hem accented her curves. Such a crime that she couldn’t use the tangerine fabric, but there would be a hundred stars there. She had worked so hard for this, she could not throw it away by outshining even a single one of them.
You shine.
Funny, now why had she thought of that?
She put her hair in an uncomplicated updo, did her makeup simply, but with her favorite red lips, pulled on elegant white gloves that reached above her elbows, and shoved her engagement ring over the thin satin. She didn’t want to hide it away, not tonight, when it was so important to remind herself—and Paul—that they were together in this.
“You look gorgeous,” Paul said when he arrived. He kissed her, but in the middle of the kiss she felt his hesitation.
“Long day?” she asked when she pulled away. She didn’t really have to ask, it was written on his face, in the circles beneath his eyes.
He gave her a weary look.
“Runyon’s changes,” she said, grabbing the purse that matched her dress, gray with black-and-silver trim. She tried to be easy and calm as they went to his car.
“He wants me to destroy my story.”
“I know.”
“I want to buy it back, Lena.”
She nodded. “Okay. So you’re ready to start all over again?”
He looked startled by that, and a little defenseless. “I guess.”
“Then we will.”
“We? I’m talking about me . You don’t have to get involved in this.”
She took his hand to ease herself into the car and waited until he shut the door and got in on the other side. “Runyon threatened my job today.” She didn’t want to say it, but she already kept too many secrets from him.
“Because of me?”
She really did not want to say this. “We’re engaged, and he’s ... doubting ... I can be loyal to the project over you.”
“He can’t fire you. You’re the head costumer.”
“He can try.”
“Braxton won’t—”
“Oh, Paul.” She sighed. “Higgy’s a pragmatist. If I cause too much trouble, I’ll be out as quickly as he threw out Flavio. More quickly, because I’m a woman, and I’m engaged, and he’ll just assume you can take care of me.”
Paul started the car and pulled from the studio lot, quiet for a long moment, long enough that it made her uneasy. Then he said, “Well, I can, you know.”
“I—I’m not sure what you’re saying.”
“Just that ... if they let you go ...” He cleared his throat. “I can take care of you.”
“Paul, I ... I love my job.”
“I know you do.”
“I’ve worked so hard—”
“I know. I know.”
“I don’t know who I’d be—”
He grabbed her hand and squeezed it hard, pinching the engagement ring between her fingers and the satin of the glove so it almost hurt. “Forget I said it.”
She tried to forget it, but she could not. The words lingered between them, the possibility he’d raised so easily—as if it was a possibility when the very thought of it sent a little worm of panic twisting within her—and she stared out the window at the passing neon lights and the palm trees reaching to a sky turning purple with evening and wished she’d feigned illness tonight.
He seemed as lost in thought as she, and they said little more before they reached the vast entrance gate of the Ambassador Hotel, with its name tower to the left and the palm trees and hedges and the beige expanse of the hotel stretching beyond. They went down the drive to the huge white glowing saucer of the circular entry, where valets stood at the red carpet laid over the red, green, and beige patterned tile. The elegant square clock beneath the elegant script of The Ambassador Hotel , everything so luxurious and beautiful that, as always, Lena could not quite believe that she was here.
Their car was right behind Joan Crawford’s in a line that stretched as far as Lena could see down the drive ahead. She’d known that anyone who was anyone—though probably not Hedda Hopper, as she and Louella were currently enemies—would be here tonight.
The valet opened her door. Paul held out his arm for her. Camera flashes blinded, but they were for Joan and her party ahead. Lena gripped Paul’s arm tightly and dipped her head as they went into the grand lobby with its huge Italian fireplace and crystal chandeliers. Those who lived in the Ambassador were fond of saying that the hotel was so vast, with so many amenities, that you could live your entire life there without ever once having to set foot off the grounds, and it was true that it had that feel of inexhaustibility, as if whatever you were looking for, whatever fantasy you wished, could be provided, if you only asked.
A ma?tre d’ and waiters led them down wide, elegant stairs. The Moroccan-style doors with the Cocoanut Grove sign above were already opened to reveal the ballroom, where white-clothed tables and chairs of bamboo and wicker crowded full-size fake palm trees, and fronds brushed the embellished Moroccan arches and pillars. Papier-maché monkeys with electrified eyes swung from the branches. The sounds of a waterfall came from the southern wall, above which a painted moon held pride of place. The blue ceiling glowed with scattered stars.
The ballroom was as crowded with people as with palm trees, and waiters scurried about with trays of drinks. Jewels glittered; silk and satin, georgette and chiffon rustled softly. The stage was draped with swaths of purple satin, the dais strewn with garlands to honor Louella Parsons. The word excess could not have found a better expression than in the Cocoanut Grove that night. It was also beautiful. If her parents could see her now ... well, they would not approve of such excess. That thought led her rather guiltily to the bohemians at Larry’s, with all their talk about the simple life, but then again, they’d never experienced anything like this, had they? When the waiter offered champagne, Lena drank it eagerly. She and Paul found their place settings, next to a producer and his wife, another screenwriter, and a press agent and his date, which made Lena more restless than she already was.
“I’m going to the ladies’ room,” she told Paul. He nodded, and she made her way through the crowd, smiling here at Debbie Reynolds and Robert Wagner, there at Elizabeth Taylor, who was surrounded by a crowd of mostly men.
Barbara Sweetin, resplendent in brick red chiffon, with rubies at her throat and dangling from her ears, laughed at something Robert Mitchum said and put out a hand to stop Lena as she passed. “Here she is, the most brilliant costume designer in Hollywood!” Barbara leaned to hug Lena, half spilling her champagne.
“Hello, Miss Taylor.” Robert Mitchum smiled. He was more handsome in person. He took a sip of his martini as he scanned the crowd. “I guess we’re all either trying for forgiveness or favor. No other way to explain why everyone managed to get roped into this tonight.”
“If anyone could have managed to avoid it, I’d think it would be you, after your Confidential suit.”
“Which I lost,” he noted.
“On a technicality,” Barbara said. “You put the fear of God into them, Bob.”
“I’m not sure about that. It would be nice to think it, though.”
Lena said, “At least we know Hedda’s not here tonight.”
“We could spot her by her outrageous hat if she were.” Barbara laughed into her glass.
“That woman won’t rest until she’s got every communist in Hollywood,” Mitchum said.
“I don’t suppose you’re scared of that , are you, Bob?” Barbara teased.
He laughed and glanced idly at the ring on Lena’s finger. “Who’s the lucky man?”
“Paul Carbone. He’s a screenwriter.”
Bob Mitchum looked as if he were searching his memory. “Hmmm. Don’t know him.”
“He’s got a film at Lux. Club Med —no ... The Doom of Medusa , I guess it’s called now. It’s really a wonderful movie. Or it was.” Lena could not help saying the last bit.
Barbara sighed. “Censors got to it, have they? They’ve practically ruined Twilight Fever . I don’t like the man they’ve assigned to it at all. He keeps telling me not to touch my hair. He says it’s too provocative.”
Mitchum grinned. “You are provocative by nature, Bunny.”
“If they didn’t want me to be, they wouldn’t have hired me. I keep telling him that.”
“There are a couple of them here tonight,” Mitchum said, nodding toward the stage. “You can tell by the suits. Like I said, all of Hollywood turned out.”
Lena followed his gaze, and yes, he was right. There by the stage stood three men in those blocky Brooks Brothers suits instead of the formal dress that most of the others wore tonight. One of them was Michael Runyon.
“Why are they here?” Just as Lena said it, Runyon’s gaze turned to her. Like a spotlight, it was direct and piercing. She did not like the way he looked at her.
She turned away quickly and wished she hadn’t left her champagne at the table with Paul.
“Have a good time tonight,” she said to Barbara and Bob Mitchum, and then she tried to melt into the crowd and make her way to the ladies’ room. She imagined she felt Michael Runyon’s gaze on her even then, though there was no way he could follow her through these masses. She glanced over her shoulder to make sure of it, and saw the flash of another suit behind her. It raised a tiny, familiar panic. Following her?
No, of course not. She was overreacting.
She hurried to the ladies’ room. She used the toilet and fumbled with her garters and inadvertently put a ladder in her stocking, cursed beneath her breath—at least the gown was long and no one would see it. Then she leaned against the sink and lit a cigarette, breathing in the smoke until her nerves calmed. By now Paul would definitely be wondering what had happened to her.
She gazed at the ring, that sparkling stone, so clean, so clear, so unlike anything she’d ever worn, a dream of a stone. She put out the cigarette and smoothed the satin of the glove, turned the band of the ring to settle it better into place. There. Perfect. Then she went out the door.
And there stood Walter Maynard, waiting for her.