Chapter 32
Chapter 32
Julia caught sight of her, came to the table, and sat down.
“What are you doing here?” Lena asked. Thankfully no one in the room paid attention. Not the table of writers, or the directors, or the cowboys in the corner.
“You told me to bring the car back to the studio.”
“No. I mean here, in the commissary.”
“I went to your office and your secretary told me you were here.” Julia looked down at Paul’s untouched roast beef sandwich. “Does this belong to someone? I’m starving.”
“We aren’t staying.”
“Well, we are. For a bit anyway. We’re not going anywhere just now.” Julia picked up the sandwich and took a bite. “Mmm. Good.”
Lena frowned. “What is that supposed to mean? You’re right, I’m not going anywhere. I’ve got too much work to do. But you aren’t staying.”
Julia shook her head and took another bite. She waited until she’d chewed and swallowed before she said, “I need a place to hide for a couple hours.”
“Not here!” Lena spoke as earnestly—and quietly—as she could. “Absolutely not.”
“Why not? It’s not as if anyone will notice. I mean, there are women dressed as whores over there and no one’s even looking at them.”
“They’re obviously actresses. People will notice a lone woman walking around.”
“Will they?” Julia ate more of the sandwich.
Lena had to admit Julia was right. No one was likely to notice another woman wandering the lot. If she’d got in through the gate, she belonged here, and no one would question it. But the thought of it made Lena twitchy.
“Maybe you should tell me why you’re hiding.”
“To protect you.” Julia sipped the dregs of Paul’s Coke. “And myself, obviously. I was followed last night, and I got a threatening call this morning. Who else did you give my phone number to?”
“No one.”
“Not your lover boy?”
“I told you, he doesn’t know you exist. Even if he did, why would he call and threaten you?”
“Because men are strange, Lena, and they are possessive, and maybe he thought you were having an affair.”
The idea took Lena aback. “You said your phone was bugged, so clearly someone else knows it. What did this man say? How did he threaten you?”
“He breathed heavily. Like a gorilla.”
“So he didn’t say anything?”
“No. But I got the message.” Julia finished half the sandwich and stirred the ice left in the glass. “If it wasn’t your dreamboat, then let’s just say it’s someone neither of us wants around.”
“One of your bosses.”
Julia inclined her head in agreement. “What are you doing tonight?”
“Working. Hopefully rescheduling a fitting.”
“Where does this friend of yours live? Maybe I’ll go get the record myself.”
“If you think I’m telling you that, you’re crazy.” Lena raised her voice without thinking, and lowered it again quickly, not wanting to make a scene in the commissary.
“Oh, all right. I suppose it’s better if we go together. Besides, we always worked together so well.” Julia smiled—that same smile, seductive and sweet at the same time. “Didn’t you think so?”
Lena looked away, uncomfortable and distressed, and unable to put her finger on exactly why. She remembered dancing with Julia in the room at the academy, the feeling that there was nowhere else she ever wanted to be but there, in that moment, how close she’d felt to Julia then and how the life she’d known before had simply fallen away and she hadn’t tried to hold on to it in any way but only released it. Such a strange thing. What a power Julia had had over her then. She could not explain it.
“Well.” The commissary was clearing out, actors and production crew returning to the business of making pictures. “I don’t have time to talk about this now. I have to get back to work.”
Julia nodded. “I’ll walk around for a while.”
Lena didn’t take comfort in that thought. “Stay out of the way. If the red light is on, it means you can’t go inside. They’re filming.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t get you into more trouble today, Lena.”
But Julia’s smile was a bit wicked, and Lena worried as she left her old friend in the commissary. When she got back to the costume department, the look on her secretary’s face stopped her before she’d crossed to her office door. More bad news.
“What is it?” she asked.
Wordlessly, Shirley handed her a newspaper, folded open to Hedda Hopper’s latest column.
??Lux Costume Head on the Way Out??? The piece was short and to the point: “ Sources say that everyone’s favorite costume designer may soon be bidding adieu to the studio where she so famously displaced the charming Flavio. Rumors that she’s been missing fittings with major stars like Claudia Mazur and sending studio head Higbert Braxton into furies are everywhere in Tinseltown. Is the engagement ring Miss Taylor has been recently flaunting at Hollywood soirees her way of signaling she is giving up the fashion world for marital bliss? ”
“Oh dear God,” Lena said when she finished. “Where did Hedda get this?”
“Claudia was not happy,” Shirley said. “If I had to guess ...”
It was worse than Lena had thought. “Did she get the flowers?”
“Half an hour ago.”
“Will you get her on the telephone please?” Lena dodged into her office and leaned against the closed door, shutting her eyes against everything.
But then came Shirley’s voice on the intercom. “She’s out for the rest of the day, Lena. I’ve left a message.”
Not good. Not good at all. She couldn’t imagine what Higgy’s reaction would be when he saw Hopper’s column. Anger? Or would it spur him to make good on his promise to take things in hand if she didn’t?
Claudia Mazur could not be reached all day. That afternoon, Richard Janx, the director of her film, called to ask if there was going to be a problem. He’d read Hedda Hopper’s piece, and the schedule was very tight. Lena reassured him, and asked Shirley to call Claudia again.
Just then, Peter, one of the security guards, showed up, Julia in tow. “She says she belongs here, Miss Taylor?”
Julia only smiled.
“Yes, she’s a friend. Is there a problem?” Lena asked.
“Just a bit of confusion, miss,” Peter said, tipping his hat. “If she’s with you, it’s all right.”
He left, and Julia seated herself on the couch in Lena’s office with a sigh and shook back her hair with one of those elegant motions Lena had always envied. “It was nothing, Lena, don’t get upset.”
“It’s been a long day—”
“The Roman Forum set is really bad, you know that, don’t you? They’ve got the Basilica Giulia in the wrong place.”
“It’s for the cameras. They can move around more easily this way.”
“So thousands of Americans will always believe it’s where it’s not.”
“Thousands? It had better be hundreds of thousands, or Higgy will be very unhappy.” Lena turned back to her sketchbook.
“That’s not the point,” Julia argued.
“Do you really care?” Lena asked. “Were you really even a student at the academy? Or was it just a ... a front?”
“My God, Lena, how suspicious you’ve grown.” Julia looked hurt. “Of course I was a student. I love archaeology. The rest was just ... I needed money.”
“Petra said you were all part of something.”
“Petra was an idiot who liked thinking she was a revolutionary. They all were. But they were just artists, Lena, and you know how they are. Always wanting to change the world, but really they only care about themselves and their art.”
“What ever happened to her?”
“I don’t know. Keeping track of Petra wasn’t a priority for me when I was locked up. She’s probably married with thirteen children. Now we should go find this friend of yours, don’t you think?”
“I’ll be here awhile yet.”
“Lena.” Julia leaned forward, very intent. “I’m only causing you trouble and worry, which is not what I want. The sooner we do this, the sooner I’ll be gone.”
“Look, I know that, believe me. No one wants that more than I. But I messed up yesterday and I can’t mess up again.”
Julia looked surprised. “It can’t be so bad. It’s very impressive, you know, seeing how far you’ve climbed. You have an assistant, a secretary ... all those people copying your fashions from the movies. Just as I told you it would be.”
It was gratifying, and gratifying too to hear Julia say it. More than Lena expected. Still, she was surprised to hear herself confess, “I’m afraid I’m going to lose it.”
“Why would you?”
“People are suspicious of my success. Everyone thinks I pushed out the old costume head, though I didn’t. He just got distracted, and I’m ... I’m afraid the same thing is happening to me.”
She felt Julia’s gaze, a long quiet moment. Then, “Don’t let it.”
“That’s easy to say. But that fitting I missed was very important. I’m a woman—”
Julia said. “Being a woman means you have a perspective no man has. It makes you powerful, Lena. It makes you ‘more than,’ not ‘less than.’”
Lena snorted. “Not in Hollywood.”
“You sound like Elsie now.”
The name made Lena cringe. Suddenly the smell of pig shit was in the air. Defensively she said, “I’m a long way from Elsie.”
“Good. Don’t let them tell you who you are, Lena. There is still so much for you to do. I can help you, you know. Like I did before.”
“What does that mean?”
Julia said, “Only that I know people who can help you. If you want, depending on what you want.”
Lena didn’t like the sound of that, though she couldn’t say why, or what it was in Julia’s voice that made those words frightening. “I told you. I love my job.”
“I know,” Julia said. “You shouldn’t have to worry about losing it either. You’re too valuable. If you play it right, they’ll realize it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You need job security, that’s all.”
Lena let the words sit for a moment, unsure what to say. Suddenly being here with Julia seemed so fraught, everything about her old friend perilous: prison, the couriering, murder, the men in the Cinquecento, her ransacked apartment, being followed. The CIA. Lena remembered Flavio talking about being in debt to Mickey Cohen’s men. It was an open secret that the mob was involved in the movie business; so many studios in Hollywood had mob financing. She was sure Lux was no different. She’d seen the photos of Higgy Braxton at Ciro’s and Mocambo with men rumored to have mob connections. “Are you ... are you talking about ... the mob?”
She felt Julia’s gaze. “What?”
“I don’t want to be beholden—”
“You think so small sometimes, Lena. That’s the Elsie in you.”
“Then I don’t understand.”
“You’re so much stronger and cleverer than you know.”
Lena remembered that Roman night, the impossible blue of the sky and the music trailing faintly into the courtyard, the marijuana cigarette, the tight feel of it in her lungs.
You shine.
“It’s only the men who make you small.”
“Not Paul,” Lena said reflexively.
“Okay, not Paul. I’m sure he doesn’t want you to quit your job and have babies. Do you have a cigarette? I’m all out.”
“In my purse.” Lena pushed her purse toward Julia, who reached into it for the package of Marlboros and shook out two.
She lit one for Lena without asking and handed it to her, and Lena took it. She needed it, she realized. Julia’s talk had put her more on edge than she’d realized. “Paul’s never said anything about my quitting,” she said defensively. “Or about having babies.”
No, he hadn’t. But he had made that comment about taking care of her. Had she heard wistfulness in his voice? Had there been ... what? A hope that she would say otherwise? Or were those only her own fears whispering?
“Hmmm.” Julia breathed the sound on smoke. “What did he say when you told him about your marriage to Walter?”
“I never told him.” Lena spoke more sharply than she meant. She saw Julia’s surprise.
“You never told him?”
“There was never a good time.”
Julia said nothing for a moment. There was only the sound of her exhalation. “You didn’t tell him about Rome, or me, or Walter. Does he know your real name?”
Lena snapped, “No. Why do you care?”
Julia laughed shortly. “What, does he think you just appeared one day? You have no past?”
“I have a past,” Lena protested. “He knows I’m from Ohio.”
“Ah. Well. I guess that’s something.”
“I watched men shoot you and tell me I was part of something and could never escape,” Lena snapped. “The police told me to leave Rome. I had no idea why. They questioned me for hours about communists and what I was doing in Rome. The CIA wanted to know about you and the murder of a British attaché. I was escorted out and told not to come back. You have no idea what’s been going on here—what’s still going on. Red-hunts and blacklists and McCarthy and everyone’s scared to death of the bomb and the talk of war and treason ... it’s all so complicated and ... and surely you can understand why I thought it best not to talk about Rome, especially because I didn’t understand what had happened. And Paul didn’t need the burden of my past on top of his own.”
“Oh?” Julia’s eyes lit. “That’s interesting. What do you mean by that?”
“Nothing. Nothing.” Lena thought Julia would push, but she didn’t, which was good, because Lena had no intention of mentioning Paul’s time at Venice Beach.
Julia only nodded and said, “What will you do when Paul finds out?”
Lena didn’t want to answer that question. That fear haunted her day after day. “He won’t. Will he?”
Julia looked away.
Lena said again, more forcefully, “Will he, Julia?”
“I don’t want to spend any more time in LA,” Julia said finally, without looking at Lena. “Everything about it feels insane. But the longer I’m here, the more certain it is that your dreamboat will start asking questions. I don’t know how you’re going to answer them. So let’s get that record from your friend.”
It wasn’t what Lena wanted, but she trusted that Julia meant what she said. It made getting Julia out of LA more important than ever.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll make the calls tomorrow.”