Chapter 1
Don placed his hands on his knees and struggled to catch his breath. The sound of the applause from the audience in the Ethel Barrymore Theatre was deafening. He mopped his brow with the sleeve of his shirt and ran back out onto the stage, giving a little bow and waving. Three standing ovations. It was a new personal record.
Ten years, and he’d finally done it. His name above the marquee in a Broadway show that was earning him rave reviews. Ten years of hustling, eight of those hoofing it for Frankie Martino, and he was making good at last. Without Eleanor Lester. If his father could see him now…the old man would spit in his eye.
Finally, the din of the crowd softened, and he practically skipped off the stage. His pal and choreographer, Eddie Rosso, was waiting in the wings. He clapped Don on the back. “Congrats, Don! I think this might have been your best night yet.”
Don couldn’t suppress a grin. “The audience certainly seemed to think so.” He reached for a small towel Eddie was holding out to him and mopped the sweat from his face. Don’s stomach growled, and he realized he was famished. “What do you say we go get a bite to celebrate?” Eddie made a face. “What?”
“You’ve got a visitor.” Eddie grimaced and jerked his thumb in the direction of Don’s dressing room. Damn it. He’d hoped to slip out before Frankie or one of his goons dropped in.
“I’ll get rid of them,” Don growled. The high he’d experienced onstage quickly fizzled at the prospect of dealing with his two-bit manager or one of his thugs.
Eddie gave him a sad little smile as if to say, Sureeee, right. But instead, he said, “Okay, I’ll wait for you at Hamilton’s Diner on Fifty-Ninth.”
“Be there in thirty minutes, tops.” Don didn’t miss Eddie’s slight eye roll, but he was determined not to spend more than fifteen minutes with whatever problem was waiting for him. Being represented—no, imprisoned—by Frankie Martino had never been a walk in the park. But in the last few years, Don had strained at his extremely short leash more and more. Hell, he couldn’t even decompress and eat a burger with his pal after a two-show day without Frankie holding him up, demanding something.
He sighed and navigated the collection of ropes, pulleys, and flats that populated the backstage area, making his way toward his dressing room. But when he opened the door, he was startled to find a man he didn’t recognize, his head haloed by the bulbs lining the dressing-room mirror.
The man wore a three-piece suit and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. Don could tell the fella had money but didn’t like to waste it. Everything about him screamed tastefully expensive. He didn’t look anything like the wannabe gangsters Frankie usually sent to check in on him.
“Uh, can I help you?”
“Don Lamont, you’re just the man I’m looking for.”
Don pulled at the tie around his neck and loosened it, crossing to the clothes rack that held his various costumes for Pal’ing Around . “Happy to be of service,” he mumbled, unbuttoning his sweaty shirt with no regard for the man in his dressing room. He was invading his personal space after all. “And who exactly are you?”
“Walter Nebbs. I work for Evets Studios.” Don’s hands stilled on his middle button and his spine straightened. Evets Studios. It was a movie studio, he knew that. But it sounded awfully familiar. “Harry Evets is my boss, and he asked me to come take a look at you and your little musical. Apparently his fiancée saw you in previews and can’t stop talking about you.”
Harry Evets. It hit him then. He knew the name because that was the studio where Arlene worked, where she’d made her screenwriting debut with a picture that had won her an Oscar last month. Reno Rendezvous. He’d gone to see it three times. He hadn’t talked to Lena since that day he’d said goodbye to her on the platform a decade ago. When he got to New York, he had been flat broke.
If he was going to spend a nickel on a phone call, he wanted to wait until he had something good to report. News that would make Lena proud. But then, he’d got mixed up with Frankie. Done some things he wasn’t proud of. Been paired off with Eleanor Lester. Then there had been Mabel. After Mabel, well, he didn’t want Frankie or Eleanor to know that Lena and her family existed. It was safer that way. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t still proud of Lena for achieving her dreams. She’d made good. And he hoped that her success hadn’t cost her what his had cost him.
He rubbed absentmindedly at a spot on his ribs where one of Frankie’s thugs had slugged him the other day. It was after another performance. Don had come into his dressing room, only to be immediately sucker punched by one of Frankie’s guys. All because Don had taken a meeting with a Broadway producer and forgotten to mention to Frankie that it was happening. The bruise hurt like hell, and he’d had to work not to wince through his performances that week. But that was Frankie’s MO. Hurt Don just enough to keep him in line, but never enough to actually affect the merchandise.
“You all right?” the man from the studio asked.
“What?” Don had practically forgotten the guy was standing there. “Oh, my ribs. Yeah, sure, fine. Just took a spill in the subway the other day, little tender.”
The guy nodded with sympathy. “Prefer a taxi myself.”
Don bit his lip and tried not to laugh. Yeah, he’d prefer a taxi too. But Frankie kept him on a tight budget. So, it was going to be the subway for the foreseeable future.
Don brushed a pile of newspapers out of an armchair in the corner. He hadn’t wanted to move the stack of adoring opening night reviews of Pal’ing Around that he’d placed there nearly two months ago now. They were the reminder of what he’d done right. A welcome bright spot in the midst of all the mistakes he’d made. Don sat down. “Well, Mr. Nebbs, how can I help you?”
The man removed his hat and mopped his brow with his handkerchief. “Mr. Lamont, how would you like to come to Hollywood?”
Don’s jaw fell open. “What?”
The man chuckled. “That reaction never gets old. Mr. Lamont, I’m a talent scout. Mr. Evets is always looking for the next star on the rise, and word of your success in this show has reached him all the way out in California. He sent me to see if you lived up to what the papers have been saying about you. I went to call him at intermission to tell him that you were even better than what the critics wrote. He gave me immediate permission to offer you a one-picture deal. With an option for a multiyear contract if all goes well.”
Don blinked slowly. A one-picture deal. With an option to be a contract player at one of the most illustrious studios in Hollywood. He’d be an idiot to give the man anything but an enthusiastic yes. But a memory of his father, his hands stinking like fish and motor oil as he belittled him, flooded his thoughts. It turned his stomach and a cold sweat broke out on his brow.
His father was dead. Had been for two years. But when Don thought of Los Angeles, he didn’t think of palm trees and sunshine and the movies. He thought instead of a cruel man who’d told his son every chance he got that he’d never amount to anything. The memory of the smell of his father’s hands threatened to make him vomit. It was a stench matched only by the rot in his father’s soul.
“Of course, we’ll have to find the right property first. And you’ll have to do a screen test, just to be sure,” Walter Nebbs added. “But we’re prepared to make you a generous offer.”
“Of course,” Don mumbled. The suit thought he was stalling for more money. Fine, let him. His mind moved a mile a minute. He couldn’t say no, could he? Not even if saying yes meant he had to return to California, to the one place he swore he’d never go back. Every time he thought about Los Angeles, he thought about all the reasons he’d left.
“We’re prepared to offer you $400 a week. Plus a studio car and the cost of your lodgings,” Nebbs announced, clearing his throat. “And a retainer for expenses.”
God, these studio bigwigs really wanted him, huh? But Don still wasn’t sure. The offer was far from chump change, but sixty percent of it would go toward lining Frankie Martino’s pockets and keeping his illegal gambling rings in operation. Don had been so eager to make it on Broadway, to prove his father wrong, he’d agreed to the outrageous contract that Frankie had offered him without blinking. Because he’d be dancing. Professionally. Who cared if his manager was raking in sixty percent of his salary? He’d been a prize fool. Eight years later, he was still paying the price. Through the nose.
Besides, being a movie star had never been his dream. Broadway. Dancing for a live audience every night. That was what he’d always wanted. And he’d gotten it. Even if it’d come with incredibly thick strings attached. Strings that were pulling at him as he turned this proposition over in his brain.
The second he told Frankie about the offer, which he would have to do, as the ache in his ribs painfully reminded him, Don wouldn’t have a say in the matter. Hell, Frankie would probably try to make it a package deal with his dance partner, Eleanor Lester. Never mind that Don had finally loosed himself from her and her conniving ways with the success of Pal’ing Around .
But then he got an idea. “Can I make you a counter?”
Mr. Nebbs raised his eyebrows. “It’s a very generous offer, I assure you. But try me.”
“How about you give me $600 a week, skip the car, I handle my own lodgings and expenses, and you include the difference in my weekly salary?” He was doing the math quickly in his head. He could find a cheap little hotel somewhere; it would be a fraction of the cost of whatever Hollywood hot spot the studio was thinking of putting him in. And he could eat as cheaply as possible. It wasn’t like he wasn’t used to it. If he was out on the town, Frankie made sure it appeared as if Don was living a life of luxury. But in reality, $400 a week was more than Don had ever seen in his lifetime. As long as Don was dependent on Frankie, he couldn’t go anywhere that Frankie didn’t tell him to go. This was his ticket out.
If he only told Frankie about the first offer, the $400 per week, he could pocket most of the rest and finally buy out his contract. Even if it wasn’t enough, if he made it in Hollywood and became a contract player, he could get the money that way. He could be free of Frankie, and of Eleanor, once and for all.
Walter Nebbs scratched his chin in thought. “It’s highly unusual. But I don’t see why not.”
Don raised his hand. “With two other conditions. You let me handle all the particulars with my manager.”
“Done,” replied Nebbs. “What’s the other?”
“You bring my choreographer, Eddie Rosso, out to California too. I can’t work without him.” Don wasn’t exaggerating. Half of the success of Pal’ing Around was thanks to Eddie and the new dance style he’d helped Don develop.
“We wouldn’t be able to offer him much of a salary. But if you want him there to ask for advice, sure, we can do that.” Don knew Eddie wouldn’t mind. He didn’t have a gangster manager he needed to buy out, after all. Plus Eddie was a simple guy. Give him a bed and three hot meals a day, and he wouldn’t complain.
“That sounds reasonable,” Don replied. He was only half paying attention, his mind moving as quickly as his feet were known to do, springing from one idea to the next. It was a crazy idea. But it just might work. And at this point, what did he have left to lose? His options were to take this chance at getting out from under Frankie’s thumb or to continue dancing for the louse for the rest of his life. Only one of those sounded tenable.
“Do we have a deal?” Nebbs asked, extending his hand. Don leaned out of his armchair and took it, shaking it.
“We do.” Don nodded. Nebbs stood and brushed off the powder from Don’s makeup palette that now dusted his sleeves. “There is, er, one other thing.”
Don braced himself for something regarding Frankie. Something that would derail his plan before he’d even had the chance to put it into motion. “What’s that?”
“I don’t like the idea myself, but Mr. Evets was quite insistent. You’ll have to work with a rather unconventional director.”
Don didn’t know if he liked the sound of that. He’d had enough of unconventional for a lifetime with a mobster for a manager. “I see.”
“She’s, well, she’s a woman.”
Don bit back a laugh. That was what made it unconventional? That a woman would direct the picture? This guy wouldn’t know unconventional if it bit him in the ass.
Nebbs kept going. “She recently won an Oscar, you see. And Mr. Evets has some cockamamie idea that she should be given a chance to direct. Says it’d be good to put her on something low risk, a project with new, relatively inexpensive talent that won’t cost us too much if it goes belly up.”
“Oh, careful now, Nebbs. If you call me inexpensive, I might get the wrong idea. Ask for more than what we’ve agreed upon.”
The man straightened and leveled Don with a piercing look. “I think we’ve come to quite generous terms, Mr. Lamont. Even if you have to take direction from a woman. Mr. Evets gave me some nonsense about giving the people who do good work a chance, no matter their sex. I’m not entirely sure why he can’t assign her another screenplay to write and be done with it, but he’s the studio head, not me.”
Nebbs was rambling now, but something he’d said had caught Don’s attention. A screenwriter who had won an Oscar last month. It couldn’t be. “What’s the lady’s name, Nebbs?”
“Arlene Morgan.” Nebbs said it as if he’d been sucking on a lemon drop, his lips puckering around the final n in her name. “The dame doesn’t know it yet. Been off playing bridesmaid. But supposedly Harry’s meeting with her tomorrow.”
“Well, I’ll be damned.” Don whistled. “She did it.”
“Pardon?”
Don waved his hand. “Nothing, nothing, go back and report to your boss that as soon as you have a project set, I’ll be on the next train to Los Angeles.”
Don reached for the dressing-room counter that lined the wall below the mirror. It held his makeup case and a cup of water. He picked up a penny that he had left on a small tray next to his script. He rubbed it, the face of Abraham Lincoln almost erased by the number of times he’d run his thumb across it. For luck, she’d said. Luck had a funny way of making itself known in his life, and he often wondered if she’d have still said that if she’d known all the ways luck would complicate things. But hell, maybe it wasn’t luck’s fault. Maybe what he’d thought was luck was temptation and not luck at all. Now, though, for the first time in his life, he was going to make his own luck. Or try anyway.
He leaned back in the armchair, still sitting in his costume with his shirt unbuttoned, exposing his sweat-soaked undershirt. He looked at the dressing-room ceiling, the distinct outline of a water stain turning the cream-colored panels a dark brown. He turned the penny over between his fingers. He wasn’t only going back to Los Angeles then. He was going back to all of it. To Lena, who he’d left on a train station platform a decade ago with tears in her eyes. Maybe this was what the penny had been for all along—to bring him back to her. Back to the pledge that they’d made so long ago in a sunny backyard: that one day, they would make their art together.