Chapter 2 Everyone Holds the Cards to Their Downfall #3
“Iffy won’t like a small house,” Betty says about June’s older sister, Ida Finney, referred to as Iffy behind her back. Iffy, entitled and prim and proper, but an ally when push comes to shove. Then Betty laughs. “That’s my guess who the house is for.”
“No. It wouldn’t be for Iffy. It’s too small, too secluded. Honestly, no one would want to live there.”
It was Frankie’s dream house. The ultimate goal for someone raised in a tenement: a small, quiet home, far enough away from the hustle and bustle that one could pretend nothing else existed.
A place to live alone and to indulge in silence.
Barn red with wide wooden planked floors and a small, shaded garden surrounded by trees.
There was even a fig tree without leaves that Nico immediately spotted.
I’ll have to ask the neighbors if it fruits.
Most wild fig trees don’t, he explained to the woman showing them the house.
The woman nodded and said, How truly interesting, boredom slowing her words.
Betty unwraps a mint and pops it in her mouth. “If the house isn’t for Iffy, we still need to find her something, don’t we? She can’t just live with June, can she? I feel like that’s not so great for June?” And then a smile. “Though I keep hearing there’s going to be a wedding.”
The long-standing rumor, one the studio started, after conjuring the entire Jack-and-June relationship with a wave of its wand, back when June needed to repair the dent an ex had put in her reputation and Jack was an unapologetic bachelor whose career needed a bump.
Both with years left on their contracts with the studio, neither with a say in the matter.
“No way,” Frankie says. “If there was a wedding, I’d know.”
Betty, chastened, starts straightening papers on her desk. The mint bulges in her cheek.
Frankie’s made a mistake. Betty, often underestimated, is the gatekeeper, the one who’s always listening and is the key to almost everything Nico-related.
Because of this, those in the know have her at the top of their Christmas lists, and the office fills with flowers on her birthday.
Frankie leans in. “You’re right, though.
Iffy needs a place to live. Between me and you, I think that place should be Detroit. ”
Now Betty smiles. “I know we need her, but that woman is a nightmare. And it kills me that June doesn’t see it. I’ll never understand how the strongest people are simply undone by love.”
Loving or being loved—all of it can be a downfall, a lesson driven home with Frankie’s mother’s mistakes, culminating in the time Fiona left the one decent job she had to work for a man who brought her bunches of sweet peas from his garden every Thursday.
A man whose wife came into the office only one week into Fiona’s new employment, recognized the flowers she herself had grown, and put an end to everything.
Fiona: long dark-red hair and arctic-blue eyes and freckles that she hated but men found charming.
She’s too pretty for her own good, Frankie once overheard about her mother.
That kind of pretty makes you dream stupid dreams.
Nico opens his office door. “You find the cat?”
“It’s gone.”
“It’s not gone,” he says, and steps aside as she enters the room.
As the door closes, Frankie catches a glimpse of Betty’s face, watching as she always does, with open curiosity.
Not many women make it past the desks outside the offices, and though Frankie’s desk is out there as well, the fact that she’s invited inside so often—without ever being asked to take notes—has sparked more than just curiosity.
“Every starlet in town feeds that cat. No way it’s leaving. ”
“Is everything all right with . . .” Frankie stops, and motions to the phone, referring to the studio brass.
“Head of production is getting his walking papers.”
Frankie’s eyes widen. “But they love him.”
“Loved. Someone’s always gotta take the fall. But it’s not out yet, so mum’s the word. Anyhow, the reason you’re here. Magda’s not happy that you gave Dottie a scoop.”
Dottie is Magda’s competition. “Because I told Dottie that Joan Crawford didn’t like her name? Come on, if a studio named me Crawford, I’d think crawfish too. It was nothing, just a morsel to keep Dottie close. I didn’t intend for it to be a scoop.”
“I’d be a rich man if intentions counted—what matters is that Magda got touchy. I had to settle her down. So make sure she knows it was a morsel, not a meal. Oh, on that, Angela’s cooking something special tonight. Come hungry. Really hungry, or she’ll be mad.”
Sunday dinner. Every week. Six p.m., on the dot.
“But,” Nico continues, “what I really wanted to say is this: You’re almost there.”
“Where?”
“What do you mean where? You’re almost my associate. I got the green light from the powers that be.” When she says nothing, he raises his hands. “Hello?”
But Frankie’s thrown. Being given what she’s worked for is not something she’s used to, and these days, in this economy, there’s no correlation between hard work and reward.
In her mind, she thought she’d have to fight forever.
After a moment she realizes she’s nodding, though she’s not sure what she’s agreeing to. “I got it?”
“First, a two-month probation—”
“What about a two-year probation? Isn’t that what I just did?”
“Ah, there you are.”
“Nico, no one can say I haven’t proven myself—”
“Frankie, I get it. I know that. But the men in the clouds here, they don’t see a woman doing what I do.”
“Well, they wouldn’t until I did it. Then they’d see it.”
“Exactly. Exactly what I told them. So two months—a provisionary promotion, you might say. But that gives you a title, clout, even more money. Listen, though, you gotta tread carefully. You’re good at your job, way better than I’d even hoped.
But you’re fearless. And fearless people take too many risks. ”
A pause as he lifts a jade paperweight from his desk, glancing at the phone message beneath it.
Frankie’s mind races. What does he know?
She’s gotten sloppy, has forgotten her own rules, has started enjoying life more than is wise.
Don’t say it, she told her boyfriend a few months ago, when it sounded like he was about to tell her he loved her.
Though no one had ever told her that before, and it wasn’t as if she had practice in these matters, she’d felt the approach of the line as if the words themselves were swarming around them.
You feel it too, don’t you? he’d said, and he was happy.
There were a few reasons she chose to not believe that he loved her, but in that moment she only knew that she was slipping and needed a handle on her life.
Love, as she’d learned, was the great derailer, the crusher of plans, the water doused on the fire of ambition.
So again, she cut him off, irritated. You’re used to getting what you want, but I’m not.
Take it from a pro: It only hurts when you realize you wanted what you couldn’t have.
So don’t say it, and whatever you do, don’t make me believe it.
“To start you off,” Nico continues, “I’m giving you something big, something that will help you prove yourself right out the gate.”
Wordlessly, she nods, and he sets the messages down.
“What I’m going to tell you is the scoop you’ll give to Magda. You ready? Jack and June are engaged.”
Frankie smiles at the joke. Rumors of an engagement have riveted the nation. But that’s all they are—rumors. “Funny.”
But Nico’s shaking his head. “In about a month they’re getting married.”
Now, a subtle, faint spike of panic. “A new rumor—”
“Not a rumor. Or it won’t be, once you tell Magda. Because you get to give her the scoop, while I tell Jack.”
“I don’t understand. This is real?” Her skin’s gone hot, her heartbeat in her ears, because even as she says the word, she knows that this is real. Or maybe not real but happening. “He doesn’t want this. Neither of them does.”
“She does.”
“No, she doesn’t. She hates him.”
“Frankie, June is with child.”
Struck silent, Frankie can feel her mind racing. At last, she manages to say, “But it’s not his.”
And to this, Nico laughs. “Of course it’s not. Can you imagine? No, those two—no. But they’ll be fine. No one’s asking them to pledge love and be faithful—”
“Aren’t they?”
“In technical terms only. But we gotta get ahead of this. June’s not saying whose it is, but what she is saying is that she wants this baby.
Who better to marry her than the man she’s been with for years?
The man the country wants her with? Anyone else would be a disaster.
Not exaggerating, it would destroy her if another man stepped in and said he was the father.
Naturally we won’t bring up the baby till after the wedding.
But you know how it goes: Everything comes to the surface eventually.
It’s when, not if. So they need to be engaged now. ”
“And Jack raises another man’s child?”
“Just because it’s someone else’s child doesn’t mean you can’t love it. You know that.”
“My mother had a choice when she adopted me.” Even as she says this, she knows Nico’s patience is wearing thin, so she changes the subject. “June was drinking today. I could tell.”
He shrugs, but there’s a flicker of concern on his face. “I don’t imagine much will change in that regard. Or with the other stuff.”