Chapter 2 Everyone Holds the Cards to Their Downfall #4
The other stuff: inhalers, broken in half, split apart like shucked beans, with the cotton Benzedrine-soaked strip insides removed.
To make impossible deadlines, actors need to work in impossibly long shifts, and if the contents of a perfectly legal inhaler make the difference, so be it.
Roll up bits of the bitter-tasting strip, swallow with coffee or alcohol, and strap in for a spike of productivity.
Then, when necessary, there’s a pill that’s like a pin in a balloon.
And another to take you further down. Sleep, wake up in four hours, repeat.
There’s an entire room with broken inhalers.
Once on that ride, you don’t get off, Nico’s said disdainfully.
Jack, at least, won’t touch the doctors’ offerings, and is notorious for getting the sleep he needs by simply becoming tired and useless.
The studio, aware his altered states can be a liability, lets him get away with this.
“Is it safe?” Frankie asks.
“Doctors know what’s safe, and they’ll keep an eye on her.”
“Jack’s going to hate this fix.”
“Which is why you’re lucky you don’t have to be the one to tell him.
” A deep breath, and he says, “The studio needs this. I won’t get into how badly they need this, but after The Last Chance tanked, and with Paramount making truckloads on The Sign of the Cross and everything MGM touches turning to gold, RCO needs Desert Son to be a smash.
This wedding builds the Jack-and-June frenzy, and that drives people to the theatre.
” Then, slowly, he adds, “Jack Sawyer is not in a position to argue. Not with what we cover up for him. Not with his past. The last thing he wants is for the studio to be on his bad side. You understand?”
She nods. The threat barely veiled.
“This is what we do, me and you: We see the big picture. We make them take their medicine because it’s good for them. The country’s favorite couple has a baby? That’s great for them. That’s not in magazines, it’s the cover. Every cover.”
The reality of this is settling in.
“Great. Good,” Nico continues. He stands, shrugging on his coat. “So you’ll tell Magda, who will put it on her evening show.”
“When? Tonight?”
“No time like the present. Magda’s in the lobby.”
Frankie glances toward the lobby. From the outside, it looks like an ice-cream parlor. “I don’t know what to say.”
“The beach one, remember?”
The beach proposal. Over a year ago, June’s mother, an older woman with an unstable and eroding mind, managed to send June a confusing letter before passing away.
The note was a jumbled scrawl of accusations involving a death and names no one recognized, a mishmash of her life, perhaps, or even tales she’d heard at the salon long ago; who knew what she was talking about.
Whatever the case, the letter was no longer harmless when it fell into the hands of a disloyal maid who wanted to make some extra money.
Frankie and Nico thought an engagement would be a perfect distraction from the story, should it hit.
For an entire day, they invented proposals, throwing out options as if trying on new shirts.
“Yeah. Do the beach one,” he continues. “With the food on the hood of the car. Plaid blankets, whatever, the whole thing. Lobster from Murry’s Malibu.
Just make it good, and then tell us all so we know.
And listen, you got the easy job. You hear me earlier?
I get to tell Jack. So, next step is batten down the hatches because, with his temper, there’s gonna be blowback.
It’s a hell of a way to promote you, isn’t it?
Straight into the fire. Hand me that script there, would you? ”
Frankie forces a smile and watches her hand as she picks up the script, surprised when her fingers work. Bodies, treacherous with instinct, continuing on even while the heart breaks.
“By the end of this day,” he continues, “Jack Sawyer fan clubs all over the country will cover their mirrors in black. Millions of tears will spill into pillows, those poor girls who go to sleep dreaming of him. But, Frankie,” he continues, “remember the deal. No missteps. This is probation. The eyes of the studio are on you, kid.” A smile.
“And if I didn’t already say it, congratulations. ”
She feels caught off-balance, a sucker punch when she didn’t have both feet on the ground.
There is pain to this, a voiceless agony.
Though not because she’s in Jack Sawyer’s fan club, or goes to bed dreaming of him—but because she goes to bed dreaming beside him.
She’s brokenhearted because Jack Sawyer is her boyfriend.
Though they had no future, they still weren’t supposed to end. Not like this.
“Oh,” Nico says, waiting. “You had something you were going to tell me?”
“I was going to tell you I was ready. That I deserved to be promoted.”
“Well, look at that. Guess all you gotta do now is not blow it.” He smiles. “Kidding. You’ll be great. Hey, you happy?”
“I’m happy,” she says, thankful no one can tell when she’s lying.