Chapter 4 Justice and a Happy Ending
Justice and a Happy Ending
Hollywoo land. The D has fallen again. Dusk holds the world in a tight grip, and the white letters are pink-tinged, appearing to undulate atop the darkened terrain.
Made of flimsy wood panels and held in place by telephone poles, the housing development sign is anything but sturdy.
Just last year, a discouraged theatre actress from New York climbed a fifty-foot workman’s ladder to the top of the H and jumped off.
The day after her death, a letter arrived with an offer of acting work.
That was the detail that Frankie knew would pulse steady in the hearts of actors everywhere.
Keep going, the next day could be the answer.
June was the one who gave Frankie the news when it happened, and as she spoke, she cried.
Did you know her? Frankie asked. June nodded, but then confused the moment by saying, Didn’t we all?
Maybe they did. Settled deep within Frankie’s core is still someone afraid to hope that a new day is a new chance.
Someone who felt none of the promised comfort of an afterlife when her mother died and who, since, has felt nothing but alone and tired of fending for herself against a troubled world.
Though she is excellent at sequestering her feelings—a survival tactic, a way to move forward without the past’s determined grab—she is also someone who would never admit to finding comfort in the height of the H.
The bottom line is no matter how worried she is about what will happen with Jack and how things will change and if it will work, she doesn’t feel entitled to sadness, not with all she has.
Most of the people she knows back home are stuck in windowless rooms, living in spaces no bigger than half a subway car.
People on an entire floor share one toilet and steal electricity and wear flour-sack dresses and eat lard-and-bread sandwiches, if lucky.
It’s a life lived between the cracks, a world of scraps.
Now, somehow beyond logic, Frankie has a job that she loves and a room that sometimes feels like just her own, with walls that aren’t strung-up sheets.
Now there is no ice on the inside of the windows, and she can drain the bathwater without thinking, and the mirror on the medicine cabinet steams from the heat.
All of it, a miracle. So this sadness, this feeling that she’s missing out, it’s shameful, and she knows she has no right to it.
Instead of trying to stop for a light, she floors it and a horn trails after her.
The studio owns her car, a ’31 DeSoto Deluxe convertible, but since she’s on call day and night and often made to transport actors who can’t be seen in anything rusted or clunky, the vehicle is with her at all times, and is considered part of her compensation.
Two-tone mint green with a tan interior and white-walled tires.
The trunk is actually a foldout rumble seat, and just the sight of the car conjures picnics with wicker baskets and scarves trailing in the wind.
Nico took her to pick it out, right before he realized she didn’t know how to drive. Not legally, at least.
The beautiful car. An apartment that’s bigger than anything she’s ever dreamed of.
Still, the numbers in her bank account don’t match the outward image of her life, and what she’s managed to save wouldn’t get her very far.
Soon, though, her income will catch up. Thankfully.
But then she thinks of Jack’s engagement.
What will they have to do to make their own relationship work?
If things were difficult before, how will they be now?
As usual, she’s in her apartment only the minimum amount of time.
“Off to Grant’s after Sunday dinner?” Virginia, one of her roommates, a secretary at the studio, asks.
Her other roommate, another secretary, Susan, gives Virginia a knowing look.
I couldn’t say my name, Jack told Frankie the first time he donned a New York accent and left a message at the apartment.
So Grant I am. Grant, her roommates claim, is a creep, because he’s never once picked her up for their dates.
Meanwhile, Virginia has a framed headshot of Jack on her nightstand.
“I’m not sure yet,” Frankie says. They don’t often see each other on Sunday nights, due to his usual early-Monday-morning call times. But this week he’s not filming.
“You make yourself too available,” Susan says. “If he hasn’t planned a date by now, I’d let him know he missed his chance.”
Missed his chance. She and Jack spent so much time fixated on what they didn’t have that they never fully appreciated what they did have—or understood just how quickly they could lose it all.
She waits till both roommates have left and then goes to the phone in the living room to try Jack at his Pasadena house, where if necessary she can leave a message with his valet, O’Shea.
A butler, an assistant, a driver, and sometimes also a bouncer, he is a man Jack trusts with his life, and though she’s pretty sure O’Shea knows what’s going on between them, she still casts her calls and visits in appropriate lights.
“He’s on the court, miss,” O’Shea says.
The tennis court, at the bottom of his property.
Tennis is Jack’s chance to work out whatever anger he might feel, and more than once Frankie has watched him play, shocked at his intensity.
It’s all she can do to not stare at his arms or the sweat that darkens his shirt, and though she knows he’s strong, there seems to be an underlying fury that drives him.
The only person he’s been able to play against in any satisfying way is a professional he hires to hit with, a man who has claimed that any time Jack wanted to leave acting, he’d have a career waiting for him.
But Jack—despite his stature and his strength—has no interest in taking tennis any further. To him, it’s simply a way to unleash.
“How long has he been on the court?” she asks. In her mind, she sees him playing, the shine of anger on his skin.
“Two hours now—since he got home from the studio. He’s got to be almost done. At least, that fellow he’s hitting against looks to be almost done.”
“Could you ask him to call Frankie? It’s about an interview tomorrow.”
“Yes, miss. If he comes up before I leave.”
“Leave?”
Though operators are generally forbidden from eavesdropping, some calls are just too tempting. In the silence she can almost feel O’Shea weighing the options of what’s safe to say.
“He’s given me three nights off. Told me to visit my sister. I was about to walk out the door.”
Three nights off. Jack’s done this so he can be alone, which doesn’t bode well. She needs to see him in person. They’ll both feel better when they’ve addressed what’s going on and come up with a plan.
When she hangs up the phone, Virginia is standing there. “I forgot my pocketbook,” she says. “Was that Jack Sawyer you were talking about? Was he the one playing tennis?”
But Virginia doesn’t give her time to respond.
“You said, Ask him to call Frankie. I heard that. Not even from the studio. Which means he knows who you are.”
“He’s not blindfolded when I come in the room. I would hope he knows who I am.”
Virginia lowers herself into the nearest chair. “I always figured Nico dealt with the stars directly.”
“Nico doesn’t want to deal with anybody directly. That’s why he has me.”
Slowly, Virginia smiles. “You said he was on the court. He’s supposed to be amazing. A natural.”
“Who’s amazing?” Susan says, appearing in the door. “We’re late.”
“Frankie just called Jack Sawyer’s house, and he was playing tennis.”
“I’m working,” Frankie explains.
Susan shrugs. “When is Frankie not working?”
“But with Jack Sawyer.” Virginia turns to Frankie. “Just tell me one thing no one else knows. One thing, and I’ll leave.”
He notices everything and leaves a full glass of water on my bedside table because he knows I get thirsty.
“Let me think.” He waits to shave till I’m there, because he knows I love to watch.
“There’s not much.” When he rolls up his sleeves, there are golden hairs and a pulse in his forearm.
Now she’s thinking about his forearms. “He’s actually annoying. ”
Susan’s eyes are wide. “Frankie, do you have a crush on Jack Sawyer?” She turns to Virginia. “She’s blushing.”
Virginia looks almost upset. “You don’t, do you, Frankie?”
Frankie stands to go back to her room. “I just said he was annoying.”
“Good,” Virginia says with something like relief. “Because no one could beat out June.”
“I’ve seen their chemistry on-screen,” Susan says, “so I won’t argue.”
They’re on the ride, Nico’s said about audiences swept along in the Jack-and-June story.
Because a lie is one thing. A movie is a lie, a screenplay a lie.
But provide the illusion that there is truth just beyond that lie, just beyond the lens of the camera or in the hand that holds the script, and it’s a different beast. With the myth of Jack and June, they’ve given people the ability to watch them on the screen and see another layer, something that enhances every look, every glimpse, every kiss.
The whole country is involved, a part of their romance.
They’re on the ride. Buckled in and captive, watching it play out thirty feet high.
An hour later, she’s on the way to Nico’s house.
Night deepens the upper part of the sky, the horizon still bright with lights from the city.
Jack Sawyer is not in the position to argue, Nico said.
Not with what we cover up for him. Not with his past. As Frankie drives, she imagines telling Virginia the truth. Would she still like Jack, if she knew?