Chapter 6 A Coil Wound Too Tight
A Coil Wound Too Tight
A frenzy of wedding plans. Talk of designers and dresses, of color schemes and bridesmaids.
Throughout it all, Frankie keeps an eye on Nico’s door, wondering if Jack will indeed try to call everything off.
Now and then, she reminds him: Get out of marrying June if you want, but if my name comes up, I lose my job, guaranteed.
On Monday, after a week has passed, she decides Jack probably thought better about derailing the studio’s plan until Betty patches through a call and Frankie hears Nico’s voice rise. Subtly she goes to the parrots’ addition, which is slightly closer to Nico’s door.
“Who’s he on with?” she asks Betty.
“Milton Ewing,” Betty says of Jack’s closest friend, a writer who’s in London.
“Last-minute changes to the script. A transatlantic call, do you believe it? Sounds like Nico doesn’t—he’s yelling loud enough that Milton and all of London could hear him without a phone.
Oh, your cookies,” Betty adds, and holds out a cookie tin.
Inside are telegrams. Everything coming in to the studio’s stars, and everything going out.
We can’t fix something we don’t know about, Nico’s said about the practice of reading words that were intended to be private.
Once a week, Frankie or Nico pore over everything, determined to head off disaster.
Doing this was how they learned that one of their stars had a heart condition he’d kept secret, and so they knew to have a doctor on standby during rough shoots.
It’s how they found out an ex-girlfriend was blackmailing another actor for a child he claimed wasn’t his, and how they discovered someone else was cheating on her husband with a director who wasn’t trustworthy.
From potential sex scandals to stars flirting with other studios or trying to break their contracts, being in the know is what makes the difference.
“Frankie.”
Nico’s at his door. Quickly she goes to her desk to shove the tin into her bag and then follows him into his office. As she does, Romeo or Juliet lets out a shrieking squawk. Nico clears his throat. “So, Milton asked me, What do you call a month’s worth of rain?” A pause. “England.”
She smiles. “Funny.”
“Before I forget, you’ll want to take out money from the bank before they close.”
She glances at her watch. “Don’t they close soon?”
“No, close as in shut down. As in not just for the day. New York Reserve Bank’s gold reserve is about to fall below the legal limit, and when that happens, it’s trouble. So, get your money, because they will shut down, and then you’ll be up a creek.”
In her mind, she sees the measly sum from when she last made a deposit. She can’t think about that now. “Anything with the wedding? Jack or June? Cold feet?”
“Cold feet we’ve got in spades. Lucky we’ve got Ida on our side, because just this morning June’s telling me she can be a single mother and maybe she’s done acting.
Done acting. Lord help me. And Jack. When has Jack Sawyer made my life easy?
I said that when he called. From day one I’ve been cleaning up your messes, I said. From day one.”
“He called?”
“Right before Milton. But, Frankie, this is about you.”
This is about you.
In a flash, she sees the world she’s about to lose.
Everything. Her apartment, her car, her job, this life on the West Coast without real winters, this place where dreams come true and where who you were doesn’t dictate who you’ll become—everything, all of it, gone.
Her heart pounds in her ears as she sees her mother the day she left the one job she loved for that man who brought her flowers.
The stupid happiness on her face. “Nico—”
“That house in Edendale? You liked it?”
Frankie’s sweating. Can he tell? She understands he said something about a house, but she lost the train of thought. “The house?”
“Yeah, that house I took you to, I took you there to make sure you liked it. The studio’ll own it, of course, no way around that, but you can live there.”
“The house?” she says again.
“Eventually, when they get past this financial bump, the studio wants that whole hill. And then they’ll tear down whatever houses are on it, but until then, it would be yours.
” When she says nothing, stunned, he continues.
“You were looking a little down, so I thought I’d tell you now. But you’re still looking down.”
“The whole house?”
“Whole house. No roommates. The middle of March—you can plan on that for a move-in date.” And then he considers something.
“But we’re not kidding. This is a probation.
You gotta be good. You’ve worked hard. It’d be a shame to not make it.
” Then, a smile. “Not that I think that will happen. I’m just saying that now, of all times, is when you tread carefully.
I think I said that before, but I wanted to be sure you heard it. ”
With this, she understands: He knows. He knows, and he’s telling her she will have nothing if she strays outside the line of what’s allowed with Jack.
But here, right now, is her chance for correction.
He gives her a small smile, and she realizes he’s aware of what he’s taken with this wedding, and he’s giving her this house in return. A dangled carrot. A consolation prize.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. It’s work. It’s sacrifice. But reward too. If you want it.”
Anything she thought she could get away with is no longer an option. She needs to choose.
“I think,” he continues slowly, “Jack could use some hand-holding on this. The cold-feet thing. I’ll just say it—he was upset when we spoke.
This is the eternal bachelor we’re talking about, the one with a girl on each arm—that’s his true nature, you ask me.
So an engagement, even a fake engagement, it’s doing a number on him.
The man’s probably at his house beating the hell out of a tennis ball.
So go earn your raise and your house and show us what you got. Do some convincing.”
Jack is sliding out of reach before she’s ready. “But, Nico, if he really doesn’t want it—”
“Frankie, before you get started, let me tell you what he really doesn’t want: He doesn’t want the studio as his enemy.
But he wins in this. Wins. The love of the country and the ability to keep working.
And you know what else? It’s not just him: If June’s not married, she can’t have the baby.
You want to tell her she can’t keep her baby?
I don’t. But this is where we’re at: The country will not let her be an unwed mother, and the studio won’t let her destroy herself.
God knows she tries. Now. The hand-holding. This is part of the job. Go fix.”
Jack’s house looks empty, and it’s this difference, this emptiness, that drives everything home: It’s over, and they both know it. This isn’t an idea, it isn’t something in the future—it’s real, and it’s happening now.
Louis lets her past the gate, and as she winds up the drive, she catches glimpses of the house above, windows dark.
To her right is the empty tennis court. She keeps going, noticing one light on in what could be the kitchen.
Still, at the house, there is no sign of Jack—or O’Shea, for that matter, who usually parks his truck on the far right of the driveway.
He had three days off last week, but for him to be gone again means Jack purposefully got rid of him.
She tucks her car on the side of the garage, alongside ropes of hanging ivy, and makes her way to the front door.
When she knocks, another light goes on deep within the house.
Minutes later, Jack opens the door, and she smells the bourbon on him. She starts to turn around. “We can talk later.”
But he steps aside, ushering her in. As she goes with him to the kitchen, she tells herself this is not a breakup with her boyfriend, it is simply her doing her job, but all she wants to do is cry. “Where’s O’Shea?”
“Sister’s.”
“More time off?”
“Do I not get to have my own house to myself when I need it?”
They’re diving in, she sees. “There’s the issue of the wedding and the issue of us. Which do you want to talk about first?”
He shakes his head. “So logical.”
“It’s not logical, it’s sober.”
He shoots her a look. “Fine, let’s talk about us.”
“We couldn’t have done it for much longer,” she says firmly. She needs to believe her own words. “Me sneaking through your yard at night, never being able to call you my boyfriend, never being able to even call you just to say hi without making up a story.”
“I could’ve kept going.”
She tosses her tote bag onto the built-in kitchen table. “Sure, because you get your fame and reputation, while I sneak around and settle for scraps.”
Suddenly he looks completely sober. “That’s a hell of a thing to say, coming from someone who didn’t even try to stop Nico.”
She glares at him, incredulous. Angry that he’d ask her to risk everything when he knows how close to the edge she lives. “What difference would I make? I’m no one.”
“You’re like a daughter to him. Maybe if he knew the truth—”
“The truth? That their big plan, their moneymaking headline and the story that’ll drive people to the theatre, can’t happen?
The studio needs this, and you want me to tell them that one of their top stars wants to call it quits with their other top star, to hang her out to dry in her time of need, all to be with a no one?
That sounds like a good plan? And the public, forget it. They would not love you for that.”
“I don’t care about being loved.”
“You would if they stopped loving you.”
“Maybe I finally want to live my life.”
Frustrated, she calls his bluff. “Then do it. Tell them you’re done and you don’t care.”
He raises a brow. “I know you’re not serious.”
“You’re the one who’s not serious. If it were really what you wanted, and you were willing to risk everything, then I would help you.”