Butterfly (34 page)

song on the jukebox. Outside the South, country music wasn’t fashionable. She was glad

of that, because it reminded her of things she didn’t want to be reminded of. “Maybe you

should change your looks, Roy.”

He gave her a startled look. No one had ever said
that
to him before.

“What’s wrong with my looks?”

“You were just saying you were thinking of changing.”

He frowned. Yes, but Roy had said that because he had been fishing for compliments,

not insults. Obviously no one had ever taught Beverly tact. He looked at her. Beverly’s

face was always so open. She never acted coy, or teased, or winked, or even smiled, hardly.

She took life very seriously and, if asked, gave her most honest answer.

Which meant she really
did
think he should change his looks.

“Holy cow,” he murmured, worried now.

But she came around from behind the counter and sat down next to him. “You’ve

been told more than once that you look just like Fabian,” she said quietly. “Maybe that’s

why no one will hire you. They already have Fabian. What they don’t have is Roy

Madison.”

She had him interested now. No one, not his mother, his sisters, his string of room-

mates, his casual boyfriends, had ever suggested he should look any different from the

way he did right now. Well, maybe this was just the advice he needed. “Yeah, but what
is

Roy Madison?” he asked, surveying his reflection in the mirror behind the counter.

Beverly studied him. “I don’t know, Roy. Did you go to college?”

“No.”

“You look like a college boy. You look like Bobby Rydell or Ricky Nelson.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“It’s too slick.”

“Slick?”

“It’s a dishonest look, if you aren’t really like that.” She frowned slightly. “You look like

a man with something to hide.”

“Hide?” He laughed a little nervously. “Me?”

“Don’t wear your hair like that.”

Roy brought his hand up protectively. “Hey, I work hard to get it just like this.”

“I know. And it looks that way. It’s not natural, Roy, It’s not honest.”

He looked at his reflection. How can a hairdo be dishonest? “What do you suggest I

do to it?”

BUTTERFLY

145

“Just be natural. Just be yourself. You aren’t like any of those other boys. You have your

own style. You shouldn’t try to force yourself to adopt someone else’s.”

“But their style sells! It’s what girls think is sexy these days.”

“There are different kinds of sexy, Roy,” she said quietly. “Some men weren’t meant to

have their hair combed like that. It makes them look phony.”

He laughed. “What makes you an expert on men all of a sudden?” As far as anyone at

the diner knew, Beverly hadn’t gone out on a date in her life.

“Don’t put all that grease on your hair,” she said.

“It’ll stick out all over if I don’t!”

Beverly continued to study him in all seriousness. Well, he had brought it up. If he

hadn’t wanted an answer, he shouldn’t have asked. The mellow voice of Marty Robbins

filled the little diner, bringing with it visions of mesquite and cactus, of Texas longhorns

and steak barbecues, of tortillas and hot nights and dust and the moonlight on the San

Antonio.

“Where are you from, Roy?”

That caught him off guard. Beverly Highland never asked a personal question. “South

Dakota.”

“Be natural. Be yourself. Don’t try to look sophisticated, because you’re not.”

“And just how do I go about doing that?”

“You don’t do anything. Leave your hair natural. Let the wind do the styling. Use baby

shampoo and towel it dry. And let it grow over your ears a bit, it will soften the lines of

your face.”

Beverly looked up at the clock then and stood up. “I’m going home for a few minutes,

Roy. Will you tell Louie to watch the store?”

As he watched her hang up her apron and pull on her sweater to leave, Roy looked at

himself one last time in the jukebox chrome.
Baby
shampoo!

With the salary Eddie was paying her these days, Beverly could afford a car. But she

didn’t want to spend her money on a car, so she sat at bus stops and purchased monthly

MTA passes. And even though she had long since moved out of Eddie’s sister’s boarding-

house—it was too noisy—Beverly had not moved into an extravagant apartment. She had

chosen a modest little building of sixteen units off Cahuenga, behind Hollywood

Boulevard. It was white stucco with the usual palm trees, and there was a tiny pool that

wasn’t worth jumping into. She could take the bus straight down Highland and be home

in twenty minutes. Beverly had a more important use for her money. Every week she

banked her paycheck. She doled out a small living allowance to herself, clipped coupons

when she could, bought clothes at discount, and ate free at the diner. The dollars were

slowly adding up. She was patient; someday she was going to be rich. And when she was,

she was going to find Danny Mackay.

She got there just as Ann Hastings, her neighbor, was pulling mail from the box.

“Hi!” said the exuberant Ann. “Wow, a ton of Christmas cards. Over half of them

from my mother’s friends. Why does she do that, give my address out?”

Beverly smiled and proceeded up the steps. Beverly Highland, Ann noticed, rarely

checked her mailbox. It was as if she knew there was never going to be anything in there.

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Kathryn Harvey

“Haven’t seen you for a while,” Ann said, following her up the steps, clutching her

brace of holiday envelopes.

“We’ve been busy at the diner. And Eddie’s in Covina, looking for a site for a new

store.”

As Beverly put her key in the door to unlock it Ann came and leaned against the wall.

“You know, I told my dad all about Eddie’s burgers. He said you could sell the recipe and

make a bundle.”

“Eddie’s received offers to buy his secret recipe. But he doesn’t want to sell.” No one

except Beverly and Eddie knew that it was really her recipe. And when he had been

approached by someone wanting to buy the recipe and market it, Eddie had consulted

with Beverly. But she had said, “Your hamburgers are special. If the recipe is available to

everyone, then they’ll stop coming to your diner.” He had thought that good advice and

so declined to sell.

“Yeah,” Ann said, not making moves to leave when Beverly went inside. “I’ve had

Royal Burgers. They’re real good.”

Beverly didn’t close the door in the girl’s face. She knew that Ann Hastings was lonely,

and that whenever she could she would seize upon a neighbor and trap him or her into

conversation. Beverly had seen some of the rude brush-offs Ann had gotten.

So she said now, “Would you like some iced tea?” And Ann jumped at the invitation.

It was just a one-room apartment, with a sofa-bed and a kitchen nook. But it had a

nice sunny exposure facing the Hollywood Hills, and Beverly liked it. She had fixed it up

with curtains and pillows from Pic ’n Save and that was all. Living for the future as she

did, Beverly was content to make sacrifices now. It was also for the future that she prac-

ticed strict self-discipline. The first two years of working at Eddie’s had put pounds on her

frame. She had taken them off and kept them off. She ate modestly, just enough to sustain

herself, and didn’t allow herself to develop any expensive or addictive tastes. She neither

smoked nor drank, nor went to movies. She didn’t buy herself any luxuries; she didn’t

pamper herself. Discipline and hard work were the touchstones of Beverly Highland’s

simple life. All calculated to get her to the day when she would meet up again with

Danny.

She had two exceptions to this rule: The first was her hair, which needed to be touched

up every week so that the platinum looked natural. She did this to keep Rachel Dwyer

buried, totally and forever. The second exception was books. Beverly spent money on

books. But these were no longer mainly novels; they were nonfiction books from which

she learned about success, about how to get ahead—stories of real men and women who,

through guts, risk-taking, determination, and an instinct for what people want, made it

to the top. Her current book was
Be My Guest,
by Conrad Hilton.

“How come you’re home at this hour?” Beverly asked Ann out of kindness. There was

nothing at all wrong with Ann Hastings except perhaps that she was too eager to be

everyone’s friend. Twenty-two years old, a little overweight and not terribly attractive,

Ann tended to overcompensate by generating a personality that many found intrusive.

But Beverly remembered what it was like to want to be accepted.

“I quit my job this morning.”

BUTTERFLY

147

Beverly looked at her. “Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, so am I. My dad’s going to kill me. And my mother’s going to say I told you

so.”

Beverly knew Ann’s story; anyone who crossed her path heard her story. The only child

of overindulgent and overprotective parents in the Valley, Ann was trying to break away

from them by going it on her own. With a degree in art from Valley State College, she had

recently gotten a position at the Broadway department store on Hollywood and Vine as a

window dresser. It was a decent job, but the problem was, Ann was very creative and des-

perately wanted some artistic freedom.

“I came up with this great concept for doing the windows this year,” she said enthusi-

astically. “What do you think: Christmas in the movies!”

“I like it.”

“Each window would be a scene from a movie—like
White Christmas
or
It’s a

Wonderful Life.
Even
Ben Hur.
I thought, I would make each window like a movie set,

with costumes and everything. I’ve got a friend down at Western Costume, you know.”

Beverly knew. Ann Hastings had “friends” everywhere.

“But my supervisor said no. Just Santa and his elves this year. So I lost my cool and

said something I shouldn’t have. I just got mad, Beverly. I can’t stand being restricted, you

know?”

“What are you going to do?”

She glumly stirred sugar into her tea. “I don’t know. Diplomas in art don’t exactly rake

in the job offers. My mother wants me to move back in with them and pursue a master’s

degree. I can’t live with them anymore, Beverly! They suffocate me!”

Beverly wouldn’t know anything about that. She’d never been suffocated with love.

“We lost a waitress last night,” she said, “and I was going to start interviewing. Would you

like to work for Eddie?”

Ann thought about it. Clearly, it didn’t appeal.

“Free meals,” Beverly added.

“I’ll do it.”

There wasn’t anything to say after that, except speculate on what it was going to be like

having the Kennedys in the White House. Ann asked Beverly if she had read Errol Flynn’s

My Wicked, Wicked Ways
yet, and Beverly said simply, “I might get to it if I have time.”

How a movie star spent his time on bearskin rugs did not interest Beverly. But one man’s

climb up the ladder of financial success did.
“To accomplish big things…
” Conrad Hilton

had written, “
you must first dream big dreams.
” And dreaming was something Beverly had

done all her life.

It was too priceless an opportunity to avoid going to her own empty, lonely apart-

ment, and such a treat to sit at someone else’s table for a change, as if they were old

friends, that Ann was in no hurry to leave. And Beverly didn’t mind. As she watched

Ann’s pudgy hands sort through the stack of mail she had received Beverly wondered if

she should try writing yet another letter to Belle and Carmelita. Her last one, two years

ago, had come back marked, “Moved—No Forwarding Address.”

“Oh, no,” Ann groaned.

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Kathryn Harvey

“What’s the matter?”

Ann waved a letter in the air. “My cousin again! Jeepers, I wish she’d leave me alone.

My cousin is on the rich side of the family. They have a house in the hills, and they’re very

snobbish. Every year my cousin throws this massive Christmas dance, and every year my

mother forces me to go.”

“Don’t you like parties?”

“Oh, the dance is all right, it’s just that all the other girls my cousin invites arrive with

escorts.
I
go with my parents. I told my mother last year that I wasn’t going to go any-

more, and we had a big fight. ‘It’ll upset your Auntie Fee,’ she said. ‘And make us look

bad.’ My mother just doesn’t understand. I’m twenty-two, Beverly, and I don’t have a

boyfriend.”

“Neither do I.”

Ann stared. She looked at the enviably slender body and perfect platinum hair and

gorgeous face and did not believe her.

“It’s true,” Beverly said. “I don’t have a boyfriend. If I was invited to a dance, I’d have

to go alone.”

“How about that…” Ann said slowly. Then, remembering the letter, she said, “But I

have to go to this one and I’ll just die walking in with my parents. I swear Janet—that’s

my cousin—does it just to humiliate me! We’ve been rivals for years. Ever since we got a

swimming pool before she did.”

“Can’t you find someone to go with you? Surely you must know someone who might