Daddy (23 page)

“I've enjoyed talking to you, Oliver.” She looked almost hurt as the other man laughed, and then she turned to her network boss and almost pouted. “I suppose you're going to take him away now.”

“I should. I'll bring him back if you like,” and then he turned to Oliver with a supposed word of warning. “Watch out for her, she hates movie stars, she loves kids, and dogs, and she never forgets her lines. I don't trust women like that, do you? And what's more she's too goddamn good-looking. You should see her at four A.M., it'd make you sick, no makeup and a face like an angel.”

“Come on, Howie, knock it off! You know what I look like in the morning!” She was laughing and Oliver looked amused. She looked like a good sport, and he would have loved to see her at 4:00 A.M., with or without her makeup. “He's telling lies, all lies, I hate kids and dogs' But she hadn't sounded like it when they talked about his children.

“Okay, Charlie, go play, while I take Oliver around. I'll bring him back in a little while.” But when they left her, much to Oliver's regret, “Howie” introduced him to absolutely every human being of any importance on the set, and it was an hour before he got back to the spot where he had left her. And of course she was gone. He hadn't expected her to wait … not really … except that he would have loved it if she had. He quietly walked away, and went to look for his limousine, and then much to his amazement, in the distance, getting into a red Mercedes, he saw her. She was wearing her hair in two pigtails, and she had taken off her makeup, and she had an old black leather coat on. He waved to her, and she saw him and waved back, and then hesitated for a minute, as though waiting for him to approach her. He walked over to her then, wanting to tell her how much he'd enjoyed meeting her, and she smiled as he came closer.

“On your way home?” She nodded, and smiled up at him, suddenly looking like a kid. But a very pretty one as he watched her.

“I have two weeks off until after the holidays. We went on hiatus tonight. What about you? Finished with your duties in there?” She smiled easily at him and he nodded. He wanted to ask her out, but he didn't quite dare, and then he decided what the hell, all she could do was say no, even if she was Charlotte Sampson.

“Have you eaten yet?”

She shook her head, and then her face lit up. “Want to go for a pizza at Spago? I'm not sure we'll get in, but we can try. It's usually pretty crowded.” That was the understatement of the year. It was usually wall-to-wall bodies, willing to wait a lifetime for Wolfgang Puck's terrific meals, and a glimpse of the stars who hung out there.

“I'd love it.” He looked thrilled, and glanced over his shoulder at the limousine. “Can I give you a ride? Or should I follow you?”

“Why don't you just ride with me?”

“You wouldn't mind?” It would certainly be simpler.

She smiled warmly again. She liked the way he looked, and the way he sounded. She liked his easy air, and there was something quiet and confident about him. He looked like someone you could count on. “Of course not.”

He dismissed the driver quickly then, as though he was afraid she'd change her mind, and slid into the front seat beside her. And then suddenly she turned to him. “I have a better idea. Sometimes Spago can be pretty noisy. I know another Italian place on Melrose. It's called Chianti. It's dark and no one will see us there. We can call from here, and see if they'll take us.” She pointed to a small red phone hanging from the dashboard, and operated it with one hand as she started the car, while he watched with amusement. “Something wrong?”

“No. I'm just impressed.”

“Yeah,” she grinned. “It's a long way from Lincoln, Nebraska.”

The restaurant answered on the first ring, and they would be happy to give Miss Sampson a table. And it was a perfect choice. It was small, and dark and intimate, and there was nothing “nouvelle anything” about it. It looked the way Italian restaurants used to look, and the food on the menu sounded delicious. The headwaiter took their order quickly, and they settled back side by side against the banquette, while Oliver tried to absorb it all. He was having dinner with
the
Charlotte Sampson. But this was Hollywood, wasn't it? And for the flash of an instant, he thought of Megan in New York. How different this was. That had been so sophisticated and a little decadent, and somehow this seemed so simple. But Charlotte was that kind of person. She seemed very real.

“This was a great idea.” He looked pleased, and they both dove into the breadsticks. They were starving.

“It's so wonderful not to have to worry about going to work at four o'clock in the morning tomorrow It really makes a mess of your social life sometimes. Most of the time I'm too tired to go anywhere at night, except home to bed. I take a bath, and then I crawl into bed with the next day's script, and by nine o'clock I'm out cold with the lights out.”

“What about all the famous Hollywood parties?”

“They're for morons. Except the duty calls like tonight. The rest of them you can have. The ones like the one tonight are dangerous not to go to. You don't want to get anyone mad at the network.”

“So I've heard. Is it really as tense as all that?”

“Sometimes, if your ratings aren't great. This is a lousy business.” And then she laughed. “But I love it. I love the excitement of it, the hard work, the challenges of doing difficult scripts. There are other things I'd like to do more, but this has been a terrific experience.” She had been doing the show for two years.

“What would you rather do?”

“Professionally?” It was an interesting question. “Shakespeare probably. I did a lot of repertory in college, and summer stock after that, when I couldn't get any other work. I like live theater. The pressure of it. The demand that you remember all your lines and do it right night after night. I think the ultimate, for me, would be a Broadway play.” He nodded, he could see that. It was kind of the pinnacle of the art form, but what she did had merit too. He admired her a lot for what she did. And it was harder work than it appeared. He knew that much.

“Have you done any films?”

“One.” She laughed. “It was a disaster. The only person who saw it and liked it was my grandmother, in Nebraska.”

They both laughed and their dinner arrived then, as they chatted on endlessly about their work, his kids, the pressures of their jobs, and how he felt about suddenly running the L.A. office. “Advertising must be rough. You screw up once, and you lose the client.” She had heard horror stories for years, but he looked surprisingly calm considering the kind of pressure he worked under.

“It's no different from what you do. They don't give you much leeway either.”

“That's why you need something else, so you never really care too much. There has to be something else that matters in your life.”

“Like what?”

She answered without hesitation. “A husband, marriage, kids. People you love, something else you know how to do, because one day, the shows, the autographs, the hoopla, it's all gone, and you have to watch out you don't go with it.” It was an intelligent way to look at what she did, and he respected her for it, but what she had just said suddenly made him wonder.

“Is there something you're not telling me, Miss Sampson? Is your husband about to walk through the door and punch me in the nose?” She laughed at the thought and shook her head as she dug into her pasta.

“No chance of that, I'm afraid. I was married once, a long time ago, when I was twenty-one. It lasted about ten minutes after I got out of college.”

“What happened?”

“Simple. He was an actor. Instant death. And I've never met anyone else I wanted to marry. In this business, you don't meet too many men you'd want to spend the rest of your life with.” She had also gone out with a producer for several years, but that had never come to anything. And after that, she had gone long periods without anyone, or dated people who weren't in the business. “I'm too choosy, I guess. My mom says I'm over the hill now.” She looked at him soberly, but there was a twinkle of mischief. “I'll be thirty-four next month. Getting a little ripe for marriage, I guess.”

He laughed openly at the remark. She looked about twenty. “I wouldn't quite say that, or is that how they look at it out here?”

“If you're over twenty-five, you're dead. By thirty you've had your first face-lift. At thirty-five, you've had two, and your eyes done at least once. Maybe twice. At forty, it's all over. See what I mean, you've got to have something else in your life.” She sounded as though she meant it as he listened.

“And if not a husband and kids, then what?”

“Something to occupy your mind. I used to do a lot of volunteer work with handicapped kids. Lately, I haven't had much time though.”

“I'll lend you mine.”

“What are they like?” She sounded interested and he was touched. It was hard to believe she was successful and famous. She was so real and so down-to-earth, and he liked that a lot. He liked everything he had
seen
so far. It almost made him forget the way she looked. Her looks seemed unimportant suddenly compared to the rest. She was beautiful inside, and he liked that even better. And as he thought about it, he tried to answer her question about his children.

“Mel is intelligent and responsible, and she desperately wants to be an actress. Or at least that's what she thinks now. God knows what she'll want to be later. But she wants to major in drama at college. She's a junior in high school. She's tall and blond, and a nice kid. I think you'll like her.” He suddenly assumed that the two would meet, and then wondered if he was assuming too much, but Charlotte didn't flinch when he said it. “And Sam's a cute kid, he's ten, and a little fireball. Everybody seems to love him.” And then he told her about Benjamin and Sandra and the baby.

“That sounds like a heavy trip. And it must be very rough on him.”

“It is. He's determined to do the right thing, if it kills him. He doesn't seem to love the girl, but he's crazy about the baby.”

“So you're a grandfather then.” She suddenly looked at him with mischief in her eyes. They were the same green as his, though neither of them had noticed. “You didn't tell me that when we met.” Ollie laughed at the way she said it.

“Does that make a big difference?”

“Tremendous. Wait till I tell my folks that I went out with a grandfather. They'll really wonder what I've been up to.” It sounded as though she was close to them, and he liked that about her. He even told her about his father and Margaret.

“They're coming out in January to see the kids. She's the best thing that ever happened to him, although I didn't think so at first. It was a hell of a shock when he married her so soon after my mother's death.”

“It's funny, no matter how old we are, where our parents are concerned, we're still children. Don't you think?”

“I do. I resented the hell out of her at first. But he has a right to some happiness in his last years.”

“He could live to a ripe old age.” She smiled.

“I hope he does.”

“I hope I meet them,” she said softly.

They finished dinner then, and chatted on for a while over coffee, and then they went back to her car, and on the way out two people stopped her for autographs. But she didn't seem to mind. She was friendly and kind, and almost grateful. He commented on it as they got back in her car, and she looked at him with her wide green eyes and a serious expression.

“You can never forget, in this business, that those people make you what you are. Without them, you're nothing. I don't ever forget it.” And the beauty of it was that it hadn't gone to her head. She was amazingly modest, and almost humble.

“Thank you for having dinner with me tonight.”

“I had a wonderful time, Oliver.” And she looked as though she meant it.

She drove him back to the house in Bel Air and when they got there, he seemed to hesitate, not sure whether to ask her in or not, and then finally he did, but she said she was really tired, And then, suddenly, she remembered something.

“What are you doing over the holidays, with your kids gone?”

“Not much. I was going to catch up on my work at the office. This'll be my first Christmas without them.”

“I usually go home too. But I just couldn't this year. I'm shooting a commercial next week, and I wanted to study the next scripts. We have a new writer. Would you like to do something on Sunday?” It was Christmas Eve, and he was trying not to think about it, but her offer sounded much too appealing to decline.

“I'd love it. We could have dinner here.” Agnes was around, even with the children gone, but Charlotte had a better idea.

“How about if I make you a turkey? The real thing. Would you like that?”

“I'd love it.”

“We can go to church afterward. And there are some friends I always go to visit on Christmas Day. Would you like to join me for that too?”

“Charlotte, I'd love that. But are you sure there isn't something else you'd rather do? I don't want to intrude. I'll be fine, you know.” Fine, but very lonely.

“Well, I won't,” she said with a soft smile. “I'll be really disappointed if you don't come. Christmas is very important to me, and I like spending it with people I care about. I'm not into fake Christmas trees sprayed silver and all the garbage that goes with it. Your typical Hollywood Yule.”

“Then I'll be there. What time?”

“Come at five o'clock. We can eat at seven, and go to church at midnight.” She scribbled the address down for him, and he got out of the car, feeling dazed, as she thanked him again, and drove off with a wave. He stood for a long moment watching the little red car disappear down the hill, wondering if it had really happened. It was all like a dream. But Christmas with her was even more dreamlike.

She was waiting for him in a white hostess gown. The house was decorated beautifully. It was in the Hollywood hills, on Spring Oak Drive. And it had the cozy look of an old farm. And she laughed and said it reminded her of Nebraska. There were rough-hewn floors, beam ceilings, and huge fireplaces, one at each end of the room, and in front of them huge, overstuffed couches. The kitchen was almost as big as the living room, with another fireplace and a cozy table set for two. And there was a Christmas tree blinking brightly in the corner. And upstairs there were two handsome bedrooms, one which was obviously hers, done in pink and flowered chintzes. The other a cheerful yellow guest room, where her parents stayed when they came, which she said wasn't often enough. It didn't have one-tenth the sophistication of Megan's penthouse in New York, but it had ten times the warmth, and he loved it.