Love Me (30 page)

She’d written it down. Written it down and then crumpled the piece of paper into a ball and stuffed it in the corner of the bottom drawer of the secretary. She retrieved it now and smoothed it out on the leather blotter, squinting at the spots where the decidedly
un
orderly creases had faded the pencil scratching.

All those years, all that sacrifice, and that was all the girl had left her. Taken everything Helen and Lowell Frobisher had offered her and thrown it back in their faces.

And now she’s going to be a bride
. Margaret was getting married. To some picture fellow. Some nameless slickster with no roots, no family, no identity apart from what the movie magazines made up for him. God knew where he came from, or
who, or what. He’d have shellacked hair, a gleaming toothpaste smile, a light step on the dance floor—and absolutely no idea how to hold his knife or address a lady or what to properly call the lavatory. An upstart piece of trash, called a gentleman only by people fooled by the cut of his too-flashy suit.

Like mother, like daughter
.

Maybe it was time to tell her the truth. If Margaret was really going to marry this fellow, if she was really going to fall forever out of the grasp of Pasadena and the Frobishers, she at least ought to know who she really was and where she really came from. Why their relationship had never been easy. Why Helen had been able to wave her out the door without the guilt or recrimination a normal mother would feel. A natural mother.

A real mother
.

She ought to be told
, Helen thought with a sigh.
And I guess I’ve got to tell her
. Schwab’s was as good a place as any. It couldn’t be tonight, obviously. The Frobishers had dinner with the Winthrops tonight. And dinner tomorrow with the Gambles and the McKendricks, senior and junior. Nothing was worth giving up a social occasion like that.

But the night after that. Or maybe the one after that. After all, Margaret had said she’d be there every night. There was plenty of time to tell her. So she’d know who she was and whom to trust and where she belonged.

So she wouldn’t make the same mistakes the Moore sisters had.

“N
ew York City!” The redcap’s clear baritone rang through the car, loud enough to rouse any napping traveler. “All out for New York City, Grand Central! Welcome to the Big Apple, ladies and gents!”

New York City. At last
.

Amanda gave her hat a final adjustment in the small round mirror affixed to the wall of the tiny sleeping compartment that had been her home for the past sixteen hours, since the Twentieth Century Limited had pulled away from LaSalle Street Station in Chicago. Three days on trains, watching more country than she’d ever seen in her life go past through the window, and finally, here she was.

She studied her exhausted-looking reflection, poking at her pallid cheeks, wondering if she could powder away the lilac shadows beneath her eyes.
The city that never sleeps
, she
thought with a rueful grin.
Meanwhile, I look like I need to sleep for about five years
.

“Grand Central, miss.” The redcap rattled the door with a knock that was polite but insistent. “Last stop.”

Giving her hair a final pat, Amanda scooped up her leather traveling case and made for the exit. She stepped out onto the plush red carpet that ran the length of the sleek blue-gray train and onto the dim, smoke-filled platform. The sharp scent of diesel filled her nose as she pushed through the throngs of people waiting to embark for destinations north, skirting the uniformed porters struggling with piles of luggage, the little vignettes of joyous reunions and tearful farewells playing simultaneously all around her.
Like everyone is in their own little movie
.

When she emerged at last into Grand Central Terminal, Amanda gasped.

It looks like heaven
. Like the beautiful watercolor of the gates of heaven in the big illustrated Bible her Sunday-school class back in Oklahoma had been allowed to take turns looking at as a reward for being quiet (and appropriately fearful) during the reverend’s weekly sermon about fire and brimstone: the same radiant streams of golden light bouncing off arches of pale, pearly stone; the carved friezes of smiling cherubs and trumpeting angels; the celestial blue ceiling upon which heavenly bodies seemed to float.

The only thing different was the people. Streaming across the marble floor, never glancing left or right, purposeful as any crew she’d ever seen on a movie set. She stared at them in awe, eager to soak up every detail, like an anthropologist recording the rituals of an undiscovered tribe. The women’s hair was sleeker, she noticed. Their coats were cut slimmer—the wasp
waist was definitely back. The men all carried newspapers and wore snap-brim hats tilted low over their faces, as though to protect them from some imaginary torrent of rain. Did everyone in New York walk so fast? And how did they not bump into each other? It was like a dance, a vast number choreographed by some unseen, unknowable director. Like God.

Amanda giggled.
Funny how I’m getting religion all of a sudden
.

“Hey, watch it, will ya, toots?” The voice blared like the horn of car. Amanda scurried out of the way just in time to avoid being trampled by a mustachioed man with a bowler hat and a briefcase. Before she could apologize, he was already gone.

Wherever New Yorkers are going
, Amanda thought, watching his figure recede among the teeming, speeding throng,
they all act like they’re about an hour late
.

She finally made her way through the doors and out into the thrum of Forty-Second Street. In Hollywood, you always heard the East Coasters talk about how much they missed the Manhattan skyline, but from the sidewalk all Amanda could see was doors and windows and concrete and hardly a hint of sky.

And people. So many people, in every size and shape and color of the rainbow, united only by a mutual relentless hurry that seemed to preclude any eye contact or attempt at conversational engagement.

And yet, to her surprise, Amanda found she didn’t mind. She didn’t resent these swift-moving, smartly dressed people quite literally too busy to give her the time of day. Not at all. She wanted to
be
one of them.

She wandered over to a quieter block and stood on the corner, watching two or three people hail a taxicab before she mustered the confidence to flag one down and asked the driver if
he might take her to a good hotel. He looked her up and down, sticking his head out the window like an eel peering out of its hole to check for predators, and suggested she turn around. Amanda did, and realized she had been standing all this time directly under the gilded marquee of the Waldorf Astoria.

A hotel. No wonder there are so many taxicabs
.

Sheepishly, she turned to thank the driver, but he had already pulled away from the curb. She thought of a line from the script from the picture they were making at Metro, the one they’d sent to Gabby to read for before they gave it to Judy Garland, as everyone but Gabby had known they would.

“People come and go so quickly here,” she said aloud.

Everything in the hushed lobby of the Waldorf Astoria, from the crystal chandeliers to the giant potted ferns to the exquisitely arranged groupings of antique gilt furniture, screamed money.

Or rather, it
didn’t
scream; it whispered. This was not the flashy glamour of Hollywood, with its kidney-shaped swimming pools and plaster Corinthian columns as gaudy and hastily assembled as a set on a soundstage. This was
old
money, or at least as old as money got in the New World. The kind that was not earned but inherited, that by its very solidity had been burnished, not diminished, by the devastation of the Depression, that telegraphed a kind of aristocratic insouciance, a sort of “oh well, whatever happens,
we’ll
never be poor.”
Must be nice
.

Amanda approached the front desk, feeling shyer and less sure of herself than she had in years.
Like Norma Mae Gustafson, an Oklahoma rube in a tacky Woolworth’s dress
. “Hello?”

The clerk, unexpectedly soigné in his dark green uniform, turned to examine her. “May I help you?”

“Yes. I’d like a room, please.”

“Do you have a reservation?”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

The clerk shook his head slightly, as though he couldn’t believe anyone could be so colossally careless as to not keep a standing reservation at the Waldorf simply as a matter of course. “I’ll have to see what we have available. Do you have a preference as to the kind of accommodation?”

The cheapest kind
, thought Amanda, visualizing the rapidly thinning wad of bills tucked inside the lining of her black grosgrain handbag. She was trying to figure out the most discreet way of saying exactly that when she heard a voice call out to her.

“Red! Hey, Red, is that you?”

She was so surprised to see the boy bounding toward her, his porkpie hat pushed far back on his dark hair, his shirt open at the throat, that she didn’t recognize him at first. Only when she noticed the battered trumpet case in his hand did she put two and two together.

“Eddie,” she said, blinking stupidly. “It’s Eddie Sharp, isn’t it?”

“Sure is. And I know you too, Amanda Farraday. It’s funny, huh? We’ve never been properly introduced—because believe me, sister, I’d remember—and we know each other anyway. Ain’t it the darndest thing.”

“That’s show business I guess.” Amanda fiddled nervously with the clasp of her handbag.

“Showbiz, yeah.” Eddie looked at her appraisingly. “Now. Tell me the truth.” He leaned in closer, as though he didn’t want
the desk clerk to hear. “What’s a classy dame like you doing in a flophouse like this?”

Amanda laughed. “Fallen on hard times, I guess.”

“Ain’t it the truth. You oughta see my usual digs when I come here. They’d put, whaddya call it, Buckingham Palace to shame. But this joint?” Eddie cast a theatrically disgusted glare around the splendor that surrounded them. “Next stop, skid row.”

“I guess your star must be falling.”

“I guess so.” Eddie lifted his cigarette to his lips—which, Amanda thought, were almost indecently full. A slow grin spread across his face as he exhaled. “So tell me seriously, what brings you to this neck of the woods. Business or pleasure?”

“Um …”
To be honest, I don’t quite know myself
. “A little bit of both, I suppose.”

“Good answer. I’m doing a little bit of both myself. My band and I are opening at the Palace in two weeks. But until then”—he smiled again—“it’s all about pleasure. So let me know if I can give you a hand with that half of the equation.”

I bet Gabby would love that
. “I don’t think so, Mr. Sharp.”

Eddie whistled in dismay, although by his expression he seemed in no way deterred. “Wowee zowie, it just got cold in here. Look, sweetheart, I wasn’t suggesting anything
untoward
. Just that this city can get real lonely real fast if you’ve got no one to see it with.”

“Who says I don’t?”

“Not me.” Eddie held up one hand in a sort of truce. “I bet you’ve got truckloads of offers. But if you find yourself craving one of those fancy salads they got here and want someone to eat it with, you know where to find me. In the meantime”—he
turned to the clerk—“you take good care of this young lady. Nothing but the best for her, and don’t let her tell you different. This lady is a major Hollywood star.”

Shamelessly flirty
, Amanda thought as she watched him head to the door,
but I think he means well
. At least the hotel clerk was friendlier, now that Amanda had the official imprimatur of someone he recognized, although when the bellboy opened the door of the suite he insisted was the “only possible option” for a “special friend of Mr. Sharp,” her heart sank. With its Aubusson carpets, gorgeous swag draperies, and magnificent green marble tub that was so deep you had to climb down three steps to get to the bottom, she didn’t even want to
think
about what it must cost.