Stars Over Sunset Boulevard

by Susan Meissner

  Jim talked the whole way down to the coast, giving the three of them a running commentary on how successful the evening’s shoot had been. Twenty minutes later they were stepping inside a seaside nightclub in nearby Venice, where couples danced in bare feet on a wooden floor dusted here and there with sand that had been tracked in off the beach. The four-piece band consisted of a man on an upright piano, a second on a bass fiddle, a third on a clarinet, and the last seated at a set of snare drums he played with brushes instead of sticks.

  They chose a table near the sandy dance floor, and Audrey quickly ordered a round of Orange Blossoms, and then another. The vermouth-and–orange juice concoction was both refreshing and bracing on Violet’s tongue.

  Jim, obviously attracted to Audrey, turned out to be adept on his feet, and he and Audrey spent dance after dance on the floor while Bert and Violet watched.

  After five or six numbers, Violet finally asked Bert if he’d care to dance.

  “Sure.” He smiled uncomfortably, as though he knew a true gentleman should have asked her first.

  Bert’s hand was firm on her back and his palm, sandwiched with hers, was cool and strong. Violet hadn’t danced with a man since a friend’s wedding more than a year ago. She had been in Franklin’s arms that night and had been blissfully unaware of the dark enemy inside her body, nibbling away at her insides. She hadn’t yet felt the searing malice of the tumor; that would come a few weeks later when she collapsed into a puddle of her own blood and woke up hours later, emptied of purpose. Violet could smell Bert’s aftershave, woodsy and enticing, as they moved. The effect of the cocktails tempted her to rest her head on his shoulder and remember what it had been like to feel Franklin’s kisses on her neck.

  A few feet away, Jim said something to Audrey. She tipped her head back and laughed like a starlet on a rich man’s yacht.

  Bert watched them as they spun away.

  “So, Audrey tells me you like to go bird-watching,” Violet said, eager to sweep away the memory of Franklin’s kisses and to get Bert to take his eyes off Audrey so that she might have a chance of having a good time.

  He turned to her. “She told you that?”

  “Is it a secret?”

  “No,” Bert said quickly. “I guess I’m surprised she found that interesting enough to mention.”

  “Have you always liked birds?”

  Violet could sense Bert relaxing more as his attention was being diverted to something he enjoyed. “It was my father’s hobby before it was mine. He took it up after he got home from the war. When I was a kid, he and I would go out to the mountains and deserts with binoculars to look for certain birds, and we kept a little notebook of all the ones we found. It was like hunting, but without having to kill anything.”

  “Sounds nice. Do you still go with him sometimes?”

  “Not with him. He died when I was eighteen. I go on my own now, when I go.”

  “Oh. I’m so sorry.”

  “He had some lingering health issues from the war. They finally caught up with him.”

  They danced in silence for a few seconds, and Violet wrestled mentally to come up with something else to talk about. Something that didn’t make her dance partner sad. She didn’t want to stop dancing. It felt so wonderful to be in his arms.

  “So, I guess there aren’t many birds to go looking for in Hollywood,” she ventured.

  “Actually there are all kinds of birds close by. Just up the road where you live with Audrey are the foothills and there are lots of different kinds of finches and black phoebes, mockingbirds, jays, and starlings that live there. But you’re right. On the city streets, there are mostly just sparrows, crows, and pigeons. Although one time I heard a nightingale. On Sunset Boulevard, of all places.”

  He paused in expectation. She apparently waited too long to respond with, “Oh?”

  “Nightingales aren’t indigenous to the United States. They’re European.” He seemed both wildly pleased and slightly disappointed that he had to tell her this.

  “So somebody had one in a cage? You heard it through an open window?”

  “I heard it in the fronds of a palm tree.”

  “But how could that have been possible if nightingales don’t live in America?”

  “Precisely,” he said. “I’ve gone back to the same place a few times but I haven’t heard it again. I’ve been tempted to ask Audrey to come with me for good luck. She was with me the first time I heard it.”

  “And she heard it, too?”

  Bert frowned slightly. “No.”

  The song was coming to a close. The dance was ending.

  “I’ll go with you sometime. If you want company,” Violet offered, casually shrugging her left shoulder. She liked the thought of strolling down glittering Sunset Boulevard with Bert.

  He blinked at her as the last notes of the music drifted away and the dancers stopped.

  “Oh,” he finally said as he drew his arm away from her back. “Sure.”

  They walked back to the table and Violet realized Bert didn’t want just any company while listening for some unexplainable nightingale. He wanted Audrey’s.

  • • •

  Hours later, as Violet was brushing her teeth before bed, Audrey appeared at the open bathroom door.

  “I’ve finally figured out who that woman was at the fire tonight.”

  Violet stopped brushing. She’d had too much alcohol and was too tired to comprehend what Audrey was talking about. “What?”

  “With Myron Selznick. The woman in the hat. She was talking with Mr. Selznick after the fire. I figured out who she is.”

  “You did?”

  “It was Vivien Leigh! She was there with Laurence Olivier, although I’m sure she was pretending she wasn’t.”

  Violet blinked at her. “Why?”

  “Because she’s having an affair with him, even though she’s already married and has a family back in England. That’s why he was there tonight.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “When you pay attention to the details in this town you can learn a lot, Violet. What do you bet she’s here to test for Scarlett?”

  Violet frowned. “But she’s English.”

  Audrey stepped into the bathroom and reached for her own toothbrush. “So are Leslie Howard and Olivia de Havilland. I’ll bet you five dollars I’m right.”

  Violet turned on the tap and washed the remnants of tooth powder off the bristles of her toothbrush. “I don’t have five dollars to lose to you.”

  Audrey sprinkled the powder onto her own brush. “You wait and see, then. I’ll bet we haven’t seen the last of her. English or not.”

  Violet put her toothbrush in the drinking cup they used as a holder and moved away so that Audrey could have the sink.

  “Did you have a good time tonight?” Audrey asked, and then stuck the toothbrush in her mouth.

  “I did.”

  Audrey stopped brushing for a second. “I’m glad you were there so Bert had someone to dance with. Jim was a rather insistent partner. He wouldn’t take no for an answer. Good dancer, though.”

  “I am glad I was there, too. Bert’s very nice.”

  “He’s a gem. Did you tell him all about Alabama?”

  “We actually didn’t talk about me all that much,” Violet said, wanting to add that Bert had been a little preoccupied. “We did talk about his bird-watching.”

  “I bet that made him happy.”

  “He told me about the nightingale he heard.”

  Audrey looked at Violet’s reflection in the mirror over the sink. White foam rimmed the corners of her lips. “He did? He is nuts about finding that bird again. Like a little kid.”

  “He said you were with him that night. But you didn’t hear it?”

  Audrey spit into the sink. “No. But, then, I don’t h
ave an ear trained to hear birdsong like he does. And we were walking down Sunset Boulevard on a Saturday night. It wasn’t exactly quiet.”

  “I think he likes you, Audrey,” Violet said, the words tumbling out of her mouth before she could even decide if she wanted to say them.

  Audrey cupped her hands into the water running at the tap. “I know he does,” she said a second later, not looking up. She bent down and sipped water from her hands and then turned off the tap. “But I’m five years older than he is. And the last thing I need right now in my life is a romance. I need to focus on my career.” The words fell weightless from Audrey’s lips, as though they weren’t her words at all, but lines from a script. She wiped her chin on a towel and dropped her toothbrush into the cup holder next to Violet’s.

  Audrey turned toward Violet and the open bathroom doorway. “Bert is too nice a guy for someone like me,” she said, her voice now her own. She wished Violet good night and walked past her and into her bedroom, closing the door softly behind her.

  FOUR

  Christmas Eve 1938

  The afternoon train from Los Angeles began to slow as it neared the Visalia city limits. Audrey cast a glance at Violet sitting across from her with her gaze glued to the passing cotton fields outside the window. It had taken no convincing to get her roommate to join her on the overnight trip to the farm. This would be Violet’s first Christmas away from her family, and she’d been blue the past few days because of it. A package had arrived from Alabama a few days earlier and its contents—pearl earrings, a leather handbag, sugared pecans, and a snow globe—had led to tears of homesickness and a burned roast, both of which Violet had apologized plentifully for.

  Audrey leaned back against the seat and allowed herself to remember her own first Christmas away from home. She and Aunt Jo had taken the train down to San Diego and they had stayed at a beach house and eaten lobster for dinner. A potted jasmine that Jo had dragged in from the porch served as their Christmas tree. Her aunt had given Audrey pink satin bedroom slippers, perfume, and rhinestone earrings that looked like diamonds so that Audrey would still feel like she was pretty. There had been a crèche set up on the tiny lawn of the beach cottage next to theirs. The baby Jesus had looked so perfect, and the Virgin so at peace as she smiled down on her child, while Joseph stood just inches away. . . .

  But that had been a long time ago.

  She had been home only a handful of holidays since moving to Hollywood. Three years had passed since she’d been there for Christmas; two since she had been home at all. Her stepmother, Cora, had asked that she make an effort to come this year. Her father had been asking about her, wondering how she was.

  “He misses you, Audrey,” Cora had said when she’d called Audrey a few days after the filming of the burning of Atlanta. “I know he has an odd way of showing it, but he does.”

  He doesn’t show it at all had been the words Audrey had wanted to say.

  “Does he know you’re inviting me?” she had asked instead.

  “Of course he does. He wants you to come. So do I. We all do.”

  Audrey had started to say she would think about it, even though she knew she would decline, but then she had remembered Violet wasn’t going home to Alabama for the holidays. If Audrey brought a friend, all the conversations would be on the level of polite pretense, a much nicer way to spend the Christmas hours, even if it was genteel artifice. If Violet came, there would be no awkward silences that reminded Audrey of what she was and what she had done. Audrey had answered that she could come, but she wanted to bring her roommate.

  “I can’t come without her,” Audrey had continued, when Cora said nothing. “She doesn’t have any family in California. It would be unkind to leave her here by herself.”

  Cora had finally said that would be fine and they’d be happy to have them both.

  The train now pulled into the platform at the station, the rails whining a high-pitched welcome.

  “I just can’t get over how flat this part of California is.” Violet turned at last from the window. “It’s like Kansas. There are cotton fields! I know you told me you were raised on a farm, but I just couldn’t picture it. All I know of California is Hollywood. This part is very different.”

  “Yes, this part is very different.”

  They stood to reach for their overnight bags on the shelf above their seats.

  “By the way,” Audrey said, “my last name used to be Kluge. I changed it to Duvall a long time ago. Mr. Stiles didn’t think Kluge sounded melodic enough for a screen name. So, whatever you do, don’t call my dad Mr. Duvall.”

  Violet looked at her a bit wide-eyed and nodded. “All right.”

  They stepped off the train and onto a platform crowded with other holiday travelers. The station’s railings were festooned with evergreen garlands that were turning brown from having swayed for too many days in the ample San Joaquin Valley sun. Audrey spied Cora in a clutch of people at the far end of the platform. She waved.

  “There’s my stepmother.” Audrey nodded toward Cora and they made their way toward her.

  Cora, only twelve years older than Audrey, greeted her with a cordial hug, not deeply expressive. Audrey returned the embrace with the same courteous restraint. They were like coworkers, next-door neighbors, or seatmates who rode the same bus every morning. They didn’t like or dislike each other. They respected each other’s choices. This was the balance the two of them had wordlessly struck at Aunt Jo’s funeral minutes after Audrey’s father had asked that she at least give Cora a chance.

  “So, we’re giving each other chances now?” Audrey had replied on that long-ago day. She and her father had been standing at the Los Angeles cemetery where Jo was to be buried next to Uncle Freddy. Audrey had just laid a handful of jonquils on top of the casket. Jo’s favorite flower. Cora and the rest of the funeral party were waiting for them at the cars.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” her father had replied.

  Audrey had been too tired to elaborate on what seemed so obvious to her. Grief was exhausting. “I barely know Cora.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about. I’m afraid she thinks you don’t like her. She came all this way. It would have been easier for her if she and the boys stayed at the farm. She’s making an effort, Audrey. I don’t think it would hurt you to do the same.”

  “You don’t have any idea what hurts me,” Audrey had murmured, loud enough for him to hear, had he been standing a little closer.

  “What was that?”

  She looked up from the casket to face him. “I said, I’ll be sure to let her know how much her coming meant to me.”

  He’d studied her then, as if needing to familiarize himself with her features, even though she knew he likely saw her face on troubled nights when sleep eluded him. She looked just like her mother. When he spoke, a mix of resentment and disbelief strung his words together.

  “For the love of God, Audrey. It’s been nearly a decade. Are you honestly still angry with me? I did what was best for you.”

  Fresh tears had pooled in her eyes and she had willed them back to the deep well from which they had sprung. “Are you honestly still angry with me?”

  Even from a few feet away she had felt him stiffen. “You really want to talk about where you’d be right now if I hadn’t sent you here?”

  “Yes,” she had whispered. “I do.”

  She had waited for him to respond even though she knew his question had been posed to end a conversation, not begin one. He had looked away, off to the north, where his home and life waited for him. He said nothing else.

  Audrey had touched him on the shoulder, the closest she could come to embracing him. “I’m glad you came. Aunt Jo was wonderful to me.” She then started toward the cars. Cora was leaning against the long Cadillac that Audrey’s father had driven down from Visalia, fanning herself with a California road map. Audrey�
�s half brothers, six-year-old twins Sam and Gordon, were slapping each other in the backseat and laughing.

  “Thank you so much for coming, Cora,” Audrey had said when she reached the Cadillac.

  “It was our pleasure to be here for you, of course,” her stepmother had said, matching Audrey’s gracious tone.

  “I mean it. I’m glad you came.”

  She had said good-bye to the boys and then had turned for the car, driven by one of Aunt Jo’s longtime friends, that was waiting for her. She hadn’t looked back to see whether her father was watching her go.

  Now inside that same Cadillac as Cora drove away from the train station, the talk was general, easy, and nonspecific. Leon, Audrey’s father, was doing well. The farm had had a good year. The twins were happy and healthy. In due time, they pulled off the highway onto a two-lane road, and then onto a single lane marked KLUGE FARMS—PRIVATE DRIVEWAY. Plum trees as far as the eye could see lined the road, tall and confident even though the picking season was over and no fruit clung to their branches. They passed several acres of trees before the house and farm buildings came into view, and an old ache rose within Audrey at the sight of them. From the outside the house looked the same as when her mother was alive. Three dogs of various pedigree roused themselves from the shade of a massive sycamore and scampered, tails wagging, toward the car as it pulled forward. Audrey recognized two of them from previous trips home.

  “You’ve got a new dog,” she said to Cora.

  “Oh. You mean the black one? That’s Orion. We’ve actually had him for a while.”

  Audrey said nothing else as Cora pulled into the empty carport.

  The women got out of the vehicle and Cora opened the trunk. The dogs regarded Audrey and Violet with joyful curiosity. Audrey looked past the animals to the house, watching the side door and then the front door.

  “Your father and the boys are finishing up at Merle’s,” Cora said, as if answering a question that Audrey had spoken aloud.

  “Working on Christmas Eve?” Audrey murmured as she reached into the trunk for her bag.