Shooting Hollywood

by Melodie Johnson Howe

  Tiffany Blue

  A woman I know confessed to me that she found a Tiffany box in the snow one evening in front of the famous jewelry store. Picking it up and moving further down the sidewalk, she opened it and discovered a pair of earrings. She kept them. But her guilt would never let her wear them. The moral? Never confess your sins to a writer.

  “HOW CAN JAMES do this to me, Diana?” Julie Plume asked, as we walked past Tiffany’s. It was five o’clock on a cold wintry day, and Fifth Avenue was beginning to fill with office-workers hurrying for home or the nearest bar.

  “The movie’s wrapped and he’s gone back to his wife,” I explained.

  Was it her youth or the insularity of her beauty that kept Julie from grasping the more simple facts of life? Or was I just too old and too jaded? I gave her a sideways glance. She was wearing a black hat pulled low over her natural blonde hair. My hair was determinedly blonde. A red muffler nestled her firm defiant chin. My chin was softening. Her turned-up nose and high cheekbones were flush from the cold, making her look even younger and shockingly wholesome. I don’t think I ever looked wholesome, even when I was. Her black coat was pulled tightly around her lithe supple figure. My feet were killing me. Yes, I was too old and too jaded.

  “I hate it when filming ends, Diana. I feel like I’ve been abandoned, like I’ve been left by my parents or something. I should have realized when we were in bed and I whispered in his ear, ‘Jimmy, Jimmy,’ and he told me to call him James that our affaire wasn’t going anywhere.”

  I laughed. “Maybe the name Jimmy makes him feel like a little boy.”

  “He told me that only his wife calls him Jimmy.”

  I remembered the feel of his wife’s quivering hand in mine when I had first met her. It was a more vivid memory than the feel of James’ body on my body, or his lips on my lips. In fact, I couldn’t remember his intimate touch at all. Only his wife’s small nervous hand. It was like grasping a sparrow. How many years ago was that? Twenty? Or more?

  “Why did you go to bed with him in the first place?” I asked, pulling up the collar of my camel-colored coat. “You know his reputation. He always goes back to Carol.”

  I marveled at how I could ask her this without feeling hypocritical. Time, and a husband whom I loved deeply until his death, had intervened. My brief affaire with James Barron no longer mattered in my life. Except that I had just finished acting in his new movie. But that’s, as they say, show biz.

  “He’s a brilliant director. The most important one I’ve worked with, that’s why I went to bed with him.”

  “You’ve only worked with one other director, Julie.”

  “James brought something out in me I didn’t know I had. You saw it in the dailies. Everybody saw it. They’re talking Oscar, Diana.” Her green eyes flashed with triumph.

  Unbelievably, they were talking Oscar performance. Julie and I had just come from viewing the dailies. Sitting in the darkness of the screening room I had marveled at how the camera loved her beauty, but also how it had magnified her extraordinary lack of depth and emotion. James had corrected for her lack of talent by allowing her to say only five or six words in a scene; then he’d quickly cut to me, or one of the other lesser-known actors. By not letting his camera linger on Julie, he had created mystery where there was none. And isn’t that what good filmmaking is all about? Yet sitting there in the dark I knew the movie wasn’t any good. I knew that James Barron had lost his touch.

  “I thought James and I had developed something,” Julie continued. “You know, like Woody Allen and Diane Keaton. Or even Mia Farrow. It’s not like I expected our relationship to last forever, but just long enough for him to star me in two or three of his films. I know he’s not as hot as he used to be, but I thought he could put me over the top. You know what he’s going to do next?”

  “What?”

  “Some script about two men and an elephant. The only woman in it is a middle-aged zoologist. Can you believe it?” she asked, appalled.

  Middle-aged? I made a mental note of this since parts for women my age did not come along that often. “What’s the title of the script?” I asked, nonchantly.

  Ignoring my question she stopped and stared bleakly into a dirty gray snow bank. People swerved around us unaware that it was the soon-to-be-famous Julie Plume and the vaguely familiar but not-in-the-least-bit-famous Diana Poole who were blocking their way.

  “I can’t believe James is dumping me.” Her eyes shined with a disquieting intensity.

  “Did you honestly think you would be different? So this new script is about two men and a zoologist?” I tried not to sound too desperate.

  “Elephant. Why does he always go back to his wife? I mean, don’t you find that weird?”

  “Maybe he loves Carol. Do you know the title of the script or not?” The direct approach was always better with Julie.

  “Are you being serious?” she demanded.

  “About what?”

  “About James loving Carol? I can’t believe how naïve you are, and at your age.” I smiled. “My age allows me to be serious about many things, even love. And it is a serious business, Julie. I’d be careful if I were you. Can we walk? I’m getting cold. I want to get back to the hotel.”

  But she stayed rooted to the middle of the sidewalk. “What if I can’t act without him?” she asked.

  “Don’t be silly. You’re on your way to being a huge star. Don’t dissipate your energies. It can all be lost so easily. And be gracious to Carol tonight.” I was very gracious to her twenty-some years ago, I thought guiltily.

  “He invited his wife to his wrap party?” Her eyes widened incredulously.

  “He always does. She flew in from L.A. this morning.”

  “Well that’s a slap in the face, isn’t it?”

  “Whose face are we talking about?”

  “Look!” She said in a low intense voice.

  I followed her gaze. Nestled in the dirty gray snow bank, and briefly caught in the lights of a cab pulling away from the curb, was a little blue box tied with a white ribbon. Julie picked it up.

  “It’s from Tiffany’s.” She spoke in quiet awe as if she had just entered St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

  “Someone getting into that cab must’ve dropped it.” I stared down Fifth Avenue at a mass of red taillights. Exhaust curled up from the cars and undulated on their yellow trunks like beckoning apparitions.

  “It’s small. That means jewelry.” Julie’s breath made a ghostly curl upward toward the blackening sky. She held the box to her ear as if she had discovered a seashell in the snow then shook it. “It’s jewelry,” she confirmed.

  “Give it to the store’s doorman. He’ll take care of it.” I looked back at Tiffany’s; its windows glowed like giant candelabras flickering seductively in a rich dark room.

  “The doorman? Are you kidding? He’ll just give it to his wife, or girlfriend, or try to sell it.” She slipped the little blue box into her coat pocket and walked quickly away. She was putting as much distance between herself and Tiffany’s as fast as she could.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, trying to keep up with her.

  “I want to see what’s in it.” Maintaining her fast pace she took off her glove and slipped her bare hand inside her coat pocket. After a few moments she announced. “I have the ribbon off. And now the lid. I feel something cold and wonderful.”

  She removed her hand from her pocket. Resting in her palm was a diamond and emerald earring in the shape of a large shimmering teardrop. She quickly thrust her hand back into her pocket. “Is that not the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen, Diana? And to think, they come in pairs like socks.”

  Her march was stopped by a red light. Cars filled the intersection. Pedestrians milled.

  Catching my breath I managed to say, “We can give the earrings to a salesperson if you don’t trust the doorman.”

  “How do we know a salesperson won’t keep the earrings?” she was whispering now, aware of the people
waiting impatiently around us. “There’s no sales slip or anything.”

  “Well you can’t keep them. Someone will be back looking for them.”

  “Lower your voice. Let me think about this.”

  “What do you have to think about?” I whispered. “Someone bought those for a gift. Maybe he wanted to give them to her tonight.”

  “Gift? He? Her? My, my, aren’t you the romantic,” she observed, sarcastically.

  When did romance and love become so disdainful to the young? I wondered. I must’ve been in love with my husband and not noticed the change.

  “Is that why you went to bed with James?” she asked in a low insinuating voice.

  I was taken aback. How did she know? Did he tell her?

  “Look, I was younger than you and it was my first acting role, and his first chance at directing. We were both scared. We helped each other get through it.” Ah, revision. Or the truth? I wasn’t sure anymore.

  “Oh, I see, you were doing a good deed. Was he married to Carol then?”

  But Carol’s hand did tremble in mine. “What does any of this have to do with you stealing earrings?”

  “There’s stealing and there’s stealing. That’s all,” she said, blithely.

  “I’m not going to stand on this freezing cold corner and discuss moral equivalency with you.”

  Julie looked thoughtful. “You know, I don’t think there is any romance connected to these earrings. I think some old wealthy woman with saggy ear lobes bought these for herself. Someone who has nothing better to do with her time or money. A woman like James’ wife.”

  “The woman could be Iavna Trump for all I care. The earrings do not belong to you.”

  “Keep your voice down. Oh, I see. Nothing belongs to me. Not James. Not the earrings. I wonder what belongs to Carol? Did you ever ask yourself that, Diana?” She suddenly laughed and put her arm around mine as if we were the best of friends. Her cheeks and nose were red like a kid’s.

  “I promise I’ll return the earrings tomorrow. I just want to wear them tonight to James’ party. I’ve never had anything so beautiful. I feel like Cinderella.”

  The light changed. As Julie dashed across the street she flashed her heartbreakingly beautiful smile at me as if I was her fairy godmother and she was thanking me for a magical act I had just accomplished. But I was no fairy godmother. I was an actress who understood the rules of the game. And Julie? Well, I don’t know what she understood.

  James Barron’s party was being held in a private dining room in the hotel where ‘the talent’, as the production people liked to refer to us, were staying. The party was in full swing when I arrived. French mirrored walls reflected crystal chandeliers. Candlelight glowed on black silk-covered tables. The actors, the upper echelon of the crew, and the various producers and moneymen formed little groups where they talked, lied, and laughed. Julie stood in the middle of the room wearing a lime-green slip of a gown and pretending to hang on every word of her leading man, the moody Lucas Caine. The diamond and emerald teardrops, dangling from her delicate lobes, erupted in small bursts of light like a Lilliputian Fourth of July.

  “Diana, you look wonderful.” Howard Marsh threw his arms around me and swayed me back and forth in one of his great bear hugs. Then with a quaint swashbuckling elegance he swept two glasses of champagne from the tray of a passing waiter, handed me one, and bowed. Then he looked forlornly around the room.

  “We’re out of work again, darling.” He heaved a theatrical sigh.

  “Waiting for the phone to ring again, darling.” I imitated his sigh and smoothed my burgundy velvet suit jacket.

  “There’s something regressive about waiting for the phone to ring. It’s not as if we’re actors at all, but just a group of desperate old pimply-faced teenagers still waiting to be asked out. Cheers.”

  After we clinked our glasses and drank I casually asked, “Did you hear about James’ next project?”

  “Something about two men and a Rhino.”

  “A zoologist. What’s it called?”

  “I have no idea. I know there’s nothing in it for me. All the male parts will be for twenty year olds. I wonder how old the Rhino is? Did you see those earrings Julie is wearing?”

  I nodded as Julie tossed her head back and laughed at something Lucas said. Since he had no sense of humor and she couldn’t act, her laughter sounded loud and forced as if she had been practicing it alone in front of her mirror. I knew this display of mirth was for James’ benefit. Seemingly oblivious of her he lurked in a dim corner. In his late forties, and wearing small dark glasses and a black suit, James Barron looked as if he were attending a funeral instead of hosting his own party. He was also dyeing his hair, a sign that he was afraid of losing that allimportant audience: the young. The pressures of Hollywood have so little to do with talent. Next to him was Marcus, his cinematographer, a tall distant man who was listing from too many Martinis.

  “I know Julie has no conscience,” Howard sniffed. “But I can’t believe she has the guts to wear those earrings.”

  “I see she told you what happened. Of course she has the guts.”

  “She shouldn’t be blabbing it around.”

  “She promised she’d return…”

  “Ixnay. The Tantrum is approaching with The Wife,” he warned under his breath. The Tantrum was Howard’s name for one of our eight producers, a man who had all the emotional restraint of an infant.

  “My two favorite actors,” he greeted us. Any actor he was talking to was his favorite, but Howard and I immediately forgot this and beamed gratefully under his compliment.

  The Tantrum tilted his fetus-shaped head toward his companion and said, “You both know Carol Barron, James’ wife?”

  “Of course we know Carol,” we gushed in unison, and too eagerly. Then I felt her hand in mine. Her fingers no longer trembled. It was just another lifeless handshake.

  “I haven’t seen you in ages, Diana.” She was proudly thin, as if that was where she had placed all her energies. Her dark hair was cut into a short severe style; it looked like a protective helmet. “I hear you’re very good in the film.”

  “The real surprise of the movie is Julie Plume,” The Tantrum announced with his usual insensitivity.

  Carol forced a thin-lipped smile. “Yes, I hear she’s great. James knows how to get the best out of his actresses.”

  Her tired brown eyes met my tired blue ones and I knew she knew. But was it about Julie? Or me? Or all the other actresses who had a quick affaire with her husband, and then left discreetly, so he could return to her?

  “Are those earrings real?” The Tantrum’s puffy eyes were riveted on Julie. His moist baby-mouth hung open.

  “Of course they’re real,” Carol answered. “My husband always tries for reality. Excuse me.” She eased away from us.

  “What did she mean by that?” I asked.

  “I thought you knew. James gave Julie those earrings,” Howard said, shaking his head in dismay.

  “What?”

  “He better not have charged the production for them,” The Tantrum grumbled. Forgetting that Howard and I existed, he turned his back on us and began to talk to one of his co-producers.

  “Howard,” I said. “James didn’t buy Julie those earrings. She found them in a snow bank.”

  He blessed me with his fatherly smile. Howard had the paternal look down perfectly. He’d been playing Julie’s father in the movie.

  “Don’t tell me you believe her story, Diana? She actually winked at me when she told it.”

  Before I could respond, Lucas Caine sidled up to me and slipped his arm around my waist. “I wish I was man enough to go to bed with an older woman. But I know you’d make me feel ineffectual.”

  “God, what a line you have, Lucas.” Howard rolled his eyes.

  “That line gets me out of more problems.” A lock of Lucas’ hair, the color of chocolate cake, flopped onto his forehead. Irritated that there was a part of his body he couldn’t contr
ol, he huffily pushed the errant strand back into its proper place then glanced over at Julie. She was now talking to one of the movie’s five screenwriters.

  “How could James give her those earrings when he only gave me a travel clock from Tiffany’s?” he demanded. “I worked my ass off making her look good. And who uses travel clocks anymore?”

  “If he spent that much money maybe he really loves her,” Howard observed.

  “Love?” Lucas repeated the word as if he had never heard it before.

  “Well, it’s the only answer I can come up with.” Howard blushed, embarrassed at his own sentimentality. Why were people my age suddenly self-conscious about love?

  “As far I know he’s never given any of his other conquests a gift like that,” he added defensively.

  “James did not give her those earrings,” I said. “She found them in a snow bank.”

  “Diana, you’re a woman of the world. How can you believe a stupid story like that?” Lucas asked, letting his eyes follow the strand of pearls that curved around my neck and down into my cleavage.

  “Because I was with her.”

  But he wasn’t listening. His eyes had darted quickly away from my cleavage, and he was now talking to Howard. “James owes Julie. Big time. He bought her off because she won’t play the game, so she won’t tell The Wife. But he wasted his money. The wife knows. Everyone knows.”

  “Everyone always knows,” Howard said, sagely.