by Juliette Fay
Henry finished the rest of his drink.
“You want another?”
“Yes.” Henry reached for his wallet.
“It’s on me.” Charlie got up and headed back to the bar.
Henry stared at those hands clasping under the table, one man’s resting in another man’s lap as if it were the most normal thing in the world. It had been a very long time since he’d held hands with a man—a boy actually.
He’d been sixteen and he’d found a friend, a secret friend, at school. They’d circled each other for months, letting the tiniest clues slip to see how the other would react. His name was Sol. Short for Solomon, of course. How had Henry forgotten that?
Because I wanted to forget.
They hadn’t spent very much time together and were only just beginning to explore what could be. Sol had been sweet and studious, unlike Henry, who had a temper and hated school. Ironically he’d invited Sol to his tiny apartment to study. His father was at work laying bricks for the Apollo Theatre up in Harlem, and his mother worked at a shirtwaist factory.
They spread out their books so carefully on the kitchen table, both terrified and wanting the other to make the first move. Henry knew that as host and the more assertive of the two, it would be up to him. He offered to show Sol the apartment, ending with his own tiny bedroom, big enough for a bed and a dresser with only a few spare feet of space left in which to stand.
“Would you like to sit down?” he’d asked Sol and motioned to the bed.
Sol sank down slowly onto the threadbare quilt, which Henry had spread with extra care before leaving for school, and Henry sat down with him.
The two boys looked at each other.
Knowing.
Henry remembered it so well. How good it felt, finally, finally to be known.
He took Sol’s hand—which was even sweatier than his—and tucked it onto his lap, just as those two men in front of him now were doing. It felt like the most natural thing in the world, so sweet, so well meaning. How could anyone think such an affectionate gesture was wrong?
Sol took off his round, black-rimmed glasses, and Henry could wait no longer. He kissed Sol so hard the two of them nearly fell off the bed. The culmination of months of wondering and hoping and dreaming was even better than he’d imagined. Sol was making happy little hungry noises, and Henry was flooded, drowning in joy!
He often wondered how he’d never heard his father coming.
The man was large and, as with everything else he did, there was a heaviness to his gait. He thundered darkly through his days and nights, which was probably how he’d sprained his ankle at work and been sent home.
But Henry hadn’t heard him that day, and he later speculated, as the bruises faded, the broken arm healed, and the screams of “FAYGALA!” reverberated through his brain, that it was joy’s fault. The joy had been deafening.
Two musicians joined the pianist on the tiny stage, a bass and a horn player, and they set aside the jazz to begin a George Gershwin piece, “Boy Wanted.” There was no singer, but it was a popular song, and Henry knew the words.
I’ve just finished writing an advertisement, calling for a boy.
No half-hearted Romeo or flirt is meant, that’s the kind I’d not employ.
Though anybody interested can apply, he must know a thing or two to qualify . . .
As Charlie made his way back from the bar, several couples, all men, got up to dance, holding each other and swaying unselfconsciously.
“I need to go,” said Henry.
Charlie sighed. “You really don’t.”
“I’ve had too much to drink and I’m all . . .” Henry waved his hand around.
“If I’ve upset you, I’m sorry.”
Henry looked up at him. “No, it’s not your fault. It’s just . . .”
“I know.” Charlie sat down with the two drinks. “Do you mind if I stay? I’ve been waiting to get here all night.”
“Not at all. I can find my way home.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“Of course.”
Henry wended his way through the tables, which had begun to fill while he’d sat reviewing his brief romantic history. As he passed a group of men, all talking and laughing, one face was familiar.
Edward Oberhouser.
23
When in doubt, make a western.
John Ford, director, producer, writer
Sitting on a bench at Olympic Studios, Millie stared down at the scuff on her new shoes. They weren’t brand-new, of course. Irene had taken her shopping for them three weeks ago with the money she’d gotten from that lady writer.
“You can’t spend that on me,” Millie had protested. “We need it for when you move into the Studio Club. Or at least spend it on yourself, since you earned it. Say, you could get a new hat!”
“I don’t want or need a new hat,” said Irene. “And you need shoes.”
That was admittedly hard to argue with.
“Besides,” she went on, “this is what my uncle would call star-shine money. It just dropped out of the sky, and so we have to do something special with it.”
Two-dollar shoes didn’t really qualify as “special,” in Millie’s shopping experience. They qualified as ugly and poorly made. But that wasn’t what caught Millie’s attention. “Your uncle?” she said mildly, so as not to scare Irene off the subject. “Where is he now?”
“I don’t precisely know. We don’t really keep in touch. Now, I saw in the paper that Baker-Hertzler on Hollywood Boulevard is having a dollar day on Saturday. They probably don’t have shoes for a dollar, but there are sure to be some bargains.”
As Millie surveyed them now in the September sun, they were no bargain, with their military heels and utter lack of any kind of adornment. Not so much as a button. But they were a vast improvement over the boots she’d been wearing in Southern California in August, so she was grateful. She was genuinely grateful for everything Irene did, and everything Irene was.
In fact, Millie wondered if she might be a little bit in love with Irene. Not so much in a stable-boy-hayloft kind of way, but in the truest, best way. She missed Irene all day long, as she trudged around Hollywood, getting her name registered on the extra list of every studio, large, small, or completely fly-by-night. She’d been to the Poverty Row studios around Sunset and Gower, and to Mayer and Metro-Goldwyn, touting her ability to ride a horse and drive a car—they all seemed to perk up at that. And now she lived at the Studio Club, where they could call and leave a message if they wanted her. But it had so far come to nothing except sore feet.
And she missed Irene all night, in her new twin bed that she had all to herself. It was the first time she’d slept alone since she’d joined Chandler’s Follies, and she did not like it one bit. Irene had always let her snuggle up against her back as they were falling asleep. At first Irene used to ask, “Are you cold?” which Millie sometimes was, but that wasn’t the whole reason, or even the main one. Millie would say, “A little,” because she didn’t want to lie, just to fib a tiny bit. And then Irene stopped asking.
Because she loves me, too.
The knowledge of this—evident in all the ways that gruff, practical Irene put reason and self-preservation aside time and again on Millie’s behalf—was what kept her trudging in ugly shoes up and down the boulevards of Hollywood.
Because sometimes, she just didn’t want to anymore. Actually most of the time.
It wasn’t turning out for her. The tea set money—the only financial contribution Millie had made to this whole endeavor—was gone, and Irene was struggling to pay for them both on her paltry nineteen dollars a week. Henry had been helping out, which they thought she didn’t know, but she did. She saw him slip some money into Irene’s hand once, and another time into her purse.
And she was so lonely. Irene and Henry were gone all day, of course, and so was that sassy Gert Turner who Henry had introduced her to. She bunked in another room and went out a lot in the evenings. She
often invited Millie to go with her, but Millie didn’t have any money.
There were evening classes she could take at the Studio Club—tap dancing and oratory and understanding Shakespeare—but she was so tired. She didn’t know why sitting on studio benches all day was so exhausting, but by the time she left in the late afternoon, she always felt as if she’d dug a whole field of potatoes.
Sometimes she thought it was that business with Wally that made her feel so worn-out and demoralized. But it had been a month ago. Shouldn’t she be over it by now?
Irene came by almost every evening, and they often went to the movies, sitting up in the nickel seats. Henry came with them if he wasn’t doing a night scene from that Bible movie he was in, or if he wasn’t too tired from working all day and then getting woken up in the night from some thunderous snorer in the men’s dorm at the YMCA.
Irene said going to the movies was “an investment” because it gave her ideas. She had a little notebook now that she scribbled in all the time, and she’d frown and knit her brows if some notion was giving her trouble. Sometimes she studied Millie or Henry in a strange, detached way and then scribbled some more, and then they would both yell at her not to write about them. Millie loved being with Irene, but sometimes Irene was so distracted, it was only a little bit better than being alone.
Worst of all, with the loneliness came the memories of that night, when she had struggled with all her might, only to be easily overpowered. She didn’t sleep well anymore, and when she woke gasping in fright, there was no Irene.
Ugly and scuffed. Her life was turning out just like her shoes.
She had started thinking about all the farms there were on the outskirts of town and how she might go back to a life of picking beans and shoveling the cow manure out of the dairy barn. Maybe she could even find a place with horses.
“Mildred Martin! Is there a Mildred Martin out here?”
Millie blinked and looked up. People were swiveling around to see who the lucky girl was. Suddenly another girl a couple of benches down raised her hand. “I’m Mildred Martin!”
The older woman who’d been calling out turned toward the girl. “Horse rider?”
Millie was confused at first—was there another girl here with the exact same name? What were the chances? Or maybe . . . the realization was dawning on her that maybe someone else was desperate enough to pretend to be her, to take her job.
Oh, let her have it.
But then she thought of Irene and how angry and disappointed and just sad she’d be if she ever found out. Irene wouldn’t show her sadness, of course. But it would be there.
Millie stood up. “I’m Millie Martin,” she said to the girl. “I can jump a horse over a hedge at a full gallop. Can you?”
The girl sat back down.
By ten in the morning, Millie was in the back of a car, headed to Olympic’s Back Ranch, wearing a costume that a little angry man named Albert Leroux had given her. Made from a dark blue calico print, it had long sleeves and a high collar and swung down from the cinched waist to just above her ankles. It was a little big on her, which she was glad of. It would make it easier to straddle the horse. Her father had allowed her to ride in pants, though this had scandalized her mother. But since her mother never left the house, Millie had done as she pleased. The dress came with a white muslin apron and matching bonnet.
“Thanks for taking me,” she said to the back of the driver’s head.
“That’s what they pay me for. I just brought the other girl over to St. Vincent’s.”
“St. Vincent’s?”
“Hospital.”
“Was she sick?”
“Broke something. Collarbone, shoulder, I’m not sure what. But by the sound of her, it hurt something terrible.”
“How’d she do it?”
“Fell off a horse. She said it was skittish, didn’t like the gunfire, so it reared up. Something like that. Hard to understand her through all that caterwauling.”
Millie was taken by cart out to the set, which was on the farthest edge of the lot on a rocky hillside dotted with brush and trees. Where the land flattened out, there was a cabin with a little yard and vegetable garden. There were even clothes hanging from a clothesline. The camera was set up in front with the crew clustered around it.
Millie stopped for a moment and took a deep breath to steady her nerves.
I’m here. And I’m making money. And I get to ride a horse!
As she approached, a few heads turned in her direction.
“There’s the girl.”
“About time.”
“She the right size?”
“She’ll have to do,” said a man in a tan suit and knee-high brown boots. A megaphone swung from his hand. “Where’s Wally? Wally! Get the girl ready!”
Millie turned to ice under the hot California sun when she heard his voice.
“Russell! Com’ere for a minute, wouldya? We gotta get this new girl sorted out.”
He was coming toward her now, another man beside him with shoulder-length black hair and nothing but a square of cloth over his parts. Millie felt herself go blurry, the edges of her melting away into the dirt.
Don’t faint, she told herself. If you faint now, they’ll haul you off to St. Vincent’s like that other girl. She bit at the inside of her lip until she tasted blood.
Wally didn’t seem to know it was her at first, all covered up as she was with the high-necked dress and the bonnet hiding her black hair.
The bastard doesn’t even recognize me. She felt her temperature rise. He did what he did, and he can’t even remember to what girl!
“The Injuns swarm the house,” he was saying, “and you’re off in that paddock over there with the horses, and you—” He stopped suddenly and stared at her. “How’d you get in here?” he growled.
She didn’t trust herself to respond, could barely find her voice.
You. Need. This. Job.
She gritted her teeth to quell the shaking. “Registration called for me.”
“You told them you could ride.”
“I can.”
“I doubt it.”
The Indian spoke up. “We’ll see soon enough. Meanwhile, everyone’s waiting.”
“Then you tell her what to do,” Wally said and strode off.
Millie exhaled. Don’t faint. Don’t faint. She took some sips of breath.
“Appears you two know each other. Some sort of romance gone wrong?”
Millie looked up at him, his eyes so dark they were almost black. “It was no romance, believe me.”
His face changed then, and she couldn’t really have said how. She might have thought his molars clenched, but they didn’t. “Do you need to sit down?” he asked.
“If I sit down, I’ll lose my job, won’t I?” she murmured.
“Probably.”
“Just tell me what to do.”
He walked her back to the paddock, murmuring instructions the way her father’s trainer would whisper to a spooked horse: a constant stream of mostly monotone words, many of which ended in question marks. “You’re going to see me coming, right? And then you’re going to mount that horse over there—can you do that? And then you look over your shoulder at me a bunch of times, like you’re scared, okay? Like I’m terrifying.”
“You’re not terrifying.”
He smiled. “Not now. But I can act like the hounds of hell. Just don’t forget I’m acting.”
“Isn’t that what actresses are supposed to do? Pretend the actors aren’t acting?”
“Let’s just get the timing right in the first few takes, and then we’ll worry about making it look real.”
Millie stood where she’d been told, among the horses. There was an old gray Arabian with its concave nose and swaying back. He was the first to come over and say hello as she held her hand out flat so he could lick the salt from her palm. She wished she’d had an apple or lump of sugar to make friends with, but this stately gentleman didn’t seem to require
such tokens.
The Appaloosa came next, absolutely beautiful with his white coat and leopard spots. He was a bit more standoffish and declined to lick her hand, but his ears faced her, so she knew he was interested. The Indian would ride this one, of course, a classic Indian horse. Millie found herself a bit jealous. He’d be willing to jump, she could tell, but he wouldn’t lose his head.
The sleek brown quarter horse, the one she was to ride, wouldn’t even greet her.
“Oh now,” she chided. “Don’t be like that. We all need friends.”
The horse lowered her head to the ground and nibbled some weeds.
“Those don’t even taste good, you faker.” Millie made a little whickering sound, and the horse looked up. “I do actually have to ride you, I’m afraid, so start getting used to the idea.”
It was half an hour or more that she stood there waiting for her take while the Indians snuck up on the farmhouse below the paddock about fifteen times in a row. After a while she sat on the fence in a spot where the house blocked her view of the crew, specifically Wally. She was grateful for the time to collect herself and get acquainted with her equine cast mates.
How long had it been since she’d ridden a horse? The farm she’d worked on had only had two plow horses, and they certainly didn’t need exercising after a day in the fields.
It had been since home. Her father had sold her lovely American paint horse when she was about to be shunted off to Miss Twickenham’s. “There’ll be no one to ride her,” her father had said. “It’s not fair to the horse.”
Fair to the horse? she’d wanted to scream. What about me? How is any of this fair?
But she’d been too stunned to say anything. And Calliope was gone the next day. The day after that, so was Millie.
The camera was suddenly being moved, and the herd of crew members went with it, around the side of the house, aimed at the paddock and at her. Then the director approached.
