“If Reggie thinks he’s getting four for Mansfield’s lipstick brushes, he’s higher than his prices.”
The gravelly-voiced dealer standing beside Frankie at the preview table is talking to her companion. Their eyes meet briefly, recognizing each other from previous entertainment auctions, and they exchange a nod in agreement to the fact that Reggie Furlani, auctioneer to the stars, has once again inflated the values of his items. Los Angeles may be a city of millions, but the world of memorabilia dealers is small enough that everyone knows one another—if not by name, then definitely by face—which is not to say they’re friends, or even friendly. Like any business, there’s competition, and it’s often fierce. Frankie once watched two dealers come to blows in a parking lot over one of Orson Welles’s partially smoked cigars.
Today’s crowd, however, seems far better behaved. The fifty or so who are here for the preview shuffle down the rows of display cases like well-dressed cattle. It’s an impressive assortment, Frankie decides as she scans the offerings—the collection of a film buff from London who clearly had a thing for blond actresses: Kim Novak’s shooting script from Vertigo. Michelle Pfeiffer’s sunglasses from Scarface. Jessica Lange’s grass belt from King Kong.
“See anything you like?”
She looks over to meet the kohl-lined gaze of Georgia Rosen, one of the first dealers to visit their shop when it opened. Like many women in Hollywood over seventy, Georgia has battled time with the help of a gifted plastic surgeon and facial procedures that could successfully fill the façade of the Parthenon.
“These wigs from Shampoo are kind of fun,” Frankie says, glancing around for one of the auction assistants to open the case for her so she can get a closer look.
“I’ve got my eye on the lot of Monroe’s liquor and fur receipts for a client of mine in Miami.” Georgia deals mostly in costume jewelry but anytime Marilyn Monroe lots come on the block, exceptions are made. “The trouble is he’s capped me at two grand and I know with Margot here it’ll go to four,” she whispers, tipping her head to the right. Frankie leans forward to look down the table and sees Margot Cosper tapping into her phone, her fingernails matching her flawless licorice-black bob. She deals exclusively in Marilyn memorabilia for overseas clients and is notorious for inflating bids; Reggie loves her.
Frankie’s phone pings from inside her purse. Normally she wouldn’t check the message in the middle of a conversation, but with Gabe Beckett’s response still pending, she can’t resist a quick peek. She’s disappointed to see it’s just an email from the property manager of the store, which would usually be spam, but the title, in all caps—RENT INCREASE—sends her pulse racing. The price hike, it explains when she clicks on the note—which will take effect in two months—isn’t just a scratch, it’s a third-degree burn.
Her face flames. Has Dennis raised the rent on all his tenants—or just the ones who recently stopped dating him?
Georgia’s eyes pool with concern. “Everything okay, hon?”
“The rent on the shop,” she whispers numbly. “It’s going way up.”
“Oh damn.” Georgia sighs, the thick black wings of her eyeliner crinkling with reproach. “That’s why you never date your landlord, sweetie.”
It’s more than a fair point—but in Frankie’s defense, she hadn’t planned on dating Dennis Farley. And maybe she never would have fallen for him in the first place if he hadn’t confessed to a collection of prop cigarette lighters, including ones from Dr. No and Basic Instinct—but once he did, how could she resist his invitation to dinner? Especially when she’d lost her mother just three months earlier and believed the distraction of romance would help her move through her grieving (it hadn’t) or that Dennis’s fondness for big band jazz and Bergman films was proof of his tender heart (it wasn’t).
“Maybe it’s for the best,” Georgia says as she leans in to inspect a signed lobby card from Vertigo. “I don’t know why anyone keeps the overhead of a storefront these days. Everything’s done online now.”
Like Georgia’s ill-timed dating advice, this isn’t news to her either. Long before her mother died, she and Frankie watched competitors close up their shops. They’d discussed the possibility of switching to a solely digital business, too. But her mother had been resolute and Frankie agreed: what made their store unique was that they offered people the chance to immerse themselves in the fantasy—and that required the senses. When a customer called from Paris interested in Kristin Scott Thomas’s aviator jacket from The English Patient, her mother chastised the poor man for wanting to buy it sight unseen: “Three thousand dollars and you don’t even want to know how it smells?”
“So how much are you asking for them?”
Georgia’s question draws her back. Frankie blinks at her.
“Glory Cartwright’s letters,” Georgia says. “How much?”
Saul. She feels a prickle of frustration but it’s fleeting. Georgia was on the Brisket Brigade for a few weeks before she got wise to Saul’s long-term plan to stay single but well fed, and found herself a widower from Beverly Hills who only eats out. They stay in touch on Facebook, which explains how she knows about the letters.
Frankie drops her phone back into her bag. “I’m not selling them.”
“Because I’ll give you five grand for the pair,” Georgia says as if she didn’t hear the answer. “I have a client in Tampa who’s wild about Glory Cartwright. Laid down ten thousand for the fitted sheet from the bed they found her in.”
She winces. “That’s disgraceful.”
“Hey, look, it wasn’t my sale,” Georgia says, her palms up. “Personally, I draw the line at postmortem stuff, but not everyone’s as classy as you and me.” This coming from the woman who bid on the pack of cigarettes they found in James Dean’s totaled car. “I’m not sure they’d be very juicy, anyway—what with how much they fought about him dragging her all the way out to the East Coast.”
Frankie recalls the endless pages of damning articles she’d stayed up half the night reading.
“Most of what they write isn’t true, you know.”
“Words lie but pictures don’t,” Georgia says, jabbing the air with her pen for emphasis. Georgia can believe that; she grew up without Photoshop and the magic of digital foolery. “I know Glory put on a good show for the press and her fans—starting that festival and all that—but if she was so happy, then why did she kill herself? Am I right?” Georgia asks as they follow the stream of buyers into the adjoining gallery, and once again Frankie pushes down a burst of guilt, having to remind herself she has no proof—at least not yet—that her mother, or Frankie herself, had anything to do with Glory’s despair. Hadn’t most of the articles cited Glory Cartwright’s begrudging departure from Hollywood as the real source of her crumbling emotional health? Others mentioning that she’d struggled with bouts of depression even before leaving Hollywood?
Stopped at a case containing Grace Kelly’s annotated script from Rear Window, Georgia leans over and whispers, “Saul said there was a picture, too. You think you might want to sell that?”
Even as Frankie rolls her eyes, she’s smiling. “You’re relentless, you know that?”
“Damn straight.” Georgia waits a beat, then squints. “So is that a yes?”