They drove up from Culver City to Sunset Boulevard, then east toward Vine Street. It was a balmy night, once they were past the haze of the studio fire. Julie cranked down the window of Andy’s gleaming blue DeSoto coupe and peered out at all the glittering neon signs looming above the palm trees, trying not to appear too awed by it all.

“See over there?” he said, lifting one hand from the steering wheel as they turned off Sunset, pointing. She spotted a huge billboard of a woman’s head illuminated over a darkened building. People on the street were slowing their pace and staring upward. No wonder. An even larger neon sign next to the one of the woman proclaimed THROUGH THESE PORTALS PASS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GIRLS IN THE WORLD.

“That’s Earl Carroll’s latest supper theater,” Andy said. “He went broke in New York, but we’re all about second chances out here. They don’t open until after Christmas, or we’d go there and take in a show.”

“So does that mean if I walk in there someone will wave a magic wand and turn me into one of the Most Beautiful Girls in the World?”

“All you have to do is believe,” he said lightly. “Is that a little skepticism I’m hearing in your voice?”

“Do you believe?”

He laughed. “Well, I gave up a long time ago on Santa Claus, so you may have spotted something. All I’m doing is showing you the different kinds of magic we of the entertainment industry can offer.”

She liked the dryness of his tone, which was somewhere between rueful and sarcastic. And also, she realized, quickly changeable.

“So you’re a good Protestant girl? And not put off by my name?”

“Why would I care about that?” she retorted, imagining what her father would say right now. Something like, “Weinstein, huh?” Then he would snap his evening paper smartly and frown his disapproval. He was good at that.

“No reason,” he said. His tone became playful. “You know, my mother always used to say, ‘Why can’t you meet any nice Jewish girls out there in Hollywood?’ and I told her, ‘Ma, all the girls here are Gentiles, and they all want to be actresses, and they all want to live in Beverly Hills.’ Most of the Jews are writers or film editors and still live in West Hollywood. Some of us have worked our way up to the Hollywood Hills, but give us time.”

He gave such an artless, loose shrug, she laughed. “Thank you for helping me out today,” she said.

“No problem. It was quite a sight, wasn’t it?”

“The fire? Oh yes.”

“Nobody but Selznick would have attempted that,” he said. “He hasn’t even got a full script or a leading lady yet. You can’t help being impressed by his chutzpah.”

“Chutzpah?”

“Audacity. Nerve. It’s Yiddish.” He seemed resigned as he swung a hard right. “We’re going to a place I like on Beverly Boulevard,” he said. “Do you want to be an actress? Please say no.”

“No.”

“Really?”

“Why would I want to be?” she said. “I can’t act.”

“That hasn’t stopped most of the girls out here.”

“At least they’re all gorgeous. I’m not even garden-variety pretty.”

“That may be your good fortune,” he said.

That stung a bit. He could have pretended.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“We’re going to dine with the stars and eat chili,” he said. “At Chasen’s. It’s classic Hollywood, not too many gaping tourists.”

“Are you really that contemptuous? I’m still a tourist, myself.”

“They spoil the story,” he said. Whatever that meant.

Chasen’s was a modest-looking stucco building with a jaunty green-and-white-striped awning, not the type of place she would glance at twice in any other town. They slipped into an oversized booth covered in thick chocolate-brown leather that felt like soft butter. Julie peered around, wondering if she would see any movie stars, and tried not to appear to be looking.

“Think you would have recognized Gable in this setting?” Andy said lightly.

“Sure,” she said, a bit affronted. “I was too flustered up there. I’m really not just a hick from the sticks, or whatever you’re thinking. I go to movies all the time.”

“I don’t think that,” he said. “And I’m not out to mock you. You have a spark to you. I like that. Look, you’re new to town. There’s nothing wrong with being green. Pretty much everybody here was green once.”

She could not imagine that being true of him, but she wasn’t going to say so.

They did eat chili that night. And drank several martinis. And Julie did catch a glimpse of Humphrey Bogart—sitting at the bar, nursing a beer, and slurping spoonfuls of chili from a bowl. But by then Julie was more interested in the man sitting across from her in the booth. All she knew about him so far was that he worked directly for Selznick as an assistant producer.

She told him about growing up in Fort Wayne, graduating last June from Smith College, and going home, resigned to the predict-ability of soon having a diamond engagement ring on her finger. It was all laid out, really. Her high-school sweetheart, a sweet, affable man, was already scouting neighborhoods for their first home—one big enough, of course, for a family. Christmas would be a really good time for an engagement party. The engagement ring, he declared, would be a full carat, which pleased her mother. He was a man on the way up, but not too ostentatious. What a wonderful son-in-law he would be, her mother enthused. Reliable, a good provider.

And then how jolted Julie was to realize that she no longer wanted the same things he did: That being the wife of a proper lawyer from a good family, totally content to forge a career drawing up wills for rich Fort Wayne people, wasn’t her dream. That being on charity boards providing for the victims of the Depression was worthy, but not enough. Something in her needed to fly. How hard it had been to tell him, and her parents, the truth.

“You felt like a complete jerk,” offered Andy.

She nodded. “Plus, I didn’t know what I wanted.”

“You just wanted to run. No”—he smiled—“fly.”

“Yes,” she said. “Now it’s your turn.”

“Born in Germany, American mother, German father. Parents divorced. Grew up—sort of—in New Jersey.”

“Don’t stop there,” she said, laughing. She loved the energy in his voice.

“Okay. Columbia, then taught awhile, wrote an unpublishable novel, grew bored.” He paused. “My grandparents stayed in Berlin, and my older brother moved to France, married a French girl, and became a citizen. I went over in the summer of 1932 to visit them all, harboring the stupid idea of nostalgic hours of bike riding, particularly through the German countryside. It didn’t turn out that way.”

“What happened?”

Andy looked away. “Nothing much good,” he said.

She wasn’t sure how to respond to that, but he quickly brightened.

“Anyway, I went home,” he said. “I dumped the idea of teaching and moved on to Hollywood, dreaming of glory. Oh, and making some real money.”

His first job was with Louis B. Mayer’s stable of writers. “We were the joke of Hollywood,” he said, leaning his head back, holding a cigarette, blowing wispy smoke rings up to the ceiling. He laughed. “They bunched us together in a room filled with typewriters, and when the signal came that Mayer was approaching, we all started typing. Quite a clatter as we all hit the keys and puffed away. You were fired if your fingers weren’t moving.” He gave a comical shrug. “Mayer never did understand that writers need to think once in a while, too. That was it for me. No more writing. So—are you nearsighted or farsighted?”

“What?” He did switch topics a lot.

He pointed. “Your glasses,” he said.

“Oh.” She touched the horn-rimmed frame and told him the truth. “Neither.”

“So why do you wear them?”

“So people will take me seriously, mainly.”

He stared at her. “Around here, everybody is taking their glasses off. Are you sure you aren’t waiting for someone to lean over, remove them from your face, and tell you you’re beautiful?”

Why did he try to rankle her every few minutes? “I told you, I want to be taken seriously.”

“What do you want to be taken seriously for? And I’m really listening.”

“I want to be a screenwriter,” she said, taking a deep gulp from her martini glass. “And don’t tell me that’s crazy.”

“I’m not laughing,” he said. “What got you to that?”

“Frances Marion.” She paused, waiting for his reaction.

“She was at the top, once. Worked a long time with Mary Pickford. One of the few women still holding on. Good dame, though.”

“You’re not making some dismissive comment?”

“No, I’m not. Frances Marion’s one of the best writers in the business, but it’s tough for women now. There’s a lot of money to be made here, and men are taking over the jobs. That probably annoys you.”

She ignored the gibe. “She came to Smith and gave a wonderful speech. All about taking chances, trying for something different.” Julie couldn’t possibly convey how the Hollywood writer’s words had inspired her—given her a lifeline, really. Or how appalled her parents were, and how her father roared that she should never have been allowed to go to a women’s college like Smith.

“So you dumped your boyfriend and came to Hollywood. How do you know you can write?”

“I’ve got some ideas. I did some work at school.” She refrained from telling him that her work had won admiring praise from her teachers. A classroom was no credential for Hollywood; he wouldn’t be impressed.

“How did your parents react to all that after getting you tucked up and ready for a good marriage?”

“Not too well,” she confessed. “I’ve got one year to prove I can do something.”

“Then they pull the plug financially?”

“Well, yes. I intend to be fully self-supporting. I’ll figure something out.” The whole truth? If she wasn’t, they would find a way to pull her back home. And she had no intention of going back, which she figured he probably guessed.

He gave her a wry smile as he lifted a hand to signal the waiter to bring yet another round. “One thing you should know up front: most writers you meet in this town are embittered, live in the shadows, are totally undervalued, and have probably never seen a single thing they’ve written make it to the screen.”

“It can’t be that bad or they would all leave, wouldn’t they?”

He raised his almost finished martini, eyes lively, and kissed her glass with his. “Ah, the reason they stay is simple. They write a few second features, get screen credit once or twice—but there’s always the big one just ahead, that plum script that brings an Oscar. Like the donkey, they keep following the carrot ahead of the nose.”

“Andy, you really are pretty cynical.”

“The truth? It’s just a form of self-protection,” he said. “I’m rooting for you.” He looked at her, his eyes thoughtful.

She laughed a lot that night. Andy was funny and smart, and he actually did listen, and she could relax and enjoy herself for the first time since she had stepped off the train four weeks before and found her way to Selznick International.

“What’s the best thing about Fort Wayne?” he asked as he polished off his bowl of chili.

It took a minute. She was still too involved with what was the worst—probably the consistent disapproval of her very proper and dusty-dry relatives. You didn’t ask why things were done a certain way in Fort Wayne—like why Negroes were expected to “know their place,” or why a girl was an old maid if she wasn’t married by the age of twenty. Her mother had almost fainted when she gave away her so carefully chosen but unwanted wedding dress to a classmate.

“Catching fireflies in a bottle on a hot summer night,” she said, and decided it was true.

She told him about her roommate, a girl from Texas who wanted to be a movie star, and how they’d met while they were both trying to fit their hands into Norma Shearer’s prints at Grauman’s Chinese. How they had snagged menial jobs in the studio copying room, but Julie wasn’t fast enough to type stencils for press releases, only to mimeograph them.

“And why is that?”

“I didn’t want to be stuck as a secretary, so I didn’t take typing in school,” she confessed.

He burst out laughing. “Calculated ineptitude—I like that,” he said.

Then it was his turn. He told her he grew up with his nose in books, and cried only once that he could remember, when he was twelve and his dog died. He told her he tried to be popular in high school by telling jokes, and the worst humiliation of his life was when classmates dug into his pockets and found he wrote them all down on scraps of paper so he wouldn’t forget the punch lines. He confessed this in such a boyish way, she felt she was the only one who knew. She loved the way his eyes crinkled up when he laughed. Most of all, the way he looked at her. There was more there, a play of light and shadow, but for now it was enough to dance happily on the surface, sipping martinis with Andy. Hollywood was scary and exciting, and she had no idea what was to come next. But she was here; that alone was a victory. Her parents wouldn’t approve, but she was pretty sure Andy was the best thing that had happened to her in a long time.

He drove her home; it was quite late by then. She kept the window open, closed her eyes, and inhaled the lush scents of California’s sultry evening perfume. She loved that smell. She knew that, wherever she might be from here on, one faint whiff of anything similar would bring her back in a rush to this night, this night when she first met Gable and Lombard and a man named Andy Weinstein.

She thought he was going to kiss her. Surely he started to, simultaneously turning off the engine with one hand and reaching out to stroke the nape of her neck with the other. She imagined it would be as delicious and heady as the air, and she closed her eyes. She could feel his breath.

“Tomorrow morning,” he said instead. “Nine o’clock, no later. And the woman to see is Doris Finch. Plain-Jane name, smart woman.”

“What?” Julie’s eyes flew open.

“The publicity office at the studio. And have your wits about you this time, kiddo.”

He got out of the car, came around, and opened her door.

“And by the way—you are pretty, you dope,” he said after walking her up the path; he was watching as she turned her key in the lock of the rooming house on Fairfax Avenue. His smile this time was almost mischievous. “How could you not know it?”

She slept well that night.

The next morning, Julie arrived early. She walked slowly up the drive of Selznick International Pictures in Culver City, savoring the beauty of the gleaming white building with its graceful pillars. Selznick’s mansion was supposed to be a replica of George Washington’s Mount Vernon, but she imagined it as Tara, and played with the idea that she was walking toward home, feeling the gentle swaying of her skirts, hearing the bustle of the plantation.…

A sudden sharp honk blared, and she jumped away from a fast-approaching car. It passed unnervingly close, close enough for her to catch a glimpse of the man she had so stupidly not recognized yesterday on the platform. Clark Gable did not look happy. Julie caught a quick flash of a blond head next to him, but whether it was Carole Lombard she couldn’t tell.

Voices were muted in the crowded publicity department. That was because there was a great deal of shouting coming from Selznick’s office down the hall, and all were pretending not to hear. But the voices were reverberating too loudly through the main corridor for the pretense to work.

The only person who looked unconcerned was Andy. He sat casually on a desk, twirling a pencil in his fingers, talking to a smiling woman with long legs and dark hair pulled back in lush, sculpted waves. Julie had tried for that style, but she couldn’t make it work—her hair was too thick. She knew instantly this was Doris, and she had better stop thinking about her hair if she wanted to make a decent impression.

Andy looked up and beckoned. Doris swiveled in her chair and met Julie’s eyes with a cool gaze that told Julie all she needed to know. This woman was not her friend.

“Well, hello there. You’re the girl who got in trouble with Selznick yesterday? Good thing you met his favorite protégé—our golden boy here.” She tossed a grin at Andy.

“She’s got more going for her than I do,” Andy cut in as the shouts from Selznick’s office grew louder. “Lombard is in her corner. Doris, meet Julie, and vice versa.”

They stared at each other. Doris blinked at almost the same time Julie did.

“Well—” Doris began.

The door to Selznick’s office suddenly blew open, slammed back with enough force to crack the plaster. Gable straddled the entry, his physical presence stopping all conversation. Nothing quivered on the man except, oddly, his pupils. They seemed to be part of the audience to his indignation, just like all the other eyes in the room. He strode out, his face registering fury, which only made his presence in the room more powerful. Julie drew in her breath—could there be a more masculine man than this one? Probably every woman in the room would consider succumbing, even now—when he looked ready to kill somebody.

He strode past them, head up, moving toward the front door. Behind him, framed in the doorway, Selznick stood with arms folded, watching coldly—the man in charge, made of stone. Next to him, Carole Lombard, dressed again in flowing pants and what looked like the same wrinkled shirt from yesterday, stared after Gable.

“Hey, Pa!” she yelled.

Gable stopped and looked back.

“Sweetie, you’re the King,” she called out. Her voice was so huge, so soothing, it swallowed the air in the room. Even the phones, respectfully, went silent. “And every fucking person in this building knows that,” she continued. “Not to mention everyone in the fucking country. So why don’t you come on back here, and we’ll work this little squabble out? Come on, Pa. For me.”

Gable paused near the door, the muscles of his handsome face working. Pulling himself up straight, he slowly pivoted, a full theatrical turn. He glared at Selznick, then walked with measured steps through the silent room back to the producer’s office. Lombard reached out and tweaked his ear, grinning. Turning, all three retreated and closed the door.

A collective sigh of relief stirred movement, followed by the hum of business as usual. The phones were ringing again; permission had somehow been granted to resume.

“Same problem?” Andy asked, looking singularly unimpressed.

Doris leaned back in her chair, picked up a nail file, and drew it sharply across a broken nail. Julie winced at the sound.

“Same as before. He isn’t getting the royal MGM treatment here, and he’s afraid he isn’t up to the part,” she answered. “And you never heard it from me.”

“He wouldn’t derail this movie.”

“Of course not. But he’s still scared, and he doesn’t want Cukor.”

“We both know why.”

“Well, the public reason is that Cukor is masterful at directing women, not so good at directing men.” She paused, then added, “Gable needs Lombard more now than ever.”

“When is his divorce final?”

“When his wife finally gets the money she wants and settles. MGM is sweetening the pot. Couldn’t be soon enough for Carole.”

They both chuckled companionably, and Julie felt frustrated.

“Excuse me,” she began.

Doris looked up with a faint smile, and Julie had the distinct impression she hadn’t been forgotten at all. “Well, since you’re such a favorite of Lombard’s, we’ll have you escort her to this afternoon’s interview,” Doris said. “You go with her and we’ll see how you do. There’ll be someone with you to show you the ropes.”

The “someone with you” turned out to be Rose, her roommate and partner in the mimeograph room. Rose was just as bewildered over what “the ropes” were as Julie was.

“Just you and me?” she said with astonishment. “What are we supposed to do?”

Julie had no answer. She and Rose shared a mutual low-grade desperation because neither was good at her job, but this was worse. Rose could type a little, though she was always dabbing correction fluid over her pages, and when Julie copied them, the corrections turned black and looked terrible.

“Kind of moth-eaten,” Rose had admitted one day when Julie showed her a particularly messy page. “They’re going to fire me, I know.”

“Retype it and let’s try again,” Julie said. This was one way to forge a friendship, and it worked.

But now they were at a loss.

Andy was heading out the door of the studio office when Julie grabbed him. “What do I do?” she asked. “What do they want?”

He looked a little surprised. “You’ll figure it out,” he said. “You’re there to keep the reporter on his toes—just look stern and clear your throat once in a while.”

“Andy, please, be serious.”

He now looked fully astonished. “What are you worried about? You’ve got access to Lombard, so now figure out how to make the best of it. Dinner tonight?” He plucked his hat off the rack by the door, adjusted the brim, and put it on.

“I’ll think about it,” she said.

“Suit yourself.”

Was that a flicker of disappointment in his eyes? Well, if he couldn’t give her a little more support, it was too bad.

He turned the door handle and was gone before she could change her mind.