Julie and Rose made their way past the scorched back lot to get to Lombard’s dressing room, an opulently outfitted trailer, which was on the far side of the studio grounds. Dozens of trucks filled with brick dust were lumbering one by one onto the field, dumping their loads as crews on the ground armed with rakes combed the coppery-red silt into the scorched soil.

“Someone told me it’s to make it look like Southern clay,” Rose said. “Mr. Selznick wants every detail to be perfect. He’s amazing.”

“How can they work so fast? And to start building Tara on top of this tomorrow …” Julie shook her head, squinting into the afternoon sun as they walked along the edges of the lot, steering clear of the powdery brick dust curling into the air.

“It is kind of magical, isn’t it?” Rose said shyly. “Aren’t we lucky to be here?”

Julie nodded, grateful that Rose felt the same thump of excitement in her breast. Maybe they were just starstruck newcomers. Maybe seeing the mechanics of it all might eventually drain the magic out. But they were here, right now, part of the movie world—albeit on the edge. Anything could happen.

“Afraid we’ll get disillusioned?” she asked, thinking of Andy’s wry, almost mocking take on his own world.

“Not me,” Rose said firmly. “Anything I don’t want to see, I’ll just close my eyes.”

Julie pondered that briefly, wondering if she could do the same. And there they were again, the two voices inside of her, one arguing for reality and the other for dreams. She had to fly somewhere.

She glanced at Rose with a touch of envy. Rose might look fragile, but she probably knew how to set boundaries and lock gates better than Julie did.

They reached the dressing room next to the soundstage where Lombard was wrapping up her movie Made for Each Other. Sitting on the trailer steps was an impatient-looking reporter in baggy pants who made a point of staring at his watch as they walked toward him.

“Our appointment was one o’clock,” he said. “It’s five after. I’ve been waiting for you studio people, but I do have a deadline and—”

The door to the dressing room burst open, and there was Carole Lombard. She wore a shimmery satin gown that all but slithered across her body, barely covering her breasts. It could have been a nightgown—Julie wasn’t sure—but it took her breath away to see how confidently Lombard wore it. She looked amazingly beautiful.

“Oh, quit complaining,” Lombard said brightly to the reporter, beckoning them all in. “I saw you out here and figured you could toast your heels for a while. You’ll get a good interview.” She laughed. “For starters, I’m wearing nothing under this dress; want that for your lead? Where are you from?”

“The Reading Eagle, Pennsylvania,” he said, brightening considerably. “I hear you’re signing for a new movie?”

“In negotiation,” she said. “But I’m signing a helluva lot of autographs. When I think of the bunk I’ve written on them, I get sick.”

It was too late for Julie to clear her throat.

Lombard’s sitting room was simple but quite elegant. Not that Julie had ever been in a star’s dressing room, of course. But the carpet, a deep forest green, looked lush and expensive. The sofa and two chairs were covered with a muted brocade fabric, and the coffee table was sleek and white. Screens hid the makeup room, but she could see past them to an array of mirrors over the dressing table. Large bouquets of ivory-cream roses were everywhere.

The reporter—his name, he told them with a certain huffiness, was Jeff Malone—settled on the sofa. Julie and Rose perched on the chairs, trying to look businesslike.

“First time doing chaperone duty, girls?” Lombard said, flopping down on the sofa next to Malone. “Good luck—nobody shuts me up.”

The phone on the table beside her rang. She picked it up, listened for an impatient second or two, then rolled her eyes. “Me, play a violin? I’d look like a screwball. Now, if you want someone who can shoot a .410 shotgun, I’m your woman.” She hung up.

The reporter said quickly, “I didn’t know you hunted …?” The phone was ringing again.

“Skeet shooting,” she said as she picked up the receiver. “Clark likes to kill birds; I prefer to kill clay disks. Less blood. Though I wouldn’t mind taking shots at producers.” She listened for a second to the new voice on the phone. “Can we please get these details wrapped?” she said. “Yes, I definitely want the fucking house; sweetheart, I’m planning on giving a party there next week—you’re invited. The guest of honor is going to be either a bear or a lion. Haven’t decided.” She all but tossed the phone into its cradle this time.

“You and Gable are officially a couple?”

She laughed. “Of course,” she said. “Okay, let’s get to it—you want me to talk about sex. I think sex is wonderful and therapeutic, and girls here in Hollywood should quit being obsessed with losing their virginity. And no double standard. Men who stray should be forgiven, and I want the same freedom for myself. That cover it for you?”

Malone’s jaw dropped. He nodded.

Rose glanced at Julie, clearly horrified. Julie kept her face serene, but her thoughts were spinning. Were they supposed to do something? Did Lombard mean all that? Wasn’t her relationship with Gable still sort of a secret? Then again, how could it be, since they were so openly and exuberantly a couple?

“Miss Lombard reserves the right to make that off the record,” Julie blurted out. “It’s, um, required for the interview.” She had no idea what she was doing, other than trying to protect the actress somehow. Probably more like stepping in front of a speeding truck.

Lombard looked at her with interest. “That’s all right, kiddo,” she said. “Thanks, though, for putting your fists up.”

Malone was in a daze. He scribbled away for half an hour, his questions interspersed with Lombard’s phone calls, before Lombard told him briskly, “Time’s up. You satisfied?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

“Send us copies,” she said, and then glanced at the younger women with amusement. “That’s what you’re supposed to say, girls.”

“Of course.” Julie flushed. “Please send copies to our publicity department.”

“Sure.” Malone got up, opened the door, and started to leave. He turned around with one last question: “Do you ever get tired of the pace?”

Lombard didn’t respond immediately. The phone was ringing again, but she didn’t seem in a hurry to answer it this time. “Let me put it this way,” she said. “I want to live a natural life before I’m an old lady.”

“And what does that mean?”

“Eventually, I’d like to get off the pogo stick.”

“How do you do that?”

And her answer, which stuck somewhere in the recesses of Julie’s mind: “When I make my last movie, I’m going to tell them to bill it as ‘Lombard’s farewell appearance,’ ” the actress said matter-of-factly. “And I tell you, when they put that on the billboards, it will be true.”

Malone left, a very happy man with a full notebook.

Lombard started to close the door after him, and stopped. She peered down the path and let out an impatient sigh. “So here comes another visitor,” she said. “Have you girls met Jerry Bryant yet?”

“Who is he?” Julie asked.

“Unofficially? He’s head morality cop for Selznick International Pictures and the Legion of Decency, rolled into one.” She smiled at Julie’s confused look. “He’s the head studio publicist. His job is to keep trouble and scandal out of the papers, and right now I’m not one of his favorite people.”

The man climbing the stairs to the door was buttoning a suit jacket that strained across an ample belly. His hair, a bald patch at the crown, was gray. He didn’t look happy. But as he stared up at Carole, his round face took on an expression of rehearsed cordiality.

“Well, well, Carole, another unsupervised interview? Why didn’t you call me, sweetheart? Remember me? I’m here to keep you out of trouble.” He flashed a stiff grin, revealing a mouth of unusually small, sparkling teeth.

“Actually, my dear Jerry, you’re here to keep Selznick International out of trouble. Too late. The world’s most scandalous interview is over, and now we can all cower, waiting for the deluge. How can I help you?”

“What did he ask you?”

“My opinion, of course, on whether that handsome Mr. Roosevelt is sitting in the White House plotting ways to drag us into a European war. Well, I told him a thing or two.”

Jerry hesitated. Then, “You do like your jokes,” he muttered as he stepped into the trailer—and noticed Julie and Rose for the first time. “Who are these?” he said.

“Really, Jerry. Where are your manners? ‘These’ are the two young women your girl Doris sent over to supervise the interview. They did a fine job. Anything else? I’m shooting a scene in a few minutes.”

Uninvited, Bryant sat down, ignoring the pair. “This must be Doris’s idea of a joke, sending two copying room girls to supervise. They’re as green as Hollywood grass,” he said, irritated. “But that’s not important. I’m here on another errand—it won’t take too much of your time.”

“And what is that?”

He pulled a notebook out of his pocket. “Routine information,” he said.

Carole remained standing, folding her arms. “What?”

He flipped open the notebook, pulled a pen from his breast pocket, snapped it open, and said, “I need to know your menstrual cycle.”

“What? You can’t be serious.”

Julie and Rose looked at each other in astonishment.

“Carole, let’s not make a major issue out of this. Your menstrual cycle, understand? That should be easy enough. We keep records on all the actresses; every major studio does.” He tapped his notebook with his pen and waited expectantly. “It’s important, sweetheart. For water scenes, cramps, mood problems—those things.”

Carole started to laugh, a from-the-belly laugh. “Jerry, you dirty dog—do you want to fuck me?”

Bryant paled, then blushed scarlet before recovering. “I’d love to, dear, but I know I haven’t got a chance,” he said. “This is just routine. What if we have to shoot an ocean shot? Claudette Colbert had no objections. For heaven’s sake, we don’t need shooting schedules ruined—that would be a disaster.”

Carole was laughing so hard she could barely speak. “Jerry, you’re just doing your job, though the mandate seems a bit twisted, but how convenient this information must be for the studio brass. Somebody’s planning for fucking, and I know it. Sorry, my menstrual cycle is privileged information. I wouldn’t even give it to President Roosevelt.”

Bryant didn’t protest. “This will go higher up,” he warned.

“I don’t care.”

Resigned, he closed his notebook and sighed heavily. “You are not easy, sweetheart.”

“You’re damn right.” She leaned close as he prepared to step out of the trailer and kissed him on the forehead. “You’re not a bad egg,” she said. “Thanks for giving us a good laugh.”

He worked hard trying to rearrange his face, but it wasn’t quite in place as he hurried away.

Lombard’s energy seemed to leave her as abruptly as air from a balloon. She sat on the sofa, swung her legs up, and plopped her head into the pillows. She reached for a cigarette. “Don’t look so shell-shocked, girls,” she said with a grin. “It’s okay. They call me the Profane Angel, right? It’s a smoke screen. It keeps men a little scared of me. I assume you both want to be in pictures?”

Julie shook her head in the negative. “Not acting,” she said.

“I do,” Rose allowed. She said it quite calmly, and Julie was struck by how large her friend’s eyes were. Her mouth, full and pink, was parted in an uncertain smile.

Lombard nodded slowly, looking Rose up and down. “You are gorgeous, dearie—so why not?”

Rose blinked. “Why not?” she repeated weakly.

“I’ll see what I can do. What’s your name?”

“Rose Sullivan.”

“You’ll have to change that, of course. I shed mine as fast as I could when I got out of Indiana. Who wants to drag around a dreary moniker like ‘Jane Alice Peters’?”

“I’m from Indiana,” Julie volunteered.

Lombard looked at her with a curious smile. “You’re the messenger Andy Weinstein took a shine to. Where in Indiana?”

“Fort Wayne, just like you.”

“Well, well. We tend to speak our minds, we girls from Fort Wayne. Did you think that reporter could harm me?”

“I didn’t know. I wanted to tell him he couldn’t just write anything he wanted to.”

“And what drew you to Hollywood?”

“I want to write movies.”

“Like Frances Marion?”

“Yes.” There, she had put herself with one word in the company of her role model, someone who was brilliant and had made it here, and she was thrilled that Lombard knew her name. Nobody at home did. And for just an instant something shimmered in her mundane connection with the star. Maybe it was because she had already decided she really liked this casual, profane woman who said what she wanted and did as she pleased.

“Are you any good?” Lombard asked.

“I don’t know. My college English teacher thinks so.” It was restful, just stating it that way. She sensed Carole wouldn’t laugh.

“That plus a helluva lot of determination might get you somewhere someday.”

“I hope so.” She felt almost giddy. In a world of make-believe, maybe she had met a woman at the top who was real.

“Your friend Rose got touched with a magic wand this afternoon,” Andy said, walking up behind Julie in the publicity office as she was stapling the last press releases of the day. “Lombard got her an interview—and a tryout for Scarlett.”

“That was fast,” Julie said, surprised.

“Selznick is auditioning every promising actress he can find. Your friend from Texas will be lacing up a corset in a couple of days. Want to watch?”

“Yes, I would love to.” Could it really work like this? Did it mean Rose had a chance?

“Any feeling of being left out?”

Julie thought about it. “No,” she said. “I would if I had the same ambition for acting that Rose has, I guess.”

He smiled; she liked his smile when it came from the warmth of his eyes.

“A nonglamorous dinner with me as a booby prize?”

She nodded. Why had she been so prickly earlier? Two amazing days in a row, and a sanity check with Andy Weinstein after each one. That really wasn’t a booby prize.

“I’ve got another piece of news for you,” he said later, as they settled into a booth at a cheerfully noisy place on Wilshire with red linoleum and greasy menus.

“Something good?”

“Carole Lombard wants you to work as her personal assistant.”

Julie dropped her menu, which landed dangerously near the flickering candle in the middle of their small table. “She does?”

“She told Doris late this afternoon. Said she liked the idea of having a hometown girl on her staff. Especially one with the guts to speak up.”

“Oh my goodness, she makes fast decisions.”

“You’re not unhappy about that, are you? This gives you a nice edge, but I’m sure Doris would love to stick you back into the mimeograph room. She was not pleased about losing both you and Rose at one whack.”

“I’m thrilled, Andy.” She meant it fervently.

Andy looked at her with an expression she couldn’t quite fathom. “I like bearing you good news,” he said.

It didn’t take long. Rose was called for her screen test only two days later.

Julie scrambled to help her get ready, both of them breathless and nervous. “Green eye shadow,” Julie advised, remembering Vivien Leigh’s makeup. “Lots of it.”

When they reached the soundstage, which was cluttered with hovering cameras, they saw a row of bright-faced women sitting in chairs, all dressed in Civil War gowns of the 1860s.

“An assembly line,” Rose murmured, and some of the light faded in her eyes.

Julie thought she recognized Paulette Goddard, who Andy said was still Selznick’s favorite for the part. But maybe it was Jean Arthur—Julie wasn’t sure. Sitting in a canvas chair behind the cameras was David O. Selznick, tipped back, glasses on his nose, staring straight ahead. Once, he glanced at his watch. Julie could have sworn everyone around him began moving faster.

“Rose Sullivan.”

Rose squeezed Julie’s hand and, following an assistant, walked through a door leading to the wardrobe department.

Only minutes later, she emerged, caught Julie’s eye, and gave a wide smile.

Julie gasped. Her friend looked beautiful. Wardrobe had dressed her in a cream silk gown with a frothy tulle bodice cut very low, and Julie could see the modest Rose trying discreetly to pull it higher. She shook her head warningly in a quick motion, and Rose dropped her hands.

Do it their way. That’s what the two of them had whispered to each other late into the night. “The truth is, I have nothing to lose,” Rose had said, sounding far more sensible than Julie feared she would be if she were the one trying out for the part.

Again someone called out Rose’s name, beckoning her onto the set.

Rose lifted her head high and walked gracefully before the cameras, appearing totally serene. A slightly bored-looking actor playing Ashley for the screen tests stepped up next to her.

“Okay,” Selznick said. His voice was strong and brisk. “Rose—it is Rose, right?—in this scene, you are confessing your undying love for Ashley Wilkes, exposing your heart and soul. We’re only doing one take per actress, so let’s see what you can do.” He signaled his assistant. “Roll cameras,” he said.

The clapperboard went down.

Rose clasped her hands together, looking up at the stand-in, bursting with barely contained emotion. “I am in love with you, Ashley,” she began.

The cameras rolled for fewer than five minutes, but it was long enough to impress Julie. Rose, without artifice, had transformed herself for those brief moments into Scarlett O’Hara. She really was a natural actress. Had Lombard sensed that?

“Thank you, young lady,” Selznick said when the cameras stopped. “We’ll get back to you. Next!”

And that was all.

Those first weeks working for Carole Lombard increased Julie’s heart rate permanently, she was sure of that. To be around such a whirlpool of energy was to spin in the dizziest orbit she could ever imagine. She had no chance to slip into melancholy at Christmas, what with helping Carole swathe her trailer in festive red and green garlands and trying to keep propped up a slightly dizzy-looking tree adorned with lights and mounds of tangled tinsel. She was grateful to be able to pour out the stories to Andy. Not every night, but often now they had dinner together, either at Chasen’s or at the cozy greasy spoon with sticky menus. Julie loved both. Andy would chuckle as she described how Carole burst through doors rather than walk through them. How she laughed, how she swore—as Life magazine put it—with “the expletives of a sailor’s parrot.” How she got up earlier than everybody else and played tennis with such ferocity she almost always won; how she never stopped moving. Her idea of a personal assistant was someone who paid her departmentstore bills, bought her Kotex, booked manicures, fed gossip queen Louella Parsons a few bright tidbits every week, glared at reporters during newspaper interviews, read to her, ran errands for Clark, and was ready for any kind of assignment at all.

That included negotiating with Gay’s Lion Farm for the rental of a lion for her party, maybe a mountain lion—preferably on a leash? Like the one Herman Mankiewicz rented when the Columbia University football team played in the Rose Bowl? (“His alma mater, you know; the fight song is something like ‘Roar, lion, roar.’ If they don’t have one, tell them a goat will do as well. Honey, whatever it is, will you pick it up?”)

Andy loved that.

Carole surprised Julie one afternoon. “Any chance I can read some of your work?” she said.

“I have some essays; they’re not really complete,” Julie said, flustered.

“Well, get moving. You’re too smart to be fielding Louella Parsons and hauling goats around town for very long.”

She brought some material the next day, blathering something about how these were drafts, works in progress, that sort of thing, until Carole cut her off.

“Cripes, your English teacher liked it, right? Don’t apologize in advance, just read.” Carole did her usual, flopping down on the sofa, closing her eyes, and putting her feet up.

Julie chose a treatment for a story about a campus murder endowed with what her professor had called “unusual plot twists” that got her an A in his class. It didn’t sound so great as she read. It sounded schoolgirlish.

She finished and put it down, annoyed with herself for ever having boasted to Carole about her writing prowess.

“Not bad,” Carole said calmly. “Want to practice? Try writing a scene for Gone with the Wind. Lord knows, David has everybody else in town working on it.”

“Are you serious?”

“Why not? Be audacious. You don’t have to show anybody unless you want to. And don’t wring your hands over it—it’s not all about writing something brilliant. You have to put together a good act. Inhale the damn thing. Then become it. Hell, that’s what actors do.” She looked steadily at Julie, her expression thoughtful, and changed the subject. “Are you related to the Crawfords who used to own half of Fort Wayne?” she asked.

Julie flushed. She didn’t want to be labeled again; she had spent enough time living down her lineage. She nodded reluctantly.

“Well, well. I’ll keep your secret, dear.”

“I don’t have a secret,” Julie said, startled.

“You’re trying to unstick yourself from a pretty important and stodgy family and figure out your own life, am I right?”

“How do you know?”

“Honey, out here, we’re all peeling off something. It’s a toss-up over who has the most baggage—a high-school dropout like my Clark, or a girl from Smith.”

The next evening, Julie ran the idea by Andy of writing a Gone with the Wind scene, knowing he would listen, but not sure whether she would get a funny, cynical response that would make her laugh. He had been too busy for dinner the past few days, and she missed him. Some dispute between the Screen Writers Guild and the studios, he said. Ostensibly about pay. Whether the communists were infiltrating the guild was the real issue. “We weave in and out of the real world in this racket,” he said with a shrug. He was obviously not interested in saying more. The first day of principal shooting was rapidly approaching, and he was absorbed with work. Part of his job was tracking and organizing production logistics for the movie, and she could see the strain on his face.

He did listen, nodding with the gravity of any one of her professors, making no disparaging comments this time about a writer’s fate.

“Carole’s a smart broad,” he said.

“Is that a compliment?”

“You better believe it.”

She felt emboldened. “What about me?”

“If you weren’t, I wouldn’t be wasting my time with you.”

“And if you weren’t smart and funny and kind, I wouldn’t be wasting my time with you.”

A ghost of a smile—a flicker of that elusive shadow she could never quite pin down. “Good girl,” he said.

It was late by the time Andy drove her home, taking the long way, along the undulating road known as Mulholland Drive, high above Sunset Boulevard. He had lapsed into silence. It was as if he were somewhere else, and she wondered if something had gone wrong between them.

“Andy, are you here?” she said, touching his shoulder after several moments of silence had gone by. “Everything okay?”

Without comment, Andy steered the car into a clearing that overlooked the lights of the city on one side, the San Fernando Valley on the other. He pulled on the brake. She loved this view—the sweep of the city, the glittering lights all the way to the unseen night sea at the horizon. She loved smelling winter wildflowers scattered through the dry brush. But right now her heart was hammering in a peculiar way, and she waited.

He clicked off the ignition. “I’m worried about Gone with the Wind.”

She felt a guilty surge of relief. “What’s happened?”

“I’m not sure this movie is ever going to get made,” he said slowly. “Selznick is brilliant—he’s the best in the business—but his need to control everything has gone past rational limits.”

“Isn’t that his strength?”

“Sure. And don’t get me wrong: I love my job. Working with a genius like Selznick is usually just plain fun.”

“Sometimes you hide that well,” she teased.

“I’m part cynic and part schoolboy,” he said with a small sigh. “But I’m worried that he loses perspective.”

“Like when?”

“Biggest one? Ignoring the objections of Negroes—and their papers, like the Los Angeles Sentinel. Ever look at it?”

Julie shook her head, feeling guilty.

“It’s not as if they’re all angry because we’re making the movie—hell, Negro actors are thrilled for the work. And their newspapers, organizations—they don’t all want the same thing. But he’s got to listen better.”

Julie thought of the book. “They’re all happy ‘darkies,’ and no one’s too worried about slavery. Is that it?”

He looked at her and smiled. “Pretty obvious, isn’t it?” His smile quickly faded. “That’s just one example. He’s obsessed with this story. He can’t let a single detail go, and it could kill him. If this movie falls apart, we’ll all crash.” He put his head back and closed his eyes. “The damn script—all the different versions—fill four suitcases. Nothing is good enough for Selznick. Do you know how many women he’s considered to play Scarlett? Just about every major actress in Hollywood, plus hundreds more. At least he isn’t testing all of them. We’re already two years behind schedule.”

He didn’t seem to need any further response from her, which was good, because she could think of nothing to say. But she felt comforted that he would tell her all this.

“Did you read what Gary Cooper told Louella this week? Said the damn movie was going to be a flop, and he was glad it was Gable who was going to fall on his face, not him.”

“Maybe he just wishes he had accepted the part of Rhett Butler instead of turning it down,” she said.

That brought another flicker of a smile. “Could be, but it feeds all the bastards who want Selznick to fail. You know how he got Gable for the part? Convinced MGM to ante up an extra fifty thousand to pay off that stubborn wife who won’t give him a divorce. She says it isn’t enough, she wants more—one reason Gable is always in a foul mood.” Andy folded his arms across the steering wheel and stared at the glittering lights below. He looked so dejected, Julie reached out and touched his hand.

“Sorry, I’m not great company,” he said, turning to her. “It’s the cost of working with a true gambler who also happens to be a genius, I guess.” He paused, then added, almost wonderingly, “You know, if one thing had gone wrong in the burning-of-Atlanta scene—just one thing—it would all have been over.”

He was so close, and surely in need of comfort. Everything in her scolded against what she wanted to do, that it was not proper, but why shouldn’t a woman act first?

She moved forward and kissed him hesitantly on the lips.

He didn’t respond for a second or two. Then, with a sigh, he pulled her into his arms. The first thing she registered was that his lips smelled faintly of tobacco. The second was, how good they tasted.

He drew back sooner than she wanted. “Can’t take advantage of a girl like you in the old Hollywood way,” he said, cupping her head in his hands, dropping a gentle kiss on her nose.

“Why not?” she asked recklessly.

“It would be too much of a cliché,” he said. “You know, don’t you, this is the classic spot in L.A. for discreet deflowering?”

She started to speak, but he put a finger to her mouth. “Don’t tell me, I don’t want to know if you’re a virgin or not.”

“Andy—”

He kissed her again, and then slowly pulled away. “Time to take you home, Miss Julie Crawford,” he said.

Julie didn’t know whether to be embarrassed at her own temerity or hurt by his rejection. She was twelve years younger than he was, but she wasn’t a child. They had only known each other for a month, it was true. She fought consternation as they made their way down the winding mountain road—he must be terribly worried, he was burdened by responsibilities, she wanted to help him—but concluded finally that he simply might not be attracted to her. That was devastating. She thought of him all the time. She stared out the window as he chatted about the weather, about the movie. She didn’t look at him, just focusing instead on the headlights of drivers on the other side of the looping curves of Sunset Boulevard, growing increasingly miserable. Was this all there was?

They reached the rooming house. She turned to him, first putting her hand firmly on the door handle. “Don’t get out,” she said coolly. “You obviously don’t take me seriously. I’m fine getting up to the door on my own.”

“On the contrary, Miss Crawford,” he said. “I take you very seriously.”

“It doesn’t seem like it to me.”

He reached out and pushed back a lock of hair from her face, then traced her lips with a finger. “You’ll either see it or you won’t,” he said. “Time will tell.”

She couldn’t think of a thing to say. “Good night,” she managed lamely.

Rose was already asleep when she undressed and slipped into bed. Had Rose heard anything yet about her screen test? Julie wondered. She’d have to wait until morning to find out. Just as well. Her own thoughts were too mixed up for her to concentrate on anything tonight. Andy had invited her in, and then pushed her out.

The thought did occur to her later, just before she fell off to sleep, that if her father knew how properly Andy Weinstein had behaved up on Mulholland Drive, there might have been a faint thaw in what she knew would be his icy disapproval.

Somewhere near the end of the week, Selznick triumphantly announced his choice for Scarlett O’Hara: it was indeed to be that beautiful little English actress Julie had seen on the platform the night he burned down Atlanta, Vivien Leigh.

Rose was unfazed. “I never dreamed I would get it,” she said, “but I’ve had a wonderful time.”

“You’re handling it much more calmly than I would,” Julie said.

“Better not to want anything too much,” Rose responded. Still, a flicker of wistfulness tugged at her face. “You know who was tested just before me?” she said. “Vivien Leigh. The wardrobe mistress told me they sneaked her in, hardly anybody knew.”

“Did you see her?”

“No. But they put me in the same dress; the wardrobe lady told me that. And you know what? It was still warm.” Rose lifted two delicate fingers, pressing them together. “I was that close,” she said, beaming.

The red earth of the Back Forty rumbled with the sound of trucks and hammers and the shouts of workmen hauling paint and plasterboard and roof tiles and paper chandeliers and everything else Selznick demanded. Julie often spied Susan Myrick, a Georgia journalist and friend of Margaret Mitchell’s, who was here to make sure Hollywood didn’t tamper too much with her old friend’s depiction of the antebellum South. She was a woman of serious demeanor, never without a copy of Gone with the Wind in her hand, and Julie was too much in awe to approach her. Myrick had already objected to a proposed scene of slaves cutting cotton in April—wrong time of the year, she announced to Selznick. And Scarlett could not carry a bowl of olives into the dining room, because olives were not grown on Georgia plantations. But Myrick lost her fight to build Tara without columns—which were never envisioned by Mitchell—to a stubborn Selznick, who conceded only to making them Georgia style—square, not round.

And now here it was, in front of Julie—the home of Scarlett O’Hara, a pillared white mansion standing proud and seemingly unbreakable. Unless you blew too heavily. That was the joke, but you only heard it from the construction workers.

A fairy-tale city was taking shape on this sweep of land, so amazing that Julie could, at least once in a while, get Andy out of her thoughts. The rapidly growing set was impervious to the honking horns and grubby hurrying of Culver City. It wasn’t just Tara: a network of the streets and houses of Atlanta was springing up, and the scene expanded every day.

Each morning, she pulled herself from bed and joined the cleaning ladies and the plumbers and other sleepy travelers on the 5:00 a.m. bus to get to the studio early. That way, she could step onto the back lot alone and be in the old South and feel the magical world of Gone with the Wind come to life. In front of Tara, the trees that had been fashioned over telephone poles looked real, and if she hadn’t known the dogwood blossoms were made of white paper, the illusion would have been complete. It just took believing. She loved watching it grow—over fifty building façades now, and two miles of streets. It didn’t matter that she walked in a landscape of glued plasterboard, a place of fake structures held together by little more than Selznick’s frenzied dreams. It was vividly real.

And—if she came early enough—deserted. So the morning she saw a sole figure standing in front of Scarlett’s home, hands shoved in his pockets, hunched forward, collar up against the cold, it almost felt like an intrusion on her personal territory. Until she realized who it was.

David Selznick glanced up and saw her. She was shocked at how strained and spidered with red his eyes were. He looked like a man who didn’t sleep. There were rumors that he was living on Benzedrine and gambling every night until three in the morning, and that his marriage was shaky. All this before principal filming had even begun. But his passion for perfection was legendary: Horses’ tails had to be cropped in exactly the fashion of the Civil War; furniture had to be aged so it looked authentic. The gowns and uniforms had to be exact replicas of Civil War clothing, and not just the clothing that would show. Vivien Leigh was complaining vigorously about the dauntingly rigid whalebone corset she would be forced to wear, to no avail. The edict from Selznick was firm.

“Spectacular, isn’t it?” he said, looking at her without a glimmer of recognition.

“Yes,” she said.

“Every goddamn critic in town says I’m a jackass for taking this on. So what do they think gets accomplished if somebody with guts doesn’t roll the dice every now and then?” He was staring at Tara now.

Was he talking to himself? She stepped back, sure now she had intruded on a soliloquy.

“We start shooting tomorrow,” he said. “Right here. Scarlett will sit on those steps. I’m going to make a movie nobody will ever forget.” He beckoned to her. “Come on, take a peek at history in the making.”

There didn’t seem to be any option, so Julie followed him up the stairs. He reached out to touch the knob on the door that was supposed to open onto the front hall of Tara, then pulled back.

“It’s not much more than cardboard,” he said with an offhand shrug, “but more real to me than a lot of damn things around here.”

Julie stayed silent. He wasn’t expecting a reply.

“Hell, nothing wrong with a good façade,” he continued. “Just like everything else in Hollywood. It’s enough for me.”

Without another word, he turned, walked slowly down the steps, and strode away.