Julie’s eyes were stinging and her head throbbed the next morning as she dragged herself from bed and made her way to the bathroom. She stopped, toothbrush in hand, staring at the windowsill of the common room. Shoved up against the glass was an old Standard Corona typewriter someone had decided to discard. Its keys were yellowed and the return bar was hanging by a single screw, but it sat tall and unbowed in worn dignity, waiting to be picked up by the trashman.

It was like getting a late Christmas present. She reached out and punched a few keys. The ribbon, though faint, still had ink. There was a desk below the window, and, tentatively, she opened a drawer. Yes, paper. Bright, shiny, empty white paper. Very carefully, she rolled a sheet into the typewriter, stared at it for a moment, and then began typing. Slowly.

An hour passed before, with a start, Julie checked the time. Lord, she was late; she still hadn’t brushed her teeth or showered.

But, even hurrying for the bus twenty minutes later, she had to force herself to push away her own thoughts and try to focus on the latest travails of Gone with the Wind. Pay attention, she told herself. This might be Selznick just getting rid of Cukor to please Gable, but the ramifications were huge. Unless Selznick named another director quickly, there were going to be some decent people fired today, people without the high salaries of actors and actresses—secretaries, script girls, gaffers—all of them in jobs that put food on the table for families no moviegoer would ever know.

She walked up the driveway to the antebellum headquarters of Selznick International, seeing small knots of workers clustered together on the grounds outside, some glancing over their shoulders, as if waiting for a blow. Several women held handkerchiefs to their eyes.

Inside the central publicity office, everyone moved back and forth aimlessly. Through Selznick’s open door, Julie saw Olivia de Havilland and Vivien Leigh standing in front of the producer’s desk, alternately crying and pleading for Cukor. Both were dressed, head to toe, in black.

“They heard the news while getting ready to film the scene in the Atlanta Bazaar,” Rose whispered. She made no mention of Julie’s late arrival; it occurred to Julie that her friend might not have been fully asleep when she tiptoed in late last night.

“David, David, we need George,” Olivia said, weeping, raising her voice so all could hear. She tore off her somber black bonnet and threw it on Selznick’s desk. “We thought we were dressing for a movie scene, and now we find we are mourning our director? For God’s sake, David—George is the heart and soul of Gone with the Wind! You can’t fire him!”

“I believe I have that prerogative,” Selznick responded dryly. He walked to the door and shut it, gently but firmly.

“He won’t budge,” Doris said. She was sitting at her desk, staring at the door, a tight smile on her face. “They can plead all they want; nothing will change. He’s shutting down production for now. Just to scare everybody.” She turned her head; Andy was standing behind her. “So who do you think?” she said.

“That’s easy. Fleming. He’s wrapping The Wizard of Oz.”

Doris nodded, satisfied. “My call, too.”

“Want to bet how soon?”

“Two weeks. Ten gets you a hundred.”

“And a side one on whether Vivien and Olivia donned that funeral garb purposely to make their plea more dramatic?”

Doris laughed. “Yeah, I thought of that.”

Julie felt suddenly impatient with their insider smugness. “Well, may the best man win,” she said. “Obviously, you don’t need me for this conversation.” She turned to leave, and made it to the front door before Andy caught her by the hand.

“Hey, what’s the matter?” he said.

“I’m tired of being ignored by the two of you.”

A slow smile spread across his face. Making a fist, he gently tapped her chin. “What’s this? A little jealousy?”

She flushed. She tried to tell herself she had no claim on this man. But her eyes filled. “We shared something.…” She stopped.

He stared at her reflectively, his eyes traveling over her face. “You are a decent kid,” he said.

She could think of nothing to say.

“Listen, I’ve got an idea,” he said. “Let’s get out of here for the afternoon. I want to take you somewhere, somewhere special. Anything on your list?”

“You’re serious?” Carole had told her she could take the day off.

“They don’t need me here for the lamentations. George will survive. So will the movie. Give me some glamorous destination and I’ll take you there. Lawry’s? Du-Par’s? Brown Derby? Malibu? Gilmore Field? It isn’t officially open yet, but The Hollywood Stars are practicing today. Somewhere you haven’t been before. What do you say?”

“Okay.” She loved his sudden animation. Her uncertainty began to lift. “Let me think.…” But she knew. “You’re going to laugh,” she warned.

“No, I’ll hide my amusement, I promise.”

“The sign. The one on the hill that says Hollywoodland. Can we get close to it?”

For an instant he looked surprised, then wary. “Is that really what you want to do?” he said.

“Yes. I want to see it up close.”

Was it her imagination, or did he seem to waver? “You wanted me to choose Gilmore Field?” she teased.

“It’s more impressive than the sign,” he said.

“But not as glamorous a place to a girl from Indiana.”

He hesitated a beat or two longer than she expected before reaching out and taking her hand.

“Okay, kid, your choice. Let’s go.”

Within an hour, they were winding and twisting up a hillside, along Beachwood Canyon, into the Hollywood Hills. “If I’m your tour guide, want some statistics?” he asked. He seemed to be forcing an effort to exhibit his earlier buoyancy.

She nodded. She was catching glimpses of the sign as they rounded curves, and realized already that it was larger than she had expected. Maybe she was showing her provincialism, but it was a thrill to get up close to this Hollywood icon.

“Each one of those big white metal letters is fifty feet high and thirty feet wide. Put up in ’23 as a sales tool for a subdivision. Don’t know how many lots they sold, but it was a great promo for the movies,” he said, pointing. “Just around another curve or two and you’ll see what I’m talking about.”

She looked around. What a beautiful, deserted place this was—holly bushes clustered close to the road, oak trees, even scatterings of bright-red poppies. Everything seemed to thrive here, without the bleak, snowy winters of the Midwest. She was not going back. She would find a way to become a screenwriter. Her thoughts returned to the pages she had banged out that morning on the old typewriter. How amazing and exciting it was to see a wisp of an idea take shape.

Andy pulled abruptly to the side of the narrow road. “Look up there,” he said. “Close enough?” His voice was trying to lighten. “Can we go now? I’m getting hungry, and there are no restaurants up here.”

She peered through the windshield glass. HOLLYWOODLAND. It was bigger than she had expected. Its size was like a shout, a bellow of grandeur. It dwarfed the few homes on the slope of the hill, diminishing them into dollhouses. It was stunning.

“Can we get closer?” she asked.

Without answering, Andy put the car in gear and kept climbing. Then he suddenly twisted the wheel, turned off onto a dirt path, and pushed down hard on the gas pedal. “Sorry, it’ll be a bit bumpy from here.”

The sign loomed over them now, so close Julie could see the tangle of worn wiring that held the metal squares to each other. Some of the squares, shabby and dented, dangled precariously in place, shivering with every breath of wind. At the far end, a tall ladder in back of the “H” reached a full fifty feet to the top.

Andy pulled up in back of the sign and turned off the engine; he stared at the ladder, his face still.

“It doesn’t look cared for,” she said, disappointed.

“The real-estate company isn’t bothering anymore. Doesn’t matter—not many people get this close up. Seen enough?”

She was determined to hold on to her initial mood. “I’ll bet it still has the best view in town.” She pointed to the ladder. “Somebody must climb up there; otherwise, why the ladder?”

“There’s a caretaker. He’s around here somewhere, old guy who lives in a shed up the hill. He’ll probably be out of a job soon.”

She cast him an arch look. “You seem to know quite a lot about this place. Been here often?”

He shook his head slowly. “Once was enough.”

“You can be as terse as a real cowboy,” she said. She opened the door and jumped out of the car, beckoning to him. There were too many constraints in her mind and her heart; she felt like defying them. “Come on, let’s do something adventurous—just a little daring?”

He got out of the car as she ran over to the ladder. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m going to climb the ladder,” she said gaily. “Come on, Andy, do it with me!” She put a foot on the bottom rung and started climbing. “Have you climbed it before?”

He leaned backward, staring up to the top. “No.”

“Well, why not? Anyway, it’s my turn. Let’s go, okay?” She went up a few more steps, then paused a bit as she stared upward, determined not to dissolve into a nervous Nellie.

Moving swiftly to her side, Andy put his hand on the rung over hers. “No,” he said, more forcefully than was necessary.

“Why not? Fear of heights?”

He managed a taut smile. “What proper young lady from Indiana wants a man climbing a ladder, looking up her dress?”

It didn’t quite come off as a joke.

“Look, let’s sit in front of the sign instead and wave to all the scurrying masses below who will be—coincidentally—looking up at us. Must be a metaphor in all that,” he said. His hand still gripped the rung, blocking her path up.

She wanted the lighthearted Andy back. “Okay,” she said, stepping back to the grass.

His face relaxed. Gently, he took her hand and led her around the shaky bottom plates of the first “O” to the steep rim of the cliff; here they settled in, backs against the scaffolding.

“I don’t want to spoil this for you, but I have to tell you something,” he said.

Her voice caught. “What is it?”

“A woman climbed up that ladder and jumped off this sign a few years ago. Killed herself.”

“Oh God, Andy, that’s terrible. Who was she?”

“Just a young kid dreaming of making it big in Hollywood. She got turned down for a part in a big movie and some say she couldn’t take the pressure.”

“Did you know her?”

“Saw her around the studio, said hello a few times.” He looked up at the flapping letters above them. “This place is such hokum. The whole town is hokum.”

A slight wind curled through the brush and up to the sign, setting the loose panels behind them flapping against each other in a tinny cacophony of sound. They sat quietly, listening to the wind, staring down to the valley.

“Are you still enamored with Carole and Clark?” he asked.

“I think they’ll get married as soon as they can,” she said. “They truly are in love.”

He was silent for a moment. And she realized how she yearned for that word to mean something to him. “Please, don’t mock,” she said.

He squeezed her shoulder and pulled her close. “I’m not saying they aren’t, but that doesn’t mean much here. Actors pay attention to each other for a while, and then they get back to feeding their public selves.”

“God, Andy—”

“Look, hunger is real. But hunger here is different.”

She sat in silence. It made little sense now to tell him about her idea this morning that had turned into twenty pages of typing. She had felt inspired; he would roll his eyes and laugh. Maybe later. After she wrote another draft. Maybe his attitude was exacerbated by Cukor’s firing.

“Are you worried about your job?” she asked.

“Sometimes. But I stay sane by not believing anything here is worth getting frantic about,” he said. “Do you understand how this works? Selznick wants to scare the hell out of everybody; he wants the town to hold its collective breath. Then he’ll hire Victor Fleming. Louella and all the other sycophants will hail it as a brilliant decision, and Gone with the Wind will sail through, with hosannas to Selznick. His whole goal is to take over the movie himself. Listen”—he chuckled—“if he could, David would play Scarlett. Anything to give him total control.”

“He’s your boss. I don’t care about the movie, I care about you.”

He gave her a light kiss on the forehead. “So are we done with this little venture?”

“You’re changing the subject.”

“What’s your wish, my lady?”

“I’m thinking about that poor girl who jumped off the sign. How alone she must have felt.”

“Right. The fact is, despair comes too easy here.” His hands cupped her head, his face leaning close to hers. She could have sworn he moved to cover her ears against the almost seductive, rhythmic sound of the wind on the metal plates of HOLLYWOODLAND.

“We did share something special last night,” he said quietly. “I’m not good at saying that kind of thing. But for you, yes. Julie …”

She closed her eyes. It wasn’t going to vanish; she would not have to pretend their lovemaking had been casual or even unimportant. “It meant a lot to me,” she whispered.

“I know,” he said, his voice gentle. “Tonight?”

“Yes.”

“And—”

“What?”

“You don’t have to be so determined to lose your virginity this time. Relax.”

She giggled. And relaxed. And as he kissed her, with a moan of what could be pleasure or sadness, as the wind coiled past them, with the city at their feet, she wondered about all the girls who came here with plans and dreams, and whether hers were as unreal as theirs.

Carole’s Bel-Air home was in its usual chaos Wednesday morning. Julie couldn’t imagine anything else, not with the two dachshunds, a Pekingese, a cocker spaniel, a rooster, two ducks, and a cat named Josephine who insisted on sleeping with the dogs, whether they liked it or not. All had the run of the house except in the living room, with its white carpet.

“I do have my standards,” Carole said to Julie without a trace of self-mockery. One of the ducks quacked and fluttered across her feet. Laughing, Carole scooped it up and surprised the poor creature with a kiss. The duck fluttered away, and Carole turned to Julie. “You’re gonna get tired of hearing it, but I’m in heaven,” she said.

Julie couldn’t resist. She reached out and hugged this ebullient woman who never spoke in riddles, dissembled, or dodged a question—a hug immediately and exuberantly returned.

“Let’s talk about your job,” Carole said, stepping back as the cocker spaniel streaked past, chasing the cat. “Are you happy with it?”

Julie smiled. “I like working for you,” she said. “The truth is—I don’t have much to do.”

“You’re promoted now to companion, secretary, adviser—”

“Adviser?”

“Okay: should the living room remain off-limits to the animals?”

“Yes.”

“See? You just advised me. Have you started writing something?”

Julie nodded, suddenly shy.

“For Gone with the Wind?”

“No. It’s something different.”

“Can I press?”

“I don’t know,” Julie said, groping a bit. “It’s about surviving in a fantasy world. I’m not sure myself yet.”

“Don’t show anyone yet, but keep at it. You’re not going to hang around here forever.”

“I’d rather be here than in Fort Wayne,” Julie said.

Carole smiled. Their mutual distaste for their hometown had already formed a bond. “Honey, me, too,” she said, then added, more slowly, “I still see the faces of those poor devils begging on the streets in ’29, when I went back to see my grandparents. Half the country was out of work. What are your parents like? They did send you to a fancy college, right?”

Julie’s thoughts briefly took her back home. Her parents were good people; they had done their best. She would not have gone to college except for her father’s determination to shape her as a son, not as a daughter, and she would not be here if her mother hadn’t dreamed of making it in the movies herself. That revelation—the day she left—had come as a surprise. And so did one more. As her mother kissed her goodbye at the train station, hugging her tight, the scent of Chanel N° 5 wrapping around Julie, she had whispered, “They are all Democrats in Hollywood, dear. Don’t tell your father, but I voted for Mr. Roosevelt.”

“It was kind of abrupt,” Julie said after relating this to Carole, starting to laugh. “It was as if she had just told me her innermost secret.”

Carole hooted at the story. “So your mother has a mind of her own,” she said, “even if she has to hide it.”

“Were you sorry to hear about Cukor?” Julie asked tentatively.

“Nope.” Carole was brisk. “George will be fine, but David will get a better performance from Clark with a new director, and that’s good for the movie.” She shook her head. “God, my man is so wonderfully clumsy. You know he can’t dance?”

Julie shook her head.

“I sent him a full ballet outfit with oversized toe shoes when he was making Idiot’s Delight to help him laugh and loosen up for the dancing in that one,” Carole said. “But he’s terrified about the ballroom scene in Gone with the Wind. I’ve been trying to teach him, but he is so adorably shy.” She began a mock waltz around the room with an imaginary partner: “One-two-three, one-two-three,” she intoned, dipping and swirling. Then a sudden squawk. “Clark, you’re stepping on my foot!”

Julie started to giggle, but suddenly there was the sound of throat clearing. They both looked up, and there was Clark, standing in the doorway. His cheeks were red. “Am I that bad?” he asked in an embarrassed voice.

In answer, Carole threw out her arms and walked toward him. “Julie, turn on the phonograph, will you?” she said gently.

Julie moved quickly to the new Decca console next to the sofa. There was a Bing Crosby record on the turntable. She switched the phonograph on and carefully put the needle on the disk. The singer’s lazy, velvet voice immediately swirled into the room, crooning a familiar song. What was it? It was “The Shadow Waltz.” Clark had his arms out awkwardly now, clutching Carole as she coaxed him into a dance. He swore under his breath, looking down at his feet. “Can’t get the damn things to move properly,” he said.

“Look at me, not the floor,” Carole commanded. “Just listen to the music; I’ll dodge your feet.”

Julie sat quietly and watched Carole gently guide Clark around the room, murmuring encouragement. It took a few minutes, but his rigid shoulders finally began to relent. Yes, he was listening to the music. He pulled Carole closer, kissed her ear. “Only for you, Ma,” he mumbled. “Only for you.”

When the record was over, the needle kept scratching back and forth. Julie lifted the arm up and put it back in place.

Clark had a devilish look in his eye as he glanced at Julie. “So—you think I’m ready to twirl Scarlett around in the ballroom scene?” he asked.

“Um …” Julie tried not to smile.

But Carole was already laughing. “Julie, you ignore him; he’s teasing. Anyway, it’s all been resolved.” She beckoned to a servant who appeared at the door carrying a tray of tea and cookies, and sank into a chair, rubbing her feet.

“It has?”

“Victor is having a rotating platform built,” she said. “All Clark has to do is stand there with Scarlett in his arms and twirl away.”

“Victor?”

Carole shot a quick glance at Clark, who shrugged his shoulders. “Whoops, not announced yet,” she said. “Victor Fleming, of course.”

Just as Andy had predicted. They both looked a little chagrined at the slip.

“That was quick. When was it decided?” Julie asked.

“Oh, a long time ago. It’s just that nobody told George.”

“But that’s not fair.”

“Don’t feel too sorry for him,” Clark broke in. “Vivien and Olivia are already sneaking over to his house for private coaching. Everybody catches their breath, I’m happy, and the movie gets made.”

“Andy said the same thing.”

“He’s seen a lot of scenarios play out,” Carole said. “An interesting man, even if he carries something of a burden on his back.”

“Something of a burden? What do you mean?”

“Oh, the usual Hollywood angst. You’ve had a peek at it.” Carole’s tone turned brisk and bright as she went on to chatter about the stack of bills mixed in with the fan mail, and how glad she was that Julie would sort through it and make sure she didn’t send a signed photograph to the electric company and fifty-five dollars to a movie fan.

“I don’t know which would be more surprised—it might be fun to find out. Then again …” She laughed and beckoned Julie to follow her outside. “Let’s pot some chrysanthemums; isn’t that a ridiculous name for a flower?”

Julie smiled, but wondered. This was the first time she had sensed Carole dodging a topic. And it was about Andy.