The weeks passed quietly, the California sun making its way through the usual milky haze that draped itself like a blanket over Los Angeles each morning, shining brightly through the afternoon, and sinking promptly when it was supposed to. Carole was on a publicity tour for Made for Each Other. Andy and Clark were engrossed in the daily ups and downs of Gone with the Wind. This gave Julie hours of free time to work on her script, and she could hardly pull herself away from the old Corona typewriter that no one else seemed interested in using. Her story had a structure now—it was growing; it was getting better. She loved the work, the discipline. Every word had to be carefully chosen, had to carry forward the characters and the plot. Some nights she was excited; then, when day rolled around again, she would find herself seeing all the faults, all the stupid words, and she would tear the latest draft to pieces.

She mentioned this to Carole in a low moment.

“Nothing bad about that,” Carole said with a bright smile. “You’ll throw away garbage that you first thought was profound, and on you’ll toil until you create something decent.” She started laughing. “Honey, that’s the way it works for all of us.”

Sometimes Julie was able to go on set and watch the filming of the movie that anchored all of their lives. It was a chance to see Andy work, which helped her understand why he seemed more tense these days. She wondered what had been sacrificed by firing Cukor. Fleming seemed constantly distraught—especially when he found out Selznick had planted a spy, the continuity girl. Her job was to report any deviation from Selznick’s blitz of daily orders, but everyone knew who she was. She looked like a gray mouse trying to hide in the baseboards as she scuttled around the set.

Andy shrugged it off on the infrequent nights when he was free for dinner, but the tension didn’t leave his face. “Selznick is up to his old tricks, complaining about everything, sending instructions to Fleming. He doesn’t like the color quality of the takes; Fleming says it’s those damn Technicolor cameras, can’t get good angles using them. Doesn’t matter—he’s stuck with them.”

“Do you actually like your boss, or not?” Julie asked. “I’m never quite sure.”

Andy seemed surprised at the question. “Sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t,” he said. “But I respect him. And he’s taught me a lot.”

“Not to be an egomaniac, I hope,” she said.

He raised a hand and gently tweaked her ear. “What do you think, kid?”

She laughed. They were at his house, in the kitchen, spooning spaghetti and meatballs into crockery bowls. To her surprise, she had found that Andy actually liked to cook. At some point, she should confess to him how much she hated dicing and chopping and reading recipes; she should admit that she always forgot something essential, like garlic, or even onion. It wasn’t a character flaw a woman was supposed to admit to, but there it was. Confession would come later; right now, she was contentedly—and safely—slicing a loaf of French bread.

“Look, I know I’ve been pretty absent lately, but I’ve got a place I want to take you,” he said. “Somewhere special.”

“Don’t tell me, let me guess—a movie premiere? A Hollywood party?” she teased.

“The new ballpark. I’ve got great tickets. Want to come?”

“For what?”

“Baseball, of course,” he said, looking slightly surprised at her ignorance. “Don’t you like baseball?”

She started to nod her head, and saw the sly gleam in his eye. “Absolutely,” she said promptly. “I know what a home run is, and I know three strikes mean you’re out. After that, what is there?”

The gleam in his eye spread to a full grin. “Good, you’re not pretending. Listen, come with me. It’s more than a Saturday game; it’s the first time the Stars play in that ballpark.” He was suddenly earnest. “There’s nothing like it, Julie.”

If she had hated the game, her answer would be no different. “Sure, I’ll go,” she said.

Saturday morning. Andy grabbed her hand, nodding toward the streetcar tracks. “Okay, kid, let’s run like hell,” he muttered.

They ran. Julie was grateful for the tennis shoes borrowed from Rose, which allowed her to keep up, jumping over curbs, dodging a few cars, gasping as they got closer and closer to the big red streetcar on the tracks ahead. They managed to scramble aboard the car, already jammed with jovial, shouting passengers, just as the bell clanged and the driver began slowly pulling out, to clatter and bump through the streets of Los Angeles to the newly opened Gilmore Field.

“If we’d missed this car, we would’ve missed the start of the game, which would be a disaster,” Andy said with an excited laugh, pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket to wipe his forehead as they hung on to the overhead straps.

“No disasters today,” Julie yelled over the clamor of the crowded streetcar.

“Not here anyway.” Andy leaned over at that moment and kissed her on the lips.

So familiar now, the taste and feel of his mouth on hers. She swayed with the streetcar, inhaling the smoke and laughter all around her, glad she was here. Andy seemed to have shrugged off care. He was like a boy today, and she loved it.

Twenty minutes later, the streetcar bell clanged loudly, and the driver lurched to a stop. Andy bent down to peer out the window.

“We here yet?” Andy called to the driver.

“You better believe it, buddy!” yelled a man up near the door. “Look at that ballpark!”

“Let’s go.” Andy took Julie by the hand, and they made their way down the streetcar steps with all the other baseball fans. She could see the Farmers Market, just off of Fairfax Avenue. She had once wandered around its array of tiny stalls with their bright canvas covers, inhaling the smells of fresh oranges, taffy candy, and enchiladas, amazed to find a market of such simple, rural nature in Los Angeles. Even now, she would have been tempted to suggest they stop for ice cream at one of the stalls, but that was before she looked up and saw the new stadium ahead of them. Who couldn’t be impressed? It gleamed white, its walls rising high, and she imagined it beckoning seductively to the hordes hurrying toward its interior. She glanced at Andy. His face was open and expectant as he tugged her along, slipping them both expertly through the swelling crowd, turning one way, then another, to get inside faster. By the time they reached a ticket stall, the line of people filing into the ballpark was huge.

“Do you know what you’re going to be seeing first?” he asked.

“Tell me,” she said.

“Wait until we walk up the ramp—the one ahead?” He pointed. His face glowed with pleasure. “I love the moment just before I see any baseball field. It’s wonderful. You hear the voices, feel the excitement.…” By this time they were walking up the ramp. “Now, watch,” he said, his voice almost reverent.

Two more steps, and she saw. The shadows cast by the bleachers parted like heavy theatrical drapes, presenting the field in all its dazzling glory: a richly vibrant hue, as green as the finest emerald. White baselines cut crisply across the field, turning it into a Mondrian painting. The stands were filling with people, music was playing, vendors of beer and hot dogs were hawking their wares. All this, under a bright sun in a clear blue sky that seemed to touch the field with a kiss.

She heard Andy’s sharp intake of breath.

“This is my way of going to church,” he said. “Does that shock you?”

“No, not shock me.” She thought about it. “But why?”

“Faith and religion, they’re timeless, right? So is a baseball game. It’s the only major sport with no time limit. No clock running out. I love that. I love the timelessness of it.”

“Because it makes anything possible?” she asked.

“Yeah, I guess that’s right.” He looked at her with sharpened interest. “You get that?”

“It’s new to me, but, yes, I think I get it.” What mattered most was this precious glimpse of Andy unweighted by irony. It did occur to her that, if it took a baseball field to give her a peek inside this man, wasn’t that itself ironic?

They were in the ballpark now, stepping carefully down the narrow steps to one of the front rows. Andy was whistling for the vendors even as they threaded their way through the crowd to their seats behind home plate—“Two beers,” he yelled; then, “Two hot dogs!” as they settled in. “Look how close we are,” he said happily. “This is going to be a great ballpark.” He sat down, pushing back unruly hair. “See anybody familiar down on the field?”

She peered and saw a man dancing around the field, pretending to hit an invisible ball with an oversized bat. “Who is he?” she asked.

“Oh, just some actor mugging for the crowd. He’s doing warm-up, Hollywood style—it’s a tradition,” Andy said, reaching into his pocket for money to pay the vendor. “Look around you, toots—this is going to be Hollywood’s favorite off-duty playground.”

Even as he said it, Julie realized that a frowning, slightly built man swearing and fiddling with a home movie camera in front of them was the singer Rudy Vallee. And two seats over, shouting encouragement, was Bing Crosby. Who was that next to him? She wasn’t positive, squinting into the sunlight, but she thought it was Jack Benny.

“Crosby needs a shave, wouldn’t you say?” Andy asked.

She nodded and smiled as she tried to balance a cold beer in one hand and her hot dog in the other. Except for the actors around them, they could almost be in Fort Wayne. “Why so many movie people?” she asked.

“Because a lot of the big guys own a small piece of the Stars. Bob Cobb—he owns the Brown Derby—bought the team and figured he could get it going by selling stock to DeMille, Crosby, and a lot of others. Team isn’t too good yet, but everybody wants a bite.”

“Do you own a piece?”

He shook his head, pausing for a brief second. “It’s not my crowd,” he said with a certain deliberateness. His eyes brightened. “By the way, want to know who gave us these great tickets today?”

“Sure.”

“Lombard slipped them to me, and there’s the reason why.” He pointed to a tall woman with a set smile sitting a few rows ahead of them. “That, my dear Julie, is Rhea Gable. She got an extra set of tickets in the divorce settlement. Your happy couple will stay happier away from her.” He let out a whoop. “Okay, here we go! Let’s play ball!”

The home team players—dressed in white knickers and socks—were jogging out on the field to the cheers of the crowd. To Julie, they looked oddly pristine for men about to play a running, sliding game like baseball.

“Why are they wearing white?” she asked.

“Home team always wears white,” Andy replied. He gave her an exuberant kiss on the cheek, almost upsetting her beer. “Glad you came, kid.”

She glowed at that. It was proving to be a delicious day, even though the Stars started their decline in the first inning. But in the stands? No posturing, no acting, just half of Hollywood looking as if it belonged more in Fort Wayne than in the movie capital of the world.

The sun was dipping toward the west. It was the top of the ninth, and the Stars were losing, but no one seemed too unhappy, even after the Stars’ hapless pitcher walked a man with the bases full, bringing in a run for the other team.

“Yep, no mirrors, no cameras, except for Vallee’s sixteen-millimeter contraption. What are those guys behind us arguing about?” Andy turned and groaned. “Oh God, politics.”

Two men, a skinny one with a nervous tic that kept his narrow mustache twitching, and a burly type whose bleary eyes reflected the consumption of too much beer on a hot day, were arguing at the top of their lungs over whether President Roosevelt was trying to get the United States into a European war.

“He’ll sneak us into it, you just wait,” said the skinny one.

“He hasn’t got the balls,” scoffed the other. “We’re not going over there.”

“Are you kidding?” The man with the twitching mustache was turning red. “He’s gonna get pushed to it by the goddamn Jews! Why should we go to war for those kikes?”

“Yeah, and what about the kikes over here?” said the one with bleary eyes. He tipped up a can of beer, draining the last of it. “They should go back where they came from.”

Their voices had muted the chatter in the seats nearby. A few people glanced quickly around and then turned away, to stare at the field.

Julie felt Andy’s body tense. “No,” she whispered. “Ignore them. It’s not important.”

But Andy was already on his feet. He turned slowly, took one step up over the seat to the next row, and grabbed the skinny man by the collar. When he twisted his fist, the man’s face turned an even darker red.

“Like to repeat what you just said?” Andy asked.

“Leave me alone.” The man twisted to break free of Andy’s hold.

“Oh, maybe you want to apologize?”

“Get your hands off of me,” the man hissed. “Jew.”

For just a few seconds, the world seemed to stop. Andy’s face was darker and colder than Julie had ever dreamed it could be. He looked capable of anything.

“Andy, no—” she heard herself say.

Suddenly two stadium policemen were on the scene, firmly pulling the man from Andy’s grasp, each taking him by one arm.

“Cool down, mister,” one of them said quietly to Andy. “We’ve had our eye on these two, we’ll handle it.”

“Hey, why don’t you guys carry this on out in the parking lot?” the other policeman said loudly to the two drunks. “Maybe we can get a telegram off to Roosevelt, telling him what you’ve decided.”

Someone laughed. A nervous, jocular titter. The stillness that followed settled around Julie like a heavy, smothering coat.

Nobody looked at Andy as the stumbling pair were escorted out of the stands and disappeared into the shadowed tunnel.

Andy stared after them, his jaw working.

“Okay, let’s wrap up the game. We’ll be back to fight another day,” yelled a man two rows behind their seats. Then he lowered his voice, muttering to his companion, “The Jewish guy works for Selznick; I’ve seen him around.”

Julie wasn’t sure if Andy had heard. She turned and found him staring at her—still, oddly, with the face of a boy. But a boy hit by something; hit hard.

“Ignore them?” he said. “Did you say ignore them?”

All the way back on the streetcar, Julie tried to find reasonable words to resolve this. The man had been a fool, but challenging him only underscored the ignorance of his words; surely Andy could see that. Besides, he could have been hurt.

Yet, each time she glanced at Andy’s still face, she felt shut out. Oh, they talked. He told her more about the game of baseball, chatted about Fleming’s irritation with Selznick’s interference. He told her about the rapidly growing number of rushes he was viewing every day. “I’ll be going over more of them tonight,” he said easily, looking out the window. “Guess I won’t see you tonight. I’ll get the car and take you to your place.”

“Okay.”

“Anyway, you can use the time to work on your script, right?”

He was trying. Her eyes felt wet.

“Andy, I’m sorry. It was a terrible insult. I wasn’t trying to diminish that, but, yes, I was trying to hold you back.”

He gave her a bleak smile. “It’s not your fault, kid,” he said. “You’ve probably never even heard the word ‘kike.’ I’m the one with the problem.”

She would not tell him, she could not tell him, that she did indeed know the word—had heard it in various settings, usually as a joke, accompanied by laughter. Even at Smith. Giggles, there; whispers, quickly evaporated. It was a hidden word, used only in certain company, never discussed. The man bellowing in back of them at Gilmore Field had roared it out with its full complement of hate, and if she ever heard it again, she would not smile faintly and walk out of the room, nor would she just declare it rude or stupid; she would—she hoped—toss it back, exposed for what it was.

How could she say all this to Andy?

“No, I am,” she said.

He touched her hand then, stroking her fingers. But he said nothing.