“Heard anything yet? I’ve got champagne if you have; a stiff Scotch if you haven’t.”

Carole could make her inquiry sound casual, but, then, she was an actress. She and Julie were measuring the dining room at the ranch for a bear rug Carole had dragged home from an auction, besotted with what she called “the noble head” of the beast.

“Isn’t it gorgeous?” she enthused as they pulled and shoved the dead bear to the middle of the room. “It will fit, of course it will. I want his head—look at those teeth—facing Clark when we’re eating dinner; he will love it. This place is almost getting crowded! Okay, which is it, champagne or Scotch?”

“Scotch.” Julie sighed.

Rain was falling outside. Julie could hear it tapping on the windowpanes, followed every now and then by a sleepy roll of thunder, echoing from somewhere off in the fields surrounding the house. Beyond the rain, on the horizon, a thin ribbon of fading light still glowed.

She looked around. Indeed, the rooms were filling up. Much of the furniture was Early American, mixed with Western notes—in one room, Clark’s rifles were mounted all over the walls. As soon as Clark finished shooting the last principal scene of Gone with the Wind, they would be moving to Encino. Carole had two movies completed for the year now, including In Name Only for RKO, which meant no more opportunities to tease Cary Grant over his real name—“Poor man, Archie Leach? Everybody should be given a second chance on what to call themselves.” She could pour her energies into scouring shops and secondhand stores for treasures sometimes only she valued. Like the bear rug, Julie thought.

Julie plopped down on the soft fur, avoiding contact with the bear’s eyes. Spending time with Carole was like breathing in crisp, bracing air, sometimes too much at a gulp. But they were friends now. Just today, they had packed Carole’s things on the Selznick lot, stripping away all the glamorous white sofas and lavish lamps in her dressing room, leaving it once again just a trailer. Even though she had finished filming Made for Each Other, that trailer had allowed her a presence on the Selznick lot—and, as far as Selznick was concerned, anything that made Carole happy made Clark happy.

“Poor David, I’m sure he thinks I’m not leaving a moment too soon,” Carole said to Julie, surveying the cheap-looking ordinariness of the empty space. “That bright idea of mine yesterday was about as smart as my turning down the lead in It Happened One Night.”

That “bright idea” had involved launching a few hundred balloons at yesterday’s picnic for the cast and crew on the Selznick International front lawn. Unfortunately, they floated out over the Atlanta sets, stopping the filming of a scene. The sun was bright and hot, and the balloons began to pop. Maintenance crews fanned out, frantically looking for all the bright pieces of latex scattering everywhere. Selznick had not been pleased. That Carole thought it was funny and didn’t apologize hadn’t helped. Clark later reported the hilarious sight of a cursing Selznick pacing the set, picking up balloon fragments himself.

“Only you would get away with that one,” Clark said to his wife, chuckling.

“I wish I’d hear something,” Julie said now. She flexed her fingers, which felt stiff from lack of use. They hadn’t had a workout on the typewriter in what seemed like an eternity—in truth, more like two weeks.

“Sure, I understand. Creative people live in mortal fear of tossing their seed on barren ground.”

Julie couldn’t help it—she laughed.

“So I mangled the Bible this time?” Carole grinned. “Well, that’s what happens when you leave school at fifteen.” She leaned over the bar, belly first, and surveyed the various bottles, which were lined up like soldiers on duty. She picked up an already opened bottle of Johnnie Walker Black. “This is Clark’s favorite—a bit strong, but you need it today,” she said. She turned her attention back to the shelves of glasses on the other side of the bar. “Cut crystal or jelly?” she asked.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“We’ll go fancy.”

Carole picked up two crystal glasses with the bottle and sat back down on the rug. She poured a healthy-sized drink and handed the second glass to Julie. “So—what was it like to go to a high-toned college like Smith?” she asked. “Does everybody ride bicycles and wear walking shorts? Nobody to do your makeup before class?”

Memories of the wooded landscape, the tidy, carved paths, the sense of containment that marked her college life surged back. Julie blinked, suddenly nostalgic for all those middle-aged teachers in dark dresses and Peter Pan collars who laid out study plans, gave weekly tests, graded precisely. In college, rules were clear. “It was fun, but … it hugged too tight,” she said. “Margaret Mitchell actually went there for a while, a long time ago. I heard she hated it and dropped out.”

With a sympathetic chuckle, Carole handed her the bottle. “You stuck with it, and she’s the one making a million dollars. It’s okay to toss the first one down.”

Julie filled her glass and took a big gulp, swallowed fast; then took another and started to choke.

“Drinking correctly does not seem to be a skill they taught you at Smith,” Carole said, taking the bottle from her. “I’ve watched Clark do it, one healthy swig at a time. It builds fortitude.” She poured her drink to the brim and drank, then handed the bottle back to Julie.

“When did you know you wanted to be an actress?” Julie asked.

“I didn’t really; it just happened. I used to play baseball in the street with the boys after school, and a producer visiting his mother was out on the porch one day and saw me.…” She shrugged. “I never got to geometry.”

“Am I bragging if I tell you I got straight A’s in geometry?”

Carole flashed a fake wicked smile. “Let’s get to the important stuff,” she said. “Did you ever play ball as a kid?”

“I couldn’t hit,” Julie confessed. In her neighborhood, the boys ran the night games out on the street. A girl who couldn’t hit had to watch from the sidewalk.

“I loved it,” Carole said dreamily. “I loved the feel of the bat, the sound when it hit the ball, that fabulous crack. And I could run; damn, I was a good runner. I was the best runner on my block. There were nights when I felt I could fly if I just ran a little faster.” She lifted her arm, observing her muscles with detached curiosity. “I wonder if I could still do it?”

“I’ll bet you could do anything you wanted to do.” Julie meant it.

“Okay, here’s my question.” Carole frowned. “What the hell is a hypotenuse?”

“It’s the longest side of a triangle.”

“Well, we know a lot in this town about triangles. I’d guess the longest side is the guy.”

Julie giggled as she poured another drink. “Are we really doing this? I feel like we’re in some Western movie.”

“Saloon scene, Peril at Noon, take one!” Carole gulped down a mouthful of Scotch and let out a whoop. “Good shooting, partner, we got ourselves a bear!” Her nose was getting pink.

“I’ve gotta ask you something,” Julie began.

“Well, hurry up, we’re both going to be too drunk to string two sentences together pretty soon,” Carole said cheerfully.

“I think of you as fearless. Are you afraid of anything?”

“Live bears,” Carole said. “I like dead ones.” She patted the head of the bear lying so tamely beneath them.

“How can you be fearless unless you don’t care what happens?”

“Honey, how can you be fearless unless you do care? I care like hell about some things, and the things I don’t care about don’t rank on any fear scale at all.” Her forehead puckered into a frown. “Did that make sense?”

Julie wasn’t sure now whether it did or not. The bottle was passed again. “I want to sell my script and I want Andy,” she said. “Maybe I’m asking for too much.”

“Oh, fuck that. Ask for the moon, why not?”

“We haven’t talked lately.” Julie’s stomach ached, thinking about that. Or maybe it was the Scotch. “And maybe you’re wrong about Frances Marion. Maybe she read my script and thought it was total trash.”

“You’re on your own with Andy, but I told you, you’ll hear from Marion.” Carole squinted, trying to see into the bottle of Scotch. “It’s empty,” she said in surprise. “Should we open another one?” She stopped, listening. “I hear something.”

Julie nodded. “I thought it was my ears.” The room was spinning.

“I think it’s the phone.” Carole started to get up and fell back down onto the rug. “My legs aren’t working,” she said, giggling. “Well, I can still crawl.” Slowly she made her way to the telephone stand in the hall and tugged at the cord. The phone toppled to the floor. Carole picked up the receiver, holding it upside down at first, then cooed, “Hello?”

She listened. “Well, of course she’s here,” Carole said. “I’ll tell her. What time? Who is this? The maid, honey.” She hung up and crawled back to the rug.

“Speaking of the devil. That was Frances’s secretary. She wants you to attend a story conference tomorrow morning in the Writers’ Building at MGM. Nine a.m.”

“That was for me?” The room swayed. Julie tried to stand up, but collapsed like a string doll. “They like my script?” She could hardly form the words.

“Well, put it this way—you have been invited to your first literary dissection. Now you will see how the creative process really works. Congratulations!” Carole struggled to her feet, pulling at the buttons of her well-worn gabardine pants. “These things are getting tight,” she muttered. “Honey, it’s time for the champagne. Just a little.”

Carole’s words floated in Julie’s befuddled brain. She heard the champagne cork pop and felt the bubbles tickling her nose as she and Carole hoisted stemmed glasses this time. Carole was laughing and chattering, even as Julie, the room swaying even more, puzzled over one word. Dissection?

The morning sun was moving relentlessly upward. Julie stood staring at herself in the bathroom mirror of the Encino house. Before her, a can of Barbasol shaving cream and two toothbrushes—one red, one yellow—sat at attention on a thin glass shelf, signaling the beginnings of serious occupancy. No array of cosmetics yet; no brushes and creams and salves—those were all still in the Bel-Air house.

Was Carole the red one? Or the yellow? Julie ran her tongue over the mealy fuzz in her mouth; it made her think of mold. She gagged.

So this was what a real hangover felt like. She’d been high before, a little drunk, kind of tipsy, but never with an aftermath like this. Her mother would be in despair. Her daughter, the nice young Smith graduate, was truly, horribly hung over. Naturally—she was living in a city of sin. Julie frowned, pressing her forehead against the cold mirror over the bathroom sink. Had her mother ever actually said that? She couldn’t remember. Well, anyway, she thought it.

Julie blinked, trying to clear the red from her eyes. What time was it? There was no way she could have made it back to the boarding house last night. Carole, all apologies, had given her a pair of pajamas to wear; they enveloped her. Were they Clark’s? “They’re the ones of his I could’ve worn if I’d played Claudette Colbert’s part in that damn movie,” Carole told her with a giggle. “Good night. Set the alarm. Take my car. Wear something in my closet, but don’t wake me up.”

She then weaved upstairs and threw open the bedroom door, waking what sounded like a surprised Clark. Julie heard her giggling, teasing; then Clark’s gruff, sexy baritone. The door closed.

Now all Julie could think of was brushing her teeth. I’m sorry, Carole. I’m sorry, Clark. She reached out for the yellow toothbrush, squeezed some Pepsodent onto the bristles, and brushed with one goal: get rid of the mold.

The sun glanced off the windshield of Carole’s car as Julie drove to the MGM studio, the light stinging her eyes. She would never touch Scotch again, she vowed. She would never drink a glass of champagne again. Please, she would promise anything to make this appointment on time and standing up straight.

Finally, she was in Culver City, and there it was ahead of her, the central entrance to MGM Studios. Very grand—formidable. It made Selznick International look like a dollhouse. She parked on the street and presented herself to the uniformed attendant inside the guardhouse. He was wizened, dried up from too much sun. His hat, which once might have fit, settled low over his brow. He surveyed her with a critical eye.

“One of Marion’s girls?” he said, raising his eyebrows.

“I have an appointment for nine o’clock.”

The guard glanced at the clock behind him. It was now a quarter to nine. Julie felt a dampness under her arms and hoped she wasn’t ruining Carole’s green jersey jacket. He seemed to be thinking it over, playing with her. “Well, okay,” he said, after perusing a sheet of paper. “You’re on the list. Go to the Writers’ Building. Room 632. It’s a good walk down that way.” He pointed.

Julie didn’t care how she looked; she ran. Past a pair of clowns in full makeup, lounging against the side of a building, puffing away on cigars. Past a cluster of women in bright ballet costumes, practicing turns and pirouettes. Past a freckled teenager wearing braces and a cap pushed back on his head—was it Mickey Rooney? Hurry, hurry. She didn’t know who would be there, what was supposed to happen; all she knew was, she had received a summons that might change her life.

The door to Room 632 was ajar. Julie hesitated, then stepped in. Half a dozen men sat around a long table covered with ashtrays full of cigarette butts. The walls, indifferently painted at some point in the past, were streaked with smoke stains. Frances Marion wasn’t there; no women were in the room.

“Miss Crawford? Sit down, young lady,” said a rotund man squeezed into an expensive suit. His hair, thin and graying, was combed carefully over an oily scalp. He did not stand up, just waved her to a seat next to him. His mouth somehow smiled while the rest of his face didn’t move. He looked down at a stack of papers in front of him. “We’ve read your script. A lot of talent here, right?” He surveyed the others at the table.

“You said it, Abe.” A man sitting across from her was nodding so vigorously that his head looked as if it might come loose. His complexion was sallow, the color of thin chicken broth. He was drumming a yellow pencil against the table with jittery fingers. “Wish we had the money for it.”

Julie sank into the seat next to the man named Abe. “It’s a very contained story, a love story,” she said quickly. “It wouldn’t require expensive sets.” She knew a little something about that, having watched the creation of Gone with the Wind, she reassured herself.

They looked at her blankly, as if she hadn’t spoken.

“I could see Hepburn in this,” said a third man, sitting at the end of the table, cradling a cup of coffee. His face was puffy, his eyes bloodshot. He looked as if he, too, might have finished off a bottle of Scotch last night.

“She’s box-office poison, too smart-ass,” said Abe, thumbing through the script. He stopped and looked up at Julie. “Can you write for men? It’s action, drama—not dialogue, you know.”

“I think so,” Julie said, wondering what that meant. “I’m sure—of course I can.”

A fourth man, sitting at the end of the table, stared down at what Julie assumed was her script, shaking his head like a doleful coroner performing an autopsy. “We need a good detective story. No, we’re desperate for a good detective story. Something gritty. Can we fold a murder in here?”

This time it was Julie who looked at all of them blankly.

Abe said, “This is very L.A. But we need more sophistication. I don’t want to see any goddamn palm trees.”

“Actually, this is set in the Midwest,” Julie interrupted.

“Manhattan?” said the man drumming with the pencil. “We could do Brooklyn or Coney Island. Maybe a murder on a Ferris wheel?”

“Christ, no,” said Abe. “There’s no audience for Brooklyn.” The drumming stopped immediately.

“What we need is a corpse rouger,” the coroner broke in.

“What’s that?” Julie asked.

“Somebody who can pump life into a dead script.”

Surely she had heard wrong. “Are you saying—”

Abe brightened. “If I can just jump in here for a minute, I think what we need is a good woman’s tearjerker. Broken love, a murder—juicy.”

“That’s it, Abe.” Everyone around the table nodded in unison.

“Well …” The man named Abe was pushing back from the table, signaling an end to the meeting. “How’s three hundred for six weeks?”

“What?”

Again, it was as if she hadn’t spoken.

“You okay with that? Wonderful! Welcome to the MGM family,” Abe boomed, standing up. “We’ll get this set up. Nice to have you on board.” He reached out a hand. “Better check in with Marion before you leave.”

Dazed, Julie took his hand, mumbled her goodbyes, and walked back out into the narrow corridor. Somebody would point the way.

“Miss Crawford? Miss Marion’s expecting you,” said a crisp-looking receptionist as Julie approached her desk. It had taken ten minutes of wandering from floor to floor to locate the right office, which, when she finally found it, was smaller than she had thought it would be.

Marion sat at a narrow, highly polished desk filled with papers. A transom window was open, but no breeze was circling today. Surrounding her in casual clutter were boxes of what looked to be scripts; behind her were shelves filled with randomly stacked books and several family photographs in gold frames.

“Some of us around here still read,” she said with a smile, as Julie’s gaze rested on the books. She waved her to a seat. “You’ve had your baptism of fire, or at least one of them,” she said. “And you survived. Abe Goldman—he’s a production head, by the way—gave me a quick call. He liked the way you stood up for your script.”

“But he didn’t want to talk about it,” Julie said uncertainly.

“That’s the way it works.” Frances Marion leaned back in her chair. “Abe wants to think he values independent writers—encouraging creativity and all that—but, just between us”—she actually laughed—“he rules in a small universe, and values mostly his own opinions. Sound familiar?” She arched an eyebrow, but kindly. “Julie, you’ve been offered a job—just for six weeks, but you will know what you want much better after that than you do now.” Her voice took on a wistful edge. “It’s very different from what it used to be. Nowadays, you knit your story all day, and people like Abe unravel it every night.”

Julie said nothing for a moment, gazing at her idol. Marion’s dark hair was pulled back into a businesslike bun, with streaks of gray at the temples. Her hands, in this light, looked more heavily veined than Julie had noticed before, and sprinkled with dark spots. What her mother called liver spots, Julie remembered with a jolt of surprise. She thought of Frances Marion as ageless, but she wasn’t.

“You were with Andy Weinstein at the Mankiewicz party, as I recall. Any news about his grandparents?” Marion asked unexpectedly, leaning back in her swivel chair, hands pressed together under her chin.

“They were arrested; that’s all I know,” Julie answered, feeling awkward. If he had heard more, he had not told her.

“Put in a camp, probably. I was in Berlin last year,” Marion said. “Swastikas everywhere. Lots of strutting soldiers with guard dogs. We should be doing movies about that, but nobody—not L. B. Mayer or the Breen Office—wants to offend Hitler. Mank wrote a good script about Hitler in ’33, which pretty much decided its fate. Breen’s censors killed it.”

“Why?” Julie was sure she was asking a stupid question, but Marion answered soberly.

“We make too much money over there. Forty percent of our revenue comes from foreign markets.”

“What do you think is going to happen?”

“Eventually, war. The Nazis aren’t going away. I have two sons.…” Her voice trailed off for a moment before she pulled herself upright into a more professional posture. “We’ll take care of all the details,” she said briskly. “Your job will be to sit in on story conferences and work with other writers and producers to develop various scenarios. Whatever Abe decrees. No credits are promised, and all rights fall to the studio.”

“And I get three hundred dollars?”

“Julie, you get three hundred dollars a week. This is Hollywood.”

Julie gasped. “Oh my goodness, I can’t believe it.” She could save, maybe even save up to buy a car.

“It’s almost like play money out here, you know. That’s what draws writers like Scott Fitzgerald. He gets twelve hundred a week.”

“Miss Marion, what happens to my screenplay?”

“Just call me Frances, will you?” She smiled. “Miss Marion has a thing for Robin Hood, and I don’t have a thing for Errol Flynn.” She made such an unexpectedly comic face, Julie laughed.

“That’s the girl,” she said approvingly. “Tuck your screenplay away in a drawer, but don’t throw away the key.”

“Okay.” Julie drew a deep breath; it was still hard to say goodbye to her labors. “Can I ask—does my story really need a corpse rouger?”

This time Frances Marion laughed—a hearty laugh. And when they were both laughing, Julie began to feel that something good might actually be happening. At least for six weeks.

“Three hundred dollars a week?” Rose screeched the words. “Julie, that’s incredible, I’m so happy for you!”

Julie had come in to the mimeograph room at Selznick International in search of her friend, who was working her last day, and Rose, bless her, actually jumped up and down as Julie gave her the news. It made Julie a little dizzy to watch her. The throbbing in her head had definitely not gone away. The room was encased in glass to save the rest of the office from the sound of the rattling machines, but Julie could see a few curious glances thrown in their direction—including one from the always inquisitive Doris.

“When do you start?”

“Not until next Monday. I haven’t the slightest idea what they’ll have me doing.”

“Have you told Carole?”

“She’s the first person I called.” The whoop over the phone had been such a pleasure to hear. “She told me not to forget to laugh.”

“Does Andy know?”

“I haven’t seen him,” Julie said.

They stared at each other.

“I think he might be happy for you,” Rose ventured.

Her coaxing was having an effect; why shouldn’t she seek Andy out and tell him her news?

“They’re viewing rushes today. Maybe—”

“—I could take a stroll over to the screening room?” Julie smiled at her friend. “Well, maybe I might.”

“If you don’t, you can mimeograph this big stack of releases,” Rose said jokingly, gesturing to a basket full of paper, making a face. “No, I didn’t think you wanted to do that.”

A slight breeze was blowing, just enough to make Julie glad she could button up Carole’s green jacket, which was indeed quite damp now under the arms. The path to the screening room was deserted, for which she was grateful. It gave her time to think.

It was all very well to get congratulated on landing a writing job at MGM, but the job didn’t feel any more substantive than a cone of spun sugar. What was she supposed to do? She thought of Andy’s story about Mayer’s stable of writers, wondering if that was what lay ahead for her. Irritated by her own nervousness, she straightened her shoulders as she walked. For six weeks, she had a real job. Hard though it was to admit this, it had stung a little when Vivien Leigh called her “Lombard’s girl.”

Julie made her way to a graceful street, a street straight from the old Atlanta of the Civil War. No one was around—no technicians in overalls, no extras smoking cigarettes, no directors, camera crews—it was empty. Tempted, she decided to walk through it.

To her left was the façade of a redbrick building, with a large, bold sign nailed to the wall that read ATLANTA EXAMINER. And just ahead was the railroad-depot set, designed—at Selznick’s insistence—as an exact replica of the actual train-car shed destroyed by Sherman in the Civil War. Up on the hill behind it was the Tara mansion. And there was the white-columned church that soon came to be a hospital for the sick and wounded soldiers. The wind whispered around the corners of the façades; here and there, a door flapped back and forth, exposing the sturdy plywood structures holding them up from behind.

What would happen to all this? Would it be left to burn in some future cataclysmic fire ordered by some future powerful producer? And what would rise from those ashes? Julie smiled to herself with a certain ruefulness. She was writing melodrama in her mind—at least, some kind of script.

She was reaching the end of the street. Ahead was the present—the projection building, a solid, sealed edifice that had no windows. It was totally without magic from this view, but, with luck, there was magic shaping up inside.