• 38 •

THE LAST TIME Beulah saw Freeman was in the much shabbier hotel room to which she had been shifted after the verdict was announced. He claimed that reporters had discovered her, leaving him no choice but to stow her away in a less prominent location. It was obvious, though, that he didn’t wish to pay to keep her in a comfortable suite charged to his account any longer. At the new hotel, she paid for the room herself, using a few crumpled bills he pressed into her hand, the implication being that the responsibility for the hotel charges now rested more with her than him.

She found herself sequestered in a narrow single room with nothing but a twin bed and a writing desk. The window permitted no sunlight: it looked out across an air shaft to a brick wall. She was obliged to share a toilet down the hall with the other women on her floor, all of whom came and went so infrequently that she rarely saw them. She might as well have been in jail, for all the comfort her lodgings provided.

After a week in this dismal room, Freeman arrived to tell her, with a resigned, hang-dog look, that no theater, whether a live stage or moving picture, would allow any sort of performance connected to Beulah Binford. Ladies had formed committees. Town ordinances had been passed, even in places Freeman never intended to send her. It had become fashionable to banish her, as a way of taking a stand against indecency.

“I think you’re up against it, sweetheart,” Freeman said, chomping on a wet cigar. “I don’t know just why New York has gotten on its hind-most moral legs at this late date when it stood for Nan Patterson and others I have booked.”

“Why do you keep talking about Nan Patterson? She was nothing like me. She shot a man!”

“That was never proven,” he said hastily. “I mean to say that if Nan was welcomed back to the stage after a scandal, there’s no reason to push you out. I speak as a practical theatrical man, not as a moralist, but I do stand for consistency.”

“Well, what are we to do about it now?” She’d been in New York for three weeks, and had yet to see a penny of the salary she’d been promised.

“I think we let ’em cool off, girlie,” Freeman said. “Give it a year. Maybe we try for that photoplay later. I know the best fellow in the business. He’ll write your story, and we’ll get a girl who can play you beautifully. It’ll be grand.” He turned to leave, as if he couldn’t wait to go speak to that fellow about a photoplay.

“If she’s playing me, then what am I doing?” Beulah called.

Freeman’s hand was already on the doorknob. “Listen, sweetheart. I can’t carry you for another year. I’ve already put myself to considerable expense on your behalf. No one wants to see you get rich as much as Freeman Bernstein does. But you’re too hot right now. Find yourself a nice office job. You’re paid up here through the end of the month. There’s plenty of respectable houses where a girl can rent a room. Go find one of those, and live a quiet life.”

He opened the door. “And stay away from married men, why don’t you?”

He was gone before she could say a word. Beulah never saw him again.