Almost Famous Women Read Online Free PDF

press.”
    â€œShe has to keep a little mystery,” Joe explained, turning to Georgie.
    â€œIs that what you call it?” Marlene asked, exhaling. “I might say sanity.”
    â€œI respect your privacy,” Georgie said, annoyed at the reverence she could hear in her own voice.
    â€œTo reinvention,” Joe said, tilting her glass toward Marlene.
    â€œIt’s exhausting,” Marlene said, finishing her glass.
    Aside from Marlene, there were eight other guests at dinner—including Phillip, the priest Joe kept on the island, a Yale-educated drunk, the only other white full-time inhabitant of the island. There were also the others from the boat: Clark, a flamboyant director and friend of Marlene’s; two financiers and their well-dressed wives, who spoke only to each other; Richard, a married state senator from California; and Miguel, Richard’s much younger, mustachioed companion of Cuban descent. Georgie noticed immediately that no one spoke directly to her or Miguel.
    They think I don’t have anything worth saying, she thought. She turned the napkin over and over in her hands, as if wringing it out.
    Before Joe, she’d never been around people with money. Back home, money was the local doctor or dentist, someone who could afford to send a child to private school.
    Hannah, dressed in a simple black uniform, brought out fish chowder and stuffed lobster tail. The guests smoked between courses. Occasionally, Joe got up and made the rounds with the wine, topping off the long-stemmed crystal glasses she’d imported from France. After the entrées had been served, Hannah set rounds of roasted pineapple in front of each guest.
    â€œHow many people live here?” Clark asked Joe, mouth open, juice running down his chin.
    â€œAbout two hundred and fifty,” she said, leaning back in her chair, an imperial grin on her face. “But they’re always reproducing, no matter how many condoms I hand out. There’s one due to give birth any day now. What’s her name, Hannah?”
    â€œCelia.”
    â€œWill she go to the hospital?” Clark asked.
    â€œI run a free clinic,” Joe said.
    â€œYou have a doctor here?”
    â€œI’m the doctor,” Joe said, grinning. “I’m the doctor and the king and the sheriff. I’m the factory boss, the mechanic too. I’m the everything here. I give out mosquito nets and I sell rum. I sell more rum than anything.”
    â€œWell, more rum then!” Clark said, laughing.
    Joe stood up, grabbed an etched decanter full of amber-colored liquor, unscrewed the top, and took a swig. She passed it down thetable, and everyone but the financiers’ wives did the same. Georgie kept her eyes on Marlene, who seemed unimpressed, distracted. She removed a compact mirror from her bag and ran her pointer finger along her forehead, as if rubbing out the faint wrinkles.
    When she wasn’t speaking, Marlene let her cigarette dangle out of one side of her mouth, or held it with her hand at her forehead, resting on her wrist as if she was tired of the world. She smoked Lucky Strikes, Joe said, because the company sent them to her by the cartonful for free.
    â€œHow does she do it?” Georgie whispered to Joe, hoping for a laugh. “How does her cigarette never go out?”
    Joe ignored her, leaning instead to Marlene. “Tell me about your next film,” she said, drumming her fingers on the white tablecloth.
    â€œWe’ll start filming in the Soviet Occupation Zone,” Marlene said, exhaling.
    â€œNo Western?”
    â€œSoon. You like girls with guns, don’t you, Joe?”
    â€œAnd your part?” Joe asked.
    â€œA cabaret girl,” Marlene said. “But the cold-hearted kind. My character is a Nazi collaborator.”
    Joe raised her eyebrows.
    â€œDespicable,” Marlene said in her husky voice, “isn’t it? Compelling, though, I promise.”
    â€œYou