Hollywood Boulevard Read Online Free PDF

arrival of the director for a drink with his wife. Did he have time off the set during a complicated lighting shift . . . or was something wrong that he could leave, or had he said he'd have an early night and I'd forgotten?
    Â Â Â Â It was a hurried drink. A drink should never be hurried. "How you grace me with your presence!" I spoke to his back as the door closed. He left with the bottle. He'd come for the bottle, the drink a nickel's worth of his time bestowed. Was his leading lady thirsty?
    Â Â Â Â They are shooting close by, close enough for me to drop in, which he said I should do. But I won't. I would be treated on set like the general's wife. There would be curious stares and fawning over his onetime lead, the actress who took best prize at Cannes under his direction. The unanswered question always hovering: Why did she retire early, still in her prime, when the full blossoming of her breasts tantalizes most and she begins to understand her craft and to take bigger risks— why? Were the producers already casting about for less ripe, more malleable girls with dreams of stardom; was that it? Andre insists the lead is in me yet. Ha! I walked away of my own free will. Why would I walk back into that insecure cesspool of chattering facades called acting?
    Â Â Â Â Andre doesn't like that word, insecure . He says it's overused, a catchall excuse for lack of discipline.
    Â Â Â Â "Wobbly, then," I said back. "People are wobbly in who they are. You might try to be more sympathetic."
    Â Â Â Â "Rubbish." It could almost have been Joe talking. But Joe would have qualified the retort by saying that the system of civi lization discourages personal strengths, the better to control a populace.
    Â Â Â Â I stopped myself from throwing my drink at the door behind Andre. Wasted! I am wasted on peasants. If I came at you, dear audience, full force, you couldn't withstand me, yet Andre can crush me with a glance, like a rose petal under heavy boots.

    B etween Joe and Andre there were others. Once Joe and I bled dry, were wrung out, twisting in the winds of our failure, others entered the void. I was all alone in L.A. We didn't want to split up a pair of sisters, so Joe kept the cats, old by then but missed terribly, and I would not replace them. Harry kept me busy. He bent over backward to make the physical part of my move painless. It wasn't. He secured invitations to the important parties. That was hell. It was all I could do to keep from finding the broom closet until enough time passed to head for the door, get into my car, and drive home. I'd bought a brand- new compact to spirit me across the vastness of Los Angeles. I sublet a furnished bungalow on Gardiner Street, up in the hills— not too far from where I am now— and hunkered down among the chintz upholstery, shades drawn. I napped a lot, like a three- year- old, or I paced the small, secluded garden draped with intoxicating jasmine, surrounded by tall eucalyptus trees. I went for walks and absorbed the stares of the locals for doing the unthinkable, using my feet on the pavement. I detested L.A. at that point with all the strength my newly single sorry soul had available.
    Â Â Â Â Dottie was my one solid friend. We were an odd mix. She was much older and very overt. Singers are a different sort of showman than actors. She started out doing radio jingles in Wichita, then went east, played the Rainbow Room, other high- end New York nightspots. Dottie was auditory color; she'd made a brief splash in a tough town. She told me she was born with perfect pitch. "That was God's gift," she declared. "I had not a thing to do with it." It was her Plains modesty talking; Dottie's no- nonsense values didn't always fit with her bright outfits and flamboyant theatrics. We had in common a shyness hidden by what we did for a living. With Dottie it was Kansas proper— no one out in all that open likes a show- off, she'd