Sammy Keyes and the Hollywood Mummy Read Online Free PDF Page B

Marissa. It didn't even sound like her. She sounded calm. Older. And there was so much understanding in her voice that my mother turned completely around in her chair, gave Marissa a few painful blinks, then burst into tears. “Why can't I just be an actress? Why do I have to go through this nightmare?” She looks at me and says, “If I don't marry him, it's all over. I'll be back waiting tables at Big Daddy's like I never left town, and Samantha, that's going to kill me. Do you understand? Kill me.” She pushes the tears up and away with her little fingers. “And I can't afford to just leave here and live on my own. I'll never find another setup like this! I'm not out a nickel until I actually get work—do you think there's another place around that does that?No! Which is why we're all willing to stick to their ridiculously strict schedules and regimens. They want to make us stars as much as we want to be stars, because that's how they make their money.”
    Marissa says, “So if you say no, you think he's going to make you leave?”
    “I have no doubt about it. Max is a very proud man, and I'm sure he'd hold me to my contract, which means I'd probably never work again.”
    Marissa asks, “Can he
do
that?” and I add, “Yeah, isn't that blackmail?”
    She shrugs. “He hasn't come right out and said any of this. It's just my intuition that it's what I can expect.”
    Marissa says, “Maybe you're just worrying too much.”
    “Yeah. Maybe he does this all the time. How many wives has he had, anyway?”
    She looks right at me. “One. He never remarried after his wife, Claire, died. Have either of you ever heard of her? Claire Lewellen.”
    We both shake our heads.
    “Neither had I, but she'd be a hard act to follow. Max's office is a veritable shrine to her. She was a very glamorous starlet, and from the way Max talks, she would've had a room full of Oscars if she'd lived.”
    “What happened to her?”
    My mother shrugged and said, “She died in a car wreck near Malibu.”
    “A long time ago?”
    “According to the newspaper article hanging in the reception room, it's been twenty-five years.”
    I thought about all this a minute, then asked, “So why you?”
    She frowned at me. “Don't sound so incredulous, Samantha.”
    I
was
incredulous. I mean, after all these years of
not
getting married again, why now? And why, of all people, my
mother
?
    She looks down and sighs. “He says we're destined to be together. He says he's been waiting for me since the world went dark. He says he can't turn back now, and he can't go forward without me.”
    For a moment the room is heavy with silence. Then Marissa says, “It sounds like he's in love with you.”
    My mother looks at Marissa, her eyebrows practically screwed into a knot on her forehead. “Except that when he proposed…he called me Claire. He swears he didn't, and I
was
in a state of shock, but still….”
    We all sat there a minute, quiet. And it was strange. In a way I was upset. Very upset. But in another way, the whole situation seemed distant. Like it was happening to someone else. My mother had transformed herself into someone new, just to be mistaken for a person who'd been dead for twenty-five years.
    Oh yeah, that was worth the effort.
    Finally I shook my head and asked, “So what are you going to do?”
    “Samantha, this is not the picture I had for my life, but there's probably not a woman at the agency crazy enough to turn him down. LeBrandi said she'd do it. She said she'd do it in a heartbeat.”
    I blinked. “You
told
her about it?”
    “I had to tell
some
one! And LeBrandi and I have been through a lot of auditions together, so yes, I confided in her.” She eyed me and said, “And what I told her was that I couldn't do it.”
    “Really?”
    “Yes, but what she said makes a lot of sense. I'll lose everything if I turn him down, and think about what I'll get by becoming his wife! The man is extremely wealthy, but aside from that,