Some Kind of Angel Read Online Free PDF Page A

that.”
    “It’s simple enough,” I said.  “Yes or no?”
    “Harvey?”
    I looked out into the auditorium and said, “I’m sorry.  No woman would look at a man and say “How wonderful is sex?  A woman would look at a man and say exactly what I said.  Or at least she should.”
    Harvey Melville sat there, thinking she was expressing his own feeling about the script.  This scene in particular was unrealistic.  Even a girl as innocent as this character was purported to be would be wary of having sex and getting pregnant, even if the man did vow to protect himself. 
    Harvey was known for his photographic memory when it came to faces.  He was also known for his ability to instantly shift gears in placing people where they would do his production the most good.   If he’d slated a woman for one role in an audition, and she delivered a line and got a laugh from his cast and crew, he’d shift her to another more comedic role.   “Leslie, would you come down here for a moment?”
    I’d blown it.  He was going to toss me out on my ear.  Who did I think I was, rewriting the script?  Reluctantly, carefully, I descended the stairs into the auditorium.
    “Leslie, I’d like you to do me a favor.  I’d like to bring you on my staff as an assistant writer.”
    “Charlie will blow his top,” Helen said.
    “Let him.  I had the feeling this script was off from the get go. If you would be willing to take this puppy home and give me suggestions on how we could tighten it up and make it more realistic, I’ll pay you five hundred dollars a week.  If you’d rather be on stage, I understand and you can continue through the audition process, but if my offer interests you, I think you could be of much more use to me in the assistant writer capacity.”
    Assistant writer.  Five hundred dollars a week.  Steady income.  No more working at Monikers.  No more worrying about auditioning while I was pregnant.
    “Do you really think I could be of some use to you?”
    “No question about it.  Do you accept?”
    “I do.”
    “Good.  We’ve just said our vows, and now we’re married.  Here’s the script.  Can you work on it tonight?”
    “Yes.”
    “I’ll expect some suggestions by Friday.  Maybe not for the whole script, but at least for Act I.”
    “You’ll have them.”
    “A woman I can trust.  I think I’ve died and gone to heaven.  See you on Friday here at eight o’clock so I can look at what you would change.”
    “Eight o’clock in the morning?”
    “Oh, my dear girl.  I didn’t even know there was an eight o’clock in the morning.  No, Friday evening.”
    “I’ll be here.”
    “I’m sure you will.”
    He watched her scurry out of the auditorium, the script clutched tightly under her arm.  He felt better than he had in a long, long time.
    He turned to his assistant.  “How did you spot the fact that she was pregnant?”
    Helen smiled at him.  “I wasn’t sure at first.  But when she turned around, I could see the mask of pregnancy.  She tried to hide it with makeup, but these working stage lights are brutal.  They show everything.”
    “I’ve had three wives and I’ve never heard of the mask of pregnancy.  What the hell is it?”
    “Not all women have it.  It’s a slight discoloration around the mouth, forehead or cheeks.  Pregnancy causes a steep rise in estrogen and that in turn stimulates excess melanin.  The clinical name for it is chlosma.  It goes away after delivery.”
    “The things I’m learning all because I got onion soup dumped in my lap.”
    “See?  Never an ill wind.  I bet Leslie Rutledge is believer in that, just now.”
    “You think I’m crazy, making her my assistant script writer?”
    “I think you’re a genius.  And I’m not just saying that because you’re my boss.  I’ve seen you in casting and I think if Raymond Burr had been a candidate for the district attorney, you, too, would have been smart enough to cast him as Perry