The Song Is You Read Online Free PDF

that he knew what this visit was really about. She didn’t bother to hide the spiny fear in her face.
    “Been a while. You’re over at Columbia now?” He smiled, kept smiling, suddenly self-conscious of everything, from his new shirt and sterling movie-reel cuff links to the picture window behind him, the polished dark oak desk on which he rapped his fingers.
    “You could say so. Not working much these days,” she said, tilting her head and lowering her long lashes.
    “No? You on contract? Because maybe I could call—”
    “Look at the king of Hollywood. Sure look like the Jack now, don’t you?” she said icily, twisting her lips into a knot.
    Hop just kept on smiling,
    Slanting her eyes, she shifted forward and asked in a confiding tone, “What is it exactly you do here, Mr. Hopkins?”
    Hop leaned back in his chair and, out of the corner of his eye, looked out his small window at the back lot. He felt a twitch in his eye.
    Putting on his game face, he looked her in the eye
    “I’m a fireman.”
    “Come again.”
    “I put out fires. I start fires,” Hop said, warming up to the line. “A
    little of both.”
    Iolene gave him nothing, not even a glimmer. The shiny clicks and levers that moved so easily for him with the likes of Barbara Payton were useless here. Instead, she snapped back, “Not the same fires?”
    “Not usually, no. Ideally, at least.”
    “Tell me, Mr. Hopkins, would you start a fire just so you could put
    it out?”
    “Now that’s an idea.”
    She paused a second, as if deciding whether to tussle or not. Then
    something unfolded in her eyes, something unpleasant.
    “You’re really hitting on all eight now, eh? I know all about you, Mr. Hopkins. I got you coming and going. What I could tell—it got you far with your bosses, but maybe other people would be less impressed.”
    “Oh.” Hop set his hands on the edge of his desk to keep himself steady. Something felt funny, something he could just about taste. “That’s it, huh? Looking for a touch?” he said, as tough as he could, although he couldn’t seem to stop himself from swiveling back and forth in his chair.
    “No touch, Mr. Shark Skin. That’s not me. And you don’t get off that easy.”
    “Who does, Iolene?” he said, treading water, unsure where she was going but wanting to play it for all scenarios.
    “You remember what happened that night. You were there, right in
    the middle of it. I saw you, and you saw everything.”
    Of course he remembered.
    “Okay,” he said, nodding, businesslike. “Let’s talk. Meet me at the
    bar around the corner, the one with the green menu board out front. Twelve o’clock.”
    She agreed.
    For the next few hours, Hop tried to get work done, made his calls, filed some press releases. But his mind kept pitching back to Iolene.
    He used to see her all the time back in his Cinestar days. As many times as they ran into each other at the studio or at nightclubs, she wouldn’t let him make her. Iolene, lips like tight raspberries. The girl who wouldn’t spread her fine legs, not ever, not for him. What could be better than that? He felt her caramel skin in his sleep nights after he saw her. She’d pretend, even, not to get his meaning (Sure can’t be your hand there on my new belt, can it?). She liked to play it, but only so far. She wouldn’t come across. Even if she was the type—and maybe she wasn’t, but let’s face it, in this town, they all were, himself included—she wouldn’t lay for a Cinestar reporter, a lousy feature writer. A columnist, maybe, if he had some jingle, but not a schmuck like him. Not when she could get a three-line walk-on by laying for Otto Preminger just once.
    That night back in ‘49, the night she was talking about, well, he’d been playing craps, minding his own business and losing his rent money, when Iolene and her friend Jean approached him. Sure, he’d offered to take Iolene and Jean out on the town. Sure, he’d talked them into swinging by