The Memoir of Johnny Devine (5 page)

“
I see.”

“
How is it coming?” He
nodded at the paper in her hand.

As Millie excused herself, Eliza gave the
page a scrutinizing glance. Perhaps the pause would give her time
to make what she had to say easier. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but
there’s a passage here that I’m … not sure what you meant to say.”
Eliza reminded herself, again, to speak more firmly. Most people
didn’t take a soft-spoken woman seriously, and as a female trying
to break into a male-dominated literary world, softness was an
added disadvantage.

Frowning, he limped closer, took the page,
and read it. He towered over her by several inches, even when
leaning on a cane. His aftershave gave off a warm, woodsy
fragrance. The crease in his brow deepened. “I’ll rewrite it. It
may take a little while. I hope you don’t mind.”

“
No, not at
all.”

He glanced at the bottom of the page and
frowned again. “This is only page three.” He turned to her. The
amber flecks in his dark eyes set his questioning look ablaze.

“
Yes.” Was he upset about
her slow progress? But she couldn’t simply retype the manuscript as
it was—the writing needed significant revision. Surely he knew
that?

Would he blame her anyway? Fire her?

John met her gaze. “I’ll bring it to you
when I’m finished.”

Eliza forced a polite smile. “Very good.”
She turned and headed back through the front sitting room, passing
an inviting display of colorful French tapestries and calming
woodwork while her insides clenched tighter with each step.

Was this how working with him would be for
the entire book?

Back at her desk, she took up a notepad and
continued going over the manuscript, making her revisions in
shorthand which she could type later, after he returned the revised
page.

She was making steady progress when Millie
cleared her throat from the other end of the library. “Lunch be
served at twelve thirty, ma’am. I ’spect you’ll take it in
here?”

Eliza turned to answer but
hesitated. No doubt that streusel-topped apple dish was to die for.
But she hadn’t even earned a full day’s pay yet. At the rate things
were going, by eating his food, she could end up owing
him
at the end of the
day.

And owing him anything was out of the
question.

She swallowed hard. Twice. “No, thank you, I
… won’t be needing lunch.”

Frowning, Millie tilted her head and peered
around Eliza’s feet and over the desk. “You brought your own,
then?”

“
I’m quite fine, thank
you, Millie.” Eliza’s smile felt too tight.
As long as you don’t bring that miraculous apple thing in
here.

By the time John came back with his page,
she had revised two more pages in shorthand.

He set the new sheet of paper on her desk.
“Perhaps this is clearer,” he said, his deep voice almost a
grumble. He stared at the page for a moment, then turned and
left.

With a wince, Eliza watched his retreating
limp. She had heard he’d been injured in the war, but she didn’t
know the particulars. Walking seemed painful for him. Forcing
herself to focus, she returned to her work.

The rest of the day followed in the same
pattern: revision, short bouts of typing, and more interrupting Mr.
Devine—or John, which she still couldn’t bring herself to call
him—when the writing was unclear. Every time she went to him for
clarification, his frustration oozed across the room. It didn’t
help that the sound of her shoes on the wood floor alerted him to
her approach. She’d never wished for a pair of slippers more.

At five o’clock, Eliza gathered the wads of
paper that had missed the waste can and collected her purse and hat
from Millie. Mustering her nerve, she went to the dining room.

John was asleep at the table, his dark head
resting on folded arms, his jacket slung over the chair behind
him.

Should she wake him or wait? Seeing the film
star drooling on his sleeve did help make him a little less
intimidating. She cleared her throat.

John awoke with a start and sat up. “Mrs.
Saunderson.”

“
I’m … sorry to disturb
you, Mr. De—” Frowning, she bit her lip. What in the world was she
going to call him? “I’m leaving now. I will continue retyping your
opening chapters tomorrow.”

He grabbed his cane and rose, expression
unreadable. “Do you know how long before you can begin typing what
I’m writing now?”

“
I’m not sure.” Her mind
raced for a valid defense. Ralph had never accepted blame for his
mistakes. Everything was always twisted into being her
fault.

Millie came into the dining room and stood
quietly beside the buffet.

Eliza concentrated on keeping her voice as
kind as possible. “Because of … the kinds of revisions your
publisher requires,” she said carefully, “it’s taking me a bit of
time to work through them.” With any luck, she was the only one who
could hear the dry click in her throat.

“
I see. But that may be a
problem. I had four months to turn in a completed manuscript, and
I’m a month behind schedule.” His face churned with unreadable
thoughts.

If he wanted to fire her and hire someone
else, couldn’t he just say so? She forced herself to speak. “I
promise to do everything in my power to meet your deadline.”

He studied her carefully, as if sifting her
words and weighing each one. “All right, Mrs. Saunderson, you do
that,” he said. “And I’ll pray.”

I
learned that it didn’t matter how I showed up on the set,
only that I did. Breathing and semi-upright. Skills any student of
Stanislavski could be proud of.

~
The Devine Truth: A Memoir

Eliza arrived at the
villa the next morning determined to disturb her
employer as little as possible. She went to work smoothing out
transitions and following the editor’s notes. But she soon came
across more phrases and sections she didn’t understand. Who was
“Jonesy,” and why had John brought up the name only to never
mention the woman—assuming it was a woman—again? Were his readers
supposed to know who she was? As teenagers, Eliza and Betty had
been strictly sheltered by their old-fashioned parents. Though
Eliza had later become familiar with Hollywood gossip, perhaps she
was still naïve to things that were common knowledge to the general
public.

And what did he mean by
the phrase “nameless studio starlets assigned to
candy duty
”? She read
on, but there was no further mention of the phrase. She had her
suspicions about what it meant, but the author still needed to
explain the term for his readers.

Since she dreaded interrupting him, she
marked problem spots and read on. When she had collected a number
of things needing to be fixed, she took them to him all at once.
Thanks to heels that announced her approach, every time she went to
him, John was leaning back in his chair, watching her enter, with a
grim look that deepened with each trip. By noon, it was all she
could do to make herself walk into that dining room.

The pay is
good
, she kept reminding herself. And as
she worked, Eliza held on to the hope that John was learning from
his prior mistakes and was now avoiding them as he wrote. It was a
small hope, but she held on to it all the same.

The sound of Millie clearing her throat from
the other end of the room made Eliza jump. “You take lunch in here
today, ma’am?”

Tempting as it was, Eliza had no intention
of eating away her earnings.

Besides, Joan, one of the girls from her
building, had invited her to a card party later that evening and
there was sure to be snacks. And payday was coming soon. Life had
been either feast or famine for so long she’d grown used to going
without.

“
No, thank you, Millie.”
Eliza continued to work, pencil in her teeth and ignoring the
rumble in her belly that began the moment Millie mentioned food. By
some act of cosmic providence, Eliza had actually eaten supper the
night before. On the bus ride home, she’d found a sack lunch
containing an apple and half of a cheese sandwich. Normally, she
wouldn’t eat food someone had left lying on a bus, but the half
sandwich had been neatly wrapped in wax paper, the same way Betty
would do for Sue Ellen or Eddie Jr.’s school lunch. Both the apple
and the sandwich seemed perfectly fine, and since she couldn’t
afford to faint on the job, she had taken her chances.

At a sound behind her, Eliza turned.

Millie hadn’t left the library but was
standing at the back of the room with arms folded, watching
her.

“
Yes, Millie?”

The old woman lifted her chin, sending a
flash of light from her glasses, like cowboys in a western
signaling each other from their hiding places in the rocks. “Beg
your pardon, ma’am,” Millie said evenly, voice firm. “But skippin’
meals ain’t smart. And you seem like a smart woman. That’s
all.”

“
Thank you, Millie, but
I’m fine.” To Eliza’s dismay, the growl that came from her middle
nearly drowned out her refusal.

Millie’s eyes narrowed. She tromped back to
the kitchen muttering something in the same tone she’d used on Lucy
Ricardo.

It wasn’t long before Eliza came across a
page that not only wasn’t clear, it was slightly unsettling. John
was making strange references to a menacing movie camera as if it
had a mind of its own—like something from a Hitchcock film. The
thoughts were so vague that she wasn’t sure if he meant it as a
metaphor or if he meant to convince the reader that the camera was
really alive.

Which made him sound crazy.

Which might then explain the red-faced
woman’s early demise.

She stared at the page again. The penmanship
was neat and firmly written. She had once interviewed a graphology
specialist at a military base who analyzed handwriting to determine
things about a person—hidden things.

Crazy things.

On the other hand, maybe a person had to be
a little batty to work in Hollywood. Hopeful, she read it again,
but her heart sank as she reached the end of the page. It was
complete nonsense.

Eliza took the page and headed toward the
dining room. Halfway there, she stopped.

John was clearly growing weary of her
interruptions. What if he thought she couldn’t do the job?

What should I do?

Betty would tell her to simply do what she
was being paid to do: correct grammatical issues and turn in an
edited, typed manuscript before the deadline. But since the passage
of text was so unclear, she had no choice but to go in there and
ask him to clarify his work.

Again.

Wincing at the click of her footsteps, Eliza
headed to the dining room.

The rising tone of
Millie’s voice startled her. “—and that’s
twice
now. The woman ain’t nothin’
but skin and bones already, Mr. John. We gonna find her stone-cold
dead on the floor any day now, just you—”

Eliza took an extra loud step and entered
the dining room, page in hand.

Millie, bent near John’s side, straightened
when she saw Eliza.

“
So sorry to interrupt,
but I—”

“
Mrs. Saunderson,” John
said. A plate of steak and onions and a dish of cobbler topped with
ice cream sat in front of him. He examined Eliza’s frame with a
glance so brief she may have imagined it. “I hope you’re not
working through lunch?”

Millie stood silent, watching Eliza.

“
Thank you, but I
don’t—”

“
Oh no,” Millie said,
shaking her head at Eliza. “No, I’m sorry, ma’am, but you just
bein’ unkind now.”

“
Unkind?” Had Eliza
offended the woman?

“
All that food I made just
gonna be thrown out,” Millie said. “Be a terrible, sinful waste. If
you don’t take some, I could lose my job.”

Eliza studied John to make sure she’d heard
right, but he was leaning back in his seat with arms folded,
watching Millie.

“
So if you don’t want to
see a poor old woman beggin’ on the streets, you best take some.
You can eat here or take it on home, but you gots to take
somethin’
.”

John turned back to his meal, a faint smile
tugging at the corners of his mouth.

“
I see.” What living soul
would dare refuse such a performance? Apparently Johnny Devine
wasn’t the only actor in the house. Much as she hated to do it,
Eliza would just have to accept lunch and have the meal deducted
from her wages. “Yes, thank you,” she said quietly. “But only if
it’s not too much trouble.”

“
No trouble at all,” John
said, opening a folded napkin. “Millie?”

“
Yes, Mr. John.” The woman
grinned, forcing deep ripples from a lifetime of smiles into her
cheeks. She tottered off toward the kitchen.

John indicated an empty chair beside him.
“Please, have a seat.”

“
Oh. I … didn’t know you
meant … in here.”

John stiffened. He glanced out the window,
his face a blank—almost. The discomfort in his expression was so
faint that someone passing by probably wouldn’t notice it. “Millie
can join us,” he said quietly. “Is that acceptable?”

As Millie returned, Eliza’s gaze followed
the steaming steak until Millie set it down on the table. “I …
suppose that would be fine,” Eliza said, her voice barely
audible.

As she took her seat, John said,
“Millie—”