The Property of a Lady (58 page)

Dick set up the reel and doused the lights. He took another sandwich and stood at the back, munching chicken as the magic unfolded on the screen.

There were no props, just an empty stage and a young blond girl, head bowed, her hands crossed gracefully over her chiffon skirt. Slowly she raised her head and began to dance, floating across the screen, her long hair streaming behind her as she pirouetted and turned to the faint strains of a Debussy nocturne. The music faded and she walked gracefully toward the camera. The clever backlighting created a halo from her platinum hair, casting soft shadows beneath her high cheekbones, and her light, slumbrous eyes captured all attention as she smiled nervously and said, “My name is Azaylee O’Bryan. I am fifteen years old and at Hollywood High School. All my life I have wanted to dance and most of it I’ve wanted to be in the movies. Thank you for giving me a test, Mr. Nevern.”

As the film went blank C. Z. put down his glass with a shaking hand. His heart fluttered in his chest and he clasped a hand to it as if to stop it jumping.

“There’s more,” Dick said, rolling the film on. “I had her do a little scene.”

“Sign her,” C. Z. said abruptly. “A thousand a week. We’ll sign the contracts tomorrow.”

Dick stared after him, astonished, as C. Z. stood up and made for the door. He looked ashen and he seemed unsteady on his feet. “But … are you sure you’re all right, C. Z.?” he said, striding quickly after him. “I mean, you don’t look so great….”

“I am sure. I meant what I said. A thousand a week and we sign tomorrow.” They were in the big hall and he paused at the foot of the stairs, steadying himself with the banister. “She’s underage,” he said quietly. “The contract will have to be signed by her parent or guardian. Do you know her family?”

“Sure.” Nevern said eagerly, “I’ve known her mother for years. I’ll get them here tomorrow without fail.”

Zev watched the hours ticking past until morning, pacing the house like a caged animal waiting for its release. At dawn he showered and dressed in a light, beautifully tailored suit and a pale shirt of the finest Sea Island cotton, knotting his French silk tie carefully in the mirror. His shoes were Italian and his thin platinum watch Swiss. He inspected his image critically, adjusting his tie yet again, adding a flowered silk handkerchief to his breast pocket, wondering what she would think of him. Then he summoned his car and drove to the studios.

Dick Nevern was on the phone to him at eight-thirty. They would be at Magic Studios at noon.

C. Z. shut his office door and paced the floor again until ten, when he called for his car and returned home. He took another shower, changed his clothes for an almost identical suit, shirt and tie, checked his appearance once more, and drove back again to Magic. It was eleven-thirty and he was ice-cold with nerves. What if Missie didn’t remember him? What if she treated him coolly, an almost-stranger, just some person from a past she might not care to remember? He wondered what had happened
to her husband and if she had children. And he wondered if she would still look the way he remembered.

On the stroke of noon his secretary buzzed and said Mr. Nevern was here with Azaylee O’Bryan and her mother. He told her to send them in.

He stood with one hand on his desk for support, his eyes fixed on the door as it opened.

She looked exactly as he remembered, her wide violet eyes opening even wider as she saw him. Dick hovered in the background as she stopped and said, “My God, it’s Zev!
You
are C. Z. Abrams!
You
are Magic Movie Studios.”

His heart flooded with the old emotion. Nothing had changed at all. He held his arms wide, his eyes fixed on her. “I did it all for you, Missie,” he said quietly.

Azaylee was aware of the whispers that if C. Z. Abrams were not Missie’s friend she would not be starring in Magic’s first big talkie. She tried not to let it bother her, concentrating on each day’s work in
Marietta
and staying close to her mentor, Dick. She didn’t find what she was doing difficult and Dick was right, the camera loved her. Sometimes, in the evenings, she could hardly believe that the girl on the screen was really her, and the fact that she had a new name for the screen, Ava Adair, made it all the more unreal. Rosa and Missie conspired to keep her feet firmly on the ground though, insisting that no movie-star nonsense was discussed in their household and reminding her that Ava Adair was just Azaylee O’Bryan, a fifteen-year-old who still had to finish high school.

She thought it was nice coming home from the studios and becoming her old self again, a kid with a glass of milk asking what was for supper and taking the dog for a walk. But she couldn’t wait to get to the studios the next morning and become Ava Adair.

She knew people were jealous because she was earning a small fortune, and that worried her because she didn’t care a damn about the money. She would happily have made movies for nothing, she loved it so much. Dick had given Rachel a small role and at six-thirty every day they traveled to the studios in the big Lincoln limousine C. Z. sent for them, giggling together about Azaylee’s eighteen-year-old
costar Will Mexx, who had confessed he was madly in love with her.

“Love,” Azaylee scoffed, laughing. “Even Dick is better-looking than him.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Rachel replied thoughtfully. “He’s got nice teeth.” And then they fell about laughing again.

Rachel was a young lady of eighteen now, small and pretty with her mother’s soft features and merry dark eyes, and she was Azaylee’s best friend. They shared a joint ambition to be movie stars as well as all their secrets: like Rachel’s crush on Magic’s sophisticated star Ralph Lance, her blushes every time she saw him and the way the young guys stared at them now as they walked by; and Azaylee’s mad passion for the boy from Santa Monica High who served behind the drugstore soda fountain on weekends.

Rosa’s middle daughter, Hannah, was as pretty as her sister, but at twenty she had given up her acting ambitions in favor of a job at a casting agency, where she was constantly in trouble for allowing her sympathies to affect her judgment and sending obvious needy misfits for jobs. The eldest daughter, Sonia, was twenty-two and a teacher in San Francisco, already engaged to be married to a young man from a nice middle-class Jewish family. And Rosa had been seeing a hardware manufacturer from Pittsburgh, Sam Brockman, on a regular basis—which meant whenever he was in town—for three years now. But the romance was, as she put it, “on ice.”

“Once bitten, twice shy,” she quoted to Missie. “So? How do I know he’s not another Meyer Perelman?” Of course, in her heart she knew he was not, but she liked her life the way it was: The boardinghouses were flourishing and romance was available on a monthly basis, with flowers and candlelit dinners and the occasional trip to Catalina Island. And she was still her own woman. No man was going to boss Rosa Perelman around again.

But it was Missie’s romance with C. Z. that was riveting
Hollywood. The private man’s intimate life was being discussed in every studio and every restaurant in town. There were even pictures of him in movie magazines. “Magic’s C. Z. Abrams with his constant companion Missie O’Hara arriving for the premiere of his latest epic,” they said, or “Beautiful Missie O’Hara hosting a dinner for C. Z. at the Cocoanut Grove to celebrate the completion of
Calamity Kids.”

Dick Nevern thought the funny thing was that C. Z. didn’t seem to object. In fact, one morning he had walked into his office and caught him smiling at a picture of himself and Missie in a magazine. “‘Constant companion,’” C. Z. had said. “Half the nation must be wondering what that implies.”

Dick hadn’t liked to ask what he meant, but he could see that, for once, C. Z. didn’t mind the attention from the press. Maybe he thought his new image as a ladies’ man was good for business, some said cynically, but Dick knew better. He could see he was a happy man. And Rosa noticed the difference in Missie.

“How do you get that way?” she demanded one evening as Missie was dressing to meet C. Z. “All shining and excited because you are going to see him? You look different. With O’Hara you were soft, smiling, content. But for Zev Abramski you are a young girl again. Anyone could tell from fifty paces you’re a woman in love.”

“I loved O’Hara in a different way,” Missie answered quietly. “He was the strong one and I was weak and wounded. Every time he took me in his arms I felt safe. O’Hara was a special man; he had a sort of joyousness about him that made life sunny. I still love him and I will never forget him. But what I feel for Zev has got nothing to do with what I felt for him.” She stared at Rosa guiltily. “Is it wrong for me to love Zev the way I do, then?”

Rosa shook her head. “Only you know how you love him and that’s the way it should be. And after all that’s
happened in your life, you should grab every chance of happiness you get.”

Missie thought about Zev as she drove to his house in Beverly Hills in the new dark-blue de Courmont roadster he had given her. She had been amazed to see him behind that grand desk the morning she had gone to Magic to talk about Azaylee’s contract. And even more amazed by his transformation—the frail, sallow, withdrawn young pawnbroker had been replaced by a slender, starkly handsome, well-dressed man. Only his eyes were the same, still with that lonely, yearning look she remembered. When he had held his arms wide like that and said, “I did it all for you, Missie,” the eight turbulent years since she had last seen him had melted away. She was back in the dark little pawnshop on the corner of Orchard and he was sliding the fifty dollars to bury Sofia into the worn wooden groove under the brass cage.

“It’s been a long time,” she had said quietly, shaking his hand because she couldn’t just rush over and kiss C. Z. Abrams, head of Magic Studios. “But I’ve never forgotten you, Zev, or your kindness. And now you are doing it again—being kind I mean, to Azaylee.”

She could feel his hand tremble as it gripped hers, and he said softly, “It’s been too long, Missie.”

Then Azaylee rushed in exclaiming, “Zev Abramski! I remember you coming to Rivington Street on Sundays to take Missie to the Ukrainian café!” She paused and inspected him, smiling. “But you look different now you are Mr. Abrams.”

“And you look different too. Quite the young lady.” His somber dark eyes took her in and then he smiled. “And the camera did not lie, you are a
lovely
young lady.”

She blushed and dropped her eyes. “I just hope I can be a movie actress,” she told him eagerly, “especially in a movie where I can dance.”

She sat next to Dick on the sofa, folding her hands in
her lap and crossing her ankles neatly, the perfect little lady, listening as he talked to Missie.

“Dick showed me the test,” he said abruptly. “Azaylee shone from the screen like a beacon. And something else very important now, she had a low, pretty voice with a sweet quality to it. I think she has potential. We would like to feature her in a movie called
Marietta
. With your permission, of course.”

“She is only fifteen,” Missie said hesitantly. “I would like her to finish high school, maybe go to college….”

He nodded. “Naturally. She is still a child and would not work adult hours. We would have tutors on the set and also make sure that she took a proper rest during the day. Don’t worry, Missie,” he said gently. “I would look after her.”

“Of course you would….”

“Oh, Missie,
please, please, please!”
Azaylee flung herself on her knees at her feet. “Oh,
please
say yes.”

Missie laughed, but inside she still was not sure she was doing the right thing. The doctor had warned that any stress or trauma might catapult Azaylee back into her never-never land, and it didn’t seem right to subject such a vulnerable fifteen-year-old to the stresses of movie acting. Yet she wanted it so badly. She hadn’t seen her so joyous and eager since O’Hara died….

“I came here to refuse your offer,” she said at last. “I was going to ask if you would consider seeing Azaylee again when she was a little bit older, but now that it’s you, Zev, how can I say no?”

“Oh, thank you,
thank you.”
Azaylee pirouetted around the room in an ecstasy of happiness. She stopped at C. Z.’s desk and said earnestly, “I
promise
I will work hard, I’ll do everything you tell me. I won’t let you down.”

“Of course you won’t,” he agreed, laughing, and Dick Nevern thought, surprised, that he rarely remembered him laughing, not even at Magic’s own comedies. Even a smile was rare praise from C. Z.

C. Z. suggested Dick show Azaylee around the studios and afterward take her home while he took Missie to lunch and talked business.

Missie remembered that first lunch now as she drove to his house. He had called for his car and taken her to his home as if he couldn’t wait to show her he was no longer a poor pawnbroker but a man of taste and refinement. But his quiet, grand house with its silken carpets and fine paintings had felt as unlived in as a museum.

A manservant served them an exquisite lunch as they sat stiffly opposite each other at a beautiful antique walnut table, making conversation about the weather and his lovely gardens until suddenly he took her hand across the table and said, “Tell me what happened to make you so sad.”