But there had been no word from Alex when the film released. No flowers delivered. No telephone call. No telegram. Not even a postcard from anywhere bearing a simpleCongratulationsorI told you you’d make the big time.
Perhaps because hehadtold her. He’d always believed she’d get to Hollywood someday and find her destiny there.
Melanie knew then, propped there in the darkness against a stranger’s bed pillows, that this was the reason she hung on to Carson even though he did not love her.
Even though he could not help her.
Even though letting him pay her rent, her lawyer’s fees, her grocery bill, and her housekeeper was a bad idea, just like Elwood had said it was.
Carson was all she had.
Her Hollywood friends, if that’s what they had been, had deserted her. What was it her housemates Nadine and Corinne had said when they asked her to move out?We know you wouldn’t want us to jeopardize our own acting careers. We’d do the same for you. Of course we would…She didn’t have that sweet shared house in Hancock Park anymore or any savings to speak of—she’d already blown through much of what the studio had paid her to make the film.
And she couldn’t go home. Her mother and father were appalled by the accusations that had landed her on the blacklist, despite her tearful insistence she was innocent. Her parents were convinced—because they’d feared it all along—that a naïve Melanie had mixed with the wrong crowd, aligned herself with bad company who had promised her success. Herb and Wynona had believed from the get-go that moving to Hollywood was a terrible idea, not because Melanie was a terrible person, but because it was a terrible place.
But it wasn’t too late to come home to Omaha and return to her abandoned university studies, they’d said, perhaps a better major this time around?
“Everybody makes mistakes,” her father had written in his last letter. “If we can learn something from them, they’re not a complete waste, are they? Come home and we’ll help you get back on the right track.”
Shewouldn’tgo home.
A delicate tube of ash fell onto Melanie’s nightgown from the cigarette she was holding but not smoking. Melanie flicked it off, and it came apart and fell to the floor beside the bed, shapeless.
She ground out the cigarette in an ashtray on the nightstand and turned on the lamp. She sat up, grabbed her wristwatch, and squinted to make out the tiny hour and minute hands.
Four a.m. and she was wide-awake.
She may as well just get up and make herself some coffee.
Melanie rose and walked over to the chair by the window where she’d tossed a thin robe. Through the sheers she could see that someone was awake next door as well. Lights were on downstairs at the Blankenship house and also on the back patio, just as they had been early the morning before. Melanie pulled on the robe and made her way to the sliding doors in the living room, opening one quietly. The air was still unseasonably warm and dry. If Elwood wasperhaps in his backyard, she didn’t want to scare him back inside. She still wanted to speak with him since asking Alex for advice was nothing short of impossible. Elwood was the next best. And she still wanted to make sure he was all right.
Melanie stepped out into the sultry night, walked across the barely dewy grass to the fence, and peered through the fence slats, as Eva had done.
But it was not Elwood in the Blankenship backyard.
It was June. She was sitting in her pajamas at a scrolled metal table on the patio, a tumbler of melting ice and amber liquid at her elbow. A fountain pen rested between her fingers, which were poised over a tablet.
The hand that held the pen was frozen in place inches above the paper, as if the words just wouldn’t come.
“Can’t sleep?” Melanie asked.
June jerked in her chair and immediately put a hand to her back. “Oh. Melanie. You startled me.”
“Sorry. I couldn’t sleep, either. I thought maybe Elwood was out here.”
“It’s just me.”
“You working on something?”
June gazed down at the tablet of paper. “Just helping Elwood with the screenplay he needs to finish. It’s…uh, been hard for him the last few days. As you can imagine. I was just noodling on some ideas for him.”
Melanie looked up at Elwood’s window. The shade was down and the room within was dark. June glanced up there as well.
Melanie brought her gaze back to her neighbor. “I guess Elwood is sleeping okay tonight?”
June regarded Melanie before dropping her eyes back to the tablet in front of her. “Nice that one of us is, hmm?”
Melanie took another step forward, bringing her body as close to the fencing as she could. “I’m actually quite worried about Elwood.” She watched June carefully as she waited for a response. It came quick and effortlessly.
