“I absolutely refuse to go back there.”
“If you’re asking for my advice, stop associating with Carson. And if you can’t afford to live here in Malibu without his support, then consider living somewhere you can afford to live. Nothing will change for you untilyoumake changes first. I can pretty much promise you that.” A long pause followed. “I really need to get back to the script I’m working on. Okay? Think about what I said.”
The conversation had ended, and Eva rushed back inside the house so as not to be seen.
Eva hadn’t yet met the woman named June whom she and Melanie were now watching; Melanie never had neighbors—or anyone, really—to the house except for Carson and her agent, Irving. But from Melanie’s front window Eva had seen June Blankenship opening and closing the garage door and sweeping the walkway and porch. She guessed the woman to be in her late forties or earlyfifties. It was hard to tell from so far away. June was of average height and build, with mousy brown hair strewn with silver that she kept perpetually swept up into a twist at the back of her head.
Melanie pulled on her cigarette now and blew the smoke over her shoulder. “I need you to do me a favor,” she said to Eva. “You’re dressed and I’m still in my nightgown. Go over there to the fence and tell June that I need to speak with Elwood before I take that phone call this morning. There are things I need to ask him that I didn’t think to ask last week. Tell her it’s important. Ask her if I can come over in a few minutes. Or if I can call him. Tell her I know it’s early but I can see his light is on. Make sure you tell her it’s important.”
Melanie then swiveled to look at Eva, who had not moved.
“Did you hear me?” A thin current of agitation rippled in Melanie’s voice.
“What? Yes.” But Eva couldn’t quite recall all that Melanie had asked her to say. She was stunned at being asked to speak to a neighbor she’d not yet met—at dawn, no less.
“Well? Go ask her.”
“Ask her…” Eva’s voice trailed away.
Melanie huffed. “Ask her if I can speak with Elwood for just a few minutes. It’s important. And he’s up.”
“What if you just telephoned—” Eva began, her face warming at her boldness. Brashness. But Melanie cut her off.
“I already tried that. He’s not picking up. Now please do what I ask. You work for me, you know.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Melanie.”
Eva nodded and slid the door farther open. She crossed Melanie’s patio and then the bit of lawn to the fence line. On the other side of it, she could hear June Blankenship grunting and breathingheavily as she worked. It seemed a very bad time to be asking the busy neighbor a question. Especially the one that Melanie insisted she ask. Eva neared the fence as quietly as she could to peer through one of the slender openings between each wooden slat.
June appeared to be putting one last rosebush in place and tamping the dirt all around it. Then she shoveled mulch over the fresh planting. Eva could see that half the rose garden, maybe six or seven of its dozen bushes, had been freshly dug. Overnight, it seemed. The scene too easily conjured a memory, one that she thought she’d finally hidden away in a dark corner so deeply she’d never have to think of it again.
She shook the image away and watched as June Blankenship stepped back from the bushes and onto the patio flagstones. Watched as June set the shovel carefully against the house. Watched as June lifted her gaze to an open window on the second story, and then a moment later as she dropped her gaze and murmured, “How could you do this to me?” seemingly to no one.
Eva pulled back quickly and silently from the slats.
She knew she had to make her presence known in that odd moment and ask the question she’d been commanded to ask, though she would’ve much rather crept back into Melanie’s house, unheard and unseen.
She cleared her throat.
“Mrs. Blankenship?” Eva said.
2
Melanie crushed out her cigarette and watched with aggravation as Eva stealthily approached the fence, tiptoeing as if what she’d been asked to do was scandalous. Did neighbors not talk to one another where Eva was from?
Melanie found that hard to believe. Poland wasn’t Mars. Surely Polish women spoke to their next-door neighbors across the fence, even that early in the morning if both were up.
Eva was now bending slightly to peer at June Blankenship through the slats.
“Just ask her!” Melanie whispered to herself.
It wasn’t often she wished Marvelous Maids had sent over a chatty American to be her housekeeper. Most of the time she was glad the person they sent was a quiet foreigner. Eva didn’t know enough about Hollywood celebrities to be starstruck, and she didn’t have American siblings, cousins, and old high school chums pumping her for information about the actress she worked for. Eva was an outsider. Calm, competent, and unimpressed, it seemed, by Melanie’s notoriety. Melanie liked that. Her agent, Irving Ross,liked that. So did Carson. So did the lawyer Carson had hired for her. Eva didn’t ask questions, didn’t initiate unwanted small talk, didn’t take things as souvenirs, didn’t gawk or gush or giggle. Sometimes Melanie longed for more interaction from Eva—it was lonely being stuck in the house day after day—but if she had to choose between annoyingly talkative and absurdly quiet, she’d still choose the latter.
It had been Irving’s idea to bring in Eva as her housekeeper when Carson insisted she have one.
Irving had specifically wanted someone for the job who hadn’t grown up reading fan magazines. Nor did he want someone from an agency typically tapped by Hollywood elite. It had to be someone outside the studios. Someone they could trust. Carson agreed.
