It was Agnes who picked out the new house, a Puerto Rican cottage with the cutest balconies, jampacked with antique Spanish furniture. In the evening Margo sat in an easychair in the big livingroom in front of an open fire playing Russian bank with Agnes. They got a few invitations from actors and people Margo met on the lot, but Margo said she wasn’t going out until she found out what was what in this town. “First thing you know we’ll be going around with a bunch of bums who’ll do us more harm than good.” “How true that is,” sighed Agnes. “Like those awful twins in Miami.”
They didn’t see anything of Tony until, one Sunday night that Sam Margolies was coming to the house for the first time, he turned up drunk at about six o’clock and said that he and Max Hirsch wanted to start a polo school and that he had to have a thousand dollars right away. “But, Tony,” said Agnes, “where’s Margie going to get it?… You know just as well as I do how heavy our expenses are.” Tony made a big scene, stormed and cried and said Agnes and Margo had ruined his stage career and that now they were out to ruin his career in pictures. “I have been too patient,” he yelled, tapping himself on the chest. “I have let myself be ruined by women.”
Margo kept looking at the clock on the mantel. It was nearly seven. She finally shelled out twentyfive bucks and told him to come back during the week. “He’s hitting the hop again,” she said after he’d gone. “He’ll go crazy one of these days.” “Poor boy,” sighed Agnes, “he’s not a bad boy, only weak.”
“What I’m scared of is that that heinie’ll get hold of him and make us a lot of trouble… That bird had a face like state’s prison… guess the best thing to do is get a lawyer and start a divorce.” “But think of the publicity,” wailed Agnes. “Anyway,” said Margo, “Tony’s got to pass out of the picture. I’ve taken all I’m going to take from that greaser.”
Sam Margolies came an hour late. “How peaceful,” he was saying. “How can you do it in delirious Hollywood?” “Why, Margie’s just a quiet little workinggirl,” said Agnes, picking up her sewingbasket and starting to sidle out. He sat down in the easychair without taking off his white beret and stretched out his bowlegs towards the fire. “I hate the artificiality of it.” “Don’t you now?” said Agnes from the door.
Margo offered him a cocktail but he said he didn’t drink. When the maid brought out the dinner that Agnes had worked on all day he wouldn’t eat anything but toast and lettuce. “I never eat or drink at mealtimes. I come only to look and to talk.” “That’s why you’ve gotten so thin,” kidded Margo. “Do you remember the way I used to be in those old days? My New York period. Let’s not talk about it. I have no memory. I live only in the present. Now I am thinking of the picture you are going to star in. I never go to parties but you must come with me to Irwin Harris’s tonight. There will be people there you’ll have to know. Let me see your dresses. I’ll pick out what you ought to wear. After this you must always let me come when you buy a dress.” Following her up the creaking stairs to her bedroom he said, “We must have a different setting for you. This won’t do. This is suburban.”
Margo felt funny driving out through the avenues of palms of Beverly Hills sitting beside Sam Margolies. He’d made her put on the old yellow eveningdress she’d bought at Piquot’s years ago that Agnes had recently had done over and lengthened by a little French dressmaker she’d found in Los Angeles. Her hands were cold and she was afraid Margolies would hear her heart knocking against her ribs. She tried to think of something funny to say but what was the use, Margolies never laughed. She wondered what he was thinking. She could see his face, the narrow forehead under his black bang, the pouting lips, the beaklike profile very dark against the streetlights as he sat stiffly beside her with his hands on his knees. He still had on his white flannels and a white stock with a diamond pin in it in the shape of a golfclub. As the car turned into a drive towards a row of bright tall frenchwindows through the trees he turned to her and said, “You are afraid you will be bored… You’ll be surprised. You’ll find we have something here that matches the foreign and New York society you are accustomed to.” As he turned his face towards her the light glinted on the whites of his eyes and sagging pouches under them and the wet broad lips. He went on whispering squeezing her hand as he helped her out of the car. “You will be the most elegant woman there but only as one star is brighter than the other stars.”
Going into the door past the butler Margo caught herself starting to giggle. “How you do go on,” she said. “You talk like a… like a genius.” “That’s what they call me,” said Margolies in a loud voice drawing his shoulders back and standing stiffly at attention to let her go past him through the large glass doors into the vestibule.
The worst of it was going into the dressingroom to take off her wraps. The women who were doing their faces and giving a last pat to their hair all turned and gave her a quick onceover that started at her slippers, ran up her stockings, picked out every hook and eye of her dress, ran round her neck to see if it was wrinkled and up into her hair to see if it was dyed. At once she knew that she ought to have an ermine wrap. There was one old dame standing smoking a cigarette by the lavatory door in a dress all made of cracked ice who had xray eyes; Margo felt her reading the pricetag on her stepins. The colored maid gave Margo a nice toothy grin as she laid Margo’s coat over her arm that made her feel better. When she went out she felt the stares clash together on her back and hang there like a tin can on a dog’s tail. Keep a stiff upper lip, they can’t eat you, she was telling herself as the door of the ladies’ room closed behind her. She wished Agnes was there to tell her how lovely everybody was.
Margolies was waiting for her in the vestibule full of sparkly chandeliers. There was an orchestra playing and they were dancing in a big room. He took her to the fireplace at the end. Irwin Harris and Mr. Hardbein who looked as alike as a pair of eggs in their tight dress suits came up and said goodevening. Margolies gave them each a hand without looking at them and sat down by the fireplace with his back to the crowd in a big carved chair like the one he had in his office. Mr. Harris asked her to dance with him. After that it was like any other collection of dressedup people. At least until she found herself dancing with Rodney Cathcart.
She recognized him at once from the pictures, but it was a shock to find that his face had color in it, and that there was warm blood and muscle under his rakish eveningdress. He was a tall tanned young man with goldfishyellow hair and an English way of mumbling his words. She’d felt cold and shivery until she started to dance with him. After he’d danced with her once he asked her to dance with him again. Between dances he led her to the buffet at the end of the room and tried to get her to drink. She held a scotch and soda in a big blue glass each time and just sipped it while he drank down a couple of scotches straight and ate a large plate of chicken salad. He seemed a little drunk but he didn’t seem to be getting any drunker. He didn’t say anything so she didn’t say anything either. She loved dancing with him.
Every now and then when they danced round the end of the room she caught sight of the whole room in the huge mirror over the fireplace. Once when she got just the right angle she thought she saw Margolies’ face staring at her from out of the carved highbacked chair that faced the burning logs. He seemed to be staring at her attentively. The firelight playing on his face gave it a warm lively look she hadn’t noticed on it before. Immediately blond heads, curly heads, bald heads, bare shoulders, black shoulders got in her way and she lost sight of that corner of the room.