When Margolies put her wrap around her he let his hands rest for a moment on her shoulders. “There’s another thing I want you to let sink into your heart… not your intelligence… your heart… Don’t answer me now. Talk it over with your charming companion. A little later, when we have this picture done I want you to marry me. I am free. Years ago in another world I had a wife as men have wives but we agreed to misunderstand and went our ways. Now I shall be too busy. You have no conception of the intense detailed work involved. When I am directing a picture I can think of nothing else, but when the creative labor is over, in three months’ time perhaps, I want you to marry me… Don’t reply now.”
They didn’t say anything as he sat beside her on the way home to Santa Monica driving slowly through the thick white clammy morning mist. When the car drove up to her door she leaned over and tapped him on the cheek. “Sam,” she said, “you’ve given me the loveliest evening.”
Agnes was all of a twitter about where she’d been so late. She was walking around in her dressinggown and had the lights on all over the house. “I had a vague brooding feeling after you’d left, Margie. So I called up Madame Esther to ask her what she thought. She had a message for me from Frank. You know she said last time he was trying to break through unfortunate influences.” “Oh, Agnes, what did it say?” “It said success is in your grasp, be firm. Oh, Margie, you’ve just got to marry him… That’s what Frank’s been trying to tell us.” “Jiminy crickets,” said Margo, falling on her bed when she got upstairs, “I’m all in. Be a darling and hang up my clothes for me, Agnes.”
Margo was too excited to sleep. The room was too light. She kept seeing the light red through her eyelids. She must get her sleep. She’d look a sight if she didn’t get her sleep. She called to Agnes to bring her an aspirin.
Agnes propped her up in bed with one hand and gave her the glass of water to wash the aspirin down with the other; it was like when she’d been a little girl and Agnes used to give her medicine when she was sick. Then suddenly she was dreaming that she was just finishing the Everybody’s Doing It number and the pink cave of faces was roaring with applause and she ran off into the wings where Frank Mandeville was waiting for her in his black cloak with his arms stretched wide open, and she ran into his arms and the cloak closed about her and she was down with the cloak choking her and he was on top of her clawing at her dress and past his shoulder she could see Tony laughing, Tony all in white with a white beret and a diamond golfclub on his stock jumping up and down and clapping. It must have been her yelling that brought Agnes. No, Agnes was telling her something. She sat up in bed shuddering. Agnes was all in a fluster. “Oh, it’s dreadful. Tony’s down there. He insists on seeing you, Margie. He’s been reading in the papers. You know it’s all over the papers about how you are starring with Rodney Cathcart in Mr. Margolies’ next picture. Tony’s wild. He says he’s your husband and he ought to attend to your business for you. He says he’s got a legal right.” “The little rat,” said Margo. “Bring him up here… What time is it?” She jumped out of bed and ran to the dressingtable to fix her face. When she heard them coming up the stairs she pulled on her pink lace bedjacket and jumped back into bed. She was very sleepy when Tony came in the room. “What’s the trouble, Tony?” she said.
“I’m starving and here you are making three thousand a week… Yesterday Max and I had no money for dinner. We are going to be put out of our apartment. By rights everything you make is mine… I’ve been too soft… I’ve let myself be cheated.”
Margo yawned. “We’re not in Cuba, dearie.” She sat up in bed. “Look here, Tony, let’s part friends. The contract isn’t signed yet. Suppose when it is we fix you up a little so that you and your friend can go and start your polo school in Havana. The trouble with you is you’re homesick.”
“Wouldn’t that be wonderful,” chimed in Agnes. “Cuba would be just the place… with all the tourists going down there and everything.”
Tony drew himself up stiffly. “Margo, we are Christians. We believe. We know that the church forbids divorce… Agnes she doesn’t understand.”
“I’m a lot better Christian than you are… you know that you…” began Agnes shrilly.
“Now, Agnes, we can’t argue about religion before breakfast.” Margo sat up and drew her knees up to her chin underneath the covers. “Agnes and I believe that Mary Baker Eddy taught the truth, see, Tony. Sit down here, Tony… You’re getting too fat, Tony, the boys won’t like you if you lose your girlish figure… Look here, you and me we’ve seen each other through some tough times.” He sat on the bed and lit a cigarette. She stroked the spiky black hair off his forehead. “You’re not going to try to gum the game when I’ve got the biggest break I ever had in my life.”
“I been a louse. I’m no good,” Tony said. “How about a thousand a month? That’s only a third of what you make. You’ll just waste it. Women don’t need money.”
“Like hell they don’t. You know it costs money to make money in this business.”
“All right… make it five hundred. I don’t understand the figures, you know that. You know I’m only a child.”
“Well, I don’t either. You and Agnes go downstairs and talk it over while I get a bath and get dressed. I’ve got a dressmaker coming and I’ve got to have my hair done. I’ve got about a hundred appointments this afternoon… Goodboy, Tony.” She patted him on the cheek and he went away with Agnes meek as a lamb.
When Agnes came upstairs again after Margo had had her bath, she said crossly, “Margie, we ought to have divorced Tony long ago. This German who’s got hold of him is a bad egg. You know how Mr. Hays feels about scandals.”
“I know I’ve been a damn fool.”
“I’ve got to ask Frank about this. I’ve got an appointment with Madame Esther this afternoon. Frank might tell us the name of a reliable lawyer.”
“We can’t go to Vardaman. He’s Mr. Hardbein’s lawyer and Sam’s lawyer too. A girl sure is a fool ever to put anything in writing.”
The phone rang. It was Mr. Hardbein calling up about the contract. Margo sent Agnes down to the office to talk to him. All afternoon, standing there in front of the long pierglass while the dressmaker fussed around her with her mouth full of pins she was worrying about what to do. When Sam came around at five to see the new dresses her hair was still in the dryer. “How attractive you look with your head in that thing,” Sam said, “and the lacy negligee and the little triangle of Brussels lace between your knees… I shall remember it. I have total recall, I never forget anything I’ve seen. That is the secret of visual imagination.”
When Agnes came back for her in the Rolls she had trouble getting away from Sam. He wanted to take them wherever they were going in his own car. “You must have no secrets from me, Margo darling,” he said gently. “You will see I understand everything… everything… I know you better than you know yourself. That’s why I know I can direct you. I have studied every plane of your face and of your beautiful little girlish soul so full of desire… Nothing you do can surprise or shock me.”
“That’s good,” said Margo.
He went away sore.
“Oh, Margie, you oughtn’t to treat Mr. Margolies like that,” whined Agnes.
“I can do without him better than he can do without me,” said Margo. “He’s got to have a new star. They say he’s pretty near on the skids anyway.” “Mr. Hardbein says that’s just because he’s fired his publicityman,” said Agnes.
It was late when they got started. Madame Esther’s house was way downtown in a dilapidated part of Los Angeles. They had the chauffeur let them out two blocks from the house and walked to it down an alley between dusty bungalow courts like the places they’d lived in when they first came out to the coast years ago. Margo nudged Agnes. “Remind you of anything?” Agnes turned to her, frowning. “We must only remember the pleasant beautiful things, Margie.”