“Miss Mead, is everything all right?”
A beefy young security guard, whom I’d chatted up the first day on the lot, stood just behind Arthur, the buttons straining on his uniform.
Arthur turned and looked up. The cords of his neck stood out, white and thick. I wondered what it would be like to wrap my hands around his neck and strangle him as he’d done to me. To tighten my grip and feel his throat under my fingers.
I spoke clearly and loudly, from my chest. “This man needs to be escorted off the lot and banned from ever coming here again.”
Arthur held his palms out. “I’m leaving. I’m leaving.”
I wondered if he had any last words for me, but the guard grabbed him by the collar before he could say a thing.
In my dressing room, I sat still, calm and composed, as the makeup artist painted my face. I thought of Hazel and how I’d betrayed her in ways both big and small. A terrible choice had to be made, and I’d taken the coward’s way out. I’d make it up to her, though, make sure she was well taken care of. I’d reach out to her again when things settled back down.
When the world righted itself.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Hazel
December 1950
Hazel practically fell out of the taxi onto the pavement outside the Chelsea Hotel, she was so tired. A bellman took her luggage from the trunk and helped her over the curb. She tipped him as much as she could spare, knowing that the bellmen at the Chelsea rarely had the opportunity to perform the more profitable hotel duties of escorting guests and their belongings up to a room—one of the drawbacks of employment at what was really an artists’ commune.
The Christmas tree in the lobby had been commandeered by Winnifred and Wanda, Hazel guessed, glistening with baubles and tinsel that overwhelmed the poor pine. An enormous golden angel at the very top listed precariously to one side, ready to be toppled at any moment by a wayward gust of wind from the open door.
At least she was home, if only for a two-week break for the holidays. Hazel was back to understudying—the only job she’d been offered since the debacle, and only because the producer had been eager to see her grovel for the part—this time in a tour of an Ibsen play across the sadder towns of America in an effort to bring the classics to the masses. The masses didn’t care much for Ibsen, and the stage manager had whispered to Hazel that the second leg of the tour was up in the air as the big bus hurtled through New Jersey.
It was a paycheck, one that she could really use right now.
The thought of money stopped her from going right up to her room. She backtracked and knocked on Mr. Bard’s office door.
“There you are! Welcome home!”
His effusive greeting and hug almost made her weep. She attributed her silly emotions to the fatigue of travel, and dug into her purse for an envelope.
“Mr. Bard, I have rent money for you for the next couple of months. Thank you for being so patient with me.”
He shook his head. “No, my dear girl. You are a gift to our city, to our community, and I will accept half of it only.” His generosity moved her even further, and he chuckled and handed her a handkerchief. “No need to cry.”
“It’s been a long couple of months, and it’s so nice to be back. Thank you. I’ll be out again on tour in a couple of weeks, so there will be more money coming in.” Hopefully.
He plucked the envelope from her hand, gathered up half of the bills, and returned the rest to her. “Buy yourself something pretty for Christmas, all right?”
She turned to go but he called after her. “Wait a moment, I have some mail for you. Special delivery, one of them.”
Ugh. In the five months since she and Charlie had been caught in flagrante delicto, she’d hoped the hate mail had died down. That terrible summer seemed so long ago, and she hadn’t heard from Charlie since. One day she’d even stopped by the offices of American Business Consultants in the hopes of finding out where he’d disappeared to, but they’d rebuffed her, which came as no surprise. His absence, and that of Maxine, left a dark hole in her life, though she hated herself for thinking so.
She grabbed the stack of mail and thanked Mr. Bard once more.
Her preference would have been to fall into a tub of hot water and soak, letting the muscles tensed from days on the road work out their kinks. But two weeks wasn’t much time, and she had to make the most of it. She changed into clean clothes and refreshed her face with some cool water before heading uptown. Her mother hugged her and brought her inside the apartment, where the smell of a pot roast made Hazel’s stomach growl. For all Ruth’s faults, she was an excellent cook.
Ruth embraced Hazel and took her coat. “Come in, see your father, and we’ll eat right off.”
Hazel handed over the bag of groceries she’d picked up at the store on Broadway. While she was earning money, she wanted to share the largesse. Or perhaps it was a proud gesture, to prove that she was still a successful artist and that nothing had changed. Even though everything had changed.
“You are a dear.” Ruth kissed her on the cheek and laughed—a light, tinkling sound better suited to an ingenue. Hazel and Ben had been certain she’d cultivated the giggle as a schoolgirl and refused to part with it, despite her advancing years.
Both her parents had aged greatly since Hazel’s fall from grace. Their theatrical friends had mostly abandoned them after the news of Hazel’s affair with Charlie broke, and they were left outcasts. Her father had faded into himself more and more, no longer making any grunts of approval or even raising his eyebrows, while her mother had become a constant source of noise, either humming or talking back to the radio, as if to make up for the silence.
How far they’d come. When Hazel was a struggling understudy, Ruth had been angry at what she perceived to be her lack of ambition and refusal to take direction. When Hazel made it into the big time, Ruth resented her independence. Yet these days, her mother was nothing but supportive and kind, and no longer controlling. She’d stood by Hazel, unlike most of the others, and only wanted her daughter to be happy. Hazel’s trajectory had allowed her mother to finally work through her sticky grudges and come out the other side a softer woman.
“You don’t have to go back to that hotel, Hazel.” Ruth placed a large slice of beef on Hazel’s plate before turning to her husband and cutting his food with a practiced efficiency. “You could move back into your old room.”
“I’m fine there. Thank you, though.”
“Why pay all that rent money when you’re on the road most of the time, anyway?”
“Mr. Bard’s been very understanding.”
“He’ll get tired of it before long, trust me. I really don’t understand it.”
Hazel knew there was no point in explaining. True, economically it made sense to move back home. But there was no place like the hotel, her oasis of crazy calm. She loved hearing Mr. Kleinsinger’s piano compositions as they drifted down and around the serpentine stairway from his room on the tenth floor, like a melodious ghost. Sure, his pet boa constrictor occasionally turned up in the hallway, but no one really seemed to mind. Artsy and crazy were one and the same here, no questions asked.
It was the only place she could write, as well. The only place she wanted to write. Not that she’d had much luck lately. The two scripts she’d tried to submit under a different name had been rejected. No doubt the radio producers had asked around and figured out her true identity. All the blacklisted writers were trying the same scam.
Back at the hotel later that evening, determined to not waste a minute, Hazel sat at her desk by the window and rolled a sheet of paper into her typewriter. Really, she should go to bed and start fresh in the morning, but waking up to a blank piece of paper tomorrow would be the end of her. Better to get something down now, even if it was just a page, something she could shape and edit, than to have nothing at all.