The Last Embrace Read online

  Mrs. Potter lowered herself into a caned chair. A sleek black cat padded into the room and crouched by her feet, tail twitching.

  “Well, Miss Kessler, what would you like to know?”

  Feminine laughter drifted from the back of the house, then a blast of song from a tinny radio. Mrs. Potter’s eyes flickered and her lips curved in annoyance. Lily smelled coffee and the tantalizing aroma of angel food cake. In Illinois, she would have been offered a meal by now. Surely something to drink.

  “Please, Mrs. Potter. Couldn’t I talk to you and the boarders together? I’d like to meet them. I’m sure they’ve got some ideas of where Dor—er, Kitty might be.”

  Mrs. Potter stared at her clenched white hands. “Very well. I’ll ask them into the parlor.”

  She left the room, the cat trailing after her. Lily jumped up and followed.

  “Maybe you could take me to where they are. I don’t want to disturb their coffee klatch.”

  Lily wanted them to feel comfortable. It wasn’t a police interrogation, after all.

  Mrs. Potter grabbed her arm. “Miss Kessler,” she said, “I run a respectable house.”

  The cat brushed against her stockings and Lily felt the prickle of static electricity. Something angular jabbed the back of her neck. She turned and saw an iron wall sconce casting a thin watery light into the hallway.

  Mrs. Potter’s eyes glinted. “We don’t have a curfew here, like some of the other places. I know what the studios expect of these girls, and it’s the devil’s own bargain. So long as they don’t bring it home, it’s none of my business.”

  “I see,” said Lily, who wasn’t sure she did at all.

  “If Kitty’s off somewhere improving her chances, it’s nobody’s business but her own.”

  Mrs. Potter gave Lily’s arm an emphatic shake. “She’s an ambitious girl, our Miss Kitty. No bad habits. Never any money trouble. Rent’s paid up through the thirty-first. She’s not one of those as pays by the week.”

  “Please let go of me,” Lily said.

  Mrs. Potter’s hand fell to her side. She gave a simpering laugh. “Sometimes I get carried away. These girls get to be like daughters to me.”

  Oh, so you’d prostitute your daughters for a Hollywood role?

  There was an awkward silence and Lily feared she’d spoken out loud. Then Mrs. Potter said, “I suppose you’ll want to see her room.”

  She started up the stairs, leaving Lily no choice but to follow. In the winding upstairs hallway, Lily heard a Victrola playing swing jazz. There were closed doors on either side. They walked along a faded carpet runner patterned in cabbage roses.

  At the last door, Mrs. Potter paused.

  “Kitty had the turret room,” she said. “I have a hard time letting it, the girls say it’s haunted. That’s nonsense, of course.”

  Mrs. Potter’s eyes narrowed. “Now, before I open this door, do you have any proof you’re who you say you are? We can’t be too careful and there’s already been people snooping around, asking questions that are none of their business.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t rightly know. I run them off when they don’t explain themselves. The only one I let in besides the police was the man from the studio, and he was polite and showed me ID.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Clarence Fletcher.”

  “Did he take anything?”

  “Not that I saw. And I only left him alone a minute when I went down to pay the dry cleaner’s.”

  Ample time to shove a diary down his shirt, Lily thought.

  “So the studio’s worried too?” she said.

  Mrs. Potter spoke through gritted teeth. “Maybe the studio don’t know everything. Maybe she’s passing time with someone from another studio. So how about it?” She held out a hand.

  Lily brought out a letter from Mrs. Croggan and her passport. The landlady examined the letter and flipped through the passport, absorbed in the colorful entry stamps of foreign nations.

  “You been in a lot of Communist places.” She eyed Lily with sly interest.

  “I was a government file clerk in the war.”

  “Those stamps’re more recent than that. You sure you’re not a Red spy?”

  No, I was a spy for our side.

  “They kept me on after the German surrender. The Marshall Plan…I just got my discharge papers.”

  The landlady dug a ring of keys out of her pocket. “I been up here once to make sure she wasn’t in bed, too sick to call out. And the police, they was here all of two minutes. Found no sign of foul play and left, not before the young one asked Louise to go out dancing.”

  She turned the key and pushed. They entered.

  The small room had curving walls and a coved ceiling. The hot still air smelled of newsprint, cigarettes, talc, and stale perfume. Photos of movie stars adorned every wall. The only furniture was a plump armchair, a tall skinny bookcase, and a dressing table on which sat a large bottle of Arpège. Lily wondered if Doreen had a wealthy admirer.

  Mrs. Potter pointed out the radiator, where stockings, silk panties, and a lace brassiere had been left to dry. “Does this look like the room of a girl who isn’t coming back? Or that?” She indicated the dressing table, where cold creams and potions lay next to a tortoiseshell brush.

  “Well, that about covers it.” Mrs. Potter began herding Lily out.

  “Please,” Lily said. “I’d like to stay here until I find Kitty. I’m new to the city and—”

  Mrs. Potter crossed her arms. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “But I’m a family friend. And you said the rent’s paid through the month.”

  Mrs. Potter said nothing. She wants me to offer her money, Lily realized.

  “What did Kitty pay you?” she asked.

  “Twe—eh, excuse me, thirty-five dollars a month.”

  She’s just bumped the price up fifteen dollars, Lily fumed. But she reached for her wallet, realizing that Kitty’s room was the perfect headquarters for her mission. The landlady counted the bills, then folded and tucked them inside her brassiere.

  “Where did she sleep?” Lily said, looking around.

  Mrs. Potter gave a short bark. “Ain’t you never seen a Murphy bed before?”

  She walked to the far wall and threw open a cupboard door, revealing an upright bed. With one tug, it unfolded into the room. The sheets were crisp and bluish white, covered with a clean wool blanket. Mrs. Potter pulled a pillow from the closet and tossed it onto the bed.

  “There you go, fit as a fiddle. Maybe you’d like to have a little rest before coming downstairs. Bathroom’s at the other end of the hall.”

  “No, actually I…”

  But Mrs. Potter was already closing the door behind her.

  Lily figured she’d wash her face, then fetch her suitcase and change into fresh clothes before meeting Kitty’s roommates. She wanted to make a good first impression.

  She walked to the narrow bed and sat down. Up close, the blanket was thin, its satin trim fraying. The box springs groaned in a metallic woe-is-me. The throw rug over the hardwood floor was worn where many hopeful girls had trod a path from the bed to the vanity table.

  The room’s genteel poverty contrasted sharply with Mrs. Croggan’s boasts about her daughter taking Hollywood by storm. Kitty had written home of screen tests, drama workshops, and star-studded premieres. Of dancing at the Cocoanut Grove, wearing designer gowns loaned by Adrian. Of the studio contract that kept her too busy for a visit home. Of how she’d lightened her hair, learned how to shape her brows, saunter across a room, paint her eyes. Of the casting director who’d raised one bored eyebrow at her name and christened her Kitty Hayden.

  So this was the reality.

  The hum of the radio downstairs, the distant voices, the roof over her head after two days of travel, produced a strange lethargy. Lily knew she should call Mrs. Croggan to tell her Doreen still hadn’t turned up. Instead, she kicked off her heels, stretched out, and
was asleep before she knew it.

  Lily woke up sweaty and hot, drool crusting the side of her mouth, her suit creased. Pushing herself up on one elbow, she saw that the light outside the window was different now, velvety at the edges. The purple mountains rose in silhouette against the hills like a landscape on a Japanese screen. Something intoxicating bloomed below. Jasmine? Honeysuckle? It made her swoony, like she’d ingested some of Coleridge’s opium. She opened the door and almost tripped over her suitcase.

  After washing up with a bar of Lifebuoy, Lily hung her clothes on spare hangers. She tossed her heels into the closet, then decided to wear them downstairs. Prodding shoe boxes with a bare foot, she found one right away. Then her toes brushed against something soft and furry. Lily felt it move.

  She screamed and jumped back, expecting a rodent to run out. When nothing came, she peered cautiously into the closet and saw a toy ape. She pulled it out. It was about eighteen inches tall, covered with coarse fur, and wearing a remarkably lifelike expression. Lily examined its glassy doll eyes.

  “I could have sworn it moved,” she murmured.

  Gingerly, she touched the ape’s arm, recoiling as its elbow bent. So it had moved! This was no child’s toy, it was jointed in all the places a real ape’s body would be. Was it a studio prop? A zoological model? Its eyes seemed to follow her as she put on slacks and a blouse.

  Lily went downstairs, following the voices to a kitchen where five girls sat around a Formica-topped table, smoking and drinking coffee as a phonograph crooned “Goodnight Irene.”

  “We heard you scream,” said a girl with red curly hair pinned atop her head and a white blouse tucked into slim black pants. “We thought maybe you’d stumbled across Kitty’s body.”

  A nervous titter went around the room.

  “That’s horrible, Red,” scolded a brunette with soft features and little-girl hair who was dismantling a radio.

  The girl named Red sauntered over to Lily, hand on hip.

  “Mrs. Potter said we should be nice to you because you’re Kitty’s friend from Illinois and you’re tired from your trip. Is everything okay?”

  “Yes,” Lily muttered, annoyed at herself. “Just banged my foot.”

  Red gave her a practiced once-over. “Welcome to Hollywood,” she said. “You’re especially welcome if you steer clear of my auditions. The casting directors are always looking for fresh faces and I don’t need any more competition.”

  “I’m not interested in Hollywood. I’m here to find Kitty. As soon as she turns up, I’ll be on the train to New York City.”

  “Well, la-di-da,” said Red.

  The brunette put down her screwdriver, got a cup of coffee and a piece of cake, and placed them in front of Lily.

  “Don’t mind Red,” she said, glancing sternly at the brassy girl. “She’s not a bad egg. This business makes us forget our manners. I’m Beverly. I’ll help you with anything I can.”

  “Thank you,” Lily said.

  The other girls introduced themselves. There was Fumiko, a lithe, slender girl with Asian features and glossy black hair that hung down her back. Jinx was tall and sylphlike, with long legs and a swan neck. Jeanne, who was eating a gooey green sandwich, was elfin, with porcelain skin, blue eyes, and curly blond hair. Louise, the one who’d sent Mrs. Croggan the cable, was working late.

  “We all came out to Hollywood to get into the movies,” Beverly said. “Except for Fumiko. She was born here, though you wouldn’t guess by looking at her.”

  Fumiko’s black eyes glittered. “The word is Nisei, Beverly. It means a second generation—I was born in America to Japanese immigrants.”

  “Nigh-say,” Beverly said, butchering it. “Fumiko had a hard time of it during the war, didn’t you, dear? Whew, aren’t we glad that’s over.”

  “Not me. I wish the Hollywood Canteen was still open.” Jinx rubbed her calf dreamily. “Dancing with all those gorgeous doomed boys…”

  Fumiko said nothing. Lily recalled the December day in 1941 when Keiko, the Japanese girl down the street, hadn’t shown for the school bus. Their teacher Mrs. Pollard telling the class in hushed tones about the deportations, the internment in remote desert camps. Shifting uncomfortably, Lily asked Jeanne what she was eating.

  “Avocado sandwich.” Jeanne gestured to a Fiestaware bowl piled high with the bumpy-skinned black fruit. “Tree’s out back. Mash ’em with a little salt and pepper, squirt of lemon, and it tides you over between paychecks.”

  Lily’s mouth watered. She’d grown up on the creamy fruit but hadn’t eaten one in years.

  “What made Louise decide to cable Dor—uh, Kitty’s mother?” she asked the room.

  “Ever since the Dahlia murder,” Jeanne said, eyes darting, “we girls had an agreement. If one of us was spending the night away from home, we’d let the others know.”

  “And Dor—er, Kitty didn’t?”

  “No. And she missed an early call the next morning, which wasn’t like her, as I’m sure you know.”

  “Actually, I didn’t.” Lily proceeded to explain about Joseph and the room fell silent in sympathy.

  “My fiancé got blown up by a mine in the Loire,” Red said. “Just think. I could have had three squalling brats and a house in Burbank by now.”

  “We girls may compete for parts and even boyfriends, but we all want Kitty back safe and sound,” Beverly said, her eyes lingering on Red, as if daring her to contradict her.

  “Mrs. Potter thinks Kitty may be on some romantic rendezvous,” Lily said.

  Jeanne wiped her mouth on a napkin. “It’s possible,” she said. “The night she disappeared, Kitty mentioned she had a date but wouldn’t give me any details.”

  “She told me she was going on a night shoot,” Jinx broke in. “She was wearing her best suit. And new heels. When I complimented her, she said I could borrow them anytime. That’s the type of girl she was.”

  “Mrs. Croggan couldn’t remember the name of the picture or where was it filming.”

  Beverly glanced away. “We checked. The studio didn’t have anything that night.”

  “Maybe she was moonlighting for another studio?”

  “She was on contract at RKO. They’d fired her.”

  Could that be why she was so secretive? Lily wondered.

  The colors outside ebbed to a dusky blue. Beverly went around, snipping on the lights. The room filled with a comfy air of a home, even though Lily was sure the girls viewed it as a way station they’d happily trade in for something more permanent.

  They told her about a drugstore lunch counter on the Boulevard that offered a five-course meal, with spaghetti, fish, salad, a fruit cup, and coffee, for sixty-five cents. They also explained that the rooms off the kitchen door were Mrs. Potter’s domain and boarders were to keep out.

  Lily learned that Kitty had been in dozens of movies, including small parts in They Live by Night, The Farmer’s Daughter, and Blood on the Moon. Since landing at RKO, she’d worked on The Set-Up and The Window, two B noir films.

  Lily wandered to the window, where two giant searchlights swept the sky. Tugging on gloves and pinning hats atop their heads, Fumiko and Jeanne got ready to leave for a premiere of a movie in which Fumiko had a small role.

  “I give a very nuanced performance as a Shanghai barmaid,” she said.

  “But it’s great that she got a role, right?” Lily asked after they left.

  “I’ve seen her do Shakespeare in Little Tokyo and bring a drama class to tears with an Ibsen monologue,” Red said. “She even started a theater troupe in Manzanar. It makes her crazy that the studios will only cast her as a maid or a prostitute.”

  “Jinx and Kitty are the only ones with studio contracts,” Beverly explained. “The rest of us run around auditioning like crazy for the privilege of busting tail and making scale.”

  “The camera loves Kitty,” said Jinx. “Even if she’s only on screen for five minutes, you see the vulnerability, the nakedness. It’s like you can gaze through her e
yes and see her soul.”

  “But Hollywood is a monster,” Red said. “If you were naked in the last film, they want you skinned in the next one.”

  “That’s awful.”

  Red gave the others a meaningful look. “I’m even thinking of hiking up to the Hollywood sign.”

  “Why?” asked Lily.

  “Kitty used to say that if everything fell through, she’d pull a Peg Entwistle rather than go home in defeat,” Red said.

  “Who?”

  “Peg was a blond bombshell who came out here in ’32, dreaming of stardom. Sound familiar, anyone? She landed a contract with RKO, but her picture bombed and the studio didn’t renew her contract. She couldn’t afford her rent and had to move out of her boardinghouse.” Red paused for dramatic effect. “One night soon after that, she hiked up Mount Lee, folded her coat neatly at the base of the Hollywood sign, climbed the maintenance ladder, and jumped off the H. Fell three stories.”

  “Did she die?”

  Lily imagined how such a cautionary tale could slip into Hollywood lore, along with which producers had wandering hands and which drugstores offered all-you-can-eat specials.

  “She landed in a patch of cactus, and the spines pierced her organs. Took her several days to expire. Two days later, a letter arrived from the Beverly Hills Playhouse, offering Peg the lead in a play. It was about a woman who commits suicide.”

  Lily was aghast. “That’s too horrible. You don’t think Kitty…?”

  “We all want to hit it big,” Red said. “All it takes is one break, so we try to keep our spirits up. We go on auditions until the soles fall off our shoes. But sometimes it’s so darn hard.”

  Lily examined their pretty, wholesome faces. Most of them wouldn’t make it. They’d hang around the edges of Hollywood, wasting their youth, losing hope, their beauty receding until their faces took on a wizened simian—

  “Tell me,” Lily said. “Why did Kitty keep a little ape in the back of her closet?”

  “Ape?” Red and Beverly chorused.

  “I’ll show you.”