Til the Real Thing Comes Along (18 page)

“I’ll bet you’re going to be a big star,” she said to Lily, who said thank you and stopped herself from telling Marion Davies
the truth, afraid it might seem hurtful to this woman who was only a Mistress and not a Wife. What Lily really wanted was
to be married and have what she called “tons of children.” Stardom realty didn’t mean much to her. In fact she had told Mr.
Raymond that, when he was trying to woo her away from Dr. Beeler. He had perched on her reception desk in Dr. Beeler’s waiting
room, laughed, and said:

“Dear girl, if you come and work at my studio, I promise you’ll stand a much better chance of finding the man of your dreams
than in a shabby dentist’s office on Wilshire Boulevard. You’ll meet producers and movie stars and cowboys and politicians.
You’re so pretty you’ll be able to take your pick of the lot. And in the meantime I’ll make old Alfred here sign a paper swearing
if you change your mind he’ll take you back.”

In the two years she’d been at the studio, Mr. Raymond and his wife, Vera, had become a kind of aunt and uncle to Lily. Escorting
her to premieres. Making sure she
was home safely at her widowed mother’s tiny home when she returned from a location shoot. It was only because the Raymonds
had built a bank account of trust with Lily’s severe mother that Colleen Daniels had agreed, albeit grudgingly, to let Lily
join them for a weekend at San Simeon.

San Simeon. After dinner Lily went to the tiny loft bedroom she’d been assigned just off the projection room. The room had
been brought to California piece by piece from a monastery in Europe. She sat on the bed and thought about her day. The way
at lunchtime Mr. Hearst out of nowhere had said, “I feel like some Welsh rarebit,” and everyone, all the guests, had trooped
into the kitchen to cook one up. Vera Raymond grated cheese, Lily made toast points, and Julian buttered the toast. Everyone
pitched in except for that stodgy friend of Mr. Hearst’s from Chicago. The one with two last names. Malcolm Rand. No. Rand
Malcolm. The man sat there the whole time reading the newspaper. The newspaper! Lily couldn’t believe it. And someone said
after they’d all been cooking and chatting and he’d been behind the paper for at least an hour, “I only hope that’s a Hearst
paper,” and everyone laughed. Lily would have to remember that. Her mother would think that was funny. Especially since Rand
Malcolm never even looked up. Just turned the page.

The next day was Sunday, Lily’s last day at San Simeon, and of all things, with her rotten backhand, she was asked to be Mr.
Hearst’s tennis partner. At his direction she played the net while he, dressed in a white shirt and white trousers, stayed
at the base-line. Hitting the long balls again and again until he and Lily easily beat Vera and Julian Raymond. Marion Davies
was watching the game, and when it was over she waved to the others, took Mr. Hearst’s hand, and they walked off.

Lily, wiping the sweat from her freckled face and then rubbing the towel hard through her bright-red hair, looked after them
dreamily. “He is so in love with that woman,” she said to the Raymonds.

“Goddamned if
I
know why,” she heard an unfamiliar voice say, and when she turned, she realized that the Raymonds had gone, too, and sitting
at a table under a nearby tree was that Malcolm man. With a start, Lily realized he’d probably been there the whole time.

why is because she’s the perfect woman for him, no
matter what my mother says about their marital status,” Lily snapped, then felt silly because she probably sounded like some
dumb lovesick girl to the man from Chicago. By way of response, he picked up his newspaper from the table next to him and
began reading it as if Lily weren’t standing right there.

Well, nice talking to you, too, she thought. Mr. and Mrs. Raymond had told her they’d be going out for a drive at two and
it was a few minutes before. She’d go to their room and find them and join them. She had just turned to go when she heard
the man’s newspaper rattle and his throat clear. When she turned back he’d lowered his newspaper just enough to reveal his
eyes, which she noticed were very blue.

“What makes her so great?” he asked.

“She’s full of beans,” Lily said, using an expression of her mother’s which, when stoic Colleen used it, was one of enormous
praise. “And with all due respect, he’s dull. She lights up the rooms here and he knows it.” How could anyone, even an old
fogy like this guy, not see that? “I mean, when I first saw the two of them together yesterday, her so beautiful and him with
that big head and funny voice, I thought she can’t really love him. It must just be all the money. And that made me mad, but
then when I watched them I realized that she brings him out. That’s what a partnership is for. That’s what my father always
said about it. Because people would say Cal and Colleen Daniels are like night and day, and you know what he would answer
them? ‘That’s why the night
needs
the day.’ My parents were like that. You see, my mother is kind of like Mr. Hearst. Not
that
serious, and certainly not that rich, but a person who keeps things inside, and my father, God rest his soul, was the life
of the party. He could sing ‘Danny Boy’ until you cried your eyes out. ‘Cal Daniels always has something to say, whether he
does or not,’ my mother would tell me. But she loved that about him. Every couple needs one person like that. And my dad could
talk without end,” she said, smiling at the memory of her father.

“Obviously,” Rand Malcolm said, “it’s in the genes.” Lily, realizing from his tone that she was being insulted, was about
to say something about his rudeness, but it was too late. He already had the newspaper in front of his face again. The boor.

“It’s been a pleasure,” she said, and walked up the path, having no idea that the turning point of her life had just taken
place. At San Simeon.

Within a few years, audiences all over America had fallen in love with Lily Daniels when she appeared in her first leading
role in
Boarding School,
in which she played a young teacher at a girl’s school who is accused of murder. The cop who investigated the case and fell
in love with the young woman was played by Jack Welles, a craggy-faced hard-looking actor who made his living playing tough
guys. The contrast between Welles’s world-weary attitude and Lily’s dauntless love of life was so electric and sexy that Julian
Raymond ordered three more scripts written in which they could play lovers.

The first one took place in the old West and was called
The Sheriff’s Daughter.
That was Lily, and Welles played an outlaw in the jail. When they fell in love and she wanted to help him escape, he refused
unless she agreed to run away with him. At the last minute she couldn’t go with him and he couldn’t go without her, so he
died on the gallows, but not before telling her that where he was going now, “They’d never let your kinda gal in.”

The next one,
Dear Suzy,
was a comedy about a newspaper on which Lily was the editor and Jack Welles wrote the lonely-hearts column. It was full of
snappy repartee and love scenes and jokes, and the biggest hit yet. Then they made
Woman on the Run.
Jackie Welles played Gino, a no-good mobster who had only one soft spot and that was for his gal “Red,” a beautiful but shy
girl who wouldn’t give up her job in the five-and-dime and take money from him, “‘cause it ain’t right.” When Gino was shot
down in the street, leaving Red alone in the world, audiences cried—and vowed to see any picture starring Lily Daniels and
Jackie Welles together. Those two were magical. What sex appeal. In real life, off camera, they were probably madly in love.

They weren’t. Jack Welles had been happily married for the last twelve years. To three different wives, for three years each,
with a year off—an intermission—in between. And Lily was still hoping to meet the man of her dreams, and starting to think
she wouldn’t. And that maybe she would have been better off staying in Dr. Beeler’s office. Certainly the work in a dental
office was a lot easier than this. And the people she met seemed a lot more sane. And
at least in a dentist’s office you knew what you were doing. Not like making movies. Never quite feeling she was getting the
hang of it, she took acting lessons even on the days she was shooting. At least once a month in frustration she would march
into Julian Raymond’s secretary’s office and insist that she be allowed to see Raymond right away. And when Raymond called
her in he’d be all smiles and tell her how many letters came to the studio every day praising her work, and she would invariably
tell him: “Mr. Raymond, I just don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this. I’m not very good at it, and I don’t have
the patience for it, and frankly I’d rather go get a
real
job.”

She was using most of her earnings to put two of her brothers through college and to help support another and his wife. She
didn’t want to give that up, but she didn’t know how much longer she could keep convincing herself that this silly carrying-on
she was doing in these movies was acting.

Somehow Julian Raymond would calm her down. With reports from her acting teacher about how well she was doing. With reviews
from newspapers all over the country on how moving her performances were. With news of the rumor that for
Woman an the Run
she could be nominated for an Academy Award. And though none of those things mattered very much to her, eventually she would
feel bad about taking up so much of Julian Raymond’s valuable time and leave his office assuring him that she would keep making
pictures for him. That she wouldn’t run back to Dr. Beeler’s office or just up and quit.

Then the airplane landed on the back lot—a private plane, unheard of in wartime, but there it was. It was a Lockheed 12, someone
told Lily later. When it finally touched down on the big open field behind the western set, people rushed out of offices and
dressing rooms and sound stages and ran out toward the field excitedly, as if it were not just a fancy airplane that had landed
but a spaceship. When the propellers stopped turning, the plane was very silent for a moment, and so were all the people standing
in the field. Then the door opened and out of the airplane came the pilot.

He had high cheekbones and blue eyes and thick wavy strawberry-blond hair and a very serious expression, and he looked familiar
to Lily but she couldn’t quite place him. He
didn’t even acknowledge the people in the ever-increasing crowd, all of whom were looking at him nervously. This had to be
some kind of gimmick. Some kind of publicity stunt. Some out-of-work actor who knew how to fly a plane and was landing it
here at Hemisphere just to get attention with the hope that that would help him get a part in a picture. He was certainly
better-looking than any actor this studio had under contract. Finally he stopped and looked around at individual faces in
the crowd, as if he was trying to spot someone, and then he spoke.

“I’m looking for that girl.”

Julian Raymond was nowhere in sight. He must have been at a meeting somewhere off the lot. The crowd remained quiet, as though
no one knew what to say. Finally Barney, a cameraman Lily liked, spoke up. “What girl is that, mister?” he asked. Lily thought
Barney’s voice sounded very afraid.

“That actress named Lily Daniels,” he said, and Lily’s insides jumped when she heard it. She tried to make herself very small
and to hide behind one of the makeup men who had run out onto the field just ahead of her as the plane was landing. Maybe
this was some crazed fan who wanted to meet a movie actress, and this was his way of doing it. He could be violent or have
a gun on him. Lily wished she had stayed in the safety of her dressing room and watched the airplane land from her window.
Now she prayed silently that no one would tell the crazy fan that she was standing there, shaking. Everyone was silent, until
the man from the airplane spoke again, to no one in particular. “My name’s Rand Malcolm.”

Rand Malcolm. Rand Malcolm. No. The stodgy guy she’d met a few years ago, maybe five years ago, at San Simeon? Impossible.
The one who was always reading the newspaper. Could he have been this handsome?

“Rand Malcolm from the Rainbow Paper Company?” asked Charlie, an accountant from the front office.

“That’s who I am,” Malcolm said, walking toward the crowd.

Of course, Lily remembered, her heart pounding. Someone at San Simeon had told her that was why Rand Malcolm had been visiting
Hearst that weekend. Waiting to talk business with Mr. Hearst. Malcolm owned a company that
manufactured paper. Probably he sold it to the Hearst newspapers.

“Read about you all the time in the Business Section,” Charlie the accountant said, with what Lily noticed was great respect
in his voice.

“I always use your plates and cups when I don’t feel like doin’ dishes,” shouted Sadie, the woman who ran the studio kiosk
and sold newspapers, candy, and gum.

“Well, God bless you, madam,” Malcolm said, nodding at her.

“Hell, no,” Sadie said. “God bless
you.
Who wants to do the goddamned dishes?”

Everyone laughed. Lily thought about making a run for it, back to her dressing room. What did Rand Malcolm want from her?

“What do you want from Lily?” Harry, a grandfatherly electrician, asked shyly. Lily realized now that everyone in the crowd
knew she was standing out there among them. They were protecting her.

“I want to marry her,” Rand Malcolm said. Now everyone was smiling and chatting, exchanging looks, because all of them felt
the glamour and the romance and the fun and the drama in this moment—which was more than in any movie any of them had ever
worked on. And many of them had been around for a very long time. And then, as if they’d agreed on it, they all parted to
clear a path, and Lily, who had been studying lines in her trailer, wearing baggy trousers and one of her brother’s old shirts
and not one drop of makeup, moved out of the crowd and down the path toward Rand Malcolm.

Malcolm didn’t say a word as she walked toward him. Just nodded. A businesslike nod. Almost as if this was exactly the way
he had pictured it would happen. Never thinking Lily Daniels might be at home when he landed his airplane at the studio, or
out of town, or that she could be outraged at his audacity and not interested in speaking to him, or that someone as pretty
as she was, was probably engaged to another man or, worse yet, married to someone who would tell him to get back into his
goddamned airplane and go home to Chicago. No. He felt positive, as he always did, that things would work out exactly as he
hoped. And when Lily arrived at his side he said, “Let’s go somewhere and talk.”