Work Text:
Los Angeles, 1955
MGM Studios
"You can take off your shoes."
I watch her rise from the vanity and cross over to the window, adjusting the curtains. A stream of sunlight cuts across the carpet like some chasm between the two of us.
There are a multitude of gaps.
Elizabeth Danvers. The Elizabeth Danvers, one who caught and kept company with anyone from film directors and stars to royalty, or something close to it. They called her Diana, too. At least the press did, because this woman of star and screen had never taken a man to marry. Or, a string of men to marry and then divorce within two to three years.
The camera is my lover, she had laughed in an interview, all flashing cameras and microphones in some hotel ballroom in Italy. I stayed up to watch the broadcast, all wide-eyed and brimming with something in the pit of my stomach. Unlike a man, I can come home whenever I want and it doesn’t say a thing!
The press had laughed and laughed and laughed.
But there was a flicker of something in her eyes, something of solitude. I could see it. It was like a sheet of glass between yourself, between herself, and you’re looking at another you, except you aren’t.
I take off my shoes.
She has an honest face. That’s what she said to Mr. Wilder, the Billy Wilder that brought Marylin Munroe to life in The Seven Year Itch, a smashing success. Apparently, her word was enough to get me in. I was young, just 17, and afraid of conflict to a fault, which the studio found desirable. My screen test managed to capture the interest of the film star of our time. At least for me anyway.
“I don’t frighten you then?” Her voice makes me jolt out of my thoughts.
“No,” I manage to say.
“Have you seen the script?” She doesn’t wait for me to answer, instead picks it up from a side table holding a telephone and tosses the thing, which I manage to catch. “Billy wants to try his hand at being Hitchcock.” She gives a dry laugh.
“Bad Wolf,” I read aloud, and begin to flip through the pages.
Elizabeth Danvers waves her hand dismissively. “I told him he needs Sarah Jones for this kind of thing. This...gothic monster.”
“I create myself,” I read. “I take the words, scatter them across time and space.” A turn of a page. “An...ontological paradox?”
“A causal loop,” she sighs.
“What?”
“Hypothetically speaking, you and I get into a machine, go back in time, and put a bullet through Klara Hitler’s brain. No baby. No mass murderer and fascist scum. The problem of millions of deaths,” she snaps her fingers, “resolved.”
“Unless he’s born somewhere else,” I counter, and she smiles, all teeth. “Some...when...another when.”
“True.” She cocks her head, and like it was nothing, sinks down beside me on the chaise, bringing her feet up. She looks...normal. Beyond the rich gowns and cigarette smoke of the films I’d seen her in. Cuffed black pants. A dark green shirt with 3/4 sleeves. Beautiful beyond any stretch of my imagination.
“Let me look at you,” she murmurs, and I try to fight my racing heart as she tilts my chin up, studying me. “I couldn’t take my eyes off you in Fine China. Those...” gentle as anything, she traces a finger underneath my left eye. “The eyes are the hardest part, you know. You can get stuck so easily between yourself and the camera. But you didn’t.”
I can’t think of anything to say. I can only look at her, looking at me. Like I was some piece of art.
“I...” I try to think straight. “I wasn’t in it. Very much, I mean.” A friend of Edward Threshold’s daughter.
She frowns. “You don’t have to be in something long to make an impact. I was bored to tears by Newman. That man couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag when it comes to drama.”
That gets a laugh out of me. She was right. I didn’t know much about acting. Not yet at least. But to watch Paul do take after take with growing frustration on lines that were “all fluff and not much else”, was somewhat amusing from my place on the sidelines, reading a book or eating a sandwich.
“Anyways,” she says, and runs a hand through her hair, black as night. “Tell me about you.”
“Me?” I rack my brain. “Well, I’ve only been in a couple of things-”
“No,” she stops me, and her voice is so authoritative, I start inwardly. “I don’t mean films and cameras and all that. I mean you.”
Me.
I must not answer fast enough because she laughs a little. “No need to get struck by anything. There’s no secret motive.”
“I don’t-what do you want to know?”
Elizabeth Danvers considers. “Little things. To understand someone, you have to look at things. Meaningful, little things. The deep stuff.”
“The deep stuff?”
“Yes, like...” she pauses to think, “what’s your favorite color?”
“Well, now you’ve crossed over the line,” I say, and smile when she bursts into laughter. It’s my turn to think. “Blue. But not anything soft but like...when the sun isn’t up yet. And it’s early and everything is just...I don’t know. It makes me feel safe.”
My admission and the look in her eyes have me fighting a blush. “Well,” I shift a bit in my seat. “What about you?”
“Brown.”
“Brown?”
She raises an eyebrow with a smirk. “Well, not entirely brown. Have you been up to Washington? The Pacific?”
“No.”
“It’s...it’s like your blue hour for me. Deep, dark soil and trunks of massive evergreens. And you go out and walk among the fog and silence. It’s like the sea and yet-”
“Not.” I finish. Our eyes meet and I give a smile “It, um, it means a lot that you...I mean, I’ve been watching your stuff forever and-”
“Finish your thought.” Her voice is soft.
“Thank you,” I finally say. “For picking me, Miss Danvers.”
“Oh, God above, you don’t need to call me that. I’m old enough as it is.” She glances at the clock and mutters something in French of all things, probably a curse.
“I have a meeting.” She rises from her seat and stretches. “Shoot me now. But,” she pulls on one platform sandal, then the other. “How do you feel about dinner?”
My stomach flutters. “D-Dinner?”
“I assume you eat dinner.”
“Yes, but-” I was renting some dingy hotel spot for fifteen dollars a week, and it was far enough from the studio as it is. Taking the bus every morning early in the morning was more than a drag. “I mean, my place, well, the place I’m renting is-”
“You’re 17 years old and renting?” She frowns. “Oh, no, that won’t do at all. You’ll have dinner and stay at least one night. You can meet Christopher.”
“Who’s Christopher?”
“A lovely present from Miss Leigh. She adores cats but somehow managed to secure a retriever for me. He loves meeting new people.”
“I don’t even have-”
“We’ll deal with things as they come, Vivienne. Now, I really have to rush, but you can entertain yourself until I come back. It’ll be an hour at the most.” She’s about to rush out the door before she stops and crosses over to me.
“I’m glad to be working with you,” she says, and her voice is insistent. Utterly kind. “And you,” suddenly her lips press against my cheek, “can call me Danny.”