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“I think I’ll just cancel the one at five, Robert,” she sighs. The driver holds open the door and Elizabeth Danvers slides in with complete ease. He crosses back to the driver's seat and turns the ignition before a knock on the window makes them start. Elizabeth tries to suppress a groan at Jack Favell.
He’s a tall thin man that she has to suffer when it comes to any movement that she makes. Someone commissioned by the studio to “keep track of things." Things. Diet. Exercise. Time spent at home. Even her dog, for God’s sake.
She rolls down the window. “The set needed work so Billy called me off.”
He smells like cigarettes. “Are you sure you don’t want to look into the fitting for the river scene?”
“Certain,” there’s a hardness in her voice that makes him falter. “But,” she sighs, “if anything changes, you can just ring me. Now, I really do have to get going before Christopher tears up my couch. Again.”
He’s stuttering objections as she rolls up the window. Robert puts his foot on the ignition and then the car is speeding out of the lot.
I spring up from the backseat and Elizabeth lets out a scream.
I burst into laughter as she whirls around and looks at me. “Surprise!”
The movie star puts a hand to her probably racing heart and shuts her eyes for a moment, trying to calm herself. “Vivienne, what in the world-”
“Robert and I are taking you on an adventure, and you can’t say no.”
She turns to Robert who is suppressing a grin. It’s not working. “You brute!” She slaps him on the arm, but the gesture is entirely non-threatening. I stick my head between them and she looks at me, completely baffled but I can see amusement in those grey eyes.
“What in the world am I going to do with you?” she sighs. My gaze turns pleading.
“Please. It’ll be fun.”
“Define fun.” We stopped at a red light.
“Art fun,” I stress, and fish for the brochure in my pocket. As I’m doing so, she flips down the overhead mirror to check for something in her teeth. “Pasadena-”
“Pasadena?” Elizabeth shuts the mirror so fast it rattles a bit “No, absolutely not-”
“It’ll just be a couple of hours and we can get something to eat and also since it’s Tuesday there aren’t as many people so you don’t have to worry about cameras and-” I’ve gotten a bit dizzy from my rush and she gently pushes me back into my seat. “The art museum is really cool.”
“Vivienne, I can’t possibly-”
“Please. Please, please, please? ” I pout at her. “Pretty please with cool paintings on top?”
There’s silence for several moments. Robert merges into a new lane. I’m starting to feel the shame that I’ve shoved down coming back up with a vengeance before she lifts up her hands in defeat. “Fine! Fine, take me on your little adventure.”
“Thank you!” I do my best at hugging her before she starts laughing and tells me to put on a seatbelt.
Robert drops us off a few minutes from the entrance and agrees to pick us up at 6. The number plays inside my head. I, the idiot, did not think. 3 hours with...a movie star.
The Norton Simon Museum has the nicest lake I’ve ever seen. We opt to walk by that first, and my guess was right. There’s practically no one around. Her shoulders relax considerably as we move over a small bridge and stop at the middle. She leans her arms on the banister and stares at the clear water.
“Are you okay?” I ask. My teeth sink into my bottom lip. “We can head back if you-”
“Vivienne, calm yourself.” Her voice is lovingly exasperated. She removes her sunglasses from her hair and folds them into her purse. “I just...” she sighs. “I miss doing things like this. I’m grateful for my job, of course. But...”
I’m confused. “You’re like, the biggest name out here. You’ve been all over the world-”
She scoffs. “You don’t see the poking and prodding behind the scenes. Dresses and makeup and diets and press.” She lifts herself up. “London and Paris and Milan wear thin when you barely get to see anything.” We walk further down through an open space of strangely carved rock. One has a hole in the middle, and I trace my finger along the opening.
“Being known,” and I fight the heat in my cheeks when, as if it was nothing, she takes my hand and entwines our fingers. “It’s bittersweet. When I was in smaller pictures, I could...I could do things. Go places without being spotted. I’ve had to call the cops on some rather persistent press who managed to get into my property.”
“What?” Anger suddenly boils inside of me, and my face must show it because she looks at me with a soft expression.
“It’s Hollywood, dear. One great big monster. People get here and they forget how to act.”
“Miss Danvers-”
“Danny,” she stresses. “Please, I’m begging you. Call me Danny.”
I give her a sheepish smile. “Danny.” A beat. “If you...if you didn’t do this. Movies, I mean. What would you want? Get married or, well, I mean, you can do that-”
Danny lets out a barking laugh. “Oh, a man wouldn’t want me.”
“What? What are you talking about? You’re-” I cut myself off. Absolutely beautiful. Gorgeous. Something amazing.
“I’m too...” She’s trying to find the word. We turn a corner. Paintings, mostly blue on the walls. I pause to inspect one, a swirling mass of moths.
“Independent?” I offer.
Danny runs a hand through her hair. “I once...I went to Arizona, a year, maybe a year and a half ago. Some...honestly I don’t really remember but I’ve always had a fondness for horses. I’m a good rider, frankly. But you’ve never seen a horse until you’ve seen them, completely wild. Moving together in a herd and there’s nothing but land and sky.”
Her voice is wistful and soft. Her gaze, not entirely here.
“Then what?”
“But then, people come in, and they, they monopolize on that beautiful wild. You have to work so, so hard to get a horse that angry. The minute you attempt to get a rope around their neck, they lose it all. But then...time goes by, and they settle so much that they forget where they came from. Like it never happened in the first place.” She takes in a breath and traces the blue with a finger. “I feel like that, sometimes. Wanting to go back, but...where?”
I listen to her. Her words. See the sadness in her eyes. Without a second thought, like some silly schoolgirl, I wrap my arms around her middle and squeeze tight. She starts for just a second before relaxing.
“I don’t think it’s gone.” My words are a bit muffled before I pull back. “That...wild. Maybe it’s just-just misplaced for a bit. You put down somewhere but it’s still there.”
Danny looks at me for a long moment. Her hand comes up and cups my cheek, thumb moving along the bone. “You...” she can’t finish the sentence. There’s something that flickers between us, something intangible that neither can name.
I offer her a smile. “You didn’t answer me though.”
She blinks. “I didn’t?”
“About what you would do. If you weren’t...you know.”
She pauses and takes my hand again. “Probably...probably living in the mountains. Not here. That...Pacific Northwest. Near some small town to go and visit once in a while. I’d own horses.” Danny smiles at me as we walk. “I’d teach you to ride.”
I laugh. “So I’m in this picture.”
“Do you want to be?”
I swear my heart stops for a moment. Forever blue ridges and an open sky. The soft sounds of those beautiful creatures. They would be half wild, and they would only come when we called. And we would wake up late on Saturdays and burn breakfast and when it rains we’ll open all the doors and watch storms come in and when the stars come out we’ll wander fields and we don’t have to worry about press and cameras and lipstick and one, two, three, action!
“Vivienne.”
I start out of my daze. She’s looking at me quizzically, and I can feel heat threatening to rise in my cheeks in the afternoon sun. Something flickers in those grey eyes before it’s gone.
“Do you want to get something to eat?” I blurt. We’ve only been here for almost an hour, and I’m itching to move. She nods, but if anything, grips my hand even tighter. Not wanting to let go.
We set up shop in some near-empty park (a God-send). I’m still annoyed at the vendor who asked for her autograph. How she had so quickly switched something on. That starlet persona. It makes me feel a bit sick.
Danny takes a bite of her hot dog and groans. “You don’t know how much I needed this,” she says around her bite.
“Don’t you eat hot dogs?”
She gestures to herself with a roll of her eyes. “Even this isn’t entirely my own. Movies like thin, or, as thin as you can muster. I haven’t eaten a hot dog in seven months.” Like a child, her eyes light up. “We should get ice cream.”
I laugh. “Sure, why not?” I take a bite of my own food, overloaded with mustard. I liked the almost spicy tang a bit too much. She stretches her bare foot. The sun has left the sky now, replaced with clouds. Grey.
“You’re young,” she observes. “Why movies? Don’t you want to go to college or-?”
“I do, well, I did. Everything was coming up roses for a bit with my uncle before some screw-up. I don’t really know the details but bye-bye to vet school. My parents aren’t around enough to really notice. They’ve got some business thing down in Atlanta. They send me money, which is good-” I stop because her mouth has turned down in absolute displeasure. “What?”
“If you were mine,” and her voice is hard, “I wouldn’t leave you to the wolves of Santa Monica and Long Beach. Forgive me, but that’s completely ridiculous.”
If you were mine.
She’s talking, but all sound has cut out. Mine. Mine. Mine.
The movie star snaps her fingers in front of my face. I jolt and she raises an eyebrow. “Why do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Go off somewhere inside. I’m surprised you haven’t gotten hit by a car crossing the street.” That gets a laugh out of both of us, but I sink my teeth into my lip.
“Habit, I guess.”
Her hand takes my chin and the pad of her thumb runs over my bottom lip. “Stop that,” she murmurs. That same curling, intangible thing. I let out a shuddering breath and she lets go.
We don’t go for the ice cream, but in the darkening of the evening, we walk on the sidewalk, seeing cars and people go by.
“Thank you,” she says. “For this adventure. It’s been the most fun I’ve had in ages.”
I smile at her. “I’m glad. I like...I mean, it’s fun to...to hang out with you.” I feel like a stupid kid but then her arm wraps around my shoulders and she gives me a squeeze. But then she frowns.
“What?”
“I think...” and she’s looking around. “We may have made a wrong turn.”
I look around too, and what I thought to have been the increasing lights and sounds of evening near a museum is...very much not. “Oh, God,” the words are mortified coming out of my mouth. “Shit, I’m so-”
I don’t get to finish my sentence because God opens up the sky in a downpour.