Page 18 of His Girl Hollywood
“Well, if you hadn’t been out half the night, you’d have known I’ve been here since about eight thirty. But you never came home.”
He raised his eyes to the ceiling, searching for some kind of celestial guidance he was certain would not come. “Look, you want to come out of the bathroom, tell me what’s going on?”
“Sure, my pleasure. You’re the one who cornered me in here.” Eleanor was a phenomenal dancer—and a phenomenal pain in his ass.
He moved aside and gestured for her to sit on the bed. There really wasn’t anywhere else comfortable in the room. “Just tell me why you’re here. Did Frankie send you to check up on me? To talk me into getting you a part in the movies too? Move the act to Hollywood… Is that his idea?”
She glared at him as she walked past him and flipped the switch to turn on the light. Now that he wasn’t trying to wrap his head around who was in his room in the late hours of the night, he noticed that she looked more haggard than he’d ever seen her. There were bags under her eyes and she was shockingly pale, her usually alluring cotton-candy-pink blush a stark contrast to the sickly color of her face. She seemed weary, not just from waiting for him the last few hours, but in a way that was bone-deep. She finally softened and released a heavy sigh. “I’m here because I need your help.”
He leaned back against the wall and studied her. Things must be pretty dire if she was coming to him. They’d sold out Broadway houses and European concert halls together, but offstage, there was no love lost between them. Eleanor had already been in Frankie’s pocket when Don was paired off with her. He had told Eleanor repeatedly he wasn’t interested. That their relationship was forshow and that’s all it would ever be. He’d thought dating Mabel would make that clear to her. But instead, Eleanor had eliminated what she saw as her primary obstacle. Now, she suddenly needed his help? The whole thing seemed suspect. “Look, Eleanor, I don’t know if I’m even coming back to New York after this. Whatever it is, you’re going to have to ask Frankie.”
“Goddamn it, Don, it’s not about you or New York or the act.” She looked on the verge of tears now. “I don’t care about our partnership. I want out too.”
It was lucky he was already pressing his weight into the wall or he would’ve fallen over. Dance was Eleanor’s life. And she’d always had far fewer qualms about the cost of their success. “But, why? You’re Frankie’s girl through and through.” He said the last part bitterly, almost spitting the words at her. He’d always resented her for the way she preened for their bully of a manager. Don had chafed against his leash, but Eleanor had closed the door to their cage herself on more than one occasion.
“If you’d paid a lick of attention to someone besides yourself and your goddamn career, you would’ve noticed I haven’t been Frankie’s girl for a long time now.” The pronouncement shocked him. But it was a welcome one. Because if Eleanor wasn’t Frankie’s girl, she wasn’t here to do his bidding. “I don’t want nothing to do with Frankie Martino no more. I want a normal life. You remember that architect I met at the Stork Club, Robert, the one from upstate?”
Don nodded his head yes. “Well, he wants to marry me.” Eleanor extended her arm and Don caught a glimpse of the ring on her left hand. He didn’t know how he’d missed it; it was the size of the Rock of Gibraltar.
“Many happy returns. I don’t see where I enter into this.” He wanted Eleanor to go. He needed to catch a couple hours’ sleep before he had to be on set, or he wouldn’t be in top form.
“It’s Frankie.”
The words stopped him cold. He should’ve known. A shiver ran down his spine and he thought of Mabel. The horrible scars on her face after Frankie’s boys had finished with her. Eleanor had helped put them there, but that didn’t mean that this innocent architect who’d fallen for her deserved a similar fate. “Eleanor, he didn’t hurt Robert, did he?”
Eleanor shook her head. “No, not yet anyway. I wouldn’t have come to you except, well, you’ve been through this before. With Mabel.”
Don swallowed the lump in his throat that rose immediately at the sound of her name. He suppressed a burst of anger at Eleanor for even daring to say Mabel’s name after what she’d done. “Yeah, I’m the fountain of wisdom on that front. Worked out real well for her.”
Eleanor gave him a look of such pity that it pierced his heart. “You couldn’t have known Frankie would do that.”
“Sure, I could have,” he spat out bitterly. “Why I expected anything less is what eats me up. The idea that Frankie—or you—would really let me be happy with someone outside his organization. I should’ve known better.”
The memories of that night washed over him and he felt sick. He grabbed for the chair by the window, feeling light-headed as he remembered the heaving hulk of a man who had brushed against them as they danced at the Carousel Club. The way Mabel had squeaked, grabbing at Don for protection. How the man had pulled something from his coat and, before Don knew what was happening, thrown it at Mabel. It had been lye, and it had badly burned the entire left side of her face. She’d lost her sight entirely in the eye that it had splashed into.
All because he’d had the audacity to want to date her, to gopublic with their relationship and end the ruse of his romance with Eleanor. Mabel had been a model, had signed a contract with Elizabeth Arden only a few days before the attack. A contract that had been rendered null and void the second they’d caught sight of her damaged visage. Don had wanted to kill Frankie for it, then find Eleanor and wring her neck. But he couldn’t. Because the man owned his soul. And at that time, he had no power as a solo artist. He danced with Eleanor or he didn’t dance at all. There had been nothing he could do about the attack. Except return to Eleanor and their pathetic relationship with his tail between his legs. Last he’d heard, Mabel had moved back home to Allentown with her parents.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Eleanor whispered.
“No, it wasn’t. It was yours.” Eleanor gasped at the accusation. The nerve of this dame. He’d held his tongue as long as he could stand it. She wanted to talk about Mabel? Fine. It was high time they talk about whatreallyled to that night. “You told Frankie about her. You were jealous, you couldn’t stand the idea that I never wanted our relationship to be real. That I was ready to end the whole damned charade.”
Eleanor scoffed and sat down on the bed. “I didn’t even know about Mabel. You weren’t exactly my bosom friend. Eight years dancing together, Don, and I still know nothing about you. You’ve never told me anything about your parents, where you grew up, nothin’. Anything I knew about you I knew because Frankie told me. How could I have told Frankie about Mabel when I didn’t know she existed?”
“Then how did he find out if you didn’t tell him?”
Eleanor shrugged. “He put a tail on us constantly. Or didn’t you ever notice?”
The words lanced his heart. Memories flooded back to him. The sound of footsteps behind him on a late night. The same blackcar following his cab. The stranger in the gray fedora who always got on and off at the same subway stops he did. How had he never realized? He thought he’d been discreet. Hell, Mabel had almost broken up with him after their first three dates had been at the same picture show where no one could see them in the dark.
But his caution had been no use. Frankie had known all along. Had been following him. Tracking his every move. That still didn’t explain why Eleanor had been so eager to please the monster who owned their contract. Why she’d doubled her efforts to seduce Don after Mabel was out of the picture. “Fine, you didn’t tell Frankie about us. But you still egged Frankie on. Convinced him that Mabel would hurt our act. Begged him to do something about us. Frankie told me so.” Eleanor tried to interrupt, but Don barreled ahead. “Oh, he’d never admit one of his lackeys did the job. But Frankie maintained it was a blessing in disguise. To keep us atop the heap. That you had come to him in tears, worried that I was going to mess everything up. Thatyouthought we wouldn’t last as a double act if people knew I was romancing some other dame. He said that when you heard the news about Mabel, you were relieved. Because it meant she was out of the picture and our act was safe.”
Eleanor gave him a sad look. “You believed that? You’re dumber than I thought, Donnie. What have I ever said or done to convince you I’d be capable of that? That I would want to see an innocent girl hurt because of me?”
He had spent the last several years resenting Eleanor for this. It was why he had sought outPal’ing Around. Being around Eleanor all day, every day… He couldn’t stomach it any longer. Every time he looked at Eleanor, all he saw was Mabel’s disfigured face. “Don’t act like you never did nothing, Eleanor. You laid it on even thicker after Mabel moved out of the city. You kept trying to kissme whenever there was a camera in our face. You started wearing a phony engagement ring until I told you to knock it off.”
“Because Frankie told me too! He said the papers thought our act was wearing thin and we needed to convince them our love was for real. Haven’t you ever heard of self-preservation?” She stared at him with such naked honesty on her face that it burned in its intensity. He buried his face in his hands and swallowed back tears. Had he been wrong all this time? Had Eleanor Lester never really been Frankie’s girl? Was she merely a scared hoofer, looking for any way to make good, the same as him?
He thought about the illegal speakeasies and night clubs that Frankie had forced them to perform at, free of charge, during Prohibition. Because Frankie owed the clubs’ owners a debt. The raids they’d narrowly escaped time and again. The way he and Eleanor had pretended to be fun and fancy-free, a couple of wealthy, good-looking swells painting the town red. All so no one would ever know that Frankie Martino was a two-bit cheat and a fraud. God, the lies he and Eleanor had told. The things they had swallowed. All to stay in Frankie Martino’s good graces. This was why he was here. To end this, to make sure Frankie could never do this to him or anyone he loved ever again.