Page 43 of His Girl Hollywood

But as the years had passed, he hadn’t been able to shake off the dirt. He’d become ever more mired in the muck. The possible wires he could’ve sent over the years spiraled through his mind.Dear Arlene, The weather is beautiful from this holding cell. This marks my second arrest in a month during a police raid. Or how about:Finally got to dance for a real bigwig this week. Ever hear of Lucky Luciano? Yes, his eye really is that droopy.How could he crow about his success when it came in exchange for parts of his soul? He’d traded decency for fame. Integrity for success.

Then, Mabel had happened—and his guilt and his shame had twisted into paranoia and fear. He’d convinced himself that any relationship that wasn’t strictly professional was dangerous. When a moment had finally arrived where it was imperative that he write, he had been choked with dread. Anxious he would only inflict worse harm. When Don received word that Patrick Morgan had died, he’d so desperately wanted to reach out. Send flowers. A note conveying his sorrow. Anything. But his fear had stopped him.

Frankie wanted to control every aspect of Don’s life, direct Don toward one aim only—keeping Frankie’s pockets flush with cash and Cosa Nostra creditors off Frankie’s back. Looking at Arlene,seeing the ways he’d hurt her and her family laid out so starkly before him, Don realized that he’d let Frankie win. That in never writing, never reaching out, he was no worse than a puppet dancing on strings pulled by Frankie Martino. But how could he fix it? He didn’t know how to paper over the years of hurt and estrangement, didn’t even know how to start. But if he was really here to free himself from Frankie’s yoke, he had to try. He nearly jumped when Arlene reached out from her chair and grasped his hand in hers.

“There’s no excuse for what I did,” he said. “You’re right. But I thought you all were better off without me.” He squeezed her hand in a gesture of assurance, as much for himself as for her, as he tried to find the words to explain. “I lost sight of myself in New York. Became someone I didn’t recognize and somehow I got stuck. But I’m trying to fix it, Arlene. I’m trying to start over.”

She huffed, an airy hint of a laugh. “By trading Broadway and its footlights for the spotlights and glamour of Hollywood?”

Shit.That hadn’t been what he’d meant. But it looked that way to her, didn’t it? That he was trading up for an even greater level of fame and success. If she only knew how precarious his situation really was. “Well, when you put it like that, I sound like a real cad.”

She’d left him a clear opening. All he had to do was tell her the truth about Frankie. He opened his mouth and found his throat choked with an unholy cocktail of shame and fear. Shame because he knew Arlene would’ve been far too smart and far too good to ever find herself in a situation like this. Fear because he knew she would be all indignant rage on his behalf. The same way she’d been when he was a boy and his father had roughed him up. She wouldn’t heed Don’s warnings if he told her the truth; she’d rush headlong into danger.Or,whispered a vicious voice in the back of his head,what if she doesn’t? What if after all this time she decides you deserve to lie in the bed you made for yourself?

She stood, shoving her hands into the pockets of her simple lilac gingham dress. He suspected it was one her mother had made, an old favorite. Crossing the yard, she started pacing under the camellia bush. Watching her helped banish that terrible internal voice that sounded like his father. A memory of falling from that tree and breaking his arm when he was eight years old sprang to mind, and he chuckled.

“What’s so funny?”

“That tree—it was once my greatest enemy.”

She giggled. “You howled like a wounded animal when you fell out of it. And your mother was so mad. She’d told you to stop climbing the trees back here. That you were bound to get hurt.”

“You didn’t leave my side the entire time I was in the cast. You were my right arm. Literally.”

He stood up then too. He had too much nervous energy to stay seated. He looked up and took in the stars. They were dim and twinkly, obscured by the lights of the apartment buildings and duplexes lining their block. Houses that contained lives he’d once believed were too small to contain him and his dreams. But the houses hadn’t been the problem. It had been him and his cocky arrogance, his belief he was too good for the world he’d been born into. Too big for the box his father wanted to keep him in. Yet, Arlene had found a way to build the life she’d dreamt of without ever letting go of the people who mattered most to her. He wished he’d known that was even possible. Instead, he’d traded one suffocating box for another.

Arlene walked to meet him in the middle of the grass and gently bumped her shoulder into his. “Remember how we used to lie in the grass and look at the stars? You know, after you left, I still did it. Every night for a year. Did you keep looking at them? In New York?”

“I was too busy to bother to look up.” He grimaced. “I didn’tmean… That came out all wrong. What I mean is that somewhere along the way, I lost track of what really matters, the small beauties this world has to offer, the support of a friend.”

“Did you mean what you said in there—that you came here because you wanted to work with me? As your director?”

He was surprised by the question. That she would doubt the truth of that. “Of course I was. I told you that first night on the soundstage that I was here for you. For us. To make good on the dreams we’d spent hours in this backyard weaving. Hollywood was an opportunity—to escape, to start over. But knowing you’d be here making sure every step I took was a sure-footed one, it gave me the courage to say yes.” This time he reached out and grabbed her hand, tangling his fingers in hers. “I’d like to be friends again, Arlene. Please.” There. He’d said it. Frankie and his threats be damned.

She bit her lip and nodded. “I don’t know if you know this, but I don’t exactly invite people I dislike over to my parents’ house for dinner.” She was still nervous, he could tell. He squeezed her hand to reassure her.

“Someone you don’t dislike isn’t exactly a bosom friend, but I’ll take it.” That made her laugh, and he loved the way it made her face look, free and open, unencumbered by the stress etched into it on set. She turned to look at him and giggled further, reaching for his waist. His eyes widened in shock and his throat went dry, before he realized she was reaching for the flowery apron he’d tied on to help her mother with the dishes. “I see Mama recruited you.”

“I seem to recall she likes a man who knows his way around the kitchen.” They were both quiet then, remembering Arlene’s father, his booming laugh, and the warmth of the kitchen when both the Morgans were home. Her father praising her mother’s cooking, Pauline swatting at him with a dish towel, saying he was distracting her and going to ruin their supper.

“You remember?” Arlene whispered.

“How could I forget? It was like their own little pantomime, standing side by side at the sink, washing and drying in a rhythm only they knew.”

Arlene bit her lip, clearly overwhelmed with emotion, and nodded. She swiped at her eyes, before giggling, the burble of a bittersweet memory in her voice. “We used to call it the Morgan waltz.”

He nodded. “I wanted to learn it so badly. To be a part of a home with that much love, that much happiness.” God, nowhewas getting choked up.

“You always were,” she whispered, her voice like a prayer before bedtime. “You left us. But you were always welcome here, always part of the Morgan family.”

He struggled to get the next words out. “I see that now. And I’m so sorry to have missed Patrick’s—”

“It was a lovely service.” She stopped him, squeezing his hand a little tighter. “We spread his ashes in the ocean, from the bow of his boat, like he always said he wanted.”

“I should’ve written, sent flowers, something.”

She scrunched her lips into a moue of regret. She nodded, taking a breath before she spoke, as if she were deciding something. “You should’ve. It would’ve meant a lot. To Mama…and to me.” He spoke to apologize again, but she cut him off. “But that’s in the past. And I might’ve said that we can’t pick up where we left off. But that doesn’t mean we can’t start over.”

“I’d like that.”