She walked slowly toward the back booth, excitement, anticipation, and almost certain disappointment churning inside her. As he reached for a pack of Chesterfields, she saw fingernails bitten to the quick. He tapped out a cigarette. Belinda held her breath, waiting for him to look up. Everything around her faded. Everything except the man in the booth.
He turned a page of his book, the cigarette dangling unlit from the corner of his mouth, and thumbed open a match pack. She’d nearly reached the booth when he struck the match and looked up. Just like that, Belinda found herself staring through a cloud of gray smoke into the cool blue eyes of James Dean.
In that instant she was back in Indianapolis at the Palace Theater. The movie was East of Eden. She’d been sitting in the last row when this same face had exploded on the screen. With his high, intelligent forehead and restless blue eyes, he’d roared into her life larger than all the other larger-than-life faces she’d ever seen. Fireworks exploded inside her and Catherine wheels spun, and she’d felt as if all the air had been punched from her body.
Bad Boy James Dean, with the smoldering eyes and crooked grin. Bad Boy Jimmy, who snapped his fingers at the world and laughed when he told it to go to hell. From the moment she saw him on the Palace Theater screen, he meant everything to her. He was the rebel…the lure…the shining beacon…The tilt of his head and slouch of his shoulders proclaimed that a man is his own creation. She’d transformed that message within herself and walked out of the theater her own woman. A month before her high school graduation, she lost her virginity in the backseat of an Olds 88 to a boy whose sulky mouth reminded her of Jimmy’s. Afterward, she packed her suitcase, slipped out of the house, and headed for the Indianapolis bus station. By the time she reached Hollywood, she’d changed her name to Belinda and put Edna Cornelia behind her forever.
She stood in front of him, her heart thumping in a crazy dance. She wanted to be wearing her tight black pedal pushers instead of this prim, navy-blue cotton dress. She wanted dark glasses, her highest heels, her blond hair pulled back on one side with a tortoiseshell comb.
“I—I loved your movie, Jimmy.” Her voice quivered like a violin string drawn too tight. “East of Eden. I loved it.” And I love you. More than you can imagine.
The cigarette formed an exclamation point to his sulky lips. His heavy-lidded eyes squinted against the smoke. “Yeah?”
He was speaking to her! She couldn’t believe it. “I’m your biggest fan,” she stammered. “I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen East of Eden.” Jimmy, you’re everything to me! You’re all I have. “It was wonderful. You were wonderful.” She stared worshipfully at him, her hyacinth-blue eyes luminous with love and adoration.
Dean shrugged his fine, narrow shoulders.
“I can’t wait for Rebel Without a Cause. It opens next month, doesn’t it?” Get up and take me home with you, Jimmy. Please. Take me home and make love to me.
“Yeah.”
Her heart was racing so fast she felt dizzy. No one understood him like she did. “I heard Giant’s really going to be something.” Love me, Jimmy. I’ll give everything to you.
Success had made him immune to hyacinth-eyed blondes with star-worship emblazoned across their pretty faces. He grunted and hunched back over his book. She didn’t consider his behavior rude. He was a giant, a god. Rules that applied to others didn’t apply to him. “Thank you,” she murmured, as she backed away. And then, in a whisper, “I love you, Jimmy.”
Dean didn’t hear. Or if he had, he didn’t care. He’d heard those words too many other times.
Belinda spent the rest of the week reliving the magical encounter. His location shooting in Texas was over, so he was sure to be at Schwab’s again, and she’d go there every day until he reappeared. She wouldn’t stammer, either. Men had always liked her, and Jimmy would be no different. She’d wear her sexiest outfit, and he’d have to fall in love with her.
But it was the respectable navy-blue sheath she wore the following Friday evening when she walked out of the shabby apartment she shared with two other girls and went off with her date. Billy Greenway was an acne-scarred sex fiend, but he was also the head messenger for Paramount’s casting department. A month ago, she’d gotten an audition at Paramount. She thought she’d been one of the prettiest girls in the waiting room, but she didn’t know if the assistant casting director had liked her. As she left the building, she’d met Billy, and by their third date she made him promise to get her a copy of the casting director’s memo if she’d let him touch her titties. Yesterday he’d called to tell her he finally had it.
They’d nearly reached his car when he pulled her against him for a long kiss. She heard the rustle of paper in the pocket of his checked sports shirt and pushed him away. “Is that the memo, Billy?”
He kissed her neck, his heavy breathing reminding her of all the raw Indiana boys she’d left behind. “I told you I’d bring it, didn’t I?”
“Let me see.”
“Later, babe.” His hands moved to her hips.
“You’re going out with a lady, and I don’t appreciate being mauled.” She gave him her coldest look and got in the car, but she knew she wouldn’t see the paper until she’d paid his price. “Where are you taking me tonight?” she asked as they drove away from her apartment.
“How’d you like to go to a little blast at the Garden of Allah?”
“The Garden of Allah?” Belinda’s head came up. During the forties, the Garden had been one of the most famous hotels in Hollywood. Some of the stars still stayed there. “How did you get an invitation to a party at the Garden?”
“I got my ways.”
He drove with one hand on the steering wheel and the other draped over her shoulder. As she expected, he didn’t take her directly to the Garden. Instead he wound through the side streets off Laurel Canyon until he found a secluded spot. He turned off the ignition and flicked the key over so they could hear the radio. Pérez Prado playing “Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White.” “Belinda, you know I’m real crazy about you.” He nuzzled her neck.
She wished he would just give her the memo, then take her to the party at the Garden without making her go through this. Still, it hadn’t been too bad last time, not once she’d closed her eyes and pretended he was Jimmy.
He thrust his tongue in her mouth before she caught her breath. She made a soft, gagging sound, then imprinted Jimmy’s face on the backs of her eyelids. Bad Boy Jimmy, taking what you want without asking. A small moan escaped at the feel of the rough, invading tongue. Bad Boy Jimmy, tongue so sweet.
He began tugging at the buttons of her navy sheath, his tongue stuck deep in her mouth. Cold air brushed her back and shoulders as he peeled the dress down to her waist and pushed her bra away. She pressed her eyes more tightly shut and pretended Jimmy was looking at her. Am I beautiful for you, Jimmy? I like it when you look at me. I like it when you touch me.
His hand slid up her stocking and over her garter onto bare flesh. He touched the inside of her thigh, and she eased her legs open for him. Touch me, Jimmy. Touch me there. Beautiful Jimmy. Oh yes.
He pressed her hand into his lap and rubbed it against him. Her eyes flew open. “No!” She pulled herself away and began straightening her clothes. “I’m not a tramp.”
“I know that, babe,” he said tightly. “You got a lot of class. But it’s not right the way you get me all worked up and then turn off.”
“You got yourself all worked up. And if it bothers you, stop dating me.”
He didn’t like that, and he peeled out onto the dark street. All the way down Laurel Canyon, he sulked in silence, and he was still sulking as he swung onto Sunset Boulevard. Only when he’d eased the car into the parking space at the Garden of Allah did he reach into his pocket and pull out the paper she wanted. “You’re not going to like this.”
The pit of her stomach lurched. She snatched the paper from him and ran her eyes down the typed list. She had to scan the page twice before she found
her name. A comment was printed next to it. She stared at it, tried to make sense of what she was seeing. Gradually she absorbed the words.
Belinda Britton, she read. Great eyes, great tits, no talent.
The Garden of Allah was once Hollywood’s favorite playground. Originally the home of Alla Nazimova, the great Russian film star, it had been turned into a hotel in the late twenties. Unlike the Beverly Hills and the Bel Air, the Garden had never been completely respectable, and even when it first opened, there’d been something slightly seedy about it. But still the stars came, drawn like silvery moths to the twenty-five Spanish bungalows and the party that never seemed to stop.
Tallulah Bankhead cavorted naked around the pool, which was shaped like Nazimova’s Black Sea. Scott Fitzgerald met Sheilah Graham in one of the bungalows. The men lived there between marriages: Ronald Reagan when it was over with Jane Wyman, Fernando Lamas after Arlene Dahl. During the Golden Age, they could all be found at the Garden: Bogart and his Baby, Ty Power, Ava Gardner. Sinatra was there, and Ginger Rogers. Screenwriters sat on white slat chairs by their front doors and typed during the day. Rachmaninoff rehearsed in one bungalow, Benny Goodman in another. And always, there was a party.
By that September night in 1955, the Garden was in its death throes. Dirt and rust streaked the white stucco walls, the furniture in the bungalows was shabby, and just the day before, a dead mouse had been found floating in the pool. Ironically, it still cost the same to rent a bungalow there as it did at the Beverly Hills, although within four years the place would fall to the wrecker’s ball. But on that September night, the Garden was still the Garden, and some of the stars were still around.
Billy opened the car door for Belinda. “Come on, babe. The party will cheer you up. A few of the guys from Paramount will be here. I’ll introduce you around. You’ll knock ’em dead yet.”
Her hands curled into fists on the paper in her lap. “Leave me alone for a little bit, will you? I’ll meet you inside.”
“Okay, babe.” His footsteps crunched in the gravel as he moved away. She wadded the memo into a ball, then sagged against the seat. What if it was true that she had no talent? When she’d dreamed about being a movie star she’d never thought much about acting. She’d imagined they would give her lessons or something.
A car pulled into the space next to her with the radio blaring. The couple didn’t bother to turn off the engine before they started necking. High school kids, hiding out in the parking lot at the Garden of Allah.
And then the music was over and the news came on.
It was the first story.
The announcer repeated the information calmly, as if it were an everyday occurrence, as if it were not an outrage, not the end of Belinda’s life, not the end of everything. She screamed, a terrible, long cry, all the more horrible because it happened inside her head.
James Dean was dead.
She threw open the door and stumbled across the parking lot, not looking where she was going, not caring. She tore through the shrubbery and down one of the paths, trying to outrace her suffocating anguish. She ran past the swimming pool shaped like Azimova’s Black Sea, past a big oak at the end of the pool that held a telephone box with a sign, FOR CENTRAL CASTING ONLY. She ran until she came to a long stucco wall beside one of the bungalows. In the dark, she sagged against the wall and cried over the death of her dreams.
Jimmy was from Indiana, just like her, and now he was dead. Killed on the road to Salinas driving a silver Porsche he called “Little Bastard.” He’d said anything was possible. A man was his own man; a woman her own woman. Without Jimmy, her dreams seemed childish and impossible.
“My dear, you’re making a frightful noise. Would you mind terribly taking your troubles somewhere else? Unless, of course, you’re very pretty, in which case you’re invited to come through the gate and have a drink with me.” The voice, deep and faintly British, drifted over the top of the stucco wall.
Belinda’s head jerked up. “Who are you?”
“An interesting question.” There was a short silence, punctuated by the distant sound of music from the party. “Let’s say I’m a man of contradictions. A lover of adventure, women, and vodka. Not necessarily in that order.”
There was something about the voice…Belinda wiped her tears with the back of her hand and looked for the gate. When she found it, she stepped inside, drawn by his voice and the possibility of distraction from her awful pain.
A pool of pale yellow light washed the center of the patio. She gazed toward the dark figure of a man sitting in the night shadows just beyond. “James Dean is dead,” she said. “He was killed in a car accident.”
“Dean?” Ice cubes clicked against his glass. “Ah, yes. Undisciplined sort of chap. Always raising a ruckus. Not that I hold that against him, mind you. I’ve raised a few in my time. Sit down, my dear, and have a drink.”
She didn’t move. “I loved him.”
“Love, I’ve discovered, is a transient emotion best satisfied by a good fuck.”
She was deeply shocked. No one had ever used that word in her presence, and she said the first thing that came to mind. “I didn’t even get that.”
He laughed. “Now there, my dear, is the real tragedy.” She heard a soft creak, and then he stood and walked toward her. He was tall, probably over six feet, a little thick around the middle, with wide shoulders and a straight carriage. He wore white duck trousers and a pale yellow shirt filled in at the neck with a loosely knotted ascot. She took in the small details—a pair of canvas deck shoes, a watch with a leather band, a webbed khaki belt. And then her gaze lifted, and she found herself looking into the world-weary eyes of Errol Flynn.
Chapter 3
By the time Belinda met him, Flynn had gone through three wives and several fortunes. He was forty-six but looked twenty years older. The famous mustache was grizzled; the handsome face, with its chiseled bones and sculpted nose, had grown jowly and lined from vodka, drugs, and cynicism. His face formed a road map of his life. In four years he’d be dead, falling victim to a long list of ailments that would have killed other men much earlier. But most men weren’t Flynn.
He’d swashbuckled his way across the screen for two decades, fighting villains, winning wars, and saving damsels. Captain Blood, Robin Hood, Don Juan—Flynn had played them all. Sometimes, if the mood struck him, he’d even played them well.
Long before he came to Hollywood, Errol Flynn had taken part in adventures every bit as dangerous as those he’d played on screen. He’d been an explorer, a sailor, a gold prospector. He’d traded for slaves in New Guinea. The scar on his heel came from a shot fired by a party of headhunters, another scar on his abdomen from a scuffle with a rickshaw driver in India. At least that’s what he said. With Flynn, no one could ever be sure.
Always, there were women. They couldn’t get enough of him, and Flynn felt the same about them. He especially liked them young. The younger the better. Looking into a fresh young face and plunging into a fresh young body gave him the illusion of recovering his lost innocence. It also brought him trouble.
In 1942 he was put on trial for statutory rape. Although the girls were willing, California law made it illegal to have sexual intercourse with anyone under the age of eighteen, willing or not. Nine women served on the jury, however, and Flynn was acquitted. Afterward, he perpetuated the myth of his prowess even as he hated becoming a phallic joke.
The trial didn’t end his fascination with young girls, and even though he was forty-six, alcoholic, and dissipated, they still found him irresistible.
“Come over here, my dear, and sit next to me.”
He touched her arm, and Belinda felt as if the earth had spun out of its orbit. She sank into the chair he led her to just as she thought her knees would give out. Her hand shook as she took the glass he pressed toward her. This wasn’t a dream. It was real. She and Errol Flynn were alone together. He smiled at her, a crooked smile, roguish, urbane, the famous left eyebrow slightly higher
than the right. “How old are you, my dear?”
It took her a moment to find her voice. “Eighteen.”
“Eighteen…” His left eyebrow rose a little higher. “I don’t suppose—no, of course not.” He tugged on the corner of his mustache and gave her an apologetic chuckle, both charming and disarming. “You wouldn’t happen to have your birth certificate on you?”
“My birth certificate?” She looked at him quizzically. Such a strange question. And then the old stories about the trial clicked into place, and she laughed. “I’m not carrying my birth certificate, Mr. Flynn, but I truly am eighteen.” Her laughter turned daringly mischievous. “Would it make any difference if I weren’t?”
His response was vintage Flynn. “Of course not.”
For the next hour they observed the amenities. Flynn told her a story about John Barrymore and gossiped about his leading ladies. She confided what had happened with Paramount. He asked her to call him “Baron,” his favorite nickname. She said she would, but she called him “Mr. Flynn” just the same. At the end of the hour, he took her by the hand and led her inside.
With some embarrassment, she asked to use the bathroom. After she had flushed the toilet and washed her hands, she sneaked a peak at the contents of his medicine cabinet. Errol Flynn’s toothbrush. Errol Flynn’s razor. Her eyes skipped over the pills and Errol Flynn’s suppositories. When she shut the cabinet, her face in the mirror was flushed and her eyes bright with excitement. She’d wandered into the presence of a great star.
He waited for her in the bedroom. He wore a burgundy-colored dressing gown and smoked a cigarette in a short amber holder. A fresh bottle of vodka sat on the table at his side. She smiled tentatively, not sure what she should do next. He seemed both amused and pleased. “Contrary to what you may have read, my dear, I am not a ravisher of young women.”