For the first time, a glimmer of a smile turned up her carefully painted lips as she directed Harlean inside.
Dave Allen was surprisingly young, probably under thirty, with suntanned skin, bright hazel eyes and an engaging smile. He was not at all what Harlean had expected of the head of Central Casting. He stood and held out a hand to indicate a green leather chair opposite his desk. He was staring at her.
“Have a seat.”
“Thank you, Mr. Allen.”
“Dave, please. I’d feel ancient otherwise. And with whom do I have the pleasure of meeting?”
Harlean Carpenter, she nearly said but Mrs. Charles McGrew fought past it. Both names tangled in her mind then, dueling in that split second with the idea that she would have to explain being someone’s wife at such a young age.
What if they contacted him? This was all just a silly lark anyway—her momentary adventure.
“Jean Harlow,” she offhandedly replied, managing a smile. It completely surprised her that she had blurted it out, but her mother’s name would suit for now.
“That gaze of yours alone is worth a million bucks. You are different, just like the letter says.”
“Thank you...” she tipped her head to the side and held her smile “...I think.”
“Just calling it like I see it, Miss Harlow. That’s my job. We’ll want to get you registered right away. Eleanor, my secretary, will get your information.”
“Don’t you need to know if I can act or anything?”
She was stunned that he was actually going to register her after less than a five-minute conversation.
“I have what I need. Just shine every time we send you out, like you have right now with me, and you’ll be in business, believe me.”
As she left the office ten minutes later, Harlean plucked a business card from the secretary’s desk and gave it a victorious tap against her cheek. She was too stunned even to wonder what “in business” would actually mean in the coming days, but it didn’t matter, she reminded herself. She had won the bet, and she couldn’t wait to tell the girls, and see their faces when she did.
* * *
The next day, Harlean and Chuck took a picnic lunch into the bucolic grounds of Griffith Park. Chuck brought his camera, intent on taking photographs of his wife amid the lush surroundings. The rocky setting was like another world in the middle of a bustling city. There pine trees mingled with huge, glorious sycamores and a periwinkle-blue stream wound through it.
“The camera loves you.” He smiled as he clicked away, instructing her to pose this way and that atop a huge boulder beneath the warm midday sun. “You take my breath away.”
“I look like a schoolgirl in this outfit,” she said as she gestured to the gingham dress, baggy cardigan and sensible white tennis shoes he had chosen for her that morning.
“Not to me, you don’t.”
“Well, gingham isn’t very sexy.”
“You are my wife, I don’t want you to be sexy, at least not for anyone else but me. Besides vampy women are pretty loathsome. In my opinion, disgusting.”
Harlean thought of Pola Negri, her dark eyes beneath a silk turban, the hypnotic stare. She could not have disagreed with Chuck more. She respected any woman who could have that kind of power through a camera lens. It didn’t have to mean she was loose.
She had wanted to tell him about the dare all day, and about Dave Allen’s reaction. But something stronger stopped her. She knew she should be able to tell her husband anything, especially something that was actually kind of exciting, but she certainly did not want to ruin such a lovely afternoon by setting off his jealous streak.
After he had taken a few pictures, they sat in the shade of a gnarled old oak tree and Harlean unpacked sandwiches and a thermos full of lemonade. It was quiet here, pristine. The only sounds were from the stream running nearby and birds trilling in the trees above.
Chuck propped himself on an elbow. For a moment, he just watched her sitting against a tree trunk, knees drawn up to her chest.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“Think about what?”
“About being back in California. Is it everything you hoped it would be?”
She leaned over and pressed a kiss onto his cheek. “Being married to you makes it all a hundred times better than that.”
“Well, you’re still the best thing ever to happen to me, that’s for sure.”
He said it matter-of-factly because he said it to her so often, but now there was a richness in his tone, like the sound of a pledge, and it touched her. She understood that it helped him believe in what they had together, and to remind her what was in his heart. Life had made him such a serious young man, and filled him with demons Harlean wasn’t sure she could ever fully help him vanquish, no matter how fiercely she loved him—especially because he wouldn’t acknowledge his feelings about the past with her.
But if she could continue making him happy, that would be a start and, she hoped, distraction enough.
“How about you, are you happy here?” she asked him.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I just thought maybe you missed home.”
“You are my home.”
He leaned over to kiss her as if to underscore the declaration.
“Sometimes I think I might like something to do.”
He tipped his head, and she knew that he had heard the change in her tone. “Like what?”
“Oh, gosh, I don’t know, just something to do with my days, that’s all.”
He ran a hand behind her neck and gently pulled her close so that he could kiss her again. It was so tender and sweet between them just then that she felt badly admitting to him that she could ever need anything else but his love and their marriage.
“Something more than keep our home and cook those wonderful meals you do?”
“I’m a horrible cook.”
“You are not.”
“Well, you are biased.”
She smiled as he caressed her neck with skillful fingertips, but she pulled away from him suddenly, sat back up and busied herself with pouring a second cup of lemonade. This was not the place for them to get carried away with more than a few kisses.
“What do you do when you’re gone from the house?” Harlean asked.
“I just knock around with the guys here and there, whatever they’re doing. No big deal. Got to stay in their good graces, you know. What’s with the third degree, doll?”
“I’m just curious.”
But of course it was more than that. She didn’t want to believe he had a serious problem with drinking, but his behavior with his new friends, and what happened on the cruise, had startled her enough to put the thought into her mind. She couldn’t help but worry now every time he took a drink because she saw that it changed him.
After lunch Chuck took the picnic basket back to the car. Then they hiked along the trails up through the hills of the park where they talked about a bit of everything, and nothing, as young couples do. As they wandered, she told him the vision she had for decorating their house, and then he proposed the possibility of taking a trip up the coast to Santa Barbara. Later, she asked him whether he’d yet been convinced of the beauty of poetry through reading the Keats volume together in the evenings. Harlean loved how he could make her laugh one minute, and say something poignant the next. She liked to think they could talk about anything, yet she still could not make herself tell