November 1, 1961
EVELYN HUGO AND CELIA ST. JAMES SLUMBER PARTIES
How close is too close?
Girl-next-door Celia St. James, with her Oscar win and her trail of hits, has been a longtime friend of honey-blond sexpot Evelyn Hugo. But lately we’re starting to wonder if these two aren’t up to something.
Insiders are saying the two are quite a pair of . . . thespians.
Sure, plenty of girlfriends go shopping together and share a drink or two. But Celia’s car is parked outside Evelyn’s home, the one she used to share with none other than Mr. Don Adler, every night. All night.
So what’s happening behind those walls?
Whatever it is, it certainly doesn’t sound like it’s on the straight and narrow.
I’M GOING OUT ON A date with Mick Riva.”
“Like hell you are.”
When Celia was angry, her chest and her cheeks flushed. This time, they’d grown red faster than I’d ever seen.
We were in the outdoor kitchen of her weekend home in Palm Springs. She was grilling us burgers for dinner.
Ever since the article came out, I’d refused to be seen with her in Los Angeles. The rags didn’t yet know about her place in Palm Springs. So we would spend weekends there together and our weeks in L.A. apart.
Celia went along with the plan like a put-upon spouse, agreeing to whatever I wanted because it was easier than fighting with me. But now, with the suggestion of going on a date, I’d gone too far.
I knew I’d gone too far. That was the point, sort of.
“You need to listen to me,” I said.
“You need to listen to me.” She slammed the lid of the grill shut and gestured to me with a pair of silver tongs. “I’ll go along with any of your little tricks that you want. But I’m not getting on board with either of us dating.”
“We don’t have a choice.”
“We have plenty of choices.”
“Not if you want to keep your job. Not if you want to keep this house. Not if you want to keep any of our friends. Not to mention that the police could come after us.”
“You are being paranoid.”
“I’m not, Celia. And that’s what’s scary. But I’m telling you, they know.”
“One article in one tiny paper thinks they know. That’s not the same thing.”
“You’re right. This is still early enough that we can stop it.”
“Or it will go away on its own.”
“Celia, you have two movies coming out next year, and my movie is all anyone is talking about around town.”
“Exactly. Like Harry always says, that means we can do whatever we want.”
“No, that means we have a lot to lose.”
Celia, angry, picked up my pack of cigarettes and lit one. “So that’s what you want to do? You want to spend every second of our lives trying to hide what we really do? Who we really are?”
“It’s what everyone in town is doing every day.”
“Well, I don’t want to.”
“Well, then you shouldn’t have become famous.”
Celia stared at me as she puffed away at her cigarette. The pink of her lipstick stained the filter. “You’re a pessimist, Evelyn. To your very core.”
“What would you like to do, Celia? Maybe I should call over to Sub Rosa myself? Call the FBI directly? I can give them a quote. ‘Yep, Celia St. James and I are deviants!’ ”
“We aren’t deviants.”
“I know that, Celia. And you know that. But no one else knows that.”
“But maybe they would. If they tried.”
“They aren’t going to try. Do you get that? No one wants to understand people like us.”
“But they should.”
“There are lots of things we all should do, sweetheart. But it doesn’t work that way.”
“I hate this conversation. You’re making me feel awful.”
“I know, and I’m sorry. But the fact that it’s awful doesn’t mean it’s not true. If you want to keep your job, you cannot allow people to believe that you and I are more than friends.”
“And if I don’t want to keep my job?”
“You do want to.”
“No, you want to. And you’re pinning it on me.”
“Of course I want to.”
“I’d give it all up, you know. All of it. The money and the jobs and the fame. I’d give it all up just to be with you, just to be normal with you.”
“You have no idea what you’re saying, Celia. I’m sorry, but you don’t.”
“What’s really going on here is that you’re not willing to give it up for me.”
“No, what’s going on here is that you’re a dilettante who thinks if this acting thing doesn’t work out, you can go back to Savannah and live off your parents.”
“Who are you to talk to me about money? You’ve got bags of it.”
“Yeah, I do. Because I worked my ass off and was married to an asshole who knocked me around. And I did that so I could be famous. So I could live the life we’re living. And if you think I’m not going to protect that, you’ve lost your mind.”
“At least you’re admitting this is about you.”
I shook my head and pinched the bridge of my nose. “Celia, listen to me. Do you love that Oscar? The very thing you keep on your nightstand and touch before you go to sleep?”
“Don’t—”
“People are saying, given how early you won it, you’re the kind of actress who could win multiple times. I want that for you. Don’t you want that?”
“Of course I do.”
“And you’re gonna let them take that away just because you met me?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Listen to me, Celia. I love you. And I can’t let you throw away everything you have built—and all your incredible talent—by taking a stand when no one will stand with us.”
“But if we don’t try . . .”
“No one is going to back us, Celia. I know how it feels to be shut out of this town. I’m just finally making my way back in. I know you’re probably picturing some world where we go up against Goliath and win. But that’s not gonna happen. We’d tell the truth about our lives, and they’d bury us. We could end up in prison or in a mental hospital. Do you get that? We could be committed. It’s not that far-fetched. It happens. Certainly, you can count on the fact that no one would return our calls. Not even Harry.”
“Of course Harry would. Harry’s . . . one of us.”
“Which is precisely why he could never be caught talking to us again. Don’t you get it? The danger is even higher for him. There are actually men out there who would want to kill him if they knew. That’s the world we live in. Anyone who touched us would be examined. Harry wouldn’t be able to withstand it. I could never put him in that position. To lose everything he’s worked for? To quite literally risk his life? No. No, we’d be alone. Two pariahs.”
“But we’d have each other. And that’s enough for me.”
She was crying now, the tears streaking down her face and carrying her mascara with them. I put my arms around her and wiped her cheek with my thumb. “I love you so much, sweetheart. So, so much. And it’s in part because of things like that. You’re an idealist and a romantic, and you have a beautiful soul. And I wish the world was ready to be the way you see it. I wish that the rest of the people on earth with us were capable of living up to your expectations. But they aren’t. The world is ugly, and no one wants to give anyone the benefit of the doubt about anything. When we lose our work and our reputations, when we lose our friends and, eventually, what money we have, we will be destitute. I’ve lived that life before. And I cannot let it happen to you. I will do whatever I can to prevent you from living that way. Do you hear me? I love you too much to let you live only for me.”
She heaved into my body, her tears growing inside her. For a moment, I thought she might flood the backyard.
“I love you,” she said.
“I love you, too,” I w
hispered into her ear. “I love you more than anything else in the entire world.”
“It’s not wrong,” Celia said. “It shouldn’t be wrong, to love you. How can it be wrong?”
“It’s not wrong, sweetheart. It’s not,” I said. “They’re wrong.”
She nodded into my shoulder and held me tighter. I rubbed her back. I smelled her hair.
“It’s just that there’s not much we can do about it,” I said.
When she calmed down, she pulled away from me and opened the grill again. She did not look at me as she flipped the burgers. “So what is your plan?” she said.
“I’m going to get Mick Riva to elope with me.”
Her eyes, which already looked sore from crying, started to bloom again. She wiped a tear away, keeping her eyes on the grill. “What does that mean for us?” she said.
I stood behind her and put my arms around her. “It doesn’t mean what you think it means. I’m going to see if I can get him to elope with me, and then I’m going to have it annulled.”
“And you think that means they’ll stop watching you?”
“No, I know it means they will only watch me more. But they will be looking for other things. They will call me a tart or a fool. They will say I have terrible taste in men. They will say I’m a bad wife, I am too impulsive. But if they want to do any of that, they’ll have to stop saying I’m with you. It won’t fit their story anymore.”
“I get it,” she said, grabbing a plate and taking the burgers off the grill.
“OK, good,” I said.
“You’ll do whatever you have to do. But this is the last I want to hear about it. And I want it to be over and done with as soon as possible.”
“OK.”
“And when it’s over, I want us to move in together.”
“Celia, we can’t do that.”
“You said this would be so effective that no one would ever mention us.”
The thing is, I wanted us to move in together, too. I wanted it very much. “OK,” I said. “When it’s over, we’ll talk about moving in together.”
“OK,” she said. “Then we have a deal.”
I put my hand out to shake hers, but she waved it away. She didn’t want to shake on something that sad, that vulgar.
“And if it doesn’t work with Mick Riva?” she asked.
“It’s gonna work.”
Celia finally looked up at me. She was half smiling. “You think you’re so gorgeous that no one can possibly resist your charms?”
“Yes, actually.”
“All right,” she said, rising slightly on her toes to kiss me. “I suppose that’s true.”
I WORE A CREAM-COLORED COCKTAIL dress with heavy gold beading and a plunging neckline. I pulled my long blond hair into a high ponytail. I wore diamond earrings.
I glowed.
* * *
THE FIRST THING you need to do to get a man to elope with you is to challenge him to go to Las Vegas.
You do this by being out at an L.A. club and having a few drinks together. You ignore the impulse to roll your eyes at how eager he is to have his picture taken with you. You recognize that everyone is playing everyone else. It’s only fair that he’s playing you at the same time as you’re playing him. You reconcile these facts by realizing that what you both want from each other is complementary.
You want a scandal.
He wants the world to know he screwed you.
The two things are one and the same.
You consider laying it out for him, explaining what you want, explaining what you’re willing to give him. But you’ve been famous long enough to know that you never tell anyone anything more than you have to.
So instead of saying I’d like us to make tomorrow’s papers, you say, “Mick, have you ever been to Vegas?”
When he scoffs, as if he can’t believe you’re asking him if he’s ever been to Vegas, you know this will be easier than you thought.
“Sometimes I just get in the mood to roll dice, you know?” you say. Sexual implications are better when they are gradual, when they snowball over time.
“You want to roll dice, baby?” he says, and you nod.
“But it’s probably too late,” you say. “And we’re already here. And here’s OK, I suppose. I’m having a fine time.”
“My guys can call a plane and have us there like that.” He snaps his fingers.
“No,” you say. “That’s too much.”
“Not for you,” he says. “Nothing is too much for you.”
You know what he really means is Nothing is too much for me.
“You could really do that?” you say.
An hour and a half later, you’re on a plane.
You have a few drinks, you sit in his lap, you let his hand wander, and you slap it back. He has to ache for you and believe there is only one way to have you. If he doesn’t want you enough, if he believes he can get you another way, it’s all over. You’ve lost.
When the plane lands and he asks if the two of you should book a room at the Sands, you must demur. You must be shocked. You must tell him, in a voice that makes it clear you assumed he already knew, that you don’t have sex outside of marriage.
You must seem both steadfast and heartbroken about this. He must think, She wants me. And the only way we can make it happen is to get married.
For a moment, you consider the idea that what you’re doing is unkind. But then you remember that this man is going to bed you and then divorce you once he’s gotten what he wants. So no one is a saint here.
You’re going to give him what he’s asking for. So it’s a fair trade.
You go to the craps table and play a couple of rounds. You keep losing at first, as does he, and you worry that this is sobering both of you. You know the key to impulsivity is believing you are invincible. No one goes around throwing caution to the wind unless the wind is blowing their way.
You drink champagne, because it makes everything seem celebratory. It makes tonight seem like an event.
When people recognize the two of you, you happily agree to get your picture taken with them. Every time it happens, you hang on to him. You are telling him, in no small way, This is what it could be like if I belonged to you.
You hit a winning streak at the roulette table. You cheer so ebulliently that you jump up and down. You do this because you know where his eyes are going to go. You let him catch you catching him.
You let him put his hand on your ass as the wheel spins again.
This time, when you win, you push your ass against him.
You let him lean into you and say, “Do you want to get out of here?”
You say, “I don’t think it’s a good idea. I don’t trust myself with you.”
You cannot bring up marriage first. You already said the word earlier. You have to wait for him to say it. He said it in the papers. He will say it again. But you have to wait. You cannot rush it.
He has one more drink.
The two of you win three more times.
You let his hand graze your upper thigh, and then you push it away. It is two A.M., and you are tired. You miss the love of your life. You want to go home. You would rather be with her, in bed, hearing the light buzz of her snoring, watching her sleep, than be here. There is nothing about here that you love.
Except what being here will afford you.
You imagine a world where the two of you can go out to dinner together on a Saturday night and no one thinks twice about it. It makes you want to cry, the simplicity of it, the smallness of it. You have worked so hard for a life so grand. And now all you want are the smallest freedoms. The daily peace of loving plainly.
Tonight feels like both a small and a high price to pay for that life.
“Baby, I can’t take it,” he says. “I have to be with you. I have to see you. I have to love you.”
This is your chance. You have a fish on the line, and you have to gently reel him in.
“Oh, Mick,” you say. “We can’t.
We can’t.”
“I think I love you, baby,” he says. There are tears in his eyes, and you realize he’s probably more complex than you have given him credit for.
You’re more complex than he’s given you credit for, too.
“Do you mean it?” you ask him, as if you desperately hope it’s true.
“I think I do, baby. I do. I love everything about you. We only just met, but I feel like I can’t live without you.” What he means is that he thinks he can’t live without screwing you. And that, you believe.
“Oh, Mick,” you say, and then you say nothing more. Silence is your best friend.
He nuzzles your neck. It’s sloppy, and it feels akin to meeting a Newfoundland. But you pretend you love it. You two are in the bright lights of a Vegas casino. People can see you. You have to pretend that you do not notice them. That way, tomorrow, when they talk to the papers, they will say that the two of you were carrying on like a couple of teenagers.
You hope that Celia doesn’t pick up a single rag with your face on it. You think she’s smart enough not to. You think she knows how to protect herself. But you can’t be sure. The first thing you’re going to do when you get home, when this is all over, is to make sure she knows how important she is, how beautiful she is, how much you feel your life would be over if she were not in it.
“Let’s get married, baby,” he says into your ear.
There it is.
For you to grab.
But you can’t look too eager.
“Mick, are you crazy?”
“You make me this crazy.”
“We can’t get married!” you say, and when he doesn’t say anything back for a second, you worry that you’ve pushed slightly too far. “Or can we?” you ask. “I mean, I suppose we could!”
“Of course we can,” he says. “We’re on top of the world. We can do anything we want.”
You throw your arms around him, and you press against him, to let him know how excited—how surprised—you are by this idea and to remind him what he’s doing it for. You know your value to him. It would be silly to waste an opportunity to remind him.
He picks you up and sweeps you away. You whoop and holler so everyone looks. Tomorrow they will tell the papers he carried you off. It’s memorable. They will remember it.
