I should have kept quiet. I should have just smiled nicely. But instead, I said, “Don’t hold your breath.”
Brick looked at me and laughed and then waved good-bye, as if I hadn’t just insulted him.
“Can you believe that guy?” I said. Harry had already opened my door and was waiting for me to get into the car.
“That guy makes us a lot of money,” he said as I sat down.
Harry got in on the other side and turned the key in the ignition but didn’t start driving. Instead, he looked at me. “I’m not saying you should be dallying around too much with these actors you don’t like,” he said. “But it would do you some good, if you liked one, if things progressed past a photo op or two. The studio would like it. The fans would like it.”
Naively, I had thought I was done pretending to like the attention of every man I came across. “OK,” I said, rather petulantly. “I’ll try.”
And while I knew it was the best thing to do for my career, I grinned through my teeth on dates with Pete Greer and Bobby Donovan.
But then Harry set me up on a date with Don Adler, and I forgot why I would ever have resented the idea in the first place.
* * *
DON ADLER INVITED me out to Mocambo, without a doubt the hottest club in town, and he picked me up at my apartment.
I opened the door to see him in a nice suit, with a bouquet of lilies. He was just a few inches taller than me in my heels. Light brown hair, hazel eyes, square jaw, the kind of smile that, the moment you saw it, made you smile. It was the smile his mother had been famous for, now on a handsomer face.
“For you,” he said, just a bit shyly.
“Wow,” I said, taking them from him. “They’re gorgeous. Come in. Come in. I’ll put them in some water.”
I was wearing a boatneck sapphire-blue cocktail dress, my hair up in a chignon. I grabbed a vase from underneath the sink and turned the water on.
“You didn’t have to do all this,” I said as Don stood in my kitchen, waiting for me.
“Well,” he said, “I wanted to. I’ve been hounding Harry to meet you for a while. So it was the least I could do to make you feel special.”
I put the flowers on the counter. “Shall we?”
Don nodded and took my hand.
“I saw Father and Daughter,” he said when we were in his convertible and headed over to the Sunset Strip.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, Ari showed me an early cut. He says he thinks it’s going to be a big hit. Says he thinks you’re going to be a big hit.”
“And what did you think?”
We were stopped at a red light on Highland. Don looked at me. “I think you’re the most gorgeous woman I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“Oh, stop,” I said. I found myself laughing, blushing even.
“Truly. And a real talent, too. When the movie ended, I looked right at Ari and said, ‘That’s the girl for me.’?”
“You did not,” I said.
Don put up his hand. “Scout’s honor.”
There’s absolutely no reason a man like Don Adler should have a different effect on me from the rest of the men in the world. He was no more handsome than Brick Thomas, no more earnest than Ernie Diaz, and he could offer me stardom whether I loved him or not. But these things defy reason. I blame pheromones, ultimately.
That and the fact that, at least at first, Don Adler treated me like a person. There are people who see a beautiful flower and rush over to pick it. They want to hold it in their hands, they want to own it. They want the flower’s beauty to be theirs, to be within their possession, their control. Don wasn’t like that. At least, not at first. Don was happy to be near the flower, to look at the flower, to appreciate the flower simply being.
Here’s the thing about marrying a guy like that—a guy like Don Adler, back then. You’re saying to him, “This beautiful thing you’ve been happy to simply appreciate, well, now it’s yours to own.”
