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  Well, of course I went. Who could refuse an offer like that? After that, we started seeing each other.

  We kept our affair secret, as neither one of us wanted to lose our jobs. Working at a studio was like working anywhere else—people love to gossip about what everyone else was doing. So, we kept it to ourselves because we didn’t want to deal with any of that hassle. But as soon as the picture wrapped, we became official. I even went with him to the premiere. What fun that was! A real treat.

  We were in love for about three years. But, as his fame grew, so did his ego, tragically. He was never unbearable, as some actors are, but he did have trouble keeping it in check. And I know it’s hard when everyone makes a fool out of themselves over you and wants to be your best friend. And the women! Good Lord, they’d practically throw themselves at him! Oh, that made me so angry. I was more foolish back then and things like that ate me up inside.

  The fact that I’d basically written the script that had made him famous annoyed me, too. I didn’t receive anywhere near the accolades he did. In fact, I barely even got a credit. So, therefore, I was a little jealous and because of that, a little resentful of Vic, who had nothing to do with it. I acted like a fool and I admit that. One time I got so upset, I threw a plate at him and hit him in the head. It knocked him out cold. I’ve always felt bad about that.

  But as they say, all good things must come to an end…

  Just a week shy of my twenty-fourth birthday, I found Vic in bed with a young woman. I don’t know who she was, but I believe she occasionally worked as an extra. It hurt me, mainly because I knew he only did it to tear us apart. I would have preferred he’d been more of a man about it and just told me it was over. To see that… Well, a woman in love with a man who cheats on her is one miserable girl. But to catch them at it? That only adds to the misery. It’s like a dagger in the heart that twists and twists and never lets up.

  So, it was over. But it was a sweet thing back then, being in love with a famous actor. To think of how we were treated like royalty everywhere we went… That was living, it really, really was. However, it was over almost as soon as it began. And looking back, I don’t hold any grudges. Well, maybe one or two. But that’s the way love is, isn’t it? It always makes us hang onto things we’d rather forget but somehow can’t.

  Now this leads us up to the time of my life where I became acquainted with Carmen. I’ll begin to write about her in the next letter.

  With warmest regards and kindest wishes,

  Ms. C.V. Weeks

  * * * * *

  July 19th

  Dearest Marabel,

  So, here we are to the part I know you really want to get to. I apologize if I got too caught up in my own reminisces. But it has been fun, thus so far. I just hope I haven’t bored you to tears.

  It was just after I’d broken up with Vic that Herbert, who was in the midst of making his first feature, pulled me out of the house to go to a studio party. (At that time, we were living together in a little bungalow he’d bought up in the Hills. It was Spanish style home and had a small pool and was just lovely.) A lot of schmoozing went on at these parties and I really found them intolerable. And I didn’t want to go mainly because I was afraid I’d run into Vic. It had been a few months since we’d broken up but he’d immediately married the starlet I’d found him in bed with. The fool. It hurt; I’m not saying it didn’t. But I was moving past it. Or, rather, I was trying to. However, our former relationship was overshadowed by theirs. They were always on-again, off-again and had several huge fights on the lot, all of which were talked about in detail at the commissary.

  “Come on, Caddy,” Herbert said. “You really need to get out of the house.”

  “I don’t want to,” I said, miserably. “Just leave me alone.”

  “Do it for me,” he pleaded. “I can’t go alone.”

  I just stared at him and shook my head. I was in the midst of a post-love depression. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. Every girl has had this time in her life when she finds that the one she loves doesn’t love her back. Herbert, however, found my behavior unbearable. He chastised me over it for about an hour until I finally relented just so he’d shut up.

  Alas, we went. The party was being held in a very nice home of some producer. The food was delicious and there was plenty of it. The home was perfectly decorated. It was a nice party. However, I just didn’t want to be there. Foolish me, I wanted to be home crying.

  The night wore on. Herbert was having a wonderful time. I situated myself in a corner and would catch his eye from time to time and jerk my head towards the door. He ignored me, of course. It was his job as an aspiring director to mingle with others in the industry and to make those all-so-important contacts. I didn’t mind that he was doing that; I just wanted to be someplace else.

  I’d just about given up on him and was about to call a cab when I heard her voice. It was the first time I heard her voice and one of the reasons that it caught my ear was because of her still-strong Southern accent, so much like my own, which I couldn’t seem to get rid of no matter how many voice and diction classes I took.

  Even so, I ignored her. But she was persistent.

  “Hey, did you hear me?” she asked. “Do you know where the bathroom is?”

  I said, without looking, “Up the stairs, to the left.”

  “Oh, they don’t mind us going upstairs?” she asked.

  I finally looked up and was struck by her beauty. She stood at about my height, just under five-foot-four, and had beautiful auburn hair and these electric blue eyes. Her skin was lightly freckled, though she always covered it up with makeup and hated to go into the sun because it “gave” her even more freckles. One freckle, she would say, was more than enough. Her body was thin but curvaceous. She once told me that no matter how much she starved herself, she could not get the size of her legs, especially her calves, to decrease. She had very strong legs, what some would consider sexy. She always wore long skirts and pants, mainly to keep men from gawking at her legs.

  But she was so down to earth that you always noticed her beauty second after her personality. I can still see her standing there, highball glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other. She was so young looking and so nervous acting. She looked… Well, you could tell she didn’t have a lot of money and her clothes looked a bit shabby. Her hat was set off to the side, as if she’d been trying to adjust it, then couldn’t get it back on straight. Her stockings had a run in them. But her manner, her pure sweetness, made one overlook all of this and see into the person she was. And that person was very intriguing.

  “No,” I said. “They don’t mind.”

  “Would you mind coming with me?”

  “Why?” I asked, almost annoyed. No one had ever asked me to go to the bathroom with them. It wasn’t something you would ask of someone else, especially a stranger.

  “I’m just not…used to these types of things,” she said.

  “Are you from the South?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” she drawled. “Why?”

  “Your accent comes out strong.”

  She blushed. “I’ve been taking voice and diction to get over it. It must not be working.”

  I smiled at her because I had done the same thing when I’d first gotten to Hollywood. “I did that,” I said.

  “Really?” she asked, her eyes wide. “I can’t hear yours.”

  “You’re not listening closely enough. But it’s getting better,” I said.

  “So does that mean mine is awful?”

  “No!” I exclaimed and shook my head. “No, you sound fine.”

  She smiled. “I really have to pee.”

  “Okay,” I said and got up. “Follow me.”

  We went up the stairs and found the bathroom. She even made me go in with her! Why, I don’t know. I stood over the sink and checked my make-up as she did her business. When she was finished, she came over and washed her hands.

&n
bsp; “Do I know you?” she asked and stared at me in the mirror.

  “No.”

  “You look familiar to me.”

  “My sister is Andrea Weeks,” I said, figuring that this was probably why she recognized me.

  “Oh! You’re kidding!”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not.”

  She smiled. “Is she still dating Alistair Campbell?”

  At that time, Alistair Campbell was a handsome English actor. Everyone loved him. And everyone wanted to date him. But not my sister. They’d just broken up. She’d told me he was, and I quote, “A drag in bed.” My sister and I shared a lot. Always have. So, I shook my head. “No. She’s not dating anyone right now.”

  She nodded, then picked up a bottle of perfume and sniffed it. “Oh, this smells divine.”

  She held it under my nose. I sniffed and said, “Yes, I have some of that at home.”

  She studied me for a moment, then slipped it in her purse.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, appalled.

  “Nothing,” she said, grinning.

  “You can’t just take that!”

  She shrugged, then leaned up against the vanity. “What’s your name?”

  “C.V. Weeks.”

  “C.V. Weeks?”

  “Yes,” I replied, becoming a little annoyed at her for taking the perfume.

  “What does it stand for?”

  “Cadence Veronica.”

  “Oh, that’s cute!” she squealed and held her hand out. “I’m Carmen Clayton.”

  We shook hands and I said, “Is that your real name?”

  She shook her head. “My real name’s Elsie Smith.”

  “Oh,” I said. “But I do like Carmen Clayton.”

  “Yeah,” she said, nodding. “My agent told me to change it. Well, he’s not my agent yet but we did have a meeting and he said Elsie Smith was just too plain. So I came up with Carmen Clayton.”

  “Umm…”

  “This is a nice place, isn’t it?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, though I wasn’t particularly impressed. I had been to parties at much bigger and nicer houses. “It’s nice.”

  “Your sister have a big place like this?”

  “No, she lives in at the Beverly Gardens most of the time.”

  “That’s a real nice hotel,” she said, eying me. “Why? Why does she stay there?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I think she just likes room service. And she doesn’t have to worry about finding maids and all that. They also have laundry service.”

  “Wow,” she said. “She sounds real fancy, your sister.”

  “She acts real fancy, too,” I told her.

  “I’d like to meet her,” she said.

  “Well,” I said. “Okay, I guess.”

  Let me stop here and say that after she found out who I was related to, it was obvious that Carmen was more interested in befriending Andrea than me. You see, she wanted a life like my sister’s. You can’t really blame her. My sister led an extraordinary life. I envied her from time to time myself. Also, it’s just the way it is in the movie business. Everybody wants to use you to meet your famous friends and relatives. It’s nothing to get upset about. It’s just the way it is.

  “We should get back down to the party,” I said.

  “Okay, Cadence,” she said. “Is that your real name?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “I like it. Why do you use the initials C.V. when you have such a pretty name?”

  “I’m a writer. It makes me ambiguous.”

  “Makes you what?” she said and shook her head as if I were speaking a foreign language.

  “Most people like to think of writers as being men,” I said. “This makes me more unisex. They can’t tell that I’m a woman. I fit in better.”

  “Oh. So what kind of stuff do you write?”

  “Scripts.”

  “You’re a screenwriter?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Wow. You got something for me?” she said jokingly but with a slightly detectable sense of desperation.

  “I’m working for a studio,” I said. “I have no say so as to who they put in any of my scripts.”

  “Oh, shit, really?”

  “Yeah, really. We should get back.”

  She nodded and we went back downstairs. She disappeared and I finally got Herbert to leave. I was so glad to be out of there! I wanted to get back to my crying.

  That’s about all I have for now. I will write later. My hand is about to fall off. I do apologize that I had to write this one in longhand but I need a ribbon for my old typewriter and haven’t gotten out to get one yet, if I can even find one, that is. No one uses these things anymore. Perhaps I should just succumb and get one of those computers. I don’t know. I just like to type on a typewriter, that’s all. I just like the sound of it. It’s so much more satisfying than a computer. Anyway, I’ll be sure to type out the next letter. (I know my handwriting is horrendous but I can’t help it. My mother used to chastise me over it.)

  With warmest regards and kindest wishes,

  Ms. C.V. Weeks

  * * * * *

  July 26th

  Dearest Marabel,

  Let’s jump right in, shall we?

  I didn’t see Carmen for the next few months or so. I’d been called down to the set of my last script because the director wanted to see me for some reason. As was usually the case, I was sitting for over an hour waiting on him to take some time out of his precious schedule to get to me, which irritated me to no end. They always did that. They’d call you down there and make you wait, like you didn’t have anything better to do. And I had lots to do—rewrites, starting work on a new script and wrangling all those awful male writers into actually getting some work done. After a while, I got fed up and left.

  I decided to take a walk. I always liked to see what was going on the lot. In those days, the studio was a fun place. There was always someone walking around in a gorilla costume, always some actresses dressed up as showgirls, what-have-you. It was almost like a mini-circus without the trapeze artists.

  As I walked past an empty sound stage, I heard a noise. A woman screamed. I looked around and, as fate would have it, there was no one to be seen. I walked gingerly to the door and peeked in. Some man—I later found out his name was Evan Sanders and he was a sound man—had Carmen up against the wall. He was hissing something at her and pointing his finger in her face. She stared defiantly back at him. Then he hauled back and slapped her so hard her nose bled.

  After I got over my initial shock, I felt… Well, I was infuriated. How dare this bastard do something like this? This wasn’t right, not at all. I’d seen enough. If there is one thing I cannot stand is for some man to beat a woman. I can’t stand that. Who do they think they are?

  I yelled, “Hey!”

  They turned and saw me. I think Carmen even smiled.

  “Get lost,” he said.

  I pushed back the door and entered. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “What’s it to you?” he hissed.

  “She’s my friend,” Carmen said. “She’s a writer here. She’s good friends with Andrew Millsap.”

  Andrew Millsap was the studio chief which meant, of course, anyone that knew him was off limits to any sort of verbal abuse. Or, in Carmen’s case, physical. (Of course, I didn’t know him that well. I’d only met him once at the premiere of A Better Life and he dismissively shook my hand before turning his attention to more “important” people wanting a word.)

  He let her go, glaring at us both. “Have her then. She ain’t nothing but a piece of trash anyway.”

  He skulked out of there. She stared after him. I could tell she was about to cry. I felt terrible for her and walked up and took her hand.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Why don’t we go somewhere for a drink?” she asked softly. “I could sure use a dri
nk.”

  I knew I shouldn’t have left the lot because it was only about two in the afternoon and the workday wasn’t over yet. Also, I was supposed to meet with the director, but something told me to try and help her. It’s like something about her make me realize that she needed me and that was more important than work at that moment. For some reason, I felt a connection to her, a need to help her. She seemed very fragile, especially after what I’d just witnessed.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ve got a car.”

  We went to my car and I drove us to a bar near the studio. After we got there, Carmen went to the bar and I phoned the director’s secretary and told her to send word to the director that I’d taken sick and was going home. The secretary started to chastise me about it, as they always do. They were always feeling their importance, for some reason. Anyway, I told her that if the director had a problem, then he could take it up with me tomorrow as I was much too sick to work at the present. She relented and we hung up.

  Carmen stared at me as I came back from the phone. “Nice life you got there.”

  I shrugged. “Yes, I suppose.”

  “You got a smoke?”

  I shook my head. I was only a social smoker then. And, of course, I smoked when I was with the writing team, mostly so I’d fit in with the guys.

  “Hey, bartender, you got a smoke?” Carmen called to him.

  He gave her a cigarette, then me. I almost declined but lit it anyway. Maybe to fit in with Carmen.

  “Thanks,” Carmen said and picked up her drink, heading to a booth. “Send us a couple of fresh ones in a few minutes, won’t you?”

  The bartender nodded at her and we settled into a booth across from the bar. She sat there in silence, drinking and smoking.

  “Who was that guy? The one who hit you?” I asked.

  “Some jerk,” she replied and took a long sip of her drink, then lit her cigarette, taking a deep draw.