“You’re staying?” Nora felt sick. This wasn’t happening—this couldn’t be happening. He wasn’t taking this marriage—or her—seriously at all.
“I can’t leave them.” He sat on the bed—the opposite corner from her. It was the first time he’d pretended like there was a bed in the room.
“No,” agreed Nora. “You certainly can’t leave them.”
He picked at something on his pants until he gave up. He focused on her, his green eyes vacant, his tone cool. “I understand completely, you know. If you need to take a lover.”
“What?”
“Zane, for instance.” He shrugged and crossed his legs, inhaling his cigarette deeply before going in search of an ashtray, which he found on the nightstand.
“Zane?”
“He thinks you’re beautiful.”
“Jesus, Billy.” Nora stood up. Tears welled up in her eyes. She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting, but that he was suggesting she take a lover on their honeymoon was cruel. Billy should think she
was beautiful. The fact that he was pimping her to Zane on their honeymoon was unbearable. It was something Clint would do. “I can’t talk about this. Not today.”
“Suit yourself.” He extinguished the cigarette and stretched out on the bed. Within minutes, he was snoring softly.
Nora drove Billy’s Phaeton up the highway and into the Monumental Studios lot at a breakneck speed. The car was powerful as well as beautiful, she’d give it that. She’d taken her anger out on it as she’d flown back up the highway to Los Angeles. When she pushed through the front doors of Monumental’s offices, Halstead saw her immediately.
“He told me,” began Nora, peeling off her gloves.
“Who told you what?”
“Billy told me that he can’t have sex.”
The old man blanched. “He did what?”
“You should have told me,” snapped Nora.
“On the contrary, Nora,” said Halstead. “Your husband should have told you.” The man shook his head. “It had nothing to do with me.”
“He said you thought it was better that I not know about the measles until after the wedding.”
“Did he now?”
“I should have been told.”
Halstead leaned back in his chair and folded his hands in front of him, considering his next words carefully. “Oh, Nora. Our Billy is a dear boy and very valuable to this studio. This new picture, Beyond the Shore, it’s the most expensive film we’ve ever backed here at Monumental. That’s largely because of Billy and Ford. They are a powerful duo, you know?” Halstead cleared his throat. “I fear this is all Louella Parsons’s fault. She knew and Billy was afraid she’d leak it. I perhaps encouraged him to court you so she’d think the rumor wasn’t true. But I’m afraid dear Billy has treated you poorly. For that, and my role in it, I’m terribly sorry.”
“Thank you.” Nora sat on the chair in front of Halstead and put her head in her hands.
“My dear,” said Halstead gently. “You love him?”
“Of course I love him. He’s my husband.”
Halstead considered her gravely, like she’d been given a few months to live. “Tell you what I’ll do. You haven’t done much comedy, and Max and Me was a real hit. I think you could be our queen of screwball. There’s a play on Broadway that the company is investing in called A Million Kisses. If the initial run is good, we’re going to make it into a film. I think the change of scenery would do you some good. It’s a story about a man who moves his mother in to live with him and his new wife. We’ve got Lillibet Denton as the mother and a new find from New York, Jack Watt, playing the son.”
“This feels like you’re paying me off.”
“No, my dear. I’m getting you out of town for a while.” Halstead reached for his cigarette case in his breast pocket. “You’re like a daughter to me.”
“You have a daughter, don’t you, Halstead? A real one?”
“I do,” he said, nodding.
“Tell me. Would you have married her off to Billy Rapp?”
Halstead sat in his chair, silently looking down at his cigar a beat before he lit it.
She shook her head. “I didn’t think so. How long is the run in New York?”
“Ten weeks. Four weeks of rehearsal and a six-week run. Enough time to clear your head.”
Nora nodded. Maybe a break from Billy would do her some good—give her some perspective on their marriage.
Billy didn’t have much of a reaction when Nora told him that Halstead was sending her to New York. Beyond the Shore was about to start filming and he was wrapped up in sets and production notes. She was also on the opposite coast from Clint again, and that felt good.
While Nora’s house was on the market, she’d moved into Billy’s newly constructed chalet nestled in the lush hills of Benedict Canyon. They’d continued to sleep in separate rooms there—separate wings of the house—but before she left for New York, Nora and Billy posed for a Photoplay photo shoot on the balcony of the canyon in the morning sun, the couple drawn together in a blanket. That they looked happy, Nora thought, was chalked up to her chops as an actress. Only in the evenings did the couple see each other when they made an appearance at the Trocadero or the Hollywood Bowl. There, nestled against Billy, Nora gushed to Hedda Hopper that she loved coming home to him each night.
The studio flew Nora to New York. Her co-star, Lillibet Denton, was a tiny, birdlike woman with cornflower eyes and red hair tint that was rapidly fading to match the color of her flesh. Normally, Lillibet performed in London, but she let everyone know she was making an exception by appearing in New York. Seeing the actress from the London stage performing the role of the scheming mother-in-law was like cramming for a test each night. When Lillibet walked on stage, each gesture, word, and pause was given such weight that the woman was sweating after every scene.
Upon the completion of Nora’s first scene, Lillibet stood with her arms folded. “Do they teach you to sashay on set like that in Holly Wood?” (Lillibet always inserted a rather dramatic pause between the two words.) “I wasn’t aware this was Vaude Ville.”
Lillibet challenged Nora’s preparation and taught her timing and proper movement and voice projection. After rehearsals or performances ended, Lillibet invited Nora to join her for a late dinner and drinks. Lillibet suggested that Nora read Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, Gide, Proust, and—only if she had to—Colette. Nora took to carrying a pad and pencil in her handbag to take notes of all Lillibet’s many suggestions. Lillibet tended to dismiss the American writers except for Hemingway and Fitzgerald, but Edith Wharton was a favorite and the woman gave Nora her own dog-eared copy of The Age of Innocence.
“Your mind must be constantly challenged, Nora, especially because you are a woman. Don’t have them turn you into some mannequin who speaks on command.”
If Lillibet exercised Nora’s mind, then co-star Jack Watt had a raw sexual quality that was hard to miss and—no surprise even to herself—Nora bedded him by the second week of rehearsals. It was exhilarating to be wanted again. But Jack Watt had his place and Nora knew that she’d be returning to Hollywood. Even though Jack was moving there after the show wrapped, she wouldn’t be looking him up. She was still Billy Rapp’s wife. While she may have a lover in New York, the relationship wouldn’t continue in the same city with Billy.