Anne Girard - Platinum Doll

As she had predicted to him over dinner one evening a few days earlier, he was eventually invited to the country club to join them for a game of golf and then for tennis. Their days of sporting routinely ended with drinks at the country club bar in a private room where a blind eye was turned to the dictates of Prohibition.

“I’m pretty pitiful at it really,” he said of his golf game. “But my aim at this point is to charm them sufficiently so that they don’t care.”

She pressed another breezy kiss onto his cheek, rose from the bed, then yawned and stretched in a long butter-yellow ray of sunlight. “If you haven’t won them over yet, you will soon enough.”

“You really do believe in me, don’t you, doll?”

“One hundred percent. I just want you to be happy. And thank you for the book.”

“You really like it, then?”

She heard the familiar catch in his voice, just a note—but it came from that fragile need for reassurance. “You knew I would. It’s incredible. It’s a very rare volume, you know.”

“I’d like to think I’ll always know what you like.”

“You sure don’t have to win me over like that with things, Chuck. You know I adore you already. I always will.”

He searched her face for a moment and when she saw him finally give away just a hint of a smile, she knew that he did.

Later that day they decided to go to the pictures. Harlean was thrilled that Chuck was willing to sit through a romantic comedy because she knew he disliked them. He didn’t even complain about this one, though, and he told her he actually enjoyed it as they walked back to their car. Marriage was give-and-take, and it was so good to feel that they were both doing their part. Harlean couldn’t imagine anything that could be better than what the two of them had together right now. She loved decorating their home, and learning to cook. Even thoughts of writing a novel began to fade from her mind. The only thing lacking was that she missed her family more every day, her mother most especially, but she tried her best not to think too much of that.

* * *

Over the next few days, Harlean relished seeing how happy Chuck was here in their lovely hideaway, and how at ease he was when they were together, cooking together, or when she was trying to teach him about poetry. Please let things stay just as they are, she found herself thinking. She repeated that to herself daily until it became almost like a mantra. Coming to California had been good for him. He had left everything behind in the Midwest just as she had. She said it to herself even that evening a few days later, when his new set of friends delivered him back home, propped up between them after an afternoon of carousing.

“Ol’ Chuck sure is the life of the party. He was dancing on tables over at Musso and Frank’s an hour ago.” Blake Kendrick who lived next door gave Harlean an apologetic shrug as he handed Chuck over to her.

Harlean did her best not to show her disappointment. Damn, why did he always have to drink so much?

She thanked them with a believable smile and, after they’d gone, she dutifully tucked him into bed, kissed his forehead and turned out the light.

An unsettling concern pressed in on her again as she leaned against the closed door and let out a heavy sigh. She needed for him to stay just as content as he had been at first. Everything for her depended on that. They were alone here after all, and with Chuck gone so often lately, she had begun secretly to feel the greater pull of homesickness every day. Of course, she couldn’t tell Chuck that because he always said they were each other’s family now. For his sake, she tried very hard to make that true.

A few moments later, she went to the telephone and quietly dialed the number, hoping he was too sound asleep to hear. It wasn’t Sunday yet but, tonight especially, she just needed to hear her mother’s reassuring voice on the other end of the line.

* * *

Once the house was fully furnished, Chuck insisted on organizing another party. He planned on inviting everyone they’d met so far in Beverly Hills. It seemed a huge undertaking, but helping him gave Harlean a way to keep busy as the shine of the housewives’ world was fading by the day for her.

He planned to grill hot dogs, since he knew they were Harlean’s favorite food, and he had a florist fill the house with orchids and fragrant roses.

“I’ve put out the rest of the hootch we brought with us from Chicago. I hope it will be enough,” he said as he set clean glassware onto the kitchen counter next to bootleg bottles of gin and whiskey.

“Will you stop your worrying? Everything will be great.”

“So many of them have houses that are so much larger than ours. Maybe we should have bought a bigger place.”

Harlean went to him and twined her arms around his neck. She was wearing her favorite unstructured beige trousers, sneakers and a crisp white polo shirt, the way she had seen Joan Crawford do. Although, she didn’t think she could look quite as chic as the young star it was certainly fun to try.

She pressed herself against Chuck’s taut chest, and tenderly kissed him. In response to the gesture, he took her face in his hands.

“I love you like this, without makeup or anything. You have such lovely skin,” he said as he reached around and pressed his hands against her spine, drawing them closer together. “But I do wish you would wear a brassiere.”

She turned her lip out in a pout. “You know how I hate them, and my breasts are so small no one notices anyway.”

“Oh, they notice, all right.”

“Just to make you happy, I’ll put one on, then,” she said with a seductive half grin. “And I was going to do up my face for the party.”

“Then good thing that’s not for a while, because I have plans for you first, Mrs. McGrew.”

He pulled her more tightly, murmuring the words into her hair, and she felt a delicious shiver of anticipation. “Do you now, Mr. McGrew?”

“Oh, yes, indeed I do.”

“Anything I should be warned about?”

His smile was fox-like and adorable to her. “Not a chance. That would ruin all the fun.”

An hour later, the house pulsed with the sound of boisterous laughter. Music rolled and spilled out into the backyard where one of the guys was just lighting the BBQ. Harlean allowed herself a gin and soda with some of the girls. Then they wanted her to play the upbeat Louis Armstrong tune, “Weather Bird,” on the gramophone so they could dance.

She went back inside to change the music and paused at the kitchen window. She glanced out, and was surprised and happy to see Chuck looking like the life of the party, a real part of the group as he told a story, and everyone looked rapt.

She turned back around and saw Rosalie and Louis B. Mayer’s dignified and rail thin daughter Irene dancing the Charleston in the living room. Rosalie proudly explained earlier that she had met the MGM boss’s daughter one afternoon after she had weaseled her way into the studio commissary after a casting call and they had become friends. Irene brought her boyfriend David Selznick with her tonight and was intent on showing him off since he was an up-and-comer in the industry.

The story of how Irene and Rosalie met hadn’t surprised Harlean after their escapade at the Brown Derby. Clearly, Rosalie had perfected the art of looking like she belonged, and Harlean could stand to take chances like that, as well. Harlean had gone to school with Irene when she was in California the last time, but if Irene remembered her, she didn’t show it.

“Come over and dance with us, Harlean!” Rosalie called out to her happily.

“Yes, come on!” Irene seconded, her face already glistening as they all did the animated steps of a flapper.