This was the last time I'd ever play the good Samaritan.
I swallowed the drink and turned back to Jennie.
"Did you ever get laid in a mink coat?" I asked angrily.
There was sadness and understanding on her face.
"No."
I poured myself another drink and swallowed it.
We stood there, looking at each other silently across the room for a moment.
Finally, I spoke.
"Well?"
Her eyes still on mine, she nodded slowly. Then she raised her arms and held them out toward me, the coat falling open, away from her naked body.
When she spoke, there was a note in her voice as if she'd always known that this was the way it was going to be.
"Come to mother, baby," she whispered gently.
The Story of JENNIE DENTON.
Book Eight.
1.
Jennie walked through the curtained doorway into the camera and the director shouted,
"Cut! Wrap it up!"
And it was over.
She stood there for a moment, dazed, blinking her eyes for a moment as the powerful kliegs dimmed.
Then the oppressive August heat came down on her and she felt faint. She reached out a hand to steady herself.
As if from a distance, she heard the giant sound stage turn into bedlam.
It seemed that everybody was laughing and talking at once.
Someone pressed a glass of water into her hands. She drank it quickly, gratefully.
Suddenly, she began to shiver, feeling a chill, and the dresser quickly threw a robe over her shoulders, covering the diaphanous costume.
"Thank you," she whispered.
"You're welcome, Miss Denton," the dresser said. He looked at her peculiarly for a moment. "You feeling all right?"
"I'm fine," Jennie said. She felt cold perspiration breaking out on her forehead.
The dresser gestured and the make-up man hurried up.
He swabbed at her face quickly with a moist sponge.
The faint aroma of witch hazel came up in her nostrils and she began to feel better.
"Miss Denton," the make-up man said, "you'd better lie down for a while. You're exhausted."
Docilely she let him lead her back to the small portable dressing room. She looked back over her shoulder as she went in. The bottles were out and the whisky flowing. Everyone was gathered around the director, shouting congratulations, supplying him with the adoration they felt necessary to insure their employment on his next picture. Already, they seemed to have forgotten her. She closed the door behind her and stretched out on the cot.
She closed her eyes wearily.
The three months the picture was supposed to take had stretched out into five.
Five months of day-and-night shooting, of exhaustion, of getting up at five o'clock in the morning and falling into bed like a stone at midnight, and sometimes later.
Five months, until all the meaning that had been in the script was lost in a maze of retakes, rewrites and plain confusion.
She began to shiver again and pulled the light wool blanket up over her and lay there trembling.
She closed her eyes. She turned on her side, drawing her knees up and hugging herself.
Slowly the heat from her body condensed around her and she began to feel better.
When she opened her eyes, Ilene Gaillard was seated on a chair opposite.
She hadn't even heard her come into the small room.
"Hello," Jennie said, sitting up. "Was I asleep long?"
Ilene smiled.
"About an hour. You needed it."
"I feel so silly," Jennie said. "I usually don't go off like that.
But I felt so weak."
"You've been under a terrible strain. But you have nothing to worry about.
When this picture comes out, you're going to be a big star – one of the biggest."
"I hope so," Jennie said humbly. She looked at Ilene. "When I think of all those people, how hard they worked and how much they put into the picture. I couldn't bear it if I turned out to be a disappointment to them."
"You won't.