Four dwarves in white turbans and bright-pink vests and matching sultans’ pants came through with jeweled hookahs. They sat down on the big poufs, and women crowded around them on the floor, smoking and laughing. Iris was pretty sure she heard Tallulah Bankhead laughing. A pale woman, beautiful like a silent movie star, with black-lined eyes, black spit curls, and a long, backless silver dress, pulled on Iris’s hand. She asked Iris if she was new and who she’d come with. Iris told her that yesterday, when she was having her makeup done by Francisco Diego, Patsy Kelly’s assistant came by handing out invitations, and she’d given Iris a thick white envelope. Patsy Kelly’s assistant kissed Francisco and said, No invite for you, and he’d laughed. Patsy must have spotted you, the pale woman said now. Iris smiled. I’m Sylvia, the woman said. Iris, Iris said. Sylvia waved her hand and a dwarf wearing a white fez and no vest came by, carrying a tray of pink ladies. Sylvia handed one to Iris. Welcome to Paradise, sweetie pie, she said. Iris and Sylvia sat down on a divan.

  A woman came up to them and leaned down to kiss Sylvia. Sylvia introduced Iris and the woman kissed Iris too. She trailed a feather along Iris’s shoulders. Iris sat very still until the woman walked away. Another woman came by and took a sip of Iris’s pink lady, watching Iris over the rim. She finished the drink in a swallow, and she and Sylvia walked away. Iris felt a hand pulling on her hem. A woman was sitting on the floor beside the divan, putting her hand under Iris’s dress and sliding it up her thigh. She brushed her fingers over the inside of Iris’s thighs and over her panties. Iris sat as still as she could. This was not the kind of party, like the ones in Dellie Bryson’s finished basement back home, where you could have a little fun and slap someone and go back to having fun, on your own terms. Iris heard a woman scream in another room but it didn’t sound like a person offended or injured, and the hand was still there, flicking in and out of Iris’s panties. It was possible that in this big house, with all these beautiful women (and the ones who were not beautiful were built like goddesses, and the ones who were neither looked clever and powerful), there was someone whose hand Iris would actually welcome. Iris said, “Thank you,” to the woman sitting on the floor, although that seemed ridiculous, and she walked into the next room, where the buffet was.

  Food was lined up, from dinner to dessert—which was a pretty girl with whipped cream and strawberries, laid in thick waves, from her chest to her feet. Women in their slips and high heels, in their cocktail dresses with the backs partially unzipped, were filling their plates. A quartet played all the popular songs, and on the far side of the buffet the two women in long black dresses were doing a slow fox-trot. A brunette in a scarlet kimono and black silk pants was eating steadily from a plate piled with lobster tails. I love lobster tails, she said. I mean it—I think they are the greatest thing ever. Her voice was throaty and warm and she sounded like an American girl, but a little softer and sweeter at the edges. Rose Sawyer, she said, and instead of shaking hands, she gave Iris a lobster tail. Let’s find a spot, Rose said, and they walked to where more women were dancing. She sat Iris down on an empty couch. What a crowd, Rose said. You stay here, beautiful girl. She came back with more lobster tails and an unsteady tower of oysters on the half shell, blinis with caviar piled like flapjacks, and two Champagne flutes tucked into her bodice.

  Iris put her hand to her hair to fix it, and the dwarf with the white fez came by. Champagne? he said. Oh, please, Iris said. Rose looked at her. Well, here I am thinking, Look at this little bumpkin, and here you are, having your way with Armand and who knows what else. Shame on me, she said. Oyster? Iris opened her mouth.

  This was not the kind of party where you said, Oh, I’ve never eaten oysters, or, Oh, gosh, they look wet and disgusting, which they really did. If oysters were the path to parties like these and beautiful, dazzling, dark Rose Sawyer, Iris thought she could toss back oysters like cold beer on a summer day. She managed two and chased them with Champagne.

  “Aren’t you a pro,” Rose said.

  “Not really,” Iris said. “I’m from Ohio.” There was no reason to lie to Rose.

  “Of course you are,” Rose said. “You are my beautiful American baby. Dance?”

  Iris had never danced with another girl, except bumping around the room with Eva, to practice for a party or a show. Iris always made Eva lead so she could work on her steps, but then she had to put up with being led by Eva, who was fierce and wrong-footed on the dance floor and only came up to Iris’s collarbone. Rose Sawyer was about an inch taller than Iris.

  “Who should lead?” Rose said.

  “I could,” Iris said quietly.

  “But you don’t want to,” Rose said, and she put a strong arm around Iris’s waist. All Iris’s dancing, her show routines, waltzing with her father, the senior-year parties with Harry Bledsoe and Jim Cummings, who were the best dancers in Windsor, faded away. She was dancing for the first time, right now, her face against Rose’s smooth, powdered cheek. Breast to red silk breast, thigh to black silk thigh. They did two promenades and a slow twist, as if they’d been practicing, and Rose pulled Iris back to the divan. More Champagne appeared.

  Look, Rose said. Shmundies on parade. Iris didn’t know the word but she got the idea. There were naked women everywhere, drinking and eating and smoking and dancing, all naked and nearly naked. A chubby girl lay over the back of one of the divans, her head almost touching the floor. A woman sat underneath her, kissing her face and neck and cradling her head while another woman pulled the girl’s legs over her shoulders and buried her face between them. All Iris could see was the girl’s pearly, round stomach heaving, and the back of the other woman’s head, her smooth platinum hair pulled up with combs shaped like tulips. A woman in a pale-pink chiffon toga walked by and waved to Rose. Her toga came only to her thighs and it was held together by one big ruby starburst at her shoulder. Her small breasts and her large, bushy and bright-orange triangle were not at all covered by the chiffon, just softened, as if by candlelight. A Negro girl, in silver lamé pumps, danced by herself, near the piano. She wore her hair up, rhinestones twinkling in her chignon and more rhinestones sparkling like dewdrops in her dark, curly pubic hair. Iris saw an unfortunate olive-skinned girl near the oysters, with dark hairs around her nipples and a thick cloud of darker hair growing up from the middle of her thighs, like moss climbing a tree and spreading up and across her stomach, almost to her navel. Iris thought the girl was going to feel terrible when no one picked her. Iris wondered if the girl would just eat a few oysters and head home to cry. A tiny blonde, with a big white bow in her hair and a pair of white Mary Janes on her little feet, skipped over and put her face between the dark girl’s breasts.

  “A lid for every pot,” Rose said. She spilled a little of her Champagne on Iris’s breast and licked it off, like a cat. The Champagne soaked Iris’s bodice, down to her lap. To her shmundie.

  Iris thought the top of her head would come off, shooting through the room like a cannonball of dense, rocketing pleasure. The room did not spin, the way it did when there was too much beer at a party back home. It opened like a flower, the walls falling back to contain the smoke and scent and shmundies—and another one appeared, an inch from Iris’s Champagne flute, blond, dyed blue, and shaped like a heart. The walls yielded and began to melt from every kind of body heat. Even when Iris was much older, even after years of Champagne and cigarettes and silk underthings and a wonderfully varied and pleasing parade of shmundies in her own life, she could recall every single minute of the Hollywood orgy with Rose Sawyer.

  WHEN SHE GOT HOME, damp but fully dressed, from garters to gloves, Iris lay on her bed, a few feet away from Eva’s bed. Eva gave a little sniff, about the smokiness in Iris’s clothes, and she turned toward Iris, ready to listen.

  “I met a girl,” Iris said. “I’m in love.”

  Iris thought it was to Evie’s everlasting credit that all her little sister said was, That’s nice.

  Letter from Eva (Unsent)

  Firenze Gardens

  Hollywood

  February 1, 1942

  Dear Dad,

  Things sure are changing fast around here. We moved into a really nice apartment, now that Iris is under contract at MGM. Mr. Arthur Freed signed her—after just one audition on Sunday night at The Derby (and another at the studio, later). We’re pretty sure Iris is going to be a star. She has a new friend, Rose Sawyer, who you might have seen in the magazines. America’s Sweetheart Rose is what they call her. Rose is showing Iris the ropes, as much as she can, and Iris has already gotten two speaking parts, one in Evening Romance (she gives Robert Taylor a cup of coffee) and one in Something Special. They didn’t make her change anything for that movie, which says a lot. (The girls here change their noses and their names and their eyebrows and everything. One girl has to pad everywhere, front and back and even on the sides. A girl Iris works with had to pluck every hair out of her hairline because they said she had to make her forehead bigger.) Iris doesn’t have to do much. They put some more red in her hair and Francisco Diego, the makeup man, who is really becoming a friend, told her to wear pink-orange lipsticks, not blue-red, because that’s for real brunettes (like me, he said).

  4

  My Blue Heaven

  ROSE RUBBED SUNTAN LOTION ALL OVER IRIS. SHE SQUINTED IN the sun and gave each toe a dab, and each ankle two whirls around and then up and down the shins. Inner thighs right to edge of the white bathing suit. It was a great choice for Iris, Rose thought. Iris stood out in that suit, like a diamond, and the suntan lotion made her fair skin and tiny blond hairs gleam pale gold all over. Rose always saw the best and prettiest parts of every woman she met and she’d point them out and tell how they could look even better. At the studio, she sometimes dressed girls she hardly knew, hat to shoes, just because it pleased her. She didn’t have dolls, or friends, growing up.

  Rose smeared cream on Iris’s face (“Don’t wind up with a red nose,” she said. “Mr. Freed’ll kill me.”) and her chest, to the wired edge of the suit, slipping her fingers under the shoulder straps. She told Iris to turn over so she could do her back.

  “Oh, this is nice,” Rose said.

  “Yes.”

  Rose could hear Iris breathing loudly in her ear. Rose massaged her shoulders, stroking her arms. She pulled gently on Iris’s fingers. Rose had never had a massage but she’d heard two women talking about massages at the commissary. They said Hedy Lamarr had one every morning for her lymph nodes and that was why she looked so amazing. Everything drains out of you, said one of the women. Rose wanted to drain everything out of Iris. She splashed oil on the backs of Iris’s legs and pulled Iris’s legs apart. Everything that was draining now swelled up and came back in little waves, up one leg, then the other, rushing up Iris’s spine and down her calves. Iris’s feet flexed under Rose’s hands. Iris buried her face in the beach blanket. Rose had brought everything she could think of: sandwiches, oranges, hard-boiled eggs, soda pop, a beach blanket, and the slick gold oil for Iris’s skin. The sun had started to drop, just a little, still bright orange above the horizon, and the beach was still warm. A little girl with pigtails, wearing just her underpants, did a couple of cartwheels through the waves, and her parents gathered her up in a big towel. Rose and Iris watched the three little figures trudge to the parking lot, and then the beach was empty.

  Rose lay back and untied the straps of her suit. Iris said nothing. Rose unrolled her suit top to below her breasts. No one’s here, she said. Look.

  Iris looked carefully in every direction. After the orgy, Iris told Rose that she’d hardly seen breasts until that night, and that they’d never mattered to her. She said that she’d seen her mother’s a few times and she saw Eva’s little nothings, a pair of fried eggs, all the time—how could she avoid it. Walking to the beach, Iris said to Rose, Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind, and that’s how I look at you.

  Rose kissed Iris’s nipple. She pulled Iris’s hair and kissed Iris on the forehead, on the cheek, on the lips, on her neck, behind the ear. Iris kissed her back. Rose pushed Iris off and stood up. Rose pulled down her bathing suit and stretched, the sun glowing behind her and through her legs.

  “You too,” she said.

  Iris kicked off her suit and they clasped hands and ran into the water.

  “Geronimo!” Iris yelled.

  They swam like seals, and before it got too dark, they ran out of the water and dried each other off. Rose packed everything up and carried the basket on her head like an island woman.

  PUDGE NEVER DROVE OVER the speed limit. It took him less than an hour to drive from Hollywood to Malibu and only ten minutes to park his car and trail the two girls walking from Tim’s delicatessen to the beach. He walked north, close to the road, where no one on the beach would notice him. After twenty minutes, he had all the photos he needed. And he knew the pictures were perfect. You can’t really go wrong with a C3 range finder and two beautiful naked girls cavorting on the beach, is what Pudge thought. He didn’t have to do a thing to the pictures. The redhead’s pretty mouth on the brunette’s tit. The brunette and the redhead (not a real redhead, he noticed) taking off their suits and running into the water, their asses bouncing like happy peaches. Pudge did the negatives and the contact sheet and he didn’t wait for the six prints to dry. He laid them on a couple of dish towels on his backseat and drove them over to Hedda Hopper’s office. She made him spread the photos out on her secretary’s desk and she put on her glasses. Hedda Hopper told her secretary to give him fifty dollars.

  “Thank you, Mr. Rustin,” the secretary said.

  “They’re good pictures,” Pudge said. “You can see everything.”

  ROSE KNEW WHO HEDDA Hopper was. Hedda Hopper was not, in Rose’s opinion, the worst person in the world or in America, or even just in Hollywood in 1942. Hedda Hopper hated FDR and she wrote some bad things about Jews that never came to much and she was famous for saying that the civil rights movement was bad for Negroes. Thirty-two million people read Hedda Hopper.

  On Tuesday, Hedda Hopper called Rose at her bungalow and invited her to lunch the next day. Rose took off her red nail polish and put on pink. She wore an ivory gabardine suit and a hat and gloves. Hedda Hopper had iced tea and a Cobb salad. Rose wanted a club sandwich but she ordered the same thing. Hedda Hopper passed Rose the Los Angeles Times, folded in half. Inside the fold, there were three photographs of Rose and Iris at Malibu.

  Rose said, “If that photographer had stayed another minute, he would have seen me slapping her face. I was never so upset in my life.”

  Hedda and Rose looked down at the photographs together. Hedda put the picture of Rose kissing Iris’s breast on top of the pile. She sipped her iced tea and Rose sipped hers.

  Rose said, “Honestly, Miss Hopper, I didn’t even know girls like that existed. She asked me if I wanted to go the beach. I thought we were friends. I didn’t know what to do.”

  Hedda Hopper didn’t say a thing. She moved her hand so her rings caught the light. She ate a few bites of her salad.

  Rose said, “I think girls like her are just ruining Hollywood. They’re just not … not the right kind of people.”

  Hedda asked for a little more dressing.

  Rose clasped her modest, pink hands in front of her.

  “I admire all you’ve done to clean up Hollywood, Miss Hopper. I do. Just the other day—before this, this awful, mixed-up thing, I was saying to Buck, Buck Collins—my fiancé; did you know we’re engaged? We’ve been keeping it a secret, not that we think someone like you would be interested in our little romance—I always say that everyone in the business has an obligation to support the right kind of movies, and the right kind of people.”

  Rose called her agent to say that she hoped that something would come of her romantic feelings for Buck and then she took her phone off the hook and was sick for two days. On Thursday, Rose’s picture was in the paper. It was a studio picture of her and Buck Collins, smiling at each other and holding the reins of his beautiful horse, Star. On Saturday, the studio drove her and Buck and a photographer to a bungalow not too far from the Malibu beach and on Sunday, there was a full-page spread of them in front of the bungalow and in front of St. Thomas the Apostle Episcopal Church. Rose held on to Buck’s hand. On the drive back, Buck said, We really should have dinner. We will, Rose said. She put her head against his thick shoulder.

  In the article, Hedda Hopper quoted Rose as saying, “When you’re in love, why wait?” Miss Hopper wrote, in the next line, “Why indeed? These lovebirds are ready to bill and coo in their new nest and we wish them all the best!” In the middle of Monday’s column, Miss Hopper wrote: “There is always going to be an unsavory element in Hollywood, women—we certainly can’t call them ladies—of a certain stripe, who may lead young girls into the shady, dangerous parts of our little town. Do the right thing, Mr. Mayer.”

  Rose read every word. The head of public relations at MGM would call a man, who’d call a man, and by the time Iris got to the set on Tuesday, she’d be turned away at the gate. The guard would hand her a paper bag with some bobby pins, her slippers, and her silk robe inside it. Iris was about to turn nineteen, and her career was over. Rose had seen it happen to other girls.

  She knew better than to call Iris. Iris would apply for all the waitress jobs at the places near the studio, where everyone knew her and liked her, and the manager would give her a free cup of coffee and a slice of pie and Iris would know what that meant. Iris would apply at Ohrbach’s and Bullock’s and the salesladies would take the application and put it on the pile, without a word.