“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Evelyn,” Celia said, teasing me. “I think we all know what I’m worried about.”

  I took her by the waist. She was wearing a thin satin slip, edged in lace. I was wearing a short-sleeved sweater and shorts. Her hair was wet. When Celia’s hair was wet, she didn’t smell like shampoo. She smelled like clay.

  “You’re going to win,” I said, pulling her toward me. “It isn’t even a contest.”

  “I might not. They might give it to Joy or to Ellen Mattson.”

  “They would no sooner give it to Ellen Mattson than throw it in the L.A. River. And Joy, bless her heart, is no you.”

  Celia blushed, put her head in her hands briefly, and then looked back at me. “Am I intolerable?” she said. “Obsessing over this? Making you talk to me about it? When you’re . . .”

  “On the skids?”

  “I was going to say blackballed.”

  “If you are intolerable, let me be the one to tolerate you,” I said, and then I kissed her and tasted the lemon juice on her lips.

  I checked my watch, knowing that hair and makeup would be there any moment, and grabbed my keys.

  She and I had been taking great pains not to be seen together. It was one thing when we really were just friends, but now that we had something to hide, we had to start hiding it.

  “I love you,” I said. “I believe in you. Break a leg.”

  When my hand turned the doorknob, she called to me. “If I don’t win,” she said, her wet hair dripping onto the spaghetti straps of her slip, “will you still love me?”

  I thought she was joking until I looked directly into her eyes.

  “You could be a nobody living in a cardboard box, and I’d still love you,” I said. I’d never said that before. I’d never meant it before.

  Celia smiled wide. “Me too. The cardboard box and all of it.”

  * * *

  HOURS LATER, BACK at the home I used to share with Don but now could say was entirely my own, I made myself a Cape Codder, sat on the couch, and tuned the TV to NBC, watching all my friends and the woman I loved walk the red carpet at the Pantages Theatre.

  It all seems much more glamorous on-screen. I hate to break it to you, but in person, the theater is smaller, the people are paler, and the stage is less imposing.

  It’s all curated to make the audience at home feel like outsiders, to make you feel like a fly on the wall of a club you aren’t good enough to get into. And I was surprised by how effective it was on me, how easy it was to fall for, even for a person who had just recently been at the very center of it.

  I was two cocktails in and drowning in self-pity by the time they announced Best Supporting Actress. But the minute the camera panned to Celia, I swear I sobered up and clasped my hands together as tightly as possible for her, as if the harder I pressed them together, the higher her chances of winning.

  “And the award goes to . . . Celia St. James for Little Women.”

  I jumped up out of my seat and shouted for her. And then my eyes got teary as she walked up to the stage.

  As she stood there, behind the microphone, holding the statuette, I was mesmerized by her. By her fabulous boatneck dress, her sparkling diamond and sapphire earrings, and that absolutely flawless face of hers.

  “Thank you to Ari Sullivan and Harry Cameron. Thank you to my agent, Roger Colton. To my family. And to the amazing cast of women that I felt so lucky to be a part of, to Joy and Ruby. And to Evelyn Hugo. Thank you.”

  When she said my name, I swelled with pride and joy and love. I was so goddamn happy for her. And then I did something mortifyingly inane. I kissed the television set.

  I kissed her right on her grayscale face.

  The clink I heard registered before the pain. And as Celia waved to the crowd and then stepped away from the podium, I realized I’d chipped my tooth.

  But I didn’t care. I was too happy. Too excited to congratulate her and tell her how proud I was.

  I made another cocktail and forced myself to watch the rest of the spectacle. They announced Best Picture, and as the credits rolled, I turned off the TV.

  I knew that Harry and Celia would be out all night. So I shut off the lights and went upstairs to bed. I took off my makeup. I put on cold cream. I turned down the covers. I was lonely, living all alone.

  Celia and I had discussed it and come to the conclusion that we could not move in together. She was less convinced of this than I was, but I was steadfast in my resolve. Even though my career was in the gutter, hers was thriving. I couldn’t let her risk it. Not for me.

  My head was on the pillow, but my eyes were wide open when I heard someone pull into the driveway. I looked out the window to see Celia slipping out of a car and waving good night to her driver. She had an Oscar in her hand.

  “You look comfortable,” Celia said, once she’d made her way to me in the bedroom.

  “Come here,” I said to her.

  She’d had a glass or three. I loved her drunk. She was herself but happier, so bubbly I sometimes worried she’d float away.

  She took a running start and hopped into the bed. I kissed her.

  “I’m so proud of you, darling.”

  “I missed you all night,” she said. The Oscar was still in her hand, and I could tell it was heavy; she kept allowing it to tip over onto the mattress. The space for her name was blank.

  “I don’t know if I was supposed to take this one,” she said, smiling. “But I didn’t want to give it back.”

  “Why aren’t you out celebrating? You should be at the Sunset party.”

  “I only wanted to celebrate with you.”

  I pulled her closer to me. She kicked off her shoes.

  “Nothing means anything without you,” she said. “Everything that isn’t you is a pile of dog shit.”

  I tossed my head back and laughed.

  “What happened to your tooth?” Celia asked.

  “Is it that noticeable?”

  Celia shrugged. “I suppose not. I think it’s just that I’ve memorized every inch of you.”

  Just a few weeks ago, I had lain naked beside Celia and let her look at me, look at every part of my body. She had told me she wanted to remember every detail. She said it was like studying a Picasso.

  “It’s embarrassing,” I told her now.

  Celia sat up, intrigued.

  “I kissed the television screen,” I said. “When you won. I kissed you on the TV, and I chipped my tooth.”

  Celia laughed so hard she cackled. The statuette fell back to the mattress with a thump. And then she rolled over on top of me and put her arms around my neck. “That’s the most lovable thing anyone has ever done since the dawn of man.”

  “I suppose I’ll make a dentist appointment first thing tomorrow.”

  “I suppose you will.”

  I picked up her Oscar. I stared at it. I wanted one myself. And if I had stuck it out with Don a little longer, I could have had one tonight.

  She was still in her dress, her heels long gone. Her hair was falling out of the pins. Her lipstick was faded. Her earrings still glistened.

  “Have you ever made love to an Oscar winner?” she said.

  I’d done something very close with Ari Sullivan, but I didn’t think that was the time to tell her. And anyway, the spirit of the question was if I’d ever experienced a moment like that one. And I absolutely had not.

  I kissed her and felt her hands on my face, and then I watched as she stepped out of her dress and into my bed.

  * * *

  BOTH OF MY movies flopped. A romance Celia did sold out theaters. Don starred in a hit thriller movie. Ruby Reilly’s reviews for Jokers Wild called her “stunningly perfect” and “positively incomparable.”

  I taught myself how to make meat loaf and iron my own slacks.

  And then I saw Breathless. I left the theater, went straight home, called Harry Cameron, and said, “I have an idea. I’m going to Paris.”

  25

  * * *

  CELIA WAS SHOOTING A MOVIE on location in Big Bear for three weeks. I knew that going with her wasn’t an option, nor was visiting her on the set. She insisted she would come home every weekend, but it felt too risky.

  She was a single girl, after all. I was afraid the prevailing wisdom erred too close to the question What do single girls have to go home to?

  So I decided it was the right time to go to France.

  Harry had some connections to filmmakers in Paris. He made a few calls on the sly for me.

  Some of the producers and directors I met with knew who I was. Some of them were clearly seeing me just as a favor to Harry. And then there was Max Girard, an up-and-coming New Wave director, who had never heard of me before.

  “You are une bombe,” he said.

  We were sitting in a quiet bar in the Saint-Germain-de-Prés neighborhood of Paris. We huddled in a booth in the back. It was just after dinnertime, and I hadn’t had a chance to eat. Max was drinking a white Bordeaux. I had a glass of claret.

  “That sounds like a compliment,” I said, taking a sip.

  “I don’t know if I have before met a woman so attractive,” he said, staring at me. His accent was so thick that I found myself leaning in to hear him.

  “Thank you.”

  “You can act?” he said.

  “Better than I look.”

  “That cannot be so.”

  “It is.”

  I saw Max’s wheels start turning. “Are you willing to test for a part?”

  I was willing to scrub a toilet for a part. “If the part is great,” I said.

  Max smiled. “This part is spectacular. This part is a movie-star part.”

  I nodded slowly. You have to restrain every part of your body when you are working hard not to look eager.

  “Send me the pages, and we’ll talk,” I said, and then I drank the last of my wine and stood up. “I’m so sorry, Max, but I should go. Have a wonderful evening. Let’s be in touch.”

  There was absolutely no way I was going to sit at a bar with a man who hadn’t heard of me and let him think I had all the time in the world.

  I could feel his eyes on me as I walked away, but I walked out the door with all the confidence I had—which, despite my current predicament, was quite a lot. And then I went back to my hotel room, put on my pajamas, ordered room service, and turned on the TV.

  Before I went to bed, I wrote Celia a letter.

  My Dearest CeCe,

  Please never forget that the sun rises and sets with your smile. At least to me it does. You’re the only thing on this planet worth worshipping.

  All my love,

  Edward

  I folded it in half and tucked it into an envelope addressed to her. Then I turned out my light and closed my eyes.

  Three hours later, I was awakened by the jarring sound of a phone ringing on the table next to me.

  I picked it up, irritated and half asleep.

  “Bonjour?” I said.

  “We can speak your language, Evelyn.” Max’s accented English reverberated through the phone. “I am calling to see if you would be free to be in a movie I am shooting. The week after next.”

  “Two weeks from now?”

  “Not even, quite. We are shooting six hours from Paris. You will do it?”

  “What is the part? How long is the shoot?”

  “The movie is called Boute-en-Train. At least, that’s what it is called for now. We shoot for two weeks in Lac d’Annecy. The rest of the shoot you do not need to be there.”

  “What does Boute-en-Train mean?” I tried to say it the way he said it, but it came out overprocessed, and I vowed not to try again. Don’t do things you’re not good at.

  “It means the life of the party. That is you.”

  “A party girl?”

  “Like someone who is the heart of life.”

  “And my character?”

  “She is the kind of woman every man falls in love with. It was originally written for a French woman, but I have just decided tonight that if you will do it, I will fire her.”

  “That’s not nice.”

  “She’s not you.”

  I smiled, surprised at both his charm and his eagerness.

  “It is about two men who are petty thieves, and they are on the run to Switzerland when they are distracted by an incredible woman they meet on the way. The three of them go for an adventure in the mountains. I have been sitting here with my pages, trying to decide if this woman can be American. And I think she can. I think it’s more interesting that way. It is a stroke of luck. To meet you at this time. So you will do it?”

  “Let me sleep on it,” I said. I knew I was going to take the part. It was the only part I could get. But you never get anywhere good by seeming amenable.

  “Yes,” Max said. “Of course. You have done nudity before, yes?”

  “No,” I said.

  “I think you should be topless. In the film.”

  If I was going to be asked to show my breasts, wouldn’t it be for a French film? And if the French were going to ask anyone, shouldn’t it be me? I knew what got me famous the first time. I knew what it could do a second time.

  “Why don’t we discuss it tomorrow?” I said.

  “Let’s talk tomorrow morning,” he said. “Because this other actress I have, she will show her breasts, Evelyn.”

  “It’s late, Max. I’ll ring you in the morning.” And I hung up the phone.

  I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply, considering both how beneath me this opportunity was and how lucky I was to be given it. It’s a hard business, reconciling what the truth used to be with what the truth is now. Luckily, I didn’t have to do it for very long.

  * * *

  TWO WEEKS LATER, I was back on a film set. And this time, I was free of all the buttoned-up, innocent-girl stuff that Sunset had pinned on me. This time, I was able to do whatever I wanted.

  It was clear for the entire shoot that Max wanted nothing more than to possess me himself. I could tell by the way he looked at me in stolen glances that part of my allure to Max the director was my allure to him as a man.

  When Max came to my dressing room on the second-to-last day of filming, he said, “Ma belle, aujourd’hui tu seras seins nus.” I had picked up enough French by then to know he was saying he wanted to shoot my scene coming out of the lake. When you’re an American movie star with huge boobs in a French movie, you quickly learn that when French men are saying seins nus, they are talking about you being topless.

  I was fully willing to take my top off and show my assets if that was what it took to get my name back out there. But by that point, I had fallen madly in love with a woman. I had grown to desire her with every fiber of myself. I knew the pleasure of finding delight in a woman’s naked body.

  So I told Max I’d shoot it however he wanted but that I had a suggestion that might make the movie even more of a sensation.

  I knew my idea was a good one, because I knew how it felt to want to tear a woman’s shirt off.

  And when Max heard it, he knew it was a good one, because he knew how it felt to want to tear my shirt off.

  In the editing room, Max slowed down my exit from the lake to a snail’s crawl and then cut the footage a millisecond before you can see my full breasts. It simply cut to black, as if the film itself had been tampered with, as if maybe you’d just gotten a bad cut.

  There was so much anticipation. And it never paid off, no matter how many times you watched it, no matter how perfectly you paused the tape.

  And here’s why it worked: man, woman, gay, straight, bisexual, you name it, we all just want to be teased.

  Six months after we finished shooting Boute-en-Train, I was an international sensation.

  PHOTOMOMENT

  September 15, 1961

  * * *

  * * *

  SINGER MICK RIVA SWEET FOR EVELYN HUGO

  Performing last night at the Trocadero, Mick Riva had a few minutes to indulge our questions. Armed with an old-fashioned that appeared not to be his first, Mick was awfully forthcoming . . .

  He revealed that he’s happy to be divorced from siren Veronica Lowe because, he said, “I didn’t deserve a lady like that, and she didn’t deserve a guy like me.”

  And when asked if he’s dating, he admitted he’s been seeing quite a few ladies but that he’d give them all up for one night with Evelyn Hugo.

  The former Mrs. Don Adler has proven to be a very hot commodity these days. Her appearance in French director Max Girard’s newest film, Boute-en-Train, has spent the summer selling out movie houses all over Europe, and now it’s taking the good ol’ US of A by storm.

  “I’ve seen Boute-en-Train three times now,” Mick told us. “And I’ll see it a fourth. I just can’t get enough of her coming out of that lake.”

  So would he like to take Evelyn out on a date?

  “I’d like to marry her is what I’d like to do.”

  You hear that, Evelyn?

  HOLLYWOOD DIGEST

  October 2, 1961

  * * *

  * * *

  EVELYN HUGO TO PLAY ANNA KARENINA

  Talk of the town Evelyn Hugo has just signed on to play the title role in Fox’s epic Anna Karenina. She has also signed to produce the picture with Harry Cameron, formerly of Sunset Studios.

  Miss Hugo and Mr. Cameron worked together at Sunset on such hits as Father and Daughter and Little Women. This will be their first project together outside of the Sunset umbrella.

  Mr. Cameron, who has made a name for himself in the biz for his great taste and even greater business acumen, is said to have left Sunset over differences with none other than studio head Ari Sullivan. But it appears Fox is eager to be in business with both Miss Hugo and Mr. Cameron, as they have ponied up a substantial fee and a stake in the box office.

  Everyone has been watching to see what Miss Hugo’s next project will be. Anna Karenina is an interesting choice. One thing’s for sure, if Evelyn so much as shows a bare shoulder in the flick, audiences will come running.