Make Believe Read Online Free Page A

her husband.
    “Exactly,” I echoed. “I detest a witch-hunt, and this one is lasting too long and is too insidious. I don’t understand this…this madness. I gather that gossip queen Hedda Hopper is on an anti-Red tear, even smearing you in her columns. ‘Moscow Max’—right? Snide and catty.”
    “I’m famous.” Max raised his eyebrows. “Edna, everyone in Hollywood is desperate to be wildly famous.” A half-bow. “I did it effortlessly.”
    “Infamous,” Alice muttered. She reached over and gently touched her husband’s hand. It was a sudden gesture, instinctive, but it seemed so necessary at the moment, a lover’s reassuring pat, sheltering. Just for a second they glanced at each other, excluding me, and in that instant I witnessed real affection, love, concern. And, to my horror, a little fear. I felt a lump in my throat because I realized, like a blow to the face, how treacherous and precarious their peaceful life had become. Trouble in a sun-drenched paradise.
    Max breathed in, once again anxious to shift the conversation. A thin smile, teasing. “Ava Gardner can’t wait to meet you.”
    I gasped, a histrionic Victorian reflex I detested in myself, though these days the grim specter of humanity seemed to warrant it more and more. “Whatever for?”
    “Think about it, Edna. You wrote Show Boat , the movie she thinks will define her career, showcase her as a real actress. The movie that, like The Killers a while back, will finally convince the world she’s more than long legs, curvy body, and sex-goddess appeal. A breakthrough movie, that one. Hemingway himself sent her roses. But Metro has a track record of dumping her into grade B movies. They don’t believe her power. Both Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons wrote wildly insane columns protesting Metro’s casting, can you believe? Keep her out of the classic. ‘ Show Boat is America…Ava is…cheesecake.’ But she can act, you know.”
    Alice chimed in, “She’s mentioned you a number of times.”
    “Ava Gardner?”
    They both laughed. “Edna, Edna.” Max leaned forward. “She’s not what you think.”
    Frankly, I never liked it when people told me what I was thinking. A little too arrogant, such a presumption. Max, however, I’d forgive. “Well, to be honest, she doesn’t strike me as…dimensional. I mean…” I faltered. “Sex goddess, hellcat, those nightclub scenes that make the papers…” I suddenly realized my narrow image of the beautiful woman was the product of George Kaufman and Marc Connelly blathering their puerile adoration for the voluptuous woman. George, I knew, regularly devoured Photoplay and Modern Screen , though not in front of me. He knew better.
    “You’ll love her,” Alice confided with certainty. She wrapped her arms around her chest, twisted her body into the cushions of the chair. “She gives the greatest hugs.”
    “I don’t allow strangers to hug me,” I announced, imperious.
    “You won’t have a choice.” Alice giggled like a schoolgirl.
    “And she won’t be a stranger very long,” Max added.
    Now I changed the subject. “Tell me, is the movie atrocious, Max?”
    “God, no.” He laughed out loud. “It’s…Technicolor.”
    I sighed. “Oh, joy. A splashy cartoon. Magnolia Ravenal dancing with Donald Duck.”
    Max hedged, glanced over my shoulder. “Well, it’s different from the Hammerstein and Kern version. The director Pop Sidney didn’t want to use Hammerstein’s libretto. He did leave off that ugly word for Negroes in ‘Ol’ Man River’…”
    “Thank God for that. In my novel only the lowlife characters use that word.”
    “But they’ve rewritten most of the dialogue which is…”
    “Juvenile, insipid…” I interrupted.
    “A little bit, in places. But the music is pure Jerome Kern. Otherwise I wouldn’t have worked on it.”
    “Thank God.” I paused. “You know, I make no money from this production. Not a red cent. Hollywood hacks can willy-nilly run amok