Stars Over Sunset Boulevard Read Online Free Page A

doorstep of one of the homes with a toddler on her hip and a dish towel over her shoulder, calling out into the twilight for an older child to come in.
    Violet’s gaze seemed to linger on the mother, and then on the place where the woman had stood after she’d stepped back inside her house.
    â€œSo, did your aunt work in the movie business, too?” Violet asked when the house and the mother with her children were behind them.
    â€œNot hardly,” Audrey answered. “She married a man from Los Angeles who was a professional gambler, for lack of a better word. She met him at a casino before I was even born. I think her job was keeping him out of trouble.”
    â€œOh.”
    â€œApparently Uncle Freddy habitually made a lot of money and habitually lost it. I never met him. He got himself killed when I was still little. Luckily for Aunt Jo, it was after he had just made a lot of money. She bought the bungalow with what he had hidden in their apartment and lived off the rest so she didn’t have to worry about taking a job at the library that barely paid her anything. My father wasn’t too impressed with whom his older sister had married. He’s always resented the fact that when he expected me to come back home to him, I didn’t. I stayed with Aunt Jo.”
    â€œSo why did he send you to live with her, then?”
    â€œLet’s just say it was convenient for him.”
    Violet opened her mouth to say something else, but they had arrived at the bungalow and Audrey filled the momentary silence. They could have that conversation later, if they had it at all.
    â€œWell, here’s the house,” she said.
    The bungalow, like many of the other houses on the street, was Spanish themed, one of the three architecture styles allowed in the bedroom community of Hollywoodland, with white stucco walls, a red tile roof, arched doorways, and terra-cotta pots of geraniums happily bloomingon the porch, even though it was December. She slipped her key into the lock and they stepped inside.
    Audrey hadn’t replaced any of the furniture since Aunt Jo’s death six years earlier. There had been no need. Jo had bought only quality pieces with the money she had found hidden in the floorboards of the apartment. There was a long sofa, coffee table, two armchairs, a Victrola, and a dining room set Audrey never used. The yellow-and-white-tile, eat-in kitchen had a door that opened onto a shaded patio and a laundry closet in the corner with an electric clothes washer. Two bedrooms, a bathroom, and the ten-year-old tabby cat completed the interior.
    â€œThis would be where you would sleep,” Audrey said as she showed Violet the room that had been hers before Aunt Jo died. There was a bed, a dresser, and vanity inside. Lacy blue curtains hung at the windows. A hooked oval rug lay in the middle of the floor. A painting of the ocean decorated the longest wall. “It’s fully furnished, as you can see, so it’s a good thing you’ve only got a suitcase.”
    â€œIt’s perfect,” Violet said, almost breathlessly.
    â€œNot as big as your Southern plantation back home, though, right?”
    Violet laughed. “I didn’t live on a plantation. We lived in the city.”
    â€œIn a big house?”
    Violet hesitated before nodding. “It was. But . . . but I don’t live there anymore.”
    Audrey sensed for a second time Violet’s desire for something that for the moment was out of reach. This young woman from Alabama by way of Shreveport wanted something that life back home couldn’t give her. She had come to the land of dreams to find it. “Do you have any bad habits I should know about?” Audrey said.
    â€œWhy? Do you?” Violet asked, and a tiny current of dread rippled across her face.
    Audrey smiled. Violet didn’t appear to be like any of the other Hollywood women she knew. Audrey liked her. “I tend to leave my