The Angel's Cut Read Online Free

sum set by,’ she said. ‘From stunt jobs, and now and then I invest a couple of hundred with a friend of mine. My friend Flora raises—say—five hundred, and I put in two, then I fly across to Cocopah or Pasqualitos and buy tequila. Flora’s from Brawley, down near the border. Her uncle cuts his fence wire so these bootlegging boys we know can drive off the highway, and through his pastureland, to the edge of the desert. Flora and the boys put down kerosene in broken bottles to mark out an airstrip, then they listen for my engines and light the kerosene so I can see where to bring her in. The boys pay for my cargo. Flora and I split the money. Flora’s uncle letsthe boys out again onto the highway, and mends his fence. Flora pays him his cut, and we fly home.’
    Millie finished, then said, ‘I suppose that sounds more dangerous than flying stunts.’
    â€˜Do the bootleggers carry guns?’
    â€˜Yes. But we try not to take it personally. Besides, if we waited for help we’d be waiting forever—me and Flora. We have to play the hands we’ve been dealt.’ Millie yawned, and stretched, and her elbows popped. She passed him the flask again. ‘Are you warm enough?’
    He nodded. ‘So that’s why your friends at Glendale sniggered when I mentioned Prohibition.’
    â€˜Yes. Because I never have to do without booze. We keep what we need, me a little, Flora a lot.’
    â€˜She’s a drinker?’
    Millie nodded. ‘She has her reasons.’

Venice, California
    June 27, 1929
    O n the same day that Millie ran into Xas at Glendale airport, Millie’s friend, Flora McLeod, had a visit from an old flame.
    When Gil Crow arrived at Flora’s bungalow she was in her robe. Her clothes were lying, muddied, just inside the front door.
    Gil kissed her, said, ‘Ah, Flora—your slatternly ways,’ and handed her a bottle of whisky. He went in ahead of her and began moving magazines and clothes to make room for himself on the couch. ‘Though I hear your cutting room is a picture of order,’ he said.
    Editing film was Flora McLeod’s second career. She’d first come to Hollywood in 1920, at nineteen years of age, after winning a beauty contest in Brawley, her home town. She did get to act in movies, though for her biggest role she only got to play the girl who almost gets the guy, a peppy girl standing at the door of a dance hall, checking her hair andwaving hello. Flora photographed well, worked hard, and was fun to have on a set. She might have gone on to better roles, and the talkies could have used her sharp, clear voice. But in 1925, when she was at a costume party at the Ship Café, her boyfriend touched a cigarette to the grass skirt she was wearing. It was meant to be only a bit of mischief, but the skirt caught with a whoosh, and the flames seemed to lift Flora off the ground. Later people saw that the paint on the café ceiling was blistered and blackened in a long trail, for Flora had bolted across the room before a quick-thinking twenty-one-year-old millionaire called Conrad Cole tackled her and wrapped her in a thick velvet curtain.
    When she finally got out of hospital Flora was down to four and a half stone. She went to live with an aunt in Brawley, and learned to walk again, at first with her legs apart as if to hold her in a straight course on a moving deck. She put on a little weight, but nothing would induce her to round out again, for the scarring on her hips had hardened into a kind of cutaneous belt above and below which any extra flesh would billow, and pull at every movement.
    Flora might have remained with her aunt. There was some talk about turning the porch in which she was sleeping into a proper bedroom. But she saw the life she’d have, as a poor relation, a scarecrow figure who helps a little around the house, hanging out the family wash, wincing every time she has to lift her arms. She could