Max followed my gaze, saw Clara, and quickly turned his back to the bar, as if he didn’t want to look at her. “Do you even read the news rags?” he whispered.
Well, yes. I’d seen the photos of her in court with her current boyfriend, Rex Bell, at her side. “But she’s not on trial, her secretary is.” Her secretary, Daisy DeVoe, had tried to blackmail her for over a hundred thousand dollars.
“Sure, but it’s Clara being raked over the coals.” Max kept his head turned away, but his expression was grim and a little sad.
What came out at trial was shocking, even for Hollywood. Drunken parties, cocaine, plenty of men—Gary Cooper, Victor Fleming, the entire USC football team, or so they said—all of it written in letters so explicit, they couldn’t be printed even in the seediest tabloid. The newspapers jumped on Clara Bow like hyenas ripping up a carcass.IT Girl Exposed! Singed Starlet in Ruins!
Max went on. “Paramount can’t handle her mess of a personal life, especially now that it’s no longer personal. Not to mention she’s the last word in self-destruction. Between the men, booze, and drugs, they won’t put up with much more of her, not when she can’t even remember her lines.” Max snorted. “For the life, I can’t understand why these people have to write it all down. They keep letters and diaries like trophies, then they’re shocked when some mug finds them and wants a payoff.”
Max was a lot of things—stubborn, overbearing, bossy... Icould go on. But he was rarely wrong about the business. Couldthe It Girl really be finished? Then I heard her. She’d only been in one talkie, but I’d recognize her voice anywhere. Throaty, with a tinge of a Brooklyn accent.
“Maximilian. Are you going to hide out over there all night, or are you going to come on over and say hello?”
My mouth dropped open. Was she talking tomyMax?
Max let out a long breath and gave me what seemed to be an apologetic look. He turned toward the bar. “Clara. It’s been a long time.” He sounded none too pleased.
Max, on a first-name basis with Clara Bow?
Max’s grip on my elbow tightened as the circle of men reluctantly parted for us. Clara didn’t spare me a glance as she handed Max her empty glass. “Fill that for me, will ya, Maxi?” She turned to the men lounging beside her. “Fellas, this is Max Clark. His father was Dusty Clark, the Kissing Cowboy.” She smiled and swayed a bit. “As fine a man as you chumps could ever hope to meet.”
Max refilled her glass with a splash from the bottle on the bar. His jaw was rigid, and he didn’t even try to look like he was glad to see the most famous woman in Hollywood. “How you holding up, Clara?” He held the glass out of her reach, forcing her to look at him.
She gave him a sultry smile instead of an answer. “So this is who you’re spending your time with now?” She kept her eyes on Max. “Isn’t she a pretty little thing.” It sure didn’t sound like a compliment, so I didn’t thank her.
Max introduced me with precious little enthusiasm. Close up, I could see what he’d meant. Clara looked worn, like a dollar bill that had passed through too many hands. Her heavy makeup couldn’t conceal the bruised circles under her notorious bedroom eyes.
“It’s a pleasure, Miss Bow,” I got out before she turned away, bellowing for more glasses.
She filled them herself, almost to the rim, and passed one to Max and one to me. “Any friend of Max’s” was all she said before raising her glass. “To Dusty Clark.” All the men followed suit. “He could drink any of you cake-eaters straight under the table. Didn’t matter what there was, gin, whisky, or moonshine.” She clinked her glass with Max’s and gave him a slow wink. “Down the hatch,” she said, throwing back the glass in one go.
I took a gulp from mine. It burned all the way down and made my eyes water.
Max set down his empty glass and took Clara’s hand. It was small and pale in his. “Take care of yourself, will you, Clara?”
She looked at him blearily. “I’d rather if you took care of me, Maxi,” she whispered with a look that could melt steel.
My cheeks burned as hot as my throat. Was Max one of the long line of Clara’s men? I was hardly as pure as the driven snow, but the notion of Clara and Max together made a little fire flare up in the back of my brain.
Without another word, Max moved me through the crowded room.
“You know her?” I whispered, staring up at his tight jaw. Max kept a lot to himself, but when he did talk, he told it straight. I liked that about him, even if sometimes I didn’t want to hear it. But at the moment he was looking anywhere but at me.
“My father was part of this crowd.” That answer was bushwah, but he had that look on his face that told me not to push it. “Mina, please. Let’s go.”
Max didn’t beg, so I must have misheard that plea in his voice. Besides, I’d just met Clara Bow, and I still hadn’t found Louella orRoy Lester. “Max, I’m not leaving here until I do what I came to do, and that’s get this part.”
Max turned, grabbing my elbow just below my faux pearls and whispering furiously, “Mina, listen to me for once. These people—” he jerked his head at the whole room—“people like Clara, like Barrymore. They’re looking for something—happiness, meaning, I don’t know what. They think they can find it in the bottom of a bottle, or with dope, or in somebody else’s bed.” His honey-gold eyes were bright and close. “They keep looking and looking.” His voice hardened. “And then they end up destroying themselves.” He put his hands on my bare shoulders. “I’m telling you, Mina, this is a bad idea.”
I stared up at him. Honestly, where had this come from? Was this about his father? What happened to Dusty Clark—star roper and rider and in at least a hundred films—had been a tragedy. “Max.” I swallowed hard. “I’m not like your father. I can handle this.”
Max shook his head, blowing a frustrated breath. “No,” he said firmly. “You can’t.”
Max knew plenty about the business, but he didn’t know beans about me. He thought I wanted to make it big, live in a fancy mansion like Lester’s, wear furs and designer dresses. But he was wrong.
I had no intention of staying in Hollywood any longer than I had to.
The studios loved new faces and they paid them well. Why, Joan Crawford, the most elegant of all the flappers, had started at seventy-five dollars a week at MGM. My plan was to make my money then get out. A six-month contract as Roy Lester’s leading lady would make me enough coin to leave California with tentimes what I’d taken from Papa. Enough to make up for everything and keep Papa in peaches and pipe tobacco for the rest of his life. I’d left the farm almost a year ago, and by now the mortgage and taxes were past due. If I didn’t make it soon... I’d never be able to go home.
