CHAPTER 1
Burbank, California
December 1952
“It’s almost nine. Everyone else has left. Go home.”
Frank Porter barely glanced up from his drawing. “Soon, I just need to?—”
“Go home.” Sylvia Weaver plucked the pencil from Frank’s hand and held it out of reach. She looked exhausted, with dark circles under her eyes. Her short hair needed a comb, and there were ink smudges on her white blouse.
Frank was pretty sure that he looked equally disheveled. His curls had escaped the Brylcreem hours ago, his facial hair was well past five o’clock shadow, and his tie was stuffed in the pocket of his suit coat hanging on the nearby coatrack. Still, deadlines loomed.
“I’m at the part where he’s knocking on the door, and I can’t decide whether he’d ball his webbed front foot into a fist or just sort of slap it against the wood.” Frank demonstrated by whacking one of his palms onto his desk.
“Slap,” Sylvia said firmly. “It’s funnier. The sound department will enjoy it.”
As usual, she was right. “Fine. But then when he enters the castle and he’s hopping along behind the king, where’s his gaze trained? Up at the king’s ass? ’Cause then he’s not really watching where he’s going, and he might?—”
“Frank. These critically important questions can be answered tomorrow. Right now, you need a decent meal, maybe a highball or two, and then your bed. Go.” She made a shooing motion.
He sighed, did a basic tidying of his workspace, and stood. It felt good to stretch his body, but the old familiar ache flared in his foot and he grabbed his cane before he had a chance to fall. “You could take your own advice,” he said as he shuffled over to the coatrack. Earlier in the day, the rack had overflowed, but now only his jacket and hat remained—along with a maroon scarf that someone had forgotten.
Sylvia stood watching him, hand on hips. “You’re right. Hang on and we can walk out together.” She hurried away, heels clacking on the hard floor.
As lead animator, she had her own office instead of having to work elbow-to-elbow with everyone else. But it was a small, windowless space in a corner of the large room, and she rarely spent time in there. Instead she’d squeeze in somewhere amid her underlings or pace among them, giving praise, criticism, and advice. She also spent a lot of time meeting with the studio execs and with representatives from the various departments. Frank didn’t envy her job one bit.
When she rejoined him near the exit, she was wrapped in a scarlet wool coat and black kid-leather gloves, with a silk bonnet—black with white polka dots—tied over her hair. Beside her, Frank felt drab, a monochrome sketch beside his Technicolor boss. And he was slow-moving, although she adjusted her pace to match his hobble.
“You don’t have a coat?” she asked as they made their way down the darkened hall.
“My suit jacket’s fine.”
She clucked her tongue and he chuckled. After several years in Los Angeles, he was still amused that people bundled up just because the calendar said it was winter. Back in Nebraska, this would have been shirtsleeve weather. He didn’t miss the frigid cold, the snow, or the ice, although he wondered if their absence was one reason why he never really felt the holiday spirit. Even now, it didn’t seem as if Christmas was just around the corner.
The security guard nodded at them before unlocking the door to let them outside. The building was part of a U-shaped cluster, and they stepped out into a paved courtyard dotted with palm trees and framed, left and right, by two parallel buildings. A parking lot sat at the far end, and along the way several tall lampposts cast pools of light, creating elongated shadows that Frank thought might be fun to draw. Too bad there were no moonlit scenes in his current project. Maybe the next one would offer a chance.
During the day, people scurried back and forth across the plaza, clutching clipboards or sheaves of paper. Others would stand in small clusters to smoke cigarettes or sat on one of the benches eating a sandwich or drinking from a paper cup of coffee. Pigeons and sparrows would strut around people’s feet, and the air carried a complex aroma of car exhaust, perfume, and the commissary’s fried food. At certain points in the year, jacaranda blooms would add their scent. Frank liked to think that he could also smell the ocean, but it was surely his imagination.
Now, his and Sylvia’s footfalls were the only sound. The nighttime space held an air of melancholy but also, perhaps, a hint of magic.
No, that was his imagination again.
Sylvia broke the near silence. “I forgot to mention. I have a treat for you on Friday afternoon.”
He looked at her questioningly and noted her sly grin.
“Carver Reed is coming by,” she said.
Frank wondered whether she could hear his heart speed up. “Oh?” His feigned nonchalance probably didn’t fool her. “Why?”
“So you two can spend some time together.”
He tripped and almost ended up flat on his face. Luckily, his faithful cane saved him. “Why?” he repeated, even less nonchalantly.
“So you can observe him, to aid in your work. You know this is standard practice, Frank.”
“Yeah, but I’m drawing a frog, not the actor who’s voicing him. Isn’t Bill Schmidt drawing the princely version of him?” He knew the answer to this question perfectly well, but it was all he could come up with at the moment.
