But the Andrews Sisters chimed in, crooning away about apple blossom time, and the rest of the world came crowding back. Before he shipped out, James promised to return to me, just like those song lyrics said, and make me his bride. Now that memory tied a double knot of nervousness and relief in me, and my hands fell away from Frankie’s. There’d been nothing on the news about James’s ship, or any news from the Pacific front. Was the war drawing to a close there too?
Frankie kept slow-dancing by herself for a few seconds, then stopped and studied the look on my face. She caught her plump lower lip in her teeth and looked around my room, then spotted my typewriter in its case, and her flashbulb grin returned. “Hey, you got any of your movie scripts here? Maybe I can read from them!”
I bashed my hip against the drawer where I kept City of Angels. “It’s — it’s not ready for a dramatic reading yet.” When her smile faltered, I said, “But why don’t you run through your monologues for me? The ones you’re practicing for the screen test. I can give you notes on them.”
Frankie shrugged, plopped down onto the mattress. “It’s gettin’ late. I should head back.” But she made no move to stand.
I glanced out the window; Friday night in Los Angeles was always a dicey affair. What men were still left weren’t the sort you wanted to run into in a darkened alleyway — zoot-suiters and draft dodgers and alcoholics and worse. “Maybe I should walk you home. And then — oh.”
“And then walk back alone?” Frankie rolled her eyes and flopped back onto the bed. “I know. How about we have a slumber party? Like in grade school. Then I can run my lines for you in the morning.”
I suspected then that I’d been snared in another Frankie trap. From what I’d pieced together at the factory, Frankie’s roommate had a zoot-suit-wearing boyfriend who liked to invite himself over to their place, especially after he’d been hitting the sauce. Sometimes he hit the roommate too. “You take the bed. I’ll get some spare blankets and pillows and sleep on the floor.”
Frankie smiled at me like I’d pulled the moon down for her, and that made it even harder for me to mind being had.
She was out cold by the time I set up my pallet — pins still in her hair, even — so I tucked myself in and pulled out James’s photo to whisper good night. I tried to imagine him whispering back, but I couldn’t remember his voice, exactly — sticky and drawling, I thought, but maybe the navy had tightened it up. Maybe I remembered it all wrong
Two years now he’d been gone, and I’d only known him for four months before that — I was fresh off the bus at sixteen, completely clueless when it came to men. “Complications,” Mama said of them, though I never had trouble keeping away from them, and they kept away from me. James was undemanding, easygoing; sure, his letters all sounded the same after a while, but he was safe. Wasn’t it enough? Why should a girl like me think she ever deserved more?
I must have drifted into sleep, into dreams of roaring planes and frantic Morse code beeps, then I slammed back into myself with a jolt and sat up. Moonlight trickled through my chintz curtains, highlighting the empty space in my bed where Frankie should have been. I frowned, pulled on a robe, and stepped out into the living room.
A halo of lamplight wreathed Frankie, curled up in Mrs. M’s armchair, lips moving along with the stack of papers she was reading. My City of Angels script. I stood there for a moment, too shocked at her gall to say anything, but as I watched her, I realized she wasn’t just mouthing the lines to herself — she was becoming Kitty Cohen. Her eyebrows drew down and her shoulders rolled back and she transformed into something . . . magnificent.
But — that script was private. It was mine. I stormed toward her and snatched it out of her hands, then headed back into my room.
“Evie, wait!” she cried, following me into the bedroom and shutting the door behind her. “Don’t be mad!”
“It’s not ready for anyone to see it yet. It’s not even finished.” I shoved it back into its drawer and sank back down onto my pallet, fists at my side like stones weighing me down. “You have no right to take my belongings —”
“But Evie, it’s good.” Frankie’s eyes rounded; she leaned toward me with a dramatic flair. “I love it. A woman gangster — it’s fabulous. And she’s more than just a gangster. She’s vicious, and wonderful, and she knows what she wants . . .”
I let my fists unfold. That’s what I wanted Kitty Cohen to be — tough and cunning and determined, a woman for whom beauty, if she had it, was only one of her many tools.
“But the romance stinks,” Frankie said.
I jerked my head up. “What are you talking about?”
“The detective who’s investigating her? There’s no passion there. It’s like she’s flirting with a saltine cracker.” Frankie smiled. “You’ve gotta draw from what you know. Maybe from — from you and your James?”