“I think,” Pamela whispered, “there was a real person by that name, a long time ago….”
“Shut up, Pam!” Slim grabbed the crystal highball glass full of vodka out of the waiter’s hands before he could set it on the table. She sipped, welcoming the icy-hot alcohol down her throat, and it brought tears to her eyes. Tears and memories, both.
Because it had been so long since she had just been Slim. Nancy. Whoever. It had been so long since she had been herself, and that was a laugh. A hell of a laugh. “Oh, Slim! You’re such an original! No one’s like you! You’re true, the truest I know!”
God. Truman had said that, hadn’t he? The little creep. The wise old soul. The friend who had broken her heart—and friends who betrayed other friends were simply the—the—
Take Pam, for instance. Slim’s heart was already broken long before Truman’s deviltry, crushed and ground beneath the stiletto heel of one Pamela Churchill (Hayward). She gazed at Pam now, tempted to throw some ice water down that cleavage. God, Pam really was getting too old to dress like the slut that she was; her cleavage was a bit leathery, wrinkled. But Slim didn’t douse her rival with ice water; Leland was dead now, anyway. Dead, dead, dead, like all the other men who’d loved her.
Almost all, that is.
But she had been an original back then, hadn’t she, once upon a time? She’d reveled in it, rejoiced in it, chuckled to herself about it at night. All those men, those Hollywood men, those legends—how they’d all fallen for her, every one, and she’d pretended to be embarrassed or shy or confused or surprised. But she wasn’t; she’d made them fall in love with her by being her truest self to the point that it became a costume she put on in the morning, a mask she slipped over her head. The all-American girl, the blond California goddess, the outdoorswoman who could ride and shoot and fish, seemingly not caring about how she looked—secretly spending quite a lot of time, indeed, brushing that golden hair and buffing those natural nails and plucking those untamed eyebrows, choosing those clothes, unusual and tailored and clean when everyone else was wearing snoods and lace collars and giant hats with feathers, jersey dresses with jewel clips.
Not her. Not Slim.
Who’d called her that, in the first place? Bill Powell? Probably. He was the first movie star she’d met, when she was barely fifteen, escaping, running, charging away from a tyrant father who tried to control her even after he left, a sad, broken mother, a bitchy sister; the ghost of a dead brother hovering over the entire town of Salinas, California. So as soon as she could, she vamoosed, driving away in a convertible, heading toward a resort in the desert, already starring in the movie of her life. There, she found herself—her young, golden, slim self—surrounded by actual, honest-to-God movie stars: Bill Powell, for instance. Men who took her under their wing, at first, waiting until she grew up. Just a little.
And when she did, she met Howard Hawks, another daddy. God, how she had a thing for the daddy figures! She didn’t have to pay an analyst fifty bucks an hour to figure out why. Classic story: Daddy left. Little girl spends her life trying to replace him.
Howard brought her into Hollywood finally, firmly, where she discovered, to her own surprise, that she didn’t want to star in movies. It was so much more fun to be involved in the making of them, on the arm of one of the best directors in the business, Howard Hawks. Howard fetishized her, to tell the truth; he was fascinated by how she spoke, her chin tilted down, eyes looking up, her voice throaty and full of answers to unasked questions. Howard made her read his scripts, rewriting the women characters’ dialogue as she would say it. He made sure their costumes were tailored, like her own wardrobe, even sending her out sometimes to buy an actress’s clothes herself. That’s how much he trusted her taste.
And he introduced her to more men, and what the hell was he thinking, doing that? She was so young—barely nineteen, then twenty. In love, but not in lust, and Howard knew that and so did she. And he surrounded her with Gary Cooper—rather stupid, but gorgeous as a mountain, those dimples! That surprised grin! Clark Gable—not stupid at all, although he dared you to think he was. A barrel of a man, broad-shouldered and -hipped; Clark never looked quite right in a tux, but he was a woman’s own wet dream in a flannel shirt and jeans.