"We'll see." They looked at each other for a long time. "So," Harry said finally. "Diana Chesterfield has resurfaced."

"I saw," Amanda said. "I hope you gave her quite a hard time for disappearing off your picture."

"Aw, it didn't turn out so bad in the end."

"Even so." Amanda shook her head. "Did she have any explanation for where the h.e.l.l she's been the past year?"

Harry shrugged. "Something about falling madly in love with some English duke she met on an Atlantic crossing whose family refused to accept her, so she was shut up in some castle until a handsome male secretary helped her escape to Paris to lick her wounds, so to speak. Kind of a cross between Wallis Simpson and Countess Olenska. Undoubtedly inspired by just those two."

"You don't believe her?"

"Believe her?" Harry shrugged again. "What does it matter if I believe her or not? I'll tell you one thing though, there's no way Dane Forrest can dump poor little Margo Sterling and take her back. I mean, how could he? After she's admitted to being with all those other men."

Ah. Amanda thought of that line from some Shakespeare play Harry was always quoting. There's the rub.

"Harry," she said, "we need to talk."

He looked back down at the leaves. "Do we?"

"You know we do."

Harry knitted his eyebrows doubtfully. "I don't know if that's such a good idea."

Desperate times call for desperate measures, Amanda thought. She took a step toward him, strategically leaning slightly forward so that even with his head bent he would catch the fullest glimpse of her creamy cleavage.

"Please? Isn't there someplace we can go?"

Behind Harry's thick gla.s.ses, his eyes took on a narcotic glaze. "I ... The studio got me a room upstairs. We could go there for a couple of minutes, I guess."

"And your mother?"

Harry grinned. "She's down the hall."

G.o.d, Amanda thought. If I were as good with money as I am with men, I'd be running the whole d.a.m.n studio.

Harry's junior suite at the Biltmore was the hotel-room version of an Olympus writer: small, dark, and overpriced.

" 'Why can't the actors just make it up as they go along?' " Harry said. "That's something my producer said to me. 'You just come up with the story and let them act it out in their own words.' He actually said that."

He turned toward the small, spa.r.s.ely equipped bar cart to fix them a couple of drinks. He'd been chattering nervously like this since they got on the elevator.

"Like it doesn't matter. Like it's a silent picture where they can be talking about their pets and what they're going to eat for dinner, because they're going to put a t.i.tle card over it in post anyway." Shaking his head, he handed Amanda a gla.s.s of lukewarm scotch. "No wonder Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner and Dorothy Parker-you know, real writers-are drinking themselves to death out here. Sorry," he added, "I don't have any ice. If you want, I can call for some."

"It's all right." Amanda took a steadying sip of the amber liquid. "At least you don't have to worry about them forgetting their lines," she said, taking another sip. "If they're making them up themselves, I mean."

"Yeah. And you know, the h.e.l.l of it is, it comes straight from the top. If Karp gave a d.a.m.n about writers, then the rest of them would have to. But frankly, I'm not sure the man can even read, let alone appreciate good writing. As far as he's concerned, we're bottom feeders. A bunch of faceless insects scuttling across the ocean floor, scavenging whatever sc.r.a.ps we can." He took a sip of his drink and made a face. "G.o.d, I miss New York. The weather's lousy and the subway smells like pee, but at least the people there appreciate the written word."

Amanda smiled. Listening to Harry's familiar, unchanging litany of grievances, she could almost pretend the last six horrible months had never happened.

"Is this really what you want to talk about?" she asked.

"I guess not." Harry looked sheepish. "Anyway, you were the one who wanted to talk."

"I know." Amanda's heart was pounding. Desperately, she searched her mind for all the coquettish things she'd thought of to say when and if this moment came, but the only thing that sprang to her lips was the truth. "Oh, Harry. Everything has been so awful since ... since you left. I can't tell you how ..." She swallowed hard. "If you had only let me tell you about ... about the past. I wanted to. I wrote you letters. Hundreds and hundreds. Trying to ... I don't know ... to explain."

Harry frowned. "I never got any letters."

"I was too afraid to send them." Amanda looked down at her hands, fighting back tears. "But the important thing-the thing that you have to know-is that all of that, it was all over before I met you. Before I ever knew there was going to be a you."

"I know," Harry said quietly.

His face was close to hers. She looked deep into his dark eyes, breathing in the familiar smell of him, of cigarettes and ink and the fancy lime-scented English soap that was the only expensive thing he allowed himself to buy. "Oh, Harry," she gasped. "I miss you so much." The tears she had been struggling to hold back suddenly burst from her eyes, falling thick and fast over her powdered cheeks.

"Amanda, no," Harry murmured. "Don't cry. Please. Don't cry."

But she couldn't help it. He put out his arms to comfort her, cautiously at first, but at the familiar touch their bodies fell together, fitting as perfectly as they always had. "Don't cry," he whispered again, "don't cry." She lifted her face and his lips met hers. They were kissing now, the tears still streaming down her face, their lips wordlessly saying all the things that had been left unspoken for the past six months.

If it had been a scene from a picture, this would have been the part when it faded to black.

But sometimes, Amanda thought happily as she guided Harry's warm hands toward the zipper of her gown, sometimes real life is even better than the movies.

TEN.

G.o.d. She's so beautiful.

Seeing her bright hair spread in a silky fan across the pillow, her long eyelashes casting soft shadows on her pale cheek, Harry thought, as he often had, that looking at a sleeping Amanda was like being somehow transported into some undiscovered pre-Raphaelite painting. Like being with one of the ethereal, half-magical beauties in the Arthurian legends he had loved to read as a little boy. It was as if the enchantress Morgan le Fay or the Lady of the Lake had materialized in the bed to bestow her favors upon some lucky b.a.s.t.a.r.d of a mortal peasant, and the lucky b.a.s.t.a.r.d was Harry.

He'd never felt worse in his entire life.

Amanda's eyes fluttered open. "Good morning."

"Good morning."

"What are you doing dressed so early?" she murmured. A lazy feline smile spread across her face as she wrapped her arms around his waist.

"It's not that early. Anyway, I have to go to the studio."

Her smile faded. "Today? Who's going to be there?"

"Everyone who wasn't there last night." Harry extricated himself from her grasp, turning his head away. He couldn't look at her, not right now. "Besides, I get the most done when it's quiet. Fewer people around to bother me."

"Harry." Amanda sat up. "If this is about not winning last night ..."

"It has nothing to do with that," he snapped. "I'm on a deadline, that's all. Production schedules don't change just because somebody else went home with an Oscar."

"Oh." She cast her eyes downward, pulling the sheet around herself protectively. "Of course. I understand."

Harry felt a sudden stab of remorse. "Do you ... do you need a ride home or anything?"

She shook her head. "I have my own car."

"Then, listen, stay as long as you want. And order breakfast-h.e.l.l, order anything. Champagne, caviar, anything."

"For breakfast?"

"Why not?" He shrugged. "Listen, Amanda ... I'm really sorry about this."

"What do you mean, 'this'?"

He looked down, unable to meet her eye. "About having to run off to the studio," he said finally.

"Oh." The relief in her voice was palpable. "Don't worry about it, darling, I understand."

Darling. He placed a swift, dry kiss on her expectant lips. "I'll call you, okay?"

G.o.d, could I be any more of a heel? Harry thought as he scurried out the door. I might as well have left fifty bucks on the dresser.

His head pounded with the ache of last night's Scotch as he rapped his knuckles on the door at the far end of the hall.

"Who is it?" came a fearful voice.

"Ma, it's me. Open up."

"Harry!" There was a symphony of jangling and clicking as Sadie Gorenstein labored to open the collection of locks and latches on the door. From the sound of things, Harry wouldn't have been surprised if she'd brought some of them with her especially from New York. "Where have you been? I've been up for hours. It's still dark and there I am already wide awake, staring at the ceiling."

"It's the jet lag, Ma." He kissed her cheek. "Remember, I told you how California is three hours earlier than New York."

"Sure, I remember, but I don't understand. To me, time is time." She ran her hands self-consciously down the front of her flowered dress. "I'm embarra.s.sed, I don't have anything to offer you."

"It's okay."

She gestured helplessly around the room. "If only you could have found me a place with a kitchen, I could have prepared you something. Made you eggs with belly lox and lots of onions, just the way you like."

"I have to go to the studio this morning anyway," Harry said. "Some rewrites that have to be in by the end of the day, or else." He'd already lied to Amanda; why not lie to his mother too? "Besides, Ma, you don't make breakfast in a place like this, you order it. Just pick up the phone and tell them to bring you eggs or toast or anything you want, and to charge it to the room."

"A cooked breakfast?" Sadie made a face. "It won't be kosher."

"It wasn't kosher last night, and you ate."

"That was different. With all those people around, I didn't want to be rude. Besides, with a cooked breakfast, they'll put bacon with it."

Harry sighed. "So have the fruit plate."

"Fruit plate? Here?"

"Yes, here. California has the best produce in the whole world. Believe me, there'll be such fruit on the plate you never even knew it existed." Jesus, Harry thought. Five minutes with my mother and already I'm talking like a character from The Jazz Singer. "And after breakfast, go down to the lobby and the driver will take you anywhere you want to go. Shopping, anything."

"The driver?" Another face. "You want your mama should be alone in a car with a strange colored man?"

"His name is Arthur, Ma," Harry said. "He's from the studio, and he's a very nice man. You'll like him, he's from the Bronx. And I'll be back here around six to take you to dinner."

"Dinner? Where dinner?"

"I thought we'd go to the Vendome on the Sunset Strip. It's a French restaurant, and they've got card games in the back, like Pop used to play on Hester Street."

"You want I should eat with a bunch of gamblers?"

"Gamblers know how to eat. It's one of the best places in town."

"But all your fancy-schmancy friends already saw me in my dress."

"So buy another one." Harry kissed her cheek again. "I'll see you at six. Try to have fun."

In the lobby, Harry was suddenly somehow seized by the wild notion of going back and asking Amanda to look after his mother for the day. Why not throw the two inescapable women in his life together and see who made it out alive? But the flames of that idea were soon doused by the ice bucket of reality. He could never introduce his mother to Amanda, not in a hundred years, and certainly not as his girlfriend.

It wasn't just because she was a Gentile. Harry a.s.sumed that Sadie Gorenstein, like hundreds of other mothers who had lost their bright Jewish boys to the lights of Hollywood, had long ago made her uneasy peace with the fact that it was very likely the girl her darling son brought back to Brooklyn would not arrive equipped with her own gefilte fish recipe. She would be a Gentile, with no people, no family, no place. Whatever world had sp.a.w.ned the primordial Amanda, there was, as Gertrude Stein would say, no there there. It was almost laughable, thought Harry, without even a hint of a chuckle, how little he actually knew about the girl who had vacuumed up every speck of his mental and emotional energy since almost the moment he met her. He imagined the two of them sitting stiffly on the enormous antimaca.s.sar laid protectively over the velveteen sofa in his mother's tchotchke-cluttered living room in Flatbush: "Ma, this is Amanda. I don't know her real name or how old she is. I think she's from Oklahoma but I'm not sure, I don't know if she has any brothers and sisters or what her father did for a living, or if he is still living, or if he ever existed at all. I don't even know where she lives, but by G.o.d, I think I want to marry her."

No. Harry shook his head. That wouldn't go over well at all. And that was before you even took into account the one incontrovertible factual thing he knew about Amanda, regarding what she used to do for a living-what she used to be and, as far as he knew, what she still was. Sure, she denied it, but that didn't explain how she'd looked like a million bucks every time he'd seen her recently. Something-or more likely, someone-was keeping her in Paris fashions and French perfume, and it sure as h.e.l.l wasn't a contract player's fifty bucks a week.

Well, Harry thought, letting himself into his new corner office in the Writers' Building on the Olympus lot, she's not going to make a fool of me this time.

He still loved her, or at least, he still wanted her, that was clear. Which was why he couldn't trust himself around her. Last night had been incredible as always, but afterward, as they'd lain in bed, her head nestled against his chest, her smooth arms wrapped around his neck, Harry had started conjuring horrible pictures of Amanda looking the same way at other men, saying the same things, doing the same things, to the point that he'd disentangled himself from her sleeping embrace in disgust. Even now, they swam into his mind unbidden; the harder he tried not to think about it, the more explicit and intense the images became. They'd never go away, he was sure of it. Maybe it was his problem. Maybe he was just too old-fashioned, too chauvinistic. It didn't matter. That was the way it was.

And yet, if she materialized right now in his office, her lips parted, her arms outstretched, looking at him the way she always did-as though Harry, shy little Harry Gorenstein with the kinky hair and the crooked nose and clothes that were always just a little bit too big and a little bit too wrinkled, was the only man in the world-he knew he would be unable to resist. And then he would hate her for it. And she would hate him for hating her. And so it would go, on and on, a vicious cycle that would drive both of them crazy and destroy their lives. Unless he put a stop to it.

Jean, his new secretary, had carefully cleared off and dusted a spot on his end table for the Oscar statuette that just yesterday they had all been so sure was going to be his. The bare polished wood gleamed up at him reproachfully. Told ya so.

Sighing, Harry reached into his desk drawer for some papers to cover it up and came up with a fistful of typewritten pages with a familiar t.i.tle: An American Girl

By Harry Gordon

An American Girl. His masterpiece. The script he had written for Amanda. The movie that was supposed to make her a star and declare his undying love for her at the same time. Currently languishing in development h.e.l.l, without an actress, without a director, without a chance of being made.

Harry could never keep his fingers off a sore. With an appet.i.te for pain that was almost perverse, he turned the first page and began to read.