Then whoever it was just sat on the damned button and banged on the door with keys or something… which was probably going to chip the paint and make the superintendent give her trouble. Not that she really had to give a shit anymore; she’d be out of this dump by the time she came off the war bond tour. Get a place maybe closer to Beverly Hills. Or maybe even she’d get lucky and find some place on the beach.
Mr. Cooperman said not to worry about gas rationing. Motion pictures had been declared a war industry, just like the airplane companies. Since she was driving to work in a war industry, she would get a “C” Ration Sticker for her car.
Dawn stood up and went to the picture window; she’d made a hole in the curtain over it that let her peek out at whoever was at her door.
At least most of the time: It was possible to stand in a place that was out of range of her peephole. And the person who was there today was doing that. But she did recognize Mr. Jake Dillon’s yellow Packard 120 convertible in the parking lot. It stood out like a rose in a garbage dump from all the junks there… including Dawn’s 1935 Chevrolet coupe.
She wondered what he wanted. But then, that wasn’t all that hard to figure out. So the question was really how to give it to him. How coy should she appear? Probably not very coy at all, she decided. They’d understood each other right from the start. She scratched his back by being nice to the kid he brought home from the war, and he scratched hers by getting her a film test. A really good film test. Which meant she owed him. And now he was coming to collect.
So what was wrong with that? She’d been around Hollywood long enough to know all about the casting couch. And having Jake Dillon as a friend certainly wouldn’t hurt her career any. And she certainly wouldn’t be the only actress who was being nice to Dillon. Veronica Wood was screwing him.
I wonder if she ‘d be pissed if she found out I was doing it with him, too.
She called, “Just a moment, please!” And then she went to the door and unfastened the chain and all the dead-bolt locks you needed in a dump like this to keep people from stealing you blind. As she was finishing with that, she had a final pleasant thought: Three weeks ago, I couldn’t even get in an agent’s office. And here I am about to do it with Mr. Jake Dillon and worrying if Veronica Wood will be pissed if she finds out!
“Hello, Dawn, darling,” Miss Veronica Wood greeted her. “I hope I didn’t rip you out of bed or anything?”
“Oh, no,” Dawn said. “I’m really surprised to see you here, Miss Wood.”
“I had a hell of a time finding it, I’ll tell you that,” Veronica said. “Can I come in?”
What the hell does she want?
“Oh, of course. Excuse me,” Dawn said. “Please come in. You’ll have to excuse the appearance of the place….”
“I’ve lived in worse,” Veronica said, and walked to the card table and picked up one of the photographs.
“Isn’t that Mr. Dillon’s car?”
“Yeah. They finally got it fixed,” Veronica said. Then, tossing the photograph back on the table, she said, “Not bad. Who did that, Roger Marshutz?”
“Yes. Yes, he did.”
“He’s a horny little bastard; keep your knees crossed when you’re around him. But he’s one hell of a photographer. He did a nice job with your boobs on this one.”
“I liked it,” Dawn said.
“You’ll pass them out on the war bond tour, I suppose?”
“Yes.”
“I thought so. I was over at Publicity just before I came here, and they were signing mine.”
What the hell does that mean?
“Excuse me? I don’t quite understand.”
Veronica looked at Dawn as if her suspicions that she was retarded were just confirmed.
“The girls, the girls in Publicity, were signing my handouts.”
“Oh.”
Of course, Veronica Wood is a star. Stars don’t autograph their own pictures. How the hell would the fans know if the real star had signed them or not? I am not a star-at least not yet. And that’s why I’m signing my own photographs. What the hell, I sort of like signing them. But this will be the last time. Next time the girls in Publicity can sign “Warm regards, Dawn Morris” two thousand times. They probably have nicer handwriting than I do, anyway.