“And you, my little lady—” Duke hugs me to his side, my martini splashing over the delicate rim of the glass “—will be working alongside us both. How do you like the sound of that?”
“I like it very much.” I beam and press my arm into my side so the tops of my breasts rise ever so slightly. This is why I have come. A Warner Brothers’ movie, a Western, with just the right dark heroine for me to play.
“What’s this movie called that I’ve heard so much about, and how are you going to get me in it?” I slide out from under Duke’s arm and pluck the onion from my martini. I hate onions—and martinis, for that matter. I prefer gin and tonic, but nobody asked.
“Rio Bravo,” Angie answers. “And if Duke here wants you, you’re in.”
She gives me a conspiratorial wink before sauntering away as Duke leads me to the opposite side of the pool where a bar is set up under an awning. The bartender, a dreamboat with crystal-blue eyes, fills a glass with ice, pours tequila over it and hands it to Duke before he’s even asked. Duke tips the drink in a salute of thanks, while I drain the rest of my martini, drop the onion into the empty glass and set it on the bar. “She’s right, you know.” He cocks a finger at Angie who waves from across the pool. “I told Warner Brothers you were the perfect Consuela. We’ve got Ricky Nelson and Dean Martin. It’s going to be a bang-up picture.”
The alcohol spreads through me, and I feel elated. I’ve never done a picture this big. Onward and upward.
From behind, Pilar wraps her arms around my waist. “Mi belleza, we have missed you.”
I adore Pilar, a dark beauty like myself, Peruvian, although she jokes about how everyone assumes she’s Mexican. “With our accent and dark hair, it doesn’t matter where we come from...Cuba, Spain, Peru...it’s all just México to them.”
“I gave up correcting people that I’m Cuban long ago,” I told her once, as we commiserated the ache of betraying our heritage with a shrug and a laugh.
Now, I kiss Pilar and say, “I’ve missed you, too.”
Releasing me, she waves to the bartender. “Two mojitos,” she orders, and I love her even more as she hands me the clear, icy drink, mint leaves floating at the top.
The smell of rum brings me back to the Gran Teatro de La Habana where I sang every weekend during my last year in Cuba. I’d be singing there now if it weren’t for Monte Proser, the Copacabana nightclub owner who saw me perform and brought me to New York City. I miss New York—not the weather or the drab buildings but the grit of the people, the realness. Here in LA, success is cladding yourself in false sincerity, making sure you’re liked, above all else.
But I am good at that. I glance around at the sunlit guests, peachy light spilling over the hillside, and wonder where I’d be if Mamá hadn’t convinced me to sign that ten-picture deal with Republic Pictures. The commitment had scared me. What if I was no good on-screen? I was only familiar with a live audience at the time.
“Estelita.” Mamá had swatted at the contract Herbert Yates placed in my hands. “This is what every girl dreams! Don’t be so arrogant to think you’ll go on singing at the Copa forever. They’ll tire of your act, replace you, and by then it’ll be too late for a debut in Hollywood. You will be old. No one will want you.”
She was right, I remind myself. Even now, at thirty, I am already what they call Hollywood old.
I watch Pilar move to her husband’s side, her small frame dwarfed under his arm. She reminds me of Mamá, straightforward and uncompromising, determined to have things play out exactly as she’s orchestrated. She nods at the pool house. “You didn’t tell me your new husband was such a catch. Now I see why you’ve kept him away. The ladies can’t get enough.”
Past the mingling of bodies, I see Alfonso through the window seated on the couch. The blonde who sat with him earlier has inched her way closer, and a woman with bobbed brown hair has joined on the other side. The blonde throws her head back in laughter, and I look away, wondering if he is trying to make me jealous. It’s an easy thing to do.
“He’s harmless,” I say, hopping up on a bar stool and giving Duke a provocative, pouty expression. “More importantly, how are you going to get me out of my contract with Republic Pictures?”
Pilar slaps him lightly on the belly. “Yes, dearest, how are you going to do that?”
Duke offers his slow, slanted smile. “They’ve already agreed to loan you out.”
Like a prop, I think, jumping up to kiss him on the cheek. “You’re too good to me. What would I do without you two?” Warner Brothers can put a basket of fruit on my head and call me Brazilian or Mexican or whatever they want if they make me a star like Carmen Miranda.
“We’d all survive without Duke, but luckily we don’t have to,” Pilar says, Duke shaking his head lovingly at her. “Now, go lure your husband away from those devilish women, and tell him the good news.”
When I enter the pool house, Alfonso doesn’t move to get up. Instead, he folds his arms across his chest and sinks deeper into the couch with a sulky expression. The two women look at me as if I’ve interrupted some secretive tête-à-tête, and I flush with embarrassment. I’m always upsetting Alfonso in ways I don’t understand. He’s the one flirting, not me. In that moment, I have no patience for it. I whirl around, linking arms around Kitty Taylor, the wife of a photographer I met the first year I moved here. She is not an actress, which is a relief, and she hugs me and begins a stream of chatter about her three children.
It is dark by the time Alfonso finds me sitting on a pool chair with a shrimp cocktail in my hand. I have kept a sideways glance at him all night. We’ve both had too much to drink.
He drops into the chair beside me, his hair slicked back from running his hands through it, a gesture indicative of nerves. Even after two years of marriage, the sight of him sends the same burning sensation through me as when we first met.
I am thinking about coaxing him into one of the bedrooms in the pool house when he ruins it by saying, “So, you’re too embarrassed to introduce me?”
“What?” I drop the tail of my shrimp back into the cocktail cup.
“You’re embarrassed by me.”
“That’s ridiculous. Why would you say that?”
“You dropped me the moment we arrived, gliding away on Duke’s arm to hobnob with all your movie-star friends without even introducing me.” He says Duke’s name with disgust, and it angers me. I notice the sweat along his brow and the knotty mole on his chin. Annoyingly, even his mole is sexy.
“You’re the one flirting the moment we came through the door. If anyone should be insulted, it’s me.”