“We’re all alone in the world, David,” she said, and he stopped suddenly and looked at her curiously, his eyes searching hers.
“It was sweet of you to drive me here, David,” she said softly, and reached up to kiss him, a fleeting, little girl’s kiss, a simple kiss of gratitude, but tinged with slightly more than that, her lips parted slightly for only an instant, the brief increased pressure of her mouth. She pulled away from him swiftly and said, “We’d better go now,” as if he had taken a liberty to which he was not entitled.
She thought she detected a difference in his attitude as they drove away from the lake. She thought there was something new in his voice and on his face. When he stopped the car in front of Suzie’s house, she thanked him and then reached across the seat to give his hand a gentle squeeze. As she got out of the car, her skirt accidentally rode up over her knees. She went up the walk to the house without once looking back at the car, but she was certain he was watching her.
And she was certain now that he would return to Talmadge after his trip.
The two men sat in the screening room and waited for the third man to arrive. The lights were still on, and they sat chatting idly about production problems, not really too concerned with them, but only killing time while they waited. The third man came in breathlessly and took a seat alongside the others, apologizing for being late, but he’d been in conference with a set designer, what was all the shouting about, anyway?
“Herb Floren wants us to see this,” one of the men said.
He was sitting behind the control panel in the miniature theater, and he pressed a button in the face of the panel now, and there was a moment’s wait while the projectionist in the booth upstairs read the signal, and then the lights went out, and the screen was suddenly filled with color as the film began.
“Are we going to have to sit through the whole picture?” one of the men asked.
“No, just this reel. She’s in this reel.”
They sat watching the film. The man behind the panel pressed the button asking for more volume at one point, but for the most part the three men sat very still and watched the reel. They didn’t know quite what was happening because this was the last reel in the film, and it was impossible to get any true picture of plot development by watching a series of climaxes. One of the men lighted a cigar. One kept coughing into his handkerchief.
“This is the girl,” the man behind the panel said.
They watched the new face on the screen. No janitors in the hallway stopped sweeping. The projectionist in the booth did not put down his detective magazine to look at the screen in sudden awe. The three men watched the girl, and the one who’d been coughing into his handkerchief kept right on coughing into his handkerchief. The one who was smoking a cigar kept right on smoking it. The man behind the panel thought he detected a blur on the screen, and he pressed the focus button, and the projectionist put down his magazine and adjusted the focus, and then picked up his magazine again.
The scene was over in about five minutes.
“Is there more of her?” one of the men asked.
“That’s it. That’s her scene.”
“Do we have to watch the rest?”
“No,” the man behind the panel said, and he signaled for the projectionist to stop the film. The lights went on.
“I don’t know where I got this damn cold,” the coughing man said.
“What’s her name?” the man with the cigar asked.
“Burke. Gideon Burke.”
“That sounds phony as hell.”
“So does Rock Hudson.”
“What do you think?”
“I think she’s too old.”
“Look, she isn’t Sandra Dee, that’s for sure. But nobody says she’s supposed to be a teen-ager.”
“She comes over maybe thirty-eight, thirty-nine.”
“I think she comes over younger than that. Thirty-five maybe.”
“So? So that would be perfect, wouldn’t it?”
“The girl in the script has black hair.”
“So she’s got red hair, what difference does that make? We’ll change two words in the script, and she’s a redhead.”
The coughing man put an inhaler to one nostril and sniffed deeply.
“What’d you say her name was?”
“Gideon Burke. Wait a minute, I wrote it down someplace.” He fished into his jacket pocket and consulted a slip of paper. “No, it’s Gillian. With l’s.”
“That’s even worse,” the man with the cigar said.
“Well, what do you think?”
“She cries nice,” the man with the inhaler said, and he sniffed menthol into the other nostril.
“I was hoping for another name we could stick over the title.”
“That costs money.”
“What’d Floren give her for this?”
“He wouldn’t say. We can find out. She’s nobody, she’ll work for coupons.”
“What do you think, Eddie?”
“I don’t know,” Eddie said. “What do you think?”
“What color were her eyes again?” the man with the cigar said.
“Blue, I think.”
“No, green.”
“Then the color was a little off. That’s the new fast film they’re using.”
“I thought they were blue.”
“She’s got buck teeth, did you notice that?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yeah.” Eddie paused. “You think she’s pretty?”
“She’s okay. She’s no raving beauty, if that’s what you mean.”
“Gideon Burke?”
“Gillian, Gillian.”
“Where’d she dig up that one?”
“Look, what do you think?”
“She married or what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, that could make a difference, you know. We’re not shooting this around the corner. She may be married with a houseful of kids, who knows?”
“I can find out.”
“Did you hear from New York yet?”
“This morning.”
“What’d they say?”
“Sheila won’t come out to take a test.”
“What?”
“She’s too big to test. The hell with her.”
“Big television shmearcase, she’s too big to test!”
“Look, what do you think of this girl?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“She’s not bad, you know.”
“No, she wasn’t bad, that’s for sure. She cries nice.”
“So what do you think?”
“How much does she get?”
“You want me to call her agent and find out?”
“What do you say, Eddie?”
“She’s supposed to have black hair.”
“Maybe she’ll be willing to dye it.”
“And she’s got buck teeth.”
“So she’ll see a dentist. Look, we know she’s not a beauty.”
“You asked my opinion, didn’t you? I’m telling you. Her hair’s supposed to be black, and her teeth are bucked. If we have to take her all apart and put her together again, we might as well look for somebody else.”
“If you’re finished with that cigar, would you please put it out?”
“I’m not finished with it.”
“So what do you think?”
“Gillian Burke, what a name!”
“This is a big part, Harry. You think we can fool around with an unknown?”