She cheerily returned her thanks, flashing her gleaming smile and giving her best movie-star wave, which was really more of a back-and-forth glide than anything. But it did make the ring reflect the sun.
It was an absolutely perfect day, one of those miraculous early- summer Los Angeles days when everything was balmy and temperate. The type of day you’d put on a postcard. She was doing what she loved most in the world: getting ready to make a new picture, one she really believed in this time. One with potential to finally earn her the respect as an actress she yearned for. It would be her final picture with Dash Howard to boot. Harry promised.
After that night at the Cocoanut Grove when he’d tried to use her for publicity and she’d clocked him, working with Dash had been hell. She had begged Harry for four years to end this on-screen partnership. She could barely stand to look at Dash. Once, she’d wanted to move past the incident and be professionals about it. But every time it seemed they were close to a breakthrough, Dash pulled a prank and reminded her why they were like oil and water. It had taken four years of needling, but she’d finally gotten Harry to agree to let them make one last picture and go their separate ways once and for all.
But why was she thinking about Dash at a time like this? She was engaged to be married to the most desirable man in Hollywood. That pesky “box-office poison” label she’d acquired last year would be a faint memory soon.
She couldn’t wait to get back to her trailer and go through the stack of announcements again, the reams of paper dedicated to her and Monty’s engagement. Some were better than others. She could do very well without The Hollywood Reporter’s inquiry, “From Box-Office Poison to Blushing Bride?” But the cover of Silver Screen, bearing the caption “A Match Made in Hollywood” and featuring her and Monty in an affectionate embrace she had taken great pains to stage on her patio—that was more like it. Every paper in town, every rag, every fan magazine, anyone who cared to spare the ink to write about Tinseltown had her picture and the news splashed across it.
She stopped short to find her assistant Arlene, Evets’s Studios’ newest screenwriter, pacing back and forth near the steps of her trailer. “What is it?”
“Nothing, nothing, don’t worry about it.” Arlene waved her hands limply. “Is that the dress for the dinner scene?”
“Yes, it is.” Joan struck a pose to model the diaphanous sleeve that buttoned delicately around her wrist. “It’s just as you wrote it, darling. I had to show you. They let me walk across the lot in it so you could see it. But stop changing the subject. Why are you wearing a hole in the concrete? Let’s go in the trailer.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Arlene said. “Why don’t you go back to wardrobe and I’ll take care of it?”
Joan lunged, and Arlene spread her arms across the door that had Joan’s name painted on it in gold. “Joan, trust me.” But Joan was too quick for her, slipping her hand under Arlene’s outstretched arm and turning the doorknob to gain entry to what had been her inner sanctum on the lot for the last four years.
She ducked under Arlene’s arm and darted in, surveying the room. Nothing looked amiss. Her favorite Hurrell photograph of herself was still framed and gleaming on her dressing table; the lights surrounding the mirror were on, waiting for her to touch up her makeup; and her monogrammed robe was laid across the armchair in the corner, next to the stack of papers and magazines announcing her engagement. The only thing noticeably different was the myriad of floral arrangements congratulating her and Monty, filling the room with a cloying aroma.
Even the zebra-skin rug was perfectly placed in the center of the room, not an inch different from how she’d left it earlier that morning. Except…had it moved? That wasn’t possible; it was faux, it had never been alive to begin with. But no, there it was again, a little shiver as if it were inching its way across the floor of her dressing room.
She squinted and that’s when she saw it. It wasn’t the rug that was moving; it was a black-and-white creature that had been camouflaged against it now snuffling its way through the center of her space. “Skunkkkkkkk!” she shrieked, backing up into Arlene who promptly joined in her blood-curling yelps.
“Move, Arlene, get out of my way. Evelyn will kill me if that thing sprays this dress and she has to start over.”
“I told you, I told you, I told you.”
The two women practically tripped over themselves, scrambling to get back out the door and slam it shut. They crouched near the door, and Joan pressed her ear against it, listening for any sign of the creature.
Arlene was above her, one hand clinging to Joan’s shoulder, the other to the railing, trying desperately not to fall over. “What are you doing?” she hissed.
“Shhhh, I’m trying to hear if it’s spraying.”
Arlene snorted. “You can’t hear whether it’s spraying through the door.”
Joan grimaced. “Well then, I have to check.” She turned the brass doorknob ever so slowly, inch by inch until the door creaked open, making a crack barely small enough to see through. Something scampered past the door, and she pulled it shut, yelping in terror and collapsing against it.
This time, the sound of her distress sent a harried-looking production assistant in a newsboy cap sprinting to the scene. “Miss Davis, Miss Morgan, what’s wrong?”
“Joseph, thank God, there’s a skunk in my dressing room,” Joan hissed, pointing at the door with a deliberate motion, as if the skunk were a bomb and if they were too loud it might go off.
“Well, how on earth did a skunk get in your dressing room?”
“How should I know? I certainly didn’t put it there.”
“All right, all right, don’t flip your wig. I’ll handle it.” The boy cracked the door open and slipped inside, while Joan resisted the urge to bite her nails. Everyone would want a picture of her ring finger now; she couldn’t have a nail out of place.
Arlene looked as if she was going to be sick. “What if he frightens it and it sprays all over the place?”
Joan laughed. “Well, I guess it will cut the overwhelming smell of flowers. It was a bit intense, even for my taste.”
Arlene shook her head, mirth and disbelief mingling on her face. “I don’t understand how it could have got in there since this morning. They’re nocturnal!”
Joan had a vague idea. There was one person on this studio lot who loved to have a laugh at her expense, one person who could not resist a practical joke even if it cost the studio time and money.
The sound of a scuffle came from behind the door. Joan closed her eyes and massaged the bridge of her nose. So much for her perfect day. The phone in her dressing room started to ring. Most likely someone else wishing her and Monty all their best. They could call back later.
As the shrill ring of the telephone ended, the production assistant emerged from Joan’s dressing room holding the skunk aloft and away from his body, as if the creature were a live grenade. “I got him,” he huffed. Somewhere along the way he’d lost his hat and a button.
Joan arched an eyebrow. “An epic struggle between man and beast, it seems.”
The boy blushed. “He didn’t want to come out from under your dressing table. I had to coax him out with my hat. For some reason he didn’t spray, though. He lifted his tail and everything, but we got lucky.”