The Song Is You by Megan Abbott
Motherfuck, thought Hop. She knows her mark.
“… I bet. You’d probably be of real help to me in the long haul… someone like you who’s so keyed in …”
He could see her lean in toward the puny runt, probably letting him smell her Girl Reporter perfume, all printer’s ink, starch, and chutzpah.
“… anyway, Mr. Winsted, the date in question is October seventh, 1949 … an associate of Mr. Cohen’s may have been at the studio that night, but we need to know if any productions were shooting that
night…”
“… I get it, I get it. A Cohen boy right on the lot, eh?”
“Something like that…”
“… have to go to the log… come with me to the office …”
Hop watched them walk away together, Winsted placing his pimply
hand on Adair’s back like some exec, or an overly friendly maître d’.
Knowing where they were headed, Hop took an alternate route into the adjacent building so he could approach the production office from the other direction.
He thought back to his handiwork with Bix. Hop had rewritten the entire day’s production schedule log and thrown the original away.
As he came closer, he saw the door to the office was slightly ajar, most likely because it was a Saturday near dusk and the place was close to empty.
Hop couldn’t hear their initial interaction, but as they started to move toward the door, Winsted’s voice became audible.
“That’s why you can’t just check the day logs, Miss Adair, or even just the week or month logs. If there’s a mistake, it’s often not corrected until the movie finishes shooting and the final budget is submitted. Looks like they forgot to record the October seventh shoot at the time. From the budget notes here, it looks like they postponed a big scene after setting it up, but I assure you, Miss
Adair, they did plan to shoot that night. Cast called in the whole bit.”
Well, color me surprised, Mr. Winsted. This explains a lot.”
Hop felt pinpricks dance over his chest. But what good, really,
could this do her? A lot. She speaks to other actors on the shoot, someone mentions that Jean Spangler was pals with Iolene .
“Would it be possible, Mr. Winsted, to see that list of everyone who was on the set?”
“Well, sure, don’t see why not. We have no secrets here, after all.”
“Do you mind if I take some notes?”
Hop knew he was standing too close to the door, but what did he have left to lose by now?
“And the extras?”
“On this page.”
“Spangler, Jean. Interesting.” “Yeah? Know her?” “Well, isn’t she that girl who went missing a few years back?” “The one who got cut in half?” “No, the one they never found.” “Don’t remember that. Let me look up her file.” “Why not? Just for curiosity’s sake.” A few minutes of riffling, with Hop standing not two feet outside
the door, whispering Hail Marys to himself for the first time since catechism school.
“Yeah, I guess that’s so. This was her last job for us, that’s for sure. Creepy, huh?”
“Creepy, huh. Guess you don’t remember her.”
“I was still in Tustin in ‘49, taking tickets at my dad’s movie theater.”
As he listened, Hop thought about bursting forward, muzzling this lousy Winsted character. Stopping Frannie Adair in her pert little tracks. But he took a chance: better not to tip his hand. The more she senses fear, the more she’ll think she’s onto something. Gotta act like there’s nothing to find.
Before he left, he went over to the casting office. He had an idea he might need something. A “just in case” scenario. There was one clerk in that office on Saturdays and she knew Hop well. It was part of his everyday job to get photos and bios to oil the publicity machine, so she didn’t even blink when Hop asked her for a few glossies. He hoped Jean’s was still on file.
Ardmore, Jan
Clifton, Rod
Spangler, Jean
Bliss, Ann
“Here you go, Mr. Hopkins.” “Thanks, doll.” Back in his car, he pulled out Jean’s photo and set it on the bench
seat. Jean, a stunner as ever. Dark hair, widow’s peak, dimples, eyes sparkling out at you, asking you to come on in. A real knockout. Better than in person, Hop suddenly thought. That night, he’d found her bored air kind of sexy, but nothing to get excited about. He wondered if this picture was several years old, before some hard living and desperation, before some of the glitter got knocked out of her eyes, making her a little tired and a lot wary.
He slid the photo back in its folder and turned on the ignition. As he drove, he began thinking: if he could find his pickup from that night, if he could find Miss Hotcha, maybe he could be sure all the holes were plugged up but good. There’d been no one left with a story they’d care to tell. No one with the real nitty-gritty for Frannie to find, unless she was lucky enough to stumble on Iolene.
Miss Hotcha. He could remember a few details about her apartment—at least he thought he could, unless he was confusing her with some other girl, some other apartment. It was on the ground floor, right? There’d been two beds and he’d asked where her roommate was. They were twin beds, and as soon as he saw them he’d said to himself an hour, no more. Vague memory of her platinum hair, a soft cloud in his face. The side of his head crashing into a frilly lampshade on the bedside table. A long blue vein on her thigh, visible from the light of the street-lamp outside.
Not much to go on, Hop.
He could recite the names and numbers of every gossip columnist and movie-magazine writer and Hollywood-beat reporter in town and across the coast, but this…
Love Is a Memory
As he drove to Musso’s, Hop tried to think of a way to get Jerry’s counsel without telling him everything, without having to tell his friend the whole sordid story and his own role in it. With Jerry, there was nothing behind what you saw, nothing waiting to reveal itself. This was something Hop could count on. Maybe the only thing. Hop wondered how it happened. He wondered if that was a quality he’d ever had and, if so, when he’d lost it.
Pulling into the back lot, he could hear Jerry’s old refrain from back in his Cinestar days buzzing in his head: Why don’t you leave that tinhorn newsletter and get back to the what’s what. He was always trying to talk Hop into returning to the Examiner, where Hop had worked for his first months in New York, the pay so bad he couldn’t get off Jerry’s couch and into his own place.
‘You moved out here for what,” Jerry would always ask. “Not for this.”
“What else I got up my sleeve?” Hop would say, shrugging. He wouldn’t say as much to Jerry, but he could admit it to himself: he liked shiny shirts, good gin, and the occasional entree to Giro’s. Was that so wrong? The only price he’d paid so far was picking up some bad habits. “Jerry, I run with the tide. Can’t fight gravity. Can’t—”
“Say no?” Jerry would say, smiling almost wistfully. “Just keep moving, Hop. The minute you let your feet hit the ground, you’re doomed.”
“I know it,” he’d respond quickly—so quickly he’d surprise himself.
Just after seven o’clock, Hop and Jerry were leaning against the mahogany bar at Musso’s.
“Remember that girl I told you about?” Hop said, sliding Jerry’s drink toward him on the bar. “The one who came to see me about the Spangler thing?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve been thinking about it a little. Funny, huh?”
Jerry lit a cigarette and looked at Hop in the mirror behind the bar.
“Not so funny. Happens a lot to me. You run down those stories and a lot of ‘em stick in your head, knock around there a little, sneak up and say boo when you least expect it. Happens even more with cops, but with cops it’s about saving them. I think it’s different with reporters, but I’m not sure how. Wanting to know, needing to know everything.”
Hop nodded vaguely.
&nbs
were asking me something.”
“So what gives?” Hop asked. “How’d she go?”
“Accidental overdose of diet pills—trying to win a spot as one of the Babylovelies in Ken Murray’s Blackouts.” Jerry shrugged rubbing his stubble. “Funny, now that I tell it… if it happened today, doubt I’d blink twice.”
“Eh, you’re not so hard,” Hop said.
“So this Spangler girl. How do you think she bought it?”
“She had the longest legs you ever saw,” Hop said out of nowhere, the fizzy haze of the gimlet now descending. “And that sharp, dark-eyed face they look for, or used to. She’d been through some things. Maybe been knocked around a little by life. You could see something in her face. A look.” Hop’s eyes unfocused.
“I know that look,” Jerry said.
Hop turned and looked at him. “Right. That’s right.”
As he drove down Hollywood Boulevard with Jean Spangler’s face looming in his head, Hop thought again about Jean Spangler herself. Jerry always clarified things like that, blew off the dust. Hop had been so absorbed in everything else, but now there she was. Maybe, he thought, she could tell him things. And she was beginning to take on a quality he must have missed when he actually met her. She’d seemed flimsy then, a paper doll. Now there was something behind her, something roiling away.
How does a girl like that, a girl who’d been around the business, hoofer, showgirl, extra, bit player for a few years or more, get into a room with two fellas like that, fellas with such awful, awful looks in their eyes, like he’d seen many times in men at the top, high on their own glamour and glory and with an open door into every dark urge they’d ever had? They were bad guys and you could see it. He saw it, Iolene could see it, Miss Hotcha—why not Jean Spangler, or didn’t she care? Could she just not care?
He remembered her at the Eight Ball. Sutton or Merrel—he couldn’t remember which one—patted his lap, gestured for her to sit on it, and when she did, the other lifted her legs off the floor until they were stretched out across his lap, those legs encased in red stockings with red lace high heels. Her head struck back, laughing. Didn’t she have dimples as deep and tempting as he’d ever seen? Why hadn’t he paid her more attention that night? He could have pulled her aside, tilted his head and let it fall on top of her dark hair, and whispered to her, “Stick with me, sweetheart. Those guys are bad news, anyway.”
Instead, he goes for the two-bit burlesque dancer, and one apparently not lucky enough to have her own place, or even her own bedroom.
Hop, you hit it. Where did she work … ?
That was the idea.
Hop pulled up at the new Tiny Naylor’s on Sunset, got change for his dollar, and ducked into a phone booth, nearly jerking the directory from its chain.
He called the Follies Theatre, where he was sure she’d said she performed, the Burbank Burlesque Theater, the Cha-Cha Parlor, the Curly-Q on Sunset, the Girly-Q in the Valley, and a half dozen other places.
Does Miss Hotcha still perform there? Did she ever?”
Finally, “Have you ever heard of a performer called Miss Hotcha?”
No dice.
Was he remembering wrong?
He drove home, not sure what to do next. He had some idea of dropping it all, cuddling up to a nice warm bottle and taking his chances.
The elevator doors opened to his floor.
He saw the shock of bright hair first and the long silver rain-coat. In a heartbeat, something surged hot and prickly in his gut. But he
recovered.
“You threw away your key?”
Midge turned and looked at him, one hand clutching her coat
collar, the other pressed on the apartment door.
“I don’t live here anymore. I don’t let myself in places I’m not invited.”
“You and Count Dracula. Well, you always were a talented little bloodsucker.” He pushed past her and unlocked the door.
‘You’ve got a lot of nerve after what you’ve just put me through,” she said, her voice low and stretched out. About three vodka sours, Hop guessed.
“So I came by last night for a friendly visit,” he said, walking in ahead of her, leaving her to dart in behind him before the door swung shut.
“That was rotten enough, but par for the course with you,” she murmured.
And he flipped on a light and finally turned, looking at her full on, finally hitched up his shoulders and looked at her face-to-face, looked at her tiny little face. As ever, god-awful pretty and full of contempt.
“After all,” she continued, untying the sash on her coat, “you can’t surprise me on those counts anymore.”
With slightly shaking hands, she patted the soft edges of that short haircut, that violation, Hop thought to himself, of all that is lovely in this world.
“So how could I surprise you?” Hop asked. “With flowers and bon
bons? Vows of fidelity?”
“That would surprise me only if I believed you.
“You believing me—that would surprise me.”
She ignored him and looked around the apartment, at the not-so
fine layer of dust coating her meticulously planned decor.
“Couldn’t spring for a cleaning lady?”
Before he could snap back an insult, he felt himself struck by the sight of her standing in their home. Standing there, touching the edge of a Wedgwood ashtray brimming over with stubs. It had been barely a month but truthfully it was much, much longer. Had they ever really lived here together, like a married couple, reading the
newspaper and eating toast and jelly, doing what married couples do, like … What do married couples do?
She kept hovering on the other side of the sofa, running her fingertips along the edge of the narrow table behind it.
Hop, for his part, stood in front of the sofa, hat still in hand. Watching her, he’d forgotten how small she was. She never seemed that way when she was coming at him, fists balled.
She blew dust from her fingers and met his gaze. “So what kind of mess are you trying to drag me into now?”
“What do you mean, Midge?” He dropped his hat on the coffee table and folded his arms. “Why don’t you just spit it out?”
“I mean this reporter calling me.”
There it was. The punch in the stomach. And he had no one to blame but himself for this one.
“Reporter?” He tucked a finger under his collar, which felt close against his neck.
“A Miss Dare,” she said, watching him closely. Must be sensing fresh blood, he thought.
“Only you,” she added, “would have a girl reporter on your tail.”
“What did she want? Other than my tail.”
“She was asking me about this night way back two years ago I told her I’d blacked out everything from my wedding day until last week.”
“What happened last week?” he said, straining for a joke.
“I threw my wedding ring off the Santa Monica Pier,” she shot back stingingly.
“You’re a cold little piece of work, aren’t you?”
“You drained all the warmth from me the last time I found you rolling around with the elevator girl at the Roosevelt Hotel.”
“That was the one that did it, huh?” he said, the sound of his own cool voice making him sick.
Midge walked around the sofa and took a tentative seat on the wing chair.
“I couldn’t begin to pinpoint which one did it,” she said, crossing her legs tightly.
“You’re not so innocent,” he started, then stopped. He shifted uncomfortably. Were they really going to go through all this again? There was nothing more unpleasant to him than seeing the version of himself she brought out in him.
Needing to do something with his hands, he began emptying his pockets and tossing the change, matchbooks, paper, and keys onto the coffee table.
“So what did she say when you pleaded marital amnesia?” He sat down on the coffee table, facing her.
“She asked if I remembered about a girl who disappeared that fall —fall of ‘49.”
“What a funny kind of question.”
She leaned forward, eyeing the matchbooks. “Same old haunts,” she said, fingering the one from Villa Capri. “Guess you’re on a real spree now.” Before he could respond, she continued, “So I told her I didn’t remember anything like that and what did it have to do with me. Or you.”
“And?”
“She said you told her you were with the girl the night she went missing.” Her eyes looked up to meet his. “And I said oh, so did he
murder her, too? Because I’m damn sure he took her to bed.”
“Thanks, dear. Thanks a lot.”
“My pleasure.”
“And I didn’t. Either one. I’d just met her. It was right before I met the fellas at the studio who helped me get my job. Which is why I remember it so well.”
She sighed deeply, wringing her coat sash in her hand. “I don’t care. I don’t care. Just spill it, for God’s sake. Why’s this number calling me?”
“Just chasing an old story. She called me. I told her all I knew. I don’t know why she’s bothering with you.” He thought quickly, maybe too quickly. “She works with your boyfriend, Jerry. Maybe she thinks you’ll be more agreeable, shacking up with a fellow scribe and all.”
She looked at him with that prison-yard stare of hers.
“You’re a lousy bastard,” she said, shaking her golden, shining head.
Looking at her, feeling very much the lousy bastard, Hop surprised himself with the urge to reach out and cup that hateful,
heartbreaking face in his hands.