Lillian and Dash by Sam Toperoff Read Free Book Online Page B

didn’t know if she was now making the play better or worse.
    Hammett knew how important this was to her. Damn him. He was the one who told her to give it a month, to bring it from Boston to New Haven and then to Broadway and to make absolutely sure the story always stayed exactly the story she wanted to tell the way she wanted to tell it. His idea from the outset, from the Drumsheugh history to pushing her through half a dozen killing revisions, and now it was to become completely hers, the great success on Broadway,
her
success. His part, he told her before she left, was long done; this time, the glory was all for her. The bastard. He knew the play was still in New Haven. She’d left her notes with the director. How could he do this to her? Just now, just when … It had to be deliberate.
    Just before she married Arthur Kober, actually in the cab on the way to the temple, her mother Julia said, while facing away from her, with an ironic tone Lilly rarely heard from her, “They say Jewish men are different. Maybe, I’m not so sure. Friday nights, then the
Shabbos
, maybe it’s only harder for them to find the time to squeeze it in.” They both laughed.
    Sitting alone in the darkness of Pan Am Flight 82, Chicago to Los Angeles, Lilly laughed again at the thought. What was all this crap she was telling herself about men? How did she allow herself to get so off track? This wasn’t about men. Or Jewish men. This was about Hammett. About his willingness—his desire—to hurt her.
    Her stomach ached. That was where she’d always been vulnerable, even as a girl. Now she recalled something Hammett once told her about fistfights. Hammett’s Continental Op, when he gets into it with the bad guys, tries to punch at the body. “That’s where the real damage gets done, and it doesn’t even show,” the Op explains to a naive client. Hammett told Lilly that was true and also you didn’t hurt your hands on bone. Lilly touched her own stomach tenderly. That’s where the damage is and it doesn’t even show. She was very angry again.
    Every rag with a Hollywood gossip column had a story on his escapades and featured some variation on “When the cat’s away …” Hedda Hopper, who despised Lillian for calling her “Greta” continually at one of Jack Warner’s croquet parties, gave the item daily play and provided more details than anyone else. “What famed studio Boswell has been making the round of all the night spots with a different exotic China doll or three on his arm now that his once-true-love is back East scripting her new drama? She’d better put a private eye on the case fast. Unlike our antisocial Greta who ‘Vants to be alone,’ this is one guy who apparently can’t ever get enough pleasant company. Piece of advice: 3,000 miles is a very long way to stretch fidelity, if it was ever there to begin with.”
    Lilly didn’t need the gossip mill to tell her something had gone terribly wrong. None of her calls to Hammett had been answered, not to their place, not to his place, not to thestudio. She left messages for him everywhere, none of which got returned.
    There was a day or two when she thought it best just to throw herself into her work, leave the matter unresolved until she got back. What she didn’t know would hurt her less than any detailed truths. And she could rewrite whatever imaginary scenarios were required to suit her needs. Her friend Laura Karp changed her thinking over the phone with these sentences: “Lilly. He’s not like I’ve ever seen him before. He’s gone way over the line. These girls are trash. Street whores. He’s in a stupor every night. He’s debasing himself. It’s disgusting.” She almost made it seem as though Hammett were the victim. It took a sleepless night and lots of pills for Lilly to confirm that she was the sole object of his wickedness.
    Hellman was still needed for the polishing of
The Children’s Hour
, so she left New Haven thinking she could get to