Hollywood Stuff Read Free

say to do whatever she wanted on this. This was not the kind of thorny issue that Charley and she would need to sit down and thrash out. Charley would tell her to leave him out of it, Nick would make her sign an oath in blood to portray herself as childless, but basically, this would be her decision. Jane could take it or leave it. And she knew what she would do. She would leave it. She had done enough damage to her own privacy and to those whom she loved in a ten-minute interview. She was a monastic person, one who would be happy to live as a recluse, a hermit…if only the other caves would hold occasional yard sales.
    Ay, there was the rub. Jane had to put up with all those other people because people begat stuff, and stuff, for Jane, was what brought people palatably to life. It made others interesting, warm, human. It was what people kept and what they discarded that guided Jane through the confusion of human emotions. But how could Jane go along on her anonymously merry way, scouting junk in alleys and yards, on rummage sale tables and auction house floors, if she was involved in some ego-wrenching nonsense in, for the love of Pete, Hollywood? What would ever make Jane leave her happy home, in the sensible midwestern time zone where you can catch the local news and Letterman and still be asleep by midnight, and head for loopy La-La Land?
    Not Jeb Gleason. Not anyone who found her through Jeb Gleason, that was for sure.
    Jane picked up
The Long Goodbye
and carried it with her to bed. She fell asleep with the book open next to her, content with her decision to call Bix in the morning and explain that she was not interested in any movie project.
    Morning came slightly earlier than Jane had planned—announced by a ringing telephone.
    “Wake up, babe, wake up. I’ve already booked our flight. We’re going out tonight. I’ll be there in a few hours to help you pack appropriately. Book a haircut and a pedicure. You’ll be wearing sandals. This is going to be a first-class trip.”
    Right. Jane picked up her alarm clock and held it an inch in front of her face. 5:00 A.M . What was that she had asked herself when she decided that she would reject the movie proposal? What would make her leave her happy home? Wrong pronoun. Who would make her leave? Not Jeb Gleason, no.
    Tim Lowry. Of course.

2

    “Out of the question,” said Jane. “I’m going back to sleep so that I can forget that you called me at this hour.”
    “You are so cute when you’re sleep-deprived. Expect me in two hours.”
    One hour and twenty minutes later, Tim Lowry showed up at her door in Evanston wearing Ray.Bans and carrying a vintage Hartmann suitcase. He walked past Jane at the front door, through the house, up the stairs to the master bedroom, and opened her closet.
    Shaking his head and clucking, he threw a few blouses and skirts on the bed. He held up a ridiculously expensive flowered chiffon dress that Jane had bought the summer before and looked at his friend, the top of the wire hanger forming a question mark in front of his face.
    “I thought Miriam’s daughter’s wedding would be a good time to experiment with a new look,” she said, shrugging.
    “How’d that work for you?”
    “It didn’t. I wore my old black Lauren,” Jane said.
    “As I suspected, Miss I-am-so-comfortable-in-my-rut-I-will-never-leave,” said Tim, tossing the dress onto a chair. Jane served up the excuses—the phoniness of Hollywood, the loss of privacy, her fear of flying—and as Tim swatted away everything, she waved in his face the flyer for the River Grove Rummage Sale that was coming up the next weekend.
    “How about this, then? We can’t go off and miss the biggest rummage sale in the Midwest, can we?”
    “Darling girl,” Tim said, “one word:
Pasadena.
”
    When Jane didn’t respond, Tim practically began dancing around her bedroom.
    “If we leave today, we’ll be staying over the weekend, and this is the first weekend of the month. Pasadena