The Legacy Read Free

and of no interest to her. So when he pushed through to face her and introduce himself, she nodded and then went on talking. Afterwards, she could not remember to whom she had been talking. What was clear in her mind afterwards and for a long time to come was the way Devron stood in front of her, firmly stationed there, watching her and smiling slightly.
    â€œMiss Lavette,” he said for a second time, “my name is Carson Devron, and I very much want to talk to you.”
    The man to whom she had been speaking slipped away. Devron remained there.
    â€œSo you told me. Carson Devron. You’re an actor,” for want of anything better to say. She was becoming irritated — by the party, by the boring inanity of it, by this man who stood facing her, by his good looks and his blond hair. It made her rejoinder as inane as everything else that passed in that place as conversation.
    â€œWhy do you say that?” he wanted to know.
    â€œYou’re plastic,” she was saying to herself. “If I told you that — that you’re plastic, that you’re ridiculous — how would you react, I wonder? Why don’t you go away?”
    Instead, she muttered something about his looking like an actor.
    â€œI’m not an actor, Miss Lavette, and I wish you would not decide to dislike me until you can base it on something hideous that you have discovered. I know a great deal about you. You know nothing about me.”
    â€œThat’s true,” she admitted. “I’m sorry. I’m not being very pleasant.” Now the two of them were alone, or at least as alone as two people can be in a room shared with forty or fifty men and women. “I don’t like parties.”
    â€œNo, I wouldn’t think so. But I’m pleased about this one. I mean I’m that delighted to meet you.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause I’ve admired you for years, because I’ve read your books and because I think you’re quite a person.”
    â€œThank you. That’s very flattering.”
    â€œI don’t mean it to be flattering,” Devron said. “Yes, I guess I do. I want you to like me.”
    â€œI don’t dislike you. I don’t know you —” She was interrupted by Goldberg, who insisted that Devron meet a film star. “I promised her, Dev,” Goldberg said. “Just five minutes, and Barbara can have you again.” With that, he drew Devron away, and Jerry Kanter, the director chosen for her film, the one person in the room, aside from Goldberg, whom she had known before the party and during the few days she had been in Los Angeles, came over bearing two glasses.
    â€œYou need a drink,” he said.
    â€œI don’t. Thank you.”
    Kanter was fortyish, skinny, and a little less than charming. “I see you’ve met the golden boy,” he said to Barbara.
    â€œWho?”
    â€œDevron.”
    â€œWho is he?”
    â€œYou don’t know? Of course, San Francisco is not four hundred miles away, it’s another world.”
    â€œI’m sorry. When I’m back there, I’ll ask them to move it closer to the source.”
    â€œVery good. Very good indeed. All right, I’ll inform you. The Devrons created Los Angeles — at least from their point of view. They own most of downtown, and they own the Morning World. They have more money than God — oh, I forgot. You’re a Lavette. The black sheep, but still a Lavette. Perhaps not more money than the Lavettes, but more money than God, anyway.”
    I don’t like you, Barbara was thinking. I do wish I could tell you how much I dislike you. But I’m writing a film, and you’ll direct it, and that calls for forbearance.
    â€œAs for Devron,” Kanter went on, “he’s the publisher of the Morning World. Got the job last month. Some would say it comes with the family, but what the hell. You don’t want this