“Van Cleef & Arpels. It's a jeweler in Beverly Hills.” He felt a need to explain it to him. None of Greg's friends would have had any idea what that was.

But John laughed, and watching him, Anne smiled. “I know that. My mother goes there all the time. They have pretty stuff.” Lionel looked both surprised and pleased. John hadn't gagged at the thought of Lionel's working there. “Sounds like a nice job.”

“It is. I'm looking forward to it.” He beamed, glancing in the direction of the car again. “Especially now.”

“And UCLA in the fall. You're lucky, Li. I'm sick to death of high school.”

“It won't be long now. You've only got a year to go.”

“It feels like an eternity.” John groaned and Lionel smiled.

“And then what?”

“I don't know yet.” That wasn't unusual. Most of his friends hadn't figured that out.

“I'm doing cinematography.”

“That sounds wonderful.”

Lionel shrugged modestly. He had won photography awards ever since he was fourteen, and he had started getting into film two years before. He was ready for everything UCLA could offer him, and excited about going there, in spite of what his father said. His father had wanted him to go to a gung-ho school in the East. And he had the grades. But it had absolutely no appeal to him. He could sell that line to Greg.

He looked at John with a friendly smile. “Come and see me at school sometime. You can have a look around while you're making your mind up about schools.”

“I'd like that a lot.” John looked at him intently, and for a moment, the boys' eyes met and held, and then quickly, John turned away, and a moment later he spotted Greg. He seemed anxious to leave them then, and Lionel invited Anne to dance. She blushed furiously at the thought and refused to dance with him, but after he had insisted for a while, she relented and followed him onto the floor.

“What's that?” The boy who had wandered into the house with Val had followed her into the den, and he was determined to get a hand up her skirt, which didn't look too hard. But a coveted object pushed onto a shelf in the bar had caught his eye. “Is that what I think it is?” He was impressed. This was the first house he'd been in that actually had one of those, even though you sure heard about them a lot in L.A.

“Yeah. So what? Big deal.”

“It sure is.” He stared at it in awe, and then reached a hand out to touch it so he could tell his Dad when he picked him up. “Whose is it? Your Mom's or your Dad's?”

It seemed to cost her something to admit it to him. “My Mom's. You want a beer, Joey?” And then he almost fainted. There was another one. They had two!

“My God! She's got two of them! What for?”

“Oh for chrissake. I don't remember. Now do you want a beer or not?”

“Yeah. Yeah. Okay.” But he was much more interested in hearing what her mother had won the Oscars for. His Dad would ask him later, and so would his Mom, but Val didn't seem to want to talk about them. “She used to be an actress, didn't she?” He knew she was a director now. Everyone knew that. And her Dad was a big producer at MGM. But Valerie sure didn't talk about it much. She was more interested in booze and boys. At least that was the reputation she had, and he could almost see up her white leather skirt when she sat down. But actually all he glimpsed was a long expanse of inner thigh.

“Did you ever smoke dope?” He hadn't but he didn't want to admit it to her. He was fifteen and a half years old, and he had met her in school that year, but he'd never taken her out. He hadn't had the guts. She was beautiful, and terrifyingly mature.

“Yeah. Once.” And then he couldn't help himself. He had to ask again. “Let's talk about your Mom.”

That was it. She jumped to her feet, her eyes blazing with rage. “No, let's not!”

“Don't be so uptight for chrissake. I'm just curious, that's all.”

Val looked at him with contempt as she strode to the doorway and looked back. “Then ask her, you creep.” And with a flash of her red mane, she was gone, and he stared at the empty doorway in despair and whispered to himself.

“Shit.”

“Oh?” Greg stuck his head in to see who was there, and the boy blushed and jumped to his feet.

“Sorry … I was just relaxing in here … I'll go back outside.”

“That's okay. I do that here all the time. No sweat.” He grinned and disappeared, in hot pursuit of some dark-haired girl, and Joey went back outside. And eventually they all wound up in the pool late that night, in clothes, in bathing suits, in suits, in dresses, in sneakers and bare feet and shoes. They had a wonderful time and it was 3 A.M. before the last guest went home, and when they were all gone, Lionel walked upstairs with Ward and Faye, and all three of them yawned sleepily as Faye laughed.

“We're a lively bunch … good party though, wasn't it?”

“The best.” Lionel smiled, and kissed his mother goodnight, and when he sat down on his bed in the terry robe he had put on to cover his bathing suit, he sat and stared at the wall for a minute thinking of the day … the diploma … the white gown … the car,… the friends … and the music … and funnily enough, he found himself thinking of John, and what a nice kid he was. He liked him even better than some of his own friends.





CHAPTER 13




The day after the graduation party dawned like any other working day for Faye and Ward. The kids could sleep it off until noon, but they had to be at the studio by nine. Their next movie would be starting soon and the two of them had mountains of work on their desks. It always seemed to require so much discipline to go on, to work, no matter how tired they were, especially when Faye was actually directing the film. Then she was always at the studio before six o'clock, often before the actors were there. But she had to be there, to breathe the air, to get the feel of it. In fact, while they were shooting, it was always difficult to force herself to go home, and sometimes she did not. Sometimes she slept in a dressing room, eating, sleeping, and thinking the script, making it become almost a part of her, until she knew every character as though she had been born in their skin in another life. It was what made her so demanding of the actors who worked for her, but she taught them a kind of discipline they never forgot, and most of the actors in Hollywood talked of Faye Thayer with awe. Her kind of talent was a gift, and she was so much happier than when she had been acting herself. This was the fulfillment she had been looking for, and Ward loved seeing that light in her eye, that light that came only when she was thinking of her work. It made him a little jealous sometimes because he liked what he did, but not with the same determination, the same fire, as what she seemed to feel. She breathed her very soul into her work. And he was thinking of that now. In a few weeks he was going to lose her to their new film, but they both thought it was the best one they had ever done. They were both extremely excited about it, and more than once Faye had said how sorry she was that Abe Abramson was no longer alive. He would have loved this film. But he had died years before. He had lived long enough to see their success, to see her win the second Oscar of her life, this one for directing. But he had died after that, and she still missed him sometimes, as she did now. And she lay back against the seat, looking at Ward and thinking of the night before.

“I'm glad the kids had a good time.”

“So did I.” He smiled at her, but he was painfully hung over, and these days that was rare. He often wondered how he used to drink as much as he did. He couldn't take it anymore, without paying a tremendous price for it. Youth … he smiled to himself … a lot of things changed when you added a few years and gray hair … and other things did not. In spite of the hangover, he and Faye had made love that morning after he got out of the shower. That always got his day off to a good start, and he gently put a hand on her thigh now. “You still drive me wild, you know …”

She blushed faintly and looked pleased. She was still in love with him. Had been for nineteen years, longer if you counted the time they had met in Guadalcanal in '43 … that would make it twenty-one…. “It's mutual, you know.”

“That's good.” He looked pensive as he pulled into the MGM parking lot. The guard at the gate had smiled and waved them in. You could set your clocks by those two, he thought to himself … nice people … with nice kids … and they worked hard. You had to hand it to them. “Maybe we should put a communicating door between our offices, and a lock on my door.”

“Sounds good to me,” she whispered in his ear, and then playfully nipped his neck before sliding out. “What have you got going today, love?”

“Not a hell of a lot. I think almost everything is squared away. What about you?”

“I'm meeting with three of the stars,” she told him who, “I feel like I need to do a lot of talking to all of them before we start, so that everyone's prepared. So that they all know where we're going with this thing.” It was the most challenging movie she'd done. It was about four soldiers during the second world war, and it wasn't a pretty film in that sense. It was brutal and painful and tore your guts out, and most studio heads would have assigned a male director to it, but Dore Schary still trusted her, and she wasn't going to let him down. Or Ward. It hadn't been easy for Ward to raise the money for this film, in spite of their names. But people were afraid that no one would want to see a depressing film. After the assassination of John Kennedy the year before, everybody wanted comic relief, not serious film, but both Ward and Faye had agreed from the start, when they read the script, this was it. It was a brilliant film, the screenplay was magnificent, as the original book had been, and Faye was determined to do right by it. Ward knew she would, but he also knew how nervous she was.