Fay never expected gratitude from that girl. Gratitude was in short supply around here. Just because Fay saved her life didn’t mean that Nellie gave a damn.
But it turns out the girl has a knack for showing up where she isn’t expected. Always with a big smile and wide eyes and chatter that seems oh so sincere in the moment. Fay had never been foolish enough to fall for blue-eyed sincerity, not even when she was a little girl. She knows Nellie will toss her aside as easily as the tissue she uses to blot her lipstick.
Oh to be that lipstick, though. Oh to be the one who kisses a smudge into it.
**
Fay doesn’t end up alone with Nellie again until a month after the disastrous party. She’s eating at a restaurant that the studio crowd hasn’t managed to ruin yet, in a neighborhood that’s slowly shifting from white to a blend of Mexican and Chinese. Nobody bats an eye at her being here, but nobody blinks at Nellie walking in, either.
“Lady Fay,” Nellie says, clapping her hand to her cheek with a comic look of surprise. Her mouth forms a perfect O, and Fay badly wants to slip her fingers into it. “Who knew! Can I join you? I’m dying for a drink, it’s hot as fuck outside.”
Fay nods to the chair across from her, then catches the eye of a passing waiter. “Miss LaRoy would like a bourbon,” she says, and as he walks away, “Did I get that right?”
Nellie grins, all teeth. “I’ll take anything, honest. This is a nice little place. Do you come here a lot?”
“When I can.” She looks at the scarf knotted loosely around Nellie’s neck. “Has that not healed yet?”
“Oh.” Nellie touches where Fay’s mouth had been, that bizarre and awful night. “There’s still a mark. I think it’s going to fade, and I can put makeup over it, but for now it’s scarves and high necklines.”
Fay has never seen Nellie in a high neckline unless it was from wardrobe. She doesn’t expect that to change. “I’m glad you’ve recovered well. It would have been a shame to lose you.”
“You talk so pretty. Your voice is just…” Nellie rolls her eyes back and gives an exaggerated shudder. “I feel it right in my pussy, you know?”
Fay doesn’t want to laugh. She doesn’t want to get caught up in the slow-moving, inevitable fire that is Nellie LaRoy. She’s going to take down whole neighborhoods when she burns. Maybe the whole city.
But she does laugh, and tilt her head in a way she knows makes her look exceptionally pretty, and she says, “I hear that from all the girls.”
Nellie’s grin gets even wider. “I’ve never been with a girl before. But it’s not any different than mine, right? I know what to do down there.”
“Let me buy you dinner first, darling.” The waiter brings Nellie’s drink, and a menu for each of them. “Order whatever you want. Warner paid me for a script, I’m flush for a few days.”
“You write scripts? Really?” Nellie’s mouth falls open again, but this time it’s genuine. “That’s amazing. How do you think of ideas? Wow, you must be so smart.”
Fay laughs again. She doesn’t tell Nellie that she has to be smart; that girls who aren’t blond and blue-eyed and eager to jump on whatever cock they need to have to be smart. She doesn’t tell Nellie that she writes under a white man’s name, that Warner will only buy them if they’re credited to Frank Zeller and she never shows her face on the lot. They send their notes via messenger, an exceptionally beautiful black man who would be headlining his own pictures if anyone in this town had any sense or any balls.
“I don’t write the whole thing,” she says. “The studio sends me a draft and what they want fixed in it. All I do is fix the dialogue, really. A lot like when I was doing titles.”
“That’s amazing. The dialogue is the hardest part.” Nellie shakes her head and downs her drink in three long swallows. “Do you really want dinner or could we go back to your place?”
“I need to eat, darling. And so do you. You’ve been living on booze and coke, haven’t you?”
“What else is there?” But she opens the menu and looks over the dinner options. “Oh, wow, spaghetti and meatballs. I haven’t had that in ages.”
“Order it, then. Whatever you want.” She signals the waiter again. “The crab soup for me, and the spaghetti and meatballs for Ms. LaRoy.”
Nellie’s grin is back in place as the waiter walks away. “You sure make a girl feel special, Lady Fay.”
**
Nellie does know what to do down there, or at least the rough outlines, and she takes Fay’s suggestions and instructions very well. Fay has heard from directors that Nellie LaRoy is like that, contrary to her wild child behavior when the cameras aren’t running. Maybe all she ever really wanted was someone to tell her what to do. Put her in her place a bit.
Fay’s not going to take on that job, though. Nellie is a sweet girl under her bravado and drama; she’s enthusiastic in bed and takes to eating Fay’s pussy like a champion. She’s good for a few laughs over drinks at a party, before the drugs come out and she goes up in flames. Fay likes her.
But she can’t fix Nellie LaRoy, and she isn’t going to try. Fay has always been focused on self-preservation first. She has to be.
**
They see each other off and on, a few times a month maybe. And they are discreet; it’s not like they’re fucking in restaurant bathrooms. Fay’s offended when Manny comes around and fires her from her work at Kinoscope, honestly. She’s not the one who let things slip to the papers. It was either Nellie herself or people who were at that party, ages ago now, and are recycling the same gossip whenever they need a little fast cash.
She doesn’t need Kinoscope, really. She has Warner, she has what she’s stashed away from her cabaret gigs. Being fired isn’t what hurts. She’s used to being treated like there’s something dangerous and wrong about her, in this town, but she never expected it from Manny. She thought they were on the same side, but he’s realized that he gets better odds in the game if he combs his hair back and says he’s from Madrid. She can’t blame him for playing whatever hand he’s got, but the one she was dealt is different, and it hurts.
It also pisses her off. She isn’t going to sabotage Manny—she’s above that—but when she’s asked about him now, instead of the easy praise she gave before she just smiles and changes the subject. That sort of thing is understood in Los Angeles. It gets around.
**
She sees Nellie alone one more time between Manny’s intervention and when she leaves for Europe. They’re at the same party, and Nellie stays on the opposite side of the room from Fay, as she must have been instructed to do. Fay rolls her eyes and keeps to herself as well. It is what it is. She isn’t going to bother fighting the tide.
But then she walks into the powder room and Nellie is there, frowning at her reflection. She looks up and meets Fay’s eyes in the mirror, her mouth twisting in a shy, hopeful smile. “Lady Fay.”
“Nellie.” Fay steps up beside her and takes her compact out of her purse. “Don’t worry, I won’t stand too close. Don’t want to spoil your reputation any more.”
“Oh, that. It’s dead and gone.” Nellie laughs a little and dabs at her lipstick. “I’m sorry about all that, you know.”
“It doesn’t matter, darling. I know how things work.” She pats powder onto her nose and studies herself before putting the compact aside and searching for her own lipstick. “Are you doing all right?”
“Me? I’m always on top of the world, you know that.” Nellie fusses at her hair, tugging at a curl and then giving up, her hands dropping to her sides. “I’m a star, babe.”
“You always will be.” Fay adds another coat of lipstick that she doesn’t really need. “I should get back out there. I’m supposed to sing soon.”
“I’ll be watching.” Nellie doesn’t move until Fay turns to go, and then her arm lashes out as fast as that rattlesnake. She catches Fay’s wrist and they stare at each other for a moment.
“I’m real sorry about everything, Lady Fay.” Nellie pulls her in and kisses her, and Fay lets herself get lost in it for a minute. It’s sweet and sad and doomed, like Nellie always has been. It’s a last kiss and they both know it.
When they break apart, they both turn back to the mirror in unison and correct their lipstick again. “Have a good show,” Nellie says, and hurries out of the room, letting the roar of the party in as the door swings open and closed.
Fay stares at herself for a long moment. She’s going to be the one to survive, and she’s not sorry, but that girl deserved better than what she’s got.