All That Glitters by Thomas Tryon Page B

the apartment dwellings in that section of Beverly Hills—except that where we were, on North Cadman, wasn’t B. H.; we were B. B. H., Barely Beverly Hills. You could say you were Beverly Hills but technically you weren’t.
    Floyd Judson and Marie, his wife, a team of psychologists, lived downstairs in the front; upstairs was a hard-of-hearing duffer whose bathroom was directly behind our bedroom, and when we were in bed we could hear him splashing around in his tub—“the bather,” we called him. Elsewhere in the small complex was an assortment of types, including a Mocambo “hat-chick” girl named Fern, and a talented young actress under contract to Warners, and her untalented newlywed husband. In the back, over the alley, were two studio apartments, each occupied by a colorful tenant. The north apartment was inhabited by a terrific-looking tootsie; sure, Angie probably looked to most people like one more Hollywood bottled blonde, but you can believe me, she was special. Movie fans may recall her as Angelina Brown, one more pretty Columbia starlet who didn’t make it. But, then, in Hollywood there are ways and ways. She’d had a whirl at the movies ten years earlier, had given it all up to marry Eddie LaStarza, the Most Famous Baseball Player in the World, had a deep sexy voice and figure to match, wore Don Loper clothes, and did some modeling on the side, while her son by the MFBPITW went to a military academy. Like Frankie, she came of Italian stock and she maintained a gorgeous figure—she had the greatest pair of legs since Betty Grable, was in fact a good friend of Betty’s; they occasionally played poker together. She always had a tan; her hair was the color of cornsilk, but out of a bottle: the roots were often darkly telltale. And she had cheekbones to rival Colbert’s.
    By this time Frank had been married to Iceberg Frances for a dozen years; things hadn’t worked out well, but she wasn’t about to divorce him—nor did he seem particularly to want a divorce. That dilemma would come later, with April. But just then, in the mid-fifties, he was happy seeing Angie; he kept her tucked away, and if people knew about the relationship, they weren’t saying much. There seemed to be some kind of gentlemen’s agreement where Angie was concerned, not to involve her publicly or link her in print with Frank’s name.
    It’s logical and fitting that Angie should have been on that extensive list of Hollywood beauties being “squired” about town by Frankie Adonis, but she wasn’t called “The Mother of Us All” for nothing. Angie was great of heart, profoundly wise in a way some women do well to be wise, sympathetic and understanding. She took a very wry view of life, not jaundiced, just ironic. She had pushed her talent as far as it would go and she knew it; smart lady, after co-starring opposite Ross Hunter in a Columbia B flick, she “retired.”
    These days Angie was moonlighting. She’d got a job singing in a West Hollywood nightspot called the Trey Deuces. She didn’t know it then, but it was Frankie who’d stopped by and held parley with the proprietor, who, after some “persuasion” and having his palm well crossed with silver, auditioned Angie and hired her. She sang two shows a night and kept her Loper job, too. But she didn’t move out of the Petit Trianon—said she couldn’t bear to be away from Dore.
    This guy Dore lived in the other studio apartment, and if Belinda Carroll was Angie’s best girlfriend, her best “boy”friend was her next-door neighbor. Dore Skirball was the house character, and his relationship with Angie was a warm and abiding one; indeed, they were friends to the bitter end. Dore loved Angie like—well, a sister, I suppose. He’d had a sister once; she’d died in a car crash, and he looked on his gorgeous neighbor as a kind of substitute. Dore loved to chatter, so did Angie, but Angie was a good listener, too; I think this is one reason they got on so well. His