The Jewels of Tessa Kent by Judith Krantz

actually thinking of casting her, are you?”
    “That’s none of your business, Glenda.”
    “Roddy, I want this picture to be a success even more than you do. We agreed it was an ensemble piece—that great big, enthusiastic girl would throw it entirely off balance. I’m not saying she’s not beautiful, I’m not saying she can’t act, I’m not even saying I don’t wish I were her age, for the love of God! But she’s too bloody much! She eats up all the air in the room, she’s a stage actress, not a film actress, she doesn’t have the right
dimensions
. She’s as big a presence as … as Ethel Merman! She’s a talent, I admit that willingly, but not for this particular picture and not until she gets some experience in acting for a camera. You know that as well as I do.”
    “Glenda, go home before I forget I’m a gent and hit you, will you darling?”
    “What am I seeing here, Roddy, a little tiny crush on a great big tomboy? Roddy Fensterwald in love? Don’t tell me that’s making you lose your judgment.”
    “Perhaps you’re right,” he grinned thoughtfully. “Interesting interpretation—but why not? We’re all capable of anything, under the right circumstances, I always say. So this is what love feels like! Be still my heart. No wonder people carry on the way they do. Butjust think, if even I could go for this girl, how will every other man in America feel?”
    “
Little Women
is a fucking woman’s movie, Roddy. And that fucking girl’s too old for me to play her fucking mother!”
    “Glenda, as I said before, go home so you can have this particular fit with your agent. He gets paid enough to listen to you. But remember that your contract isn’t signed yet.”
    “That’s unworthy of you,” Glenda retorted with dignity.
    “I love you when you try to be grand. And, sweetie, I adore your getup. Especially the head scarf. It’s a whole new you. I’ve always insisted you had untapped range, no matter what anyone else said. Will you send Peggy and Fiona in on your way out?”

7

     
    T essa woke up one summer morning in 1974 feeling defiant before her feet hit the floor. She was going to be nineteen in six weeks, but her life was three times as full of things she was obliged to do as it had been when she was still a schoolgirl at Marymount.
    Today was Saturday, a day on which, by rights, she should have at least a few free hours to herself. But every single minute was scheduled. Right after breakfast she had a riding lesson, a new skill her agent insisted she needed to develop; then home to shower again and change for a talk with her business manager over lunch, a meeting her father had arranged and sternly told her not to forget. After lunch she had to go back home again to change once more for an interview set up by the producers of her new film,
Gemini Summer
. The interviewer, a French journalist from
Paris Match
, would be accompanied by a photographer who wanted to “follow her around” all afternoon. As soon as that major ordeal was over, her mother expected her home for dinner, here in Santa Monica. There was no space for
her
in her day, Tessa realized, as she brushed the hair that fell in adrifting cascade of natural waves no studio hairdresser would ever try to subdue.
    Even worse, she thought, she loathed horses; she wasn’t interested in “equity diversification,” the subject her business manager was going to try to explain to her once again; and she was intimidated by the idea of the interview with the man from
Paris Match
and his inquisitive photographer. She’d rather have a cavity filled.
    Novocain and drilling, a mere pinprick followed by an annoying noise that was over in a half hour, would be better than picking her way across a tightrope without losing her balance during three hours with a reporter-photographer combination, particularly when they’d told the PR people that they wanted to watch her “being herself.” Holy Mother, she thought, wasn’t it just