I might have teared up. All my life Leon and Julia have told me I am beautiful. But I thought of Bette Davis and kept my resolve. “I’m not thinking of the future right now. I’m thinking of the present, and I’m only certain of one thing, and that’s that I don’t want to live here with you.”

“Where do you want to live?” he asked, ignoring my pointed exclusion.

“Not here.”

“This is your home, Roxanne.”

I sat in one of the wing chairs in the best L’Oiseau d’Or posture I could muster. I was trembling with suppressed emotion, and blurted out, “Then why has Denise Dell been living here since Julia and I went to Paris?”

“I thought this wasn’t going to be about Denise.” He rose, came round the desk, and took a seat opposite me, so close he took my hand. “Roxanne, Honeybee, I’m sorry you feel this way. I don’t think Julia would want you to leave Summit Drive.”

“I will only stay here if Denise Dell leaves.” There! Joan Fontaine could not have done better. This moment called for panache—the real thing, not just the cologne I was wearing.

Leon meditated on this. He withdrew his hand. He said at last, “I suppose you are old enough to make your own choices. I just hope they will be good choices and reflect well on me and on Empire Pictures.”

“You are not the center of the universe. Neither is Empire.”

“Well, Empire is the center of any universe that you belong to, Honeybee. This will be your home, forever, and if you change your mind, you can always come home—”

“Then why did you make her leave? You broke Julia’s heart! You broke my heart. You broke her spirit!” I blubbered and choked.

“Julia left me, as you well know. You went with her.”

“What else could she do? Stay here and watch you carry on with a girl forty years younger than you?”

“Julia had her own secret life. Her own betrayals.”

“Julia was never unfaithful to you.”

“Funding a Communist organization with my money? The NAACP! The NAACP is crawling with Red agitators stirring up the races. I’d call that an unforgivable betrayal of my every principle! Those Negroes this morning were laughing at me! All that money! And the Matisse to Jerrold Davies! Jerrold is a Red who fled to France rather than testify to a legitimate congressional committee. And Julia produced his Les Comrades. An outright Communist film!”