Was it possible to nibble a shrimp salad and be in mortal peril? Yes. Hedda Hopper was as effusive as she was dangerous, offering sotto voce confidences and all sorts of gossip, including who was sleeping with whom. God forbid she should allude to me and Terrence, or insinuate anything about Jonathan and Denise—not on behalf of Denise (or Jonathan for that matter), but for Leon’s sake. My nerves made me break out in a rash along my back. As she held her little silver pen over a notebook, I remained perfectly charmant, but drank only Fernet-Branca. The bitter, medicinal tonic reminded me with every sip that my whole life, personal and professional, was based on duplicity of one sort or another, on lies, evasions, pretense, and subterfuge. I kept thinking that the very names she lauded (Hedda had done her homework)—Charlie with his coup at Empire, Maurice with his success at MGM, Art Luke’s first major screenplay on its way to El Paso, Jimmy Ashford, who had just been made a lead writer on Gunsmoke—all four were equally pretending to be something they were not, fronting for men whose reputations Hedda had helped to torpedo. If she knew my role with these writers, she would tear me to shreds and put me on one of her hats. And if she knew I was shacked up with a reporter for the Challenger who was covering the bus boycott in Montgomery, what had happened to Diana Jordan would look like hopscotch compared to what Miss Hopper would do to me.

Popeye probably had an aneurysm a few days later when he was parked on Clara Bow Drive. A convoy of enormous tail-finned cars lined the curb and Hedda herself stepped out of a white Cadillac. She wore a peach-colored suit that dazzled the eye, long white gloves, and a hat with long peach-colored feathers that waved gaily when she walked.

“How quaint,” she exclaimed, coming into the house, “to have your offices here on this lovely leafy street.”

“We’d be pleased if you didn’t mention that,” said Thelma. “There are zoning regulations, you know, and we don’t want trouble.”

Thelma showed her into my office, where I greeted her. New desk, smart chairs, modern lighting, modern art, new curtains (closed) and no copy of the Challenger in sight. While the photographers were setting up (I only let myself be photographed from the left), Hedda and I chatted away, and when we parted, it was with effusive goodbyes and cheek-brushing kisses.