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Back The Great Pretenders
Chapters (55)
  1. Cover
  2. Praise for The Great Pretenders
  3. Dedication
  4. Epigraph
  5. PART I
  6. Chapter One
  7. Chapter Two
  8. Chapter Three
  9. Chapter Four
  10. Chapter Five
  11. Chapter Six
  12. Chapter Seven
  13. PART II
  14. Chapter Eight
  15. Chapter Nine
  16. Chapter Ten
  17. Chapter Eleven
  18. Chapter Twelve
  19. Chapter Thirteen
  20. Chapter Fourteen
  21. Chapter Fifteen
  22. Chapter Sixteen
  23. Chapter Seventeen
  24. PART III
  25. Chapter Eighteen
  26. Chapter Nineteen
  27. Chapter Twenty
  28. Chapter Twenty-one
  29. Chapter Twenty-two
  30. Chapter Twenty-three
  31. Chapter Twenty-four
  32. Chapter Twenty-five
  33. Chapter Twenty-six
  34. PART IV
  35. Chapter Twenty-seven
  36. Chapter Twenty-eight
  37. Chapter Twenty-nine
  38. Chapter Thirty
  39. Chapter Thirty-one
  40. Chapter Thirty-two
  41. Chapter Thirty-three
  42. Chapter Thirty-four
  43. Chapter Thirty-five
  44. PART V
  45. Chapter Thirty-six
  46. Chapter Thirty-seven
  47. Chapter Thirty-eight
  48. Chapter Thirty-nine
  49. Chapter Forty
  50. AUTHOR’S NOTE
  51. Readers Guide
  52. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
  53. Acknowledgments
  54. About the Author
  55. What’s next onyour reading list?

I gave this speech to Thelma, but she wasn’t nearly as amused as I had hoped she would be. She didn’t even laugh. She just said, “Ten days without seeing Popeye is just that. Ten days. Nothing more. We keep everything, all our precautions, just as they are.” And with that she returned to her typing.

One early afternoon I came back to Clara Bow Drive from an appointment at Paramount and pulled up behind the oleander blockade. Humming “Little Liza Jane,” my arms full of scripts, I opened the door, but everything fell to the floor when I saw Terrence sitting there, his elbows resting on his knees, a suitcase on one side, the Royal on the other, his gaze on the floor. He stood, with a kind of weariness that seemed to me etched into his face, into the marrow of his bones. He opened his arms to me, and I went to him, the joy of his homecoming flooding through me. I held him, my cheek against his chest, the sound of his breathing, the beat of his heart music to my ears, the pleasure of his name on my lips.

“I missed you something fierce, Little Liza. Something fierce. I took a cab from Union Station straight here.”

“Go on, leave,” said Thelma. “I’ll cancel everything for tomorrow, Roxanne. Go take some time to be together.” She put her arms around both of us. “Don’t even pick up the scripts. Just go!”

As usual, we put the top up on the MG (otherwise, with a convertible, we were too conspicuous) and his suitcase and the Royal in the trunk. When I didn’t have to shift gears we held hands, and when we reached PCH, I felt a glorious burst of happiness that translated into speed.

“You better slow down,” said Terrence. “They’ll arrest you.”

I started to protest, but one look at his serious face, and I lightened up on the gas pedal. I kept (almost) to the speed limit as we drove north. The hillsides were awash in a dusty green and sprinkled with golden California poppies, wildflowers waning in the spring heat.

“I’ve forgotten all this,” he remarked. “Forgot everything except you, Liza Jane.” He put his strong hand on my knee, and my heart lit with happiness, and the conviction of being loved.