Her mother, Elsie, clad in a gown of an unbecoming salmon color, joined us and offered me a gloved hand as Leon introduced us. “Enchanté,” I said.

A photographer approached and asked Denise and Leon to pose with Phil Tobin, the director of Banner Headline. Elsie followed them.

“That’s a very daring dress,” said a voice behind me. I turned around to see a short man with thinning hair and sharp features. “Red is a dangerous color these days.”

“It’s a dress, not a metaphor.”

“Are you a Communist?”

“Are you the FBI?”

He laughed, a genuine, self-deprecating laugh. “FBI men are rumpled and sweaty, and they wear glasses and hats ten years out of date. They’re generally unshaven and chain smoke. I assure you, I’m not FBI, Miss Granville.”

“You know who I am?”

He chuckled. “That’s why I thought the red dress was especially provocative—daring, given your grandfather’s patriotic zeal.”

“Have we met, Mr. . . .”

“Carleton Grimes.”

I could not place him. He had hooded blue eyes, a thin, elegant moustache, and receding ginger-colored hair, and he carried himself with a kind of low-key sophistication.

“Everyone in Hollywood knows Roxanne Granville. Or knows of her. You’re an independent agent, aren’t you? Who do you represent? Anyone here?” He gestured around the gilded gathering.

“I don’t do actors.” Unfortunate phrasing. “I don’t like them very much as a tribe, I mean. My clients are writers.”

“Yes, actors have no substance if they’re not reflected in someone else’s adoring eyes.”

“You must be a writer.”

“No, I work at Paragon. Noah Glassman was my father’s college friend at NYU.” He paused when I frowned. “Noah’s the president of Paragon Pictures.”

“Oh yes, I remember now.”

“I came out here from New York to make plays into films. I wasn’t fast enough with The Country Girl. But I did manage to meet Grace Kelly, and we got to be friends, so that was some consolation.” He nodded in the distance to where the statuesque Miss Kelly stood like a pale flame collecting admiring moths. He took another glass of champagne from a white-gloved waiter. “This must be quite a good moment to be an independent agent. Films need stories. Stories need writers, and all the old guard, the really reliable talent, they’ve been swept out by the Red-hunting broom. We should have lunch sometime, Miss Granville. I’m always looking for interesting properties.”

“I’d like that, Mr. Grimes. I happen to have interesting properties,” I said as Gordon joined us.

“Look at all the television people,” Gordon muttered angrily. “I can’t stand them. Irene insists everything has to come to a stop once a week to watch I Love Lucy. I keep telling her, it’s crap! Lucille Ball was a failed chorus girl! What makes her so funny? They’re taking bread out of our mouths.”