Free The Fame Game by Rona Jaffe Page B

jealous?”
    “I’m just too busy singing,” Silky said. The drinks came and she gulped down half of hers. It made her feel warm and more relaxed. “I’m trying to figure out where you’re from by the way you talk,” she said, “but I can’t.”
    “I’m from the Middle West. What you’re listening to is the accent I learned in a short stint at radio-announcer school. I did that for a while after college, while I was trying to break into directing. Where are you from?”
    “South Philadelphia.”
    “Then why do you have a Southern accent?”
    “I don’t,” Silky said.
    “Sometimes you do.”
    “My parents were from Georgia,” she said, remembering.
    “Are they still alive?”
    “No,” she lied. “They’re both dead.” Well, maybe her father was dead; she hadn’t heard from him in years.
    “I think you should take acting lessons,” he said thoughtfully. “Has Libra talked to you about that?”
    “No. We’re taking dancing lessons now.”
    “Well, you should ask him about an acting class. Eventually you’re going to do a Broadway musical, and you should know how to act.”
    She had forgotten about the rest of her drink. The things he was saying to her were making her dizzy. “What Broadway musical? Me? What are we going to play, a black Little Women ?”
    “Not we ,” he corrected. “ You. ”
    “I’ll never leave the girls,” she said.
    “You left them to come out with me,” he said. She realized he was teasing her.
    “That’s different,” she said.
    “Not so different. People are going to seek you out, want to see you on your own. You’re going to have a life of your own. I’m just telling you this because I want you to know it isn’t going to be so easy for you to get along with the girls after a while, and I don’t want it to be a shock for you. It’s always better to be prepared.”
    “I don’t go out with anybody, and I never minded who they went out with,” Silky said. She finished her drink.
    He ordered two more. “Don’t you know anybody in New York?”
    She thought about telling him about her vow and decided against it. Telling anybody might break the magic. “Oh, I know a few boys,” she said.
    “But you don’t like any of them?”
    “I’m too busy to date,” she said. Then she realized what a dumb thing that was to say—he might think she didn’t want to see him ever again. “I mean, I guess I don’t like them much.”
    He smiled. He seemed to know a lot of things she didn’t have to bother to tell him. She couldn’t decide if he made her nervous or not. He certainly was sexy. She had decided that, anyway. He was as sexy as hell.
    “Have you always read a lot?” he asked.
    “No, just since I quit school. I didn’t think quitting school was any reason why I should stop my education.”
    “Have you ever read The Wind in the Willows ?”
    “I never heard of it,” she said.
    “It’s a children’s book, but like all good children’s books it’s really for grown-ups. You should read it. And read Mary Poppins .”
    “I saw the movie,” she said.
    “It’s much better than the movie. Movies of children’s books are terrible. The great thing about a children’s book is you have to use your imagination. Once you see the people in front of your eyes on the screen you have to go by the director’s idea of what they should be like instead of your own.” He took a little leather-covered note pad out of his pocket, and a slim gold ballpoint pen and began to write. “I’m writing down a couple of books you’ve probably missed that I think you’ll enjoy.”
    Well, get her! She was sitting here in this bar with all the television people and a big director twice her age was talking to her about books and movies as if she was an educated person! Shee-it … I mean, wow! She sipped the new drink. Somebody had put money in the jukebox and it was playing “Lemme Live Now.” It was like a dream come true. She would have paid somebody to put her