Free Some Faces in the Crowd by Budd Schulberg

something funny and off-color that Bruce Spencer had just said. But she couldn’t forget what she had done to Bill, how she had slapped him and handed back the ring, and how, like a scene from a bad B picture, they had parted forever.
    For almost fifteen minutes Jenny had cried because Bill was a wonderful fellow and she was going to miss him. And then she had stopped crying and started making up her face for A. D. Nathan because she had read too many movie magazines. This is what makes a great actress, she thought, sorrow and sacrifice of your personal happiness, and she saw herself years later as a great star, running into Bill in Ciro’s after he had become a famous cameraman. “Bill,” she would say, “perhaps it is not too late. Each of us had to follow our own path until they crossed again.”
    “Oh, by the way, Lita,” A. D. had told his wife when she came into his dressing room to find out if he had any plans for the evening, “there’s a little actress I’d like to take along to Ciro’s tonight. Trying to build her up. So we’ll need an extra man.”
    “We might still be able to get hold of Bruce,” Lita said. “He said something about being free when we left the club this afternoon.”
    Nathan knew they could get hold of Bruce. Lita and Bruce were giving the Hollywood wives something to talk about over their canasta these afternoons. Sometimes he dreamt of putting an end to it. But that meant killing two birds with bad publicity. And they were both his birds, his wife and his leading man.
    “All right,” he said, “I’ll give Spence a ring. Might not be a bad idea for the Robbins girl to be seen with him.”
    Lita pecked him on the cheek. Bruce was dying to get that star-making part in Wagons Westward. This might be the evening to talk A. D. into it.
    And then, since the four of them might look too obvious, Nathan had wanted an extra couple. He tried several, but it was too late to get anybody in demand, and that’s how, at the last minute, he had happened to think of the Carterets.
    When you talked about old-time directors you had to mention Lew Carteret in the same breath with D. W. Griffith and Mickey Neilan. Carteret and Nathan had been a famous combination until sound pictures and the jug had knocked Carteret out of the running. The last job he had had was a quickie Western more than a year ago. And a year in Hollywood is at least a decade anywhere else. A. D. had forgotten all about Carteret until he received a letter from him a few months ago, just a friendly letter, suggesting dinner some evening to cut up touches about old times. But A. D. knew those friendly dinners, knew he owed Carteret a debt he was reluctant to repay, and so, somehow, the letter had gone unanswered. But in spite of himself, his conscience had filed it away for further reference.
    “I know who we’ll get. The Lew Carterets. Been meaning to take them to dinner for months.”
    “Oh, God,” Lita said, as she drew on a pair of long white gloves that set off her firm tanned arms, “why don’t we get John Bunny and Flora Finch?”
    “It might not be so bad,” Nathan said, giving way to the sentimentality that thrives in his profession. “Mimi Carteret used to be a lot of fun.”
    “I can just imagine,” said Lita. “I’ll bet she does a mean Turkey Trot.”
    “Lew, do you think this means he’s going to give you a chance again?” Mimi Carteret whispered as they walked off the dance floor together, “Easy on the wine, darling. We just can’t let anything go wrong tonight.”
    “Don’t worry, sweetheart,” he answered. “I’m watching. I’m waiting for the right moment to talk to him.”
    Lita and Bruce were dancing again and Jenny was alone with A. D. at the table when the Carterets returned. It was the moment Jenny had been working toward. She could hardly wait to know what he thought of the test.
    “I don’t think it does you justice,” Nathan was saying. “The cameraman didn’t know how to