Minnie Flynn/Chapter 21

A YEAR of hardships followed. For weeks before Minnie's picture, which she called "The Idyls of Youth," reached the public, the newspapers carried the scandal of her second divorce. Stories of her dissipations had been so broadcast the audiences resented what seemed in her picture a sly masking of her true character. Some of the theater-owners in the small towns refused to show the picture. One whole state barred it.

Hollywood buzzed with the gossip of Minnie's downfall. When she moved into an apartment, and sold all her cars but one, they felt sorry for her, but in their hectic, busy fight for success, they had little time even for sympathy.

False pride had always played such a sinister part in Minnie's life. Her determination not to let Gilbert know how she was suffering, once she was certain she had lost him, drove her to vulgar stupidities. She was seen often in public, always in fast, dissipated company, the gayest, the noisiest in the party. All the cafés rang with her hollow laughter, the money she earned as she went from one studio to another was prodigally spent in bizarre entertainment. The "nice" people of the studios no longer knew her, but there were always parasites ready to be fed so long as she had anything to offer.

Pete was making money as a bootlegger. Sometimes he paid Minnie a commission when a friend of hers gave him an order; but he never had any money to lend her. He needed it, now that his pal, an ex-racetrack tout, had introduced him into a poker club that held long sessions in the guarded room of a Main Street pool hall.

​Nettie had left to join Al on his tour, leaving the baby with her mother. Minnie couldn't afford the expense of a separate establishment, so they crowded into her apartment. A sickly baby, whose incessant crying made the nights seem a broken chain of leaden hours. She could hear her mother's weary voice whining the songs Minnie traced back to her own childhood. She felt sorry for her mother; to think that in her old age she might have to revert to the drab, sordid, commonplace things of her former life.

The day Gilbert left Hollywood for New York, to play opposite Alicia Adams in the advertised "Colossal Photo Drama," which she was making for a new company, Minnie gave the wildest party ever held in a beach roadhouse. Only the sporting element of the studios attended, and a few outsiders who came out of curiosity, hoping for the worst. She had made a thousand dollars playing the part of an unregenerated girl in a picture whose story was a parallel of her own life. She had so fitted the rôle that the managers of the studio were unstinted in their praise. They promised her another good part as soon as they found another one into which she fitted. Every word of praise flung to her kindled her lagging hope. No one was through until she was dead, she tried to convince herself. The praise of her work sustained her from the shock of Gilbert's departure. She had seen him only as he darted in and out of studios and cafés to avoid her, but his actual departure from Hollywood seemed to take from her the last hope of a reconciliation.

To be hostess at a wild party, "where wine runs like water," would help her forget. What a fool she was still to grieve over Gilbert when there were a dozen men she could choose from, two of them rising young actors, one who was certainly madly in love with her.

As she was leaving her apartment, she was called to the ​telephone by Beauregard, who had just arrived in Hollywood. The sound of an old familiar voice was so good to her ears she instantly magnified her friendship for him, and cried out, "Oh, George, I can't tell you how happy I am that you're back here again—don't let's wait until tomorrow to see each other—I'm giving a perfectly wonderful party tonight—you've just got to come—break the stupid old business engagement. Tell me, George dear, aren't you just a little bit eager to see me too?"

He answered "yes," but he was only curious. They had told him how she had changed. He had seen for himself on the screen the cruel tricks maturity was going to play on her, but he wanted to discover for himself the actual extent of its ravages.

There were moments in Minnie's life when her beauty did not seem to be lost. Excessive animation lifted her flesh and put a transient sparkle into her eyes. Brilliantine added luster to her dulling red hair, and gave its undulations an alive high light. A becoming headdress made her seem taller and more slender. Straight lines of a gown hid her splaying hips, the low-cut bodice of a gown revealed her arms and shoulders, still white and smooth.

When Beauregard saw her, he laughed at all accounts he had heard of her lost beauty. More mature, of course, but there was an alluring voluptuousness to maturity that held its potent charms for him. And Minnie read in Beauregard's eyes this rekindling infatuation. Another chance! What did it matter if she had to pay for it? "Rotten salvage," Hal Deane always called the blind bargains made between Beauregard and his women. What had she to lose now—when there was everything to be gained. She persuaded herself she wasn't immoral, but she was desperate—and if here was her chance, she'd be a fool not to make the best of it.

​The roadhouse resounded with pyramidding noise as the hours passed midnight. "Wine like water." Men and girls too drunk to dance. Lewd songs bawled from the entertainers' throats. Minnie, quite sober, listening to Beauregard's promises of all he would do for her; how he was going to find the best story on the market, engage the best director, make the best story on the market, engage the best director, make another picture with her.

"A Colossal Photo Drama?"

He laughed, "All right, little grabby baby—A Colossal Photo Drama."

And he went on to say that if that didn't bring her back, she had better settle right down to being somebody's good little pal, and forget about the movies before she was forced into playing second-rate parts in third-rate pictures.

His suave, persuasive voice was intoning caresses, more soothing than the play of his fingers upon her arm. Minnie thought she heard the faraway cries of a baby, and her mother's whining voice.

"George, if I'm going to start in to do any serious work again, I've got to get away by myself. I'm living in an apartment with the family—it's terrible—I never seem to get any sleep—I——"

Beauregard settled comfortably in his chair and folded his fat hands. When he smiled he dropped his lids over his protruding eyeballs. "I think I understand you," he said laughing. "You'll be out of there tomorrow, you—cute little C. O. D. baby, you."