Reel: A Forbidden Hollywood Romance

It’s an odd experience, sifting through the detritus of Dessi Blue’s life. Dog-eared books and diaries, faded dresses from bygone eras, letters so old, parchmented like they might crumble in my hands. Her daughter, Katherine, has given us complete access to everything left in the house after Dessi died. She said she hasn’t gotten around to looking through half this stuff because her parents were pack rats and held onto every little thing documenting their colorful lives. She hasn’t made time to pick through their past or to dispose of it.

It’s like stumbling into a pharaoh’s tomb, the walls lined with riches and treasures. It’s mundane and magnificent. Worthless. Priceless. So many things I need to know about the woman I’m to portray. I’m eager, but also feel like a peeping tom, glimpsing another woman’s nakedness through the window of her past.

“Finding what you need?”

Canon stands in the doorway, his wide shoulders filling the frame. His eyes curious in the sharply hewn face. I drag my gaze away from him and to the stack of letters tied with string I’m holding.

“Yeah,” I say. “More than what I need. It’s kind of overwhelming and I’m not sure where to start.”

He walks in, his usual confident stride slower. He’s always guarded, but his expression seems almost wary when he sits beside me on the bed in what Katherine affectionately calls the “back room.” A box of old photos rests on the floor, and he bends to retrieve a few. A tarnished silver frame displays a happy, smiling couple on their wedding day. The style of Dessi’s dress and her rolled upsweep hairdo indicate early twentieth century, maybe late 30s, early 40s. It’s a black and white photo, but it’s clear that she’s fairer than her groom. They make a beautiful study in contrasts, him darker and her smaller, slim and elegant next to his imposing height. Shunning the camera, they stare into each other’s faces, noses nearly touching, love radiating from their expressions.

“Cal Hampton,” Canon says, nodding to the photo. “They got married in London while they were touring Europe. He was a great trumpet player.”

“They look so happy. According to the family Bible, they were married forty-five years until he died of lung cancer in 1985.”

“All that smoking caught up to a lot of them later in life.” He hands me the photo. “They do seem happy, but there was a lot of heartbreak in those years. Mostly from living in a country that wanted them to sing for their supper, but use the service entrance to come and go. That’s why so many of them left for Europe. Who can blame them?”

“I remember watching Halle Berry’s Dorothy Dandridge movie. That scene when Dorothy dips her toe in the pool at the hotel where she’s performing in Vegas.”

“And they drain the pool.” Canon’s full mouth hitches into a cynical bend. “You know how many people had no idea who Dorothy was before that movie?”

He bumps my shoulder, and the rare ease of a gesture like that from him makes me smile.

“We’re gonna do that for Dessi Blue,” he says.

“Thank you again for choosing me, for casting me.”

“We searched six months before casting you, Neevah. I knew as soon as I saw you onstage you were right for this part.”

“And the studio was okay with an unknown carrying a film like this?” It’s occurred to me more than once, but I haven’t asked him or Mallory. I was too afraid they might think about the huge risk they’re taking and change their minds.

“The studio is thrilled.” He bends to grab another box from the floor, and I can’t see his expression, but his voice sounds sure. Then again, when doesn’t Canon sound sure?

“Look at this,” he says.

Dust stirs from the jewelry box when he opens it, and a ballet dancer pops up. An old tune warbles from the box, so faint it’s barely music, and the figurine executes a turn, her pirouette shaky and uneven. Canon picks through a few pieces of jewelry—a black velvet ribbon choker, a cocktail ring shaped like a star and studded with rubies, diamond-flecked hairpins. There is a small tear in the floor of the box. I pull the base up, revealing a hidden compartment.

“Look at you, finding the secrets,” Canon says, lifting the base out completely and extracting a stack of papers, frayed and falling apart. He spreads them on the bed between us. There isn’t much, but you don’t hide things that mean nothing.

I angle my head to study the newspaper clipping of a wedding announcement.

Harlem nightclub owner Hezekiah Moore weds Matilda Hargrove. The ceremony took place at Abyssinian Baptist Church, with reception following at the Hotel Theresa.

Beneath the photo of a stern, stout man and a gorgeous woman of medium brown complexion wearing a waxen smile with her wedding dress are the words I had to. Forgive me. in neat handwriting.

Canon and I exchange a quick look of speculation.

“Matilda was Dessi’s roommate in New York for a few years,” he says. “The scene you did with Mallory showed how they met. Katherine said when Dessi left to tour in Europe, they lost touch completely.”

I flip through a stack of letters, all written in the same neat handwriting from the newspaper clipping. “Looks like she was wrong about them losing touch.”

The edge of a faded maroon paper peeks out from beneath the newspaper clipping so I pull it out to see it fully. It’s a playbill for Macbeth, but obviously an adaptation that, based on the graphic, seems to have African or island influence.

“Says the play was presented by the Negro unit of the Federal Theatre Project.” I flip the playbill over, scanning the details. “I’ve never heard of it.”

“Yeah. In the scene you read, that’s the show they were waiting to see. The Federal Theatre Project was a New Deal stimulus program that funded plays and live performances.”

“New Deal as in FDR’s New Deal?”

“Yeah. After the Great Depression. It put actors, playwrights and directors to work.

Orson Welles adapted Macbeth with an all-Black cast at the Lafayette Theatre in the thirties. Maybe ’36? They called it Voodoo Macbeth.”

“The Orson Welles?”

“Yeah, and he was only twenty years old at the time. Wasn’t even really making movies yet.” Canon shakes his head. “Genius man.”

I open the playbill and there’s a newspaper clipping inside showing a huge crowd outside the Lafayette. “Says here people lined up for ten blocks on Seventh Avenue. Over ten thousand people trying to get into the theater, and only twelve hundred seats.”

Canon leans closer to read for himself, and the clean scent of him invades my senses. I try to stay focused on the work, on what this opportunity means for my career, and not think about how drawn I am to him, but sometimes . . . like now times, when he smells so good, and his body radiates warmth, I just want to . . .

Stop it, Neevah.

He tilts his head to read the fine print beneath the photo, and his head bumps mine.

“Sorry,” he says, glancing up from the pile of faded memorabilia. Our eyes hold, and I hope mine don’t tell him everything; don’t tell him that I’m fighting this most ridiculous, inappropriate, ill-fated attraction every time I’m around him. And I am fighting it. I know it’s wrong and will only make this job harder.

His eyes search mine and drop to my mouth, and I feel his gaze like a hot, tender touch. My lips part on a caught breath, and I have to lick them. I have to stop before I make this weird and uncomfortable for him. He’s my boss.

I let the playbill fall from my fingers to the floor, seizing the excuse to bend, to break the hot connection between our eyes. It’s hot to me. I’m burning up, but when I sit up, Canon’s eyes are cool, his expression inscrutable. I want to apologize for disrupting the easy rapport between us, but I didn’t do anything. It just happened. My body inconveniently reminded me that Canon Holt is exactly my type, and I didn’t even know I had one. Big and brooding and brilliant.

“Saints and poets?” he asks.

For a second, I have no idea what he’s talking about. He’s staring at my hand holding the playbill, at the ink scripted along the outside of my thumb.

“Oh, my tattoo. Yeah. It’s from—”

“Our Town. The stage manager says that.”

I glance up to smile, but can’t hold it when I meet his eyes. There’s an intensity about Canon that I don’t think he even cultivates. It’s simply who he is—hungry to know, to understand, and his intellect and curiosity consume everything in his path. Every story, every project, every conversation. This conversation. And when you are the subject of his lens, you feel like he’s hungry for you. Like he wants to understand exactly what it is he’s looking at. And I can’t help but wonder how that hunger would feel in a kiss. Would he crush me against him like we couldn’t get close enough? Like the taste of me was driving him wild? My fingers burn with the need to scrape across his shadowed jaw, to trace his brows and lips.

“It was, um . . .” I clear my throat, desperate to rein in my rebel thoughts. “It was the last play I did in high school. That line stuck with me.”

“Where are you from?” he asks easily, apparently oblivious that I’m struggling to maintain some semblance of non-kissing normalcy.

“A-a tiny town in North Carolina you’ve never heard of. Clearview.”

“You’re right. Never heard of it.” He almost grins, yielding the slightest curve of his lips, and I realize how seldom he smiles. “So you had a burning desire to spread your wings and you struck out for New York City, diploma in hand?”

“Not quite.” The shard of Terry and Brandon’s betrayal pricks my heart. Not as much as it used to, but it may always draw a drop of blood. “I might have been content to stay there and do community theater. Get married. Have some babies.”

“But?”

“But things happen.” I shrug and force myself to meet the probe of his stare. “And it was off to Jersey, not New York. I had a scholarship to Rutgers, the drama program.”

“It would have been our loss. You might have been content to stay hidden away in Clearview, but it wouldn’t have been right. You were made for the spotlight. Whatever happened to make you leave was a blessing in disguise.”

My breath stalls. There’s so little space separating us, and the air seems to pulse in time with my galloping heart. And this time, now, I don’t wonder if he feels it, too. I know he does. It’s in the way he frowns and his eyes darken and his jaw tightens. It’s like a wavelength between us in the taut silence.

He clears his throat and leans away, inserting a few more inches between us. “So this play, Voodoo Macbeth.”

“Oh, yeah. The play. The play.”

“Right, before Orson Welles did this play, most had only seen Black actors on Vaudeville or in black face. There was even a national tour after the New York run, so this was huge.”

“I can imagine.” I need something to do with my hands, some way to reroute this conversation to neutral ground. I look down at the playbill and pull a photograph from inside. It’s of two young women posing in front of the Lafayette, both dressed well, smiling, glowing. Dessi and Tilda.

Canon flips through the small pile of papers and pulls the wedding announcement out again, placing it beside the photo.

I trace one finger over the handwritten words on the newspaper clipping.

I had to. Forgive me.

“For someone who supposedly disappeared from Dessi’s life,” Canon says, lifting his brows, “there’s a lot of letters from her hidden here. There’s a story here. Now we have to find it.”