Until Promises.
The truth got through even to Carla eventually.
Irving received the script from a producer at a major Burbank film studio who had her in mind for a part other than the lead. But as Irving read it, he had some sort of hunch that she was just right for that main role. He campaigned for the change, telling the producer and the studio brass bankrolling Promises that they could not have her for any part except the starring one. And Irving was promptly told that this was a possibility but she would have to screentest for it. Irving assured them that this was fine.
His hand was shaking as he hung up the phone on his cherry wood desk in an office that was more like a plush penthouse suite.
What have I done? he thought. I must have let the pressure rot my brain. It can’t be anything else.
Two nightmares.
One that he would have to face was telling Carla about the screen test; the other was getting her to do something better than simply coast through it on the assumption that being a big name in one sector of the entertainment world made her automatically an equivalent powerhouse in another.
Irving thought he would have to battle her for days.
But when he asked Carla, she agreed right away. Not one second of hesitation! And she rehearsed like a woman possessed, almost maniacal in her determination.
The result: she got the role, and just over a year and a month later, won an Oscar for best starring role as an actress.
Finally, at lunch the following day, Irving managed enough chutzpah to ask her why she gave him no trouble when he told her about Promises originally.
“That surprised me, too,” she confessed.
“What are you saying?” he asked, puzzled. “That you don’t know why you went along easily?”
Her smile then was the most radiant he had seen for a very long time.
“Obviously something is going on here,” Irving observed slyly.
“As I look back now,” Carla said, “I guess I can think of a reason that I wasn’t aware of at the time.”
“Tell me, Carla.”
“Because it was what God wanted. There’s a verse in the New Testament that suggests God gives each of us who acknowledge our dependence on Him a certain peace that passes understanding from time to time.”
“God?” Irving repeated. “New Testament? Carla, you’re scaring me.” Carla knew Irving had been raised a Christian but his faith had long ago lapsed.
“Yes, God, my good friend. And not like that cigarsmoking old comic actor, either.”
“I never heard you talk about Him before now.”
She paused, thinking, and then threw her head back, long strands of flame red hair flowing down her back, and said, “I have met a man.”
“So what does that have to do with God?” Irving asked lamely.
“Because, I think, it’s true that heaven opened up and dropped Kyle Rivers right in my lap.”
Irving Chicolte was twenty-five years older than Carla, and looked it, while she was in her early thirties and could have played a high school or college student.
“Now, now, I feel happy for you,” he told her, the father part of him coming to the surface. “But I’ve got to ask why you have kept him a secret until today?”
“I wanted to make sure that there was something serious going on. I didn’t want to find myself hooked by his looks or his charm only to find that’s all it was.”
“Fair enough, Carla. Now my second question: How long have you known him?”
“Only a few weeks.”
He was astonished, theatrically slamming the palm of his hand down on the round wood table.
“And already he is God’s gift?”
Next, he threw his hands up in gesture of disbelief, a reaction he’d perfected over the years. Learning such gestures, especially in Hollywood, had served him well over the years.
“I’ve never met him. What’s the problem?”
“He lives in Nashville.”
“Is that all, Carla?” Irving asked, knowing all too well when she was being less than totally forthcoming.
Carla blushed as she admitted, “You got me again.”
Irving’s eyes narrowed.
“Come out with it,” he insisted. “I need to know.”
“Kyle’s gotten involved in church activities.”
Irving was surprised but took that in stride.
“The rest of it, my dear,” he probed. “I don’t condemn men who spend time in church instead of bars.”
Carla wanted to spit the words out right away instead of hesitating but she equivocated a bit until Irving demanded that she let everything out once and for all.
“And there are his college classes,” she said. “These take all morning and most of the afternoon.”
That one got through big-time!
Irving had been sipping from a glass of white wine, and was so startled that he spilled half of it on the table.
“Are you—?” he asked hopefully but with an increasing edge of chilling resignation, knowing his client nearly as well as he had his ex-wives.
Carla nodded.
“Yes, Irving, I am serious,” she said. “I will never deceive you or play some odd practical joke.”
“Tell me that, at least, he’s a senior. Please tell me that, my dear.”
“I can’t.”
She reached out, placed her right hand on the back of his left.
“He’s a music teacher at college…” she said rather sheepishly.
“Holy Mother of—!” he started to shout but stopped when he saw a monsignor, who was sitting at the next table, turn around and glare at him.
For a moment Irving was quiet, and Carla knew why. He was already planning what might be called damage control.
“I can imagine what the tabloids will do with this if…when they find out,” he said, an old stutter long ago conquered threatening to resurrect itself. “But then, if you never see him again, the chances are—”
Carla knew the routine, knew the kind of pressures Irving was going to put on her so that she would cave in and do what he wanted.
“I will not stop seeing Kyle,” she said firmly but without raising her voice.
“Is he that good in bed, Carla?”
She might have slapped anybody else who would talk to her like that but she knew Irving Chicolte as well as he knew her, and she had come to accept such outspokenness as evidence of his honesty, even if it said a great deal about his lack of taste.
“We’ve not beentogether that way,” she said.
“Soon, I’m sure,” he muttered.
“No, Irving, now stop it!”