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EPILOGUE IT WAS AUGUST 5. 1989. our sixty-second wedding anniversary. although our private little joke had always been to add on that extra year we had lived together in sin before we decided to make it legal. The taxi stopped and the driver helped me alight. I parted with ten fifty-cent taxi coupons from my Senior Citizen Coupon Taxi Book. I knew now how much the fare would be. including the tip. I had made the same journey to 6667 Hollywood Boulevard in 1986. 1987. and 1988. I gently pushed the door open and entered Musso-Frank·s. It was nearing 2:00 P.M.. so the lunch crowd was dwindling. Iwaited only a few minutes before the maitre d' showed me to the same booth I had occupied in 1926 when I lunched with my dear friend and exboss . John Brownell. "A sherry. a dry sherry." I requested. Musso-Frank's had changed little over the years-the same mahogany booths. old waiters. and fresh crop of busboys waiting to replace them. Busy. busy. busy. Now. as then. the diners were mostly writers. producers. directors. technicians. or secretaries. all connected with the entertainment world. Only the way they dressed made them look different: beards and long hair for men; here and there a gold chain around the neck and a single gold earring. For women. miniskirts or slacks. Sweatshirts and faded blue jeans for both. Very casual. My eyes strayed to the empty booth in the corner where Ernest had sat that day and. in my imagination. I placed him there. I recalled how he had ignored me when he came over to talk to John. But if he 252 Epilogue 253 had not been interested in me that day, I soon changed that, didn't I? He never had eyes for any other woman in the nearly sixty years we were together. I felt flattered because he was a very attractive hombre to the opposite sex. But then, I was no slouch myself, and my eyes never wandered either. I turned my attention to the empty booth again. "Do you remember the letter you wrote me when we were apart for the first time, you in New York and I in Hollywood?" I asked the little man who wasn't there, but whom I willed to be there. Now, in Musso's, I thought again of the words in that letter. They were words that defined our relationship : "My Dear Wife: Let me give you the basic secret of our happiness as I have finally come to understand it, and as you yourself have revealed in your last letter. It is this: from now on each of us shall stand on our own two feet. This is of supreme importance. It makes me happy to feel that you still have sufficient confidence in me, but start worrying about yourself for a change. This is real progress, my girl, the benefit of which you shall reap much sooner than you possibly expect. E." They were brave words, confessional words. But, alas, Ernest was a man nearing fifty then, who lacked the courage to go it alone, and I, his wife, loving him as I did, understood. My mind returned to the night in 1950 when Ernest and I had resolved to terminate our insane careers in the motion picture business . The very next day, standing on my own two feet, I had gone downtown and applied for a job as a policy typist in an insurance office . As I worked my way up-from typist to claims adjuster, to truck underwriter and finally insurance broker, it more than paid the bills. We moved to a two-bedroom furnished apartment near Griffith Park on prestigious Los feliz Boulevard. The first thing we did was payoff all our debts and start squirreling money away. Ernest, in addition to playing the role of house-husband, found a reasonable source of income in ghostwriting. for a fee, he wrote articles for attorneys, physicians , physicists, and anyone else who had to stay in print to bolster his or her standing in their profession. He also began to charge for a service we had been providing free for years: the dispensing of story ideas and critiques to writing friends, especially those engaged in creating ongoing plot convolutions required by soap operas and serials. The most difficult part of our new lifestyle was spending our workdays apart, but we compensated by spending every free...

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