Luise Rainer

Rainer is an Oscar-winning movie actress who befriends Nin in New York. She takes the writer on outings to the seashore in her sports car, and to jazz joints in Harlem. Rainer is divorced from the playwright Clifford Odets, whom Nin describes as pragmatic and perfunctory compared with the mercurial actress, whom she at first finds enchanting. Rainer is Dresden-doll beautiful, capricious and willful. The two go to parties together, to Harlem nightclubs, and to the seashore in Rainer's snazzy convertible. For a while, Nin feels she has found her true soul mate. Rainer, who is also undergoing psychoanalysis, wants to talk incessantly about it with Nin, which means that the actress wants to talk about herself and her own problems. Sometimes, it is hard for the writer to tell when the actress has slipped into another character or personality. Gradually, it begins to dawn on Nin...