Her stomach clenching, Margo followed Gabby’s accusatory finger to the gorgeous girl standing in the middle of the maze of tables. She was wearing black, as usual, but hers was a dress that Margo was pretty sure she’d never find on her own wardrobe rack: impossibly low-cut, and covered from top to bottom in jet paillettes, a diamond-shaped cutout just below the bust exposing a creamy swath of bare skin. One of her hands was tucked into a luxurious cloud of sleek fur. The other was clinging to the arm of a portly gray-haired gentleman nearly old enough to be her grandfather.
“She’s not with Dane.”
She whispered it under her breath, a private sigh of relief, but Larry Julius missed nothing. “Dane Forrest?” he asked, his sharp eyes coolly surveying Margo. “Did you expect her to be?”
“Oh, Margo and I saw them leave the commissary together the other day,” Gabby said crankily. “They tried to slip out separately so nobody would notice them.”
“But you noticed.”
“Oh, sure,” Gabby said. “Margo could hardly take her eyes off him, could you, Margo?”
“We had just shot my screen test together,” Margo mumbled, staring down at her crystal saucer of champagne. “I was just wondering if I should try to say hello, that’s all.”
Larry Julius expelled a thoughtful cloud of cigarette smoke from what Margo was sure were terribly overwhelmed lungs. “Well. That’s very interesting.”
“Oh, that’s not even the half of it,” Gabby said cheerfully. “With that Amanda girl, I mean. Margo saw her earlier that same day, necking with some writer in his office.” God, Margo thought, doesn’t Gabby forget anything? For a girl who was so prone to proclaiming her academic ignorance, she had a mind like a steel trap. She could have made a heck of a trial lawyer, if anyone had ever bothered to teach her to read.
“Harry Gordon, I should think,” Larry said.
“Harry Gordon?” Gabby’s eyes were wide. “Not that Commie from New York who’s supposed to be writing my next picture? The vaudeville musical?” Gabby had been crowing nonstop for days about her new picture. A standard rags-to-riches musical, it was nevertheless the first vehicle the studio had commissioned for Gabby to star in alone, and she was convinced it was going to make millions of dollars and win her every prize going, including an Academy Award. “Not some kind of juvenile Oscar either, like they gave Shirley Temple,” Gabby sneered. “A real Oscar, for Best Actress. I mean, how could I lose? It’s being written just for me! It’s exactly the story of my life!”
“The very same,” Larry said.
Gabby snorted. “Covering all the bases, just like I said to Margo. Good thing she can’t sing.”
“Let’s have some champagne,” Jimmy said quickly, raising his glass. “To old friends and new, to fame and fortune and dazzling success. To Hollywood!”
“To Hollywood.” They all drank. Margo had never tasted champagne before. The golden bubbles, sweet and faintly sour, tickled her throat. An effervescent warmth spread down her neck and into her chest. Like drinking a glass full of starlight, she thought, her whole body tingling with pleasure.
“Who’s that she’s with, anyway?” The champagne had clearly not had the same tempering effect on Gabby, although she had drunk off her glass in a single gulp and was helping herself to another one. “He looks like he’s ready for the grave.”
Larry put down his glass, from which he had taken only the tiniest of sips. “His name is Oscar Zellman,” Larry said quietly. “I’m surprised you don’t know who he is. He ran a major production unit at Olympus until he left three years ago to set up as an independent. He’s doing quite well for himself, much to Karp’s dismay. Produced three of the ten Best Picture nominees last year, and without a studio behind him.”
Jimmy hooted. “Atta girl, Amanda! There’s a girl who knows where she’s going.”
“Well, I guess she wised up.” Gabby tossed back her second glass. “I mean, Dane Forrest might be one of the biggest stars on the planet, but he’s hardly the jackpot for any girl, is he?”
Margo could practically feel Larry Julius’s eyes boring into her. “What do you mean by that?”
“Yeah, what gives?” Jimmy asked.
“Darlings, don’t play dumb.” The alcohol was loosening Gabby’s already loose tongue. “It’s all out in the open now anyway, isn’t it? In the papers he and Diana Chesterfield might have been on the rocks just prior to her, shall we say … sudden departure, but everybody knows what really happened.”
Larry leaned toward Gabby. “Really.” His voice had dropped to a dangerous purr, and his black eyes glittered like burning coals. Since she had arrived at Olympus, Margo had heard whispers about some of the more unsavory aspects of Larry’s job, about the lengths to which he would go to keep the wrong story out of the papers or the right person quiet. For the first time she thought they might be true. “And just what does everybody know?”
“Well, far be it from me to spread nasty gossip,” Gabby continued blithely. She was well into her third glass of champagne. “But I just heard she went off to have a baby. Among other things.”
“What other things?” Larry prodded, in that same terrible voice. Out of the corner of her eye, Margo saw a uniformed cigarette girl begin to approach the table, only to scurry away at the last moment, like a tiny fish suddenly aware that the cave she is about to swim into is actually the open mouth of a shark.
Gabby flashed her dimples. “Things that a child of my tender years really ought not to know about. You couldn’t possibly expect me to repeat them.”
“Gabby Preston, you are one ripe tomato.” Jimmy Molloy burst out laughing. “You play your cards right, honey, and you could give Picture Palace a run for its money. Now.” Briskly, he snapped his fingers for the waiter. “Let’s get some more champagne, since you drank this bottle all up yourself, you naughty little wastrel. And then I’d like everyone to put their attention back where it belongs: on me. I heard the darnedest thing happened at Warner Brothers the other day.…”
Jimmy launched into his story, a rambling yarn about some dim-bulb extra who became hysterical when she thought they were throwing a real baby out a fifth-story window during a firefighting sequence, as Gabby hung on his every word.
But all Margo could think about was Dane. Could Diana Chesterfield’s mysterious disappearance have something to do with him? Had she really gone off to have his baby … or worse? Or maybe it was all just idle gossip. Margo didn’t hold much truck with gossip, having been the subject of enough of it herself over the years. All those rumors Evelyn Gamble used to spread about her … If even half of that garbage were true, Margo would have had a past to rival … well, Amanda Farraday’s.
But suppose, just suppose, this rumor was true? Suppose Dane had made a … mistake with Diana? So what? That didn’t necessarily make him a cad, any more than it made Diana a “ruined woman.” That way of thinking was like something out of the Victorian Age. The flappers of the twenties, the brash young women who bobbed their hair and drank gin and did as they liked with men, had done away with all that for good, and the Great Depression was supposed to have swept away what was left. Even in the rarified world of Pasadena high society, Margo had heard about the kind of distasteful things less fortunate women and girls, even the good, respectable, churchgoing types, had done just to survive in the hardscrabble early years of the Depression. Were those women ruined? Was Diana? Remembering the electric warmth of Dane’s kiss the day of her screen test, Margo felt a stabbing pang of jealousy toward the missing star. Maybe Diana was facing an uncertain future—or worse—but if you were going to be ruined, Dane Forrest was probably the most exciting way to do it.
Suddenly, the band struck up a lively Charleston. Scrambling couples flooded the dance floor. “Come on, Jimmy,” Gabby squealed. “Let’s dance!”
“Sit down, Gabby,” Larry said. “You’re drunk.”
“I’m not! I’m just happy for once. And I want to dance. All of you are always making me dance, and now I want to for a change! I w
ant to dance!”
The waiter was arriving at their table with their steaks. “Maybe you better eat something first, honey,” Jimmy said. “Get something in your stomach before you go too crazy.”
“Aw, don’t be such a wet blanket!” Gabby shouted. “They’re playing the shimmy shake, and I want to dance. I want to shimmy with you, Jimmy. Listen to that, I rhymed! I wanna shimmy with Jimmy,” she chanted in a high-pitched singsong, lunging for Jimmy’s arm. “I wanna shimmy shimmy shimmy with my Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy … everybody sing!” Suddenly, Gabby’s chair gave way. She toppled over onto the waiter with a terrible crash. His tray went flying into the air, depositing steak, champagne, lobster Newburg, and an entire boat of gravy down the front of Gabby’s dress.
“Gabby!” Margo cried, jumping to her feet. “Are you all right?”
Larry grabbed Margo’s wrist. “Get her out of here.”
“I don’t feel so good,” Gabby moaned.
“Margo,” Larry hissed. The pack of photographers, having smelled fresh blood, was beginning to swarm. “Now.”
Margo dragged the protesting Gabby to her feet and beat a hasty retreat through the palm trees, which formed a kind of protective canopy, making it impossible for cameras to get a clear shot until they reached the entrance of the ladies’ powder room. Smart, Margo thought as she heaved Gabby through the door. They must have planned it that way.
Inside the powder room, everything was gold. Gold carpeting, gold wallpaper, gold dressing tables with mirrors in carved gold frames: the whole room glowed as though a pirate had just opened a chest of buried treasure. A gold velvet chaise dominated the center of the room. Languidly draped across it, her shimmering black gown providing the only contrast in the room, was Amanda Farraday.
“Oh!” Her smoky hazel eyes widened in surprise. She held a long ebony cigarette holder straight up in the air, like an exclamation point. “What do we have here?”
Margo racked her brain for a plausible lie. A sudden illness? A belligerent waiter? Hedy Lamarr? That’s it, Margo thought wildly. I’ll blame it on Hedy Lamarr! Hedy Lamarr, in a drunken rage, had flung a tray of lobster Newburg at an unsuspecting Gabby. Margo could see the headlines now: Quelle Surprise! Hedy Lamarr Goes Cocoanuts at the Grove: Exotic European Hurls Homard at Starlet Songbird!
“Oh my God!” The uniformed bathroom attendant leapt out of a marble toilet stall, fluttering her hands in front of her apron. “What happened to—”
Amanda interrupted her smoothly. “Carmen, leave us alone, please.”
The woman’s mouth tightened. “But the little miss,” she cajoled, “her beautiful dress … surely I ought to tell somebody.…”
Amanda plucked a crisp twenty-dollar bill from her black silk glove and brandished it under the astonished woman’s nose. “You see this?” she hissed.
The attendant nodded dazedly. It was probably enough money to pay her rent for a month. “Yes, Miss Farraday.”
“Good.” Amanda ripped the precious bill in half and stuffed one piece into the woman’s shaking hand. “Get lost for the next twenty minutes and the other half of President Jackson here is yours. Under one condition: You keep your mouth shut. If I hear that Perdita Pendleton or any of the rest of those Picture Palace hags got as much as one word out of you, I’ll make sure this is the last piece of lettuce you see in this town that you don’t find in a salad. You understand me?” The woman gave a quick nod as she made her way for the door.
“Now, first things first.” Seizing Gabby’s shoulders, Amanda steered her into a toilet stall. “She’s got to get in there and bring up whatever she’s got in the bread box.”
“You don’t mean …”
“Puke, vomit. Regurgitate. I don’t care what you call it. She’s got to do it.”
“But I want to dance,” Gabby murmured groggily. “I’m a swell dancer. I’ve been having lessons and everything.”
“Sugar, for all I know you’re Eleanor Powell and Ginger Rogers combined, but right now all you’ve got to do is make it come up.” Amanda closed the stall door. A moment later, they heard retching. “Good girl,” Amanda called encouragingly. “That’s the way.”
“Is that really necessary?” Margo asked tremulously.
“Are you kidding?” Amanda giggled. She looked younger up close, Margo noted, still beautiful, but with slightly crooked teeth and a spray of farm-girl freckles peppering her nose. She couldn’t have been more than a year or two older than Margo herself. “She can barely stand. She’s got to sober up, if you want to get her out of here with any kind of dignity intact, and believe me, this is the quickest way.”
“Not that. I meant the whole business with the bathroom attendant.”
Amanda’s smile faded. “You want to see this whole episode in the gossip rags tomorrow? Where do you think they get their information? Bellhops, limo drivers, waiters, doormen, powder room attendants. The big shots don’t even realize they exist, but believe me, they know everything about everyone. The columnists offer them five bucks a tip. Ten, if it’s really juicy.”
“But ratting out the people who keep you employed?” Margo said. “That’s horrible.”
“Is it? If you’re trying to pay rent and carfare and feed and clothe a whole family on a buck fifty a day, do you really care what some reporter writes about a bunch of millionaires? If you want to keep them quiet, you have to make it worth their while. Just ask your friend Larry Julius.” She shook her head. “Twenty clams, though, boy oh boy. That was every penny Zellman gave me for the powder room. Could have kept me in lipstick and stockings for two months.”
“Why did you do it, then?”
“Oh, some kind of Olympus solidarity, I guess. Besides, Larry Julius owes me a favor now, doesn’t he? Around these parts, a girl can’t have too many powerful men in her debt.”
“At any rate, it’s terribly kind of you to help.” Margo retreated into impersonal politeness. She felt uncomfortable with this world Amanda described, with its unethical journalists and paid informants and old men giving young girls exorbitant sums of money to go to the powder room. Maybe it’s true, she thought. Maybe everything my parents said about Hollywood was right. “It all seemed to happen so quickly. We only just got here, after all. I don’t know how she got so drunk so fast.”
Amanda picked up Gabby’s evening bag from the chaise. Undoing the clasp, she pulled out a small vial of pink pills. “Well, wonder no more.”
“Those? That’s nothing,” Margo said defensively. “Just something the doctor gives her to help her with her diet, that’s all.”
“Sure. Her diet. And then she’s so speeded up she can’t sleep. So they give her these.” Amanda pulled out another vial, yellow pills this time. “Nembies.”
“Excuse me?”
“Downers. You mix these with a drink and it’s good night, nurse. That is, unless they do you in altogether.”
Margo swallowed hard. “You mean …”
“I mean, she better be careful. She wouldn’t be the first nice thin girl to quietly drift off one night and never wake up, while the studio tries to figure out a way to cover up the fact that they drugged her to death. They’d get away with it too. They always do.” Diana, Margo thought suddenly. Gabby had talked about Diana’s taking pills for her weight too. Could she be one of those girls?
“The biggest mistake people make is thinking the studio is looking out for them,” Amanda was saying. “It’s all that happy-family crap Leo Karp talks. What a load of bull. The studio looks out for the studio. We’re just products, and products have to make money or they’re discontinued.” Amanda pulled a gold compact encrusted with tiny green gems from her black velvet evening bag and began to repair her lipstick with a tiny brush. “They can drape us in all the diamonds and furs they want. We’re still the working class. All the real power stays at the top, same as it always was.”
Margo laughed nervously. “You sound like a Communist.”
“Do I?” Amanda studied her reflection critically in her
mirror, making minute adjustments to her left eyebrow with the tip of her fingernail. “Maybe. The Communists are right about a lot of things. At least, that’s what Harry says.”
“Harry Gordon?” Margo said. “The screenwriter?”
Amanda’s face softened into a dreamy glow. “Oh, you know who he is? He’s awfully good, isn’t he? And so passionate about his work and the world. He’s from New York, from the theater, and he sees right through all that mercenary Hollywood bull.”
“Why is he out here if he hates it so much?”
“He’s got a widowed mother and three unmarried sisters back in Brooklyn to support,” Amanda said simply. “And besides, he had a vision for the pictures. He wants to see if he can make something great.”
“You seem to know an awful lot about him,” Margo said.
“I’m just a fan, that’s all.” Amanda snapped the compact shut. “That’s pretty,” she said suddenly, pointing to Margo’s pin.
Margo’s hand flew up reflexively to cover it. “Thank you.”
“It’s unusual, isn’t it? Obviously not the studio’s. Where did you get it?”
“It’s, uh …” Nervously, Margo twisted the pin in her fingers. It was one of the only things she’d been able to bear taking with her from Pasadena. It was a link to her old self, to things she wasn’t ready to talk about yet with anyone, let alone a virtual stranger. “It was a gift,” she said finally.
Amanda grinned. “Not-so-secret admirer?”
“Oh, no,” Margo said, startled. “Nothing like that.” She swallowed hard. Her parents were about the last thing she wanted to discuss with Amanda Farraday. “It’s sort of an heirloom, I guess.”
“That’s right.” Amanda’s eyes narrowed. “You’re supposed to be some kind of heiress or something, aren’t you?”
“I … what?”
“You’re Margo Sterling, right? I read all about you in Picture Palace. They made you sound terribly top-drawer. Where are you from?”
“I … um … I grew up in Pasadena.”
“Well, la-di-da. And how did dear old mum and dad feel about daughter dearest going into the pictures?”
Starstruck Page 14
