Hollywood Husbands (3 page)

Signing, she slipped him a fifty-dollar bill. ‘Buy a beer for you and the guys.’

Pocketing the money appreciatively, the man thought about what a knockout broad this one was. Not only good-looking in her skin-tight jeans and sweatshirt, but generous too.

‘Thanks,’ he said, and added with a smirk, ‘that commercial you got runnin’ on TV sure is blistering!’

She grinned, displaying very white, even teeth, and a warm, sexy smile. ‘Glad you like it,’ she said, subtly edging him towards the door. Once they started on about her famous coffee commercial she knew the time was ripe to move them out, having learned, very early on in her career, to be friendly yet unreachable to her many unknown admirers. Once, at eighteen, she had been attacked and nearly raped by a crazed fan who had fallen in obsession with a swimsuit poster she had posed for. Only the intervention of a concerned neighbour had saved her.

The delivery man paused at the door. ‘Maybe ya gotta photo y’can sign for me,’ he said hopefully.

Out
she projected silently. She was looking forward to being alone and beginning the great unpack. ‘I’ll send you one,’ she said pleasantly.

‘Scrawl, I love ya Big Ben,’ he leered. ‘That’ll give the boys somethin’ t’ think about.’

Big Ben!
Was he kidding?

She waited patiently while he laboriously printed his address on a slip of paper. ‘Thanks again, Ben,’ she said, finally closing the front door on him.

Alone at last! In L.A. Who would have thought she would ever make the long trek west again? New York was her kind of town, always had been. California never beckoned. Well, once, when she was twenty and naively accepted the offer of a screen test.
Stupido.
She was no actress, and held no ambitions in that direction. But she was young and curious, and what the hell – a trip was a trip.

She had arrived to be met by a block-long limo with a youngish agent lounging on the back seat. He wore
multo
gold chains with his open-to-the-limit silk shirt and carefully pressed designer jeans. He had a suntan, a mini-mogul cigar, a receding hairline, and an attitude. He offered her grass in the car and an invitation to dinner.

She turned down both, which caused frown lines to appear in his perfect suntan.

A suite at The Beverly Hills Hotel was reserved for her. Flowers and fruit abounded. She stayed five days, tested with a broody actor who tried to kill her close-ups, turned down several more invitations from the bronzed agent, returned to New York, and never heard another thing.

Several years later when she was really hot, Hollywood beckoned again. ‘Forget it,’ she told her New York modelling agent. ‘I’m going to be the best model in the business,
and
the highest paid. Who needs to travel the starlet route? Not this girl, baby.’

And she was right. Jade Johnson
was
the best. And she was – due to the deal she had recently signed – the highest paid.

The deal was the reason she was once more in Los Angeles. Cloud Cosmetics made her an offer she couldn’t refuse, and part of it was spending a year on the West Coast to make a series of million-dollar TV commercials. Normally she would never have considered leaving her beloved New York. However, she had just come out of a six-year relationship with a married man, and getting away seemed like an appealing prospect.

She wandered around the apartment kicking off her tennis shoes and unzipping her jeans as Springsteen belted out ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ The sound of his raspy voice filled the room, and she was content. This was going to be a new beginning, the start of a whole different life. No more Jade Johnson – mistress. Oh no, sirree. That trip was over,
finito
. What a fool she had been. What a gullible idiot, falling for every cornball line he threw her way. She was hardly naive, and yet for six long years he had kept her captive with his tongue – in more ways than one.

She thought of him briefly. Mark Rand. An English Lord. An English asshole. A wild-life photographer of world-wide repute. They had met on assignment in Africa. She was doing leopard swimwear for
Vogue,
and he was shooting the photographs. He had curly hair, amused blue eyes, and fascinating conversation. It wasn’t until a week of passion had passed that his fascinating conversation included mention of a wife, Lady Fiona Rand.

Jade remembered her fury. She had fallen for the oldest lines in the world…
My wife and I
live together in name only… when the children are older…

And Jade Johnson – smart, worldly, hardly a babe in the woods – listened to his corny bullshit and actually believed him! For six years she believed him. And she would have gone on doing so if Lady Fiona hadn’t given birth to yet another little Rand heir, and Jade found out about it by accident while leafing through an English magazine.

The end had been acrimonious, her move to California swift.

Gazing around her new apartment she decided it was a great find. Situated on Wilshire near Westwood, she had leased it furnished, although there was no way she could think about getting through a year without her things around her. Books, records, her collection of china dogs, tapes of favourite movies, clothes, family pictures, and other personal possessions. Hence the delivery from New York a timely day after her own arrival, courtesy of TWA.

Contemplating the many cartons piled high in the hallway, she wondered if she could summon the energy to start on them now. With a sigh she realized she’d better. Grabbing a 7-Up from the kitchen she set to work.

Chapter Three

It was Silver Anderson’s forty-seventh birthday, and she awoke with the thought that she was one year older foremost in her mind. She lay in bed for a full ten minutes ruminating on this fact, and then reluctantly she arose, first buzzing her houseman and ordering bran muffins, fresh orange juice, and lemon tea to be on her table in exactly fifty minutes. That was how long it took Silver to be ready to face the world. Rather quick, considering the transformation that took place.

The woman who left the luxurious king-size bed was quite ordinary looking.

The woman who left the bedroom fifty minutes later was a television superstar.

Silver Anderson was ready for a
Vogue
photo session – the cover, of course, Silver only did cover stories. She was fully made up. Heavy base, dramatic eyes (she still wore false lashes, giving her a commanding but rather old-fashioned look). Her lips glistened with scarlet gloss, and her cheeks were sunken with shading. She wore heavy gold earrings, a white silk turban, and a pale beige leather outfit liberally studded with diamante. It was only ten a.m. but Silver knew she owed it to her fans to always look like a star. She was five feet three inches tall, and had maintained her girlish figure. It took diet and exercise, and although it was a bitch keeping to the routine, the results made it worthwhile. From behind, with her tight ass and sassy strut, she could easily be mistaken for a twenty-year-old.

Sweeping downstairs, she ignored her Russian houseman, Vladimir, who was gay and couldn’t care less
how
she treated him as long as she kept him in her employ. He dined out on his personal intimate Silver Anderson stories twice a week. To his friends
he
was the star, living vicariously through his mistress’s exploits. Silver was
always
making headlines. She segued from men problems (two ex-husbands, dozens of boyfriends) to drink problems (thank you, Betty Ford, for making it legitimate) to feuds with directors, writers, producers – whoever was around to vent her anger on. Silver was very proud of saying, ‘I am a professional. And I
will not
be screwed around by unknowledgeable amateurs trying to step in my limelight. Let them remember just exactly who they are dealing with.’

* * *

Silver Anderson first became a star at twelve. She was discovered singing and dancing in a school play by the talent agent father of one of her friends, who recommended her to the casting director of an important musical film. She auditioned, got the role, and went from there to mini-stardom singing like a bird in a series of hits. She certainly had a wonderful voice, full of power and extraordinary clarity. And so she should – her mother, Blanche (a failed singer herself), had made sure that her daughter had singing lessons from the age of five. Blanche often used to say to her, ‘I never made it. But you, my dear, will take the talent you inherited from me, and become the biggest star in the world.’ Blanche had also insisted on dancing lessons and acting classes. As a result, when she was growing up, Silver never knew childhood, just vigorous training for the stardom her mother was convinced would one day be hers. When she was sixteen, the bottom fell out of musical comedy movies in Hollywood, and her agent suggested New York and the theatre.

‘You’re not going to New York,’ objected her father, George, a college professor and sometimes inventor of what her mother referred to as ‘useless devices’. They lived in a large, rambling house in the Valley, bought with Silver’s earnings, and he had no intention of uprooting.

‘Daddy, I must!’ Silver protested tearfully, as her mother had told her she should. ‘My career is at stake!’ She overdramatized everything, even at sixteen.

Blanche agreed with her daughter. ‘We can’t ruin her life, George. We must encourage her to soar!’

George stared mournfully at his domineering wife with the carrot-coloured hair and unfulfilled dreams. He knew there was no stopping her, so it was arranged that she would accompany Silver to New York for six months while he stayed at home with their son, Jack – at nine, seven years younger than his famous sister.

Both Silver and Blanche adored New York, and the feeling was mutual. Silver opened in a new show called
Baby Gorgeous
, which ran for a phenomenal five years. During this time she married her first husband (tall, dark and weak), divorced him (he asked
her
for alimony), helped her mother to divorce George, and attended Blanche’s remarriage to a twenty-six-year-old stage hand (her mother was thirty-eight at the time) and neither of them ever had any desire to go back to Los Angeles and the Valley. New York suited them just fine.

‘George and Jack are better off without us,’ Blanche reasoned. ‘You were born to be a star. And I was born to live in New York and enjoy myself.’

That, she certainly did, what with her successful daughter and new younger husband.

After
Baby Gorgeous
there was another smash show, a huge-selling record album, and sold-out cabaret appearances wherever Silver cared to appear.

It took her ten years to go home. And then she didn’t go home as such, she took a bungalow at The Beverly Hills Hotel with her current lover, a Scandinavian stud. And in between giving head and interviews she finally called her father. ‘Drive into Beverly Hills and I’ll treat you and Jack to lunch tomorrow,’ she announced grandly, not letting on that
Newsweek
were doing a cover story on her and needed to get some family pictures.

George demurred; he had given up on Silver long ago. Just because she was his daughter did not change the fact that she was selfish and egotistical, thinking only of herself. He held her responsible for breaking up his marriage, and he would never forgive her for that.

Jack was home from college. At nineteen he was handsome, smart, and curious to meet the sister he could hardly remember. ‘I’ll go, Dad,’ he said eagerly.

George agreed under protest. He wouldn’t put it past Silver to try and lure Jack away from him too, a risk he would just have to take.

Jack went off to meet his famous sister in high spirits. He returned two hours later, a frown on his face and criticism on his lips. ‘She’s fucking unreal!’ he exclaimed. ‘She acts like the Queen of England.’

George did not show his relief. ‘Don’t swear,’ he admonished sternly. ‘Is this how they teach you to talk in college?’

‘Dad! I’m nineteen, for crissake.’

‘Then I should think you know by now that swearing does not make you any more of a man.’

‘Okay. Okay. Sorry,’ Jack said quickly, and thought that next time he came home from college in Colorado, he would take his friend Howard Soloman up on his idea that they rent an apartment together in Hollywood. ‘It’ll be an ace move,’ Howard enthused. Jack had said no. Next time he would say yes.

Silver thought her baby brother was a handsome dolt. He certainly had the family looks, although all the talent had obviously gone in
her
direction. One meeting was enough. She did not bother to call again, and it was another four years before they came face to face at the funeral in New York of Blanche, who had died of an untimely cancer.

Jack often wondered why he went. When his mother divorced his father she had divorced him too. He would never forget George’s grim face when he sat him down one day and gave him the bad news. ‘Your mother won’t be coming home,’ he’d said. ‘It’s best this way.’

As a kid, Jack could remember crying himself to sleep for many months, trying to figure out what bad thing he had done to make his mother desert him so brutally. In his teens he had considered contacting her, making her tell him. But he always put the dreaded visit off, and when she died it was too late, and he knew he must at least attend her funeral.

Silver was playing drama queen to the hilt. She was dressed in black fox furs and a pillbox hat with a veil. She clung to Blanche’s husband, sympathy brimming from over-made-up eyes, while photographers bobbed and weaved around the graveside.

Silver failed to recognize her only brother. He tapped her on the arm to jog her memory. ‘Thank you for your good wishes,’ she murmured, and moved on to the next fan.

He could smell the liquor on her breath, and tried to understand. Three months later she married her former stepfather in Las Vegas vowing that this one was ‘forever’. Ten months later there was an acrimonious divorce which caused nasty headlines.