Stars (The Butterfly Trilogy) (22 page)

     "How did
Challenge Girl
go?" he asked innocently, as if he hadn't already heard. "I understand there were production problems."

     That disaster, she thought. Carole had been entirely wrong for the part. The movie would play only in the Midwest and then drift to the cable channels for a quiet death.

     "I hear Syd Stern has something new that's shaking everybody up," Larry said. "A new character, similar to Indiana Jones, but female. They're saying it's going to be big for whoever lands it."

     Andrea said, "I heard that Syd has already found someone but he isn't saying who."

     Carole didn't really care. Syd Stern's new antiheroine was not a part she could play. But Marion Star, now
that
was a part for her.

     She sighed, toyed with the bowl of nuts, and said, "I do wish Sanford could have come with me. This place is so romantic."

     Larry laughed. "Then why would you want your husband here?"

     Carole gave him a frosty look. "It is possible to be married and still be in love."

     "You'll never convince me," he said. "So why didn't Sanford come with you?"

     "He's just so busy these days, what with this latest mania to tear down beautiful old homes in Beverly Hills and replace them with fifty-thousand-square-foot monstrosities. I'm certainly glad that whoever bought this lovely old mansion decided to keep it the way it was."

     Larry looked around the lounge, briefly wondering if the mysterious Beverly Burgess was somewhere in the crowd. Then he returned his attention to Carole. "So what are you going to do here all by yourself?"

     She conjured up the look of an aloof, unattainable woman. "I'm here to rest and keep to myself. If I can't have Sanford, I don't want anyone."

     And the spark of interest in Larry's eyes glittered a notch more brightly.

     Andrea addressed herself to the margarita she had been nursing. She had watched this scene played hundreds of times: Larry's seduction of the uninterested female. But Carole Page was at least a cut above his usual bimbos; a large cut above, in fact. Andrea admired Carole's acting. She had heard
Challenge Girl
was a bomb, and she wondered if Carole was here because of depression.

     A man came up to the table then, tall with dark hair silvering at the temples and wearing an expensively tailored suit. "Pardon me, Mr. Wolfe." he said. "I'm Simon Jung, the general manager of Star's. I was wondering if you would like to meet with Miss Burgess now."

     Larry experienced an instant of indecision: to stay here and delve into Carole Page or meet the elusive Beverly Burgess. A cliché popped into his mind, the one about the bird in the bush. So he turned to Andrea and said, "Why don't you go with Mr. Jung and get things started while I stay here and keep Carole company?"

     Paintings of nude men and women covered the walls in an endless variety of sexual embraces—kissing, fondling, making love. Andrea was spellbound.

     As she looked around, taking in the amazing bathtub where Ramsey had been killed—it was made of hand-cut lead crystal, completely transparent and large enough to hold several people—Simon Jung was saying,
"It really isn't obscene, but rather beautiful, in an erotic sort of way. The moral atmosphere of the thirties caused the press to label this room in such a way."

     Andrea tried to trace his accent. French? He was incredibly polished; if he were an actor she would cast him in the role of a nobleman or a distinguished scientist. He could step right into parts played by Christopher Lee.

     They finally left the bathroom—Andrea had somehow expected to see bloodstains in the tub—and walked down a long hall lined with suits of armor. "Mr. Jung," she said, "it has been rumored that something was done to Ramsey's body after he was dead. Was he mutilated in some way?"

     "He was castrated," Jung said.

     They arrived at an office where a gigantic model of Star's stood on display, and Andrea was introduced to Beverly Burgess, who, to Andrea's surprise, wore large sunglasses. "An eye condition," she explained. From what Andrea could see of her, Beverly was a good-looking woman, with brunette hair done in a stylish shag. As she gave Andrea the diary, an old leather-bound book, she said, "We came across it when we were doing some remodeling in the north wing."

     Andrea hefted the book in her hands, amazed to think that in here she might find the mystery to that long-unsolved murder. "I would think the police would be interested in this."

     "The case was closed long ago," Beverly said. "They decided that Marion had killed Ramsey and then perished somewhere in these mountains."

     Andrea opened the diary to the first page, and read the thin, spidery handwriting: "I guess you'd say I lost my virginity twice. Or three times. Or four, or five, it depends. Both men had me that night; they took turns with me. It was the son I was in love with, but his father wanted me also. I can't say which of them first took my virginity. They got me drunk, undressed me, and kept me in the bedroom until they were satisfied, by which time I would say that I had lost my virginity several times over. I never saw either of them again. I was fourteen years old."

     Andrea closed the book.

     Seeing the look on her face, Beverly said, "It's rather frank. And brutal in some places."

     "So I see," Andrea said thoughtfully. "Well, thank you, Miss Burgess. I won't keep you. And Mr. Wolfe is anxious to read this and get started on the screenplay." Which was a lie. Larry had no intention of reading the diary, nor of writing the script. But no one knew that. Not a soul in the world knew that the great Larry Wolfe was a fake, or that he and his "assistant" had been acting out a charade for seventeen years. How innocent Andrea had been back then, when she had offered to read his screenplay for the contest...

     She had arranged to meet Larry at the student union on the UCLA campus. She had his screenplay with her. It was awful. It was worse than awful, it stunk. And she had to think of a gentle way of breaking it to him.

     She couldn't be honest with him, she couldn't just tell him to give up writing, that he didn't have what it took, because Andrea had been brought up by the rules and ideals of an older era, highest among which was that a girl always protected a boy's ego. "Praise him," her elderly mother had said. "Make him feel like a king. Always defer to his judgment, even if you don't agree with it. Men have such delicate egos, it's up to us women to see that they always feel good about themselves. Look at your father," who had been sixty-nine years old back then. "I haven't always agreed with him, and some of his habits irritate me, but I keep my mouth shut. That's my place, and that will be your place, too, Andrea, when the time comes."

     Which was why, as she had watched Larry approach her from across the busy cafeteria, pausing here and there to exchange words with friends even though he knew she was waiting for him, Andrea had gone over and over in her mind delicate ways in which to tell him his screenplay was a disaster.

     "Hi, Alice," he had said, joining her at last. "So, what did you think of it?" He leaned forward so that his biceps bulged. When he looked at her, two invisible rays came out of his green eyes and zapped the logic center of her brain.

     "Well," she said, removing the script from the manila envelope with shaking hands.

     "Hey," he said with a smile. "Take it easy." And he placed his hand over hers.

     Andrea flew around the universe a few times and then came back down to earth.

     "So what did you think of it?" he asked.

     She had planned to say, "It's a bit too masculine for my tastes; I don't understand war stories." Making the faults of the screenplay sound really like
her
faults, the way her mother had taught her. But instead she heard herself say, "It has promise."

     "Great! Tell me what to do to make it better."

     What to do? Burn it. But when she looked into his smile, realizing that if she told him the truth she'd never see him again, she said, "I think maybe what you could do is alter the main character a little. He comes across too...harshly. He's rather cruel to women. The opening is slow, you should start with some sort of action since it
is
an action film. And then..." The list was endless. "And, um, while the locale is exotic, I don't think Iceland is a likely setting for a couple of Vietnam vets to go off their heads. Manhattan on a crowded afternoon would create more tension."

     "Hmm," he said with an attractive frown. "It sounds like a lot of work. And I just don't have the time, what with my schedule at the restaurant and all..." He tilted his head and smiled. "Do you think maybe you could see your way to helping me out a little on this? I'd be awfully grateful."

     "All right," she said, while another part of her brain was saying, Are you out of your mind? And then suddenly a very strange and unexpected thought popped into her head: she was twenty-five years old and still a virgin.

     What exactly that had to do with Larry Wolfe and his screenplay she had no idea, but she suddenly realized that she just
had
to help him, if for no other reason than just to see him again. When she said, "Okay, I'll help you," Larry had said, "Great! I tell you what, how about if I just leave the script with you and you do what you can with it? Get it to me in time for the next class meeting, and I'll take you out for a bite to eat at Ship's. How's that?"

     Andrea had said yes, selling her soul for a hamburger.

     When she returned to the cocktail lounge, she found Larry still trying to overwhelm Carole Page with his charm. Andrea stood there holding Marion Star's diary, thinking how much she had loved him back when they
were students at UCLA, and how she had loved him in the years since. But it wasn't because of those days, or those years, that she was now plotting his downfall.

     It was because of something that had happened so recently that it still seemed to burn into her heart, a brand-new wound. It was for that that Larry Wolfe was going to pay.

St. Bridget's Convent School, 1954

T
HE YOUNG GENTLEMAN WAS ABOUT TWO AND TWENTY, TALL
and well limbed. His body was finely formed and of a most vigorous make, square-shouldered, and broad-chested; a nose inclining to the Roman, eyes large, black and sparkling. His hair fell no lower than his neck, in short easy curls; and he had a few sprigs that garnished his chest in a style of strength and manliness. Then his grand movement, which seemed to rise out of a thicket of curling hair—'"

     "His what?" one of the girls said.

     "Shhh," said the others.

     "Go on, Dee Dee," Christine said. "Keep reading."

     "'He had immediately, on stripping off his shirt, gently pushed her down on the couch, which stood conveniently to break her willing fall. Her skirt was up over her face, her thighs were spread out to their utmost extension, and between them the red-centered cleft of flesh—'"

     The girls gasped.

     "'The young gentleman changed her posture from lying breadth- to length-wise on the couch; but her thighs were still spread, and the mark lay fair for him, who, now kneeling between them, displayed to us a side view of that fierce erect machine of his.'"

     "Good heavens!" blurted Frizz.

     "Shhh," hissed the others.

     Dee Dee's voice continued quietly as her audience, their faces cast in the glow of flickering candlelight, listened with held breath. "'He looked upon his weapon himself with some pleasure, and guiding it with his hand to the inviting slit, with ease sheathed it up to the hilt, at which Polly gave a cry. "Oh! Oh! I can't bear it. It is too much! I die!" were Polly's expressions of ecstasy.'"

     "Wait!" someone whispered suddenly. "I thought I heard something."

     Dee Dee quickly hid the book under a pillow while one of the girls near the door cracked it open a few inches and peered out into the dark hallway. It was nearly midnight; everyone at St. Bridget's was asleep except for the members of the secret Starlets club, who had met in Christine's room for a reading of a highly erotic book called
Fanny Hill.
Dee Dee had smuggled it in, and she read segments at each meeting.

     "My mistake," the girl at the door said, closing it. "The coast is clear."

     They all sighed with relief. Everyone knew that punishment would be severe if the nuns should find out about the secret club. On the nights that it met, the girls pretended to go to sleep, and then they waited until the light went out under Sister Gabriel's door, at which point they gathered in Christine's room for an hour or two of forbidden pleasure.

     "Read some more, Dee Dee," a girl named Lanie Freeman said. Lanie's nickname was Mouse, because she was the smallest of the group and had tiny, mouselike features. "Read that part again where she twists her legs around his naked loins."

     The others giggled.

     "I think that's enough for tonight. The gentleman finally got Polly. We'll see who he gets next week."