Stars (The Butterfly Trilogy) (43 page)

     It was a sultry Valley night, the air swimming with the perfume of orange blossoms. The women sat on chairs, the sofa, the floor, or stood along
the walls; they had all already weighed in, Philippa had handed out the diet to the newcomers, Hannah had distributed recipes and the latest inspirational message ("Hold your head high and let people know how special you are") and the atmosphere was charged with eagerness, anticipation, and visions of stunning successes.

     "We need a name," said Hannah's cousin. She had been with them from the start and had lost thirty-eight pounds and found herself a man. "We can't just go on calling ourselves 'the group.'"

     Others spoke up then, crowding the already hot and perfumed air with suggestions. It was a minute or two before Philippa realized that the doorbell was ringing.

     She went to answer it and she saw an overweight young woman standing there, with a baby on one hip and a huge canvas bag slung over her opposite shoulder. Her straw-colored hair formed a startled cloud around her head in the porch light, and the night breeze rustled a truly large tent dress of a blinding lemon yellow. Philippa thought she had come to join the group. But as she was about to invite the newcomer in, something made her stop and stare.

     The woman on the threshold also stared. Then she said, "Choppie?"

     "Frizz?"

     In unison: "My God!" And they hugged each other as well as they could considering the baby and the oversized bag.

     They laughed and cried and said things at once: "When—" "Where—" "I wrote—" "You stopped writing—"

     "How did you find me?" Philippa asked.

     Frizz said, "I still had your Hollywood address. So I went there and your landlady told me where you'd moved."

     "Frizz, I can't
believe
it! Come on in!"

     "No, you have company, and my husband is waiting—"

     "Husband!"

     "I got married. We have a baby. This is Nathan."

     Frizz offered the gurgling baby and Philippa took him, stunned by the flood of emotion that rushed over her, making her suddenly feel tender and wobbly and dumb. She had once calculated that between the time Mrs.
Chadwick told her she was pregnant and the miscarriage had been twelve hours.
I had a baby for twelve hours. I was a mother for half a day.

     "Are you just visiting California or what?" she said, afraid to hold Frizz's baby for too long.

     "We've moved here! Ron, my husband, was transferred by his company. We live in Tarzana, on Avenida Hacienda. Oh, Choppie, isn't it wonderful? My God, you look fantastic!"

     "And you. You're blond now! Look at your hair!"

     "I found a way to straighten it and get rid of that awful color I used to have."

     Philippa noticed that although Frizz had gained a lot of weight, she had a beautiful face. "You really do look good, Frizz," she said seriously.

     "I learned makeup in drama school. I'm so good at it that I can even make an ugly like myself look presentable!"

     "You were never ugly," Philippa said, noticing belatedly that, under her makeup, Frizz had a black eye. On her upper arm was a fading yellow-green bruise the size of a thumb. "What happened, Frizz?"

     "Oh me, I'm such a klutz! Fell down some steps!"

     Just then, a masculine voice from a battered Ford parked in the street called, "Hey, Fattie! Come on! I haven't got all night!"

     "Who is that?" Philippa said.

     Frizz forced a laugh, embarrassment on her face. "That's my husband, Ron. I was thin when I met him, but since the baby I've gained weight."

     Philippa looked at her old friend. Fattie, her husband had called her.

     "Oh well," Frizz said, reaching for the baby. "He's right. I am a cow."

     "Frizz, please come in."

     "No," Frizz said, but her face, when she looked past Philippa into the living room full of chatting, smiling women, took on an expression of someone wanting to be brought in out of the cold. "You have company," she said.

     "It's my diet group."

     "No kidding. A diet group? What a good idea. Does it work? I guess it does—look at you, beanpole."

     "Why don't you join us?"

     "I don't think so," Frizz said as she cast a quick, nervous glance toward the car at the curb.

     "We were just trying to come up with a name," Philippa said.

     "Hey, remember our old Starlets group? You were always good at names and at getting people together, getting them to talk. But you can't call this group Starlets, of course."

     "We do need something nice sounding," Philippa said, wishing Frizz would stay, wishing she would bring her old funny self and this little bundled baby into the group.

     "How about
Starlight
," Frizz said with a laugh, humming a few bars of "Stella by Starlight."

     "Hey, Fattie!" from the car. "I mean
now!
"

     "I have to go. Here's my phone number," Frizz said as she pressed a piece of paper into Philippa's hand. "Call me. But wait until after Tuesday. Okay?"

     "What happens Tuesday?"

     "That's when Ron goes out of town."

     "Oh, Frizz," Philippa said softly.

     "You know what? I'd rather you didn't call me that anymore. I mean, Frizz isn't me, is it?"

     "No," Philippa said. "I'm sorry." And then she wondered how they were going to work the names, since they had swapped names nearly six years ago. "Do you go by Christine Singleton now?"

     "No. I did for a little while, but I stopped going by Christine when I got married and needed my birth certificate. I sent home for a copy of it. I guess my first name is still legally Philippa—isn't that strange?—but all my friends back in New York call me by a nickname that I kind of like. It's a play on my married name, which is Charmer. They call me Charmie."

B
ECAUSE HE WAS A
VIP P
RISONER
—
HE HAD PRACTICALLY
been the President of the United States, for God's sake-Danny had been given a special cell all to himself and was allowed certain privileges, such as keeping his own clothes, including tie and belt. It was the tie and belt that he used now, tying them to the light fixture in the ceiling to create a makeshift noose. He got it good and tight around his neck, checked his watch for the precise time, and, when he heard footsteps coming down the hall, kicked the stool out from under him.

     He was astonished at how quickly the noose cut off his air supply and squeezed the vital veins in his neck. A moment after his feet swung in empty space, when he was hanging only by his neck, Danny panicked. Oh Jesus, he hadn't known it was going to be like this! Even though he knew help was just outside his cell door, and that Dr. Fortunati was going to cut him down, a deeper, more primitive part of him took over. He fought and struggled at the end of the noose, legs kicking, hands clawing frantically at the tourniquet around his neck.

     His breath was trapped in his lungs. No matter how hard he tried to suck air in, nothing came down his windpipe. My God, he thought. I'm killing myself! I'm actually going to die!

     Danny sat up in bed, awakened by his own strangled cry.

     Drenched with sweat, his sheets in a twisted jumble, he stared wildly around the room, trying to remember where he was,
who
he was.

     It looked like a hotel room—an expensive hotel room. But what hotel? In what city? He got up and went to part the drapes; brilliant daylight stabbed his eyes.

     
Where the hell am I?

     He tried to think. What day was it? What
year
was it?

     He quickly stepped back from the drapes, afraid of being seen, although not knowing why he should be afraid. Where the hell was Bonner? Why wasn't he here to take care of him? Danny made his way back to the bed and fumbled with the clock on the nightstand. It was noon.

     He realized with a shock that he was naked. He usually slept in shorts, sometimes a T-shirt, but never in the buff. His head pounded, as if he were hung over, except worse. And then he discovered that his penis was sore. How in hell had
that
happened?

     Danny buried his face in his hands and tried to force the memories to come. He pressed his palms into his eyes until they too hurt, as if through pain he would remember.

     And then suddenly, he did remember. It all came back to him. He was in a suite at the Century Plaza Hotel, and he was in L.A. because he was stalking Beverly Highland, who was going by the name of Philippa Roberts.

     And he had just had a bad dream. A very realistic bad dream. Jesus...He had never known such terror in his life.

     As he went to the wet bar in his suite and poured himself a Jack Daniel's, he recalled those last moments of icy terror, hanging by his belt, when he had realized his mistake: that the footsteps coming down the hall outside his cell hadn't belonged to Fortunati but to someone else and that their timing had somehow gotten screwed up. As Danny had danced at the end of his tie-belt noose and seen blackness rolling toward him from all sides, he had realized that he had moved too soon and that he was in fact about to kill himself.

     And then Fortunati had arrived and revived him with CPR, pronounced him dead, and gotten his body out of the county jail. And Danny had been free.

     A tremor shook him so badly that he spilled some of his drink. Reaching for a cocktail napkin, he saw the newspaper on the bar. He didn't remember buying it or reading it, and when he saw the date, he froze. It was tomorrow's date. Which meant that he had blacked out again, this time for almost twenty-four hours, of which he had no recollection.

     Danny tried to call back those hours, to reconstruct his movements, but everything remained a blank. His last memories were of seeing Philippa Roberts go into the hotel restaurant for lunch, and then he had driven to Beverly Hills to ask the large-breasted salesgirl out to dinner. But what happened after that? Had she accepted? Did they go somewhere? And did he screw her, as he had planned? Had he then killed her? But where? What had he done with her body? Had he made sure there were no witnesses?

     Danny had no idea. His mind was a blank. All because of that bumbled faked suicide. All because of Fortunati.

     Well, Fortunati had paid spectacularly for his mistake. The newspapers reported that Dr. Fortunati and his wife and four children must have died from smoke inhalation before being burned almost beyond recognition by the fire that had mysteriously broken out in their Holmby Hills mansion during the night, completely destroying the house and the garage containing Fortunati's vintage-car collection. But they hadn't died of smoke inhalation; they had been burned alive, all six of them, right down to Fortunati's six-month-old baby. They had been tied up and made to watch as Bonner went from room to room setting the house on fire. That was right after Danny and Bonner had had their fun with Mrs. Fortunati and the twelve-year-old daughter, of course.

     Bonner—Jesus. He suddenly remembered, Bonner was dead. But how?

     
I killed him. I killed my best friend.

     Danny started to cry wrenching sobs. He didn't want to be where he was, he wanted to go back, roll away the years like a worn carpet and find himself at the beginning again, before the wealth and power, before the tent preaching, before the skinny runaway, Rachel, who was now Philippa
Roberts—even before she came into his life. He wanted to be barefoot and little again, at an age before he knew his rags were a disgrace, when he hadn't known shame for his illiterate, groveling-like-a-dog father, when the whole world, the sun, and the stars were all encompassed within one beautiful woman, his mother, whom he had called his Texas Rose.

     "I'm sorry, Mama," he cried softly into his hands. "I didn't mean to let you down. I tried to be somebody. And I almost made it to the top. I almost had the power."

     Suddenly, Danny was remembering the day he had first learned about power. He and Bonner had been nineteen years old and living the high life in San Antonio; the two had gotten drunk with a friend and decided to rob the poor box of a local church. Actually, it had been the third kid's idea, and Danny and Bonner had gone along. On their way out of the church, the three nineteen-year-olds had paused to pee on the steps, and the police had caught them. While the other boy went free, Danny and Bonner had received sentences. They were sent to a work farm while their friend beat the rap because he was the son of the chief of police.

     Power. Danny had thought about power during those blistering days on the road gang, before he and Bonner managed to escape. That was what power did for you. You spoke and people danced. You lifted your finger and people moved. You controlled the strings, you called the shots. Power, real power. It was then, as he sweated under the unforgiving Texas sun and beneath the eye of one mean, ugly guard with a shotgun, that Danny made the decision that, someday, he was going to be the one with the power.