Stars (The Butterfly Trilogy) (44 page)

     It was shortly after that, while homely little Rachel was busy spreading her legs at Hazel's place to keep Danny in money, that he had come across the book that had turned his life around. He had it still. He went to his suitcase and pulled it out, an old, thumbed volume that he had practically memorized. The important parts were underlined:
The man who would be prince must be unencumbered by morals and ethics; he must be part lion and part fox. A man who strives after goodness in all that he does will come to ruin; therefore a prince who will survive must learn to be other than good. The only sure way to possess a conquered city is to destroy it.
In the margin Danny had written, "This goes for people too!"

     It was
The Prince
, by Machiavelli, and it was Danny's bible.

     Reading the old familiar words somehow brought peace to Danny; they reminded him of who he was, his purpose in life.

     To catch
her
and punish her like he'd never punished anyone in his life. What he had done to the Fortunatis, what he had done to the police chief's son, were church picnics compared to what he was going to do to Rachel/Beverly/Philippa.

     Invigorated and emboldened again, and no longer worried about what had happened to the large-breasted salesgirl he had clearly spent the night with, Danny went to the phone and asked room service to bring him up a stack of hotcakes with plenty of butter and syrup, scrambled eggs, country-style sausage, and a pot of coffee. Nothing gave him an appetite like Machiavelli!

     Then he called the front desk and asked to be connected to Philippa Roberts's room. He was told the line was busy.

     She was still here. She hadn't left for Palm Springs yet.

     Danny went to the bar and poured himself another drink. He laughed softly to himself. The terror of the night had subsided; he felt like his old son-of-a-bitch self again. He returned to the sliding-glass door that opened onto a balcony, and he looked out over Los Angeles, a kind of phony-looking city that might have been made up of movie props. Certainly not a place anyone could take seriously.

     Danny laughed again. So what if he couldn't remember the last twenty-four hours? It just made him one day closer to his encounter with Philippa Roberts.

San Fernando Valley, California, 1961

T
O MAKE A MAN NOTICE YOU
," H
ANNAH WROTE, "YOU HAVE
to be sexy, and being sexy means dressing right." She paused and looked through the window over her kitchen table to watch a few of the apartment house residents cavort in the pool. It was spring, the evening air as smooth as butter, and serious flirtations were under way as the singles who lived in the fifty-apartment complex gathered in the central courtyard with six-packs and portable radios. Hannah was trying to write her weekly fashion tip for Starlite, but she couldn't concentrate. It was springtime for her, too, and her lustful thoughts kept turning to Alan Scadudo.

     It had been nearly a year since she had quit her job at Halliwell and Katz and gotten a better one with McMasters and Sons; eleven months, to be exact, since she had seen him. She was amazed at how much she still missed him, how intrusive her fantasies about him continued to be. She
would be typing a business letter or cutting a dividend check and she would find herself picturing him making love to her, trying to imagine the feel of him inside her. Of course Hannah could only ever go as far as her imagination permitted, because although she was nearly twenty-three years old, she had yet to experience sexual intercourse with a man. She had no idea what it really felt like.

     As much as sex was on her mind these days, there was no one she could talk to about it. Certainly not her mother, who had come to terms with Hannah's thinness but who was now experiencing heart trouble; nor could Hannah talk to her zillion female cousins, not one of whom could keep a secret to save her life. She sometimes wondered if she could talk to Philippa, who also didn't have a boyfriend. But Philippa didn't seem at all concerned about men; they never talked about their sex lives.

     But there were some club members who did. In fact, very often that was all the Monday-night group wanted to talk about; she wondered if they were a particularly oversexed bunch. It was funny how that went, Hannah thought, how the characters of the Starlite groups varied, Monday being so man/sex oriented, Wednesday zeroing in on recipes, Friday night being particularly demanding of Charmie and her makeup demonstrations. And then there was the peculiar Thursday-night group, which was tiny because that was the night
The Untouchables
was on TV and all of female America couldn't be torn away from Robert Stack. Starlite had grown to the point that it had pushed out of its old Saturday-afternoon bounds and now consisted of eleven groups—one for each night of the week, three on Saturday, three on Sunday—with a total of 342 members. In just under a year.

     It was word of mouth that had caused the growth, of course. A cousin or a friend, or even a stranger, would look at a member and say, "How did you lose all that weight?" And they would hear all about the diet that was simple and fun to follow, a diet that allowed you to nibble all day long if you wanted, or that you could alter to suit your own cravings and life-style. There was also the weekly meeting away from husbands and kids, with women in your same boat, talking and laughing, or just getting a load off their chests, while you picked up a few fashion and cosmetic hints, as well as a weekly letter that contained a little pep talk to keep you going through the week. When
she heard all this, the cousin or friend or stranger would say, "How can I join?" and that was how it went.

     In fact, there was a waiting list now, and Philippa and Hannah and Charmie—if Ron was out of town—were going to have to sit down and try to figure out where to go from here. Right now, Hannah took four groups, Philippa took four, and Charmie took three. But when Ron was in town, Hannah and Philippa had to divide up Charmie's groups. All of which was very demanding because there was also the time required to write the fashion tip and Philippa's letter, each calling for some research to keep the news updated and fresh, while at the same time they had to maintain their own full-time jobs at Fox's and McMasters and Sons. Which left little time for a personal life, such as men and sex.

     Or Alan Scadudo.

     Hannah tried to type another sentence, but it was no use. She hadn't seen him in a year, but her interest in him hadn't cooled one degree. The problem was, since she no longer worked at Halliwell and Katz, how was she going to arrange to run into him? She just had to see him...

     Realizing how late is was—she and Philippa and Charmie were to meet an hour before the Saturday-night group—Hannah forced herself to address the issue of this week's fashion tip on "How to Catch a Man's Eye," reminding herself once again of her goal: to attend Greer Art Academy in Glendale.

     Although Greer had given her scholarship and placement to someone else, Hannah maintained her determination to pursue a career in fashion design. And now that she had been working at an excellent-paying job for over a year, putting away a healthy part of her monthly check, she would soon be able to afford the entire tuition on her own. But there would be sacrifices. Once she started attending college she would have to curtail her involvement with Starlite, maybe even bow out altogether for a while. And if she wasn't going to have time for Starlite, how was she going to squeeze in a love life as well?

     No, she told herself as she typed vigorously, pounding some sense into those little keys. Forget Alan Scadudo. You don't need him. Or his perfect rear end.

     "Where
is
Charmie?" Philippa said, going to the door and looking out for the fifth time in the past hour. "She's late and she's supposed to be bringing the pamphlets."

     She and Hannah were in the recreation room of their apartment complex, setting up chairs, putting out coffee and tea and diet soft drinks for the Saturday-night meeting.

     "I guess I shouldn't have given this assignment to her," Philippa said as she set out copies of her latest inspirational message—"Believe in yourself and you can achieve anything"—which she had written in her little cloth-bound book years ago. She and Hannah both knew how unreliable Charmie could be.

     It wasn't her fault, of course; it had something to do with her husband, although neither Philippa nor Hannah knew exactly what. Frizz, who insisted upon being called Charmie, couldn't be relied upon because she never knew when Ron was going to be out of town. He was a distributor for an auto parts company, and he never knew from month to month what territory he was going to be assigned to. The orders would come in and his boss would call and Ron would pack a bag and go to San Diego, or Bakersfield, or even as far north as Portland, Oregon, and stay away for days, sometimes weeks at a time. Charmie would show up then at every meeting, lively and vivacious, contributing her flair for style and her knowledge of cosmetics, which she had gained during her two years studying theater in New York. "Project confidence," she would tell the insecure ladies, "and you will
be
confident!" She would hold makeup sessions, bringing her own very large personal supply of cosmetics, and give demonstrations on "how to slim down those baby cheeks and bring out those model's cheekbones." When she was there, Charmie was a hit. But she could only be there when Ron was out of town, because he hated the diet club; for some reason known only to himself, he did not want his wife to be a part of it.

     Which was strange, Philippa and Hannah thought, considering that every chance he got, Ron Charmer would put his wife down in front of others, taking food out of her hand and saying, "You're too fat," or calling her "Chubs" and "Fattie" in public. Sometimes, Charmie had once confessed, he even went so far as to tell her that she disgusted him, she was so
fat. But whenever she tried to go on a diet, he would get furious and make her stop.

     On this luscious perfumey evening that just cried out for romance and sex, with sounds of laughter and splashing coming from the nearby pool and the heady sizzle of steaks on a barbecue driving them out of their minds, Philippa had entrusted her old friend with the responsibility of picking up the pamphlets they had gotten printed. Now it looked as if Charmie wasn't going to make it. Again.

     Philippa had become so concerned that she had attempted to probe Charmie on the issue. That was six months ago, when Charmie had shown up at a meeting with her left arm in a cast, saying something about tripping over a curb: "Silly klutzy me." It had made Philippa think of other occasions, when Charmie would show up all of a sudden after several days' absence with a bandage on her forehead, confessing, "I tripped over a rug," or with an Ace wrap around her ankle: "Twisted it in the yard." But when Philippa had tried to ask her about it, Charmie had turned a face full of hard pride toward her, as if to say, "Be my friend and don't make me tell you." Philippa hadn't pressed.

     On this warm night, Charmie eventually arrived in time for the meeting, breezing in with a purple muumuu billowing about her to hide the weight she hadn't lost since becoming part of the group. And as usual, despite being flustered, with her butterscotch-colored hair flying out of a purple scarf, Charmie's makeup was perfect. It was a curious combination: the beautiful face and the out of proportion body. Charmie had taught Philippa and Hannah how to do makeup the same way, but they could never quite achieve the same effect. There was magic in Charmie's fingers when it came to shading cheeks and highlighting the forehead, a subtle cosmetic sculpting that had the stunning effect of actually slimming the face.

     "Sorry I'm late!" she declared as she swept into the empty rec room. "Jesus, but traffic was a bitch! Here are the pamphlets, Philippa, and oh, they are marvelous. Hi, Hannah!"

     They rushed forward to relieve her of the heavy car tons from the printer. "Where's the baby?" Philippa said. Charmie sometimes brought Nathan to the meetings, where the two-year-old got fussed over by his many "aunties."

     "He's with the sitter tonight," she said. "He was fussing. Oh Philippa, I've come up with the
greatest
idea! Listen to this: I'm going to make drawings of face types, you know, round faces, oval faces, like that. And then I'll hand them out and when I do makeup demonstrations the members can color them in according to their own needs. Isn't that a great idea?"

     "I love it," Hannah said. "Can you do a practice demo on me? My face is so darned square."

     "Oh sure, you with your cheekbones to die for. Fifty million women should be so lucky!" Charmie drew a thick folder from her oversized bag and dropped it onto the card table where the other handout sheets had been placed. "This week's cosmetic tip," she said. "I barely got it written, what with the baby having a fever and fussing so."

     "But he is all right now?" Philippa asked, reading what Charmie had typed: "Today's Cosmetic Tip: If you use a face powder, use the loose, not the pressed kind, which contains wax (that's how they're pressed) and can build up on your face and look too thick."