Stars (The Butterfly Trilogy) (54 page)

     And why not? he thought now as he pumped away on the stair-climber, feeling his buttocks and calves tighten and power surge through his body. Just as he had once thought any schmuck could write a screenplay, the same seemed to be true of producing. Once again, poor Andrea had come through, and she didn't even know it. But Larry's conscience wasn't troubled. He figured that the world was divided into two camps, the givers and the takers. Andrea was definitely a giver, which in her case was the same thing as a loser.

     As the sweat began to pour off his body and he felt his heart start to pound, Larry dismissed all thoughts of Yamato and Marion Star. His body was calling to him now with visions of Carole Page. What he was most in the mood for now was sex. With one specific woman. And he had to figure out how he was going to get her.

     Outside, on the dimly lit path that was becoming littered with snow, Andrea picked her way carefully to the bungalow. She entered on her own side, coming in through the bedroom. Putting her things down and shrugging out of her coat, she went into the living room, where a fire roared in the flagstone fireplace. She listened for Larry and recognized the familiar sound of a workout on the stair-climber. She walked quietly to the open door and watched him unobserved.

     This wasn't the first time she had seen his body. Many times they worked on the beach in Malibu, with Larry swimming and sunbathing while Andrea, all wrapped up, typed away on a manual machine. And she was reminded again of how stupidly in love with him she had been, so blinded by lust.

     She was momentarily taken back to a magical summer eleven years ago, when she and Larry had been on location in New Mexico for the shooting of their latest screenplay. The director, Andrea recalled, had been very fussy
and high-strung, demanding last-minute rewrites, so that Andrea had spent most of her time in a steaming trailer, perspiring over a typewriter. It would have been a dismal memory if it hadn't been for the director's assistant, a young man with a prematurely receding hairline, thickly lensed glasses, and a nonstop sense of humor. Santa Fe's answer to Woody Allen. His name was Chad McCormick.

     As Andrea remembered it, Larry had gotten involved with one of the extras, a starlet who had spoken three lines badly; the two had spent the whole time taking junkets to Chaca Canyon, Albuquerque, and even down to Yuma, buying Indian pottery, eating chili and tacos, and making love while Andrea toughed out the script changes. She had been about to call it quits when Chad McCormick had come knocking at her door.

     Chad had not been Hollywood, he had not even been "industry," which impressed Andrea. To be an aspiring director in a shark-infested town meant one had to join the sharks. But Chad was a gentle man, soft-spoken, considerate, and most amazing of all, honest. After their first margarita together in the cantina, they spent many nights under the southwestern moon, talking about whatever came into their heads. The first time Chad kissed her, when Andrea was thirty-one years old, she had thought the entire desert had thundered with the sound of skyrockets.

     It had also been the first time in six years that she might have asked, Larry who?

     And one night, after a lot of kissing but nothing more, Chad confessed that he loved her and that he wanted to marry her.

     When shooting was done, Andrea and Chad returned to Los Angeles by way of the Grand Canyon, where they spent five nights in the Yavapai Lodge, making love beneath Indian blankets, Andrea not confessing to Chad that he was in fact taking her virginity. She recalled floating home from there, her head swimming with such girlish games as thinking of how her new name was going to sound—Andrea McCormick—and what they were going to name their children. But the dream was squashed when she came home to a moody, silent Larry who sulked for a week before telling her what was wrong.

     "You're breaking up our team," he had said.

     And although Andrea had reassured him that they would still work together after she and Chad were married, Larry's petulance deepened until she heard the unspoken ultimatum: get married and we're quits.

     Unfortunately, her addiction to Larry had been greater than her need for Chad. They parted eventually, and Larry was restored to his cheerful self.

     But he wasn't going to be cheerful for much longer, she thought now, turning away from the Michaelangelo David on the stair-climber. Not after what he did to her eight months ago.

     It had happened the night of the Academy Awards. Larry had been nominated for Best Original Screenplay; they were up against some pretty stiff competition, but they thought they stood a good chance of winning. Somewhere during their seventeen years together, Andrea had sacrificed her identity because of blind Larry worship. His was the only name that went onto screen credits, so that the Oscar nomination was solely for Larry Wolfe. But Andrea didn't mind; his win was her win. Besides, he said he was going to tell the world in his acceptance speech how he couldn't have done it without Andrea Bachman. She had fantasized that he might even call her up to join him on the stage. Had anyone ever done that at the Oscars, she wondered, as they had sat in their second-row seats at the Shrine Auditorium, right behind Kevin Costner and Jeremy Irons. Andrea had boldly reached for Larry's hand and given it a squeeze. Their seventeen-year road had brought them to this place. If they won...If they won...

     And Larry won. His name was read out and the audience clapped and the theme from the winning movie was played as he went up on the stage to accept the Oscar. And no one was clapping harder than Andrea; she even had tears in her eyes. And then he gave his acceptance speech.

     And thanked everyone in the world.

     Except her.

     Andrea had sat there stunned. Larry had even thanked the barber who cut his hair—and the audience had laughed at that—then he had held his statuette high and marched off triumphant with the curvaceous young star who had given him the award.

     And Andrea had sat there.

     He had not mentioned her.

     
He had not even mentioned her.

     And that was the moment her eyes had suddenly been opened. It was also the moment when she realized she was no longer in love with Larry Wolfe. Nor had been, really, for some time.

     And that was when she had begun to form a plan to get revenge.

     In a big way.

San Fernando Valley, California, 1966

C
HARMIE HAD ONLY GONE TWENTY FEET INTO THE FREEZING
arctic of Cut-Cost Drugstore when she saw him. A man with a cart full of Laura Scudder's Potato Chips, party-size bags. He must have had a dozen of them, and a six-pack of diet Tab. But it wasn't his nutritional eccentricity that got her attention, it was the man himself. He was so...
man.

     She must have been staring because he gave her an embarrassed smile and said, "For my kid's birthday party," pointing to the monster bags of chips.

     Charmie murmured, "Congratulations," as he walked by, and in less than a second a whole bunch of pleasant observations registered: that he was tall, broad, large, strong, and stunningly male. And young, maybe her own age, twenty-nine or so. Like an idiot she stood watching him push the cart toward the checkout, vaguely trying to calculate how many kids it took to eat ten pounds of potato chips, and then she caught herself, reminding
herself that, yes, he was an eyeful, but he clearly had a family, and
she
was a married woman.
And
pregnant.

     Which reminded her of her mission here at Cut-Cost, where the air-conditioning was kept at the approximate temperature necessary to freeze mercury. As she made her way through Feminine Hygiene and Foot Care, Charmie hoped there wasn't going to be a wait at the pharmacy; maybe if she got her pills and paid in a hurry, she could get back in time to catch one last glimpse of Mr. Hunk before he walked out of her life forever.

     She was in luck. The only pharmacy customers were two adolescent boys who were taking turns pushing each other toward the window whispering, "
I
ain't gonna buy 'em,
you
buy 'em." Charmie got her prescription filled and had to resist the impulse, when paying for it, to say, "And a packet of condoms for my friends here."

     When she left the store, summer's blast furnace of heat hit her like a wall. She felt her body suddenly expand with the heat, the way it had suddenly contracted with the cold when she had gone into the drugstore. She paused to dig around for her sunglasses in the oversize purse she carried.

     The bag, made of canvas, had been custom-made to match her tailored caftan. No more muumuus for Charmie; she now wore fashions that came from Hannah's nimble needle. After all, she was something of an executive these days, making top dollar as Starlite's cosmetics consultant; it was important that she dress the part. The caftan was made of imported Egyptian cotton dyed a luscious boysenberry, with honey-colored trim around the square neck and voluminous sleeves. The matching scarf that bound up her flyaway blond hair was meant to suggest the currently popular gypsy look, and the long earrings made of gold beads and some sort of giant seedpods threw in an added ethnic flair, so that the resulting look was a marriage between Africa and Carnaby Street. The outfit could have commanded a fat price tag in one of L.A.'s better stores, but Hannah limited her creativity to clothing friends and relatives. She didn't have enough time, she told everyone, to try to do serious fashion design; her three babies, and another on the way, saw to that.

     As Charmie slipped the large sunglasses onto her nose, she gazed across the street at the new Starlite offices. The company was growing so rapidly
that this was the fourth move in three years. Already, after just a few months in the building that had been designed, for some mysterious reason, to look like a Swiss chalet, Philippa was saying they were crowded again.

     Charmie had to fight the temptation to go across and tell her friends the good news—pregnant, after seven years! It was such a heavenly surprise! But she couldn't risk it. Although Charmie had been careful to work at Star-lite only when Ron was gone on trips farther away than Santa Barbara, and never worked the day after he left or the day before he was scheduled to return, still, the risk was always there. She had managed to keep the peace in her marriage so far, with only a few flare-ups now and then, like the time he was sober long enough to notice all the expensive clothes in her closet and he had beaten her up until she had confessed that she had bought them at a warehouse fire sale for real cheap and that it wouldn't happen again. Ron had thrown the clothes out and Charmie had limped for a month, but she was thankful that he hadn't found the hidden bank book for the secret account into which she deposited all of her earnings from Starlite. That money was for little Nathan, for college. However, despite such incidents, there had been enough harmony between them that they had actually spent some nice times together at the beach, at Disneyland, and up in the mountains, like a normal family. And also, of course, to get a new baby started. So, despite the good news she was practically bursting with, Charmie decided to wait just another few days, at which time Ron would be heading off to Fresno, where he would be for the next three weeks.

     As she searched the parking lot, trying to remember where she had parked her car, Charmie wondered if Philippa had had any luck in finding a new private investigator. In the three years she had been searching for her real parents, Philippa had had bad luck with detectives. "Defectives," Charmie called them, men who all seemed to have dropped out of the same mold. They took her money, made a lot of promises, and in the end said, "No can do," and kept the money. Charmie wondered if they had even tried to find Philippa's family. It
was
a challenging case, she knew; Philippa had so little information to go on: born in Hollywood, 1938. Exact location, unknown. Mother's name, also unknown. Still, for the money she had paid out, something should have cropped up. But the last time Charmie and Philippa
had talked, a month ago, Philippa had said she was going to dismiss the latest loser and look for someone new. Charmie wondered if she had found one, but she couldn't risk even a phone call to Philippa. As far as Ron knew, his wife hadn't had any communications with Starlite or her old friends in three years.

     As she walked across the baking asphalt, feeling her leather sandals stick a little with each step, Charmie did not at first see the man sitting in the blue Mustang convertible, top down, his forehead beaded with sweat as he devoured potato chips. She was only three parked cars away when she realized that it was
him
, from the drugstore; she smiled, and he smiled back, shamefaced, and then he said something that she didn't catch.

     "I beg your pardon?" she said, coming up to him and seeing that the passenger seat of the Mustang was packed with the monster potato chip bags. "I didn't hear what you said."