Stars (The Butterfly Trilogy) (56 page)

     Rotating her shoulders to get the stiffness and tension out of them, she went out onto the patio where the setting sun spilled ribbons of red, orange, and yellow across her seldom-used swimming pool, and she laughed softly to herself. She decided that if she were to sum up her life in just two words,
she would say, Family and fat. When, she wondered wearily, had she not been motivated by one or the other?

     She heard the phone ringing inside the house and went in to answer it. It was Hannah saying that Charmie was in the hospital, in bad shape. No, Hannah didn't know what had happened. Mrs. Muncie, Charmie's babysitter, had come to the house and found Charmie beaten up, actually in serious condition. Ron was nowhere to be found.

     A few minutes later, as Philippa nosed her new Lincoln through the thick evening traffic on Van Nuys Boulevard, she pieced together what must have happened. First, Charmie showing up when they weren't expecting her, and then, standing at the window and suddenly announcing that she had to leave, rushing out in a fluster.

     Philippa parked outside the hospital, hurried inside, and was directed to Charmie's room. To her surprise, it was a private room, which Philippa knew the insurance did not cover. And she thought, Ron must already be feeling guilty for what he had done.

     "God, Frizz," she said, sitting down at the bedside and trying not to cry when she saw the IVs, the bandages. "You'll do anything for attention, won't you? And here I've been planning this outrageous bash for your thirtieth birthday, complete with dancing boys and everything. Remember Jamie, the cute parking lot attendant at Monty's Steak House? He's going to pop out of a cake. You've got to be in good shape for that—" Her voice broke.

     "Did they tell you?" Charmie whispered through swollen lips. "I lost the baby."

     Philippa stared at her. "Baby?"

     "I...was saving it as a surprise. I was pregnant...Philippa, I feel like I'm dying..."

     Philippa leaned close and pressed her hand on her friend's arm. "You won't die. Everything's going to be all right, you'll see. You'll get through this, you have to. We need you, Charmie. Starlite needs you. The members love you, you know that. When you give your makeup demonstrations—shit."

     Charmie's eyes shifted to Philippa and her cheeks seemed to move. It looked like an effort to smile, but it came out as a grimace. "I can't believe you...you said the'S' word."

     "Don't let us down, Charmie. Please. Don't let
yourself
down."

     As Charmie's eyes rested on Philippa's face, they went flat, emotionless.

     "You know what low self-esteem can do to people," Philippa said quietly. "I suffered from it myself once, remember? And do you remember poor little Mouse, who thought she was so homely—"

     Charmie raised a weak hand to silence her.

     "Yes, okay, you remember Mouse. And I'm lecturing you again, giving you my cheery Pollyanna pep talk. But I'm torn up inside, Charmie. I don't know how to help you, how to reach you. Listen, you mustn't dwell on the baby you lost; you have to think about the baby you
have.
Nathan, he's seven. He knows what's going on. I know what you're thinking, that I don't know what it's like. But I want to tell you something that I've never told anyone. I had a baby once, Frizz, in Hollywood. I lost it when I had a miscarriage. You once said to me that I don't know what it's like to love a man. But I do."

     Charmie's eyes remained on Philippa's face, shuttered, hiding whatever was going on behind them, but she listened.

     Philippa spoke haltingly at first about Rhys, speaking his name for the first time in eight years. Her story flowed a little more easily after a while, until Rhys took form and shape in that hospital room, and she could see him standing there, all handsome and brooding and dark, smiling ironically at her as if to say, I don't mind, go ahead and use me as a bad example.

     "He thought so little of himself that he ended his life. And that's what you're doing, Charmie. You're slowly killing yourself. One of these days, Ron will do it for you."

     Charmie just stared at her, saying nothing.

     "Listen to me, okay? Just this once. And don't be Charmie listening. Be Frizz. Let's dream together the way we once did. Let's make plans for the future. Starlite can be so fabulous, you know that. You also know how much Starlite needs you. Frizz, you've got ideas, you've got energy. Just think what we could accomplish if you joined us full-time. Remember your ambition to be in the theater? Well, Starlite is your theater. I've seen the way you perform for the members. Get well and come and join us for real, Frizz."

     Charmie stirred beneath the white sheets. Pain rippled across her face. She opened her mouth and Philippa saw in shock that two teeth were missing.

     "Remember?" Philippa said. "When you got into trouble for goofing off in Sister Immaculate's class?"

     But Charmie didn't smile. Her cheeks didn't even quiver.

     "I'm going to let you sleep now." Philippa bent and kissed Charmie on the forehead. "I'll be back tomorrow."

     As she rose from the bed she heard a whisper.

     "What? What did you say?"

     "Don't come."

     "Charmie, I'm not going to let you drive me away this time."

     "Please...if you love me..." She drew in a painful breath. "Let me rest. Let me heal. I need...to be alone. Don't visit me here. And don't let Hannah come..."

     "I won't leave you."

     "Yes...you will because I'm asking you to. I have to...think..." Charmie's hand moved across the blanket and found Philippa's. She gave it a feeble squeeze, popping up the vein where the IV needle went in. "Please," she whispered. "Let me do this my way."

     A distant voice said, "Visiting hours are over in ten minutes." Charmie opened her eyes and looked around. Light from a full moon was slanting through the Venetian blinds of her hospital room with the brightness of morning. Her mind was foggy. She wasn't sure how long she'd been there, or how many days ago it was that Philippa had visited. When she lifted her head and looked around she saw that the room was filled with flowers and stuffed animals from her friends at Starlite. She had one sharp memory, of Ron visiting, kneeling beside her bed and sobbing, begging her to forgive him. And of herself stroking his head and saying, "Shhh," as though he were the one who needed consoling.

     Charmie searched inside her body to see if the wounds had healed. She felt no pain, only deadness, as if her own life had slipped out with the unborn baby—a double miscarriage.

     She thought of poor little Nathan, seven years old. He had been taken to Hannah's after Mrs. Muncie found...

     Charmie closed her eyes. What Ron had done to her this time.

     She started to cry softly. Nothing had changed after all. The evil was still in him. And this time the little boy had witnessed it; poor little Nathan, screaming the whole time Ron was doing what he did to her.

     Finally her mind began to clear. She remembered that her baby was safe with Hannah now because Ron had had to go on the trip to Fresno. Charmie vowed that Nathan was never going to go back to that house on Avenida Hacienda. And neither was she.

     Weak, but with IVs no longer in her veins, she got out of bed and laboriously got dressed. As she kept alert for sounds outside her door, carefully applying some makeup, another memory flashed in her mind: Ivan Hendricks, the man whom she had encountered at Cut-Cost— how many days ago? Had Philippa told her he was working on the case? Charmie couldn't remember. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered anymore.

     Peering out into the hall and seeing that the nurses at the station were involved with visitors, Charmie picked up one of the vases of flowers someone had sent her, slung her purse over her arm, and walked down the hall as brashly and confidently as she could, despite her weakness, as if she were a visitor on her way to see a patient.

     Valley Memorial was a busy place, being so near the freeway, where lots of accidents brought customers. There were a couple of taxicabs parked in the great circular drive out front.

     When she got in and told the driver her destination, he gave her a puzzled look. "You sure? Okay, lady," he said with a shrug.

     As the cab sped down Sunset Boulevard, with the lights of Hollywood flashing by, she thought, No, she was never going back to Ron, back to that dingy house. It was over. Everything was over.

     The cab eventually followed a winding mountain road, passing a few cars on the way. "You sure about this, lady?" the cabbie said again, giving his passenger a dubious look in the rearview mirror. Sure, he'd brought people here before, mostly tourists, but never anyone from a hospital.

     "I'm sure," she said.

     And finally they were there. She saw the domed buildings up ahead, the greenish rooftops illuminated by electric lighting and also by the light of the full moon. The parking lot to the Griffith Park Observatory was full; everyone
was here to see the latest show in the planetarium,
Next Stop: Mars.
A chill wind blew, but she didn't feel the cold. She didn't feel anything.

     She got out of the cab, leaving the vase of flowers behind, walked across the asphalt, and slowly climbed the steps at the side of the main building, which led up to one of the rooftop telescopes. Up she went, slowly, weak from having spent so long in a hospital bed, all the way up to the top where the telescope was pointed toward the stars. She was thankful that the roof was deserted. Sometimes there were lovers up here, making out as if their lives depended on it. But, for the moment, with the show going on, she had the roof all to herself.

     She stood there looking out over the city, the wind whipping her blond hair and exposing wine-colored roots. She grasped the waist-high stone wall, tensed, took a deep breath, and leaned forward to look down at the long plunge to the concrete below. She finally stood back and shouted as loud as she could: "Ron Charmer, wherever you are—Fuck you!"

     Five minutes later she was getting back into the cab, having asked the driver to wait; forty minutes after that she was standing on Philippa's doorstep saying, "All right. Let's make Starlite sensational."

F
RIEDA
G
OLDMAN WAS DEPRESSED
. D
EPRESSED, FRUSTRATED
, and just plain mad.

     Sitting in the living room of her cabin, which looked like some millionaire's hunting lodge, she gazed morosely at the beautiful late afternoon sun shining through the pine trees, and she thought, Snow! She hated it. She had gone for a walk that morning to give the maids a chance to clean her room, and when she had returned, she had found the windows open. It had reminded her of what Jake, her husband, who had come from the East, used to say. "Californians! In the summer they close their windows, in the winter they open them!" Jake had loved the snow. He would have loved Star's.

     Frieda would have loved Star's too, if her deal with Syd Stern hadn't fallen through. How could Bunny have
done
that!

     Frieda couldn't really fault the poor girl. Not after losing the Oscar and then the shoddy treatment afterward—one casting director had actually said, "Her last movie was a fluke. She won't get parts. She'd be better off joining a circus." Well, Bunny wouldn't be joining any circuses now, not with
her fabulous new looks. It had taken a lot of courage, Frieda knew, to make the decision to undergo such a total change and to suffer so many surgical procedures. Liposuction alone, of the abdomen and thighs, was painful and debilitating. Poor Bunny, going through months of torture—having her back teeth pulled, even, perfectly healthy teeth, so that her cheeks would fall in—only to discover it hadn't been necessary. Not only not necessary, but all that agony and loneliness had cost her one of the plummiest deals in recent movie history. And on top of that, since Frieda's reaction to Bunny's astonishing change was to fall to the floor in a dead faint, Bunny was now eating herself up with fear of how her father was going to react: Bernie Kowalski, so big, so important, and such a shit to his daughter.

     Frieda got up, went to the bar, and poured herself an orange juice with a generous splash of vodka.

     What a wretched morning it had been. First, having to call Syd and tell him about Bunny's metamorphosis, and Syd saying, "Well, that's very nice, Frieda. I'm glad she's gorgeous, but I can't use her. Sorry." And then next having to call the Lamborghini dealer and cancel her order for the two-hundred-thousand-dollar Diablo. And then going to the Castle with the intention of returning the twelve-thousand-dollar mink coat.

     Frieda had wimped out on that one. She was going to keep the coat.

     She was also going to keep the cabin, just a day or two longer. She had in fact intended to check out that morning and get back to her office in L.A., throw herself back into the business of working deals. But, as she had walked around the magnificent entry hall that made her think of Sleeping Beauty's castle and looked at some of Marion Star's personal things and heard the Christmas music and seen the lights and felt the heat from those monstrous fireplaces—and seen her handsome tux-with-a-smile go by—Frieda had realized that there was something compelling about the place.