Stars (The Butterfly Trilogy) (60 page)

     "Hello?" Charmie said suddenly, looking up from her book. "Why are we slowing down?"

     Philippa pressed the button to lower the partition and see what was ahead. "Oh my God!" she said.

     Charmie turned around and stared at a solid wall that seemed to stand across the freeway. There was nothing beyond it—no stars, no mountains, no taillights. And it was rapidly swallowing up the cars in front of them.

     The limousine slowed sharply, then shimmied and swerved. Charmie cried out; Philippa put out a hand to steady herself, and Ricky, who was suddenly awake, reached for her as she fell into his arms.

     In the Jaguar, Danny's mind was like a clenched fist, tight and ready to punch; he was getting high on thinking of all the things he was going to do to Philippa. It was important to keep thoughts like that alive; they put blood in a man's veins and gave him the strength to do what he had to do. He had once held the world in his palm, and then everything had been taken away from him—by
her
, by the bitch in the limousine up ahead.

     Beverly Highland. The world thought she was dead. And she thought
he
was dead. Danny felt a thrill go through him. It was such a high—she didn't
know he was alive. She had no idea what lay in store for her. She thought she was safe, that she had gotten away with it. But she was going to pay. Oh yes. Danny liked to imagine the look on her face when he caught up with her. He was going to give her a taste of what he had been through—make her hang by a leather belt, kicking and fighting for air, feeling her wet herself, the panic and terror...

     Danny reached up and adjusted the rearview mirror so that he could see himself. He smiled the sly, lazy smile that had charmed millions. He knew he was still handsome, still had power over people from his looks alone. Danny had worked hard to cultivate that look, as Niccolò Machiavelli had advised over 450 years ago: "
The mob is always impressed by appearances, and the world is made up of mobs.
" When Beverly saw this face again, a face that had once, years ago, made her crawl to Danny and beg him not to leave her, she would be crawling again, this time begging for her life. It gave Danny a hard-on to think of it.

     When he returned his gaze to the windshield, he saw her limousine suddenly vanish through a solid wall that stood across the freeway.

     "Jesus!" he shouted, and he slammed his foot on the brakes, sending the Jaguar into a spin.

T
HIS TIME, THE PHONE CALL WASN'T CONDUCTED LONG
-distance, nor did it take place on a special line. Still, the conversation was a cautious one, conducted in private, and without the interruption of a squawking parrot.

     
"You're here," the caller said.

     
"It wasn't easy. How long do we have?"

     
"Not long."

     
"Let's get started then. By the way
—"

     
"Yes?"

     
"Make sure you bring it."

     
San Fernando Valley, California, 1970

P
HILLIPA'S YOUNG SECRETARY
, M
OLLY, WAS THE FIRST TO SPOT
the black Mercedes-Benz with the darkly tinted windows as it pulled up in front of Starlite's Swiss-chalet offices. She looked out the window and said, "Holy smokes! It looks like we have an important visitor!"

     Kitty, the switchboard operator, looked up from her board. "Who is it?"

     "I don't know. It's some bigwig, though," Molly said excitedly. "A movie star I'll bet!" Ever since Philippa had appeared on
The Tonight Show
, Molly had anticipated a celebrity parade through Starlite. "Come and see!"

     Philippa was in Charmie's office, discussing a plan for bringing out a special line of Starlite cosmetics, when they heard someone running down the hall. "What's going on?" Philippa said, opening the door and looking out to see a knot of women gathered around the window in the reception area, including Kitty, who had abandoned her post at the ever-ringing switchboard.

     Molly broke away from the group and came up, saying, "A mysterious visitor has just arrived, Miss Roberts! There's a big black car out front with a chauffeur and everything!"

     "We can't see who it is," Colleen, Hannah's assistant, called over her shoulder. "I think it's a gangster!"

     Philippa and Charmie got to the window just as Mildred said, "The car's driving off! Shoot, they're leaving! They aren't coming in here after all!"

     The knot dissolved in disappointment and everyone returned to work. When Philippa reached her office, after making her way down a hall jumbled with file cabinets and storage boxes, she was thinking she wasn't in the mood to go out on a date tonight, even though it was to see a revival of films noirs from the forties. She wondered how Keith would take another cancellation.

     He was the man she had been seeing for the past six months, a forty-three-year-old engineer who worked for McDonnell Douglas. Keith's list of qualities was as long and impeccable as a freshly done laundry list. He was clean, polite, nice, considerate, decent looking, laughed easily, and made good money. He drove a late-model Cadillac, sent flowers to his mother every year on her birthday, and was naïve enough to admit to having voted for Nixon. He shared with Philippa an interest in old movies, which was what their dates mainly consisted of.

     Keith always held doors open for her, he knew how to dress, how to order wine, and Philippa was comfortable with him. But there was no spark in their relationship. She had even gone to bed with him, to see if that would set off the fireworks she longed for, but Keith had turned out to be just as polite and proper in bed as he was in real life. All through their lovemaking he had kept saying, "Is everything all right? Are you sure this is what you want?" He had sounded like a waiter.

     If Philippa had to sum him up in one word, it would be
punctual.
Keith was the most precise, on-time man she had ever met, even in his lovemaking. She felt it always took him a prescribed number of thrusts within a prescribed number of minutes and then he was done, his hands moving over her body as if it were one of his engineering blueprints, executing maneuvers precisely, predictably, and on schedule.

     Philippa hadn't been particularly burning to go to bed with him. It had just evolved, from saying good-night, to a chaste kiss on her doorstep, to hand-holding in the movies, and so on until they were between his sheets, which smelled of Oxydol. Both Keith and society had seemed to look at her askance, as if to say, What are you saving it for? It seemed to Philippa that the rules had been switched when she wasn't looking; the old days of girls guarding their virtue had turned into new days of girls proving their liberation by handing it out to anyone who asked.

     One thing Keith had taught her about sex, though—and it was a big lesson—was that the way it was between men and women was
not
the way it had been between her and Rhys. Because the moody beatnik had been her first and only lover, Philippa had assumed that heavenly, maddening, earth-moving sex was the norm, that it was what everyone experienced. Keith had opened her eyes to the real world. Ten minutes after they got into bed, it was over. With Rhys it had taken all night, and Philippa had never doubted for a minute that he had been making love to
her.
With Keith, she had the odd notion that if she were to slip out for a quick donut and coffee and come back in time for the climax, he would never know she had been gone.

     Keith had asked her to marry him. The scary part was, she was considering it.

     She went into her office and closed the door, eyeing the overwhelming stacks of mail that awaited her. Her desk was also cluttered with remnants from the surprise party everyone had thrown for her thirty-second birthday. There was a birthday card from Mrs. Chadwick, the handwriting shaky, reminding Philippa that her former landlady was getting on in years. Finally, there was the most recent report she had received from Ivan Hendricks. He had been following all leads on babies born in Hollywood in 1938 on Philippa's birthday. He was checking county records, hospital records, and speaking with lawyers who handled adoptions. "But you might have been born at home," he had written, "and the adoption was handled strictly cash, no paperwork. Don't worry, Miss Roberts, something will turn up." And she thought: If only Johnny were still alive, he could fill in so much missing information.

     "It's back, Miss Roberts!" Molly said, bursting in. "The black car is back and this time the driver is
getting out!
"

     Philippa went to the window, and moving the curtain aside, saw a shiny black Mercedes-Benz, the windows tinted to hide the passengers from view. And the driver, sure enough, was coming up the walk to Starlite's front door.

     He was a large man with a completely bald head that connected right to his shoulders without bothering with a neck, so that his earlobes settled on his stiff shirt collar—a James Bond nemesis, Philippa thought when he came through her office door. He was impeccably dressed in a gray suit, although she thought the jacket was suspiciously baggy, and he spoke mechanically, as if he had memorized what he had to say.

     "My employer would like to join your program."

     "Yes, of course," she said, signaling to a gaping Molly to bring a new member packet. "I can provide you with a list of locations so that your employer can choose the salon that is most convenient—"

     "No salon," he said. "It will be done privately."

     "I'm sorry, but the Starlite program isn't set up for that. Your employer will have to join a group."

     "That's not possible."

     Philippa glanced through the lace curtain over her office window at the darkly tinted windows of the Mercedes. She felt someone watching her from behind them. Who was it? Someone famous? Or someone who just didn't want to be seen; national security, perhaps?

     She turned back to the driver who, she noticed now, had rather pretty eyes for such a hulking guy: a springtime green with a thick fringe of black lashes. "All right," she said. "This is irregular, but I don't see why we can't be accommodating."

     When Molly returned with the glossy folder and brochures that went to new members, Philippa filled out the registration form, explaining, "The way the program works, members weigh in once a week, and then they discuss whatever problems or questions they might have with the group and with the counselor. At the end of the meeting, handouts are distributed and new menus are offered to those who have achieved certain levels of weight loss. For example—"

     "My employer understands all that." He was abrupt, but pleasant about it.

     "Very well. The sign-up fee is thirty dollars, and it's twenty dollars a month after that. If your employer wishes, she can send the payment to this office.

     To her surprise, he took two bills out of his pocket, a ten and a twenty, and handed them to her.

     "Please tell your employer that I cannot guarantee how the diet will work on its own," she said, writing out a receipt. "Starlite is based upon group support. It's not just a matter of counting calories, but much more."

     "My employer understands that."

     "It is also necessary that she weigh herself once a week, on a day of her own choosing, preferably in the morning. Normally, the group counselor would record a gain or a loss in this booklet, but in this case—"

     "We understand." His mouth snapped up in a smile, and Philippa had the sudden notion that if she were to open his shirt she would find buttons embedded in his chest, labeled WALK, TALK, SMILE, ACT AMIABLE BUT TOUGH...

     As she gathered the papers together, she said, "I'll need to know if this is for a man or a woman. The diet is different for each."

     "We'll take both."

     She gave him a smile. "Covering all bases, aren't you? All right, here you are."

     Both she and Molly watched him go, and both were wondering, for different reasons, if he would be back.