Starstruck (10 page)

Stanley turned to her, a newly tense expression on his bony face. “It’s soundstage fourteen. All the way down this road, then make a left. You think you can find it?”

“Chimney!
Tempus fugit!
”

“You go ahead,” Margaret assured him. “I’ll be fine.”

But as soon as they sped away, the well-ordered streets of Olympus seemed to bleed into chaos. Swarms of funny little carts, identical to the one that had carried off Stanley, sped by, laden with racks of costumes or camera equipment. Script assistants on bicycles whizzed by with piles of paper balanced precariously on the handlebars, sometimes stacked so high she wondered how they could see where they were going. A gleaming
white limousine made its stately progress up the street, perhaps bearing a star deemed too important to be seen traveling—at least, not before the hair and makeup department had worked its magic. Margaret tried to peer through its darkened windows for a better look. Could that be Diana? Had that been Diana? And would that be Margaret herself someday?

Stop it, Margaret
, she said to herself, shaking her head.
You’ve got Diana Chesterfield on the brain
.

“Look out below!”

Before she could figure out where the shout was coming from, a heavy black telephone came flying out a second-story window, narrowly missing her head as it shattered on the pavement with a deafening crash. On the balcony, just above the silver lettering over the doorway that spelled out
Writers’ Building
, stood a young man, his arm still poised in midair. “Notes, Howard?” the young man shouted, with a mixture of equal parts fury and glee, down at the broken phone. “That’s what I think of your goddamn notes, you
prick
!”

Even if he hadn’t nearly killed her with a flying telephone, Margaret would have thought he was an extraordinarily curious-looking fellow. His frayed sweater, thick and navy blue, like the kind that sailors wore, hung loosely on his slight frame. Behind his horn-rimmed glasses, Margaret thought his eyes were an inky, bottomless black.

Running his hands through his unruly stack of black hair, he flashed a malevolent grin in Margaret’s direction. “Hang that up for me, will ya, sweetheart?”

Still in shock, Margaret half lunged toward the splintered receiver when she heard a breathy coo from behind her. “Harry,
darling, you
really
must learn to assert yourself if you want to get
anywhere
in Hollywood.”

The young man, Harry, grinned in response. Margaret couldn’t catch a glimpse of the girl’s face as she slipped past her and up the stairs toward the young man; she saw only a curtain of gleaming red hair sweeping her shoulders and, clad in a tight-fitting black skirt, a backside that Margaret could tell was rather spectacular, even from her limited experience. No sooner had the girl reached the young man than he swept her into a passionate embrace, pressing his body against hers and gazing into her still-hidden face as though she were the only woman in the world.

Then he swept her into his waiting office and shut the door.

Now, that
, Margaret thought,
is Hollywood
.

“W
hat was
that
all about?” Amanda giggled, when they came up for air.

Harry Gordon raked his hands down her back, his lips still pressed warmly against the soft skin of her neck. “Oh, that. I think you know.”

Amanda giggled. “Not
us
, silly. I mean, I don’t know if you noticed, but you just hurled a phone off a balcony. You almost killed that poor terrified blond girl.”

“Oh,
that
.” Harry pulled away from her, frowning. As he put his thick glasses back on, Amanda studied his face. It wasn’t that Harry was exactly handsome. With his too-crooked nose and too-wild hair, nobody would ever confuse him with a matinee idol. But every time Amanda saw him, she thought she noticed something she’d never seen before. How the third finger on his right hand had a permanently ink-stained callus from
long hours with the fountain pen. How the tiny mole under his left eye seemed to make it sparkle more brightly than the right. She could look at him forever. “That was just my troglodyte producer.” Harry scowled. “If only we’d done a face-to-face. I could have given him the old defenestration, otherwise known as the Coney Island Special. Solve all my problems in one fell swoop.”

“What’s he giving you grief about this time?”

“The Chesterfield picture,” Harry groaned. “
The Nine Days’ Queen
. He’s read the latest draft, and he thinks it’s too depressing when Lady Jane Grey is beheaded for treason. Wants to know if I can have her and the husband make a run for it in the end, or better yet, figure out some way she gets to be Queen of England after all. You know, slap a happy ending on it. Make it peppy.” Harry shook his head in disbelief. “ ‘Can you make it peppier?’ He actually
said
that.”

“Well … can you?”

“No, Amanda, I can’t,” Harry replied testily. “You see,
The Nine Days’ Queen
happens to be based on actual historical events, events that I have been researching in
detail
ever since the studio brought me out to this
farkakte
place. Not to mention the fact that the entire thing is an allegory for how totalitarian governments force their citizens into complicity with evil, which you’d think might have
some
resonance given what’s happening in Europe right now, but I’m not even going to
talk
about that, lest I scare the sniveling cowards in the production department off completely.”

“Harry—”

“I mean, God forbid we try to
say
something with our pictures, right? And of course, I have to pretend I don’t know that
all these sudden ‘issues’ with the script isn’t them just stalling for time because no one knows where the hell Diana Chesterfield is.”

Amanda frowned. Like everyone around the studio lot, she’d heard things about Diana being missing, but picture people were highly prone to exaggeration, and anyway, it seemed so impossible. A major star like Diana was more than a person. She was a vast moneymaking enterprise, practically a whole corporation. For her to simply vanish from the Olympus lot without a trace was like Wall Street suddenly forgetting where it had put U.S. Steel. “Really? I thought that was just a rumor.”

“Funny thing about rumors,” Harry said bitterly, “they sometimes turn out to be true. Isn’t that just my luck? Months out here, I finally get a script out of the starting gate with these clowns and the star disappears. Damn these Hollywood bastards!” Harry slammed his fist down on the desk. An untidy stack of books fell to the already litter-covered floor with a crash. “I never should have left New York.”

Amanda looked down at the ground, consciously hiding the hurt in her face. “If you’d never left New York, you’d never have met me,” she said in a small voice.

Harry’s face softened. “You’re right.” He ran his finger tenderly down the curve of her cheek, his mouth set in a solemn line.
Promise you won’t go back to New York
, Amanda yearned to say.
Promise you’ll never leave me
. “Look,” Harry said. “Let’s forget all about this. It’s payday, I’ve got money in my pocket. We’ll go to the Polo Club.”

Amanda laughed. “You mean the Polo Lounge?”

“Sure.” Harry grinned, unembarrassed by his mistake. “See how the other half lives, have white wine en flambé and
all that jazz. I’ll even ring down to wardrobe and see if they can send up some moth-eaten penguin suit in my size. Whaddya say?”

Amanda bit her lip. “Oh, Harry, that sounds like heaven …”

Harry’s face fell. “But?”

Don’t look at me like that
, Amanda thought desperately.
I can’t stand it
. “I … already have plans for dinner.”

“So cancel.”

Amanda shook her head sadly. “I can’t. It’s with a producer over in Max Wineman’s division.”

“I see.” Pushing her away, Harry turned toward his desk. “I see. Well, I’d better get back to work.”

“Harry, no! You don’t understand—”

“I
do
understand. You’ve got a date with a bigger fish than me. Well, I hope you hook him. I hope you reel him in real good.”

“It’s not like that! Come on, the guy is probably old enough to be my father.”

“Do you honestly think that makes it
better
?”

“Harry, it’s just business, honest!” Amanda pleaded, desperate to make him see. “The guy is looking for a fresh face to put in the new detective picture he’s making with Spencer Tracy over at Metro. Larry Julius’s office set it up, for chrissake.”

Harry’s voice was dangerously soft. “I always knew Larry Julius was a thug. I didn’t realize he was also a pimp.”

“Harry, please …,” Amanda croaked. She felt as if she had just been punched in the gut with a fist made of ice. “You don’t know what you’re saying.…”

“Oh, come on, Amanda! You think I don’t know how it works?
‘Oh, Harry,’
 ” he simpered, imitating Amanda’s breathy coo, “
‘he might give me a part in his new picture.’
Well, I can’t
stand it! I can’t stand the thought of him touching you, looking at you,
leering
at you, thinking about all the things he’d like to do to you, if you only give him the chance.” Harry was shouting now. “You’re supposed to be my girl, Amanda!”

“But I am!” Amanda cried out. “I am your girl!”

Harry suddenly lunged for her, catching her in a crushing embrace, his lips devouring her, his breath burning her neck as they tumbled to the floor. Urgently, his warm hands undid the buttons of her jacket.
He thinks I’m a nice girl
, Amanda thought wildly.
Do nice girls let their boyfriends touch them this way?

“Harry—wait.…”

“You’re right. You’re right.” Harry pulled away. “I don’t know what got into me. Well, I mean, I
know …
but I shouldn’t have let myself get carried away like that. I’m sorry.”

“That’s … that’s okay,” Amanda stammered in bewilderment. This was all so new to her, these rules of courtship that Harry seemed to know automatically and to obey effortlessly.

“You’re a special girl, Amanda. A
rare
girl.” Harry stroked her cheek, as gently as if she were made of glass. “And your first time should be special too.”

“My first time?” Quickly, she dipped her head, praying that Harry wouldn’t see the panic in her eyes. The memories came unbidden: the dull thud of her stepfather’s heavy tread in the hall, the click of the doorknob as it turned.
No
, she told herself firmly.
That happened to someone else
. But the other times, the years at Olive’s house, well … maybe if she just tried, if she could just forget hard enough, a year from now they would have happened to someone else too.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Harry was saying, although he was blushing. “With the right person, it can be beautiful.
Being with someone who”—he hesitated—“who really
knows
you. Who knows everything about you. And loves you, for everything that you are.”

Everything?
Amanda thought ruefully.

“I want to give that to you, Amanda,” Harry was saying. His open, hopeful face shone with love. “When you’re ready. I want to be your first.”

Leave it to Harry Gordon to want the one thing she couldn’t give him.

T
he Olympus soundstage was a huge, windowless barn big enough to hold an airplane, or maybe two. Painted black all over. Lights dangled from the ceiling; wires were taped haphazardly across the floor. Men swarmed all around, tools strapped to their belts, fussing and cursing over towering pieces of odd machinery the likes of which Margaret had never seen before.
This is the place
, she thought with a shiver of terrified excitement.
The place that will decide my fate
.

A stagehand directed her to the makeshift wardrobe department, a corner sectioned off with some curtains and a sheet of plywood. In a folding chair beside a single full-length mirror sat a middle-aged woman with a cigarette between her lips, a tape measure draped around her neck, and a red scarf tied around her head, its ends pointing upward like the ears of an alarmed terrier.