Starstruck (18 page)

Her jaw dropped.

Hands shaking, Olive turned frantically back to the article, this time devouring each word with rabid attention. The name meant nothing, of course; Olive herself had been christened after the first tree that fat producer had seen when he’d looked out the window of his office. But the details:
A California native. A dizzy debutante
. They were maddeningly vague and fictional, but then … that face. That searching, hopeful, lovely face. A face she somehow felt she knew as well as her own.

Olive closed the magazine. She walked over to the bar, poured herself a giant glassful of sherry from the decanter, and drank it off in one gulp. Her hands were still shaking, so she poured herself another one and drank that too.

Then she walked back to her desk and picked up the telephone. “Burbank 6452, please.” She waited as the operator connected her, nervously fiddling with the little gold-and-pearl circle pin she wore pinned to her collar.

“Amanda, dear!” she said, when the girl answered. “How lucky to find you in. This is Olive Moore.… Now, there’s no need to take that tone, I simply want to see how you are.… Good, I’m very glad to hear it. Now, listen, dear, I needed to ask you something.… No, not that.… You remember I told you that at some point I might need a favor from you? Because I’m afraid that time has come.” Olive gave her gold pin a final twist. “I need you to find out everything you can about this Margo Sterling.”

T
here was only one thing wrong with the famous Cocoanut Grove nightclub at the Ambassador Hotel in Hollywood: it looked so much like something out of the movies, it was hard to remember it was a real place.

Swaying palm trees strung with thousands of tiny white lights seemed to grow directly out of the floor, forming a sparkling green canopy beneath the graceful Moorish arches. Beside the polished dance floor was a mirrored stage, complete with a twenty-one-piece orchestra and a beautiful singer draped in silver sequins and blue gardenias. The midnight-blue ceiling was painted to look like the night sky, complete with hundreds of twinkling stars. But the real stars, of course, were below, gliding between tables, glittering on the dance floor. Women dripping with diamonds, men in dinner jackets as white as their gleaming toothpaste smiles.

It was a beautiful room filled with beautiful people, and tonight, for the first time, Margo Sterling was one of them. She practically had to pinch herself to make sure she wasn’t dreaming.
If only Gabby weren’t in such a foul mood
, she thought,
everything would be perfect
.

From the moment Margo had moved into the small bungalow on the studio lot, Gabby Preston had been a constant presence, phoning several times a day with some new piece of gossip, turning up at the door at odd hours bearing various small “housewarming” gifts: a bouquet of orange blossom cut from the trees outside, a lemon cake baked by Viola, even a worn record player and a stack of old 78s. Margo was grateful. The little gifts and incessant chatter made the stark bungalow, with its smudged walls and furnishings that had seen generations of hopefuls come and go, seem almost like a home. Better yet, they helped to shut out the increasingly terrifying fact that she had walked out of her safe life with no idea what the future would hold. She was on her own now, but with Gabby there, she didn’t feel so alone.

Still, Gabby’s high-octane personality could be a little exhausting, and thanks to Dr. Lipkin and his miracle pills, her grasp on the concept of waking hours, as opposed to sleeping hours, was creative at best. It had been barely light that morning when Gabby had turned up at Margo’s door, practically climbing out of her skin with excitement. “Did you hear? We’re going out together on an engagement tonight! Aren’t you excited?”

“I might be,” Margo had said, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, “if it weren’t five o’clock in the morning.”

“But a real engagement! I could just die!”

“Wait.” Margo scowled sleepily in confusion. “An engagement? You’re getting married?”

“Honestly, Margo, sometimes I think you don’t know anything. An engagement is a night out on the town. The studio arranges it all. They choose your escort, dress you up in the most gorgeous gown, and send you out to one of the glamorous, exclusive places where all the stars go, and the next day your picture is in all the papers and everyone is talking about you. I’ve been on one or two before, of course, but only early in the evening, and always with Viola, which makes it all about as magical as a sack of lard. But not tonight! Tonight she’s got to stay at home and knit, and guess who my escort is going to be!”

Margo blinked.

Gabby couldn’t wait. “No, you’ll never guess, I’ll tell you. It’s Jimmy! Jimmy Molloy!”

“Well, that’s just swell,” Margo said.
Swell
was about as enthusiastic as she could get before breakfast.

“
Swell
isn’t the word for it! It’s positively stupendous! I told you they’re putting us together! It’ll be announced any day, I’m sure of it. I can see the headlines now.” Eyes shining, Gabby swept her hand through the air, across an imaginary front page. “Olympus’s Singing Sweethearts Blow Up Box Office. No,” she interrupted herself. “Singing
Steadies
. That’s better than
sweethearts
, don’t you think? More grown-up.”

“Do I have an escort?”

“Don’t you
ever
open your mailbox? Of course you do. You’re being escorted by Larry Julius, and don’t you dare look disappointed,” she said, wagging a finger at Margo’s obvious dismay. “You don’t think he bothers with just anyone, do you? The studio couldn’t give you a bigger stamp of approval if you walked
in on the arm of Mr. Karp himself. By this time tomorrow, we’re going to be the two most envied girls in Hollywood.” Beaming, she hugged herself. “I could die of happiness!”

But now that they were at the Cocoanut Grove, Gabby looked anything but happy. Her small face was a thundercloud under a hairdo of beribboned sausages as she reached over to seize a handful of the silken skirt of Margo’s dress, nearly knocking over the waiter who was opening the champagne for their table.

“That’s pretty,” Gabby grumbled.

In truth, Margo’s dress was a lot more than pretty. After the banana dress incident, Margo had been a little apprehensive at seeing Sadie on her doorstep with a garment bag, but all her doubts had vanished the moment she saw the bias-cut satin gown with a plunging back in a shade of silvery blue that matched her eyes. The studio had lent her a delicate sapphire bracelet with earrings to match, and to one of the shoulder straps, done in a contrasting black velvet, she had affixed her little pearl pin. It was startlingly chic, more like something out of a fashion magazine than what your typical flashy Hollywood starlet would wear.

“Yours is nice too,” Margo said, with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. Gabby had been coaxed, clearly against her will, into a frilly concoction of apricot tulle with a stiff crinoline skirt, the kind of dress a child might wear to a fancy party. “You look really pretty.”

“Don’t patronize me. I look like one of those creepy legless dolls Viola hides the extra roll of toilet paper under in the bathroom.” Gabby’s face crumpled. “Why do they make me wear these stupid baby dresses? Why can’t I have a dress like yours?”

“Image, darling,” Jimmy Molloy answered, politely holding out to the girls his gold cigarette case, which Larry Julius promptly declined on their behalf. “You can’t go full glamour like the duchess here. You’re Everyone’s Kid Sister. But don’t you worry, honey pie. There’s a lot of money in being America’s Sweetheart. Isn’t that right, Margo?” He winked at her.

Margo wasn’t quite sure what she thought of Jimmy. He was certainly awfully friendly, kissing her hand when they’d met and making a big show of pretending his eyeballs were popping out of his head when he saw her, like a wolf in a Tex Avery cartoon. But there was something a little bit
strange
about the way he never seemed to turn off.

“And, Gabby, you just be a good girl and do what the nice men tell you,” Jimmy said, chucking her on the chin. “Before you know it, you’ll have enough dough in the oven to get yourself a Schiaparelli for every day of the week.”

“I don’t need a shopperelly.” Gabby pouted. “I just want a pretty dress.”

“A Schiaparelli
is
a dress, silly.” Grinning, Jimmy curled his finger below his nose like a Gallic mustache. “She is all zee rage with the
haute monde
in gay Paree.”

“Oat mound? What on earth is an oat mound?”

“
Haute monde
. It means ‘high society’ in French,” Margo said, instantly regretting it when she saw the humiliated look on her friend’s face. The last thing she wanted to do was show Gabby up in front of Jimmy. “They probably only put you in that dress because they couldn’t find anything else to fit you,” she added quickly. “You’ve lost
so
much weight.”

Gabby’s face lit up. “Do you really think so?”

“I
know
so. If I didn’t know better, I’d be worried.”

Gabby beamed, smoothing the cloth of her dress over her svelte waist. Her hands, Margo noticed, shook slightly. “Yeah, well, now my chest is gone too. Just my luck. As if I didn’t look young enough. Next time you see me, they’ll probably have me in a baby bonnet.”

“Look over there, Margo,” Larry Julius interjected. With a subtle tilt of his cigarette, he indicated a raven-haired beauty draped in white silk and about fifteen ropes of huge black pearls gliding toward an adjacent table. “Hedy Lamarr. See the way she moves? Now,
that’s
the way you make an entrance.”

“And look over
there
.” Gabby smirked. Obviously, Viola had never told her it was rude to point. “
There’s
that Amanda Farraday.”

Her stomach clenching, Margo followed Gabby’s accusatory finger to the gorgeous girl standing in the middle of the maze of tables. She was wearing black, as usual, but hers was a dress that Margo was pretty sure she’d never find on her own wardrobe rack: impossibly low-cut, and covered from top to bottom in jet paillettes, a diamond-shaped cutout just below the bust exposing a creamy swath of bare skin. One of her hands was tucked into a luxurious cloud of sleek fur. The other was clinging to the arm of a portly gray-haired gentleman nearly old enough to be her grandfather.

“She’s not with Dane.”

She whispered it under her breath, a private sigh of relief, but Larry Julius missed nothing. “Dane Forrest?” he asked, his sharp eyes coolly surveying Margo. “Did you expect her to be?”

“Oh, Margo and I saw them leave the commissary together the other day,” Gabby said crankily. “They tried to slip out separately so nobody would notice them.”

“But
you
noticed.”

“Oh, sure,” Gabby said. “Margo could hardly take her eyes off him, could you, Margo?”

“We had just shot my screen test together,” Margo mumbled, staring down at her crystal saucer of champagne. “I was just wondering if I should try to say hello, that’s all.”

Larry Julius expelled a thoughtful cloud of cigarette smoke from what Margo was sure were terribly overwhelmed lungs. “Well. That’s very interesting.”

“Oh, that’s not even the half of it,” Gabby said cheerfully. “With that Amanda girl, I mean. Margo saw her earlier that same day, necking with some writer in his office.”
God
, Margo thought,
doesn’t Gabby forget anything?
For a girl who was so prone to proclaiming her academic ignorance, she had a mind like a steel trap. She could have made a heck of a trial lawyer, if anyone had ever bothered to teach her to read.

“Harry Gordon, I should think,” Larry said.

“Harry Gordon?” Gabby’s eyes were wide. “Not that Commie from New York who’s supposed to be writing
my
next picture? The vaudeville musical?” Gabby had been crowing nonstop for days about her new picture. A standard rags-to-riches musical, it was nevertheless the first vehicle the studio had commissioned for Gabby to star in alone, and she was convinced it was going to make millions of dollars and win her every prize going, including an Academy Award. “Not some kind of juvenile Oscar either, like they gave Shirley Temple,” Gabby sneered. “A
real
Oscar, for Best Actress. I mean, how could I lose? It’s being written
just for me
! It’s exactly the story of my life!”

“The very same,” Larry said.

Gabby snorted. “Covering all the bases, just like I said to Margo. Good thing she can’t sing.”

“Let’s have some champagne,” Jimmy said quickly, raising his glass. “To old friends and new, to fame and fortune and dazzling success. To Hollywood!”

“To Hollywood.” They all drank. Margo had never tasted champagne before. The golden bubbles, sweet and faintly sour, tickled her throat. An effervescent warmth spread down her neck and into her chest.
Like drinking a glass full of starlight
, she thought, her whole body tingling with pleasure.

“Who’s that she’s with, anyway?” The champagne had clearly not had the same tempering effect on Gabby, although she had drunk off her glass in a single gulp and was helping herself to another one. “He looks like he’s ready for the grave.”