Starstruck (25 page)

For at least a week, all Gabby had wanted to do was go to sleep and, if she was lucky, never wake up. It was Viola who had dragged her out of bed and forced the new green wake-up pills down her throat. The pink ones had stopped working weeks ago.

“So the good Lord Jesus decided it was the Sterling girl’s turn right now.” Viola always went very Catholic in times of strife. “It’ll be your turn next, baby, you’ll see. So go out there and sparkle, because the Lord helps those who help themselves.” And with that, she bundled Gabby off to the rehearsal studio without so much as a second glance.

If it weren’t for Dr. Lipkin and his pills, Gabby didn’t know how she’d survive.

Especially not tonight. She’d been hoping to spend the evening alone in her bedroom in the house on Fountain Street, listening to records on her new phonograph and crying periodically, but Viola had burst into her trailer on the Tully Toynbee set, brandishing a new white taffeta evening gown as though it were a flag of war. “I’ve just come from a meeting about the vaudeville picture. You’ve got above-the-title billing and it’s confirmed, Harry Gordon is writing it just for you. A Gabby Preston vehicle, pure and simple. You’re doing all right, kiddo. You’ve got heat. And if you want to keep it, you better stop moping and stay in the public eye. Remember, the whole world is watching.”

So like the good little girl everyone expected her to be, Gabby got dressed up and went to the Trocadero. Jimmy was there with Margo, who was looking like Diana Chesterfield to a creepy—and frankly tacky—extent; Amanda Farraday, acting all fake and gooey-eyed over Harry Gordon, was sitting at a table right in the center of the room with Dane Forrest, of all people, and a very glamorous-looking blonde in a sparkly red dress.

And who was Gabby Preston sitting with? Her mother and that goofball from the publicity department, Stan or whatever his name was. If there was a more humiliating scenario, Gabby didn’t want to hear about it.

Her heart was pounding—no, not pounding—it was trying to
get out
. Throwing itself violently against her rib cage, like a lemming diving into the sea.
Am I going to be sick?
Gabby wondered.
Oh, please, don’t let me get sick. Not tonight
.

“Gabby.” Viola pinched the delicate skin of Gabby’s forearm hard enough to bruise.

“Ow! That hurts!”

“Then pull it together. People are watching.” Viola leaned in closer. The whiskey on her breath mingled with the powdery scent of the Shalimar perfume Gabby had bought her for her birthday. “How many green pills today?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“You’re sweating bullets.” Viola took a pillbox from her handbag and forced a blue capsule into Gabby’s hand. “Take it.”

Gabby glanced nervously at Stan, but he was too busy gazing at Margo with a rapturous expression on his big-billed face. “Those are for bedtime.”

“It’s just one, and believe me, you need it.” Viola pressed her half-full glass of Scotch into Gabby’s hand. “Wash it down with this. Then go to the ladies’ room and fix your face.”

The ladies’ room at the Trocadero had no grand sitting rooms or uniformed attendants.
Good
, Gabby thought. She was glad to be alone. Leaning over the sink, she examined her face carefully in the mirror. The heavy pancake makeup she wore to even out her complexion was smeared with sweat. Black streaks of mascara had pooled in the hollow purple shadows beneath her dilated eyes. The clump of dark curls sticking to her damp neck was deflated, like a fallen, burnt soufflé.
Viola was right
, Gabby thought with a shock.
I really do look like hell
.

It was funny about the pills, she mused as she reached for her powder puff. They made you feel so marvelous at first, strong and brave and beautiful, as if you could do anything in the world. But that feeling went away so quickly, and pretty soon you just felt like yourself again, only a little smaller, a little more scared, and then you just felt tired. So you had to take a few more pills, and before you knew it, you had crossed the
threshold from tired to wired to another feeling entirely.
Dread
was the best word Gabby could think of for it. A creeping, heart-pounding feeling of dread, as though something horrible was about to happen. She’d felt that way tonight, at least until Viola had given her the blue pill.
Sweet, good Viola
, Gabby thought, lazily dragging the velvet powder puff over her skin.
She always looks out for me
.

The door began to open. Someone was coming in.
Damn it
, Gabby thought. She couldn’t let anyone see her like this. She darted into an empty stall just in the nick of time, locking the door behind her. The door went all the way to the ground, hiding her completely, but through the small crack at the side she could make out a flash of black dress and red hair that she knew belonged to Amanda Farraday. The other girl was the blonde in the sparkly red dress.
Dane Forrest’s girl
.

“Lucy,” Amanda hissed in a low voice. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Same thing as you, honey,” the girl replied. She had a high, squeaky voice, the kind the chorus girls always had in gangster pictures. “Enjoying a night out on the town on the arm of a handsome gentleman.”

“Get real.”

“Aw, come on, Ginger, cool it, will ya?”
Ginger
? Was that Amanda’s real name? “Dane came storming into Olive’s place drunk as a skunk and looking for some action. Olive didn’t want any trouble, so she gave him a cup of coffee and said someone would take him out.”

“And he picked you.” Amanda’s voice sounded flat.

“Truth is, Olive asked me to take care of him. On account of I’ve been around long enough I ain’t likely to cash out to the
tabloids with a story about how Dane Forrest showed up three sheets to the wind and looking for girls at Olive Moore’s house.”

Olive Moore!
Gabby had to clap her hands over her mouth to keep them from hearing her gasp. She knew who Olive Moore was; everyone in Hollywood did, unless they were prissy little Margo Sterling.

“But Olive’s girls have always been discreet,” Amanda said.

“Used to be. Things have changed since your day, Gin. The new ones she brought in, well, let’s just say they aren’t all exactly fresh from finishing school, if you catch my drift.”

Amanda’s dress made a silken rustle. “You should have brought him someplace else. Someplace less conspicuous. Olive won’t like it.”

“This was where he wanted to go. What am I going to do, say no? Besides, how was I supposed to know you were here? Hey”—Lucy’s voice dropped about an octave—“you’re not still hung up on him, are you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Amanda snapped her purse shut. “That’s all been over for ages. Over before it even began.”

“That’s what I thought,” Lucy said. “And I guess that’s the new fella?”

“He’s a fella, yes.”

“And I suppose he doesn’t know about all this.”

“He certainly does not,” Amanda said. “And he’s not going to.”

“Relax, Gin. He’s not going to get anything out of me. I’m not out to ruin things for you. Although …” Lucy paused. “It would be nice to feel like a big star like you remembered her old friends every now and again.”

A sharp edge, like the blade of a knife, crept into Amanda’s voice. “What do you want, Lucy?”

“Nothing! Just a letter now and then, that’s all. Golly, you’ve gotten hard in Hollywood.”

“I’m sorry, Lucy. I didn’t mean it to come out that way.”

“That’s all right, Ginger.” Lucy’s voice was gentle. “But you have to know we’re rooting for you. Maybe not Olive, but I am. And I know it can’t be easy.”

“It would be a lot easier if you’d stop calling me Ginger.”

Lucy let out a peal of laughter. “Excuse me,
Amanda
. But I do think I played it off pretty well though, don’t you think? ‘Well, I do declare, Mr. Gordon, Ginger is just what we call all the redheads back home! Just a term of endearment down in little ol’ Kentucky!’ He never doubted it for a second!” Their laughter echoed through the door as it swung shut behind them.

Alone again, Gabby finally dared to breathe. Her heart was pounding harder than ever, but her mind was perfectly clear.
Amanda Farraday worked for Olive Moore
. And she and Dane had had some kind of relationship, had been lovers, even.
Oh boy
. This was a doozy.

Knowledge is power
. Gabby didn’t know who had said it first, but she knew it was true. She knew so many things now. About Amanda, about Dane, about Jimmy, about Margo.

Smiling, Gabby sat back on the toilet seat, the blue pill beginning to send its calm blue warmth through her veins. If knowledge was power, then Gabby Preston was about to become the most powerful person in Hollywood.

“H
ere, Sophie.” Standing at the paddock fence, Margo took an apple from the folds of her heavy gown and held it against the mare’s velvety snout. The horse turned her large dark eyes on Margo as though she’d never seen her before. “It’s a cooking apple, just like you like,” Margo urged. “Go on, eat!”

She heard a quiet chuckle. Owen, the head groom of the Olympus stables, stood behind her, twisting his checked cap in his hands. “Begging your pardon, Miss Sterling,” he said in his soft Irish brogue, “but they’re nearly ready for you on the set. They’ve sent me to come and fetch you.”

“Oh, Owen,” Margo said mournfully. “I don’t think Sophie recognizes me.”

Owen laughed again. “Telling the truth, miss, in that getup I’m not sure I’d have recognized you myself.”

Margo looked sheepishly down at her costume, a vast
Tudor-style riding habit of heavy brick-colored velvet—which Rex Mandalay insisted would photograph as black—with enormous padded panniers over the hips and a tightly laced stomacher that made the front of her torso look like a flat inverted V. Along with the huge feathered riding hat and the thick hank of false hair gathered into a spangled net at the back of her head, she was about three times the size she usually was when she came to the paddock, in jodhpurs and a button-down shirt. “I see what you mean.”

“Don’t you worry, Miss Sterling. She’ll know it’s you as soon as you’re on her back. Horses always do.” Owen gave Margo an awkward pat on her wrist, the only part of her he could easily access. “Now, we can walk down to the set if you’d like, but if you don’t mind, I’d rather you ride. Sophie’s all saddled up, and I’d like to get a sense of how the weight of that skirt feels in the sidesaddle before you start filming. Then I’ll lead you down.”

“That sounds very sensible, thank you.”

Putting on his cap, he knelt next to the horse and put out a sturdy palm to boost Margo into the saddle. His brow knit in concentration as he carefully arranged the capacious folds of her dress over the mare’s chestnut haunches. “I’m sure the dressing girls will have another go at it,” he said, giving the fabric a final tug, “but in the meantime, how does that feel?”

“Fine,” Margo said, settling into the saddle. “More importantly, how does it look?”

Owen pushed back his cap, wiping the sweat from his brow. “Before I came to America to seek my fortune, I was a groom in the stables of the Earl of Kimbrough, back in Tipperary. I thought never to see a finer horsewoman than his countess.”
He grinned. “And I still never have. But for an American girl, I guess you’ll do.”

“Owen!” She tossed a glove at him playfully. “As though I’m not nervous enough!”

“Begging your pardon, Miss Sterling, I was only joking. You’ve the best seat I’ve seen around these parts. Excepting …” Owen suddenly stopped himself.

“Except who?” Margo asked.

Owen looked straight ahead, not daring to meet her eye. “Excepting Miss Chesterfield, miss.”

I should have known
, Margo thought. “Diana was good in the saddle, was she?”

“Better than good,” Owen said reverently. “Had a real sixth sense for the animal, she did, as though she could tell what it was feeling. It’s rare, that is, although not so much for those that grew up on a farm.”

“Diana Chesterfield grew up on a farm?” Margo asked in disbelief. “I thought she was supposed to be a socialite in England or something.”

“Ah, come to think of it, I could be mistaken, Miss Sterling,” Owen said, obviously embarrassed to have revealed something he realized he shouldn’t have. “Perhaps that’s a tale of my own invention. On account of how natural she was with the horses.”

“What about Dane Forrest?” Margo pressed, unable to stop herself. “How is he in the saddle?”

“Oh, fine, fine,” Owen said quickly. “A bit rough for the mares, perhaps, but I can’t fault him on a stallion. But you’ll see soon enough, won’t you?”

“Yes,” Margo said. “I suppose I will.” Today would be her first day filming with Dane and their first interaction since that
fateful night at the Cocoanut Grove, if you didn’t count that horrible night at the Trocadero, when he could barely bring himself even to glance at her. Perhaps the anticipation of seeing him, more than the thought of toppling off her horse from the weight of her dress, accounted for the butterflies in her stomach—or rather, under her stomacher.

Margo gave Sophie’s flank a gentle kick. The horse trotted obediently out the paddock gate as Owen walked ahead, holding the reins.