Starstruck (27 page)

“Gabby?” Margo was stretched out on the divan in a silk slip, her bare white arm tossed carelessly above her head.

“The door was open,” Gabby apologized. “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

“Not at all! It was just a long day. Please, come in.”

Gabby took a tentative step inside. It had been weeks since she’d been in Margo’s bungalow. Normally, the place was neat as a pin and sparsely furnished, but now, crammed with dressmaker’s dummies wearing bits of half-constructed costumes, it looked as though a tornado had hit it. Bolts of dark velvets
and somber brocades were heaped on every available surface. The wastepaper basket overflowed with off-cuts and discarded pattern pieces, and the floor was littered with scraps of tissue paper and muslin and tangled skeins of loose thread. “Is this all for you?” Gabby asked. “For
The Nine Days’ Queen
?”

Margo rolled her eyes. “Twenty-eight costume changes. Can you believe it? I don’t think the script even has twenty-eight separate scenes.” Stretching delicately, she shrugged on a gorgeous Japanese silk kimono and plunked herself down at the dressing table to rake an ivory comb through her already perfect hair. “I really should hire a maid, but who has the time to interview candidates? I shoot for
hours
every day, then I have to get out of those costumes, which weigh at least twenty pounds each, and get into hair and makeup and evening clothes for engagements with Jimmy. Honestly, it’s torture.” Putting down the comb, Margo took a pair of eyebrow tweezers out of a small dressing case. The case was beautiful, made of blue leather and lined in cream-colored velvet with her initials embossed on it in gold. “You’re so lucky, Gabby, not to have to go out.”

Well, well, well
, Gabby thought, hypnotized by the fluid motion of tweezers in Margo’s hand. How things had changed. No more meek little wide-eyed Margo, so sweetly, pathetically grateful for any little crumb she was thrown. This sleek, gorgeous girl, with her newly acquired platinum hair, fashionably boyish figure, and untroubled air of haughty self-possession was a different creature entirely from the one she’d seen wandering shy and starry-eyed around the Olympus commissary all those months ago. Gabby couldn’t help feeling a kind of resentful admiration toward her. She was reminded of the way Viola used to scold her when Gabby would leave the house with her hair
uncombed or her blouse untucked: “If you want people to think you’re a star, you better start acting like one.” Margo looked like a star.

“You’re going out with Jimmy tonight?” Gabby asked, although she already knew the answer.

“Yes.” Catching Gabby’s eye in the mirror, Margo turned around to face her. “Look, Gabby, I’ve been meaning to talk to you. I know how upset you must have been when it all … I—I meant to call you.…”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I don’t know. I suppose I couldn’t find the right words. And then when you stopped coming around, and I didn’t see you, well …” Margo looked down at the tweezers. Gabby noticed that they were plated in gold. “I guess I thought you didn’t really want to talk to me.”

“Oh no!” Gabby strove to keep her voice light. “Not at all! I’ve just been so busy, with filming and rehearsals and recording sessions and dancing lessons and goodness knows what else.”

“So you aren’t mad? About me and Jimmy?”

“Well …” Gabby paused, choosing her words carefully. If she denied it totally, Margo would never believe her, but she couldn’t just come right out and tell her. The whole plan would be ruined if Margo didn’t trust her, and anyway, Gabby had
some
pride. “Maybe just a little at first. But Jimmy explained everything.” That was a lie, but it sounded good. Lying was part of the plan. “And I’m not ready to be part of a couple just yet. I’m so busy, and things are going so well. The Harry Gordon picture, for example.”

“Have you seen the script yet?” Margo asked.

“No, but it’s going to be a doozy, I can tell. I mean, it’s written just for me. Viola got me top billing too, above the title and everything.”

“Gabby!” Margo’s smile was disconcertingly genuine. “That’s great!”

“And that’s not all,” Gabby continued. She knew she shouldn’t talk so much about everything before it was settled, but she was so excited she couldn’t help herself. “Larry Julius promised Viola that if everything goes as planned, the studio will make a big push for me come Oscar time. All I have to do is stay thin and keep my wits about me and I’m practically guaranteed a nomination next year, if not the little guy himself. There will be plenty of time for romance after that.” She gave Margo her most sparkling smile. “I’m sure Mr. Karp will suggest someone wonderful.”

“Sure he will,” Margo said. “And I have to say, I’m so relieved to hear you aren’t sore about Jimmy. All this time, I kept thinking—”

“Not at all,” Gabby said firmly. “In fact, Jimmy’s the reason I’m here. He asked me to give you a message.”

Margo’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh? What’s that?”

Gabby didn’t hesitate to hand over the envelope. One of Jimmy’s special yellow ones, the kind that had been tucked in that big bouquet of daisies he’d sent Margo after that first night at the Grove. How clever Gabby had been to sneak it out of the desk in his office that day! A green-pill brainstorm, if there ever was one.

“Oh no,” Margo moaned, scanning the contents. “Rats, rats, rats.”

“Why?” Gabby asked, although she knew full well what the
note said. She’d copied it out about six times, to make sure she got the spelling right. “What does it say?”

“Only that shooting ran late on the Toynbee picture and he can’t come to pick me up.” Margo sighed. “Did you know anything about this?”

“I was off today.” Gabby shook her ringlets innocently. “So I guess he can’t take you out tonight?”

Margo shook her head. “No, he says to get the car and pick him up at the Chateau Marmont instead. I don’t even know what bungalow he’s in!”

“Number seven,” Gabby said automatically. “By the pool. Until the house in Malibu is finished.”

“Oh,” Margo said. “But still, I have to start getting dressed now or I’ll never make it in time.”

“Where are you going?” Gabby asked. “The Grove? They’ll hold the reservation.”

“Not the Grove.” Margo was already on her feet. “Pasadena.”

“Pasadena?”

“Yes. It’s my old friend’s debutante party, and Jimmy promised to escort me. Doris always had the most terrible crush on him, and I thought … well …” Margo had a faraway look in her eye, as though she was imagining something she’d rather not. “I don’t know what I thought.”

“Are you nervous?”

“It’s been a long time since I saw any of those people,” Margo said softly. “If it were anybody but Doris …” She shook her head. “God only knows what they’ve all been saying about me. The thought of all those beady little eyes on me, judging me … It’s daunting, to say the very least. And what on earth am I going to wear?”

“Haven’t you picked something out?”

“A million things. But I keep changing my mind. And then changing it back again. It’s hopeless.”

She sounded and looked so much like her old self in that moment, so much like the sweet, funny, humble girl Gabby had been so proud to have as her very first friend. For a moment, Gabby forgot all about movies and publicity and Jimmy. “I’ll help you.”

Nimbly sidestepping the piles of pattern paper and pins, Gabby threw open the doors of the wardrobe, pushing past the neat rows of everyday blouses and skirts to where the evening gowns hung at the back on satin hangers, stuffed with tissue paper and separated by hangings of silk. She shook her head at the flounced pink taffeta, flicked past the pale blue silk, rejected a yellow dotted Swiss with ruffled sleeves that was frankly too cute for its own damn good.

Then she saw it, hanging at the end of the rail. A sinuous gown of softest silk velvet, in a crimson as rich and deep as a stream of fresh blood. With a plunging neck and a daringly low back, it was a dress to die for. So sophisticated and sexy and fabulously unapologetic, it was practically sinful.

“This one,” Gabby breathed. “This is it.”

“That?” Margo looked doubtful. “Some atelier sent it over from Paris; a present, I guess, but I don’t know if I can carry it off. I mean, it’s awfully—”

“Perfect,” Gabby interrupted. “Think about it. You’re going to stand out anyway, so you might as well make the most of it. There won’t be a man in that room who’ll be able to take his eyes off you. You’ll be the talk of the entire season. And you
know what Viola says, the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.”

“I think Oscar Wilde said that.”

“Oscar Wilde?” Gabby thought she’d heard that name before. “Is he at Warner Brothers?”

“Oh, Gabby.” Margo laughed. “I’ve missed you.”

“Me too,” Gabby said. The plan was working. Her hand was already in her pocket, fingering the next round of pills.
Two green, one blue
. “I’ve missed you too.”

T
he most famous hotel in Hollywood was practically invisible.

Perched as it was on the first ridge of the soaring Hollywood Hills, you couldn’t even see it until you came around the curve on Sunset Boulevard, and suddenly there it was, a looming edifice of white stones and gables and lofty turrets, hidden again the moment you rounded the next curve. Like Brigadoon or Shangri-La, it seemed to disappear into the ether from which it had come.

Perhaps it was just this quality that made it the destination of choice for famous people looking to do things they didn’t want anyone to know about. As long as the right palms were greased and the wrong sorts kept out, no one ever would. Not for nothing had no less a Hollywood personage than Harry Cohn, the famously naughty head of Columbia Pictures, liked to say to his stars: “If you must get into trouble, do
it at the Chateau Marmont.” It was like no other place in the world.

And as far as anyone knows
, Amanda thought, pulling her little gray Packard coupe up its graveled driveway,
I’ve never been here before
.

The uniformed valet jumped forward to help her out of the car. “Ah! Miss …”

“Farraday,” Amanda said quickly. “Amanda Farraday.”

“Miss Farraday, of course. How nice to see you again.”

“You must be mistaken,” Amanda cooed, pressing into the man’s hand one of the folded ten-dollar bills she’d tucked into the wrist of her black kid glove for just this purpose. “This is my first visit to the Chateau.”

“My mistake, Miss Farraday, of course.” The valet discreetly pocketed the bill. “I must have recognized you from one of your pictures.”

As he drove off with the car, Amanda put on her dark glasses and adjusted her black silk driving scarf so it completely covered her distinctive red hair and most of her face.
Maybe I should sell the Packard
, she thought. There were too many people who recognized it from her previous life, and God knew she could use the cash. But she couldn’t stand the idea of being trapped on the Olympus lot, having to order a studio car every time she wanted to go anywhere, with a chauffeur who was compensated handsomely to report the movements of his passengers directly to Larry Julius. Maybe she could just have it repainted a less conspicuous color, like black, or maybe that funny ecru everybody was so mad for that looked to Amanda like curdled milk. But she loved the dreamy pearl-gray. Amanda dressed in black, but gray was her favorite color. It was chic without being
affected, melancholy without being hopeless. Gray had … possibilities. It reminded her of the movies.

The clerk at the front desk didn’t blink an eye at Amanda’s veiled face. If there was one thing the staff at the Chateau Marmont was accustomed to seeing, it was beautiful people conspicuously trying not to be noticed. “May I help you?”

“Mr. Gordon’s room, please.”

“I’m afraid Mr. Gordon has asked not to be disturbed.”

Amanda regretfully slid another ten-dollar bill from her glove. “I’m Jane Austen? He’s expecting me.”

“Of course.” The money had already vanished. “He’s on the fifth floor. Room F. At the end of the hall.”

Amanda was relieved, frankly, that Harry had chosen a regular room. The Chateau’s poolside bungalows might be more luxurious, but they were outside, leaving them that much more vulnerable to photographers, some of whom were resorting to increasingly absurd measures to get their shots. She’d heard a truly crazy story about a guy who’d been so desperate to get a shot of Clark Gable and Carole Lombard that he’d scaled the fence under cover of darkness and actually hidden
in
the pool for hours, breathing through a straw. The poor guy’s skin had practically fallen off when Clark Gable himself had hauled him out in the morning, thinking he was a hotel guest who’d drowned. When this turned out not to be the case, so the story went, Gable was none too pleased, although the famously gracious King of Hollywood did offer the man a blanket and a restorative glass of brandy before he smashed his camera and called the police.

Amanda knew she’d been lucky so far. She wasn’t naïve enough to think that
nobody
in Hollywood had managed to
make the connection between elusive starlet Amanda Farraday and Ginger, party girl for hire, but for whatever reason—honor, shame, or simple disinterest—they hadn’t come forward. If only she could get a good part in a picture. Something juicy and important, beyond the gun moll and dizzy showgirl roles the studio kept assigning her. Something that could make her a real star. Then she’d be an asset to the studio, one they’d protect at any cost. She’d be untouchable.