Starstruck (31 page)

Suddenly, a voice cut across the lawn. “Miss Sterling. Is that you?”

“Arthur!” Margo cried desperately, air flooding back into her lungs. Startled, Phipps loosened his grasp, allowing her to wrench free. “Over here!”

Arthur ambled into view, a look of concern etched across his dark face. “I thought I heard you holler,” he said. “Are you all right?”

“She’s fine,” Phipps spat. “Just tripped, that’s all. Go back to your car and leave us alone.”

Arthur glanced at Margo. “No, sir, I don’t think I will. Not unless it’s what Miss Sterling wants.”

“Damn you, I said
leave
!”

“What the hell is going on out here?” Doris’s father came barreling across the lawn, a small group of partygoers trailing behind. Through the trees, Margo caught a glimpse of Doris’s face, small and bewildered beneath its halo of gardenias.

“We heard somebody shouting,” Doris offered weakly.

“Please, Doris, I’ll handle this,” Mr. Winthrop snapped. “Now, just what is the meaning of this? Who is this man?” He jabbed an accusatory finger in Arthur’s direction. “Roberts, Norris, hold him. See that he doesn’t get away.”

Margo watched in horror as two uniformed attendants seized Arthur by the arms. The chauffeur remained stoic, but she could see his face twitch with fear. “Mr. Winthrop—”

“
Quiet!
” bellowed Mr. Winthrop. He turned toward Phipps. “Phipps, my boy, perhaps you can explain what all this is about.”

Cigarette in hand, his hair already smoothed back from his face, Phipps looked as cool as a cucumber. “Well, Horace,” he began pleasantly, “I really don’t know. You see, Margaret invited me to come outside for a—how shall I put this?—a breath of fresh air”—he shot Mr. Winthrop a slightly abashed “just-between-men” kind of smile that engendered in Margo a terrible wish to make sure Phipps McKendrick would never be able to think of himself as anything resembling a man ever again—“Margo tripped, and I was trying to help her to her feet, when this fellow suddenly accosted us out of nowhere. Frankly, I can’t think how he got on the property. It was almost as if he was lurking in the bushes.”

“I see.” Mr. Winthrop gave a short nod toward another uniformed attendant. “Franklin, call the police.”

“No!” Margo shouted, heedless of anything resembling decorum. “That’s not true!”

Mr. Winthrop gave her a look as though she’d just gone to the bathroom on the lawn. “I
beg
your pardon?”

“Please, Mr. Winthrop,” Margo said desperately. She couldn’t let anything happen to Arthur, not on her watch. “Arthur
drove
me here. He only came running over because he thought I was in danger.”

“Danger?” Mr. Winthrop’s red face was incredulous. “Surely not from Phipps?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” she insisted.

“But why on earth could that be?”

“Yes, Margaret,” Phipps chimed in. His voice was calm, but she saw the shadow of the threat in his eyes. “Why is that?”

“He was … trying to …” She looked around at the sea of faces, many belonging to people she’d known her whole life, staring at her with hard, judgmental eyes.
The way they look at an outsider
. She felt her face grow hot. “Let’s just say he wasn’t acting like a gentleman,” she finished, looking down at the grass.

“I was trying to help you,” Phipps pressed, his voice hard. “What could be more gentlemanly than that?”

“Let’s get one thing straight.” Mr. Winthrop held up his hands, signaling the end of debate. “Phipps came out here with you at your invitation, is that correct?”

“In a way, but—”

“Did you ask Phipps McKendrick to accompany you outside, away from any chaperone, or did you not?”

“Yes,” Margo said quietly.

“It’s not the first time she’s done it either.” Evelyn Gamble, her lips contorted into a disapproving grimace, materialized behind Mr. Winthrop. The unwelcome sound of her unmistakable bray was like a knife through the ear. “She did the same thing with him at the Christmas dance last year. Everybody saw them.”

Mr. Winthrop looked as if he were about to explode. “Doris? Is this true?”

Trembling from head to toe, Doris was wringing her hands against the ghostly skirt of her dress. “Well …,” she whimpered.

“Good grief, Doris, answer me! Is what the Gamble girl says true or isn’t it?”

“It’s …,” Doris squeaked. Her eyes met Margo’s for only the briefest second before she dropped them back to the grassy patch before her father’s feet. “That’s what I heard,” she whispered.

“Right.” Mr. Winthrop gave a sharp nod. He turned to Margo with eyes cold as ice. “Miss Frobisher, I think you’d better leave.”

“He’s lying!” Margo cried. The humiliation of his dismissal was almost too much to bear. “If you’ll just listen to what happened—”

“I’ve listened enough!” Mr. Winthrop raged. “Margaret Frobisher, or whatever you’ve taken to calling yourself, you have been a corrupting influence on my daughter long enough, not to mention the doubtlessly corrosive effect you’ve had on the morality of other young ladies of her cohort. It’s time somebody put a stop to it once and for all.” He paused, fixing her with a terrible glare. “My only regret is for your poor parents. I can’t think what they did to deserve the shame you have single-handedly brought upon them.”

Margo reeled back as though he had slapped her. A faint murmur of shock went through the assembled crowd. Even by the merciless standards of Pasadena society, that was a low blow.

“Now, if this man is indeed your driver,” Mr. Winthrop continued, “then I suggest he drive you someplace else, unless you’d prefer to wait for the police.”

Call the police
, Margo was about to shout, until she saw Arthur’s body tense, panic flashing in his dark eyes. It was so unfair. The Pasadena police would never take the word of a “ruined” girl and a colored man over Horace Winthrop’s and Phipps McKendrick’s. She couldn’t risk getting Arthur in trouble, after what he’d done for her. Margo bowed her head, hiding the furious tears stinging her eyes. “Fine,” she said in a low voice. “We’ll go.”

“See that you do. Phipps.” Mr. Winthrop clapped the boy on the shoulder. “So sorry about all this. No hard feelings, I hope.”

“None at all.”

“Come back to the party and we’ll have a drink. That goes for everyone!” Mr. Winthrop commanded. “Back to the party. Nothing more to see here.”

Slowly, the crowd began to obey, turning their backs on Margo one by one. “Doris,” she called, stretching her arms out as her friend walked past her. “Wait.”

Doris spun on her heel. In the darkness, her huge gray eyes were almost phosphorescent with anger and disbelief. “You ruined my party, Margaret.”

“I’m so sorry. If you’ll just let me explain …,” Margo pleaded.

“No!” Doris cried. “Evelyn told me not to invite you. Why didn’t I listen?” Her face was nearly as red as her father’s. “You always have to make everything about you. As if you don’t get enough attention already.”

“Doris, please—”

“How could you, Margaret?” She shook her head from side to side, the way she used to do in French class at a sentence she couldn’t understand. “How could you?”

Speechless, Margo watched as she walked away, as they all
walked away, making their way slowly up the hill. A procession of mourners abandoning the site once the grave was full. She was dead to them now. She was the corpse, left alone to be forgotten in the ground, while the living trudged back to their everyday lives.

“Miss Sterling.” She felt Arthur’s comforting presence at her side.

“Oh, Arthur.” It came out like a strangled sob.

“Oh no you don’t, Miss Sterling.” Arthur grabbed her arm. “Don’t you cry. They aren’t worth it. Not a single one.”

“I don’t know.”

“I do. Not a single one of them is worth even a single tear of yours. You just remember what Miss Chesterfield used to say.” Margo turned toward the chauffeur, mouth agape. “Diana? What did she say?”

“She used to say, ‘Arthur, I’ve cried so many tears in my life, I promised myself I’ll never shed another one unless it’s for the camera.’ ”

Margo shivered. “For the camera.”

“That’s right.” Gently, Arthur laid his coat over her bare shoulders, to replace the one that Phipps had ripped away. “Come on, Miss Sterling. I’ll take you to the car.”

A
rthur didn’t like this, not one bit. “Won’t you just let me take you back to the studio, Miss Sterling?” he pleaded, even as he pulled up to the curb outside Schwab’s. “After the night you’ve had, you really ought to be getting some rest.”

“Absolutely not,” Margo said firmly. Her hand was already on the car door. “But you go on, Arthur. Go home and be with your family. I’ll be all right.”

“How are you going to get back?”

“I’ll have them call me a cab. Or I’ll hitch a ride with someone. Don’t worry,” she said, leaning over the seat. “I lived seventeen years before I had a driver, and somehow I always managed to get where I was going.”

“Respectfully, Miss Margo,” Arthur said, “my job wasn’t dependent on it those seventeen years.”

She had to take down three different phone numbers—
including his personal number—and solemnly swear to call any of them, at any hour, the moment she got in trouble, before he would leave. When he had at last pulled away, Margo stood on the sidewalk for a moment, staring up at the flashing neon sign that had once held for her such promise, such hope, like the first glimpse of land after months spent at sea.

Schwab’s Pharmacy

She needed to be here. She needed to be where it had all begun.

It was late, still the store was unusually empty for a Friday night. All the Hollywood hangers-on who made Schwab’s their headquarters, the has-beens and never-weres and still-to-bes who set the air abuzz with their jabber and complaints, their gossip and gloats, were nowhere to be seen. Margo made her way down the quiet main aisle and sat down at the horseshoe-shaped lunch counter in the back, which was empty apart from a man in a trench coat reading the late edition of the newspaper over coffee and apple pie. He had on one of those soft felt hats that were worn only by undercover detectives or men who played them in the movies, and for once in her life Margo wasn’t interested in guessing which one he was.

The soda jerk, a kid about her own age clearly stuck on the dead late shift due to lack of seniority, came rushing over. “Miss Sterling!” he exclaimed, placing a paper placemat in front of her with a flourish. “How nice to see you. Are you alone?”

“Yes,” she said. “All alone.”

“Oh! Well, in that case, um, what can I get for you?”

“Just a cup of coffee, please.”

“Sure thing.” The kid hesitated. “Are you sure you don’t want anything to eat?”

He looked so earnestly let down that Margo cracked.
I’m probably one of the only customers he’s had all night
, she thought. And she couldn’t deal with seeing that look of disappointment on anyone else’s face. Not tonight. Not with the day she’d had. “I’ll have a cheese dream, I guess. With bacon, if you have any left. And a chocolate soda … no, a black-and-white.”

“Yes, Miss Sterling!” The kid looked as if she’d just offered him a million bucks. “Coming right up!”

Where is everybody?
Margo thought as the kid dashed off to the icebox. There was something downright eerie about Schwab’s devoid of its cast of usual suspects.
Maybe they’re all off together someplace
. Some teeming party in one of their shabby, cramped apartments over on La Cienega, all of them drinking fruit punch spiked with cheap gin from mason jars as they jabbered grandly about the dreams that for most of them would never come true. In a way, Margo envied them. Her own rise, while certainly not without enormous cost, had been so unimpeded, such a case of dumb luck. If
The Nine Days’ Queen
was a hit, she would be a star, but it could just as easily—and even more probably—bomb, and she’d be back where she’d started, without the years of hard work and high hopes and good friends that would not only make success all the sweeter, but also cushion failure’s blow. Still, the one thing she could never say was that she hadn’t gotten a fair chance.

She glanced over at the kid at the icebox scooping vanilla ice cream into her tall soda glass. Would he one day, years from now, tell some starry-eyed teenager how he used to make black-and-white sodas for Margo Sterling? It seemed like a lifetime ago that she’d sat here with that stack of movie magazines in front of her, in her sweater, wearing that ridiculous scarlet
lipstick she’d thought was the height of sophistication, and, of course, her funny little gold-and-pearl pin. Instinctively, she reached up to feel the familiar comforting coolness of the pearl against her skin.

But her fingers met only cloth.

The pin was gone.

Frantically, Margo lifted the paper placemat, the roll of the silverware, the napkin holder, scanning the counter in desperation. She searched the folds of her gown; she squatted beside her stool, methodically examining every square inch of the floor. It was no use. The pin was gone. It must have come loose during the horrible tussle with Phipps on the lawn.

“Oh, God,” Margo gasped, “oh God, oh God, oh God.”