“I love you, Clara. Happy birthday.”
April walked away. Clara listened to the staccato beat of her aunt’s high heels as they struck the marble in the foyer. She heard Carol open the door, and she stood listening for the sound of April’s car as she drove away. The house was silent except for the tick of the grandfather clock standing like a sentinel in the marble hallway.
2
Los Angeles, 2019
Clara stopped her Maserati at the studio gate, smiling at the slouching guard on duty. He straightened and lifted his cap to her, bowing at the waist as if she were the Queen of England.
“Go right through, Miss Daniels.”
Clara let her voice find its lowest register. “Thank you, Derek.”
She drove too fast around the huge barn-like studio buildings, playing a game of tag with herself. How close could she come to a producer before he would move? Some even shouted at her and waved a fist, before seeing who she was and falling silent. She left the working schlubs alone.
Her music was loud, but she could still pick up a few stray thoughts as she drove past them. Most were murderous, until they saw her face.
She stopped her car in the space painted with her name. She turned off her music reluctantly and steeled herself for the ordeal to come.
Clara stepped out of her car, and there was a lackey waiting for her. A young woman in sloppy shorts and a stained t-shirt with the name of a TV movie written on it.
“Miss Daniels, Mr. Willoughby is expecting you.”
Clara didn’t smile. “All right.”
She reached into her bag for a cigarette, striding towards the stucco office building on her left. The woman trotted beside her, her face a mask of embarrassed misery.
“Miss Daniels, can I get you anything?”
“No.”
Clara stopped long enough to light her cigarette, but before she could strike a flame from her lighter, the woman extended a match. Clara really saw her for the first time and looked behind her eyes. In spite of years with the studio, in spite of the fact that her every working day was full of humiliation and misery, this woman worshipped Clara as a goddess on the earth.
The woman didn’t move, and the match burned lower. Clara knew she would allow her fingers to burn off before she would put the match out. Clara leaned down slowly, almost casually, and lit her cigarette from the fire at the woman’s fingertips. She blew the flame out just before the woman’s fingers got burned.
Clara smiled then, the slow smile she was famous for. The woman blinked as if dazzled by the sun. She fished into the woman’s mind and found her name.
“Thanks for the light, Peg.”
The woman stood silent as Clara moved past her into the studio building where Bob Willoughby waited in his office on the fourth floor.
Bob Willoughby, the head of Barnett Studios, sat at the end of a long mahogany table, smoking a cigar. He hastily put the cigar out and rose to his feet when Clara entered the room. His assistant, Phil, was at her side immediately, taking her handbag and offering her a glass of orange juice.
Clara took the glass and surrendered her bag without comment, her eyes fixed on Willoughby’s face. Willoughby’s new Vice President of Marketing drew out a chair for her and Clara sat, the slit in her skirt revealing her long leg, up to her thigh. The marketing VP’s gaze rested on her legs for a moment, before he took his seat next to Willoughby.
Clara tried to look into the VP’s mind to see whether or not his calm was a façade but found that she couldn’t. His mind was closed to her. She frowned. That had never happened to her before, except with the other women of her family.
The Vice President of Marketing smiled at her as if he knew what she was thinking. Her frown deepened. He couldn’t have been older than twenty-four. He had a lot of power for someone so young, to be sitting in a meeting with her and Bob. She wondered briefly if she had seen him somewhere before.
Clara let her frown fade and allowed herself. She wondered why Willoughby had brought him in, perhaps in a vain attempt to cajole her. Bob must be under the false impression that she was slipping.
She turned the strength of her gaze on Willoughby and he blinked, caught off guard. He swallowed hard and focused on the papers in front of him.
“Well, Clara, I appreciate you coming in today.”
She smiled then. “I know you do, Bob.”
“Yes, well—”
The studio head coughed convulsively, and his assistant silently handed him a glass of water. Willoughby drank it in three swallows and handed the empty glass back to Phil. For a moment, Clara thought he might mop his brow like one of the characters in the stupid films she made, but he didn’t do anything so obvious. He forced himself to meet her eyes, and she caught a glimpse of the man who had taken a chance on hiring her four years before.
“Clara, the people on the board are concerned about your next project.”
“Really?”
She kept her voice deceptively even and pleasant, sipping her juice. It was slightly sour.
“Yes. They’re afraid the market is too tight for a costume drama. They want to put you in a space thriller instead.”
Clara was silent for the span of a minute. She waited to see if anyone else in the room would speak again. When they didn’t, she extended her hand and Phil was there immediately, placing a lit cigarette between her fingers. She took a slow draw of tobacco, her gaze fixed firmly on Willoughby.
“And what do you think, Bob?”
Willoughby looked surprised at the even tone of her voice, he and took a deep breath. She could feel his fear from where she sat. She wasn’t used to seeing Bob Willoughby afraid. She felt her temper rising.
“You know I’m not paid to think, Clara. Not creatively, anyway. These men know the markets. They feel that a costume drama will flop and lose more studio money than we can afford.”
Willoughby shifted in his chair. He looked down at his papers and shuffled them. Clara got a flash into his mind. They were blank pages.
She kept her voice low, ignoring the marketing VP, who cleared his throat, almost as if he intended to speak. She stared hard at Willoughby until he met her eyes.
“Are they shelving my project, Bob?”
He nodded. Clara stayed silent for a long moment, the glass of sour orange juice in her hand. The marketing VP turned to her. She saw Bob reach for his arm to silence him, but the VP ignored him, focusing his indigo blue eyes on her. For some inexplicable reason, try as she might, Clara still couldn’t read what he was thinking.
“Miss Daniels, the marketing department wants you to know that we consider the shelving of this project only temporary. We’ve had quite a few setbacks in foreign markets, and we need to shore-up our position. We feel that if you consider the space thriller, Blast Away, we’ll be in a better position to return to—”
Clara stood in the middle of his speech, and in one smooth motion, threw her orange juice against the wall behind his head. The crystal shattered against the wood paneling and the sour juice ran down the wall in rivulets.
She didn’t look at the VP again but turned to Bob. Phil was at her side with her bag. She delicately took a last draw off her cigarette and stubbed it out in the crystal ashtray on the table. Bob’s eyes were wide, and she could feel him holding his breath.
“I think you know my position on this, Bob. I’ll wait for your call.”
Clara turned, and Phil opened the door for her smoothly. She was out of the building and back in her car before she remembered that when she’d thrown her glass the VP hadn’t even flinched.
“Who the hell is he?” Clara spoke into her cell, standing on her balcony overlooking Malibu Bay.
Donna spoke calmly. “I don’t know, Clara, but I’ll find out.”
“I want his job.”
“Let me find out who he is first. There may be a way around him.”
Clara drew the smoke from her Turkish cigarette into her lungs.
“All right. I’ll wait
.”
“I’ll handle it, Clara. I’ll call you tonight.”
Clara smiled at the confidence in her manager’s voice. Donna was one of the few people she respected.
“Tonight, then.”
Clara laid her phone down and stared out over the Pacific. The water was a dull gray, reflecting the gray of the smog trapped over the bay. Her cigarette was lightly laced with hashish, and Clara could feel tendrils of warmth relaxing her muscles despite her fury. Her mind started to unclench as she drew in another breath of the sweet-smelling smoke. Donna would handle the little prick, whoever he was.
She slid into the Jacuzzi on her deck as Margherita brought her a glass of fruit juice.
“Thank you, Maggie.”
Her little maid smiled, flashing the gold tooth that Clara had paid for. “You are welcome, miss. Would you like some lunch?”
Clara leaned back against the pool’s padded edge and sighed. “No, thanks.”
The older woman walked away on silent feet. Clara saw Margherita’s son, Paolo, emerge from the bushes along the side of the house with clippers in his hands. His chest was slick with sweat. Paolo looked like some Toltec god emerging from the underbrush.
She smiled and spoke to him in Spanish. “Your flowers are beautiful, Paolo.”
The young man said nothing but laid his gardening shears down carefully on a cedar bench. He moved with the grace of a panther as he knelt beside the pool and took her hair in his hand. Clara offered him a draw from her cigarette. He took it and cast it over the balcony rail.
“I wasn’t finished with that.”
Paolo said nothing. He drew her up onto the deck to lie beside him. His hands were hard on her body as he peeled away her bathing suit and started to make love to her on the sun- drenched deck. She marveled at the wonders of her life, that this beautiful man could make love to her on hard cedar planks that were so well-lacquered, she never got a splinter in her back.
3
Palm Springs, 2009
Twelve-year-old Clara pulled on the too-tight collar of her pink chiffon dress. She stood next to the antique vanity table, watching as her mother put on her makeup, layer by careful layer.
Jessica Daniels was dressed in a white satin gown that clung to her figure like a second skin, skimming over her hips to swirl around her ankles. It had belonged to Clara’s great-grandmother in the 1930’s. She imagined that the satin would feel smooth and cool under her hand, if she had the courage to reach out and touch it. Her mother’s hair was gathered in a golden chignon.
She watched as her mother smoothed gloss over her lipstick. Jessica met her daughter’s gaze in the antique mirror.
“Want some lipstick, honey?”
Clara blinked. Her mother never spoke until her beauty ritual was complete. Today was an exception. Today was her mother’s wedding day.
“Yes, Mom. I would.”
Jessica slid over on the mahogany bench of the dressing table and laid her hand on the seat beside her.
“Sit down, honey, and I’ll paint you face.”
Clara sat very still, praying that no one would come in and distract her mother before she finished. Jessica was so easily distracted. Many times, she had begun to make-up Clara’s face, only to be interrupted by a phone call or a visit. She would rush off to speak to the adult, leaving Clara forgotten.
Today, no one came in. The phone didn’t ring. Clara heard Carol, the housekeeper, call to someone in the garden below, ordering someone hired for the day to move a flower arrangement to a more convenient location. Then the old landline rang down the hall. Clara flinched, but Jessica took no notice of it. She simply brushed powder over her little girl’s cheeks with unbroken concentration, as if she were creating a work of art.
Clara watched as her face was transformed in the mirror before her. Her mother used the paint sparingly, but to good effect. She didn’t look made-up, but her features were clearer, more distinct. She stared at her reflection and saw for the first time that she was as beautiful as her mother was.
“You look pretty, Clara.”
“Thank you, Mom.”
Jessica sat for a moment, saying nothing. They stared at each other in the mirror, in silence. It was the longest that Clara had ever held her mother’s gaze.
She thought Jessica might speak, that her mother might say something important before she walked down the stairs, to the man who waited for her, changing their lives forever. For a moment, Clara hoped wildly that her mother would call the whole thing off. She hoped they might run off to Cancun together, leaving Darren in the dust.
But the moment faded.
Jessica smiled brightly and stood. “Hand me my bouquet, would you, honey? We can’t keep the guests waiting.”
Clara stood and handed her mother the spray of white roses and calla lilies. Her voice stuck in her throat as Jessica moved to the door in her satin gown. She watched as her mother’s manicured fingers turned the glass doorknob, and the door opened.
Clara could hear the noise from downstairs clearly then. Carol was bellowing to someone about moving a case of champagne out into the yard. She watched her mother give her appearance one last check in the full-length mirror before she turned and walked away.
Clara looked at herself in the full-length mirror as her mother had done. Her new makeup made her look like a painted doll. She washed it off before going downstairs. She was late, and Carol had to come and fetch her down. The ceremony was about to start.
Everywhere Clara went at her mother’s wedding reception, there were people. She wanted to go walking in the desert to get away from them, but she knew that she would ruin her dress. The pink chiffon rasped against her skin, and she winced. She hated pink. Why her mother had chosen it for her, she didn’t understand.
She stood under one of the tents, shaded from the hot afternoon sun. The shadows were beginning to slant across the manicured lawn behind her mother’s house, over the beautiful blooming gardens. Her mother had ordered flowers flown in from all over the world to fill the terrace and to add their perfume to the tables that stretched under the white awnings. The tables overflowed with caviar from Russia, oysters from Baja, crab and lobster from Maine. Clara hated seafood, but she stood next to the table with the fish. It had been emptied for the most part, and as a result, there were fewer people surrounding it.
Clara looked longingly past the terraced gardens to the desert that stretched beyond them. Tomorrow she would pack a lunch and go into the desert for the whole day. Her mother wouldn’t be there to worry. She and Darren would be in Cancun by then.
She looked up to find Darren watching her with a steady gaze from across the lawn. Clara swallowed but didn’t drop his gaze. He murmured something in her mother’s ear, his eyes never leaving Clara’s face. Jessica smiled up at him, her lips sliding over his cheek. He took his eyes from Clara long enough to lean over and kiss her mother’s mouth—the kind of kiss that, in Clara’s opinion, should have stayed in their bedroom.
She watched as Darren crossed the wide expanse of lawn. She didn’t turn away or try to avoid him. Avoiding the unpleasant only postponed the inevitable. Clara preferred to face her battles head-on. She didn’t blink or smile as he stopped in front of her.
“Hi, Clara. You having fun?”
She shrugged one shoulder and looked down at the few remaining crab legs displayed on a bank of ice. Darren reached over and took one. He cracked the shell with his teeth before drawing the flesh out with his tongue. He winked at her, casting the remains onto a passing servant’s tray, then smiled at her, his white teeth gleaming in his tanned face.
Clara watched him with a sort of sick fascination. She didn’t yet understand how a person’s face could be so different from the thoughts going on behind his eyes.
Darren was attractive, with a glowing healthiness that led people to believe he was wholesome. Because of the family gift, Clara knew he was far from it. She wondered how her mother couldn’t know. Clara’s eyes widened slightly as she co
nsidered, for the first time, the possibility that her mother knew exactly what Darren was and wanted him anyway.
Darren looked down at her for a long moment, letting the silence stretch between them. Clara held her breath, hoping he might say something stupid and move on. He didn’t. He simply kept staring at her.
He reached out and smoothed her hair back from her cheek. She had left it down for the wedding, and the pink flower she wore over one ear matched the color of her dress. The pads of his fingers slid over her smooth skin, and his hand ran down her cheek to cup her chin.
To someone watching, it would look like an innocent caress offered to a child. Clara knew better. She felt the warmth of his palm and heard the thoughts behind his clear blue eyes. She met his gaze and didn’t pull away.
“Will you be bored here all by yourself next week, kiddo?” His voice was casual and light.
He took his hand away, reaching for a glass of champagne. He tipped the glass back, and she watched the liquid slide down his throat. He drank the champagne in three swallows, his eyes never leaving her face.
She kept her voice deceptively calm. “No.”
“Good.” His tone had a hearty quality to it that many men used when speaking with children.
She knew he didn’t see her as a child.
Jessica beckoned to him from the steps of the terrace. She blew Clara a kiss and waved to her from her marble perch.
“I guess we’d better go meet your mom.”
Darren’s gaze shifted from her to Jessica. The hand he had laid on her arm fell away.
He was afraid to really touch her. He would never try to get her alone. He wouldn’t risk losing Jessica’s money. At least Clara’s mother had had the sense to make him sign a prenuptial agreement. An airtight one, the lawyer had assured her, as Clara listened from the hallway.
The Slow Rise of Clara Daniels Page 2